My Dearest Mk,
You don’t know me yet, but eventually, we will come to be very close
friends. I am your future and you are my
past. We are connected and although we
have often thought of one another, we have not yet met. Time will bring us together.
I am here to tell you of your future.
Being sixteen, you will probably take this with a grain of salt and
discount my predictions and advice, but bear with me and, if it is within you,
listen well and take my words to heart.
Your life will be hard. You will
experience pain, hardship and challenges that seem unsurpassable.
Your life will be good. You will
make close friends, you will meet many kind people along the way and you will
learn and grow through the years.
Your life will be colored with words.
You will hear harsh words no young woman should ever have to bear and
will take years to prove them false. You
will hear soft words which sound foreign at first, but will become familiar in
time. You will come to own your own
words, your talent, your passion, and your truth. You will learn to speak kindly but without
apology for your authenticity. You will
find your core and, in this, stop censoring yourself for the benefit of others. Like the Velveteen Rabbit, you will become
real.
Your life will be agonizing. You
will experience depths of despair that leave you unwilling to continue
living, heartache that leaves you
gasping for breath and certain that you should die of grief, and face choices
that no woman should ever have to make.
Your life will be glorious. You
will experience the ecstasy of beauty, the glory of love and the elation of
carrying children in your womb, in your arms and in your heart.
Your life will be full of learning.
You will learn that you are strong enough to brave the cold of love’s
winter. You will come to want and need deeply
enough that you will courageously spread your arms wide and hold another close
enough that she could hurt you. You will
come to understand the difference between sacrificing for love and sacrificing
yourself, choosing wisely between the two.
You will learn that you can withstand the effects left in the wake of
your betrayal by another and stand strong.
You will learn you can stand alone – quietly and with grace, continuing
to live and learn. You will have lessons
to learn, burdens to shed, and promises to keep and break.
You will survive, you will make choices, and you will come into your own
body, your truth, your soul. You will prevail. You will writhe in agony, laugh out loud, cry
for others, and dance with abandon. You
will live.
I must tell you that you will meet a woman who will break your heart open
just when you believe it had closed for good.
She will shatter the world as you know it, and open your eyes to another
world, previously unknown. She, too, will have traveled her road of glory and
pain. For you see, as much as you have learned
before you met, so, too, did she. One ordinary
day, you will happen by – lightly, without announcement or pretense and shatter
her world and open her eyes to another world, previously unknown.
Without even knowing that you each were incomplete, you will complete
one another. Without even knowing you
have just begun to live, you will begin.
Learn, grow, live and remain open to love.
With all the love in my heart,
Mk
