Love Letter No. 012: To My Younger Self

November 15, 2026

If I could sit down with my younger self today, I think we’d have quite the conversation.

I imagine you’d have a million questions about adulthood. Did we become a baby nurse? Did we ever become a teacher? Are we successful? Did we get married and have five children like we planned? Well, I have some news for you, little girl. At 29, we’re married, we don’t have any children yet, and somehow we’ve become a dog mom instead. His name is Kannon, and trust me, he has enough personality to keep us entertained. As for those five children, let’s just say I’m grateful life didn’t follow that particular timeline.

I remember how exciting adulthood seemed to you. At seven or eight years old, the possibilities felt endless. You dreamed about becoming a nurse who cared for babies, and as you grew older, teaching became another possibility. You had this beautiful ability to imagine a future without knowing everything it would take to get there. You didn’t know much about bills, responsibilities, difficult decisions, or how quickly life could change. You simply knew you wanted to be successful and build something meaningful for yourself.

I wish I could tell you that everything unfolded exactly as you imagined, but that wouldn’t be our story. We never became a nurse. We explored teaching for a little while, but eventually realized that the career didn’t offer the financial future we wanted. We found ourselves working in a field we never pictured growing up, and somewhere along the way, we discovered an interest in business and entrepreneurship. Today, we’re building our own platform, Chandler Bling. It’s still growing, and there’s so much I want to accomplish with it, but I hope one day it becomes something that outlives us. Isn’t it funny how the dreams we never imagined can become the ones we’re most excited about?

But there’s something else I wish we could talk about, something much more important than careers, marriage, or how many children we’d have by now.

I wish I could prepare you for some of the things life would bring. There are experiences I wish you never had to go through, moments when you deserved more understanding, protection, and tenderness than you received. I wish I could tell you that growing older automatically makes everything easier, but sometimes adulthood means finally understanding the things you couldn’t make sense of as a child. I’ve spent a lot of time looking back, recognizing old wounds, and learning how deeply certain experiences affected us. Healing hasn’t always been easy, and there are still things I’m working through, but I’m finally giving those parts of our story the attention they deserve.

I wonder what you’d think of me today. Would you be surprised by the choices I’ve made? Would you wonder why some dreams changed or why certain things haven’t happened yet? I think you’d have questions I wouldn’t always know how to answer. Because even at 29, I’m still figuring things out. I still have moments when I question my direction, change my mind, or wonder whether I’m making the right decisions. Adulthood hasn’t given me all the answers I once assumed it would.

But I think you’d be happy to know that we haven’t lost our curiosity or our desire for more. We still dream about the future, imagine possibilities, and get excited about what life could become. We’re learning that success isn’t limited to one career, one timeline, or one version of happiness. And perhaps most importantly, we’re beginning to understand ourselves in ways we never could have when we were younger.

I can’t promise you that everything ahead will be easy. I can’t even promise that all the things I’m working toward today will happen exactly as I envision them. But lately, I’ve felt something shifting. I’m beginning to feel more aligned with the person I want to become, and for the first time in a while, I’m learning to appreciate the journey without needing to know every detail of the destination.

If there’s one thing I could tell you, it’s that you don’t have to rush to grow up. Enjoy being little. Enjoy your imagination, your innocence, and the freedom of believing anything is possible. There will be plenty of time for responsibilities, difficult conversations, and decisions that change the direction of your life. You don’t have to figure any of that out yet.

And to the teenage girl who thought she’d have a husband and five children shortly after graduation, I’m so glad we gave ourselves more time. There’s a whole world beyond the future you imagined, and we’re still discovering it.

We didn’t become everything you thought we would. Some dreams changed, some are still waiting, and others haven’t even crossed our minds yet.

But that little girl who always wanted more for herself? She’s still here.

And I hope she’s proud of the woman we’re becoming.

With love,

Chandler