A Letter to My 14 Year Old Self

Dear 14 Year Old Self,

You will spend the next 20 years questioning, doubting, and grappling with your power and your path. What I would like for you to know is that the experiences you have had thus far, the experiences you may be currently labeling “bad” “faulty” or associate with your “brokenness” These experiences are where your gifts are birthed from. The cracks are where the light enters you. The trigger is the opportunity to heal the wound. There is gold in your story. You just don’t know it yet. This feeling you have of being “different” “misunderstood” and “unaccepted” you will one day grow to realize is actually a signifier of all that is right and good within you. Your honesty. Your empathy. Your courage. Your resiliency. Your ability to abandon anything that causes you to sacrifice your authenticity. This will be the guiding light on the path to discovering and uncovering your true north star.

This “differentness” and desire to feel accepted will sometimes make you shrink and play small. Until one day you unapologetically decide that you reserve the right to take up space. You will find your voice. And when you do you will finally come home to yourself. This will act as a remembering of what you came here to do. Be peaceful. Happy. And liberate yourself and others from suffering. This will require you to use all parts of your story. For you to allow yourself to be fully seen, heard, and known. All of you. Not just the shiney parts, but the parts of your story you want to rip out because they make you feel less lovable.

This is how you love yourself. By no longer shaming or blaming or stuffing down or repressing, bur rather to allow this guiding light to rise out of the darkness and act as a beacon of hope for others. Afterall, no mud, no lotus. An embodiment of your true authenticity will embark you on the “heroines journey”. This will be a return to wholeness. Learning first to heal yourself. Rinsing and repeating this process and then providing it as an offering to others.

Make no mistake. This path will not be easy. For it was never supposed to be. But it is your calling. It is your dharma. I will not sit here and write to you who you are or what you will become because that is for you to figure out. What I will tell you is that you can trust yourself and your intuition every…