letters to past selves

“...I think we are well-advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not."

Upcoming Workshops:

January 25. Writing with Vulnerability and Creative Courage (via WritingWorkshops.com) // 12 - 3 pm et

January 29. Practice Session #25: Writing Through Winter // 7 - 8:30 pm et (free for paid subscribers and Inner Story members)

February 6. Free Monthly Writing the Layers Workshop // 7 pm et

February 8 & 15. Words That Heal: An Expressive Writing Workshop (via The Writer’s Center) // 2 - 4:30 pm et

Weekly Story Work Exercise

Our current theme is unsent letters. You can find our recent themes here. You can find all the archives here. You can purchase a copy of my book, Story Work, here.

You knew this would happen, but you didn’t trust what you knew. You asked for a sign, and you ignored all of them.

You told yourself that you were following love, that in the long game, loyalty is what matters. And love did create a forever bond, but it didn’t create alignment.

You followed the leader and you lost yourself.

It didn’t matter what you needed—

You accepted what you could handle, what you were used to, what you thought you deserved.

Sometimes we look back at earlier versions of ourselves with such disdain:

What was I thinking? How did I let this happen? How could I have been so blind?

But those versions of ourselves were still worthy and whole, and they have stories to tell. Making friends with the people we used to be and staying in conversation with them is a brave and wise choice.

In Slouching Toward Bethlehem, Joan Didion said it well—

“I think we are well-advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise, they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind’s door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends. We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were.”

We carry every version of ourselves we’ve ever been inside of us.

So when we’re holding shame, guilt, resentment, or disgust toward a former self, there’s value and there’s liberation in finding a new way to relate to them.

I’ve done a lot of inner child work over the years—connecting with the scared little girl and the confused teenager—but in my forties, I’ve been uncovering how much resentment I still carry toward my thirty-something self.

The version of me that I thought should have known better.

Who was still under the spell of keeping up appearances, being accepted, and avoiding inconvenient truths. A woman who was growing, but in my hindsight judgment, not growing fast enough.

We resist looking back because we know we’ll have to face the things we avoided, the feelings we numbed, the realities we set aside so we could keep going. When awareness arrives, so does the responsibility of reckoning with what remains.

But we don’t have to approach these memories with blame. There are slow, compassionate ways to return to ourselves.

Writing is one of the most reliable and restorative paths I know.

writing to the person you used to be

Last week, we wrote a letter to another person. This week, we’re writing to ourselves.

Writing to a past version of yourself is a powerful way to reclaim your story. It allows you to step outside of your current skin and move across time and space, extending a sense of safety where there was fear, understanding where there was confusion, and recognition where there was loneliness.

You know what that past version craves more than anything?

For you to acknowledge them, what they felt, what they were going through, to offer perspective they couldn’t see for themselves.

So you can see how this approach lines right up with Story Work: exploring beliefs, emotions, and lived experiences to find connective threads that shape who we are today and the stories we want to tell.

For this week’s exercise, let’s write a letter to make peace with a past version of ourselves, or at the very least, start a conversation.