Never forget where you came from, who you were, the heart breaks you went through, the triumphs that pushed you forward and the people that held you back. Remember to never fear the days ahead of you and to never get stuck in the days you left behind. In painful times remember that pain is not your enemy, it is simply a reminder that you are still alive and that there is still hope.

Hold tight to your childlike trust, but do not let those who would manipulate you hold sway in your life. When life fills your moments with sorrow, remember the joy you held in seconds of happiness. Know that without sorrow, pain, darkness, and despair, there could be no joy, no pleasure, no light, and no inspiration in life. For one cannot be born without the other. So take all moments as a double-sided coin. Though there may be dark clouds ahead, there must always be a silver lining.

You came from simple beginnings. You fought for every moment of life. You breathed in every morsel of existence that you could. Don’t ever forget that. Never forget the painful memories, for they were once nightmares that you survived. Never forget the loved ones you lost, they will continue to cheer you on long after their gravestones loose their marks. You are strong because of your past, you are not the same as you were yesterday and that’s okay. Life is not about staying the same person but instead keeping the same values regardless of who you’ve become.

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Don’t let past heartbreaks keep you from opening up your heart once again. Though pain and sorrow urge you to build a wall up around your heart, work daily to tear them down again. Remember your successes, they build you up just as much as your failures. They remind you that you’re not always wrong and that there is hope in trying. Sometimes the lack of success is due to the people you hold close. When they pull you back, push you down, and try to keep you down with them, let them go and find those that will live you up.

Fear of the future is a funny thing. The fear of something soon becomes greater than the pain of the actual thing that we fear. We fear what could be and then we are surprised when we have survived what we feared most. Know this, the fondness of the past can be just as dangerous as fear of the future. It can hold you in place as you longingly look back at it. Remember that things never happen the same way twice, so chasing the resurrection of the past is pointless. Keep moving forward, but use the past as a tool to conquer the future, not to mirror it.

Pain is the mother of life. She guides us to move, to stop, to find a solution, or to simply fight for survival. We all tend to hide from pain or worse, to dive head first into it. Maybe the truth is simply that we do not always know what to do with it. Pain is our guide, our trial, and our testament. Even the birth of life results in pain, but a mother wouldn’t trade that for anything. Only in death does pain truly cease. So do not hide from it, let it guide you to where you are supposed to be and who you are supposed to be.

Trust isn’t the easiest thing to give away, and yet without it, humanity would struggle to survive. Trust is relying on someone else to do the right thing. In this day and age that’s a risky bet to place, I can’t imagine how much more so that will be in the future. So start here, be a trustworthy person. Give someone else the ability to trust. Teach them that you can choose what is right even if it is hard and so can they. When all other influences scream at you to lie, cheat, manipulate and take, stand strong against them. Be the lighthouse high up on the cliffs that the ship's captain stakes not only his life upon but also the lives of his crew.

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I cannot promise you a simple and easy life, I passed that chance up long ago. The days between now and then will be filled with loss and sorrow. That will never change, it will always be in the forecast of the future, but it is the same storm that we have faced in the past. Even in the depths of the darkest storm, there was light. Joy was always there daring us to push through and to fight on. Though the good moments seem to measure up much smaller than the bad, they hold so much more value. It's as if every mountain of dirt held an ounce of gold. Not only did the gold give us value, but the dirt brought us up higher and made us stronger.

I hope that I have tamed my demons (or at least have made friends with them), I hope that I have chased my dreams (even if I never caught them), I hope that I loved with all my heart (though my heart may be in a thousand pieces), and I hope I have become the person that God has always planned me to be (even if that person was not who I had hoped I would be).

Lots of love,

Your past self, looking towards your pain and reminding you that it will all be okay, just keep moving forward.