A Letter to My Younger Self

Dear younger self,

You are trying so hard. I want you to know I see it — the effort you pour into being enough, into getting it right, into making people glad you exist. I want to tell you: that effort, while admirable, is not the point. And it will exhaust you before it satisfies you.

The approval you are working for is already given. Not earned, given. Before any of the striving. This will take years to understand not just intellectually but in the body, in the reflexes, in the way you walk into a room. Be patient with yourself in the learning.

You will make mistakes that feel catastrophic and are not. You will lose things you thought were permanent. You will be surprised by what endures.

God is more patient with you than you are with yourself. More tender. More interested in who you are becoming than in cataloguing what you have failed to be. He is in this with you — not watching from a distance, but present in the daily ordinary unglamorous work of becoming.

Keep going. Be gentler with yourself. And for heaven's sake — enjoy the season you are in while you are in it.

With love, Your future self