Her pain is my pain

My daughter found out today that she was not accepted into the Kolkuta, India summer service program offered through her university. She also found out that she was nominated and won the award for Student of the Semester in her Bio-Medicine program. There are students from schools all over the United States in this program and the professors got together and decided that my daughter was the one student who they stood out as an exceptional student and who also got the most out of it. She was given a certificate and was told to go pick up a check later (a check, really??). She was so excited when she called to tell me about the award but was also waiting to hear about the summer program. She kept telling me that she was preparing herself to not get in since they were only accepting 8 students but when she officially opened the email and found out that she wasn’t in, she was hysterical. This is a kid that has been blessed in so many ways throughout the last several years (she has also had to deal with the death of her father unexpectantly during finals of her first semester at college).She was Valedictorian of her high school class. She applied to 6 universities and was accepted to all 6. We decided that her current university was the best fit for her. It helped that they also were the ones that offered the most generous financial aid package. She was even sent an airline ticket to visit the university again after acceptance to help with the decision. She was also able to go up one week early to camp with other incoming freshman. They got to know each other, roughed the outdoors, played games designed to break the ice and shared their fears and dreams. From that week she made friends that helped her transition into campus life smoother. After completing her first year (and dealing with the tragic loss of her father) she was accepted into a summer program in GREECE! She spent a month of that summer traveling around GREECE while learning about and falling in love with philosophy (even deciding to minor in it). The list goes on and on like this semester being spent in Copenhagen while visiting Russia, Scotland, Amsterdam and the Czech Republic.
As you can see she had so many opportunities it upsets me to think that she would get so upset over not getting this. To hear her crying hysterically both hurts me and makes me angry. Part of me blames myself, after having no one protect or shield me from anything I had worked so hard to shield her from any pain or rejection. Is this now why she takes such rejections so hard. Part of me was mad listening to her hysterics on the phone over this. I was thinking “how ungrateful can you be?”. I explained to her (or tried to get a word in between the sobs) that God must have another plan and that she should not waste time crying but start looking for another way to spend her last summer before her Senior Year of college. I also am hurting terribly for her. I was in a store when she called to tell me and had to leave immediately. My urge to buy something was gone and all I wanted to do is get outta there. I tend to carry other’s pain for them sometimes making myself depressed over pain that is not even mine and often hurts me more than it hurts these people. I don’t want her to be in pain and I realize that as I type this she is probably out with her friends and has moved on but here I sit unable to stop hurting for her. Codependence anyone??