
LETTER TO MY YOUNGER SELF: HAILEY KINTER
LETTER TO MY YOUNGER SELF: HAILEY KINTER
PROFILES

If you could write a letter to your younger self what would it say? We asked some amazing people in our community to write letters, and were blown away by the love, compassion and humor they shared. Hailey Kinter shares her letter here.
Dear Little Hailey,
Your life is going to appear very different, yet feel just as ordinary as anyone else’s.
Life is hard.
Your childhood will suddenly be taken from you. There will be many terrifying 911 calls, ambulance rides, and traumatic resuscitations. You’re going to survive this to see your twenties, but you won’t be “okay” for a long time.
Doctors won’t take you seriously until you require CPR at just 18 years old. You won’t get diagnosed for several more years, and there’s no cure yet. You will get very familiar with suffering. You will have countless heart, vascular, GI, and kidney surgeries. You will experience physical pain so severe you will beg for your life to end. You’ll fight hard but remain sick. Sometimes you will lose hope, and feel helpless. You will feel totally alone. You’ll spend numerous birthdays and holidays in the hospital. Doctors, nurses, and sometimes even people you love will say hurtful things out of frustration, fear, and denial. Friends and family will get desensitized to your suffering and fragility. Only people who are brave enough to love someone who is facing death so often will stick around. You will forever grieve.
You will be made to feel not disabled enough, while at the same time too disabled. You will never be enough for other people. You do too much while you don’t do enough. You will make many mistakes. Because you’re human and you’re not special.
Acceptance isn’t giving up, it is waking up. You are always enough, you’re perfectly imperfect.
Even though sometimes you’ll feel alone, you never truly are. You are loved and appreciated so much more than you know. The unlimited love you shower others with is returned to you every day. You just have to remember to open your eyes. Your courage to stay vulnerable and open is rewarded with others around you feeling safe to do the same. Your kindness creates a ripple effect that spreads in ways you do not see.
The most important person in your life is you. Prioritize how you treat yourself, how you talk to yourself, and how you love yourself over any other relationship. Your opinion of yourself, your validation, your acceptance, is the most important.
What do you want? What do you think?
When life gets you down, don’t fret; downhills are much easier than uphills when you’re in a wheelchair. The comforting thing about rock bottom is that it’s only up from there. After rock bottom, your sensitivity for joy and gratitude are heightened.
Most people are not awake to the small ordinary moments, they lack appreciation. They don’t look for the beauty amongst the pain.
Being human means suffering. Feeling alone, not having others validate our experiences, looking outside of ourselves for acceptance and love…everyone experiences that.
You’re still going to be educated.
You’re still going to be successful.
You’ll save lives and make a difference as a paramedic. Then your disability will change, and you’ll have to adapt the ways you impact others. Don’t underestimate the power you have in sharing your story. Your resilience will help and inspire people to keep going when they’re in the dark themselves. When you light your path, you light the way for others, too.
You’re going to fall in love. When you are least expecting it, you will fall in love with a lifeguard who you’ll grow and laugh with for eight years. Then you’ll grow apart and fall out of love. Your heart will break and heal many times. You’ll learn to fall in love with yourself, and your life. You’ll fall in love again, in many ways, like with your zebra friends, yoga, and parasurfing.
In the end, none of us get out of this alive, so celebrate each day you wake up. Rock your scars and wrinkles, you’re a survivor! When life gets tough, lean on people, we weren’t meant to suffer alone.
Keep your head up, and your heart open. Strive to be present, but not perfect.
We made it to 29,
Hailey Kinter