"Brave"

OK, first of all,  Spoiler Alert... I'm going to discuss the movie "Brave" at length.

We took the family to see the movie Brave today.  While I was expecting kind of a "chick flick," what I was NOT expecting was to leave the movie barely able to stifle sobbing. 

It wasn't a sad movie, no it had a very happy ending.  However, the premise of the movie hit so close to home, and touched on so many aspects of a mother daughter relationship that I recognize I cried like  a "little girl" (Bella's words) throughout the movie.

So, Brave was all about a mother who was trying to make her daughter, Merida be the "perfect" princess.  Mom's intentions are good and she only wants what is best for Merida but she spends so much time trying to convince and force her to be something she just isn't she never really knows her daughter.

It comes to the point where Merida runs away, and finds a witch to cast a spell to "change" her mother to change her fate.  The spell ends up turning her mother into a large bear and bears happen to be her father's nemesis in life.  (Unecessary tangent here, so I'll just leave it at that.) The rest of the movie shows how Merida and her mother's relationship grows and changes while her mother is in the shape of a bear.  How they learn to appreciate each other and love each other for who they are.

So all of my family knows that Jules and I are completely different in so many ways.  I spent years trying to get her to wear pink sparklies, do mani/pedis with me, curl her hair and make it fancy.  Basically I tried for a very long time to make her me.  I finally came to peace with our differences while I was pregnant with Bella.  One last "Cotton Blossom Pageant" disaster was the final straw.  I decided once and for all I'd just leave her be and let her have her own style and stop putting so much pressure on her.

Well, I thought that we were doing pretty good at our relationship.  I was leaving her alone to be who she wanted to be, and I found some solace in the fact that Bella got enough "princess" genes for the entire family (me included).   Until one daylast year, I had a little epiphany that I hadn't asked Jules how she was doing for days.  (And who knows how many.)  I called her into my room and just started asking her questions about her life.  In the course of this conversation she says to me, "you know mom, sometimes I feel like I'm just raising myself." 

OUCH.  Like, knife in heart.  I think that I was so busy trying to just leave her be, and not try to make her into something she wasn't, I took it too far by not engaging her enough to find out who she WAS and get to know her on her terms.

I was very grateful that she verbalized herself so well.  I would've hated it if she felt that way her entire youth and never gave me a chance to correct it.

All this was going through my mind today as I was watching "Brave."  We were leaving and I put my arm around Julianna and I asked her if some of the movie looked familiar.  She smiled and said, "kind of."   I replied look, I will try really hard not to ask you to use a straight iron on your hair, just don't turn me into a bear.

"Hmmm mom, I can't make any promises."  :) 

Well I'm going to keep trying to make it hard for her to even consider it.  Love that Jules, she is "Brave" too.