Commusings: 5 Letters to Our Younger Selves

Dear Commune Community,

It’s Schuyler, taking over from Jeff this week. I want to start with a poem from 1926 by the divine Ms. Dorothy Parker:

When I was young and bold and strong,
Oh, right was right, and wrong was wrong!
My plume on high, my flag unfurled,
I rode away to right the world.
"Come out, you dogs, and fight!" said I,
And wept there was but once to die.

But I am old; and good and bad
Are woven in a crazy plaid.
I sit and say, “The world is so;
And he is wise who lets it go.
A battle lost, a battle won —
The difference is small, my son.”

Inertia rides and riddles me;
The which is called Philosophy.

The end of a lunar year is generally all about projecting forward into the coming turning of the moons. This is certainly a worthy endeavor. But the most profitable way to launch ourselves into our future might be to gently but unflinchingly examine our past.  

If you were to go back and tell your younger self one thing, what would you say to her (or him)?

The first thing that came to my mind was fairly pedantic. Date funny people.

Then a Jungian concept came to mind about the world making us if we don’t actively participate in crafting ourselves… So I had to look it up. The exact quote: “The world will ask who you are, and if you do not know, the world will tell you.”

If you are a parent of teenage or young adult children, the (likely unheaded) advice you give them is probably the words you are whispering to yourself. I’ve said something like the following to my eldest a number of times:

“Be serious, but also don’t take any of it too seriously. When, in 10 or 40 years, you look back on how your life has unfolded – all the things that made no sense at the time will have snowballed into a logic of their own. (And again, date funny people!)”

Would that we could wrap up a bundle of deep self inquiry, stick it in a time machine, and gift it to ourselves for our 18th or 21st birthday!

In preparation for Luminescence, our inaugural, in-person Commune event on February 1 in Los Angeles, we’ve been mired in logistical conversations with the speakers. But we took a quick holiday detour into more whimsical territory and asked the luminaries in our line-up what advice they might give their younger selves. Dr Sara Szal Gottfried, Marianne Williamson, Kayla Barnes, Dr Robin Berzin, and Jillian Michaels got right back to us. 

I was delighted and teared up a bit as I read their responses. In these autopsies what often arises is immense compassion – and very often chagrin – when looking into the way, way back. I highly recommend you take a moment to pen a note to your own sweet unfurling self. And do it with friends! It might even be a perfect way to lighten up the mood of a heavy holiday gathering.

Here’s to furling flags and letting go. 

Love,
Schuyler

Jillian Michaels:

If I could go back and tell my younger self one thing, here’s what I’d say to her … 

Your passion and drive are powerful forces—never let them dim. However, I want you to understand that it’s essential to balance that fire with thoughtfulness. Taking risks is part of growth, but impulsive actions without reflection can lead to unnecessary setbacks. You have nothing to prove. When faced with a decision, give yourself the space to pause and consider your options. Wisdom lies not just in action, but in knowing when to act.

I know how strong-willed you are, and while that determination will serve you well, there’s a difference between resilience and stubbornness. Be open to advice from others. It doesn’t diminish your strength to ask for help; in fact, it shows maturity and insight. Learning from those who have walked the path before you will only enhance your ability to make better decisions.

Above all, trust the process. Life is not always going to unfold according to your plans, but that’s where growth happens. The moments that feel like setbacks are often the most valuable opportunities for learning. Don’t be discouraged when things don’t go your way immediately. Embrace the uncertainty—it’s part of the journey, and in time, you’ll see how the pieces fall into place exactly how they were always meant to.

And always remember that patience and trust will guide you toward your greatest potential.

Marianne Williamson:

The first thing I’d say to my younger self is to relax and enjoy being young. When you're young, you can’t imagine not being young, and many feel they have a guilty little secret—that they’re never getting old! But it happens to everyone who is fortunate enough. So, enjoy being young while you’re young. Too many miss out; they’re so busy thinking about the future that they don’t fully inhabit the joy of youth. Enjoy the physicality, the relative lack of burden, and the uniqueness of that time.

The second thing, interestingly enough, is to take life more seriously. When you're young, life feels like an opportunity-creation machine. Relationships, careers—everything seems replaceable. But life is serious, your experiences are serious, and so are other people's experiences. It took me a long time to treat my life with the seriousness it deserved. I wish I’d been told when I was young to enjoy myself more and to take my life more seriously.

Dr. Robin Berzin

Dear 22-year-old me,

You’ve just graduated from college and you don’t really know what to do next. You landed a job as a paralegal, but your diet consists of coffee, green apples, protein bars, and grilled chicken, all while treating yourself to Tasti D-Lite after running on the treadmill four times a week. You’re more focused on fitting into a size small than on your health, something your male colleagues probably don’t worry about as much.

