TDTL Day 3: Your Parents

Remember when I said one of the reasons I wouldn't be able to share a letter on here the night I wrote it might be because the power went out? Guess what happened last night, just as I was about to publish this post to my blog. Figures. But I swear I wrote this letter yesterday...

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Dear Mom and Dad,

There are absolutely no words to explain how much you mean to me, but I'm going to try. I honestly believe you're the best parents someone could hope for...and that's not just because I'm more than a little biased.

Thank you for believing in me, even when I didn't always reach what may have been your expectations. Even when I wasn't a straight-A student in high school. Even when I struggled to regain--and keep--my college scholarship. You believed I could succeed and knew I would be happy with however I got there.

Thank you for encouraging me to dream. You've never once said a dream of mine was too big. You didn't smirk when I decided to study Creative Writing. You've always let me dream big and do what makes me happiest.

Thank you for letting me be my own person. I know our views on various issues differ, sometimes dramatically, but you've let me discover what I believe in, instead of trying to make me think only how and what you think. You don't judge me negatively because I chose to be the black sheep and follow more liberal views. You let me say what I think.

And, of course, thank you for reading me bedtime stories. Thank you for the hours spent at the library and for keeping me room stocked with books of all kinds. Thank you for letting my imagination run haywire and listening to my long-winded tales before I was old enough to write them down (and since then too, for that matter). Thank you for putting up with my writerly mood swings and slightly irrational behavior. Thank you for not judging me too much when I ask to see something like the medical dictionary for a scene I'm writing.

But most of all, thanks for loving me for me.