I Look Like My Mom

My Nana has always told me that I look like my mom. In fact, I am most definitely the favorite grandchild due to this very fact (sorry Maia, it’s true). 

I always thought my mom was very beautiful. Which is probably why I never believed my Nana, and didn’t believe anyone else who dared announce that we bore any sort of resemblance to each other. I never felt beautiful, especially growing up. I was a cute little kid, sure. But from late elementary school through middle school, I was a complete tomboy — I always ran around with the boys during recess, I openly detested nail polish and skirts, and I blame my partially-receding hairline on the thick rainbow Under Armour headband that chronically inhabited my forehead for, like, years (and you bet I have the receipts). 

By the end of middle school and early high school, my female peers had outgrown their own tomboyish ways, trading in their knee-length jean shorts for cute sundresses and their sneakers for strappy flat sandals. I, however, was now caught somewhere in between: I didn’t really know how to wear feminine things (without my hair being in a ponytail or other athletic style) but I now felt insecure in the not-so-feminine wardrobe I had acquired. My closet haunted me. I hated clothes shopping. Nothing fit right, nothing looked right, and nothing felt like me. I watched as my girl friends seemed to grow up before my very eyes, while I was stuck on some snag in the space-time continuum. 

Embracing femininity when it doesn’t embrace you back is a young woman’s Hell on Earth, in my opinion. 

And over and over again, I was told, “You look so much like your mom!” Little did they know that I was completely appalled by the insults they were hurling at my mother by comparing her to me. 

But earlier this week, I looked in the mirror for a little longer than I usually do and was like–- wait just a second now. 

I saw my mom. 

I surged toward my phone and opened Facebook in record speeds. I scrolled and scrolled, uncovering the youngest pictures of my mom that I could find, and I suddenly saw what everyone else had been seeing this whole time, because staring back at me through the screen was a picture of me with – me. 

I know inner beauty comes from the heart, but my outer beauty comes from my mom, and I have never felt more beautiful since realizing this fact. There is something so wonderful about the idea of carrying another woman’s face with me, and there is no other face I’d rather wear than hers.

So, the next time I am asked which parent I look the most like, I will tell them that I look like my very, very beautiful mom.

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