A few weeks ago my daughter and I got matching tattoos. This was a promise I made to her years ago before she was legal to get a tattoo. Our last name is Star so we got the stars on our wrist. Black for me, blue for her, intertwined in the ribbon. The tattoo needs something else but we’ll figure that out and add it at a later date. When I told my sister she said, “yuck but you two are super close.” That’s very true. We are super close. It’s been me and her for 11 years. I’m the one who took her to the doctor, to birthday parties, to friends house, to cheer practice or gymnastics. I was the mom taxi picking her up, dropping her off at school everyday. I was the one helping her with the homework and arguing over going to bed. I was the one that had to deal with all the tears but I also got the gift of the laughs and the smiles.

My daughter will always be the center of my world and she can be I have only one child. It wasn’t easy being both mom and dad, friend and disciplinarian, good and bad. I made many mistakes and I had to apologize many times for my own bad parenting. In the end she knows that no one means more to me than she does. She knows I’m always here even after we’ve had a fight I never am going away. She knows that I too can apologize when I’m wrong so she can admit when she was the one wrong. She knows that she can count on me and I’ll do everything I can to help her and it’s a security she has grown up her whole life with. Her father, unfortunately, lives four states away. She only saw him a couple of weeks a year. I never wanted her to feel like she was lacking love in her life somewhere so I made sure she knew she was loved immensely as often as I could.

What I never realized and what I never expected as a single mom, is that for all those tough days, especially when she was younger, the bond created is so special and was worth the hardest of those days being alone. She and I are super close and I can’t thank the world and the way my life went enough for getting us to where we are today. We are two peas in a pod. I think I could really say, I did a good job, had great help from family and raised an amazing daughter.