What I’d Tell My Younger Self (Knowing What I Know Now)

If I could sit across from my younger self — the capable one, the responsible one, the one who always figured it out — here’s what I would say.

I know you think you’re fine.
I know you think this level of tired is just part of the season you’re in.
I know you believe you don’t have the luxury to slow down.

But one day, your body is going to stop negotiating with you.

Mine did.

It wasn’t dramatic at first. It wasn’t one big moment.
It was exhaustion that sleep didn’t fix.
Anxiety that didn’t match my life.
A body that slowly stopped cooperating with the pace I was demanding of it.

I told myself all the reasonable things:
This is just stress.
This is what being a single mom looks like.
This is what responsibility costs.

Until my body crashed hard enough that I couldn’t explain it away anymore.

Looking back, I don’t see that crash as failure.
I see it as my body doing the one thing my mind refused to do — stopping.

Not to punish me.
Not because I was broken.
But because I had been strong for too long without enough support.

Here’s what I wish I had understood sooner:

You don’t need to blow up your life to be aligned.
You don’t need to quit your job or chase some shiny version of purpose.

What you need is space.

Space to hear yourself instead of overriding yourself.
Space to notice what your body has been quietly communicating for years.
Space to rest without justifying it.

In midlife, the strategies that worked in your 30s stop working.
Pushing stops producing results.
Over-functioning starts to hurt.

And when the mind won’t listen, the body becomes the voice.

If you can start earlier — gently — you can avoid so much unnecessary suffering.

That doesn’t mean doing less of everything.
It means doing fewer things that pull you away from yourself.

Play more.
Move your body in ways that feel good, not punishing.
Eat to feel steady, not distracted.
Sit in quiet long enough to feel what you’ve been avoiding.
Journal without fixing.
Let rest be enough.

Your body is not the enemy.
It is the most honest guide you have.

And if you listen when it whispers, it won’t need to shout.

With compassion you’ll grow into,
Angela 💛