This Women’s Health Month, we’ll be highlighting the journeys of four incredible women from our community as they reflect on different decades of their lives through letters to their younger selves. No matter our age, life is something we’re all navigating for the first time. These stories offer a moment to pause, reconnect with your younger self, and reflect with compassion on the experiences that have shaped you.

When we think about our 20s, it’s usually a time filled with new beginnings and experiences and a lot of uncertainty. It’s also a time to understand who you want to be, discover your own identity and figure out where you feel you truly fit in. Things like ambition, self-doubt, confidence, learning and un-learning, all play a role every step of the way.

You might feel the weight of all that pressure on your shoulders, and it can be hard to give yourself grace as you navigate through this chapter of life. Looking back, Alena Luciani, an athlete and strength and conditioning coach, recognizes how much of her identity was rooted in sport, and how, in her 20s, she was yet to see that her career was only one part of who she was becoming.

Take a moment to listen to the letter she wrote to her 26-year-old self – maybe you’ll find pieces of yourself reflected in her words, helping you reconnect with different versions of yourself.

Can you relate to her story? We’d love to hear from you – let us know what you think in the comments below!

Take it a step further – here are a few reflective journal prompts you can use to dive a little deeper into your own experiences:

• What version of yourself were you trying to become in your 20s, and how has that vision changed over the years?
• What do you think made up a large part of your identity, and what have you since let go of?
• If you could write a letter to your younger self now, what would you tell her? What would you thank her for, and what would you gently remind her of?