If My Younger Self Asked Me for Advice Today: A Woman’s Reflection
Somewhere between memory and reflection lives a question I often return to. If My Younger Self Asked Me for Advice Today, what would I say to her now, with everything I know and everything I have survived?
I see you clearly. You are gentle. You are trusting. You believe love will always protect you. You have lived a sheltered life, and you do not yet know that shelter can sometimes blur reality.
If My Younger Self Asked Me for Advice Today on Growing Up Sheltered
You grew up carefully held.
Convent school.
Convent College.
Girls-only spaces that felt safe, structured, and predictable.
You were taught discipline, values, and grace. You were not taught how the world actually works.
Then you married young. At eighteen, you stepped into a new home. At twenty, you became a mother. Your husband cossetted you, protected you, and ensured you never faced life’s rough edges. It came from love. Yet love also kept you financially dependent.
You did not earn. You did not manage money. You trusted stability to last forever.
Security, I wish you knew, is not the same as independence.
If My Younger Self Asked Me for Advice Today on Education and Work
You finished your graduation after your son was born. You balanced books and bottles. You managed homes and emotions. You worked every single day, even if no one called it work.
But you did not build financial literacy. You did not build economic power. No one told you this mattered.
If My Younger Self Asked Me for Advice Today, I would say this clearly. Every girl deserves financial literacy. Every woman deserves the ability to stand on her own feet. Not because marriage fails, but because life is unpredictable.
Learning is not rebellion.
Earning is not ego.
Independence is not a lack of love.
If My Younger Self Asked Me for Advice Today on Loss and Reality
At forty, your world shifted overnight. Your husband passed away. Grief arrived first. Fear followed closely behind.
You suddenly had children to support and a world to face that you barely understood. You felt exposed. You felt unprepared. You realised how gullible you had been, not from foolishness, but from never being taught alertness.
There were wolves. You had not known to watch for them.
If My Younger Self Asked Me for Advice Today, I would tell her this truth. The world is kinder to women who understand their rights, their finances, and their boundaries.
If My Younger Self Asked Me for Advice Today on Strength
Those years were quietly hard. There were no dramatic victories, only daily courage. You learned by falling. You learned by protecting your children with everything you had.
You discovered the strength you never knew lived inside you.
You also learned something vital. Being selfless without self-awareness can empty you. Love should never require you to disappear.
If My Younger Self Asked Me for Advice Today on Self-Love
You did not learn self-love in childhood. You did not learn it in marriage. You learned it much later, around 2020, after life tested you enough.
And that is okay.
If My Younger Self Asked Me for Advice Today, I would hold your hands and say this. Do not blame yourself for what you did not know. Wisdom often arrives after the storm, not before it.
Prepare for life with awareness, not fear. Ask questions. Build skills. Trust your instincts. Never give away your power in the name of love.
Because love should help you grow.
Not shrink.
Not disappear.
And survival should never have to teach these lessons the hard way.
@wordsmithkaur
@wordsmithkaur
