An Open Letter to Annie Cardi's YA Self

I'm very excited to be featuring a few YA authors on the blog, writing their own Open Letters, through out this month.  Not aware of this fab feature?  Be sure to check out my introduction post HERE.  You can also read my Open Letter To My YA Self post HERE.

Today, please welcome YA author Annie Cardi to the blog!  I adore her debut novel THE CHANCE YOU WON'T RETURN, so naturally I had to ask her to get involved with my Open Letter To YA Self feature.  She's sharing some empowering advice in her letter below, that I can definitely relate to.

Dear My YA Self,

Let’s have a little talk about body image.

I know this is something you’re well aware of. This is something you’ve always been aware of. You know you’re supposed to love yourself no matter what, but that’s not always easy. You can’t remember a time when your body didn’t make you feel conspicuous. You’ve always been one of the heavier girls in your class, if not the heaviest girl. You wear baggy jeans and hide yourself under sports bras like they can protect you from anyone noticing how much space you take up. When other girls in your class talk about the embarrassment of a salesperson handing them a size medium instead of a small, you cringe because you know you’re lucky if you can fit into the medium at all.

Even when you were younger and reading Sweet Valley Twins books, you knew you weren’t a Jessica or an Elizabeth or a Lila or even an Amy. Nope, you were more likely to be Lois Walker, somehow the only overweight middle schooler in all of Sweet Valley. Lois Walker never flirts or goes to sleepovers or auditions for the school play. Lois is defined by her weight, by one aspect of her body. Even the books you read that you love—Harry Potter and His Dark Materials and Feeling Sorry for Celia and Dangerous Angels—are about people who look more like Jessica and Elizabeth than Lois. When you talk about body image, it’s hard to talk about loving yourself no matter what when you know that your body is not the image you are supposed to see.

Screw that.

Your body is not the enemy. Okay, I know it’s hard to believe that on days you end up in front of the mirror crying about how nothing looks right. But it’s true—your body is not the enemy. Your body is one part of who you are and what you can do, and let me tell you—there is a lot you can do. You can choose great friends; you can make those friends laugh; you can write thoughtful essays and elaborate fanfics and novels that (I’m sorry) will never see the light of day but will teach you a lot about writing. And even though right now you think gym and sports are a torture specifically designed for people like you, one day your body will run a whole mile. One day your body will run a half-marathon. It will dance at your wedding and bake pies and move your things into different apartments and walk across a stage to accept your high school and college and grad school diplomas. Your body is for hugging and dancing and flirting and auditioning for plays and making funny faces and so much more. Your body is here for you, and screw any messages that your size defines who you are and what you can do and what kind of love you should expect.

Because you have friends of all shapes and sizes, and you don’t love any of them because of how they look. You love them because they’re kind and funny and smart and thoughtful. And all of you will find love and happiness because you’re all of those things, no matter what size you are.

In the meantime, don’t hide yourself. Your body isn’t for hiding; it’s for doing everything you want to do. And there are a lot of things you’re going to do, and it’s going to be awesome.

A few recommendations for my YA self:
• Gabi, a Girl in Pieces by Isabel Quintero
• Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell
• Hairspray the musical

Annie Cardi's website | twitter | goodreads

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Be sure to check out the GIVEAWAY happening below (just click the image!).

An Open Letter To Sarah Combs's YA Self

I'm very excited to be featuring a few YA authors on the blog, writing their own Open Letters, through out this month.  Not aware of this fab feature?  Be sure to check out my introduction post HERE.  You can also read my Open Letter To My YA Self post HERE.

Please welcome my dear friend, and lovely author, Sarah Combs to the blog today, sharing her own Open Letter To YA Self.  She is the brilliant mind behind BREAKFAST SERVED ANYTIME, and in case my love for this book hasn't caused you to read it already, I hope today's letter will inspire you to.

Dear fifteen year-old Sarah,

I’ve been thinking about you, and thinking that I owe you some thanks for a decision you made on our behalf almost twenty-three years ago.

