Nina’s Story: A Role Model for Her Daughter

Nina's Story: A Role Model for Her Daughter

Nina's Story:
A Role Model for
Her Daughter

Nina is raising her 10-year-old daughter to be the beautiful, amazing person she can be.

Today, Nina is explaining how she lives her life so she can set a positive example, and be a role model for her daughter.

Watch the video for the full story.

Video Transcript:

My name is Nina. I am 47 years old.

I feel so much more confident, so much happier, so much more myself at 47 than I ever felt at 27. Why? I think it's the perspective, you know.

Like, you go through the stuff of life and you're just like, "I've done that before, I'll be fine." You know.

I've tried things and failed. I've been married and divorced. I've fallen in love more times that I can count and been heartbroken and gotten back on my feet, you know.

So it’s just...you realize when you get older, nothing is permanent, everything changes. You can take what you've learned and move on.

And, you know, the world doesn't end at disappointments and heartbreaks, that there's always more to look forward to. I have a daughter who's now 10, so in 8 or 9 years she'll be in college or off having some other adventure and she won't need me on the same daily basis that she does now.

So I'm thinking about what the next chapter of my life will look like when parenting isn't the thing that organizes it every single day.

I have worked really hard to always make sure my daughter knows how beautiful and amazing she is. And it's been a little bit of a challenge only that my daughter is what the culture thinks of as a very traditional beauty.

She's blonde, she's blue-eyed, she's got high cheekbones and a lot of charisma. And so she got a lot of reinforcement at a very early age for, "You're so pretty and you're so this."

And then I would always chime in with, "And you should see her climb that tree," or, "She's already reading." I read an article once called, "How to Talk to Your Daughter About Her Body," and the message was, "Don't talk to your daughter about her body."

There's nothing you can say before the age of 18 that's any good. Like, don't tell her it's fabulous. Don't tell her it's not. Don't suggest ways to improve it because then the focus becomes what she looks like and not what's going on inside her and who she is.

I think I'm a role model for my daughter in that I wake up every day and try to live a life that feels honest and has meaning to it.

I work a job that doesn't pay a lot but is enough, and that's not why I go to work. I go to work to do work that I love, and hopefully to help some people along the way.

I think I'm kind and I'm loyal, and she sees that in our family and in my friendships. And I think she sees me being human and makes mistakes, you know.

I try, when I do something or say something to her, with her that I shouldn't have done, I really try to apologize. And sometimes I'll even come home and say, "You know, honey, I was thinking about this thing yesterday that I said to you and it came out wrong, and that wasn't what I meant and I know it hurt your feelings or made you upset and I'm really sorry."

And sometimes she'll look at me like, "Oh, okay." I try to model being flawed to her and let her know that that's okay and that we're all complicated people.

I wish more 10-year-old girls knew that life is really long and it changes, and you don't have to figure it all out so quickly, and you can trust yourself to make choices that feel right to you and not to worry so much about what other people think of you, and, you know, figure out what you want, what you need and what's okay.

And I wish, you know, that more 10-year-old girls knew that there were so many ways to be beautiful in the world and to be independent and not worry so much.

There are so many different things that make a woman beautiful: confidence, kindness, someone who, I think, radiates connection with other people and isn't just about herself. Self-awareness is really beautiful. And, humor, you know, somebody who laughs and has a good smile, like, there's nothing better.

Pro-age for me is a radical acceptance of something that happens to everyone, and not just, "Oh, this terrible thing is happening so we might as well accept it," but is, "This is life. This is what we all go through, and why in the world wouldn't we embrace it?"

You know, I'm 47 and I have three good friends who have already died of cancer or in accidents, and I think, like, they would be thrilled to have seen their 47th birthday, none of them made it past 40. So how can I be complaining about my knees are creaky or I feel a little more tired or I have a wrinkle? Like, that is crazy to me. And I think pro-age is embracing your humanity.