My Daughter's Face Taught Me To Love My Own

Last August, I sat on the cold sand at Grant Park Beach in Milwaukee next to a woman I had just met at a wedding. Distracted by the refreshing breeze and freedom that her anonymity offered, I was preparing to reveal a secret that had been growing inside of me for the past thirteen weeks. I was pregnant with my first child, who, according to a recent genetic scan, was a perfectly healthy baby girl, just like I had been thirty years ago.

"Have you thought about what you’ll do after she is born?" the woman asked, catching me in an uncomfortably delicate place where I had to either deflect or answer truthfully and admit that I had neither the motivation to return to my current or any other job — nor was I making any major plans beyond simply being a mom for the foreseeable future.

By the time I became pregnant, it felt as though I had lived 37 lives. Everything that came before felt like countless experiences compressed into too few years. I knew, deep inside, I craved meaning, purpose, something to break the cycle. So, in answering her question, I chose honesty.

"I have no idea what I want to do," I replied, gazing at an endless stretch of Lake Michigan. “But I hope my daughter will show me something I have not been able to see yet.”

Fast-forward to February, and I’m in the recovery room at Mount Sinai West in Manhattan. On that crisp winter morning with a quiet stillness and pale sky, it seemed as if the whole world held its breath, pausing before the thaw began.

Depleted after nearly three days of induced labor that had gone entirely off script, I was finally holding my daughter, who wasn’t yet even 24 hours old and was still covered in vernix caseosa. I had insisted that the nurses leave the waxy substance on, believing it would shield my newborn from every sharp wind and harsh word the reality of the world beyond my arms had to offer.

Fighting to stay alive and awake, I mustered just enough energy to gaze intently at my baby's face, eager to imprint every delicate curve and corner into my consciousness.

Frankly, there wasn’t much new to imprint at first glance. With her swarthy complexion, as if infused with the natural warmth, Sufi bore a striking resemblance to my estranged Chechen father.

After my parents' divorce, my father had become persona non grata in each of the many apartments we moved to across Moscow. He eventually graduated into a local Lord Voldemort, having been referred to by my mom's family and friends as "he who must not be named” to avoid reminding my mother of how he let her down in ways both big and small and shuttered her trust in the entirety of manhood.

No matter how much my mom tried to bury her memories of him, my father’s ghost lingered everywhere—staring back at her through my face and haunting her in the last name I inherited from him, Muslimova.

But beyond her struggle with my resemblance to my Chechen father and the weight of our name, other problems loomed. Growing up in the early 2000s, a time when ultranationalism and xenophobia toward non-ethnic Russians was rampant, discussing my Chechen heritage—or my distinctly non-Slavic last name, Muslimova—became risky and soon strictly forbidden. Whether with friends, teachers, doctors, or classmates' parents, it was a topic my mother forbade. This taboo was her way of shielding me, hoping to avoid provoking harmful stereotypes or associations with violence and extremism tied to my Chechen roots.

Over the years, and under the precise guidance of my mom, I became adept at hiding and censoring a crucial part of my identity. The better my lie became about who I was, the more I struggled with the feeling that I must apologize for something that wasn’t wrong but was seen as such by others. But I could not hide my face.

I carried a sense of shame and embarrassment for the slightly different complexion, facial features and name that did not naturally fit the traditional Russian mold. Worrying about prejudice or judgment, I was compelled to overcompensate in order to belong, simultaneously fighting an internal conflict between being proud of who I was and feeling pressured to blend into a society that I thought would not fully accept me.

Transitioning from girl to woman, I desperately wanted to look different and started to change my looks, trying on various masks to camouflage the features I was naturally given. The act of changing offered me a brief reprieve from the possible judgments or discomfort I was programmed to associate with my natural appearance. I was ashamed of who I was.

Somewhere along the way came an obsession with perfection, deceptively promising I would finally fit in and be accepted once my physique was perfect. I was resolute to always radiate the look of a flawless girl with poreless plump skin, lustrous hair, a proportionate skinny body—all perfectly accentuated by revealing clothes, as if this perfection could armor me with an unbreakable self-worth. Beneath all of it ached the sense of inadequacy, a belief that only through this polished exterior could I finally feel valued.

In my efforts to create a perfect version of myself, I became trapped in a cycle of comparison, measuring my appearance against those around me, then expanding that judgment to everyone I saw online, and eventually, even to filters and AI. Each step only intensified my feelings of inadequacy, and no matter what I did, I never felt like I truly fit in, let alone was beautiful or proud.

That pressure was suffocating, like standing before a mirror that never revealed enough. Each glance reflected my narrowly shaped brown eyes, the distinct curve of my upper lip, my furrowed brow, and something elusive in my smile—a trace of my Chechen heritage, too familiar, too rooted in the self I longed to escape. My face was a mosaic of features I knew all too well, yet I yearned to uncover something new, something foreign—an unfamiliar beauty that never appeared, no matter how hard I searched.

Unexpectedly, I found it on that still February morning in the Mount Sinai West recovery room, closely cradling my newborn daughter. As I gazed into her tiny face, I recognized my own features mirrored back—her eyes, her lips, her olive skin. In that moment, a new beauty bloomed within me, illuminated by her presence, revealing my familiar traits through a fresh, tender lens of love and connection. The mirror had finally revealed everything.

It was as if I had finally discovered the beauty that had always been waiting, nestled in the shadows of the things I once hid and disliked. Suddenly, what used to feel like flaws now appeared as precious and irreplaceable parts of my baby's uniqueness and, by extension, my own.

Seeing them reflected in someone I immediately loved so unconditionally led me to finally see what others might have always seen in me: beauty, tenderness, and history, despite my most arduous attempts to hide them.

The curve of her nose, the curve of her lips, the positioning of her eyes—these were all features I once scrutinized in the mirror, wishing they were different; now, on my child, those same elements were enchanting, full of warmth and allure.

A week ago, as I scrolled through my Instagram feed, a photo of a couple appeared—captured on the very Milwaukee beach where I had once sat with a woman I had just met. In the image, the woman stood at the water’s edge, her gaze curious, lost in the depths of Lake Michigan. Beside her, her boyfriend stood close, gently cradling the soft curve of her belly. The caption read that they were awaiting the arrival of a baby girl. Silently, I wished for her daughter to reveal something hidden within her too, something she had yet to discover, waiting quietly beneath the surface.