My Dreamer ~ The Next Day

Remember my blip yesterday, a strange photo, some may have thought, of my nineteen year old daughter's torso?

Here is that same area of skin, twenty-four hours later, and yes, it's real.

Do I say to her "congratulations on making your dream of getting a tattoo one day a reality"? Half of me wants to. I've always encouraged my children to chase their dreams, and yet the other half of me cries out, "my daughter's perfect skin is now full of ink!"

But my daughter's life is not about me and she was so excited about finally getting this tattoo. She is a very artistic girl and drew the design herself, based on the dream catcher she has hanging above her bed. She's always had a dream catcher in her room, a place to keep her dreams safe.

And therein lies the moral to my story. It doesn't matter how I feel, how any parent feels, about the choices their children may make for their lives, so long as they are safe, and most importantly, that they are happy; that is all that matters.

As parents, we have given our children life; we guide them through the younger years of that life and when they reach adulthood, or in my daughter's case, later teenaged years, the choices they make must be their own.

I love my daughter and my ultimate dream is for my dreamer to be happy ~ and she is.