Dear Younger Me,

If given the chance to bestow wisdom on your younger self, what would you say? Would you stop yourself from making a decision you know you’ll regret later? How would you intervene?

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Be who you needed when you were younger.

”

Dear Younger R2,

Oh my.. What to tell little R2, before she becomes R2.. what a thought. I wish that I could tell you that I have a list of the top 10 important things that I wish I had known before I did something, but I don’t. It’s not always easy to wish that you’d been warned or informed about something prior to you facing it yourself. I wouldn’t be who I am today if I didn’t have most of the life struggles that I’ve faced these past few months of “adulthood”. I guess that all I can really say to little me, is to be careful of who you let take a part of your heart, and who you let into your life. It’s not always easy letting people in, but once you do they will show you their true colors. Sometimes you just have to take a risk to see where it gets you. It builds your character, so don’t be disappointed when someone lets you down, it helps you know who you can trust.

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No matter how much it hurts now, someday you will look back and realise your struggles changed your life for the better.

”

Dear Younger R1,

Where to begin…don’t worry about it. Clichéd, I know, but trust that life will work itself out, you will find yourself, you will encounter losses, you will feel alone, but KNOW within yourself that all of it will come with a lesson. Some will have a much higher price than others, but I wouldn’t wish you to change the choices. Yes, there is that ONE relationship you probably shouldn’t have stayed in for the duration that you had, but what you know for sure is that it made you realise what you didn’t want and you learned what it was like to be used by someone who didn’t appreciate you. You will become more assertive and more self-assured, but NEVER apologise for that, the right people will accept you for you. You will lose friends, boy will you- but the friends you will make will welcome your openness and honesty and you will never look back, no matter the distance, no matter where life takes you. Nothing will prepare you for motherhood, so I won’t even go there; but the amount of love your heart will hold for another human being, you will not understand and no number of words can fully explain. Thirty isn’t anything to worry about, but to look forward to. The sense of self and little lessons you would have learned along the way will only reaffirm your baseline beliefs. Love and be loved, treat others like you want to be treated and just do you-in whatever capacity that is.

Life has it’s ups and downs, sometimes it feels like more downs- but hindsight is a wonderful thing, because when given the opportunity to look back and really think about our choices, we usually can see where and why life took us in that very direction. It gives is the chance to take pause and just really relish in the fact that we still have the capacity to look back.