𝑫𝒆𝒂𝒓 𝒀𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒈𝒆𝒓 𝑳𝒖𝒃𝒏𝒂 🌷

This video is a heartfelt reading of a letter I wrote to my younger self as part of a nursing school assignment. It is a letter born from deep reflection, grief, and growth. It speaks to the winding path that brought me here, the values that have shaped my journey, and the quiet, persistent hope that healing and beauty can coexist. I offer it now as a tribute to the strength that we can find in our softness, and to the art that we can make out of our lives. 🤍 ~~~~~ Dear Younger Lubna, I am writing to you from a future you once dreamed about. Even in your boldest imaginings, you could not have fully pictured the depth, the strength, or the softness you would carry within you. You were always reaching for something more: not just success, but meaning; not just progress, but beauty. One of the beliefs that carried you through was the quiet certainty that life, even in its most fragile moments, could be art. You believed that every experience, whether triumphant or broken, was worthy of being made beautiful by your hands and by your heart. That belief gave your life shape and color when the world threatened to turn it gray. It taught you that grace can be chosen, even in grief. Reflection has always been your companion. Long before you had the words for it, you would sit with your thoughts, turning them over like river stones, smoothing their rough edges. You asked the questions that matter most: “What does it mean to live with purpose?” “How can I transform pain into love?” Reflection was your alchemy, a way of transmuting confusion into clarity, hardship into wisdom, and ordinary moments into something sacred. There were heartbreaks you could not have predicted, such as the moment you failed out of medical school, just steps from the finish line. The world you had built your dreams on seemed to collapse overnight. However, even there, in the rubble, you found a strange kind of beauty: the chance to begin again. You realized that your calling to heal was not bound to a title or a linear path. You chose to step forward into nursing, into a life of service shaped not by pride but by tenderness and resilience. You never stopped believing that the work of healing, like the work of living, could still be art. Through every reinvention, you stayed true to something rare and precious: a devotion to creating beauty wherever you could. Whether caring for a patient, writing words to lift another’s spirit, or simply moving through the world with compassion, you made even the smallest gestures a kind of offering. This was, and always will be, your art. Even without naming it, Ignatian values wove themselves through your life. “Cura personalis,” the care for the whole person, became your instinct. “Magis,” the restless drive to love more deeply and to serve more fully, illuminated your way. You lived the truth of “finding God in all things” in every fragile conversation, every painful ending, and every sunrise you chose to greet. I am so proud of you. Not because you knew the path, but because you walked it anyway, painting it with your own colors, even when the world handed you nothing but a blank, aching canvas. You made it beautiful. You made it yours. With awe and love, Lubna ~~~~~ Here is a link to an article that I published with the same title (“Dear Younger Lubna”) which contains a slightly extended version of this letter:   / dear-younger-lubna   #beauty #beautiful #innerbeauty #love #inspiration #thoughts #journal #diary #philosophy #psychology #psychiatry #medicine #nursing #literature #quotes #poetry #writing #art #wisdom #religion #spirituality #theology #encouragement #selfimprovement #motivation #faith #hope