When I was a little girl, I remember watching the Olympics with my Mum. I was fascinated by the Soviet gymnasts and wanted to be just like them.

"Ahh, but those girls had to leave home when they were very little to go train," she said to me.

"Isn't that very sad for their mummies?" I asked, shocked.

She nodded and hugged me closer. "I'm sure it is. They want their little girls to be the best they can be, so they let them go. But oh, yes, I'm sure it is very, very sad for their mums."

I miss my mother very much today. My husband is a dear man, but I think Mum would have better understood how I feel today—how I've felt for years, now.

Because I love my daughter, very much. I am amazed at the brilliant, brave, gifted woman she's grown to be.

But in order for her to be those things, I had to give her up. She's my flesh and blood, but I barely know her.

I have the seat of honor at her wedding, but I haven't spent more than three weeks with her in a row since she was eleven years old.

I'd always know she was different. Special, yes, but different in ways that worried me. I tried to channel her attention to books and puzzles, projects that required her brain and not these…other…abilities she seemed to have. I worried that she didn't have many friends. I worried that, because these strange things seemed to happen around her, that she'd never have friends.

And then, one day, a letter arrived. A strange, unbelievable letter that I somehow believed. It told of a place where my precious baby would fit—where the things that seemed to happen around and because of her would be real and normal and accepted.

So I let her go.

The first letters I got were strange. My daughter, so verbally skilled, was clearly struggling to explain things to me that I had no frame of reference for. But there were things I did understand: homesickness. Loneliness. Isolation. I shouldn't have sent her.

Then, something new. Friendship. Adventures. Misadventures. Classroom successes and personal triumphs.

And dangers I didn't understand.

She'd come home but she never stayed. She would leave early to visit her new friends (her new family, now, I guess). She would cut short holidays when their emergencies popped up. I would scream and rage inside, not wanting to lose a single minute of time with her, knowing, somehow, that the danger stalking her was getting closer. But I always let her go.

Even the day I found myself answering the door in a foreign country, staring at my daughter (but I didn't have a daughter, did I?), and understanding that she loved me, still, as much as I loved her—even that day didn't really belong to me. It was shared with the nervous, stammering, lovesick young man hovering behind our reunion.

I've gotten to know him, somewhat. He's a fine man and he adores her. And his family long ago embraced her as one of their own. I don't have to worry anymore.

She is loved.

She is gifted.

She is safe, because she was so brave.

But she isn't mine.

Her father will walk her down the aisle today, but it is only a formality. I gave her away long ago.