The first person who told me I was ‘too much’ was not a stranger. It was my first mirror. Someone who braided my hair before school, whose fragrance stayed with me even when she wasn’t around and whose face was the most beloved. I called her mother.Sometimes the first person who teaches a girl to doubt herself is another woman who loves her."You'll never learn.""Why can't you be more like their daughter?""You are too clumsy."At the time, I did not think of those words as wounds. They were simply part of growing up. After all, mothers scold, mothers worry, mothers know best.It took me years to realise that not every scar announces itself with raised voices or bruises. Some arrive disguised as comparisons, others as constant criticism, affection that feels conditional, or expectations that leave little room to simply be. They do not break bones; they simply reshape the way a daughter sees herself. 

The cruellest part is that daughters rarely stop loving their mothers. Instead, they stop trusting themselves. A compliment begins to feel undeserved because faults were all they ever heard. A mistake feels catastrophic because perfection was expected. Even success is followed by a........

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