When New York City writer Dina Alvarez asked me to write an essay to be featured on her social media, I was flattered and happy to oblige. This letter, taken from various blog posts I’ve written, is what I ended up submitting. Dina published a shorter version earlier this year, right before my 63rd birthday.

What struck me as I worked on A Letter to My Younger Self is how my earlier words seemed to fit me even better, in a place of greater peace, self-assuredness, confidence, and happiness. Re-reading my words, I felt a deeper sense of wisdom that was no longer hesistant. Gone were the tentative keystrokes of a writer who had something to say but still, deep down, heard the questioning voice of her inner, unhealed child.

Today, June 1, is the eight-month anniversary of my move here. What I’ve realized is that Portugal continues to change me. Making my dream of a new life here come true is changing me. Living alone in a foreign country that speaks a different language forces one to be relentlessly self-reliant, while constant curiosity drives never-ending discovery. You learn what you’re made of as a solo immigrant to a new land where you know no one…but you get to know yourself. Thank you, Portugal, for this gift of knowing myself a little better every day.

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5 Things to Know ~ A Letter to My Younger Self

Dear Friend,

Isn’t that what we’ve most wanted in the world? A true friend? Someone to love and accept us in all our quirky weirdness. Someone we can trust to be loyal and have our back. Keep our secrets and withhold judgment. Haven’t we longed to simply fit in and be liked and wanted as a friend? Oh, yes. I feel the tears stinging our eyes, threatening to spill. How many times have these tears flowed quietly, or sometimes not so quietly, in our private vault? Safe – but not really – from the eyes of others.

I want you to know, young Natalie, that the friend we’ve longed for since childhood is here. She is here, inside us. I know that doesn’t seem plausible. The voice inside us has been so cruel. So unrelenting in its criticism. So expert in tearing us down for most of our life. But we really can learn to treat ourself the way we’d treat a treasured friend. We can learn to trust ourself. To speak kindly and reassuringly. To have our own back. To quiet the mean-girl voice and amplify the shining-goddess light that’s always been within, just waiting to be discovered and embraced.

Trust me, sweet, misunderstood friend. An awakening is coming.

I know you don’t believe me. I know, young Natalie, you are in so much pain now. Pain stoked by our own thoughts and stories and scenarios created in our head. Pain and fear – self-created torment – no one else understands or even sees. I know we are a master at masking self-loathing and insecurity with self-deprecating humor and an ersatz veneer of aloof independence. You don’t yet know, young friend, that we will die for a moment after the seemingly never-ending pain drives us to seek death as refuge.

Take my hand now. Soak in my embrace. Let me cradle and protect you. Bask in my healing love. I feel you. I know you. I understand and accept you. I believe in you, Natalie. Hold on. Hold onto me, your older self, and know these lessons I’ve learned:

1. Being different is good. Silent suffering is not.

Like any true Aquarian rebel, we have always been different. Marched to the beat of our own drum, not following the other sheep. Peculiar, perhaps, in our deep need for space to recharge. I know that now you want desperately to conform, and you care mightily about what other people think and say about us. We will finish grad school in Chicago, work a bit as a fashion and print model, and get some freelance writing published in various local newspapers and magazines. Our internal battle with depression will remain completely undercover, because Black folks didn’t really “do” depression or therapy back then.

Trust me, sad girl, we will learn to revel in our different-ness. We will discover our quirky personality traits and non-conformity equate with vision and creativity. We will learn that showing and sharing our pain and weakness is a powerful tool of healing and strength. You’ll see. This is coming. Hold on.

2. Our happiness is deserved.

We will do well in life. After becoming the first Black and youngest VP and officer of the oldest independent PR firm in the country, we will start a small, local consulting practice. We will earn awards and large accounts. Yet we will not feel worthy or deserving. We will eventually get pregnant with the help of fertility treatments, and realize our dream of becoming a mother. We will live in a nice house on a street we never thought we’d live on. Everything will be great, but we will blow it up because we won’t believe we deserve to be that happy. But, dear friend, we do deserve abundant happiness. We simply must give ourself permission to accept every drop of joy. You’ll see. This is coming. Hold on.

3. We are good enough.

In our 40s, as the mother of a school-aged child with dyslexia, we’ll want to learn more about how children learn to read. We’ll think about going back to school, but our inner critic will tell us we’re not good enough, not smart enough, not focused enough to start over and learn something completely new. We will end up going back to grad school and getting a second master’s degree as a straight-A student. Still, our mean-girl voice will continue to tell us we’re not good enough to change careers and take a job actually teaching children. We won’t believe we are good enough, even when we earn a teaching award that takes us to meet the president of the United States in the Oval Office of the White House.

It will take a long time, but we will discover we are good enough. Not good at everything, but good enough to try…to learn…to create…to change. We will transform our life with the power of these words: “I am good enough!” You’ll see. This is coming. Hold on.

4. Don’t confuse insecurity with intuition.

Much of what we will chalk up to our “intuition” will actually be our insecurity talking, and this will lead us down a path of recurring self-sabotage and self-fulfilling prophecies.

We will begin to understand that the “signs” we read through a lens of “intuition” are first filtered through a medium of our past experiences and self-image. If we are insecure, fear is our primary filter medium, and it will completely alter the composition of what our intuition is reading.

Intuition comes from a place of confidence, power, and strength. Insecurity comes from a place of fear and doubt. We will spend decades tuning in to what we think is our intuition, and then bemoaning the fact that we “ignored” said intuition and ended up with the negative outcome we “intuited” all along. But, dear Natalie, it’s not our “intuition.” We will play negative messages over and over in our head, and react by making behavior choices that ensure the bad outcomes will eventually occur. These self-fulfilling prophecies will create a cycle of failure fed by insecurity, fear, and doubt.

We will discover a self-fulfilling prophecy is so dangerous because it’s a double-edged sword — one side I Told You So and the other I Made It So. It’s a tough pattern to break, my frightened friend, but we will learn to break it. We will develop the confidence to distinguish the noise of insecurity from the clear voice of our true intuition. You’ll see. This is coming. Hold on.

5. Embrace the present moment.

We stay so busy questioning, analyzing, classifying, labeling, and predicting our interactions and experiences that we fail to simply embrace the present moment – without the need for absolute clarity (control). We let our desperate need for security (the root of our control issues) undermine every gift of joy. What a loss.

We will learn in midlife to let ourselves just be. To enjoy and be grateful for the goodness in the moment. We will stop rejecting the healing and fortifying nourishment of spontaneous, sometimes fleeting, joy as we realize the folly of continuing a search for certainty. We will witness the power of being certain of our own value, and that will be all the security we need. You’ll see. This is coming. Hold on.

My dear, young friend, there is so much you don’t realize you don’t know now. There is so much we will learn. Please, young Natalie, stop wasting time and start not giving a fuck now about what other people think of us. Please believe in your own power and worth. Please believe in tomorrow.

You’ll see. This is coming. Hold on.

I love you.

Your Friend,
Natalie

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