Lack of sleep, frequent hangovers, daily brain fog, and mood swings are weighing you down. Trust your gut, you’re not on the right path.

While in medical school, you’ll realize you want more than just to medicate and operate. Believe in your ability to build a career that looks different. It might seem tough now, but embrace new experiences and learn from failures. Building your own business will be hard, but doing purpose-driven work will be so much more fulfilling.

Love,
Robin

Kayla Barnes

If I could go back and speak to my 18-year-old self, I’d say this: Don’t waste time trying to impress people, impress yourself. Focus on being authentic to yourself and what truly matters to you.

Be proud of your journey. Don’t get so fixated on the destination that you forget to enjoy the process. That’s something I’ve grown to appreciate as I’ve gotten older. When I was younger, I set audacious goals for myself—goals that drove me forward but sometimes kept me from savoring the joy in the moments of growth and creation. Looking back, I wish I’d been more present in becoming the woman I am today.

The second piece of advice would be about health. When I started my health optimization journey over a decade ago, I found myself following protocols designed by men, for men, simply because that was the majority of what was available at the time. I’d tell my younger self: Learn from others, absolutely—but create something uniquely tailored to you and share it with other women. That’s exactly what I’ve done today.

Dr. Sara

Dear 23-Year-Old Self,

Don’t buy the line that you need to fix yourself to be beautiful, happy, and loved. To fit in. To look good in your clothes. To attract your perfect mate. To appear emotionally and psychologically like you have your act together and are going places.

What I now understand and want you to understand is that our culture works hard to convince you that the way you are isn’t enough. The overarching message is you need to fix your body. From plump lips to six-pack abs, and from a thigh gap to a perfect smoky eye, you are likely to internalize the message that your body is something you need to change to be considered beautiful and aligned with unrealistic standards. And if you can’t achieve the impossible quickly on your own (chances are, you can’t), a med spa, plastic surgeon, or pharmaceutical company will be happy to assist you in making the unachievable possible by paying a small fortune. The entire process dims your light and disrupts your hormones.

When I was 23, I spent so much time trying to be thin. My body is not the thin type, so trying to look like Kate Moss made me redouble my efforts to count calories, overexercise, restrict, and even purge to look better in my clothing and feel “in control.”

It’s an illusion. Didn’t matter that I was in medical school at the time, I fell for the messaging. It led to an unhealthy obsession with body weight, waist size, and fat composition. It jacked up my stress levels and raised my cortisol, making premenstrual syndrome worse and accelerating the aging process. It caused problems with my insulin, setting off a vicious cycle of fat storage as my metabolic health and mitochondrial function declined. It kicked off my dance with bulimia in my twenties, and I want to save you from that fate.

Darling, it took me another 17 years to finally develop a healthy relationship with my body and to eat nourishing food. When I wasn’t spending money on supplements or cold sculpting to help me achieve a lower body fat, I spent it on talk therapy that rarely connected me to these deeper truths. I was hungry for a relationship to spirit, and my obsession with my body and how it looked blocked that connection to the divine. Even though yoga was and is a salve for the challenges of being female in our culture, it also wasn’t sufficient to protect me from dominant cultural messaging.

As Naomi Wolf famously said: “A culture fixated on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty, but an obsession about female obedience. Dieting is the most potent political sedative in women’s history; a quietly mad population is a tractable one.”

Naomi wrote that in The Beauty Myth in 1991. I was 23. Now that you’re 23, I hope that you can start to pierce the veil of the patriarchal, power-over social system that is trying to keep you down. It’s not just thinness that is used against us and to limit our power, the narrative now is even broader: be thin but muscular. If you aren’t lifting heavy, you’re not doing it right. If you don’t have lips like Kylie Jenner or abs like Khloe Kardashian or billions like Kim Kardashian, you are falling short.

Don’t buy into the false narrative. Think of it as an endocrine disruptor, like bisphenol A or phthalates… to be avoided.

The cultural message that your body is a problem to solve will needlessly rob you of peace, resilience, savings, and sanity. I wish I had known this when I was 23 because it would have saved me a lot of suffering. I could have directed the years of negative self-talk and endless noticing of all the ways I seemed to fall short physically—and put it to better use developing my passion, purpose, and service.

It's a myth that you need to fix your body. Don’t let others tell you that you need to. Don't buy into the harmful narrative.

Instead, invest in your resilience, recovery, and health. Stand fully in your power.
Here for you and the magic you will make.

Love,
Your 57-year-old Self