Crushes are fine but I beg you not to waste your time and energy obsessing about someone. Really it’s just a way to hide, to feel something without risking anything. F that. Turn your attention to something creative, constructive or productive. Make art, train for a race, volunteer or get a second job. Discover WHAT you love. Pursue that and your people will be there.


15, 17, 20, 21



You are always responsible for how you act, no matter what you’re feeling. (Or whether you’re drunk or in any way impaired.) Hammer this point home for the next 10 years!


13



Book: “victory. Stand!” By Tommie Smith


14



Blessing for the Brokenhearted: Poem by Jan Richardson ___________ "There is no remedy for love but to love more." – Henry David Thoreau ________________________ ________________________ Let us agree for now that we will not say the breaking makes us stronger or that it is better to have this pain than to have done without this love. __________Let us promise we will not tell ourselves time will heal the wound, when every day our waking opens it anew. ___________Perhaps for now it can be enough to simply marvel at the mystery of how a heart so broken can go on beating, as if it were made for precisely this— as if it knows the only cure for love is more of it, as if it sees the heart’s sole remedy for breaking is to love still, as if it trusts that its own persistent pulse is the rhythm of a blessing we cannot begin to fathom but will save us nonetheless.


20



Fire drills. Practice what to do, where to go if the house is on fire. Have an escape plan.


5-10



“You will encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated.” -Maya Angelou


17



Imagine hearing the apology you need to hear. Often times that really helps, even if the person never actually says it. It makes it easier to forgive and move on.


18



"Tough times don't last. Tough people do."


11-14



“Take the risks. Make the big moves, even if they’re small moves. Forge ahead with your lives in any and every direction that moves you. I’m asking you to be fearless.” - Rebecca Pearson (character from NBC tv drama ‘This Is Us’)


21



Spend time with people you admire, in person and biographies, documentaries, novels and movies.


14-17, 21



Practice making yourself do something you don’t feel like doing. Practice and it gets easier


10, 12, 15, 18, 21



When you’re tired, the next best thing to sleep is a shower.


16



“Tell me something you want to be when you grow up.”


5, 8



My dad was a Marine. He enlisted at 18 with his buddies during he Korean War. He was never a "typical" Marine, always a gentle spirit and rarely spoke about his days in Korea. One carry-over was kind of a little inside joke he had with his buddies in the war: They used the expression "Semper Fi" sarcastically, in the opposite way it's meant. When they said it to each other it meant "I got mine, you're on your own. Fend for yourself." We always used to joke about it too when little things happened like there was no more milk for the cereal, "Semper Fi." Of course the irony is that my dad and his Marine buddies were the very definition of faithful when it came to the big stuff. They just liked to joke about the little stuff. Still use it jokingly that way to this day.


18



Don’t worry about finding your person. Focus on finding your people.


15, 21



Sometimes it happens that what you do [for a living] is who you are. I’m reading a great book about that called The Women by Kristin Hannah.


16, 20, 21



Men worry about getting laughed at or rejected by a woman. Women worry about getting killed when they reject a man. Let that sink in.


15, 21



“When you are not fed love off a silver spoon you will learn to lick it off of knives.” Lauren Eden (poet)


0, 20



Guard your health and fitness as if it were your most valuable possession. (It is.)


14, 17, 21



Purchase the card game CBT 123 on Amazon. (Cognitive Behavior Therapy teaches kids the connection between Thoughts/ feelings/ behavior)


7



You don’t have to like everyone you go to school with, or work with. You don’t even have to like your family! BUT, you have to treat everyone with respect and kindness. They are worthy of that no matter what your opinion of them may be.


15, 21



Set up automatic payments so they are initiated on your end, so that you send out money to the bill/ company you’re paying instead of giving them access to take money out of your account.


20



Look into Space Camp for next year


8



Use Shutterfly or something like it to make Christmas books and birthday books each year.


Infant-21



I hope you become more of yourself with every passing year. I love you so.


21



Practice road-rage roll playing. People are NUTS! It's hard to imagine how you'll react when someone gets aggressive with you. Let's practice staying calm when someone is shouting and in your face.


15-17



You’re going to be okay if your relationship ends. You were a whole person before them and you’ll be a whole person after. - therapy Jeff


15, 21



You can’t ask someone to change who they are before you live or accept them.


12, 15, 21



Someone I admire is __________. Talk about someone you admire and why. Ask them to do the same. Do this often as you can. Reticket through age 18.


4