Every scar has a story. “Letter to My Younger Self” invites you into the reflective hearts of people who've walked winding roads—offering gentle truths, bold lessons, and encouragement for anyone still figuring it out. These weekly letters are full of grace and grit, showing how setbacks shape wisdom and how the past still holds power to teach. From nurturing curiosity to embracing mentorship, each piece is a tribute to growth through lived experience.
Wawira Gathoni (Not her real name) pens this week’s heartfelt Letter to My Younger Self.
Dear younger self,
One day, you will spend a lot of your adulthood trying to recreate the feeling of home. Not the physical house. The feeling.
The slowness of life in shags. The freedom of childhood before the world became heavy. The simplicity of existing before ambition, heartbreak, deadlines, motherhood, and healing entered your vocabulary.
Right now, you think your childhood is ordinary. It is not.
You wake up every morning surrounded by community. Not the performative kind people post online today. Real community. The kind where neighbours raise each other’s children. The kind where farming parties become social events filled with laughter, storytelling, and shared labour. The kind where people show up for each other without needing invitations.
You do not know it yet, but that sense of collective living will shape how you understand people for the rest of your life.
It will shape your leadership. It will shape your politics. It will shape your understanding of dignity and humanity.
Because children raised in community learn early that life is not meant to be survived alone.
Growing up in shags also gave you something many children today may never fully experience: Freedom.
The freedom to roam. To play until sunset. To exist without constant fear. To know nature intimately. To understand seasons, rain, soil, harvests, and hunger not as abstract concepts but as part of everyday life.
There is a certain confidence children develop when they grow up close to the earth. You did not know it then, but those barefoot years were grounding you in ways adulthood would later desperately need.
And perhaps one of the greatest gifts of your childhood was growing up with both parents present. Children assume permanence. They think the people they love will always exist exactly as they are.
So you do not realise that one day you will miss ordinary things. The sound of your parents talking. The routine of family life. The safety of knowing both of them are within reach.
If I could speak to you now, I would tell you to pay closer attention. Sit with them longer. Watch them more carefully. Memorise the ordinary days.
Because adulthood eventually teaches all of us the painful truth that nothing lasts forever. Even then, there were signs that you were different.
You cried to start school before you were even five years old because curiosity was already alive inside you. You wanted to learn. You wanted to know things. Adults called you bright, but because intelligence came naturally to you, nobody taught you how special that gift actually was.
That is the complicated thing about gifted children. Sometimes the world praises their performance so much that nobody notices they are still children.
And sometimes gifted children themselves grow up taking their brilliance for granted because it feels normal inside their own minds.
You were smart. Deeply smart. But at that age, intelligence simply felt like another ordinary part of life, like breathing.
You also hated your name.
Wawira.
Children teased you because it meant “someone who works.” At that age, hard work did not feel admirable. It felt embarrassing. You carried shame around a name that would later become prophecy.
Today, that same name feels sacred. Because nobody sees how much work it took to become this woman.
Nobody sees the emotional labour. The survival. The rebuilding. The persistence. Life has a strange sense of humour sometimes. The very thing you once rejected became one of the truest descriptions of who you are.
You were also a social butterfly.
People who know you today would probably struggle to imagine it. But you loved people so easily back then. You had endless friends. Endless laughter. You moved through childhood openly and fearlessly.
It is interesting how life changes people. How betrayal makes some people quieter. How disappointment makes some people more observant. How adulthood slowly teaches caution where innocence once lived. And yet, even now, traces of that little extroverted girl still exist inside you.
You were also constantly sick.
So sickly that it almost became part of your identity as a child. And maybe that is why your adulthood feels ironic sometimes. Because the fragile little girl became a remarkably resilient woman. The child whose body struggled became the adult who learned how to carry enormous emotional and physical burdens without collapsing.
You loved music too.
Those moments listening to the radio felt magical. Waiting for permission to switch it on. Memorising lyrics. Letting songs carry you somewhere softer. Even then, music was becoming refuge. And maybe that is what childhood really is.
A collection of small ordinary moments we only learn to appreciate after they are gone. The older you get, the more you will realise that growing up in shags did not make you small. It gave you roots.
Roots that kept you grounded even after life exposed you to bigger cities, bigger opportunities, bigger pain, and bigger dreams.
That little girl running freely in the village had no idea who she would become. But everything she was experiencing was quietly shaping the woman you are today.
The resilience. The warmth. The work ethic. The self-awareness. The softness. The strength. It all began there. And honestly?
You should be proud of her.
Everyone has a story worth sharing. If you’ve ever wished you could talk to your younger self—with wisdom, forgiveness, or clarity—we invite you to write to us. Your real, heartfelt letter might just be the encouragement someone else needs today. You may remain anonymous if preferred, but your truth matters. We don’t pay contributors, but we believe in the power of shared experience. Join us in building a collection of life’s hard-earned lessons and gentle reminders.
Be part of this movement. Send your Letter to My Younger Self to: [email protected].
Read part two of her series next week.
