I thought one night in a castle would give my 10-year-old daughter something magical after nearly two years of cancer treatments.<\/p>\n
Instead, at midnight, someone knocked on our door.<\/p>\n
The hotel manager handed me a sealed envelope with my name on it.<\/p>\n
Avery sat up in bed.<\/p>\n
\u201cOpen it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The first line was in her handwriting.<\/p>\n
Mom, before you get mad, Dad helped me send this.<\/em><\/p>\n She had overheard enough of her doctor\u2019s conversation to know her treatment wasn\u2019t working as hoped.<\/p>\n Then came three requests.<\/p>\n Stop telling me \u201cwe\u2019ll figure it out\u201d when you don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n Let me make some choices about my own life.<\/p>\n And choose one thing you want for your future that isn\u2019t about taking care of me.<\/p>\n That last one broke me.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t want a future without you.\u201d<\/p>\n Avery\u2019s eyes filled with tears.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not asking you to be happy without me. I just want you to want something.\u201d<\/p>\n The next morning, I finally admitted I was scared too.<\/p>\n Then I remembered something I once loved: pottery.<\/p>\n Weeks later, I returned to class.<\/p>\n Avery still had cancer.<\/p>\n I was still terrified.<\/p>\n Nothing had magically become easier.<\/p>\n But I finally understood something.<\/p>\n For two years, I thought loving my daughter meant carrying everything for her.<\/p>\n Sometimes love means carrying the bag.<\/p>\n And sometimes it means letting her carry it herself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I thought one night in a castle would give my 10-year-old daughter something magical after nearly two years of cancer treatments. Instead, at midnight, someone knocked on our door. The hotel manager handed me a sealed envelope with my name on it. Avery sat up in bed. \u201cOpen it.\u201d The first line was in her …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9692,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9691"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9691\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9695,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9691\/revisions\/9695"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}