Letter to My 27 Year Old Self

Here is what I would tell myself if I could slide into a tricked out Delorean with Doc Brown and visit my 27 or so year old self:

Summer, I see you. I’m guessing from the way you’re lying there on the floor with a blotchy red face and a gob of damp toilet paper that you’ve been suffering. So life hasn’t exactly gone according to plan, right? Well, maybe if you’d actually made and held to a plan instead of being carried downstream by the intensity of others, things would be better, right? Maybe if you had honored yourself enough to hold out for someone who would treat you right, you wouldn’t be hurting like this. Is that what you’re thinking?

Well, here’s the beautiful part: every point in your life that seems like a detour, is actually leading you along a path to your wildest dreams. Every step along the way is a guidepost to your own nirvana, and every ounce of your heart that gets hollowed out by wrenching pain is making a receptacle for awaiting joy. There are no real mistakes, there are only necessary discoveries. Dark places we wander into to induce us to reach for light. One day you will thank heaven for this marriage and the universe of understanding it will open to you. Stop banging your head against a wall and wishing you could go back and choose again. You are exactly where you need to be. Once you let go and look to the Source of all light, there’s no need to go back. Your pain will always be made into your gain if you just let it in. What seems like a mess right now is the dark smear of paint being applied to the canvas of the masterpiece that will be your life. You can pass go from whatever space you find yourself on the board, And you will find yourself in a place more spectacular than you’d ever conceived of before your “mistake”. The only mistake is blame and shame and denial.

What have you been crying about? Are you mad at yourself for being jealous and immature? Giving yourself a good shaming? How’s that working out? What if instead you witnessed your own pain in a loving, non condemning way? What if you offered yourself understanding and compassion instead of searing belittling? What if you just owned your fear and acknowledged that you worry about losing your perceived place in someone’s heart, and that that’s where you are right now, it’s natural, and you still deserve love?

What if you built a place of safety within yourself, and trusting in your understanding of God, stopped offering yourself up to others as a specimen in a petrie dish asking them to measure your worth? Guess what? They can’t, he can’t even begin to conceive of your worth with his puny, finite mortal eyes! Yes, it’s lovely to be seen with fond adoring eyes, but the only adoring eyes you actually require are yours and your maker’s. Give yourself that gift. Know that you are absolutely extraordinary. Feel the reverence for the great gift of life you’ve been given and the mission you have to fulfill. You are grander and life is more beautiful than any poet has ever attempted to describe.

And guess what,?Summer? He’s even more scared than you are. That’s the only reason he lashes out. He’s terrified to admit evidence that he’s as small as he thinks he is, so he deflects and throws it onto you. But as you step into your divinity, all of that will just roll off of you like rain water off of Thor’s metal plated abs. You don’t need to defend yourself against any fictional version of rightness. As Nietzsche once observed, “There is no such thing as immaculate perception”. There is no non-biased version of events.?Summer, just love him. Just shower him with love, shower yourself with love, wash, rinse and repeat. And if his eyes are too dazzled by the light, the relationship will naturally come to an end.?Summer, just trust. You’ll know what to do. You are going to be just fine.

You can listen to this message as many times as you need to?here.

And please share it with anyone who needs to hear it.