As my first Life Lesson post, I’m starting with a whopper of a lesson for my daughter.

Yes, I know I have a son. But I’m only 30-something and I want to have two or three more children. I’m hoping one day I will have a little girl to mold into a Mini-Me. I’m pretty awesome, and there should be more women like me. What better way than to give birth to one? Granted there are no prospects for reproduction at the moment, but there’s still time. I’m an optimist. And hey if all else fails, I have a turkey baster.

One of the most important lessons I will teach my Mini-Me is this:

Just because a man (or woman, I don’t judge) has sex with you, it doesn’t mean he (or she) love and respects you.

This probably seems like a no-brainer in the age of the “Hook Up”. But just because I see relative strangers hooking up on The Real World, not all teenagers are like that. I know there are still parents out there  teaching their kids “sex is an expression of the deep love two people have for each other” as an explanation of what sex is. That’s what my parents taught me - it went hand-in-hand with explaining that good girls don’t have sex until they’re married. Not realistic these days, but more of an ideal I want my daughter to strive for.

Growing up I always thought if I was going to have sex with someone, it would be with someone with whom I was in love. I mistakenly thought everyone else thought that way too. I thought when a man slept with me, it meant he loved me. I was very, very wrong.

I’m not going into details of how I learned how wrong I was. Suffice it to say it was excruciatingly painful, and I want Mini-Me to be spared having her heart obliterated. Yet once I was able to look back at the situation, I realized the lesson I learned was empowering. I saved myself from failed relationship after failed relationship, thinking that because I’m doin’ it with a guy, he’s as in love with me as I am with him.

I watch my friends in relationships with guys who hurt them over and over again (twin sis I’m looking at you) and just can’t let go because they’re convinced the guy loves them as much as they love him. His actions clearly say otherwise but he makes love with them, he must love them. These women haven’t learned this lesson, and frankly I think they never will. When the time comes, I will tell my daughter everything - who, when, how happy I was in my ignorance, how very badly it hurt when I realized what a fool I was, and how it nearly destroyed my life.

Hopefully she will learn from my mistake. But if she truly is a Mini-Me and as stubborn as I was/still am, I’ll be there to pick up the pieces and help her understand what happened and why.

I’m adding a new category for posts in Farrahzona. As Supreme Ruler of the land, I can.

I need a place where I can write down all the lessons I want to teach my child(ren). Life lessons I learned the hard way that I want to spare my son (and maybe a daughter?) the pain of having to live the same mistakes I did.

As Supreme Ruler, I declare from this day forward all posts so titled will be categorized in the new category simply titled Life Lessons.