It’s spring 1992, and your freshman year is drawing to a close. Things are going relatively well: You’ve found your people, you’ve been cast in The Skin of Our Teeth, all the world Smells Like Teen Spirit (literally and figuratively—your Walkman runs on Nevermind and your deodorant, which will forever be eau de freshman year, is Romantic Rose), and, like always, you’re in love. In love with, among other things: your Humanities class, your subscription to Sassy magazine, your Birkenstocks, your devoted and stalwart best friend, and (of course; you can’t help it) a boy.

Added bonus: After four (4) years of nightmarish orthodontia (you’ve had it all: headgear; rubber bands stretched slantwise across your maw; a torturous expansion device that lived for nine months betwixt your molars and had to be adjusted nightly and excruciatingly via the turn of a key), you’re fixing to get your braces removed. You cannot wait. There’s a jumbo bag of celebratory gummi bears in your backpack. Only: Wait. Hold on. The orthodontist is looking at you quizzically. He’s checking out a sheaf of X-rays taken over the last four years. He’d like for you to return to the waiting area, and could you send your dad in for just a sec?

The sec lasts a million years, and here is the upshot: The orthodontist (who deals in teeth, not noses, you remind yourself later—it has long been your habit to seek fault in any kind of authority figure, especially those who deliver unpleasantries) thinks you might have something called a deviated septum.

A what?

A deviated septum, says the Ear Nose & Throat doctor a few days later. It is indeed what you have, and it means that the bone and cartilage separating your nasal cavities is all out of whack. It also means that your breathing passages are sort of dangerously obstructed, which means you have to have an operation. Sooner rather than later.

What? But you breathe just fine. You sleep fine, too: vivid dreams and all. You throw an anguished look at your father, who is nodding along with the doctor. Doctor Ear Nose and Throat, whose authority you are already questioning in your mind. In your mind, he is already the person conspiring with the orthodontist to make you wear braces for the rest of ever.

Okay, your dad says on the exhale. He is, after all, your father, and he wants his daughter to be able to breathe.

Your face is going hot—the first outward sign of the fear gathering in your gut. You’ve got a question for this guy, this Doctor EN&T. Is this—this surgery—going to change the way I look?

No, says Almighty Doc EN&T, super-nonchalant. However, should you desire corrective surgery, we could certainly perform rhinoplasty at the same time. Those are maybe not the doctor’s exact words. You can’t be expecting your grown-ass self to be recollecting the exact words a quarter of a century later. Anyway it doesn’t matter what he said. What matters is what you heard, which is:

1. Rhinoplasty, which might be the ugliest word ever invented, some horrible zoo-animal/Tupperware hybrid; and 2. IN MY PROFESSIONAL OPINION, YOU NEED A NOSE JOB.

Immediately, your mind zooms back to that faraway land you thought you left behind forever: middle school. You’re back in middle school, home of those horrible boys who twist the last name you’ve always privately loved and been proud of—Van Arsdale, regal and one-of-a-kind, Dutch badass at your service—into Van Long Nose. The same boys who duck when you walk down the hall—because if they stood upright they’d get lanced by your gargantuan nose of course, ha ha, super original (you could eyeroll that ha ha, super original all day long to yourself, but here is the awful truth: It hurts. They are hurting you, and you won’t ever be able to forget it, not ever).

Your best friend is the best: The unwitting object of desire of not only these particular mean boys but also every other boy in your middle school, she is also a dancer made of fierceness and speed and most of all loyalty, the kind you’ll still be counting on decades from now. She cares not a fly for the admiration of these stupid boys, and she can run faster than all of them combined. So when one of them passes you at your shared locker and whispers Big Nose before disappearing down the hall, your best friend is after that asshole at lightning speed. She is grabbing him by the arm and whirling his body around to face her and she is hollering, like she can’t believe how dumb he is: You can have a big nose, but you can’t be a big nose.

