~This is a letter written for the messy-haired, wide-eyed, mismatched, rumpled little girls who prance around my classroom, for the nameless hooligans that skip across the road, for the readers and rebels, for my two tenacious nieces who are the bright light in my eyes.~
~This is for you.~
You are full of potential.
Your grubby hands grab everything, pull it up about one inch from your eyes to examine it. Usually it goes into your mouth unless I stop you. You have this way about you, curious like a cat but with a much better temperament. Your eyes shine. Nothing about the dirt, the sweat, the errant hair offends you. Fun is more important than whatever clothes you happen to be wearing.
It's beautiful. I envy you.
I envy your hope, your willingness to embrace tomorrow and today at the same time; it's a trait so few adults possess, knowing how to respect the future and live in the now, and we usually waffle between fearful planning and irresponsible abandon to the moment.
But you ask all the right questions about the future while giggling about the present. You have wild eyes and a tender heart. You are not afraid to sulk, to run indoors, to cry, to give hugs.
Your possibilities are limitless. I want you to remember that.
Because you will be pressured to change. Not always on purpose, and not always in words, and not always by people. Sometimes life will hammer that spirit out of you. Sometimes it is out of necessity that you become hard for a while, and there's nothing wrong with protecting yourself if the situation calls for it. We all go through different seasons.
But you bright, inquisitive, hopeful beacon of light, you cannot stay that way. Strength is not the same thing as stonewalling, and often it takes more of a person to be open than closed down. I encourage you to set healthy boundaries, demand respect, and be ready to exit if it is not given; but you must. not. give. up.
You cannot kill your potential because the world has treated you roughly, and believe me, it will treat you roughly. You will be scolded. You will be scoffed at. You will be let down by people you love. You will be boxed in, beaten up, tied down, pushed off a cliff. You will get sick. You will lose those you love, by death or abandonment.
But I need you to remember. I need you to recall before you were taught to hate your body, before you were taught to be embarrassed of your intelligence, before you were taught the gross lies about your sexuality, before you were used by those closest to you, before you were bogged down by bills and expectations and sexism. I need you to remember putting that bug an inch from your nose to examine it, remember the stained tips of your sneakers in the mud, the laughter lines in your pillow from sleepovers.
You have potential. You have destiny. You will change the world.
You are the future, little girl.
And I love you dearly.
respectfully,
a former little girl.
