and the memories that came rushing back
Hey there Wonder Seekers,
This past weekend I got to help my daughter, Talia-Sky, get ready for her Senior Prom.
And honestly… how is that even possible?
One minute I’m driving her to volleyball games and hearing stories about teenage drama from the passenger seat, and the next minute she’s standing in front of me in this stunning teal satin dress covered in beadwork looking so effortlessly grown up that it almost knocked the wind out of me.
The craziest part?
She looked so much like me at that age that it felt like someone had folded time in half for a second.
Everyone always jokes that she’s my mini me, and standing there helping her get ready, taking pictures, watching her laugh with her friends and carry herself with this quiet confidence… I was so fully in the moment with her.
But later that night, after the pictures were done and I was driving home from the park, something started to hit me.
I couldn’t stop thinking about my own Senior Prom.
Not just the dress or the pictures or who I went with.
I started remembering who I was back then.
And if I’m being honest… who I was then, was someone who was scared.
Not “normal teenage nerves” scared. I mean deeply uncertain about life and growing up and what came next.
My parents had just come through a long, painful divorce that seemed to stretch on forever, and my mom — who was absolutely my rock — was doing everything she could to create some sense of normalcy for me while our world felt shaky underneath us.
And I remember feeling like everybody else somehow knew how to become an adult except me.
Like everyone else had quietly received the instruction manual and I had missed the line where they were handing it out.
Driving home that night after watching Talia so fully be herself, I realized something beautiful.
She carries herself differently than I did at that age.
Not in an arrogant way.
Not performative.
Just… grounded.
There’s something in the way she moves through the world that made me emotional in the quietest way.
And maybe part of that is because life has taught me things I couldn’t have known back then. Things I couldn’t have taught her until I lived them myself.
So somewhere between stoplights and memories, I started thinking about what I would tell the girl in my own prom photos if I could sit beside her for a minute.
I think the first thing I’d tell her is this:
The hard things won’t destroy you.
I know there will be moments where it feels like they might. I know there will be heartbreak and disappointment and seasons where you wonder if you’re strong enough for the life in front of you.
But the hard things aren’t here to ruin you.
They’re here to teach you.
They’ll deepen you.
Strengthen you.
Soften you in the right places and sharpen you in others.
And I’d probably hold her face in my hands and tell her this too:
You deserve the world simply because you exist.
Not because you earned it.
Not because you exhausted yourself proving your value.
Not because you took care of everyone else first.
Just because you’re here.
And maybe the biggest one…
Your kindness is a beautiful gift.
But not everyone deserves to open it.
That one would’ve saved younger me a lot of heartbreak.
I think sometimes we imagine teenagers are the ones standing on the edge of life, but watching our kids grow up has a way of showing us how much we’ve grown too.
Watching Talia this weekend didn’t just remind me of who I used to be.
It reminded me to acknowledge the woman I became.
The woman who kept choosing.
The woman who learned to trust herself.
The woman who now gets to stand in a park taking prom photos of her daughter in a teal satin dress that strangely echoes her own.
🌟 Your Add Wonder Tools
This week, play with this:
- If you could sit down with your younger self for coffee, what would you tell them?
- What hard thing in your life ended up teaching you something beautiful about yourself?
- Where are you still acting as though love, rest, joy, or abundance are things you have to earn?
- And what would shift if you started acknowledging how far you’ve actually come instead of only focusing on what’s left to fix?
Until next time, may you remember that the younger version of you would probably be wildly proud of the life you’ve created and the person you’ve become 💛
With wonder,
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