Dear Me,
Happy Birthday! To celebrate you this February 14th I want to gift you a reminder of things I have always loved about you and things I have recently learned to love. I even want to love parts of you that I have never loved before.

I have always loved that you are creative. You love to draw, paint, papercraft, stamp, woodburning, sewing, embroidery, linocut printing, photoshop, digitals scrapbooking, junk journaling, video editing, script writing. You are truly a jack of all trades and you have enriched the lives of others with your gift. I love that you feel all the way through every step of every creative process. You put an authentic piece of yourself in everything you create, and it feels good. Keep doing this, make this more of a priority because it is so so good for your heart.

I have always loved your selflessness. I love that you see the value in harmony. You seek for the best for all involved over what is easy or what is the most socially acceptable. That harmony lends itself well to your family, groups of friends and especially in the workplace. No one really questions whether you have good intentions because you ooze them out of every pore.

I have always loved your laugh. You have the sense of humor you developed at 12 and it has only matured slightly since then. The funniest things to you are when something is out of place, when the juxtaposition of something is just silly and odd and unreal. You have literally laughed until you cried over the thought of someone taking the time to carve a flute out of a carrot and then playing it. You are silly in the best way.

I have always loved your intuition with kids and animals. Only in the last few years has the ability to articulate what you see, and feel been part of this gift, but you have always been able to tell when a kid or an animal was afraid, in need, comfortable or concerned. You used that information to advocate for them or once again to seek harmony and meet needs where you could. This is something that has led to some great experiences in your career, and I am so grateful for your intuition and how you still work to understand it better and to fine tune it.

I have recently learned to love the wounded parts of you. The parts that others broke and left you to clean up on your own. The parts that developed ways to cope and protect yourself with the only tools and skills you had at the time. Including some from so long ago that you have moments where your wounded little kid parts show up in odd ways. I love those parts; I love that they protect and that they help carry big heavy things. I love that they have served you and that they are opening up and getting ready to be replaced with new coping mechanisms and new tools.

I recently learned to love your ADHD diagnosis. I recognize it was hard to get this diagnosis late in life. I recognize the frustration and disappointment that it brought but I love that you know even more about you, and you mourned what you needed to from this but since then you have learned your limitations, you have learned more your strengths and you are learning to thrive within all of that and because of all of that.

I love your growth mindset. I love that you thirst for knowledge on how to better care for yourself in the spaces that others have failed you. That you are working to hold yourself to a higher set of standards and therefore everyone else around as well. I love that you want to be the best for those you love even though the work is hard, and the struggles can seem relentless. You are strong and persistent, and you have come so very far.

I love you as a mother. I love that you saw how you were falling short and though you had some moments where you sat in shame and guilt you have been climbing out of that and focusing on the now. You are showing up for you kid like people have never shown up for you. You are breaking generational cycles and killing it. I love that you are giving yourself grace that you are giving yourself realistic expectations, allowing your human side to exist without shaming it or telling it that it should be something better or something more. I love that you see your worth now more than you ever have as a mother. Being a mom is hard enough with everyone else's opinions and I am proud of you for changing your opinion of yourself. You are loved and you are amazing, and your kid is doing wonderful.

I am going to love your naivete, you trust of others to the point of getting hurt. I see you learning how to set boundaries, but I will also love your desire and instinct to see the very best in people. To see that even someone with undesirable behavior is probably a good person with a burden that they have yet to understand and sort out, that they need grace and space, and you give it.

I am going to love your failures. I am going to love seeing you fail over and over and over so that you learn new things and new ways. So that you can have a million new experiences. I am going to love your ability to fail and feel good about it. I am going to replace shame and guilt and fear of falling out of someone's good graces with love.

I am going to love your next iteration. You are on the precipice of big change, and you are scared of what that looks like. Uncertainty breeds anxiety but one thing I am sure of is that you are going to be even more amazing of a person than you are now. I am so proud of your hard work, of your ownership of your life and your path, of your energy and effort to make something better for you and your boy, and for not falling down the same dark path as others before you.

I love so much about you, every day I love you more than the day before. Every day together we are stronger than the itty-bitty shitty committee in our head and we are feeling our own self-love more and more. I love you, stay with me, hold my hand, hold my heart, and let's love bigger and harder than ever before. You are the light and the love this world needs so find all the ways to fill your love tank because you have work to do :)

Love,
Your new biggest fan