Channing Tatum Shares First Photo of Daughter Everly's Face: 'My World and My Heart'

Channing Tatum is relishing in sweet moments with his daughter Everly.

The famously private actor, 41, posted a photo of himself with the 8-year-old standing on a beach to Instagram Thursday — marking the first time he has publicly shared a photo of Everly's face.

In the picture, Tatum wrapped his arms around Everly, who was gazing up at the sky during an evening beach hangout.

"You my littles are everything! You are my world and my heart," the proud father began in the caption.

The actor then gave insight into the photo, writing, "[Everly was] looking at the full moon in this pic and telling me the prophecy of the full moon mermaid and then we ran into the water and looked for her and played with glow sticks in the night water calling out to the mermaids. You said you touched a bald headed mermaid and saw a tail."

"Haha one day you will read this and I hope laugh," Tatum said of the father-daughter moment. "We have fun 🤩 hehehe."

While Tatum and his ex-wife Jenna Dewan, with whom he shares Everly, have shared photos of her on social media in the past, the snaps have been from a side angle or obscured her face.

The actor, who will next make his directorial debut with the upcoming movie Dog, previously admitted to PEOPLE that life as a single dad has come with its challenges. Tatum and Dewan, 40, split in 2019.

"I was really nervous when I became a single dad, and having to raise a little girl, not being able to have the resource of a woman there to be able to lean into how to relate to her as she grows up," Tatum told PEOPLE in May. "I literally went to YouTube and learned how to braid hair."

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The easiest way he found to relate to Everly, he revealed, "was just to go into her world and connect with her in any way."

"If it's wearing a tutu or painting your nails or wearing makeup — who cares? It just worked for me," he said.

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Tatum's bond with his daughter and her free-spirited personality is what inspired him to write his first children's book, The One and Only Sparkella.

"I see dads sometimes, and . . . being a parent is hard. I wanted the book to be a little bit of a letter to them," he told PEOPLE. "Just play — you'll be rewarded with love."