A Letter to My Younger Self

Dear younger Ria,

I wish I could sit beside you for a little while. I wish I could hold your small hands and tell you about the extraordinary life waiting for you.

I’m not going to pretend it will be easy. It won’t be.

You’re going to be a little girl who never quite fits into the box people want to put you in. You’ll question everything—rules, religion, family structures, and the stories you’re told. You’ll always sense that there’s more beneath the surface, and you’ll spend much of your life trying to understand the world and the people in it.

You’ll carry questions that should never have belonged to a child. Your tendency to please people will put you in situations that hurt. You will go through things that will damn near break you. There will be moments when you fear for your life, and you’ll discover a strength you never knew you had. When you’re backed into a corner, you fight.

Some of what you’ll experience will never have deserved to happen to you. But it won’t get the final say in who you become. You’ll turn what you’ve learned into wisdom, what you’ve survived into strength, and what you’ve inherited into something you choose to change. You’ll become part of the generation that decides the cycle stops here.

You’ll meet people you love, people you trust, and people you’ll struggle to understand. Even when your heart wants to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, learn to listen to your gut. You’ll spend years trying to understand why people behave the way they do, eventually learning that you can have compassion for someone without excusing their behavior.

You’ll keep the peace until you learn to protect it. You’ll accept bad behavior until you learn to set boundaries. You’ll abandon yourself until you learn to choose yourself.

There will come a time when the road gets so dark and lonely that you’ll wonder whether you’ve lost your way. You’ll be tempted to return to the familiar, even when the familiar is what you’ve outgrown. But you’ll learn that sometimes the only way forward is through the discomfort of becoming someone new. 

And going backward? That’s just not how we roll.

Because under all of it, at your very core, you are the tough, adventurous tomboy who never gives up.

I need you to follow your heart and try everything. Every curiosity. Every wild dream. Every strange little obsession. You have no idea how much the things you love right now are shaping the woman you’re going to become.

Your love for video games isn’t just play. Shooting games will spark a passion for learning how to shoot real guns. Playing Pokémon, Kingdom Hearts, and other RPGs will shape the way you see the world—teaching you resilience, the importance of side quests, and that life is ultimate character development.

You’ll learn that you can keep evolving, keep learning, and keep becoming. Think of it as downloading your own DLC to level up.

And when you have your glow-up at thirteen and the world starts looking at you differently, you’ll discover that being the pretty girl is just another DLC unlocked on top of the tomboy core who was already fearless.

Your love for playing outside will lay the foundation for your connection to nature. Your habit of burying your head in books will become a lifelong love of learning, psychology, and understanding the world around you.

And that fierce urge you have to rebel? That drive to choose yourself when control feels unbearable? Don’t lose it. Learn to channel it. One day, you’ll step into your power, own your presence, and monetize your energy—building a life where you get paid to exist on your own terms.

You can—and you will—have so much more than you can imagine right now.

You want to learn how to snowboard? You will.

You want to ride motorcycles? You will.

You want to jump out of airplanes? You will.

You’ll pick up new hobbies and sports on a whim, become a model, see yourself on billboards and in magazines, explore the world, and make lifelong friends along the way. You’ll build a life that once would have seemed impossible to you.

And somewhere along the way, you’ll realize that the destination was never the whole point. It was always the journey of becoming.

So baby girl, buckle up. Your journey is about to get wild.

And remember, you’re never as alone as you might feel. Learn to trust that quiet voice inside you—the intuition that will become one of your greatest guides. Let your faith, your ancestors, and the universe remind you to keep finding your way back to yourself.

I’m writing this to you today on my birthday.

And I wish I could show you.

Not just the people you’ll meet, the places you’ll go, or the things you’ll accomplish, but the woman you’ll become. The way you’ll learn to trust yourself. The way you’ll find your way back to the little girl who was always curious, always questioning, always dreaming of something bigger.

I wish I could tell you that you never needed to become someone else to deserve a beautiful life.

You were always worthy. You were always enough.

I’m looking around at a life built on my own terms, surrounded by love, peace, and the freedom to be fully myself.

I’m sorry it took me so long to come back for you. But I’m here now, and I’m never leaving you again.

We made it. And trust me—we’re just getting started.

xo, Future You