You should write things down. Things like your worries and your happy times and your dreams (both the kind you have at night and the kind you have when you’re staring out of the window of an airplane). You’ll read them when you’re older and laugh or cry or shake your head, but you’ll know you’ve grown.

You’ll feel the most beautiful when you are comfortable with you. When you’ve accomplished that you can wear whatever you feel like and be radiant.

I am not always going to agree with you or understand you, but I will always love you and accept you even when it feels like I don’t (unless you are a serial killer. Don’t be a serial killer).

Your first kiss isn’t going to be nearly as good as you think it will. In fact, many of your firsts will be downright awkward. That’s okay. The best part of it all is learning how to get better.

Feel free to tell me all about your firsts. In fact, tell me whatever you’re comfortable with but you must know, darling, that whatever it is there’s a good chance I’ve already done it.

There will be bad things, terrible things. Things that make you despair, make you doubt people and living. But there are also good things. There will always be good things, even when they’re small. There is good in the world. Don’t stop looking for it.

Don’t let any man (or woman) ever make you responsible for their feelings. Don’t give your heart to anyone out of guilt or a sense of duty or loyalty. Your heart is yours to do as you please.

Dance in your underwear. Preferably not in public.

Be as good as you can to as many people as you can while you can.

No one will ever be able to love you like you’re able to love yourself. Ever. So please start loving yourself early on so you can get better and better at it every minute you’re alive.

Don’t let too many people tell you what to do, least of all songwriters who want you to do random things on the dance floor. You don’t have to shake it like a salt shaker or jiggle it just a little bit. As a matter fact don’t let anyone tell you what to do with “it”.

Ask for help when you need it and help others when you don’t.

Travel. Leave your home, leave me, leave your country and really soak what you see in.

Tell the people you love that you love them as soon as you’ve figured it out, even if they don’t or won’t love you back.

You are a sum of many parts. You can be lovely and ugly and angelic and a liar all at once. You are human.