I'm ashamed to admit that sometimes, I'm jealous of my daughter.

I know how awful that sounds. Even writing it makes me want to soften it, to tidy it up, to swap out the ugly word for something gentler. Maybe wistful. Maybe complicated. Maybe bittersweet.

But if I'm being honest, and honesty is the whole point, jealousy is the word that fits.

Not all the time. Not in some poisonous, festering way. I don't look at my daughter and want her to fail. God, no. I adore her.

I am proud of her in the deepest, most bone-level way a mother can be proud of another person.

But occasionally, when I watch her move through the world with this easy confidence I have never known, I feel a little stab of something I'm not proud of.

It catches me off guard. It makes me feel small and mean and ridiculous. Then it makes me feel sad.

Watch: Reparenting Your Inner Child. Post continues below.

Because the truth is, I'm not jealous of her in a way that makes me want less for her. I'm jealous because I wanted some of it for me, too.

When I was a kid, I was one of those girls adults described as "so bright." Teachers said I had enormous potential.

Family members liked to talk about how clever I was. I was creative, chatty, full of ideas, and when something interested me, I could be brilliant at it.

I was naturally gifted in some areas, but I was also the queen of not quite finishing things.

The smallest hiccup could knock me sideways. A tiny roadblock that another person might have stepped over without thinking would stop me in my tracks.

That became a pattern in my life. I'd start strong, gather praise, enjoy the warm glow of being seen as capable, and then the minute something got messy or difficult or required a level of persistence I couldn't seem to summon, I'd stall.

It wasn't laziness. It wasn't that I didn't care. It was more like the gears in me would suddenly jam, and the longer I stayed stuck, the more ashamed I felt, and the harder it became to start again.

"I loved gold stars."

Nothing chips away at your confidence quite like a life full of "almosts".

I think that's why I became such a sucker for praise when I was young. I loved gold stars. Loved being told I'd done well. Loved that brief little hit of approval that made me feel special and safe and visible.

But underneath it, my confidence was never solid. It was all scaffolding. It looked fine from a distance, but it didn't take much to shake it.

Home didn't exactly help.

My dad had very high expectations of me, which sounds flattering until you understand the shape those expectations took. He was interested in me when I was doing well. He lit up when I got good marks, or impressed a teacher, or gave him something to feel proud of.

But if I fell short, or if he thought I could have done better, he was quick to say so. He had a way of making you feel as though potential was a debt you owed, and if you didn't cash it in properly, you had let everyone down.

"Feeling completely directionless."

Then there was my mum, who sent a different message entirely. Before high school, after one of those conversations where adults ask children what they want to be when they grow up, university came up.

Later, Mum said to me, almost casually, "You don't want to go to uni, do you? It's not really something we do in our family. You probably don't need to go." She wasn't being cruel. If anything, she was trying to remove pressure.

But between Dad's big expectations and Mum's quieter message that certain paths weren't really for people like us, I ended up feeling completely directionless.

It was such a strange kind of mixed messaging. Be exceptional. But not like that. Aim high. But not too high. Be smart. But don't get ideas above yourself.

So I drifted. I kept going through school, and I did well enough, but never quite as well as everyone thought I should. Teachers would tell me I was capable of more, and that was probably true, but I didn't know how to get out of my own way.

I only knew how to shine when things came easily. The minute they didn't, I'd start doubting myself, and once that doubt set in, it spread everywhere.

After school, I studied interior design at a private college, and for a while, it felt like I'd found the thing that made sense. I was good at it. More than good, actually. I built a portfolio my teachers raved about. I got great feedback.

They encouraged me to apply for bigger, more prestigious roles, to approach firms they thought would love my work. They could see a future for me that looked stylish and interesting and ambitious.

I could see it too, in theory. I just couldn't quite believe I belonged in it.

So, instead of knocking on the doors they suggested, I took a job with a small local mum-and-dad business. The pay was ordinary. The work was safe. The clients were mostly older people and conservative companies who weren't exactly crying out for brave or bold ideas.

I told myself I was lucky to have steady work. I told myself I should be grateful. I told myself plenty of things, actually. But the truth is I stagnated there. I made myself smaller than I needed to be because small felt safer.

That habit didn't stop at work.

"I knew I was settling."

I settled in relationships, too, and if I'm being brutally honest, I knew I was settling while I was doing it. My friends knew it. My family knew it. The men I dated were not my equals in ambition or emotional maturity or basic quality, if I'm honest.

But when your self-worth is shaky, you don't always choose from a place of strength. You choose what feels available.

What feels familiar. What feels like what you deserve.

While my friends were heading overseas, backing themselves, building careers, having glamorous disasters and funny travel flings and stories to tell over wine years later, I was lucky if someone took me to a roadside motel on the way to visit a relative.

I never really travelled. I never had a big, shiny career. I never seemed to launch in the way other people did. Life just sort of... hummed along in a very beige kind of way.

