Dear Girl Who Doesn't Know Her Worth,

Sometimes, you do and say things you don’t mean. You have lost friendships with people who just didn’t seem to understand you, and those friends didn’t seem to have the same kinds of feelings you do. Your true feelings are buried in a chasm of your heart because you are afraid of being exposed. You have been hurt so many times before that you are afraid to take on new challenges and meet new people because you want to protect yourself from ever feeling that way again. The truth is, you don’t know who you are but perhaps you know who you want to become, and that is the beauty of self-love.

Being a young woman in this world is difficult, and you face immense pressure to look and behave a certain way. You try your best to fit in with the rest of the girls, but you often find yourself feeling low when you compare your features to their smooth, shiny hair and thin bodies. You spend hours at the gym, toning your arms and shaping your waistline into the perfect hourglass figure. You spend your hard-earned money on makeup and hair products to enhance your natural beauty, but you are only doing this to please other people. As a young woman, what people think of you haunts your every waking moment. You want to be the best. You end up being over-involved because the less time you have to spend alone with your thoughts, the better off you think you are. You want to be beautiful and confident, but no matter what you do, you always feel that you are never good enough: never the prettiest, never the funniest, never the smartest.

None of that matters. Think of all of the times you have posted on social media to show people that you have friends, that you’re a good, Christian girl, that you merit inclusion in other people’s lives, only to find yourself in all the wrong relationships with all the wrong people, in all the wrong places. You are full of self-doubt and feel like a hypocrite, and often take your self-expression to the extreme when you can’t keep it in any longer because you have low self-esteem, and that is OK. You are young and figuring yourself out right now, but just hear me out for a moment.

You are worthy of love and acceptance. You are worthy of being treated well in relationships. No matter what you have done in the past, you are worthy. You are only human, and you make mistakes, but there is forgiveness. There is redemption. You are too hard on yourself, but I know that it is only because you care so much, because you feel so much more deeply than most people, but have no idea how to express yourself. You have lost sight of who you are because you have been trying so hard to be someone else.

If I could hug every girl in the world who has ever felt unworthy of love, I would hold them and tell them everything is all right. No one should ever have to feel unworthy or unloved. You are beautiful, kind, intelligent, and funny. It doesn’t have to be you and against the world because I will always be by your side.

With love,
The girl who found herself.