A love letter
Katelynn Dey (she/her) // Contributor
Lily Jones (she/her) // Illustrator
Alex Baidanuta (she/her) // Custom Type
Dear one,
You are a soft baby animal. You cry when you’re hungry. You’re easy to hold. To carry, adore, and protect.
Women will pick you up and say things like she’s getting so big! I wish you’d stay small forever! Stop growing!
You’ll hear those words all your life. From them, and from yourself, too. Can you believe that?
I’m so sorry, baby. You are going to grow.
Dear seven,
I’m at the finish line and I want to catch you in my arms and cover your ears but you’re too fast. You win your race and slip through my arms, and you hear your bully’s words instead of mine:
“Why are you so ugly when you run?”
Now your win doesn’t count. You’re keenly aware that you’re not as small as she is. You’re getting too big. You can’t stop growing. Soon, you’ll be scared of your body and how people look at it. You’ll stop trying. You’ll stop winning.
Your stillness starts here. I’m sorry.
Someday, you’ll run again. Remember: Win or lose, it’s not your job to be pretty doing it.
Dear 10,
It’s summer. Everyone smiles as they call your cousins skinny. They marvel at how tall your brother’s getting as they pile more food on his plate. You go swimming in t-shirts because your mom cried when she saw you in a bathing suit.
But, listen. You’re reading the book that changes your life. It’s going to make you want to write stories of your own.
Nothing else matters. Can you hear me? Nothing else matters.
Dear 19,
Oh, honey.
He’s whittling you. You let him, because you’re too old to be so unloved, so untouched. You hope if he chips enough of you away, you’ll be prettier in smaller pieces.
I’ll be small forever, you promise. I’ll stop growing! Just hold me. Adore me. Protect me.
You’re hungry, and this is how you cry now. I hear you. I’ll be your gentle carver, smoothing the edges he left sharp. I’ll work on you until my hands learn how, paint you soft and bright until we can both see: you were never broken, just becoming.
Dear 30,
Why haven’t you left?
Because all your friends are getting married? You’re too old to start over? Nobody would swipe right on a picture of you?
I’m running out of patience. This man is the t-shirt you hid your body under when you were ten. He makes your mom cry for the same reason she cried when she saw you in your bathing suit.
(She didn’t cry because she hated your body. She cried because she hated hers and she taught you the wrong way to have one.)
Do you stay because “Why are you so ugly when you run?”
Because, someone might see you doing your best and call you names for it?
Goddammit.
Dear 32,
Breathe out.
I know you think it’ll all be for nothing if you don’t hold on, but you’ll see. All your lost years are breaths you took to keep you alive. You can’t get them back.
Take a page from the book of your broken heart and don’t stop. Walk to warm up. Listen to your body: it knows when to pick up the pace.
You’re not behind, my love. It’s not a race. It never was.
There are checkpoints and finish lines, and you can’t get there without this breath, right here, right now, so take it.
Then let it go.
Dear 38,
You’re the age your mother was when you started kindergarten.
It’s your first day of school again. Your classmates were born the year you graduated high school. Sometimes you’ll feel old; sometimes like you’re taking up space that doesn’t belong to you; sometimes like you still don’t have the right to exist at full size.
Mostly, you’ll feel like cheering. For them, and for you.
Dear 40,
We’ll meet next year.
I hope you’re still a soft baby animal. I hope you eat when you’re hungry. I hope you’re easy to hold. I hope you carry, adore, and protect.
I hope you pick up anyone smaller than you and marvel at how big they’re getting and never wish for them to stay little.
You’re beautiful, because you’re all of us. Can you believe that?
I’m proud of you, baby.
You are going to grow.
