Note to (Past and Future) Self : The Healing Practice of writing yourself a letter

When I was a kid, I started writing letters to myself. I’m pretty sure I cribbed the idea from an LM Montgomery book (it might have been Emily of New Moon?), and it became a regular practice.

Sometimes the letters were to past versions of me, offering reassurance, clarity, or a little bit of “see, we made it.”  More often, they were addressed to my future self. I remember one in particular: on my 14th birthday, I wrote a letter to my 24-year-old self. I sealed it, marked it with heavy warnings to “do not open until,” and tucked it away in a journal. 

Somehow, ten years and many moves later, I found myself taking a train to meet up with friends on my 24th birthday, and reading that letter.

The experience was akin to stepping into a time machine, but one built from lined notebook paper, smudged Bic pen ink, and a collection of glittery stickers. I smiled as I read the concerns of that season of life: the boy I had a crush on, the best friend I spent hours on the phone with, the music I loved. And I only winced a bit as I read back on my guesses at who I would be at 24, what I would care about, what I would have figured out by that point (spoiler alert: not as much as 14-year-old me had hoped). 

More than anything, I felt amazed at how much I’d lived and experienced in the ten years since I wrote the letter to myself. I marveled at the many ways I’d grown and changed, but I was more surprised to see how much the blueprint of my adult self was already apparent in this not-fully-formed version. 14-year old me had so many of the same hopes, and she was struggling with the same limitations and frustrations that still challenged me. I was surprised by how much I needed to read some of what she had written, and how much wisdom lurked in the musings of this teenage dreamer.

Writing letters to myself, especially in this way looking ahead five or ten years down the road, is a practice I’ve come back to over and over. For some reason, I seem to have one of those letters from myself to open on birthdays where I’m going through the most intense transitions. The last one I read was a couple of years back. I had written it ten years before, at the height of a creative, love-filled, exciting period in my life– one that went on for long enough to convince me that life could just feel this aligned, on track, and connected to purpose. 

I read the letter from a very different vantage point, and even in a very different landscape. I had written the letter while living and working on the East Coast, and when I read it, I was sitting outside of The Integratron, in the desert near Joshua Tree. I read it as a woman coming to terms with the end of a long marriage. I was feeling as low and creatively uninspired as I could remember. Lost, lonely and afraid. 

In that moment of darkness, the letter felt like a beacon of light. It reminded me of who I was, and how much I had accomplished in the time since I wrote it, including the cross-country move from Boston to Los Angeles. It even reminded me of some dreams I’d been neglecting, at a time when space opened up in midlife and post-divorce to revisit visions for myself I’d abandoned. With a nod to Joseph Campbell, the letter was a door opening up where I could only see walls.

While traveling last week, I found myself scrolling through old entries in my Notes app (ah, the Notes app—home to everything from my Trader Joe’s list to major life epiphanies). I stumbled on a short poem I wrote during the height of the pandemic, and it stopped me in my tracks. It felt like a letter to myself in the way that it was part memory, part message, and reminded me of the practice I’ve carried through my life: writing to myself across time. 

This strange and beautiful ritual has helped me shift perspective, ground myself, and tune in from one version of me to another. The words I found also echoed something else: the gentle reminders we all need now and then, especially when we forget to get quiet and listen to the wisdom within.

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A letter to my younger self:

Don’t listen to the noise. 

Listen to your thrumming heart, your churning gut, your humming soul. 

Listen only to sounds from within. 

Pay no mind to the clutter, the clatter, the cacophony that says you are not worthy, 

says that you are wrong, 

says that you are too much, 

says that you are not enough.

Get quiet, and remember that you, 

and only you,

know.

A letter to my older self: 

See above.

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What I’ve learned from writing these letters is that there is a constant self within us. One who has lived through everything we’ve lived through. One who knows where we’re headed, even if we don’t. And that version of ourselves has things to say. Sometimes it just takes a pen, a few quiet moments, and the willingness to listen.

If you’ve never written to yourself—past, present, or future—I highly recommend it. It doesn’t have to be long or profound, or even especially exciting. It simply needs to be true to where you are today.

Ask yourself:

• What does my younger self need to hear right now?

• What might my older self want to tell me?

• What version of me is asking to be witnessed today?

• If I could sit down for coffee with myself in ten years, what would I want to ask?