When my elder daughter became a teenager, she became a slightly different person. This is simply a rite of passage, I think - don't we all become different people, when the impending arrival of adulthood stares us in the face? In her case, just the kind of person she is - she wears her heart on her sleeve, so the altered version of my daughter was fairly easy to get to know. Like everyone going through adolescence, there were many hurts and stumbles in the road for her, but I never felt we had to worry about not seeing them.
That's not quite as true with my younger daughter, who is reserved and intensely private. I even began to worry to myself that I might not be able to cross this bridge, and that as she becomes something new, I might not be able to know who she is.
The only answer I have to this challenge? Stay interested. As I sat in the barn last night watching her ride a horse around and around, I realized that is a lot of it, perhaps all of it. So all the way home, I let her regale me with horse stories... the dream horse she'd like to own, the many different lives she'd like to live and how she might arrange to live all of them, and where she'd keep all of those horses she'll have.
They are still the dreams of a girl. But they are the dreams of this girl, and the key to knowing who she is.
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