To her, from me

If I could step back into the night you met him, I wouldn’t stop you. This is just as much my journey today as it was your chaos then. My hindsight is earned, but this is what I'd tell you:

I wouldn’t pull you away from going to the shore that night. I wouldn’t warn you off the way people do when they’re afraid of loss.

You have to meet him. Your soul already knows that.

But I would stand beside you — quiet, steady — and whisper what no one else thought to tell you.

Be careful with how much of yourself you offer too fast. Not because he isn’t worth loving, but because loving him will ask more of you than you think you own.

You’re about to enter a journey that will bruise your softness.

There will be ache.

There will be grief.

There will be seasons where you mistake endurance for devotion and silence for safety.

There will be nights you collapse inside questions that don’t answer back.

He will break parts of you you didn’t know were fragile.

And somehow, against your will, that breaking will become your strengthening.

You will grow into a woman who doesn’t need permission to stand in her truth. You will learn resilience in places you once only felt romance. You will develop purpose through loss, not comfort.

Yes — there will be damage.

But listen to me.

You will learn how to wear your scars like a crown.

You will stop hiding the ways love altered you and start honoring them. You will realize pain was not a detour — it was the curriculum. This is part of the design your soul chose long before you recognized his face.

It isn’t meant to be easy.

Still, be cautious.

There will be moments when his distance makes you feel smaller than you are. Times when timing feels like rejection and you begin to doubt your worth, your reason, your voice.

Don’t do that.

Breathe.

Hold on.

Stay inside yourself even when loving him tempts you to disappear.

This journey is going to hurt.

You will question truth.

You will argue with doubt.

You will wrestle fate like it owes you an explanation.

And you will be punished for it in ways no one sees.

But that is your fire.

That refusal to accept silence.That instinct to reach anyway.

That hunger to understand instead of surrender.

It’s what you’re meant to learn. It’s what you’re meant to become.

You are not entering love. You are entering transformation.

So go...

Meet him.

Fall.

Break.

Rise.

Love.

And when you don’t recognize yourself anymore, remember — she is becoming me.