Hello my dears,

By now I’m sure there’s more than one of you, maybe even three! First things first, I want you to know that I love you. I promise that I will always do my best to tell you that enough, but I know when I was a kid I sometimes thought that my parents hated me, or at the very least didn’t understand me. I want to tell you that I’ve been where you are, and I do understand, and I do love you. I don’t know what the world is like in the future, but I do know there’s a lot of good stuff going on right now, and a lot of very very bad stuff.

Let me start with some good things. I’m almost done with college right now, and I’m working at my very first grown-up job. We are making discoveries about how kids just like you grow and change, and we are very proud of the work that we do and all of the positive things that it will become. SpaceX just launched the heaviest rocket to date safely into space, with a sports car attached, and the engines landed safely so that they could be used again. Science makes new discoveries every day, and people are becoming more and more open.

It’s not all good though. Like I said, there are many bad things happening too. There is a lot of hate in the world, and nothing that we do seems to stop it. Sometimes it seems as though there are no solutions, or at least no good ones. So what I want to do with this letter is tell you some of the things that I hope for you, because hope seems to be our only defense in times like that.

I hope that in your life you are scared, and that you learn how to overcome that fear. That’s what will make you strong in the long run, what will make you able to conquer life.

I hope that you get to know how hard work feels when it’s in the pursuit of something you love. It won’t be easy, but it will make you who you are meant to be.

I hope that you come to love learning, because you will spend your whole life doing it whether or not you enjoy it. Honestly, it’s easier just to throw yourself into it with happiness. If you dedicate yourself to learning what you love, it won’t be hard at all.

I hope that you know what joy means. You don’t have to do everything with joy, that’s a silly sentiment that is frankly impossible to live up to. But I truly hope that you come to understand what it is and how to embrace it when it comes your way.

Life isn’t always easy, but I will always be here, doing my best to help you through it, and I know your dad will too.

All my love,

Momma