Vanessa Campos

Vanessa, we’ve made it to 28 autumns, and I want to thank our childhood and teenage versions of ourselves. My dear little Vanessa, I’m writing to you from the future to tell you that we still love nature—swimming in rivers and climbing trees. We’re still gentle and a little vain, but our favorite color is no longer pink… It’s black now (our teenage self is totally responsible for that).

We’re still creative and curious, and that dream of becoming a fashion designer has turned into becoming a writer—but the creative root is exactly the same. We still cry easily, but we no longer see that as weakness. We’ve learned to love ourselves just the way we are.

Our decision to become a Christian at 11 years old is still going strong, and our 18-year-old self absolutely nailed it when she let go of trying to control everything and allowed God to lead her.

I want to tell you that we made our dream of doing jazz dance and rhythmic gymnastics come true, but so that you know, we’re not exactly great dancers. We also learned how to swim, and now we can finally be little fish in the water, just like we always wanted.

Oh, and birthday celebrations are still a big deal, something we look forward to every single year.

We’re still great problem solvers, and that really grew during our teenage years and into adulthood. Hehe, we’re adults now. And it was that drive to find solutions that led our 17-year-old self to start going to the gym—something that truly changed our life. Because of that, we’ve made peace with our body, and that list of surgeries we once had? It’s gone.

Our teenage self discovered rock music, which made us fall in love with wearing black and learning English. And once we started learning English, we began dreaming of traveling the world. That dream is still in progress, but I’m sure we’ll get there.

Our childhood tattoo ideas have evolved, but little by little, we’re covering ourselves in art. And, surprisingly, we got married really young, and we have an amazing man by our side who makes us incredibly happy.

Just so you know, the “turning 30 crisis” is already knocking, and we’re feeling this urge to live 10 years in 2—we want to learn how to surf, paint on canvas, play beach tennis, get back into swimming, go skydiving, bungee jumping, climb mountains… everything!

Anyway, I think you’d be proud of who we’ve become. I love you.