A Letter to 20-Year-Old Me

Dear 20-year-old me,
You are about to embark on a whirlwind of two decades in which you’ll learn more about yourself than you could’ve ever imagined. Although the lessons you’ll learn are necessary, here’s a little roadmap to guide your travels....

1. You’ll fall unequivocally in love with the two lives you help to create. From the moment you learn that they exist, your life and your every waking thought will be dedicated to their well-being. Because of that, you’ll worry. Excessively. You’ll worry when your oldest bumps his head when learning to walk. You’ll panic when your youngest starts to hold his breath during temper tantrums. You’ll stress about the color of bowel movements. You’ll make multiple late-night calls to the pediatrician, who luckily, will have an amazing sense of humor. Please try to remember...they will be ok. You won’t somehow break your kids and actually they will grow up to be strong, intelligent individuals. One day you’ll have to start letting go, and trust me that will be the hardest thing you’ll ever have to face. Cherish the moments when you can just hold them. Watch them sleep as often as possible and skip doing laundry or working sometimes just to take a nap with them. Before you know it, they’ll be teenagers, and although you’ll love them even more than you thought possible in those days, you’ll miss snuggling. So, snuggle every chance you can.

2. Right now you have this master plan. Finish college...get a teaching job...get married...have kids, and live happily ever after. Here’s a little foreshadowing...it won’t happen that way. You won’t fall into a teaching job right out of college as you suspect you will. You will get married but it’ll be rocky and although neither of you will be completely innocent in the decline of your relationship, it will end. People will judge you and your decisions, but in the grand scheme of things, that doesn’t matter. The happily ever after you envisioned will be tainted, but you will be happy nonetheless and you’ll learn many incredibly important lessons about your own personal strength during the process.

3. One day you’ll start to believe that it’s necessary for you to work a lot to provide for your family. You’ll end up working 50+ hour weeks, feeling like a zombie and missing out on dinners with your kids. Here’s the thing...your boys do not need to see you work yourself to pure mental and physical exhaustion to know you’re a total boss and to mimic your work ethic one day. Don’t overwork yourself. Choose dinners with your kids.

4. Don’t let yourself be a floor mat. Stop allowing other people to delineate what occurs in your professional life as well as personal life. Say no when you don’t want to be a part of something. And when you feel bad vibes about something, walk away. One day you’ll learn that you have amazing perception skills. Trust your instinct.

5. Snuggle your dogs. You’ll have several fur babies that hold your heart in their paws...spend much more time laying on the floor with them and playing with them. You may have an entire life going on outside of your home, but to them YOU are their entire life. Rub their ears, take in the smell of their head, just be with them. I promise it will invoke more positive feelings than therapy ever could.

6. Avoid the tanning bed. I know right now you think you have plenty of time until you have to worry about things like UV damage, and that it’s more important to be tan. Hear me loud and clear here...one day you will pay the price. In the form of multiple holes being cut in your body and ultimately in a skin cancer diagnosis. Trust me, rocking your pale skin is definitely the way to go.

7. Spend more time with your grandparents that are still alive. By this time you’ve unfortunately lost two grandmothers, so spend time with your grandfathers! Make sure they know you love them and that you were lucky to grow up with such amazing elders. Ask your grandfathers to tell you their stories. One day you’ll work with the elderly population and you’ll hear incredible stories, which will make you wish you asked your own grandparents more questions about their lives. Ask them, listen and even document their stories. I promise you it will never be a waste of time to sit and listen.

8. Friendships will come and go. One will stay for a lifetime. Cherish her always, as that becomes incredibly rare. Also cherish the friends that come into your life while they’re present. You’ll learn something important from every single one of those friendships.

9. Travel often in your early twenties! I assure you, once you become a mom, both time and money are fleeting. Cast your flying fear aside and visit a foreign country.

10. Get comfortable with being uncomfortable! The most important lessons you’ll learn will occur when you’re far outside your comfort zone. Let that happen without hesitation.

11. Spend lots of time with your parents! They are the reason you are who you are. Their influences shaped you into an independent, hard-working, sometimes bullheaded, individual. And thank them for the experiences they gave you growing up. Let them know that your memories going camping, participating in elaborate trick-or-treat scenes, doing Christmas morning scavenger hunts, and eating dinners around the table as a family, are some of your most cherished memories. They’ll continue to help you often, even as an adult, so make sure they know how grateful you are.

12. Visit your brother often. As kids come along, (both yours and your adorable red-headed nieces!) you’ll find that it becomes far more difficult to spend time with your big brother. Don’t let that happen. Make trips to spend time with him. He was, after all, one of the males who first taught you how to be treated respectfully by boys.

13. Write more often. Maybe even continue with your fleeting dream of becoming a journalist. One day you’ll find that writing becomes a wonderful stress reliever for you. Run with that. In the words of Hemingway, “Write hard and clear about what hurts.” Also, you’ll come to appreciate classics like Hemingway far more when you aren’t immersed in reading their works constantly while finishing your degree. I promise you it will be much more enjoyable and meaningful one day.

14. Sit back once in a while, reflect and breathe. Time is about to pass at what appears to be warp speeds. Don’t get so caught up in the here-and-now that you don’t reflect on how you got there and where you’re going. In all of the roles that you will fill over the years, never lose sight of who you are and how you became that person.

15. At some points in your journey, you’ll lose your perpetual optimism. It WILL happen. But don’t let yourself remain there. One of the most valued qualities you have is being positive and sunshine-y. Don’t let that go away ever.