Hi everyone and Happy (almost) New Year!
I am so excited to be sharing with you all my topic for the December Café Chat! Due to some horrible weather that blew through Grand Rapids, the girls and I decided to stay in for a cozy night at mine and Tessa’s apartment. With our notebooks open and hot drinks in hand, we began our discussion.
As much as it pains me to look back on my high school days of embarrassing hairstyles and braces, I sometimes like to just to see how much I’ve grown. My teenage self was lost in so many ways, so I decided that our Café Chat topic would be a little different. I wanted us to think about what we would say if we could write a letter to ourselves during our teenage years based on what we know now.
If I could send a letter back in time to myself at sixteen years old, there are so many things I would want to say. I was the type of kid who put school and cheerleading before anything else, and that’s great to a certain extent, but I forgot to live. I never made it to a high school basketball game. I went to only a few friday night football games during my senior year. And to top it all off, I never got to experience a homecoming dance during those four years. I wish I could tell my sixteen year old self that the memories you make while you’re young are the memories that will stick with you for the rest of life. So go stay out late on a school night. Go to that party. Dress up in a crazy outfit for that football game. Just do it because once you’re graduated, you’ll never be able to go back.
Another very important thing that I would write to myself at sixteen, is to just stop worrying about body image. As an all-star cheerleader and pageant competitor, body image was an important thing, however, when I was young I took it to the extreme. I let everyone’s opinions get to me to the point where I would put myself on unrealistic diet plans. I hated how I felt back then because I never allowed myself to feel good in my own skin. Everything needed to be skinner and tighter and it really took a toll on my happiness. In my letter to me I would write in all caps to let go of that idea of the perfect body and go eat an entire basket of french fries.
The final thing I would tell myself in my letter is that things really do get better. Yes, you may have to move away from the friends you’ve grown up with, but you still keep in touch. You may not be able to cheer in college, but you do join an amazing sorority. You may not get a brand new car for graduation, but you will get to study abroad in Europe not once, but twice. Life gets so much better after high school. You just have to wait and see.
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Make sure to head over to Tessa ( Simply Tess ), Paige ( Where The Wildflowers Are ) and Alyssa ( Pretty, Young and Motivated ) to check out what they would say if they could write a letter to their teenage self!
xoxo
