Contemporary Month is almost over but we still have lots of celebrating to do this week (including a giveaway for Blue Sky Days coming up). Maria Landry was awesome enough to prepare this guest post for us today – actually it is written by Emma from her book Blue Sky Days.

A guest post written by Emma Ward from Blue Sky Days

Aunt Daisy and I were talking today, and she asked an interesting question: “If you could go back and tell your younger self something, what would it be?”

My mind raced with possibilities. I spent so long being what I thought was the perfect daughter – I studied hard, never got into trouble, planned my future, and always did what I thought was right. I was so busy doing all those things that I never really lived.

So what would I tell my younger self if I could? Go out and have fun. Have a life. Make friends. Date boys. Go to school functions – all the things that seemed so stupid at the time – football games and pep rallies and dances. Make mistakes, get in trouble, take road trips, do something daring and adventurous. Live.

But then I realized something…if I had done all those things then, I probably wouldn’t have felt so desperately stuck and lost, which means I wouldn’t have come to live with Daisy. And if I hadn’t come to live with Daisy, I never would have met Nicholas – beautiful, sweet Nicholas, who I love so much – or Maggie, or Vince, or Sam, who have become my family. I wouldn’t feel this sense of belonging that I never felt before.

I wouldn’t have needed Nicholas to show me the world and open up my eyes. I wouldn’t have needed him to draw me out of my shell and teach me to laugh and dance and be silly and have fun. Fun: such a strange concept to me not all that long ago. But I would have already known how to do those things – the things that most normal teenagers do naturally.

So I decided that if I could go back and tell my younger self anything, it would be that everything would turn out okay. Don’t do anything differently, because everything you did led you to where you were meant to be. Stick with the plan – it will fail spectacularly, but sometimes you need to fail, and in this case, it’ll be the best thing that could ever have happened.

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