Dear Me. {Carnival of Natural Parenting}

Welcome to the June 2015 Carnival of Natural Parenting: Talking to Yourself

This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Code Name: Mama and Hobo Mama. This month our participants have written letters to themselves. Please read to the end to find a list of links to the other carnival participants.

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Dear Twenty-Two Year Old Me,
A year out of college, you are engaged and planning a wedding. You've just moved into a twin house, that you don't necessarily love other then the fact that its yours. You don't know it yet, but in a decade you will be looking to move out of that house, and only then realize how much you really do love it.

You know what else will have changed? Just about everything! Ha! You now have a beautiful daughter, a crazy lovely pup, and even exercise regularly (and crazier still, enjoy it).

Over the next few years you will go through some wonderful things (wedding, travel, childbirth), and you will go through some really hard things (miscarriage, death, childbirth...), but you really do have a beautiful life. So do me a favor: don't stress so much. I know it seems like some things will never work themselves out, but they will. I promise.

You know what though, you have plenty of time to figure all that stuff out. Go back to planning your wedding and painting your house, and enjoy it. These are some of the most carefree and low-key days of your life! It only gets busier, messier, crazier from here on out. It gets even better too.



Dear Future Me,

Man I could use your reassurances right now. It seems there are so many things in flux at the moment, so many things in limbo, so many ways we're hoping for change and waiting, waiting, waiting.

I know it will work out in the end. We will figure this out, as we've figured out our other trials before. But man, I wish you could tell me how it was to work. I wish you could show me the whens and the hows, because right now they seem so elusive.

Reassure me that I'm going to make the right decisions for my family... that we're going to love the house that we move in to, tell me what happens with my job, will Gwen love school, do we ever win the lottery? (Okay, kidding about that last one.)

I have to imagine that ten years from now I'll be looking back at me and saying, "Sweetie, relax. It will all work out." But man it would be nice to actually hear it.

xoxo,
Meegs



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Visit Code Name: Mama and Hobo Mama to find out how you can participate in the next Carnival of Natural Parenting! Please take time to read the submissions by the other carnival participants:

• Dear Me. — Meegs at A New Day writes to her decade-younger self offering a good reminder of how far she's come, and she addresses some fears she wishes future her could assuage.
• Reflecting on Motherhood with Parental Intelligence: A Letter to Myself — Laurie Hollman, Ph.D. at Parental Intelligence writes about raising her two loving, empathic sons with Parental Intelligence and finding they have become industrious, accomplished young men with warm social relationships.
• A Letter to Myself — The Barefoot Mama writes to herself in the moments around the birth of her daughter.
• A Letter to Myself — Holly at Leaves of Lavender offers a missive to herself in the past... three years in the past, to be precise, when her little one was only four months old.
• Dear me: Nothing will go the way you've planned — Lauren at Hobo Mama gets real with her just-starting-parenting self and tells it to her straight.
• A Letter to the Mama Whom I Will Become — Erin from And Now, for Something Completely Different writes a letter to the Mama whom she will one day be, filled with musings on the past, present, and future.
• Dear Me of 7 Years Ago — Lactating Girl at The Adventures of Lactating Girl writes to her pre-baby self telling her about the whirlwind she's about to enter called parenting.
• Talking to My 18 Year Old Self — HannahandHorn talks to herself as she is just entering college.
• Dear highly sensitive soul — Marija Smits tells a younger version of herself that motherhood will bring unexpected benefits - one of them being the realization that she is a highly sensitive person.
• Talking to myself: Dear Pre Stoneageparent — Stoneageparent enlightens her pre-pregnant self about the amazing transformations life has in store for her after having two children
• Dear Me: I love you. — Dionna at Code Name: Mama wrote herself a few little reminders to help her be at peace with who she is in the moment. That may give her the greatest chance of being at peace in the future, too.
• My best advice to the new mama I was 8 years ago — Tat at Mum in Search shares the one thing she wishes she'd figured out earlier in a letter to her 8-years-ago self (that's when her first baby was 6 moths old).
• A Letter to Myself — Bibi at The Conscious Doer sends a letter back in time eight years to her darkest moment post partum.
• To me, with love — Jessica at Crunchy-Chewy Mama makes peace with her past and projects what a future her will need to hear.
• To Myself on the Last Day — Rachael at The Variegated Life tells her panicked last-day-before-motherhood self not to worry.