Dear Self!

Write a letter to your 100-year-old self.

Dear self! Hey Girl! It’s been a second! While I write every single day, I can’t think of the last time I wrote a letter to myself! First, advice! Fucking travel more! Girl, you have been wearing your big girl panties for a second; you don’t need anyone to tell you what you can and cannot do!

Next, my superpower, which is, I know, a big surprise for each of you! Cryptonite can kiss my ass, my superpower is defending my zip code, and my rose-colored glasses view of the world! Guess what? If I choose to see and look for the beauty in people, love, and kindness, that’s mine! You don’t get that! It’s my fucking sparkle, and I don’t give a giant freckled ass if you love it, like it, or hate it! I have faith, and my faith is mine entirely! “Faith is taking the first step without seeing the staircase!” Martin Luther King! Civil Rights leader and Pastor! Our Heavenly Father has something to say about people passing judgment! “Let ye who is without sin cast the first stone!” John, Chapter 8, verse 7! In case you need to dust off your bible! From Moses and the commandments “Thou shall not bear false witness!” and finally, our Heavenly Father describes how we should return to him. As children! As children! Guess what… I can’t think of a single reason more sparkly than that!

Back to the topic at hand, Last year, during my routine mammogram, they found a lump. I will save everyone the major melodrama that ensued! It was a scary time! The upside of a year! A lot happened during that year! So my first bit of advice! Lynn, don’t you fucking dare apologize for other people being toilet bowls! The second bit, love you more! You are not responsible for carrying the weight of everyone’s burdens and troubles (add your creative verbiage) on your shoulders! You have for most of your life, and this is all a result of the trauma you experienced as a child. Those traumas were not your fault! For each of those traumas, the responsibility lies with the adults who were too busy with their own self-inflated egos to do what was right! To protect the CHILD!

Now on to current events! I recently went on this fantastic journey to a place I would never have traveled to uncover history; what I discovered was much more than I ever could have possibly expected. I found beauty, history, more incredible stories, and genuinely kind people excited to share their stories and history! I found a tremendous desire to discover more, and along the way, I found more of myself. Most importantly, listen to you more!

Have you ever embarked on a journey that, in the process, you thought to yourself, what in the world am I thinking? Those were some of my first thoughts. At the beginning of this journey, I had a massive freakout. I went on my first big girl trip across the world! The journey was for work, history, and, most profoundly, for myself, for my heart! I love to write, and I planned to write along the way. I wrote less than I wanted along the way. I thought about everything I planned to write about and rarely touched my phone. Back up, hit rewind, and read that again… you heard me correctly. I barely touched my phone. I didn’t look at the tv except for the news for two nights. I completely disconnected, and I learned! It wasn’t working anyway, so I interacted with people. If you see me out exploring history, I am usually armed with something to take notes on, and these are usually clues and little reminders of insightful parts of the journey. I have each of the memories, which bit by bit, I am slowly unwrapping and sharing! I had nine days in Dubai and took photos to record most of these reminders. I spent this journey listening to people and interacting, and my goodness gracious! I cannot wait for my next trip to Dubai and want to see everything. I hope to purchase a bloggers recorder eventually; I have yet to evolve to that. Color me silly, or maybe it’s because that is also how I pen my poetry and books in physical format and then watch as the writing grows and evolves. I had my notebook in Dubai but didn’t carry it with me. Ok, where are we at advice #3 is it! Freaking do more of what makes you happy!

Here are the holy shit; this girl has never traveled outside of the United States as a big girl, so here are a few practical mental notes and tips!! Tip number one, when ATT says you get an international pass that will work for cell phone service, it won’t! Please do not believe them! ATT, you lie so bad!! Now get an international sim and get someone to help you, purchase a limited data plan nobody in Europe operates like we do being a slave to our cell phone plan! Don’t get me wrong, in the right context I love ATT, but man oh man! Ok so figure out how to operate the data plan that will keep you connected. Or disconnect, it’s freaky the first few days! Tip number two, trust yourself because, after the initial shell shock, you will love the disconnect that allows you to connect to PEOPLE!! Tip number three, drink the coffee. The delights of every memory will only add to the aroma of your journey! Double and triple-triple check the hotel’s WIFI because the Stella, while visually spectacular, had minimal, albeit ancient, definitely not working WIFI. Tip number four, bring more cash because the US-based debit card does not work, and the credit card will say, WTF is that little redhead doing in Dubai? Surely, this cannot be our smidge-over five feet tall, freckle-faced redhead over there in the desert! Pull out all the stops! AND FREEZE THE CARD, and then remember you didn’t have cell phone service, so telling them it was, absolutely, in fact, the smidge over five-foot tall, freckle-faced redhead sweating her ass off in the middle of the desert! Turn it back on for the love of all things holy! The debit card did work in Germany, thank goodness! I ate the pretzel! #historymysteries #DUBAI #historyrocks

And finally, where in the fuck have you been hiding my heart all my life. A girl who had dreamed of my Mr. Darcy smashed together with chemical Christian Grey, the man who thoughtfully, articulately has the power to both infuriate and create such passion from within my soul! Where are we at finally, tip number five! Love the people who love you back! I developed a deeper, more profound love for this red-haired, curly chaos of curls mess only my kryptonite is Umair! Umair sets my heart on fire and can sometimes drive me to utter distraction with all of his thoughts and ideas, he should be a philosopher or historian for sure! As always, there is and always will be so much more to every single story! Fucking get out there and find it! Don’t smash other people’s sparkle either, that’s kind of a shitty toilet bowl Lex Luther kind of move!