To my future child—born of love, dreams, and a mother who had to walk through fire to become herself.

My love,

I don’t know your name yet.

I don’t know the curve of your smile,

or the sound of your laugh,

or what color your soul will carry when you arrive in this world.

But I already know this:

You were dreamed long before you were born.

You were wished for not out of pressure, but out of purest devotion.

You are not the next chapter of my story—

You are your own story.

And I will honor that with everything I am.

I hope that when you read this someday,

you’ll understand how much love it took for me to get here.

Not just to meet you, but to meet myself.

Because before I could give you life,

I had to first choose mine.

Before I could become your mother,

I had to become the woman who no longer hid from her own heart.

I had to rise from the ashes of everything I was taught to be,

and remember who I really am—

so that I could give you something better than perfection.

I could give you truth.

If you are a daughter—

and I secretly hope you are,

because there are so many stories I long to pass down to you—

I want to sit with you under the stars and tell you fairy tales.

Not the ones where the girl is saved—

but the ones where the girl finds her own way home.

I want to tell you love stories,

real ones—mine and maybe your father’s,

if fate is kind enough to lead me to the one my soul keeps waiting for.

The one I believe exists, because love like that must be mirrored somewhere in this vast universe.

I want you to know that if you were born,

it means you were born from love—not fear, not timelines, not expectation.

But from love that was deep, intentional, and full of soul.

And whether you are my daughter or my son,

I want you to grow up knowing this:

You are not here to repeat the past.

You are not here to shrink.

You are not here to carry the weight of others’ beliefs.

You are here to choose—

your own path, your own voice, your own name.

There will be people who try to tell you what you can and cannot be.

What you must do, what you should want, who you should love.

But I promise you—

There are no limits.

Only doors.

And I will be right beside you,

not to walk ahead of you,

but to walk beside you—

as you open them all.

If I have the gift of being your mother,

then I promise you this:

I will not pass down cages.

I will pass down keys.

I will not raise you to be perfect.

I will raise you to be whole.

And I will remind you, every single day—

that you are not mine to mold.

You are your own to become.

But I will love you—

with the kind of love that holds,

and frees,

and shines from lifetime to lifetime.

Because my beloved…

you will be the legacy of everything I healed.

The light that came after I chose to no longer live in someone else’s story.

You are the child of a phoenix mother—

a woman with the English name Seraphine,

who once had to burn to become whole.

And I will teach you how to rise,

not because I saved you—

but because I saved myself.

With all my soul,

and all the love you were born from,

Your future mama,

Seraphine Duong