I am Not Proud of My Daughter

On graduation, generational wounding, and why I won’t teach my daughter to earn love.

My daughter graduated from college this weekend.

Which is wild, because I swear I just graduated... maybe three hairstyles ago?
Time is weird.
Parenting is weirder.
One minute you’re packing Goldfish into a preschool lunchbox, and the next you’re sitting in a stadium blinking back tears while someone in regalia pronounces your kid an adult.

Four short years ago, she and her classmates arrived on campus as nervous Covid-era freshmen. Masks, lockdowns, online everything. They missed half of high school and were still carrying the soft bruises of isolation, uncertainty, and social weirdness. No one knew how this next chapter would unfold.

But she did it. They all did. And yes, of course, I’m proud.

But also… I have complicated feelings about that word.
Not because I’m not bursting with joy—but because I’ve spent a lifetime unpacking the difference between being proud of someone and placing love on a pedestal you have to keep climbing to achieve.

The Wound of Performative Love

When I was little, my parents used to sing a tune they made up:
“We’re proud of you, we’re proud of you, we hope that you are proud of you too…”
It was innocent. Well-meaning. But even then, I think I felt the performance in it.

Kids are smart.
They can feel the emotional soup they live in even if they don’t yet have the words or cognitive framework to explain it. That seemingly innocent song was loaded with the idea that love and approval arrived as a reward. That it had to be earned or it wasn’t there at all.

So like many of us high achievers, I internalized a belief that the only way to feel safe, lovable, worthy… was to impress someone.

This is the wound of performative love.
The difference between:

“I love that you did something hard and impressive”
and
“I love you because you did something impressive.”
And maybe the most dangerous version:
“I love you only if you keep doing impressive things.”

It’s a wound so many high-achieving people carry—this quiet, lifelong fear that love might vanish the moment we stop performing.

That kind of love trains us to measure our worth in achievements.
To believe that safety lives in gold stars.
That we are only as lovable as our last success.

Which is why this moment—this graduation—meant more than it looked like from the outside.

So yes—my daughter walked across that stage. She earned the diploma. She crossed the finish line of a long, hard race.

And of course, I’m relieved she made it through. It’s a privilege to be sitting in the audience of her graduation—not pacing outside a courtroom or visiting her in a rehab center. Life could’ve gone so many ways. She could’ve gotten lost, as so many do, especially in these strange, anxious times.

But what stirs my heart most is not the outcome.
It’s not the degree.
It’s who she became along the way.

The nights she kept going when it would’ve been easier to quit.
The moments she held boundaries.
Asked for help.
Showed up for friends.
Spoke her truth.

That’s what moved me. That’s what made me pause and think:
You’ve become someone I admire.

The way she grew more herself, not less.
Watching her become that person—steady, thoughtful, quietly brave—
And that—more than any diploma—is what made me pause and think:
You’ve become someone I admire.

Not because of what you did.
But because of how you did it.
How you showed up. Who you became.

Because here’s the truth:
If she had shown all that grace and grit and strength and somehow not graduated, I would still be proud.
And maybe that’s the difference.
The one I always sensed in my own parents.
They needed the result—to validate themselves.
Intuitively, I knew they were taking on my accomplishments as their badge of honor.
That feels toxic.
Well—because it is.
They couldn’t really see or honor who I was.
They just needed the bumper sticker: “My kid is an honor student.”

That’s the difference.
The song I want to sing is:

I see who you are, and I love that person. I honor the growth of self it took to do what you did. And I hope you do, too.

Not exactly America’s Got Talent material.
Simon Cowell would definitely hit the buzzer halfway through.

But honestly? I’m okay with that.

Because the kind of pride I feel isn’t for the stage.
It’s not performative.
It’s quiet. Rooted.
The kind that says: You don’t have to earn my love. You just have to be real.
And you, my girl—you’ve become someone I deeply admire.
Not for the degree.
But for the becoming.