Every scar has a story. “Letter to My Younger Self” invites you into the reflective hearts of people who've walked winding roads—offering gentle truths, bold lessons, and encouragement for anyone still figuring it out. These weekly letters are full of grace and grit, showing how setbacks shape wisdom and how the past still holds power to teach. From nurturing curiosity to embracing mentorship, each piece is a tribute to growth through lived experience.
Faith Oneya, a communications practitioner, pens this week’s heartfelt Letter to My Younger Self.
Dear Younger self,
As a teenager, grief nearly broke me apart. By the time I was 19, I had lost both my parents and two siblings–my eldest sister and youngest brother, both of whom I desperately loved, partly because of their fragility, as they both suffered from sickle cell anemia.
Grief and senseless loss are great, albeit cruel teachers. They bend you and whip you in ways that couldn’t have imagined. They refined me. But they wiped away any opportunity I had to be childish. Or just be a child.
I was a first year university student bent on proving to everyone that I could make it on my own at that age. I’ve spent most of my adult life trying, unsuccessfully, to switch off that Miss Independent, Madam Survivor signal.
In Strength and Sorrow, Oyunga Pala writes that to accept the presence of death is a lesson in resilience–the ability to process, heal, accept and grow from loss.
But there’s something else he might have missed; that when a child loses a parent at such a tender age, they grow walls around them in the name of independence, in the name of survival, and these walls can be incredibly hard to climb out of. Decades after my parents and siblings passed away, I’m still in my survival mode. Forced to mother my sibling who’s only four years younger than me, I’m still on mother hen mode, even though we benefited from the immense and beautiful love from our stepmother.
With survivor mode that seeped into my twenties and well into my thirties came the deep, ego-driven desire to never be a charity case. I found it hard to accept help from anyone.
As a second year university student, rumours went round the campus that I was surviving on the Sh11 bob meal that was sold at the university mace. Some well-meaning young men from the Seventh Day Adventist Church were touched by this story, and the fact that I was an orphan. They brought food shopping to my room, complete with a note to tell me they were thinking of me, and Sh.2000. This was in 2005 so it was a real sacrifice for them. I was livid. Driven by anger, ego and my Miss Independent nature. I returned everything to them, gave them an earful and told them to never come to my room again or treat me like a charity case. If those young men are reading this now, I hope they forgive me for my foolishness. I should have accepted their help.
Forced to fend for myself at an early age, I thought I needed to prove to the world that I could and never really stopped to breathe and just be. I spent most of my free time taking up fieldwork research gigs, supermarket gigs and anything else I could lay my hands on for survival money, as the Higher Education Loans Board Money was hardly enough.
I wish I had stopped to just breathe and just…be. That’s what the foolish twenties are about, aren't they? But that voice still whispered…”Nobody is coming to save you”....and I continued on with my survivor mode.
My younger self could have benefited from periods of youthful folly. I think that’s an important part of life that I robbed myself of. Don’t get me wrong. I did have my share of parting and letting loose, but at the back of my mind was always getting the next gig, the next job, the next hustle, applying for more HELB money…and when I finally did land a job after university, I kept looking for another job, and other side hustles, never really stopping to smell the roses, as they say.
Now at 42, I'm finally comfortable in my skin, and still haven't fully shaken off my survival mode, but I'm slowing down my appetite for it. Now I enjoy sleeping in on Sundays and lazing about in pajamas. I take care of my skin, I take care of body. And my mind. I choose the things I give my energy to more carefully. This is what I would have wanted the 20-year-old Faith to do. I’m keen on asking for and accepting help, too.
If I met her today, I would hug her and whisper “It’s okay to just let things be. You don't have to be in control, you can switch off survivor mode and just do what other twenty-something-year- olds do. Be foolish. Be carefree. Life will figure itself out, unfolding in the beautiful ways it was supposed to.”
I'm going to end this with a poem that helps me express how much I honour my younger self. I hope it resonates with you, too.
I hope that when you finally come home to yourself, there will be flowers waiting from all the versions of the woman you were before. ("You’ll Get There" by Donna Ashwort)
Everyone has a story worth sharing. If you’ve ever wished you could talk to your younger self—with wisdom, forgiveness, or clarity—we invite you to write to us. Your real, heartfelt letter might just be the encouragement someone else needs today. You may remain anonymous if preferred, but your truth matters. We don’t pay contributors, but we believe in the power of shared experience. Join us in building a collection of life’s hard-earned lessons and gentle reminders.
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