Letter to My Younger Self

A neurodivergent woman's journey from fragmentation to wholeness

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Joseph Campbell mapped “The Hero's Journey” as a universal pilgrimage of transformation. What he didn't mention is that sometimes the call to adventure sounds like a late diagnosis that changes everything you thought you knew about yourself.

This is a letter to Her - my younger self, who spent a lifetime gluing fractured pieces to a canvas that was never her own.

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Act I: The Shattering (Years 12-18)

Dear 12-year old Me,

As I write this, I am nowhere near to what they call “the other side” - the place where everything that doesn’t belong has simply fallen away.

I know you hope this place exists. And so do I, but there’s no map. Only you, me and an inner compass whose True North somehow got distorted.

You don’t know it yet, but the road to your knowing is paved with shattered pieces - some that belonged to you, some that never did, and some you’d be grateful to leave behind forever.

Right now, you’re trying so hard not to drown. Not in your grief for the mother who’ll never return. But in your father’s self-pity.

His all-consuming rage will become the storm you have to survive with no shelter for your own pain, for years. You’ll become fluent in the language of his dismissal, but somehow, illiterate to what your own soul needs to heal.

This is where you learn that the price for acceptance is self-abandonment, that your worth is measured by how much of another’s pain you can absorb, that love means losing yourself in another.

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Act II: The Poison as The Medicine (Years 18-34)

Dear 18-year old Me,

Just as you approach the threshold of leaving the old You behind. Another big transition.

You are a woman now.

“What does that even mean?”, you ask. And who’s to blame you, really. After all, no one taught you what kind of woman to become. One thing’s for sure: not the woman who brought you into this world.

Your biggest teachers become strangers who you’ve never met, trying on identities like ill-fitting clothes and doing everything in your power to turn into your latest crush’s secret dream. Instead, you wake up to a nightmare.

What your heart couldn’t earn, your body certainly will. So you fall into the next trap, where your body becomes an offering and sexuality becomes the currency for more emptiness.

Another language you command to perfection - knowing how to please, but not how to rightfully demand in return.

You’ll chose men who speak your father’s language: silence, rage, avoidance. Every relationship will become an echo of the wound that never healed.

You'll chase control in the only place it seems within reach - your body becomes both the problem and the solution, the enemy and the only thing you seemingly command.

You'll collect degrees and certifications like armor, as if this was the permission slip to finally take up space.

Your search for meaning will take you to the edge of yourself - until you see nothing but darkness.

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Act III: The Journey Back Home (Years 34-present)

Dear 34-year old Me,

You’re at the verge of doing something bold. Perhaps the boldest step so far - both terrifying and liberating in equal measure.

You’re going to walk away from it all.

“Who made the call?”, you ask. Your body did.

The same body you've been using as currency, as battlefield, as everything but home, will finally command your attention in ways you can no longer dismiss or ignore.

Just as the world is about to go silent - battling a pandemic of its own.

Life will change in ways you never could have imagined - not the miracle transformation you were secretly hoping for, but something messier, more real, infinitely more challenging.

You'll cross oceans, change countries, rebuild your life multiple times - each move a shedding, each new place a new chance to discover who you could become when no one holds you captive in identities of the past.

Even as you create the family you never had, you'll realize that love doesn't erase the old patterns. It painfully illuminates them, amplifies them even further.

Your daughter’s arrival will mark a turning point of generations. She will become the key that unlocks everything - not just who you have always been, but who your mother was, who your grandmother was, all the brilliant, sensitive women who learned to shrink from their greatness for survival.

For the first time in four generations, someone in your ancestral line will be gifted the words to name what was never spoken: The acknowledgement of your neurodivergence.

I wish I could tell you it gets easier from here. I wish I could tell you the time and date of your arrival.

But I can tell you something else: The Home you seek is You.