My beautiful baby with cleft lip and palate has grown up to be the most incredible doctor. Proud doesn’t begin to express my feelings. I’m so overwhelmed with tears of joy. #cleftpics #cleftlip #cleftstrong #cleftpalate #cleftlipandpalateawareness #cleftlipandpalate #proud

I just had a really good cry, the kind of cry that a mom deserves after a long, long span of mothering. The day that my daughter was born was probably one of the most scary moments of my life. And it wasn't just because I was becoming a mom, I had a toddler at home, so I'd done that. But it was because she was born with a big hole in her face. She had cleft lip and palate. We didn't know she had cleft lip and palate until the moment she was born. Because all of the ultrasounds that we had had leading up to her birth, she had her hand on her face. And so it was a shocking thing. It was a small hospital. They had no information to give to me. I had a very old school doctor who I adored, who tried to reassure me. But the doctors came in and told me that she might need a G-Tube and she might need this and might need the fear that I had. When I left that hospital, I remember the night before we left the hospital. She was in the room with us and my husband looked at her and he climbed into bed with me and we just cried. We cried. Flash forward 27 years later and this kid is fucking amazing. She's going to graduate from dental school at the end of May. And I just think about how she has done this. This part she has done not just for herself but for the world. She's doing this so that she could help other kids with clefs smile brightly. She took that big basket of lemons that she was given the day she was born. And she has turned it into freaking lemon jello. Skip the lemonade. She went straight for the lemon jello. Through her first year of dental school, she had four major surgeries, jaw reconstruction, big huge bars and her cheeks, pain like I cannot begin to tell you about. And she still took all of those exams and she still did all of the work and she still attended class with an N95 mask on because she had to because we were coming out of COVID. Facial reconstruction surgery and she had to wear a mask every single day. I don't know how she did it. I don't know how she did it. And when I think about how when she was little we used to make light of her surgeries. Like it was no big deal. Like she was going to get through it and one day it was going to be over and it was such a positive thing that we were going to get through. Knowing full well that it wasn't positive and that it was painful and that she was in pain and that she was probably scared. And how I was worried what people were going to say about the scars and I didn't want her to get bullied and we did everything we could to preemptively build her up to be able to get through the process. I created a monster. Because she handled this with so much grace and so much strength and she is absolutely gorgeous now and not that she wasn't gorgeous before but she just radiates with this pride and this beauty that is not surface and she's kind and she just children love her. Like babies cling to her like oh my goodness she's such a light and I it couldn't be more proud. So this morning she sent me that they had they'd given her the programs for her graduation. They wanted to review it to make sure that these build her name correctly and seeing her name up on this thing that said doctor of medical dentistry. I love I just started crying because she did it we did it. 27 years and that kid is soaring and she I mean she was soaring all along don't get me wrong like she she's the kid who you know went to Yale but she is going to change the world for the better and she is going to do amazing things. And I could not be any more proud of her and I just felt like I really needed to share this that there's there's a lot that these kids can do and I'm so proud. That's all I really have to say is I love you Dolly and I'm so proud.