I’ve been working on an autobiographical/self-help novel lately: I’m rereading my old journals and writing to my younger self to offer the compassion, forgiveness, comfort, and hindsight that I didn’t have then.

In the first two or three days I got 4,000 words down, and I’ve been having trouble getting back to it. This isn’t the first time I’ve reread my own journals, but it’s the first time I’ve done so with these perspectives instead of just trying to remember or heal through the emotional flashbacks. This is the first time I’m rereading my journals as someone who has healed.

Healing has brought me a lot of change. I’ve been able to reclaim parts of myself that I didn’t realize had ever belonged to me. Some of these are parts that, once upon a time, I’d refused to believe had ever belonged to me.

Even when I reread my journals in an attempt to heal, I did not recognize all the good and beautiful things in my younger self’s words. Not all of them were obvious or evident to me at those times.

There’s one particular story I’ve been stuck on the last few days. I wrote this on January 27, 2006, when I was nine years old:

“But you’ll never guess what happened when me and [my younger sister] were walking home yesterday. It was the most terrible thing! There were these three boys walking in front of us and one was holding a caprisun and those overgrown, stupid, ugly boys sprayed it all over me and I chased them away and they sprayed more in my eye and ran away! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! I told Mrs. [Teacher] and she’s going to call the office to see if they can find out who they are! I hope they do find out who they are, and then kick them out of school and give them sitations! What are sitations, anyway? Well, whatever they are, they’re something the school does to bad kids, that’s for sure.”

(I don’t know if you can tell, but I was a big fan of Junie B. Jones books at the time, and I often tried to emulate the writing style of my favorite books.)

I might have remembered that event even if I hadn’t written it down. I didn’t write it down, but I remember how angry and afraid I felt, how frustrated I was. I remember how my hair felt clumped and dry and hard by the time I got home, and I remember barely having any time to try to wash it out before my mom drove us to daycare. I don’t remember if I cried that afternoon, but I remember desperately wanting to break through how mad I was so I could let the tears fall freely.

That event and my perspective on it turned into a core memory that contributed to my self-loathing.

I felt helpless. Powerless.

I felt targeted. I felt like I was someone worth picking on. I was already being bullied at school, but not like this.The bullying was only verbal before this.

I don’t remember if I ever learned what happened to those boys, but I remember feeling afraid that I’d see them on the way home again. I ended up with a narrative dictating that men could hurt or taunt me and didn’t need to fear justice, because I wasn’t capable of fighting back and no system was going to offer retribution that also served the purpose of protecting me from further harm.

This narrative was only built on for the next 17-ish years, and that’s another story. I’ve made a lot of progress with that healing journey.

Now, at twenty-seven years old, I read that entry and I see something more than what I remembered seeing in myself all that time:

I chased them.

Not very far, and they retaliated–but I chased them. I was willing to stand up for myself, and to protect my younger sister.

I can’t tell you what realizing that does for me.

I’m so grateful to my younger self. I’m so proud of her.

I’m sad that eventually I thought I lost that, or that I thought I deserved abuse, or thought I was too helpless to seek aid.

But at that time? I had it. I wasn’t going to back down and let it happen.

Rereading that entry now, focusing on how it affected me, I also remember my determination when trying to seek justice. I thought I’d lost that. I had that tested in more recent years with far more serious situations, and standing up for myself like that was much harder and scarier with far more implications. I stood up for myself on those occasions thinking those were the first times I fought back. And they weren’t.

At some point I forgot many of my strengths. I believed that I’d never had many of them at all. I’d forgotten what I used to be. I’d forgotten what I used to be capable of.

There are so many more examples of good things I’d stopped believing about myself, just in that first journal I wrote in at nine years old.

Not everyone has the same opportunity that I have to look back and remember things we thought and felt and did when we were younger. Not everyone can offer themselves the same ‘proof.’ But I want to offer you this: I am not the only one.

You may have trouble finding your self-worth. You may even think there’s nothing good or redeemable about yourself. You may feel that this has always been the case.

It’s not.

I promise you that if you were able to look back, you would find so much to love in your younger self. You would see traits in yourself that you didn’t know you ever had. You would remember things you had forgotten. You would love that younger version of yourself, and if you looked in the right places, you would see that it’s not your fault that you lost those things. You would see how you did the best you could, but the world beat you down anyway, and you didn’t know what you’d lost. You would wish that you could go back and offer comfort and hope and protection, and you’d love yourself all the more for not being able to save yourself.

You are not worthless. You are not weak. You are not helpless. You have been surviving for too long in a world that showed it did not value you or your strengths.

That does not mean you don’t have value.

That does not mean that you have lost those good parts of yourself forever.

That does not mean that you are stuck this way.

There is hope. There is healing. You can love yourself with all the compassion and forgiveness and gentleness that you wish you could love your younger self with.

As someone who survived and went on to heal and now thrive–mentally and emotionally–I promise you this.