Nineteen
Dearest Lauren -
This morning, you are waking up as a nineteen year-old.
In your bed at residence, happily ensconced in your first year of university, seeing the buds bursting just outside your dorm window that overlooks the CN Tower. The quad will be buzzing with life later today and I can’t help but wonder if you have enough sunscreen.
The Poli Sci exam is looming and you’re on a deadline for your paper on Myths of French Sensuality.
Your father will not be running up a Starbucks cake pop to you as he has done every year for the last 15 or so years, and I won’t be fielding calls from loving friends and family members jockying to be the first to wish you a happy day. (Happy, in the way we all are in your presence.)
So, it’s a different kind of birthday morning.
Different, but the same.
Because you are ever you.
Yes, you are of legal (ahem) drinking age. In fact, there is nothing you can’t do without our parental permission anymore.
That’s changed.
But the YOU you are has not.
As I reread my letters to you that I started when you turned eight, then nine , then ten, then eleven, then twelve, then thirteen, then fourteen, then fifteen, then sixteen, then seventeen, then eighteen, I was really struck by that. How the essence of you has not ever changed.
You are, as ever the kind, generous, empathetic and compassionate glitterstar you’ve ever been.
And now. The hard bit. (Always a hard bit, eh?)
You will meet people who say you’re too kind, too generous, too empathetic, too compassionate.
That you need to toughen up.
That you need to stop caring so much for others.
That you need a thicker skin.
And later, that you need to be more mercenary to survive.
Trust me. They are wrong.
Your compassion is your superpower.
Your empathy is your truth.
Your generosity makes the world go ‘round.
Besides: they don’t know just how dead fierce you really are.
The gorgeous exterior with the dazzling smile that belies the vast chasm of depth and wisdom you hold. But those who care to see it do.
I saw it in you at every street corner in Paris, in every exchange, in every pat of a dog, in every new bite.
Just as you could see in Monet’s waterlilies the articulation of the swift passage of time in some, with the stillness of youth in others.
The rest of us missed it.
You didn’t.
You named the social disparities we all glanced over. You asked the questions. Each answer informing how you will approach your poli sci exam, I suspect.
So even as you won’t be munching on a cake pop this morning, you WILL be surrounded by your uni friends who adore you for the kind, generous, empathetic, compassionate and FIERCE human you are. They will make a big deal over the big deal you are.
Savour it. And feel at home in it.
You are worthy of feeling the big deal you are.
There will be a party tonight as respite from the studying, and you will look radiant and will kick up your heels in some fabulous dress, probably to Dancing Queen for the thousandth time.
Feeling every bit of your nineteenness. Shining like the bright star you are who invites the other bright stars to shine brighter too.
Je t’adore, ma belle.
Today, and all the days and all the days and all the days to come.
And then some.
x/Mama
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