Comments

Letter to Me, Age 20 — 22 Comments

  1. Beautifully put, Joy! You’re so right that we are often our own worst critics; one of the true hallmarks of growing up, I think, is letting go of the illusion that we can be THE BEST at everything.
    Looking forward to getting to know you better at GenFab!
    Karen

  2. Joy,
    Reading through most (weekend catch-up work) of these letters to our 20-year-old selves I see how fraught with insecurity we were. The messages around weight, beauty and men!
    You sound like a delightful young woman and as Sharon noted, inner tube water polo? WOW

  3. The theme of never enough resonates with all of us – and too frequently in our lives. It seems to take some of us longer to know we are enough, more than enough, but it isn’t always a consistently achieved win.

    I know men are insecure about things as well. I wonder how closely their insecurities align with women’s. Imagine if we actually talked more openly with each other… So much less time would be wasted!

    I love the way you phrased each of these. You really bring the points home.

  4. I love this letter, Joy. It would be so lovely if we could have recieved a letter from our older self at the age of 20 (or 13 or 16 or even 30!) I think it would have been good to hear from ME at any of those ages 🙂
    Ah it would be even better to go back to those ages and relive them knowing what I know now!
    I miss the Oct Memoir challenge too, so much that I’m just continuing the theme even though the challenge is over! I wasn’t able to complete it due to a series of family events, but it was great fun.

  5. Sounds like you were doing all the things you needed to do, but were plagued by all the same self doubt that eats away at the self confidence of so many amazing young women even in the 21st Century.

  6. This is all so true. Despite all sorts of evidence, don’t we often believe the worst about ourselves? I’ve been reading through all of these posts and now wondering where I’m doing that in my life TODAY. How do I limit myself TODAY. What false beliefs about myself do I carry around TODAY that I’m going to wish I didn’t tomorrow and in all the tomorrows ahead?

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