To my thirteen-year-old self.

You probably can’t imagine twenty years into the future, but here I am, remembering you as if the past two decades were hardly any time at all. And yet, I hardly recognize you.

You were likely up early that day because you were an over-achieving homeschooler who wanted to get her vocabulary homework out of the way before breakfast. And when your parents called you in to watch the news after the first tower was hit, you didn’t understand something so devastating as the violence you witnessed in real time. You thought it was a joke.

I cringe to even write that, but I know now that you were in shock. You were processing that the world wasn’t quite as predictable or safe as you wanted to believe . . .

Read More