Happy Birthday Jilly - A Letter To My Younger Self

Dear Jilly,

Happy Birthday.

Tomorrow, at 3:03 P.M., 15:03 in military time, you will be 26 years old. A lot has happened in your 26 years. Many things have changed while others have remained the same. But, the most important thing is that you’re here, you’ve made it to this day.

Your favorite movie is still Apollo 13, as a matter of fact you can recite that movie line for line. You are still a bookworm that loves getting lost in a good story, though you should stop reading thrillers before bed. You still love to sing… even if no one can hear you. You are constant learner trying to satisfy an insatiable hunger for knowledge. You’re still a little person, but you knew that would never change.

So, what’s changed?

You are no longer the little girl who walked around carrying a forty-page packet with all the lyrics to Les Misérables and believed that they got a new actor to play Gavroche at every show (The magic of the theatre). Rather, you are now someone who works behind the scenes. You now represent the actors you’ve always looked up to. You even attended an opening night on Broadway (yes, Broadway).

You’re a survivor.

You have fought anxiety and depression and won. Some battles aren’t over, and not all your scars have healed, but you are no longer being held back by fear and sadness. There was a time when anxiety kept you from venturing far from home. Since then, you’ve traveled across the country and the world. You’ve climbed monuments in Paris and mountains in Israel…even though your luggage arrived five days later. You took a chance and traveled to London, seizing a once in a lifetime opportunity to work on the grounds of Windsor Castle.

Your struggle with body image and disordered eating is ongoing, but you are winning. You realized that you are worth more than the numbers on a scale or the size of your jeans. You stopped punishing yourself every time you looked at your reflection. You no longer measure by the calories you burn or pounds you lose. Success, to you, is being able to get up and move, period. You still need to work on allowing yourself to indulge every once in a while, but progress isn’t perfect. The important thing is that you are trying, that you want to be better.

You’ve accepted that your body is beautiful and capable of a lot more than you ever realized. You can run. Yes, you read that right. You, Jillian Ilana, can run. In fact, you kinda love it. When your feet hit the pavement it feels like you are flying. You’ve stopped fighting the pressure to workout. Instead, you now treat each workout as a way to prove how strong, mentally and physically, you are.

I must admit that you are nearly six years into a battle you thought you would never have to fight...at least not so soon. Your fiercest opponent has been grief. In October of 2015, just as you were finding your footing at Rutgers, you lost your father. In an instant, your world felt like it had been destroyed and there was nothing you could do to repair it. In the days, weeks, months and years afterwards there were moments where you felt like you were drowning under the weight of emotions you had never felt before. You realized that Cristina Yang was right, you never really know how to exist in a world without your daddy in it. But, you do. It’s not the world you and him used to dream about, but it’s still a world surrounded by people who love you and where you can still become the person he believed you could be. Grief no longer controls your life. You graduated and started your career with daddy, your angel, always looking over your shoulder and watching out for you. While he is no longer physically here, he has never left you. Most importantly, you also realized the one good thing about being a dwarf…

you are always and forever daddy’s little girl.

The biggest change? You’ve stopped feeling invisible and started feeling invincible.

While being a little person you still often feel unseen and unheard, you have found your voice. You stopped allowing fear to tell you to remain silent. You have harnessed the power of a cold call or email and have made connections with people you have always looked up to, with people who want to work with you to make a difference. You stopped hesitating and started acting, raising awareness on issues that have always mattered to you. You created a platform for yourself to advocate for accessibility and representation.

You’re no longer afraid to tell your story.

You did it, Jilly.

Through laughter and tears, triumphs and tragedies, you’ve made it to 26. I hope you are proud of the woman you have become and know that your journey is just beginning.