Then, at 25, I got pregnant to a man my friends and family already disliked. They turned out to be right about him. He left before our daughter was born.

And weirdly, that was the making of me.

Because motherhood was the first thing in my life that cut through all the noise in my head. It was the first thing I couldn't overthink my way out of. A baby doesn't care if you feel a bit overwhelmed by forms, or if your confidence is patchy, or if you're scared of failing.

A baby needs feeding. Bathing. Comforting. Showing up for. There's no room for paralysis when someone else's whole little life depends on you.

For the first time, roadblocks weren't allowed to win.

I had help, yes. My mum and sister were there for me in practical ways, especially in those early years, and I'll always be grateful for that. But emotionally, mentally, physically, I was in it. I was the one doing the daily grind and the middle-of-the-night panic and the constant carrying of responsibility.

And I was good at it. Really good at it. Better than I had ever been at anything else.

It felt like finding solid ground after years of slipping around.

One thing I became absolutely determined about was that my daughter would not inherit my self-doubt. Whatever else I got wrong, I was going to get that right. I read about how to raise confident children.

I praised effort, not just outcomes. I advocated for her. I encouraged her to try things. I made a conscious effort never to project my fears onto her. I wanted her to grow up believing the world was hers to walk into.

And somehow, beautifully, she did.

"Everything you'd wish for in a daughter."

She is everything you'd wish for in a daughter if you were allowed to design one from scratch. She's bright and kind and driven, but she's also one of those rare people who actually follows through. She doesn't just have potential. She does something with it. She gets things done.

If there's a hurdle, she either clears it or finds another route. She does not sit down in front of it and quietly decide that maybe she was never meant to be on the track in the first place.

At school, she was academic. In sport, she was talented and disciplined. Socially she has always had this lovely ease with people. She is adored, but more importantly, she knows how to love people back. She's adventurous. Funny. Brave.

At university, she racks up high distinctions without becoming insufferable about it. She is already working in the career she dreamed of and doing well enough in it that other people are taking notice. She has travelled to parts of the world I only ever saw in magazines.

She applies for opportunities without spiralling into self-doubt first. She walks into rooms assuming she belongs there.

And in relationships, she has standards. Real ones. She doesn't cling to crumbs. She doesn't confuse attention for love. She knows what she deserves and if something isn't right, she leaves.

I look at her sometimes and think, thank God. Thank God it stopped with me.

Because I worked very hard to make sure it did.

But there's another truth sitting alongside that pride, and it's the one that's harder to say out loud.

"I feel jealous."

Sometimes, when I watch her living with all that freedom and certainty, I feel jealous. Not because I want to take anything from her. Never that. It's more like I'm grieving something in real time.

She'll tell me about a trip she's booked with friends, or an internship she went after, or a relationship she walked away from because it wasn't good enough, and I'll smile and ask questions and mean every bit of my enthusiasm. But underneath it, there can be this quiet ache.

It sounds a bit like:

Imagine if I'd had that.

Imagine if I had moved through the world believing I was allowed to want things.

Imagine if I'd trusted myself sooner.

Imagine if I hadn't made my life smaller because I thought that was what sensible girls did.

The uncomfortable truth is that while motherhood was the thing I was best at, it was also the point at which every other part of my life stopped growing. I never used my design qualifications professionally again.

When my daughter was little, I worked night fill at the supermarket while my mum stayed with her. Once she started school, I moved into a daytime role there and just stayed. I never pushed for management.

Never took opportunities for advancement. I told myself I didn't want the hassle, and maybe part of me didn't, but a bigger part was that I had channelled everything into being available. Being steady. Being her safe place. I focused so completely on giving her a secure, happy life that I quietly stopped imagining one for myself.

I didn't travel. I didn't date again. I didn't build something new for myself.

Listen: For more parenting content, listen to Mamamia's Parenting Out Loud podcast. Post continues below.

For a long time I didn't question it. I was busy raising a child I adored and that felt like enough. But now she's grown up and out in the world doing all these incredible things, and every now, and then I find myself wondering what my life might have looked like if I'd backed myself the way she does.

That's the moment the jealousy creeps in. Not ugly jealousy. Just a quiet thought that goes something like, imagine if I'd believed I could do that too.

The guilt that follows is enormous, because mothers are supposed to feel nothing but pride when their children succeed. And I do feel pride. But I also feel something else that's harder to name.

Maybe it isn't really jealousy at all. Maybe it's the strange feeling of seeing the life you once hoped for playing out in front of you, just in someone else's story. And maybe that's not the worst thing in the world.

Because when I look at my daughter properly, the thing I keep coming back to is this. She didn't grow into this confident, capable person by accident. She became that person because someone spent years making sure she knew she was allowed to believe in herself.

That someone was me.

So when that flicker of envy shows up, I try to remember that part too. The truth is, she's living the life I wanted for her. And that counts for something.

Feature Image: Getty (Stock image for illustrative purposes).