Which cracks you up, and makes you weep with gratitude, and which you particularly appreciate because—even in middle school, that hellhole—you have a vested interest in words and semantics. You think you might like to be a writer someday.

But: Even though your best friend tells you daily that your nose is beautiful, that it looks a little like the one that belongs to her hero Wendy Whelan of the New York City Ballet, you sometimes—in your darker moments—look in the mirror and wonder if what those boys said was true. If you really can be a big nose, and nothing else.

It’s what you’re thinking now, in the office of Doctor EN&T, who is giving you a benign smile.

Once again, you look over at your dad, who is the reason you have your nose in the first place. It’s something you inherited from him—along with your badass Dutch last name, your freckles, and your tendency to question authority. No one can make you feel inferior without your consent, he’s been telling you for years, quoting Eleanor Roosevelt. Hold your head high. How many times did your broken-record of a dad also point out to middle-school you—middle-school us—that some of the most unforgettable women in the world have aquiline (he loves that word) noses? Princess Diana, who is even smarter than she is lovely. In fact, her mind is what makes her lovely, because, daughter, listen: that’s exactly how it works, and it’s the part of this conversation that you need to remember. Think of John Singer Sargent’s elusive Madame X—she would be nothing without her nose. Think of Botticelli. Think of Waterhouse.

You are a work of art, is what your—our—father was trying to tell you.

You don’t have to decide right now, says the doctor. Give it some thought.

And you give it some thought. You do. In the space of a moment you think of all the times you have felt and believed that you are a big nose and nothing more. And then you think of all the times—the huge number of times—when you have proven yourself more than that: a daughter, a sister, a friend. An actress whose talent and aquiline profile land her the juicy roles, the bold ones, the ones the ingénues don’t get. The girl finally now in high school, where not once has anybody ever said anything about her nose—except of course the boy, who has given her picture postcards of Sargent’s Madame X and Dicksee’s La Belle Dame Sans Merci. Who has said: They remind me of you. Who has used the word classic. He’s the kind of boy who has actually seen The Lion in Winter and likes to call you Eleanor of Aquitaine. The kind of boy who deserves your very first sans-braces kiss.

Strangely, although the doctor has confirmed that you have an actual physical defect that is hazardous to your health and requires surgery, it is not until he utters the word rhinoplasty that you find yourself unable to breathe. You have never loved your nose. And aside from the miraculous gift of breathing it provides, will never really love it, just as you will never love mirrors or cameras or photographs with you in them. But you make your decision right then and there, and you are absolutely sure that it is the right one.

Your best friend is there with you at the hospital, holding your hand and making you laugh as you fall under the fog of the anesthesia (she’ll be in the exact same spot when you get your wisdom teeth removed years later and when—years even later than that—you give birth to a child, a second boy, who will have your freckles and your strong will). When you wake up, your deviated septum will be fixed. Although there will be pain, and bandages, and lots of gross swelling for a while, you will eventually look in the mirror and see once again the same person you were before you went under the knife.

The change will be this: Now you can breathe. You can breathe. You can breathe. You will marvel at breathing, what a wonder it is, what a gift. You will ask yourself: How was I even living before? You will tell yourself: Don’t take this breath for granted, ever again.

So thank you for keeping our nose, fifteen year-old Sarah. You are wise beyond your years, and you are as brave as your Eleanors Roosevelt and Aquitaine, and although you’re far from perfect, I’m so, so glad you’re me.

See you on the other side.

Love,
Sarah

P.S. I know you have your ever-loyal Weetzie Bat and Franny Glass to keep you company, but in the interest of messing with the space/time continuum (one of our shared obsessions!), here are some other kindred spirits you'll want in your coterie: Frankie Landau-Banks (the eponymous heroine of The Disreputable History of, by e. lockhart); Taylor Markham (from Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta); and Priscilla "Petey" Willis (of Laura Ruby's exquisite Bone Gap). Oh, honey: These girls have got your number...and your back.

