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My best girl turned 11 today.

She is two inches shorter than me, and she hugs me now like a girlfriend will: arms wrapped tight around my shoulders or my waist, pulling my head into her shoulder, brushing the hair off my forehead.

The first few moments of her life were forever for me: she wasn’t breathing, and my doctor, her father, and my nurses wouldn’t let me see her. I will always remember the sudden silence of that operating room, silence in which everyone moved too fast for me to track.  My girl, I thought.  Oh god, my girl.

Then there was a petulant cry, and the room erupted into noise like I’d slid down a long tunnel into reality. A nurse put her in my arms.  She blinked open her eyes, met my own, sighed a little, settled into her swaddling, and went back to sleep. My girl, I thought.

In that single glance was an understanding. I could feel it. She knew me. Confidence, I thought then, in my ability to be her mother.

Now I think it was confidence in herself to handle whatever comes along.

My daughter never ceases to amaze me.

She’s had a rough couple of years, this last one the roughest of them all. But she stands. She rallies, she fights, she learns, she finds a way through even when she wants nothing more than to lay down and disappear. She can wear me down and turn me inside out so that I am beyond exhaustion, beyond all reason. We have fought like cats, we have cried together like sisters. There are days I wonder if I have ever done anything right with her, and I worry about her future.

But then my wonder fades away, my worry is only a memory.

Because every day, she gives me light. Even if it’s the last second of her day. Her heart, her spunk, her courage, her strength…she takes my breath away.

She turned 11 today, and for weeks leading up to this date, to this weekend, she was terrified, full of anxiety and nerves. This was the first birthday without her father living with us: she didn’t know where to have her party, whether she wanted him there or not, whether she wanted one at all.  She wanted her birthday, she didn’t want it to ever arrive. She wanted him to do something fabulously special with her. She didn’t want to see him at all.  She wanted to go back in time, relive the other birthdays when he was here and happy. She wanted to stop the world and get off.

I coaxed her through, I listened, I cried with her, I lost my patience and yelled, I cried some more with her, I held her in my arms and she in turn held me in hers.

Every day, she told me she knew she was making it hard on me and her brother, and she couldn’t imagine having any other family, that no matter what she said during her spirals of depression and anxiety, she knew she was in the right place, that things would get better.  Every day, no matter what, she thanks me for being her mother.

She has taught me patience, graciousness, courage and gratitude.  And she is only 11.

My best girl turned 11 today.  She will be taller than me soon enough.  She s already wiser. I can’t wait to look her in the eye.