A letter to my younger-self
A letter to my younger-self
I was asked to write my younger-self a letter - knowing what I know now and having just published my third book, which shares my personal story and the struggles I've had with my relationship with myself since childhood.
It’s a confronting exercise, but also a healing one. If you’re working through historical pain or grief, you might like to try it too.
Dear Claire,
I know you are finding life very difficult right now. I know you feel lost, misunderstood, and uncomfortable with who you are and how you look, but there are a few things I want you to know which I think will really help.
Firstly, the world is a bit messed up and you have been caught in the middle of it all. You will be shown images of what an ‘ideal body’ looks like, and you will be hearing people around you talk about the shape and size of their bodies, often wanting to change them to try and feel better about themselves.
But here’s the thing. This is all a misleading lie. Many pictures that you will be seeing aren’t real; they have been edited, tweaked and changed to appear the way you see them, so you are judging yourself against something that doesn’t even exist. Also, changing the shape and size of your body won’t make you as happy as you think. If you are still struggling on the inside because you doubt yourself and question your worth, the size of your jeans will not change this.
Secondly, when it comes to working out what to eat, you will be bombarded with messages that are confusing and conflicting. Often focused on things that are ‘good’ and ‘bad’ with some level of restriction in there and tracking protein, carbs or sugar - to make sure you are ‘keeping on track’. This, however, is not a healthy or helpful way to think about food.
Food is not good or bad, it has no moral value. It is the fuel that helps your body and mind function, and you should not feel like you need to follow a list of rules to nourish your body. Yes, there are plenty of foods on the shelves that have been processed and have very little nutritional value, but it is ok to have these sometimes and not feel guilty about it. You should be able to enjoy what you eat.
A better way to think about food is to focus on having more of the foods that help your body work at its best. This addition verses subtraction mindset will really help you avoid all the noise and drama that exists in the world of diets and rules. Think of it as what you choose most often is what matters and can help you to be healthy and feel well inside and out.
Also, what you end up eating, and drinking most of the time will be what is easiest to access as you are more likely to reach for the first thing you see. So, looking at how you organise your fridge, pantry and work desk will have more impact than you think. Make it easier to have the foods and drinks that nourish your body and make you feel good, and don’t have the things around that you can’t control yourself with - or make them hard to access. This physical and time barrier gives you time to break the subconscious cycle.
I'll be honest, at some point, you might get yourself into some unhelpful patterns when it comes to what you eat, and if you end up drinking alcohol, how you manage that. But that’s ok, I have ideas of how to help.
In the world we live in, it can be really easy to eat when you aren’t hungry or don’t actually intend to put food in your mouth. When this happens sometimes, it is no big deal, but you might find for you or for some of your friends, this is something that keeps on happening. You eat just because the clock says it is time, open the fridge or pantry and start picking when you are bored or you crack open the wine after a stressful day at work to unwind or following a difficult conversation with your partner - even though earlier in the week you told yourself you weren’t going to.
This is your brain following patterns that it finds familiar, and I know it can be frustrating and make you feel bad. You will however be able to find a book called ‘End your fight with food’ which will help you or the people around you break free from these unhelpful cycles.
When it comes to exercise, you will no doubt find that lots of people around you approach this with the mindset of ‘burning off calories’ or pushing themselves to work out to change the way they look. But please know, moving your body is so much more than this.
Firstly, it is super unhelpful to think of exercise in terms of calories burnt as in reality, it doesn't really work like that, those numbers on your watch or on the screen are rarely accurate and can further encourage an unhealthy mentality around food if you feel you have to ‘burn it off’ to deserve it!
Secondly, movement will be the best way to keep your body healthy and strong so you can live your best life. Keeping fit will help you climb mountains so you can enjoy great conversations with your friends and admire amazing views. It will also help reduce your risk of injury by strengthening your muscles and bones.
Third, exercise is one of the most important things you will do for your mental wellbeing, and it will be the thing that you find saves you from some of the most challenging moments you are likely to experience as you go through life.
Beyond food and exercise, sleep will be your saviour. Please don't underestimate how much sleeping will help you keep well and manage all the ups and downs life throws you. Getting enough quality sleep will help you regulate your appetite and manage your mood, so you feel calmer and are able to deal with things more effectively. There are all sorts of zero cost ways to improve how you sleep which can work no matter how busy your life gets, which you will be able to read about again in the book End your fight with food.
You will likely experience a lot of stress as you grow up because the world is a busy, noisy and complicated place and how you cope with this will have a huge impact on your life and your wellbeing. You will find it common for people to manage their feelings by eating and drinking alcohol, also people around you might start taking drugs, spending, vaping and struggle to control their anger because they aren’t able to deal with difficult feelings in a healthier way.
Managing the way you are thinking, understanding your nervous systems and emotions, tuning into your breathing, creating boundaries and times of stillness to reflect will all be important skills to learn to help you get through.
As you go through life, you will make friends, lose friends, people will love you, people will hurt you and you will have to navigate the rollercoaster of all sorts of different types of relationships from those with intimate partners to those with work colleagues and your children if you have them.
As important as it is to find ways to navigate relationships with other people however, I want you to know that the most important relationship you ever have and the one you need to foster like your life depends on it, is the relationship you have with yourself. That means the way that you talk to yourself about yourself when no one else is around really matters. You will likely berate yourself, give yourself a hard time for your mistakes and let yourself think you aren’t good enough, but this is a lie.
You are perfectly imperfect just the way you are. You would never talk to a friend the way you find you talk to yourself, and this is something you will need to work on. End your fight with food will help you with this. It will help you capture your thoughts and re-programme them to be more helpful, which will be the most important work of your life.
It might help to know that you learn some of the best lessons in life and grow as a person from navigating difficult times, so try to see challenges as an opportunity.
Lastly, one of the reasons you are likely to feel lost as you go through life is that you aren’t living in alignment with your values, the things that really, deeply matter to you. Working out what your values are and how to shift things to be more in tune with those will be really helpful and allow you to be true to yourself. You will also find that if you feel like your life doesn’t matter, you will always feel lost in some way. Connecting to your meaning and purpose is the step to change this. It might be what you end up doing for work, it could be your role in your family unit, it could also be how you support your community or connect with others. This is something to be mindful of to help you live a life that feels meaningful and whole.
I hope you know you are loved and that whatever life throws at you, you will be ok. You will need self-compassion, the right mindset, and tools in your toolkit - that you’ll build along the way - to get you through.
With all my love,
Claire x
