Mrs. Carter, I was remiss. I know the pain you are speaking of; it is cellular in nature, impossible to escape. I should have acknowledged that right away so that you would know, you are not alone. I was too intent on telling you it would not last forever, when I should have remembered my waithood had ended and yours has not.

If you feel powerless, please remember you are holding up the boundaries for two. That boundary also keeps you on your side of the fence and that is as it should be. If that does not feel like it is enough, only time can show you that it is. Everything you poured into your child is still inside her. Your voice is still inside her head. You are the person she tells her secrets and shares her fears, hopes and aspirations. You are also the person she tests herself against, the person she counts on to stay true, and when she is hurting, or longing for a champion or a dose of comfort she remembers you.

Your daughter may be like mine; a child who needed to do it her way, on her own, and learn and earn it all the hard way. It seems to me now, that was her way of taking possession of herself, and owning her own life. If so, she has certainly done it. Getting to know this oh so familiar stranger is an adventure I would not have missed for all the world.

When I read what you wrote — about being black in a white community — I was suddenly back in junior high school, walking down the hallways, sitting in class, eating in the cafeteria, and wishing I was invisible. What I remember most of those years, is the heat inside my body, as though shame was burning inside of me. No matter how hard I tried, I could not fit-in and dropped out of school. Luckily, a group of nuns took me in and saw to my education.

As things turned out, my daughter wasn’t running away from her father or me, she was leaving the school where she’d been hurt. Unbeknownst to me, my daughter had experienced the same thing I had and hid it from me. You see, I was so proud of how far our family had gone from where we started, my daughter was afraid that knowing what she was going through at school would hurt me. She was afraid I would be disappointed in her. She also tells me she hid it from me because she knew I would try to help and anything I did would only make it worse. She was right.

She needed to get away from the world I was living in. Once she left home, she was free to roam around, make friends and build a life among them. My daughter spent several years in the company of good and decent human beings and when she was ready, she called and asked if I was willing to work on our relationship.

When I retired, she flew to California, picked me up in a truck and moved me to a house in Kentucky four houses down the street from her and her husband. We see or talk several times a day.

If I had tried to hold on to her, protect or defend her, I would have lost her forever.

My grandmother once told me that children are like butterflies. If you close your hand to hold onto them, you brush the fairy dust off their wings, and they can never fly again. If you love butterflies, you must keep your hand open and let them fly away and wait for their return.

Love will find a way.