I recently came across an exercise where you write a letter to your younger self. I chose to write to myself at age 15 when I was full of teenage angst and bursting with ambition and struggling to contain other emotions that felt like they could tear me apart. As soon as I started the letter, the words came pouring out. Pages and pages. The first line was this: “Dear Young Teresa, guess what? You never did find that one big, world-changing, hyper-important thing you were put on this earth to do. But in the process of trying to figure out, you’ve done some really cool things.”
I continued by writing, “And you know that burning desire you have to write a book someday? You did it! In fact, you wrote eight. Isn’t that cool? And relax, for God’s sake, you are a good mother and you did find your soul-mate.”
After catching her up on all the important things she would experience in the next forty years of her life, I couldn’t help but tease her a bit: “By the way, you still love John Denver and musical theater, but you’re mostly over Barry Manilow. And you know how you can’t get enough of pizza and hot fudge sundaes? You can’t eat either anymore, but that’s okay . . . you’ve learned to love really healthy foods. No, really, you have!”
After I wrote to my fifteen-year-old self, I felt so much lighter. I had reassured my inner child that…
