My Daughter Helped Me Unlearn What Wasn’t Serving Me… Or Her

By Rachel Nusbaum

A byproduct of the good girl diet I was fed for much of my life, I have always considered myself a Rule Follower. I show up on time, I am prepared in advance, and doggone it, you can count on me! Then, thirteen years ago, some wild concoction of genetics gave me a Screw The Rules child. She refused to sit in a stroller. She has never let me brush her hair. At age nine, she belly-flopped into a (mostly mud) pond at a winery right next to a sign that said, “Keep Out of Pond”.   

Trying to force my approach upon her was a disaster. Eventually I saw that she was holding a mirror up to all the ways I have lived inside of a rigid, steel box. I have learned to question, push back, be brave. It has been the most impactful unlearning of my life.

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This essay originally appeared in OUR VOICES, a monthly journal published by Narrative Healing, a mind-body creative community founded by Lisa Weinert.

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