Letter to My 100-Year-Old Self

Write a letter to your 100-year-old self.

Letter to My 100-Year-Old Self

Dear 100-Year-Old Me,

First, thank you.

Thank you for allowing me to live long enough to see this moment. A hundred years of life is not just measured in time, but in endurance, faith, survival, and grace.

You have walked through more than most people will ever understand.

At just twenty-two years old, your life nearly ended. A doctor mistakenly prescribed Oxsoralen lotion and tablets, a potent medication that should only be applied under physician supervision. Somehow the prescription was filled by the pharmacy and given to you for unsupervised use.

You suffered first, second, and some third-degree burns across your body. The pain was unimaginable, and it nearly killed you. In truth, several systems failed you along the way.

What followed was devastating.

But by the grace of God and the power of countless prayers, you survived.

That moment could have been the end of your story, but it wasn’t. You heard them praying the last rights over you. Do you remember what you said? You said, you were not going to die, and you told your mom get an attorney. I told her who to call. I wasn’t suing the doctor and pharmacy, yet …..I made my will out and gave a statement to the court about custody of my daughter and why….

Later in life, your body would face more battles—osteoarthritis, spondylosis, osteonecrosis, and other painful conditions that made everyday life difficult. There were days when your body felt like it was working against you.

But you kept going.

You also survived something deeply painful in your personal life. You endured ten years of domestic abuse in your first marriage. And I want to say something to you now that perhaps needed to be said long ago.

I am sorry I didn’t leave sooner.

Maybe if I had, some of the trauma would not have been so deep. But the truth is, I did the best I could with the strength, knowledge, and circumstances I had at the time.

Sometimes survival is not about making perfect choices. Sometimes it is simply about staying alive long enough to find your way out.

And you did.

Life also brought seasons of poverty and even homelessness. Moments when the future felt uncertain and survival was the only plan.

But life also brought success, joy, family, laughter, and purpose.

There were failures along the way too, but failure never defined you. Each setback became another lesson in resilience.

And there is something else I want to thank you for.

Thank you for opening your heart again.

After everything you had been through, it would have been easy to close yourself off from love. But you didn’t.

Thank you for opening your heart to Tom, your second husband. A good, kind, God-fearing man who has stood beside you through life’s many seasons.

Only you, at one hundred years old, know exactly how many years you have been married. But as of today, it has already been more than thirty years.

Thank you for allowing that love into your life. Thank you for trusting again. Thank you for believing that goodness and kindness still existed after so much pain.

Through every chapter—the burns, the illness, the abuse, the poverty, the rebuilding—one thing never left you.

Your faith.

Faith carried you through nights when hope felt distant. Faith reminded you that your life had purpose even when the path was unclear. Faith gave you the strength to keep moving forward when quitting would have been easier.

If you are reading this at one hundred years old, it means you continued to choose life.

You continued to believe.

You continued to trust that God was not finished with your story.

And for that, I thank you.

Thank you for surviving what should have broken you.

Thank you for holding onto faith through the storms.

Thank you for believing that even a painful story can still become a meaningful one.

Your life is proof that survival is not weakness.

It is strength.

It is resilience.

It is faith in action.

A hundred years of life is not just longevity.

It is a testimony.

And somehow, through everything, God carried you here.

With gratitude for every step that brought us to this moment,

Me

(Just 37 more to go)