“My stomach hurts.”

She tells me this as she rubs the sleep from her eyes. She tells me this as we walk to school and back home. But it’s when she tells me this between devouring two slices of pizza and asking what’s for dessert that I start to figure it out.

She’s been buzzing with excitement about her school’s International Day concert for weeks. I can tell they’ve been preparing for this and building it up in school by the way she bounces as she chatters on with details about the songs they’re singing and the logistics of the event. But then, suddenly there’s more.

“There are going to be people who say things into the microphone for International Day,” she tells me on the way home from school one day, “I want to be one of those people.”

This is news. Not the part where there will be children with microphones, but that my daughter wants to be one of them. Naturally quiet and reserved, she used to wrap her shyness around herself and hide. But lately, she seems to want more spotlights.

“That sounds like fun! Have you told anyone that you want to?” I ask.

“No….”

“Well, you should,” I encourage her, “it’s always good to let people know what you want.”

I watch her for a reaction. These seeds of an idea that she might do something about her aspiration would have been carried off by the wind a few months ago. But I have a feeling they might settle in now and stretch tiny, fragile roots. So I offer a few suggestions along the lines of, “Ask your music teacher.” And then I leave it there. Best to not drown the seed.

The next day, she nearly knocks me over when I arrive to pick her up.

“I get to talk into the microphone!” she squeals. I shriek back as we break into a happy dance right there in the school hallway.

She’s so excited to have gotten the role she wanted, that it takes me a while to put the pieces together. When I do, the completed puzzle looks a lot like other puzzles we’ve cobbled together over the past couple of years—the sleepless nights and upset tummy for weeks leading up to last year’s Nutcracker performance, the stomach aches of the spring that miraculously disappeared after her solo in the Kindergarten talent show. The pains that have brought her to the studio floor while her classmates dance suddenly become clear. And, just as suddenly, I know what to do.

In the days leading up to the performance, we talk about her nervous belly. We lie in bed and take deep, calming breathes together before sleep. In the morning I tell her to write in her journal about what she’s feeling. We turn on her plastic microphone and she practices. I listen to her line, her nine words, over and over. Breathe, practice, and repeat. And then, on the way to school, we talk about how these nerves are so normal. Everyone gets them. I tell her stories about how nervous I was last year when I stood up on a stage to tell my story while she and our family and friends and hundreds of strangers watched. She asks if I am nervous about having to read a story to her brother’s preschool class that very morning and I tell her, honestly, that I am. Breathe, practice, and repeat, I tell her. And so, she does.

It becomes clear to me as we move through these steps that my role in her life’s performances, in anything she aspires to, is two-fold. I am to support her dreams and help her discover how to reach them. There is no reason that she can’t do what she aspires to and I need to make that one thing very clear today as she steps up to the microphone for five seconds of speaking and through all of her tomorrows. So I support her, I plant those small seeds of confidence, and I walk quietly with her through the scary parts.

But I am also to aspire to things myself. I need to show her, not necessarily how it’s done but that it is done. I’ll walk the path ahead of her, not so that she can follow but so that she can see what it looks like and what it feels like to stand and speak solidly on the outside while everything inside you squirms and flutters. I need to let her into my own scary parts, where the nerves are so strong that I’m worried I might shake until I fall apart. I need to let her see me, feeling as though I may be sick, walk out the door to the big meeting or onto the plane for the big adventure or up on the stage for my own spotlight moment. From the second her first aspiration sparked to life inside of her, our journeys became linked. Our future of deep breathing in sync became sealed. Every step I take into the big unknown of my dreams becomes fuel for her journey. And vice versa.

On the morning of her performance, she doesn’t complain that her stomach hurts. She doesn’t say she feels scared. She tells me she feels ready. And when her moment comes, her voice is loud, clear, and confident. She’ll tell me later that she was nervous. I’ll tell her, honestly, that I couldn’t tell. And we’ll get ready for the next time. Breathe. Practice. Repeat.

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