two days ago i posted this. about this. i'm working on my own letter right now. and this is what i got so far:
... there's no such thing as perfect. it doesn't exist.
you don't owe a man love simply because he loves you. you don't choose who you love. you will fall in love for better or for worse mostly against your will. what you do with that love--that will be the choice, yes. but don't attempt to give love to a man simply because you think you should.
should. a mostly terrible, unhelpful word. get rid of it. throw it out. eradicate it from your vocabulary. and build a vocabulary. be better read than the person next to you. intelligence is not a liability. don't apologize for what you know or how you know it.
you're going to have some bad first kisses in your life. and then, when you least expect it there will come one that undoes you in a long, gentle whoosh. head to toe. it doesn't mean you'll marry this man or even see him again. it means it was one. hell. of a kiss.
real power doesn't ever diminish another person. your success doesn't mean another person's failure.
there's going to come a day when you're skiing and the conditions are less than ideal and there's more ice on the slope than you know what to do with and so you give up a little control and your turns will be smaller and you'll be moving faster than ever before and you'll find that actually, oh, this is where control lives. take this metaphor with you into the world--take this lesson. but be brave enough to give up in the first place.
figure out what you love and never apologize for it.
loving yourself and investing in that love does not make you self-centered or an egoist or too proud. it makes you about as smart as you can ever hope to get in this life. that love becomes the well-spring of faith and empathy and imagination and boundless courage...
thing is, i want to know what you all would write. in fact the blog exists primarily because of reader submissions, so why not write your own? i sure as hell would love to read it.