A Birthday Letter to My Younger Self

Still from Documentary "The Children of Sarajevo" (Dir. Daniela Cavini)

Today is my birthday. Today, I pause. Not just to celebrate another year of life, but to look back, deeply, at the road that brought me here.

Recently, I watched a documentary filmed just after the war in Bosnia ended. It was created in 1997 by Italian filmmaker and journalist Daniela Cavini, titled “Ragazzi di Sarajevo.” I was there. I was one of the protagonists. I was 18.

And until now, I had never truly watched it.

Watching the Past Through My Son’s Eyes

This time, I didn’t watch it alone. I sat beside my 12 year old son and my partner.

As the film unfolded, I heard my younger voice, fragile, tired, carrying more weight than a child should ever bear. I listened to the stories of other teenagers, all of us suspended between childhood and survival, sharing fragments of lives shaped by war.

We were so young. And yet, we spoke like people who had already lived entire lifetimes.

As we watched, my son asked countless questions. I wasn’t much older than he is now when I lived through the war. His empathy and the depth of his reflections touched me in ways that are hard to put into words.

Echoes of a Girl Who Felt Too Old

Toward the end of the film, I heard myself say something that stayed with me: That there are still wonderful people in the places where we live…and that young people keep fighting for their lives.

But I also heard something heavier.
A teenage girl, myself, speaking about wanting to die.
About unbearable pain.
About feeling 40 at the age of 15.

Watching her, I didn’t just remember her. I met her again.

The Quiet Power of Survival

As I watched the film, waves of emotion rose and fell, sadness, grief, anger.

But beneath them, something steady remained: a deep pride.

Pride in you.
Pride in all of us who survived.
Pride in every young person who has endured war, hardship, or invisible battles, and kept going.

Today, I understand something I couldn’t back then: Every experience, no matter how painful, holds a kind of hidden gold. And if those moments had never happened, I would not be who I am today.

Watching that film reminded me that even the harshest chapters of our lives carry meaning. Even the darkest memories can illuminate something essential.

A Letter Across Time

So today, on my birthday, I write to her.

Dear younger me,

I see you. I hear the silence behind your words. I feel the weight you carried in your small, trembling hands. You thought the darkness would define you. But you did something extraordinary, you transformed it.

You took pain and turned it into purpose. You took grief and shaped it into empathy. You took anger and forged strength from it.

You grew into someone who recognizes suffering in others, who stands against division and dehumanization, who chooses light and love even when it would be easier not to,
who believes deeply in every person’s right to live freely, fully, and as they truly are.

You became a creator, not despite your past, but because of it.

A Message for Anyone Walking a Similar Path

This letter is for me.
But maybe it is also for you.

If you have walked through something difficult, if you have felt too old too soon, too heavy for your own heart, know this: What happened to you is only one part of your story.
What you create from it is where your voice, your shape, your becoming truly begin.

So on this birthday, I remember.
Not with regret, but with reverence.

For the girl I was.
For the journey I walked.
For the person I became.

And for the enduring truth: We don’t carry those experiences as weight, but as a compass, one that keeps guiding us, gently and persistently, home to ourselves.