Becoming the Woman She Needed Me to Be: A Letter from My Future Self

She didn’t know then how much she would carry, or how much she would become. But I see her now. And I’m walking her home.

Let me tell you about the little girl I once was. The one who learned to read the room before she learned to read a book. The one who laughed easily but carried a thousand unsaid things behind her eyes. The one who bent, contorted, performed; anything to be loved, anything to be safe.

She was brilliant. And no one knew. Not because she was hiding, but because she had to. Because the world around her wasn’t ready for a girl like her. A girl who felt everything, who saw everything, who knew how to walk between worlds before she had language for it.

I think of her often now, from where I stand. She doesn’t know yet how proud I am of her. How her small acts of courage became my foundation. How her silence taught me how to listen. How her aching need to be seen taught me to show up for myself when no one else could.

She was called "too much". She was called "too sensitive ". But she was never too anything, she was just uncaged energy wrapped in skin that bruised easily. She was fire held under water. She was stardust packed into bone.

And now? Now she’s returning.

The woman I’ve become is not here to abandon her. I am here to reclaim her, to gather every fragmented piece of her radiance that was ever dismissed, rejected, or buried for survival . I am here to let her voice back in. To let her paint outside the lines. To let her scream. To let her dance barefoot under the moonlight without explaining why.

Because that girl, the one who tried so hard to get it right, the one who held her breath to avoid being too loud, the one who felt the absence of love more clearly than its presence, she is the reason I’m still here.

And now, as Uranus begins its passage through Gemini, my fifth house of joy, creation, and raw expression, I feel the awakening begin.

Not as a lightning strike. But as a steady current humming beneath my ribs saying: “It’s time.”

Time to stop waiting. Time to stop shrinking. Time to stop offering love only in the hope it will be returned. Time to radiate, whether anyone claps or not.

The next eight years will not longer be a performance. They will be a reclamation.

I will not play small to keep others comfortable. I will not explain away my gifts. I will not romanticize old wounds to make them more palatable.

I will become the embodiment of what that girl always hoped I’d grow into: A woman who tells the truth. A woman who leads with love but doesn’t abandon herself to give it. A woman who knows that the love she’s always yearned for begins in the mirror. And radiates outward from there.

And I hope... deep in my bones, I hope I’m making her darn proud.

Not because I got everything right, but because I finally stopped believing I had to.

Not because I’m healed, but because I honor the wound with reverence and walk forward anyway.

Not because I became someone impressive, but because I became fully myself, loud, soft, sacred, complicated, embodied, divine.

To the girl I once was: You never stopped hoping. Even when no one saw you. Even when you couldn’t see yourself.

I see you now. And I love you wildly, endlessly, fiercely. We’re not going back. We’re going forward, together.

The path ahead is bright. Not because it’s perfect, but because it’s ours.

And for the first time in 56 years, we will walk it as one.

☥