𝕷𝖚𝖓𝖆3𝖑𝖑𝖎𝖕𝖘𝖊

Earlier today, I served as the “young woman’s voice” in a panel of local experts at a Girl Scouts speaking event. One question for the panel was something to the effect of, “Should parents read their daughter’s texts or monitor her online activity for bad language and inappropriate content?”

Around age 13, I tried to express to my mother that I thought I might have clinical depression, and she snapped at me “not to joke about things like that.” I stopped telling my mother when I felt depressed.

Around age 15, I caught my mother reading my diary. She confessed that any time she saw me write in my diary, she would sneak into my room and read it, because I only wrote when I was upset. I stopped keeping a diary.

Around age 18, I had an emotional breakdown while on vacation because I didn’t want to go to college. I ended up seeing a therapist for - surprise surprise - depression.

Around age 21, I spoke on this panel with my mother in the audience, and afterwards I mentioned the diary incident to her with respect to this particular Q&A. Her eyes welled up, and she said, “You know I read those because I was worried you were depressed and going to hurt yourself, right?”

TL;DR: When you invade your child’s privacy, you communicate three things:

You do not respect their rights as an individual.

You do not trust them to navigate problems or seek help on their own.

You probably haven’t been listening to them.

that means your calling your 8 year old self who handed out rocks to strangers ugly

that means your calling the 5 year old self with to many friends ugly

and the 80 year old you who should have enjoyed your youth but was to busy on how much you weighed

that means your calling the stars ugly

the rocks, the trees, everything you see with your "ugly" eyes

if we came from the dirt then we shall return to the dirt

what we were once made of we will return to, our forms in the stars forever