Dear Alexa, everyone is trying to define this stage of your life as something traumatic or bad. Like somehow an official label such as having “social anxiety” or “autism” could explain all the aches and pains you’re experiencing growing up. But there’s nothing unique or long-lasting going on here. Being 13 years old is a tough time in any person’s life with or without all the labels. No authority figure is going to make this early-teenage stage any easier. Nor can they help you make sense of an awkward stage of life that they experienced decades ago.
Add a mouth-full of metal braces to this phase and you might get a tiny glimpse of my own awkward years.
Whew! That was painful.
Despite what people around you may be saying (or implying), there is nothing wrong with you. These awkward years are totally normal… and they’ll eventually pass. No need to grasp tightly to any “diagnosis” or piece of advice being given to you (including mine).
You will step into a new sense of self in due time… and you’ll continue reinventing yourself over and over again for your entire lifetime.
This is your experience to have… To learn and grow from. And while there are many cliché terms to describe it, most of them are pretty annoying so I’ll skip them. The important part is knowing that you always have a choice – To face some of these uncomfortable challenges in your life head-on or to discretely sweep them under the proverbial rug through denial or avoidance.
I’ll dedicate another post to owning/healing versus denial/avoidance. It’s a pretty big concept to unpack. But I’ll just say this – We either own up and heal our difficult life experiences or they end up owning us.
Dear Alexa – This experience you are currently having kind of sucks. Just know that we have every faith in you and trust that you will be just fine. You are a strong and compassionate soul. The challenges you’re facing will teach you how to work your natural light and compassion into something dark and fearful. May you recognize your strength and potential to do good in this world.
The hardest part is stepping back and allowing you to stand behind your 13 year old decisions. I call it “failing gloriously” as I’m quite familiar with it. And before you take offense to the word, just know that no one learns from succeeding all the time. Failure teaches us how strong we are… how to get up, dust ourselves off, and start again. In fact, it’s all the little failures we experience in life that eventually leads to our greatest success.
If life was all rainbows and unicorns, you would never discover the curiosity, creativity, and motivation it takes to grow into an amazing human being.
Making active choices, doing something, and (yes) making mistakes is how we stretch our limits and broaden our view of what’s possible in life.
It’s natural for parents to want to protect their children from uncomfortable experiences such as failure. But not allowing you to fail is FAR more dangerous. For you will never experience the depth that you need to experience in order to become who you are meant to be.
Just remember this…
Wow, I liked it!
Interesting blog, added to rss reader