By Ashlee Gadd
@ashleegadd

Any time my five-year-old daughter gets hurt, she pops up like one of those jack-in-the-box toys and yells, “I’m okay!!!” 

She could trip on the sidewalk. Topple off her balance bike. Miss the last rung on the ladder descending out of the trampoline. A few weeks ago while chasing a sibling, her hip clipped the edge of the coffee table, which sent her plummeting to the floor.

“I’m okay!!!” she called out, jumping to her feet and flashing a thumbs up, alerting nobody in particular. 

Occasionally, the full extent of her injury will register thirty seconds later, a throbbing pain or visible scrape, along with a barrage of tears. But my daughter’s default setting—her first instinct—is always the same: a perfect rebound.

Over time, I’ve come to expect this response from Presley whenever I hear a crash, a bang, or the sound of her body colliding with the ground. 

“I’m okay!!!” 
“I’m okay!!!”
“I’m okay!!!”

My tough, tough daughter, I often think to myself, with a hint of admiration.

***

Last summer, my friend Tamara hired a swim instructor to come to her house. Our daughters are the same age and already share a babysitter, so adding swim lessons into the mix seemed like an efficient plan. Each of the girls would receive a thirty-minute private lesson in Tamara’s backyard pool. Call it hope or naive optimism, but I genuinely thought Presley would be swimming by the end of the summer. 

I don’t remember how many lessons we did total. Six? Maybe more? Multiple weeks and a few hundred dollars later, she still wouldn’t put her face anywhere near the water. 

At the start of 2024, I enrolled her in swim instruction—again—this time in a local indoor swim school attached to a scuba center, where they offer weekly semi-private lessons. Several months, dozens of sessions, and even more hundreds of dollars later, here we are again: same story, different pool. Presley can scoop her hands in the water, no problem. She can kick her legs and monkey crawl around the edge. She can even flip over on her back and float for a few seconds, unassisted. 

But she cannot swim—because she refuses to put her face in the water.

I’ve tried everything: bribery, practicing at home in the bath, using the beautiful vintage spritz bottle offered in the scuba center lobby to spray “mermaid dust” (air) all over her face for “extra bravery.” I’ve tried switching instructors. I’ve tried reading books about swimming. I’ve tried talking to her, asking as curiously and non-judgmentally as possible: What’s going on, Babe? What’s the problem? Why won’t you put your face in the water? 

“I just don’t like it,” she tells me.  

And even though I know learning a new skill takes time, and even though I know progress varies by child, as the mom sitting at the side of the pool for months on end, emptying my wallet over and over, I cannot deny my frustration. 

What happened to my tough girl? The “I’m okay!!!” girl? The perfect rebounder? 

When the swim instructor suggests we buy my daughter goggles with a nose cover—aka a “dive mask”—it takes all of the self-control in my face to not roll my eyes. My daughter already has a pair of goggles. They cost $25 and were featured on Shark Tank for crying out loud. 

This same instructor has been trying to teach Presley how to blow bubbles out of her nose for months and now, what, we’re just giving up? Doesn’t she need to learn how to exhale underwater?! Won’t these new goggles be a crutch? A hall pass on doing the hard thing? Isn’t this going to delay the inevitable—won’t she have to learn eventually? 

I keep my questions to myself and begrudgingly add a $14 dive mask to my Amazon cart.

***

Unlike my daughter, who is the baby of the family, I am a textbook firstborn child. 

If you’re not familiar with birth order theory, firstborn children are often described as leaders, high-achieving and/or over-achieving, structured, organized, and mature. Pair that list with eldest daughter syndrome—having a strong sense of responsibility, carrying the heavy weight of parents’ expectations, perfectionism, and people-pleasing behaviors—it’s no surprise that “suck it up, buttercup” is how I move through the world.   

I don’t remember the first time I heard that phrase, but I remember smiling the first time I said it out loud. The words rolled off my tongue like a line of poetry. Like a mantra I could use for the rest of my life.  

While I thankfully haven’t suffered a ton of physical injuries to date (with the exception of that one time at cheer practice when I went flying into the air and landed on my face), my so-called toughness shows up in other ways: namely, mental and emotional. 

For example, once I stuff negative emotions deep down into the abyss of my heart, I simply turn on my internal trash compactor. Before anyone notices anything is wrong, I’ve already crunched my sadness, anger, loneliness, jealousy, inadequacy, rejection, and general overwhelm into a fraction of what they once were. 

Stuff. Crunch. Reset. I’m okay! 

