A letter from May 4th, 2021

Dear Future Me  I think about all of the time, we spent dreaming of this moment and now that it is here I cannot help but smile and cry a bit. Right now we are on the cusp of graduating from Mount Saint Mary's University and that is a wonderfully scary feeling. We have spent almost ten years: crawling, pushing, crying and fighting to get our degree. Now that we are so close it feels unreal, we were accepted into a graduate program! I also feel very sad that mom could not be here to see us graduate. She always told us that we would be great, but she never had the chance to see us. I do not like this feeling of sadness on what is supposed to be a wonderful time in our lives. I think about all of the professors that we have met and all of the knowledge/lessons they have taught us. I am eternally grateful for attending a University that actually cares about its students. I did realize that we needed that support, because we had grown used to doing everything on our own. This University in a way allowed for us to breathe and grow in a safe environment. It challenged our thinking and allowed for us to truly understand why we were pushing ourselves so hard.  By the time you read this, we should be getting ready to defend our dissertation! We will be interning at another psychiatric hospital/facility, standing amongst professionals telling us that we do not know anything. You may find it nearly impossible to comprehend, you may even believe that we do not deserve this. I will say this now and hope you remember the woman who told us this, "I am enough, I am enough, I am most certainly am enough!" We grew up not knowing the love of our father, we grew up not having enough to eat, we grew up thinking that we were lovable. We are older now and know the truth! Our wife loves us, We always have snacks, and we do not need the love of our father to matter! In five years we will have that doctorate in Clinical Psychology and everyone we know will know it too.