“My highest hope for her is just that she has the fearlessness to always be her authentic self, no matter what she thinks men want her to be.”

 

https://www.instagram.com/p/BA_ih4ngCJz/

 

Channing Tatum might be best known for his insane Magic Mike dance moves (and, OK, his insane abs) but he’s getting attention for another reason ATM. The actor, husband and father of one just wrote an inspiring open letter to his three-year-old daughter Everly (pictured in one of her dad’s Instagram shots above) for Cosmopolitan and if you can read it without weeping, congrats!

The letter opens with Tatum explaining that when Cosmo asked him to write something for their readers in honour of “Magic Mike Live” opening in Las Vegas, he immediately thought about his daughter reading it someday. “I pictured her in her late teens or early 20s, hoping to explore and discover her sexuality and dreaming about finding true love,” he wrote. We’re not crying, you’re crying.

He writes openly about his hopes for his daughter, particularly in how she understands love, men and sex. “I tried to imagine the things I’d want her to read that would help her understand men and sex and partnership better, and at that moment, I realized a strange thing,” he wrote. “I don’t want her looking to the outside world for answers. My highest hope for her is just that she has the fearlessness to always be her authentic self, no matter what she thinks men want her to be.”

 

https://www.instagram.com/p/BFKOY4ogCFq/

 

The 37-year-old actor goes on to write lovingly about his wife, fellow actor and dance-floor badass Jenna Dewan-Tatum. “That radical authenticity of hers was what made me fall head over heels in love. Before I experienced it, I wouldn’t have known how to ask for it. Now I know it’s what I was always craving.”

“And that’s what I want for my daughter — to be expectation-less with her love and not allow preconceived standards to affect her, to ask herself what she wants and feel empowered enough to act on it.”

Read the full letter here (and then pass the tissues).

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