A Letter To My 16 Year Old Self

If you've never heard of the concept of writing a letter to your 16 year old self, let me explain.

The idea is fairly simple, you, whatever age you are now, write a letter providing advice or just general babble to what was your 16 year old self. You are writing from your present to your past.

I've been wanting to do one of these for a while and thought it would be interesting to share it on my blog and and encourage others to do the same. Here goes....

Dear 16 year old Kate,

Get off your laptop and get a job. Start applying everywhere and anywhere, you can't afford to be fussy. You'll kick yourself later in life because experience is everything. Refine your CV and put yourself out there. The shell you've become comfortable in, isn't going to get you where you want in life and it won't protect you from the big bad world forever.

Revise, revise, revise, do your homework, do extra reading and then revise some more. As Mum always says, its in there you just need to work hard. Its easy I promise you, the harder stuff comes later on.

Speaking of the hard stuff... You know people don't live forever and it's not our place to know when how and why they leave us but know its not the end. You're allowed to be upset, angry and confused. I understand. Adult life is complicated and he didn't want to bother us but know he's so so sorry for all the pain and upset hes put us through these past 16+ years.

Please know that although hes gone, you gain 3 beautiful, energetic, funny, kind sweet new family members. They make you smile every time you think about them and they call you Auntie Cake and that makes you smile inside and out.

You're going to travel to lots of new places, it'll be fun. Start a scrapbook or travel journal and look back on it every year!

By now Kate you've probably made the biggest mistake of your life so you need to come clean about it. You royally f-ed up and you HAVE to hold your hands up, it'll eat away at your for years I promise. Remember every action has an equal and opposite reaction. That's how karma works and its gonna take a few years to come back round but its not worth the pain. Don't keep things bottled up, talk about them or write them down anywhere. 

Your biggest problems now are so small its not worth the heartache. Your pain is purely self-inflicted and only you can make you happy right now.

I could honestly kick 16 year old Kate for thinking things were gonna be okay after doing that.

But know, present day Kate is working on saying sorry, she's digging deep for the courage she lacked when she was your age. Courage shouldn't take 6 years to muster up, it should be what allows you to tell the truth from the start.

Slow down, stop willing things to happened and stop rushing into decisions you know you shouldn't make. Just because the world keeps going when you stand still doesn't mean you need to run to catch up. Let it float past and start again when you're ready.

Work hard at making your own grass greener, do you, stand up tall, know that the ones we love never really leave us and if its not okay, its not the end.
Dream bigger everyday, your limits are endless and all good things come to those who wait.

Love from your future self,