Meanwhile, I keep my outsides shiny and new. Two weeks after the birth of my third baby, I went shopping for jeans. At the time, I told my husband I needed to get out of the house, but looking back I can see that so clearly for what it really was: a small cry for help. Despite being crazy in love with my little girl, a cloud of baby blues had already started to form above my head. Instead of telling anyone how sad I felt, I went to the mall and squeezed my bleeding body into multiple pairs of denim in an unforgiving, fluorescent dressing room. 

Stuff. Crunch. Reset. I’m okay! 

I left the mall that day with nothing in my hand but a carton of Wetzel Pretzels. Sitting in my car in the parking lot, I took a photo of the greasy bag and wrote a cute caption for Instagram. You know the kind, perfectly relatable with a dash of self-deprecation. Silly me, trying on jeans two weeks postpartum! What on earth was I thinking?! I sat alone in the car for ten minutes and watched the likes roll in. 

A funny thing happens when you keep your outsides shiny and new: most people stop asking how you really are. 

***

At the next swim lesson, armed with the $14 dive mask, Presley holds her breath for ten whole seconds and swims underwater for the very first time. 

I can hardly believe my eyes. 

She doesn’t flinch. Hands scoop. Legs kick. Her entire head finally submerges. Once she arrives at the other side, Presley pops up and yells across the pool, “Mommy! Guess what? There’s no gravity underwater!!!!” 

She flashes me two thumbs up. I think I might cry.

For the next twenty minutes, she and the instructor swim back and forth across the pool. They pause every ten to fifteen seconds for a back float. The instructor positions her hand loosely under Presley’s back, but lets go every so often. Then they keep swimming. “Again!” Presley chants every time she reaches the edge. Newfound confidence oozes off her body, her face, her smile. 

On the third trip across the pool, she holds her longest back float to date: twenty-two seconds. 

Meanwhile, a library book and journal remain untouched in my bag. I only open my phone once to take a video. I stare at the water, captivated, relieved to finally witness this familiar version of my daughter—brave, confident, fierce—show up at the pool.  

I sit on the bench simultaneously beaming with pride and fighting a tinge of remorse. I’ve been frustrated for months, wishing my daughter would toughen up. Wishing she would get over her discomfort, and get over it quickly. Wishing she would channel the qualities of a specific apple that falls from my tree.

But that’s not what Presley needed. She needed to learn how to swim on her own terms, in her own time. She needed to feel safe. Comfortable. Ready. She didn’t need tough love; she needed a gentle entry point. 

As it turns out, those $14 goggles were a catalyst, not a crutch.

***

For as long as I’ve dreamt about motherhood, I have dreamt of having a daughter, and for as long as I’ve dreamt of having a daughter, I have dreamt of raising her to be strong.

People say children are mirrors. This truth can be hopeful or terrifying, depending on the day. When you see a tiny reflection of yourself, it’s impossible not to notice the parts of you that need work. 

Watching my daughter learn to swim has made me reconsider what it means to be strong—physically, mentally, and emotionally. I grew up believing the worst thing I could ever be is fragile. Needy. Weak. Gentle entry points don’t come naturally to girls who chant suck it up, buttercup in their sleep. 

What am I so afraid of? I guess I’m afraid that once one little need slips out, they’ll all slip out, a final whack to the piñata. I am afraid of moving through the world without my internal trash compactor. After all, I’m known as the strong one, the stable one. Who am I, if not a dependable pillar of strength? Who am I, without this shiny exterior?

Watching my daughter learn to swim reminded me that it’s okay to not be okay. It’s okay to listen to your intuition, to be in touch with your feelings. It’s okay to ask for what you need, or to stay patient while you figure out what you need. It’s okay to pursue the gentle entry point. It’s okay to wear the dive mask—and it’s okay to take the mask off, too.

We’re back at the pool today. I’m sitting on a bench watching Presley tackle another fear: jumping off the diving block. She keeps climbing up and changing her mind, turning around and choosing the easier option of jumping off the side of the pool. 

I’m tempted to yell, “Just do it, Pres! You’ll be fine!” but I bite my tongue. 

That’s my daughter. 

And she’ll jump when she’s good and ready. 

Ashlee Gadd is a wife, mother of three, believer, and the founder of Coffee + Crumbs. When she's not working or vacuuming Cheerios out of the carpet, she loves making friends on the Internet, eating cereal for dinner, and rearranging bookshelves. Her book, Create Anyway: the Joy of Pursuing Creativity in the Margins of Motherhood, is available wherever books are sold. You can also keep up with her work at Substack.

Photo by Jennifer Floyd.