Day 25: Dear Teen Me

Dear younger self, 

I am writing to you about all the big questions that are taking up all the space in your life.

Spoiler alert: your questions get answered in unexpected but powerful ways.

Your Curls:

In years, you will eventually embrace your curls and grow to love them. You will no longer wish for straight hair. You will no longer spend hours researching the cure to frizziness. You will no longer spend every weekend scheduling plans around washing and blow drying and straightening. You will no longer hear the sizzling sound of a flatiron hitting a slightly damp piece of hair. 

Your hair journey will end beautifully, but it won’t be easy. Along the way you will battle with insecurity and comparison. You will search for glimpses of your natural hair around you. Then one day, you’ll just stop trying to fit in. You’ll cut your hair off and stop using heat. You’ll spend hours researching what products will define your curls, not what will get rid of them. You will become the representation of curly hair you were always looking for. You will encourage young girls around you to love their curls. My first piece of advice to you: love what’s different about you and push back on what is accepted as the norm. Different is beautiful and so are your curls. 

Teaching: 

Can you believe that at five years old you knew exactly where you’d end up? Ok maybe you didn’t know exactly what you’d do, but you were pretty close. You will not become an art teacher, or a kindergarten teacher, or even an elementary school teacher. You tried elementary school, and trust me, that did not work. You’ll end up teaching high school English. Who would’ve thought? Not you, right? While you are right about teaching, you will learn that teaching will be so much more than decorating a classroom or cutting out lamination.

Teaching will become your passion. It will become the very thing that drives your daily actions and nightly thoughts. Teaching will be where you learn to advocate for yourself and others. Teaching will exhaust you and keep you up at night but it will also empower you to keep going and keep fighting. My second piece of advice to you: keep fighting for what you believe in, never lose sight of what matters most to you, and don’t let others tell you that you can’t. 

Anxiety: 

At 15, you will truly know God. At 16, you will go public with your Faith and get baptized. At 24, you will still know God and spread His goodness and acceptance through your actions. The time between 16 and 24 is a time determined by anxiety. You will try to ignore it and deny it. You will feel like a bad Christian for worrying so much. Then one terrible, anxiety-filled night will lead you to asking for help. The help will be scary at first but eventually you will grow to thank God for it.

Your anxiety will never go away and you will still have hard moments but that’s all they’ll be. Your anxiety will no longer rule your life and you will start to do things you never could imagine yourself doing. God will use hard moments in your life for good. He will turn your anxiety into a tool to build your Faith.  My final piece of advice: continue to trust in God’s messy but perfect plan for your life. 

Remember to embrace your differences, keep fighting for what’s right, and trust in your Faith. 

Sincerely, 

Your future and much stronger self

About the Author

Ashleigh Navarro, UT alumna, High School English Teacher, and Somos Escitoras Mentor

Ashleigh Navarro graduate from the University of Texas at Austin in 2021 and began her teaching career in Leander ISD. She taught both 5th and 4th grade in Leander before moving to Colorado where she currently teaches high school English. Ashleigh is a graduate student at CU Boulder studying Education Foundations and Policy. She hopes to continue researching and learning how to dismantle harmful and inequitable schooling structures.

About the Blog Series

The #LatinaLuminaries Blog Series by Somos Escritoras. The series was created to illuminate the wisdom, experiences, voices, and truths of Latina women and girls and the broader Latinx community. The blog series features writing from escritoras (participants) and writing mentors from Somos Escritoras Latinx Writing Workshop. Published Latina authors, writers, poets, and illustrators who presented at our workshop also contributed to the blog series.