What 16 Year Old Me Would Think of Me Now

Hello y’all, how are you doing? Happy new month!!!! Can’t believe its the last month of the year, i don’t know how to feel about it, it happened too fast. Anyways, I recently read something somewhere (if you would consider watching a TikTok video as reading) where they were talking about what their younger self would think of who they are today and I immediately knew I had to write about it because I have changed so much. Sometimes I think about what baby Kosi would think if she could meet me today, I know the first thing I would do immediately I see her is to give her the biggest hug and I won’t let her go until she is ready to leave my embrace. 16 year old me was in my first year of the university and she felt everything so deeply, she didn’t know the beauty and strength she carried, she would always try to shrink herself, she never spoke up for herself, she was soft and she had this complicated relationship with her body which made her move through the world smaller than she needed to (which is funny because she was way smaller than me today).

If she met me today, she would definitely stare at me for a while not because I am perfect but because I am totally different from her in both good ways and not so good ways. I hope she would see a woman who is more confident, softer, wiser, more intentional but also she would see a woman who worries more than she ever did (I hope she forgives me for that). I know she would be so concerned and ask “Why are we so scared of so many things?” She would wonder when we started preparing for the worst even when the best is possible.

She would see me and notice the quite strength she never had, she would notice that even with fear, we don’t shrink anymore. We speak up for ourselves now even if our voice shakes , we take up space and don’t apologise for it, we show kindness to our body in ways she could never imagine. She would see that healing made us steady. I hope she commends us for our gentility that should never be mistaken for weakness. She would admire our softness that should not be taken as fear of being seen. She would see that we always choose peace now, that we have a community of people that think highly of us, Oh and we have boundaries now, something she didn’t know the meaning of. She would love that we talk to God more than we talk to our fears although we would like to talk to him more than we presently do.

I hope she sees all of these changes and smile because the woman standing in front of her is the adult she needed at that stage of her life and is everything she hoped to grow into even if she didn’t know how to say it. I hope she would look at me and say “You are scared… but also stronger, softer, wiser and braver than I ever was.” To be honest, that is enough for me. So tell me, what would be the first thing you would say to your younger self when you first meet them.