Dear Teen Me- Feature 12

About this Feature:
Dear Teen Me (Edited by E. Kristen Anderson & Miranda Kenneally) includes advice from over 70 authors and I’m thrilled to be part of the blog tour. My tour stop date is Tuesday October 30th, and on that date I’ll be posting a review, hosting a giveaway and sharing my own Dear Teen Me letter. In the meantime, I was inspired by the book and decided to invite friends, fellow bloggers, and authors to write their own letter. Through out the month of October I’ll be  posting them here.

Jennifer and I first met through Indigo Books & Music.. I love her approach to her letter….

Dear Jennifer aged 13-19,

This letter is meant to be is a thank you note. I write a lot of thank you letters; for dinners, for great service, for time spent with friends at a cottage. I guess it never occurred to me to write a thank you note to the person who made me who I am today. The person got me through that integral period in a girl’s life where you are defining who you are, who you will be, what kind of man you will marry, the kind of parent you will be. Me, the teenager.
Thank you.

Thank you for being brave enough to take chances and make mistakes. Those mistakes have firmly rooted me in my current beliefs, my ideals and my life path.
Thank you for saying no- over and over and over again. It was worth it.
Thank you for being a good friend. I am so proud to say that I treated my high school friends with kindness, compassion and respect and I am proud to call so many of them my friends today.
Thank you for falling in love. While sometimes painful, the joy and experiences of being young, in love and looking at life from that perspective made me crave those wonderful butterflies in my marriage. It also made me cautious and careful and allowed me to navigate through rough waters when I needed to.
Thank you for your sense of adventure. Thank you for having a “go for it” attitude and proving that independence and determination can define who you will become in the future. I am certain that my desire to see the world and to be a part of something bigger has its direct origins in the pages of my teen life.
Thank you for making time to read so many wonderful adventures. I am so grateful that I can say I have been a passionate reader all of my life. My passion for reading is still a vibrant and important part of my life and I am thankful for all that you did to further develop this.
Thank you for laughing so much and for having a lot of fun. As I look back I am flooded with amazing memories of road trips, family vacations, parties, school functions, singing and dancing. I am so grateful to say that I spent most of my teen years laughing with my friends and family.
Thank you for being emotional. While many view this as a liability, it has shaped who I am as a friend, colleague, wife and mother today. I love deeply, cry when I need to and have a very sympathetic ear to everyone in my life.
In retrospect I can see that it wasn’t very easy, but you managed to come through the other side with a strong personality, a great education and a joyful outlook on life. There were times when I know that it was scary, lonely and you felt unsure- I wish I could have been there to give you a hug.
Looking back now, that time reads like a wonderful adventure novel where the heroine gets the guy and reaps the rewards- it was all worth it….every moment.

Thank you.