P is for Potential

**If you're new to the alphabet series, start here.**

Baby girl, there are so many important P's I wanted to talk to you about. Priorities. Principles. Patience. I got started on each one, and each time I stalled out, not really knowing what to say next, not really feeling like it was ultimately all that important. And then I realized I was talking to you about the wrong P.

Today, P is for potential.

For the last couple of years, I worked for a woman who was, in all honesty, fairly hard to work for. She had a short temper. She was driven and determined and knew exactly what she wanted. If you kept your head down and did an amazing job on everything, she was pleased and happy, but mistakes were hardly tolerated and when frustrated, her temper would flash, revealing a hard, cold, mean interior. She was divorced and childless. The quintessential career woman.

I was able to stay on her good side at first. I'm an excellent employee, smart, sharp, organized. I pleased her. I made her look good.

And then I got pregnant.

Slowly, subtly, she started giving me a hard time about my doctor's appointments. At first the message--to schedule them outside of work hours--came off as joking. But she got serious very quickly. I started taking whole days off work when I had an appointment so that she wouldn't feel like my appointments were interfering with my job.

Things only got worse after I had you. She told me to code time spent taking you to your appointments differently than time spent at my own doctor's appointments. She complained to her superiors about my pumping twice a day to provide milk for you (a complaint that fell on deaf ears). When I had to stay home with you when you were sick, she took projects away from me and wouldn't speak to me for days.

One day, I overheard her telling someone that women who have children lose their potential.

I had had enough. I documented everything and submitted a packet to our human resources department with a letter stating that I felt discriminated against based on my family status. Thankfully my company treated my complaints seriously, and--skipping the stressful process in the middle--I was shortly thereafter transferred to another team.

When I got pregnant with you, when I looked at that test and screamed with joy, when I became a mother, your mother, I believed I was joining a club of esteemed women. Mothers are loved. Mothers are celebrated. Mothers impress everyone around them with their ability to solve all problems, cure all pains, soothe all fears, and encourage and enable all successes. I never thought there would be people who actually thought less of me for being a mother.

Potential. She thought I lost my potential when I had a child.

I am here to tell you she could not have been more wrong. You have given me more potential than I ever knew I was capable of. Because of you, I am a better person. A stronger person. I can do more than I ever thought possible. I can love more than I ever imagined. I have accomplished more than I ever would have without you.

You didn't steal my potential. You enhanced it.

I tell you this so that you'll understand that one day, someone will look down on you for something, will think less of you. When that happens, ignore them. Defy them. Never let their limited understanding of you limit your actual beliefs and actions. You are better than them; it is they who lack the potential for greatness, the potential for understanding and appreciation. 

You can do anything. Anything. You are the embodiment of unlimited potential. You are smart and funny and confident and beautiful and determined and brave and tender and compassionate. There is nothing that is beyond your reach. Never let anyone make you think less of yourself. Never let anyone label you.

Ever the bit of a feisty one, it wasn't enough that I got myself off this woman's team. She had refused to speak to me after she met with HR. She refused to acknowledge her role, refused to take responsibility for her behavior. I wanted her to know how wrong she was. So when I got pregnant with your brother, I made a shirt that said "Full of Potential" right across my big, gorgeous, pregnant belly.

Because I am. I am a mother, and that makes me FULL of the most incredible potential for greatness. And in the other sense, my growing belly was full of you, of your brother, the embodiments of raw potential itself.


You not only allowed me to grow into my own potential, you yourself are potential in its most pure form. Go explore the unlimited reaches of it, and relish every second.