By Bhadra

Hey teenage Bhadra,
Here is YA Bhadra talking with her newly discovered limited wisdom about the world, that she mandates you know.

(What she doesn’t know yet is that middle-aged Bhadra is chuckling at her for thinking she understands life.)

1. You cannot get people to love you by pouring more of yourself into them. Pouring out more love only empties your cup. You cannot give them more attention to draw their attention. The harder you try to love them, the more they suffocate. What you are struggling with is an anxious attachment style and a constant fear of abandonment, which will get better when your cup is filled by the right people. But for now, you should know that you are enough and you do enough. You don’t need to overcompensate to be loved. It’s okay to receive kindness without earning it. There will come a point when you learn to keep the true ones close, draw boundaries, and build relationships that pour back into your cup.
   
2. Looking lean does not equate to being healthy. Having a healthy relationship with food and exercise should be your top priority now. Otherwise, you will fall into disordered eating, fear food, and worse, hate your body for how it looks despite all that it does. People don’t decide to love or not to love you based on whether there is an extra layer of flesh, so don’t you do that to yourself either. Maybe if you get that straight in your head now, YA Bhadra’s journey could feel more like a cakewalk.
   
3. Relationships are dynamic and constantly evolving. Bonds you thought would last a lifetime might only last a couple of years. You may grow apart or grow back toward each other. And that’s okay. Be it family or friends, the real ones will stick around. If someone leaves your life, bid them adieu with a kind heart. Always wish them well; you probably don’t know enough about their past or present to understand what made them who they are, what they did, or what they said. And remember what Amma told you: “Healed people heal people, and hurt people hurt people.”
   
4. Your empathy is your superpower. Though sometimes you think you end up trusting people more than you should, kindness comes back around. No matter where you go, people connect with you because your empathy shines. It seems overbearing now, but you will learn as you go how to draw lines and know who not to trust.
   
5. Don’t be so hard on yourself. Stop judging yourself so much. I don’t ever catch you judging even a stranger for the things you judge yourself for. The decisions that you made were all based on whatever you knew best then. You may know better now, but past-you acted on what she knew best then. And most importantly, don’t ever tell yourself anything that you wouldn’t tell your dear ones. Would you ever look at them and say, “What a hopeless, horrible person you are!” Then how dare you say that to yourself? To be kind to the world, you have to first be kind to yourself, babe.
   

There’s more that I have to tell you, but I am running out of the time allotted to me. So, talk to you in my next visit?

evolving. becoming. being.