As today’s #Quest2016 prompt, Dr. Tina Seelig asks, “What advice would your future self a year from now give you today?”
As my Future Self is much braver than my current self, she made a video addressing this prompt. However, my current self had so much difficulty uploading this 2 1/2 minute video to the Tracking Wonder Facebook group that she has given up on trying to put it on this blog, and is settling instead for a transcript. So here goes.
Dear Present Self,
You are stardust.
You are the breath and bones of dinosaurs.
You are the daughter of a thousand mothers whose names have been swallowed up by history.
You are the heir to a fortune–a small piece of land, a vast word-hoard–won, sometimes, through bravery, honor, genius–sometimes ill-gotten, through plunder, pillage, and treachery.
You are the love-child of Annie Dillard and William Butler Yeats. You are the product of true love, and you have the power to break curses, but only if you remember who you are.
You are daughter, granddaughter, niece, cousin, sister, wife, mother, friend, teacher, writer, dreamer–but most of all, you are a collection of atoms that has never happened before and will never happen again. You are a constellation, and so is every being you encounter.
You are stardust.
Act like it.
Brenna Layne 
“Act like it.” This just made me smile ear to ear, Brenna. How simple. How grand. How heart-liftingly lovely. Your older self nailed it. 🙂
Thanks so much, Peggy. My older self is so, so much wiser than my now-self. 😉
For such a youngster, you are brilliantly wise. Not kidding: you blow me away with your writing and wit.
Thanks so much, Stan. Among many other gifts, you have a talent for encouragement that makes this world a much, much kinder and lovelier place.
BRENNA! BRENNA! BRENNA! I am going to fight with WordPress until it lets me post something here, because these words (and video) are amazing and beautiful and totally need to be seen and read by the world. YOU ARE AMAZING. Thank you.
Vanessa, thank you very much. YOU ARE AMAZING too! You really do inspire me to be brave. Thank you for that. And thanks for fighting the good fight with WordPress! 🙂
Throw down from your future self. Send her my love. xoxoxoS
My future self says that yours is doing some pretty wondrous stuff. 😉
A constellation spiraling about a core? The ‘terrible beauty’ is born? Pillaged words perhaps, but seemed appropriate.A demanding injunction from your future self, but brave to articulate it!
Yay for Yeats quotes! You must be one of my tribe. 🙂
I keep reading this post because I love it so much…
Thanks so much, Stan. That is a wonderful compliment, and exactly, I think, what every writer hopes for.
If it’s true of you, you definitely got your wish.