Sarah Combs on goodreads

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Be sure to check out my GIVEAWAY happening below! (just click the image)

An Open Letter To My YA Self

Dear YA Ginger,

You are about to graduate high school and walk across that stage to receive your high school diploma.  You've just spent the past four years making new friends, losing old friends, crushing on that boy from a far, studying for math exams that literally made your head hurt, staying up late into the night on the telephone, driving with the windows rolled down and the tunes cranked way up, worrying about the size of your jeans and why you are always bigger than your friends, looking to your sisters for advice but never quite knowing how to ask for it, dancing on football fields at half time, eating endless amounts of Whataburger fries with your friends, and jumping into swimming pools long after the sun went down.


You will say goodbye to your high school days with a smile on your face and a longing in your heart. You'll feel anxious to see what lies ahead, anticipating the summer you turn 18 and those last few moments spent at home before you pack it all away for college in the fall.  I know your motto right now is to "live in the moment" and worry about tomorrow when it comes.  You speak those words to your friends, even whispering them to yourself, hoping that is truly in fact how you live.  But to be honest, you are a worrier.  A planner.  Someone who has to think ahead.  Yes, you make choices that make you happy right then, but you also think about the effects of those choices later.  When you turn 30, you will finally come to terms with this about yourself.

You will chase after the boy who never stops running, making it difficult (and painful) to ever reach.  Pay attention to the boy who is standing next to you, asking to run beside you, never ahead of you.  He is the one you should give your heart to, not all those other boys who don't even know the first thing about appreciating such a precious gift that you are.  You are beautiful, no matter what size or shape you are.  You are intelligent and kind.  Your heart has the capacity to hold so much love inside.  You are worth so much more than you'll ever give yourself credit for.

You will be grateful for your parents never putting you through awkward conversations that leave you uncomfortable and wanting to pull away.  However, you'll need those conversations in the years to come.  You'll want to know what your mother would have said in those moments.  You'll long for answers to questions you'll never get advice for.  Ask questions, seek conversation, no matter how uncomfortable it may be.  These are your parents, Mom and Dad, the two people you can trust no matter what.  Open your ears and listen.  Whether you take their advice or not, that is up to you, but at least the words are there to think about.

You have reached the stage, the one that bridges the gap between your high school years and the rest of your life.  I know you'll walk across it with grace and dignity.  You might slip up now and then, falling down a few times, but have faith you'll find your footing again, you always do.  I wish I could tell you that life is beautiful, wild, and free from here on out.  I can tell you that life is an adventure, one that you will truly enjoy and fully embrace.  Will everything be just as you thought it would be?  Absolutely not.  Will you graduate college in four years, get married, and have a few kids?  No.  Will you travel the world, visit enchanting places, and see life through different lenses? Yes.  Will you find happiness when you reach 30 years old? Absolutely.  And it's a happiness you never thought you were ever deserving of.  It's a happiness that took a great loss to truly appreciate.  But its happiness nonetheless.  Hold on to that.

For your graduation gift, I've pulled a few books from my shelves that I feel you'll want to read. I know, I know, you're not much of a reader right now.  But trust me, books will become your greatest escape and the biggest catalyst for your future career.  You are a romantic at age 17 and you'll continue to be one when you reach your 30s.  So naturally I've found some books with a good dose of romance in them ;)  But I've also pulled together some books that will open your eyes, and your heart, to a world of diversity, one you'll thank me for later.

  

  

Dreamland by Sarah Dessen [add to goodreads]

Sloppy Firsts (Jessica Darling series) by Megan McCafferty [add to goodreads]

Harmonic Feedback by Tara Kelly [add to goodreads]

The DUFF by Kody Keplinger [add to goodreads]

Since You've Been Gone by Morgan Matson [add to goodreads]

The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han [add to goodreads]

Audrey, Wait! by Robin Benway [add to goodreads]

I hope you find a romance to fall in love with, a friendship to last a lifetime, and a story to carry your heart through an endless adventure.  Pay attention to these books, I might just be hinting at some lessons you could learn from ;)  Happy Graduation Day, YA Ginger! You did it!!!

