A Letter to My Younger Self About Healing Childhood Wounds

Hello sweet girl,

At the time of writing this, you are 35 years old. You have a beautiful 2-year-old son and a beautiful 4-year-old daughter. You met your husband in ‘Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults’ aka RCIA—now called ‘Order of Christian Initiation of Adults’ OCIA, during your journey into the Roman Catholic Church. You are also the founder of God’s Toddler, where you encourage people across the world to recognize the authority they have in Christ. And yes, it’s true—you never stop talking. 💛

There are some things I need you to know. There are wounds you need to heal from, truths you need to hear, and lies you need to let go of.

First, you are not ugly.

Mom and Dad simply had their own expectations of beauty, shaped by culture, family norms, and what they were taught to admire. They expected slender, petite, and familiar. But that never meant you were less beautiful.

You are strong. You are athletic. You are uniquely made. Yes, you have vitiligo, but so much of what you obsess over, other people barely notice. The deeper issue is not your appearance, it’s your fear of not fitting in.

The sooner you stop measuring yourself against standards that were never meant to define you, the sooner God will place the right people in your life—people who can see beyond the surface and call out the mission on your life. ✨

Second, counterfeit comfort is not love.

Those grown-up sleepovers, those temporary connections, those moments that felt like closeness will not heal your loneliness.

They may numb the ache for an hour or two, but when the moment passes, guilt, shame, confusion, and emptiness rush back in. What you are really looking for is not attention. It belongs. It’s safety. It’s love that doesn’t leave when morning comes.

You belong to Christ.

And the sooner you understand that He is the One who can truly fill the ache in your heart, the sooner you will stop reaching for substitutes that leave you more wounded than before. Some connections do not heal; they entangle. Some bonds are not love; they are desperation wrapped in desire.

Please hear me: your future self needs your obedience. Your peace needs your surrender. Your mind needs protection. Celibacy will not be punishment; it will be preservation. 🤍

Third, not everyone who wants you is meant for you.

I know it feels good to be wanted. I know each boyfriend seems to offer affection, attention, and some version of love. But wanting you is not the same as leading you toward God.

Not everyone who desires you has your soul, your healing, or your eternity in mind.

So listen carefully: seek God first. Seek Jesus first. Let Him reorder your appetites, your attachments, and your desires. Let Him teach you what real love looks like.

The hunger you feel—for lust, food, sleep, escape, laziness, validation, those things are often symptoms of a deeper ache. Bring that ache to Christ. Let Him meet you there. Let Him heal what you keep trying to feed with temporary things. 🙏

Fourth, forgive Mom and Dad.

They did provide for you. They made sure you had food, shelter, and clothing. In their minds, that was love. In many ways, it was. They were surviving the only way they knew how.

What they did not know how to give was emotional safety.

They did not always know how to hug you, affirm you, comfort you, or speak life into you in the ways your heart needed. But that lack was not proof that you were unworthy. It was evidence that they, too, were living out of wounds they never learned to name.

Your parents lived in survival mode for most of their lives. Immigrant parents especially often think first in terms of safety: food, shelter, clothing, stability. They give what they know. And sometimes what they know is shaped by hardship, scarcity, and fear.

So, forgive them.

Forgive them for the affection they didn’t show. Forgive them for the words they didn’t say. Forgive them for loving you in incomplete ways while still doing their best with what they had.

Because here’s the beautiful part: healing will change how you see them. And one day, you will witness your mother pouring tenderness into your children in ways that begin to heal something inside of you too. The love she gives them will soften old wounds. And motherhood, your motherhood—will begin healing your mother’s wounds in ways you never expected. 🌿

Fifth, the orphan wound is real.

That deep feeling of being emotionally alone, unseen, unstable, or unchosen—it has a name in many Christian spaces: the orphan spirit. It can form when a child’s heart is not consistently nurtured, protected, and emotionally secured.

But often, parents miss those places because they are carrying their own untreated childhood wounds.

There are things you will learn later that will break your heart in new ways. You will come to understand that Mom carried pain long before she became your mother. You will learn that there was trauma in her story from the very beginning—pain so deep that it shaped her before she ever had language for it.

That does not excuse what was missing in your childhood. But it does create room for compassion.

She did not mean to pass that wound on to you. Much of what she gave you was inherited survival, not intentional harm.

So forgive Grandma. Forgive Mom. Not because the pain was small, and not because the wounds were imaginary, but because forgiveness breaks the chain. Forgiveness creates space for God to heal what generations before you did not know how to heal.

You do not have to carry generational sorrow forever. You do not have to inherit emotional abandonment as your identity. You do not have to live under the weight of depression, rejection, or silence.

In Christ, the cycle can end with you. 🕊️

And finally, sweet girl…

Some of the things you are experiencing will make more sense later.

Some of what frightened you will one day be brought into the light. Some of what you thought made you strange will one day be understood through faith, wisdom, discernment, and healing.

You are not crazy.

You are not too much.

You are not forgotten.

And you are not fatherless.

God has always been nearby.

Even in the confusion.

Even in hunger.

Even in loneliness.

Even in shame.

Even in silence.

He was there.

And He is still here.

🌸 With Childlike Faith,

Connie Hill

An Older You

P.S. God will send you Kingdom Helpers. You will slice and dice in the spirit realm.