To: 2010 Kate (Love: 2020 Kate) —

Do you want to know something wild? You drink coffee now. You don’t like the taste, but you’ve accepted the benefits outweigh the yuck.

You still don’t like ketchup, but if you’re in the right mood you’ll eat a tomato slice on half of a sandwich and then you’ll give up and take the tomato off of the second half; “maybe next time I’ll be a better adult,” you’ll sigh.

You hike now; a lot. In fact, you’ll spend a month of your life walking across Spain and you’ll cry when it’s over. Then you’ll proceed to remedy the hole left by not walking twenty miles every single day by scampering your way to the top of nineteen 14ers in the span of about four months.

I don’t think you even know what a 14er is at this point in your life. Don’t look it up, there are too many reasons that part of your future can’t change.

Kate, you’re good at following scripts and templates, one of the best there ever was. If someone you look up to sets it in front of you, you study, you learn it inside and out and you do such a convincing job of making the role your own that no one ever questions it’s an act, including yourself.

You coast through life with this tactic for quite some time.

You thrive on the approval of others, kind of like those power boosts in the PlayStation boating game you’re really good at – you collect one and it jolts you ahead until it runs out and you have to find a new one. I know you know where all of them are hidden in that game and you win every time, but real life isn’t like that.

And the problem is, all those back pats made you believe you were flying on your own, but in reality it was really lucky, affluent, tail winds inbetween bursts of approval. Perfectly timed pats on the back don’t equate to soaring. And soaring isn’t even what you want; the definition of soaring is to maintain elevation without flapping your own wings. You have wings, Kate.

When you finally do realize you have them, there is some flailing and face planting involved. It isn’t even remotely graceful. But in your defense, you found them out of necessity.

You’ll shake the dirt off and brokenly hop back to a new perch. It’s a gain two steps fall back one sort of thing, but you’ll get there. You’ll keep trying until you get the hang of it, you always do. You’ll also carry anti-depressants around in your purse for an entire month before you sob about accepting that they might’ve been the very best thing all along. I know you, you writhe in pain before you begrudgingly take a single ibuprofen. It’s okay to take them sooner, it’s also okay to decide not to take them at all. The important thing is that the decision was your own.

There will be a lot of people you look up to telling you you failed. But if you fight for something with all of your heart and it never feels right, it’s okay to walk away to avoid losing more of yourself. I think losing sight of yourself is the actual real failure. You get dangerously close to doing that.

I wish I could tell you to detour, but this is how you learn. And you’ll have so many beautiful stories and you’ll meet so many people where they’re at for this.

I know you still feel invincible and pride yourself on the fact that the only movie you’ve ever cried in is Monsters Inc (and you didn’t even cry, you just teared up because you were yawning so much; I know, I know). But there will be a day when movie previews make you cry. In fact, there will be a day seven years from now where you’ll call out of work sick because you can’t stop the tears falling from your face.

You’ll sit in the car with dad that day, he will say words you will carry around for the rest of your life and a few days later you’ll follow through with the most difficult decision you’ve ever made. It was your best move, but that doesn’t mean it wont have ripple effects.

You do a good job of preparing for this. Too good, maybe, because you build some high sturdy walls that fall a little too late and then you’ll cry and you’ll wonder and you’ll beg the people you shut out to come back but maybe by that point they’re so far away behind they’re own walls that they can’t hear you? Try and understand, you’ve done the same.

Life is confusing, timing is tricky. But it is not you fault that you lost something beautiful because you took too long clearing out a respectable space for it. You were right for not trying to force something before there was a healthy place for it; but I know that doesn’t make the “what if’s” any less earth-shattering.

Something else? Don’t give up on someone or something solely because you think you know how it will play out. Give it the chance to prove you wrong, that’s where some of the best surprises and storylines come from, I think.

You’ll go through seasons where you swear you’ll never fly again. And then you’ll catch a glimpse of hope only to be let down again. I think one of the biggest lessons you’re learning at twenty-seven is that identifying where you went wrong doesn’t mean it will go flawlessly during your next attempt — even if you gathered all of the pieces, fought and fought and fought and did everything to tape them together just right, there are things and outcomes and people who simply aren’t meant to be. Sometimes you turn into a causality in someone else’s war, it is no fault of your own that you got stuck in their crossfire.

That’s a good time to remember those wings we talked about because you know how to use them, now. And it’s okay to exercise them because you know you deserve better; sometimes it’s okay to not look back.

.. and sometimes maybe you should look back. You’ll be confused about that when you get to where I’m at, too. There’s a lot you don’t know. Honestly, the main thing you’re learning right now is how much you don’t know.

But here is something we do know: Mat Kearney is still making more music. I know you have an irrational fear that someday all of the melodies and combinations of words in the world will be exhausted, but that hasn’t happened yet (one less thing to worry about, you’re welcome).

You’re going to be stressed out because your favorite stationary brand will stop selling their products in America; but keep writing. The cost of overseas shipping is worth not losing this outlet. Also, just because a pen runs out of ink doesn’t mean the story can’t continue in a different color. I know you hate changing colors in the middle of a page, but please remember that on the days where you feel like you need to hoard every fragment sitting in your lap to conserve normalcy or consistency. Let those things that aren’t working go; there will always be room to grow, words to say and people who want you in their lives as much as you want them in yours. (Don’t lose sight of what you have trying to conserve something that is no longer).

I love you and you’ll get where you need to go when you need to be there so the most important thing you can do now is hold on tight and do your best to enjoy it.

Kate