Love,
30-Something Ginger

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Enjoy this playlist I put together that brings me back to my youth :)

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For more details on this new feature, be sure to check out my INTRODUCTION POST HERE.  You'll find the full list of participants +  a GIVEAWAY!

Introducing: An Open Letter To My YA Self + GIVEAWAY

A few weeks ago, I took to twitter and asked my followers if they were interested in getting involved with a feature on the blog, highlighting YA contemporary reads.  The response I got was overwhelming and so very humbling.  I was ecstatic to learn that so many wanted to be apart of my little project, not even knowing the details just yet.

The idea to write a letter to my young adult self was partly inspired by the Dear Teen Me book (that I helped promote a few years ago), as well as my current profession in teaching middle school students.  Each time I discover a contemporary YA novel, it causes me to reflect back on my own youth and how certain themes played a significant role in my younger years.  I see these same stories, coming alive from the pages of the books, inside my classroom every day.  All of this propelled the idea to write my own letter, and ask others to write a letter to their YA selves as well.   

Over the next month bloggers, readers, and authors will be sharing their open letters to their YA selves.  Please join me as we reflect back on our youths, recommend books to our younger selves, and share personal stories waiting to be told.  Below you will find the schedule of bloggers and readers who will be posting their own letters.  I've also got a handful of YA authors who will be sharing their letters on my blog, as well.  I look forward to reading all the letters and the coming together of a YA community.

(If you would like to participate on your own blog, please feel free to do so! Please link back to this post and let me know in the comments with a link. Thanks!)

Be sure to follow the schedule below to read all the Open Letters:

Tues, March 31 - Dianne @ http://www.oopsireadabookagain.com
Wed, April 1 - Erin @ http://www.thehardcoverlover.blogspot.com
Thurs, April 2 - Gaby + Lisa @ http://www.bookishbroads.com
Fri, April 3 - Hazel @ http://www.staybookish.net
Mon, April 6 - Brittany @ http://www.bookaddictsguide.com
Tues, April 7 - Candice @ http://www.thegrownupya.com
Wed, April 8 - Jordin @ http://www.abottomlessbookbag.com
Thurs, April 9 - Lauren @ http://www.bookmarklit.net
Fri, April 10 - Tiff @ http://www.mostlyyalit.com
Mon, April 13 - Andi @ http://www.andiabcs.com
Tues, April 14 - Willa @ http://www.willasramblings.com
Wed, April 15 - Sarah @ http://www.whatsarahread.com
Thurs, April 16 - Heather @ http://www.theturningpages.com
Fri, April 17 - Alexa @ http://www.alexalovesbooks.com
Mon, April 20 - Joli @ http://www.actinupwithbooks.blogspot.com
Tues, April 21 - Margie @ http://www.bumblesandfairytales.blogspot.com
Wed, April 22 - Jenna @ http://www.bookiemoji.com/
Thurs, April 23 - Carmel @ http://www.carmelandkyla.blogspot.com
Fri, April 24 - Kyla @ http://www.bookbuddiesph.blogspot.com
Tues, April 28 - Christy @ http://www.novel-ink.blogspot.com
Wed, April 29 - Jen @ http://www.jenuinecupcakes.blogspot.com/
Thurs, April 30 - Jaime @ http://www.fictionfare.blogspot.com
Fri, May 1 - Lauren @ http://www.laurenheartsbooks.com

And you don't want to miss this GIVEAWAY:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Giveaway open to international readers (the book depository must be able to ship to you)

Good luck! & stayed tuned for My Open Letter To My YA Self tomorrow on the blog!

Huge thanks to the talented Georgie of What Georgie Did for the beautiful graphic