(ThyBlackMan.com) 16 years ago, I was sitting alone in a Planned Parenthood clinic located in downtown Philadelphia.
16 years later, I find myself seated in the lobby of a Planned Parenthood clinic once again. Except I am not the patient filling out the paperwork, my daughter is. We are not in the city either. This particular office is located in a suburb right outside of Philadelphia. There is, however, one major similarity. Our age. My daughter and I were both a few days shy of turning 16 when we stepped inside the doors of a clinic for the first time.
Despite us being the same age when we made our first appointment to P.P, there are many more differences between our visits than similarities. One of them being our emotional state. The fear, nervousness and awkwardness that once overwhelmed me all those years ago are gone. In its place is my daughter, a young woman of extreme confidence and grace. It is apparent just by her smile alone that everything is clear to her. There is no confusion or 
embarrassment on her part. She shows no signs of feeling guilty or shame. Which doesn’t surprise me one bit.
Because while my daughter is just here to be placed on birth control, I was in the clinic because I had missed my period and had begun sleeping entire days away.
It’s been almost twenty years and so much has changed. Life has hurtled by at such a rapid pace for everyone. And the particular reason that brought me to Planned Parenthood in the first place (I was six weeks pregnant with her) is now at P.P for her own personal reasons. As I listen to her youthful giggling, in between the moments she turns to her father for help filling out the application, I cannot help but think to myself that the laws of cycles are so evident. With twenty-four hour days, the year’s seasons and our breathing, but even more so, I see evidence of a cycle between my daughter and I.
Like people, times and places, cycles can either get better or worse. Of course, this all depends on a number of different factors, like the types of role-models you have in your life. And whether you are willing to accept the help of these wiser, greater folks. Whether your cycle gets better, also depends on the kinds of people, places and thoughts you give your attention to.
Because you are only -and this is especially true for your children- as brilliant as what you think about and focus on.
There is no doubt in my mind, and science will back me up, that my daughter could be in the very same boat that I was in when I was her age. A high-school dropout. Single. Pregnant. Moving from place to place. A runaway. Instead she is currently in the tenth grade, with a GPA of 90.1. Made honors this semester, plays the cello, takes Spanish 1, is on the swim team and has kept and maintained a babysitting job all year long. Twice a month she is bussed down to Drexel University where she takes Pre-College Courses and, as of recently, she’s lost a whooping total of twenty-five pounds.
The difference between where she is at emotionally, spiritually and academically now and where my mind was at when I was her age is, unlike my mother, I’ve never felt like I was a helpless pawn of the elements. Always aware that to a certain extent, I could mold things (especially my children and my family) after that which I most desired in my mind and heart. In a greater sense, I’ve always believed that I had the ability to make my world whatever I want it to be. She is proof of my thinking.
As my daughter laughs at her father’s jokes, I am extremely grateful that we are not doomed to repeat the mistakes of our parents as once predicted. That we can make conscious choices to control the energies that can be responsible for our own undoing and destruction. For my daughter this meant that she was not only given a fighting chance, but, a running start at life. As the whole wheel of my desires rolls onward, she will gain ground and dynamic life experiences, and for my progeny this means that she will be entirely freed from the old habits that were strongly impressed upon our family.
Not only is this idea beautiful, but according to the laws of the universe, the way life should work out. And in sitting here reflecting on my life, the life of my teenage daughter and a cycle that has finally come to a close, how could it be any other way?
Staff Writer; Camilla Marie
