Hi, I'm Emilia Isabelle

Dear Younger Me,

Dear Younger Me,

I want to start this by apologising although the words

“I’m so unbelievably sorry”

don’t even come close to expressing the depth of my sincerity.

I’m sorry for all the unkind things I ever said to you. I’m sorry for the way I picked you apart, held you to impossible standards, and made you believe you were never good enough. The way I compared you, changed you and moulded to be more palatable to others. You were always more than enough. You were brave, resilient, and beautifully human. I was unable to see it then, and even now, at times, I find my lenses being foggy, but we are a million miles from where we started.

I’m sorry for being so hard on you. I made you believe you needed to shrink physically and mentally to be accepted. I’m sorry I made you feel the need to mask who you were to fit into rooms that were never built with you in mind, in rooms that didn’t deserve your presence. I see now how you bent and folded yourself to please others, trying to belong in spaces that never truly embraced you or saw you for the person you are.

I know why you did it. I know the pain, the fear, and the desperate need for control to be seen in a way that protected you from judgement. I remember how you punished yourself and how you convinced yourself that staying small was the only power you had left and all you had to offer. I see now it was never your fault, you did the best you could with the tools you had. The loss of control frightened you to the core.

I know now the truth. You were on a journey. One that was plagued with hardship, most definitely, but also one full of awakening and understanding.

You endured so much in your life. Many of the battles you fought alone in silence, some through choice and some not. The heartbreak and the trauma of physical and emotional abuse from those that you loved and from yourself. The challenges you’ve faced in life which are unrepeatable and unbearable to relive or vocalise. Yet somehow, you survived every single one. You overcame it all, not quickly, not easily, but steadily, one step, one breath, one small act of courage at a time and you’ve continued despite it all.

I see you now, and I am so incredibly proud.

I’m proud of the woman you’ve become and are still transitioning into. I’m proud that you’ve found your strength, your resilience, and your unwavering determination to keep going even when life tried to break you.

In launching your blog, you are able to share your truth with the world, something that takes courage. At 24, you were pregnant, and by 29, you were a single parent, and you have adapted with grace. You found the strength from within to walk away from abuse, refusing to be silenced or destroyed by it and not letting it define your future. You chose to be the mother your child needed through love and stepped up to the title of single parent, even when your own heart was hurting.

Every challenge you faced could have ended your story, but instead, they became chapters of growth and resilience. It wasn’t only survival, it was transformation.

You are now a professional, independent, ever-evolving woman. A woman who continues to strive toward her highest self, who still stumbles but never stops rising. Nothing you’ve been through was wasted from the tears shed into your pillow when the world is sleeping, every bruise or scar, the sleepless nights where your mind is racing have all enabled you to be the powerful, wise, compassionate soul you are today.

I forgive you for not knowing what you couldn’t possibly know back then.

Thank you wholeheartedly for never giving up, for pushing through the darkness, letting the light in and allowing the growth of me.

With endless love and compassion,
Your Future Self