The Letter Your Teenager Can't Write You

Dear Parent:

This is the letter that I wish I could write. 

This fight we are in right now. I need it. I need this fight. I can’t tell you this because I don’t have the language for it and it wouldn’t make sense anyway. But I need this fight. Badly. I need to hate you right now and I need you to survive it. I need you to survive my hating you and you hating me. I need this fight even though I hate it too. It doesn’t matter what this fight is even about: curfew, homework, laundry, my messy room, going out, staying in, leaving, not leaving, boyfriend, girlfriend, no friends, bad friends. It doesn’t matter. I need to fight you on it and I need you to fight me back.

I desperately need you to hold the other end of the rope. To hang on tightly while I thrash on the other end—while I find the handholds and footholds in this new world I feel like I am in. I used to know who I was, who you were, who we were. But right now I don’t. Right now I am looking for my edges and I can sometimes only find them when I am pulling on you. When I push everything I used to know to its edge. Then I feel like I exist and for a minute I can breathe. I know you long for the sweeter kid that I was. I know this because I long for that kid too, and some of that longing is what is so painful for me right now.

I need this fight and I need to see that no matter how bad or big my feelings are—they won’t destroy you or me. I need you to love me even at my worst, even when it looks like I don’t love you. I need you to love yourself and me for the both of us right now. I know it sucks to be disliked and labeled the bad guy. I feel the same way on the inside, but I need you to tolerate it and get other grownups to help you. Because I can’t right now. If you want to get all of your grown up friends together and have a ‘surviving-your-teenager-support-group-rage-fest’ that’s fine with me. Or talk about me behind my back--I don’t care. Just don’t give up on me. Don’t give up on this fight. I need it.

This is the fight that will teach me that my shadow is not bigger than my light. This is the fight that will teach me that bad feelings don’t mean the end of a relationship. This is the fight that will teach me how to listen to myself, even when it might disappoint others. 

And this particular fight will end. Like any storm, it will blow over. And I will forget and you will forget. And then it will come back. And I will need you to hang on to the rope again. I will need this over and over for years.

I know there is nothing inherently satisfying in this job for you. I know I will likely never thank you for it or even acknowledge your side of it. In fact, I will probably criticize you for all this hard work. It will seem like nothing you do will be enough. And yet, I am relying entirely on your ability to stay in this fight. No matter how much I argue. No matter how much I sulk. No matter how silent I get.

Please hang on to the other end of the rope. And know that you are doing the most important job that anyone could possibly be doing for me right now.

Love, Your Teenager

*This is the tenth anniversary of the teen letter! This blog was originally published on June 23, 2015. The publication has been shared over 7 million times, has been published on other blogs, in magazine articles and books, It has been translated into ten languages that I know of , read by the famous french Actor, Franck Dubosc and has been made into dramatic pieces by church youth groups. I have received hundreds of letters from parents who figured out how to hang on to the rope when it was what was needed, and letters from people who were so grateful to parents who hung in there with them. I was lucky enough to have someone hold the rope for me when I was struggling through a particularly difficult stretch. The beautiful thing about someone holding the rope for you - about someone loving you anyway— is that it outlasts the particular struggle. You don’t remember what the fight was even about— but you carry the love forever.

© 2015/2025 Gretchen L Schmelzer PhD

The gifts of the paths we didn't choose.

“As you start to walk on the way,
the way appears. ”

— Rumi

Okay, in my case today maybe the way didn’t appear as much as it became impassable. I sought out a new trail today. I’ve been trying to get to know my new area by exploring new places to walk—and I found a trail that was only about a 12-minute drive from where I lived. Normally, I find comfort in familiarity—I like walking the old paths. I am known to re-watch favorite movies and re-read favorite books. My work requires so much travel and meeting so many new (and wonderful) people that I often need a break from novelty and new-ness. So I seek the familiar and known.

But I am trying to stretch myself a little this Spring. It’s good for the brain to walk. And it’s really good for the brain to walk in a new place. Your brain creates new neurons, if merely to help you create the mental maps that might get you home from the new place. But it’s also because I just want to give myself more of a chance to observe—to be surprised—and have to be present with where I am.

The place where I chose to walk had two trails—a shorter inner trail and a longer outer trail. My plan was to walk the outer loop —it was longer and would have given me a good hour of walking. But it’s rained for most of the weekend and after traversing some wooden walkways above water, the path led into a meadow that had become a marsh. I walked a few steps out and decided it was too tricky to walk in. I decided to turn back.

I had seen a sign back at the first bend in the path to the inner loop, a trail to a quarry, so I headed to that fork in the trail and turned left. I figured I’d get a short walk. The trail wound through pine and up to ledges. Along the edges of the path were swaths of labrador tea . The air was sweet with pine and the labrador tea. it smelled just like the islands in Maine.

After about 10 minutes of walking in dense forest I emerged into the open and along an old granite quarry. A wide-open sky. A mini canyon, filled with water and reeds. Red wing blackbirds loud and flying around. It wasn’t the Grand Canyon, but it was spectacular—a wide expanse—with a view of the mountains in the distance. Blue sky and white clouds in one direction and grey sky in the other direction. Light rain fell despite the sunshine. I looked for a rainbow, but didn’t see one.

It was odd mix of small and large. You could see the other side, but it was big enough and deep enough that you didn’t want to get too close to the edge. I thought, as I looked out, that in some ways it doesn’t matter how big a canyon is if you can’t get across it.

Respecting what you can’t get across or can’t get around seemed to be the message of the day. I would have completely missed the canyon if my original plan for the outer loop hadn’t failed.

I walked back out thinking about how many things I wouldn’t have done, or wouldn’t have seen, or people I wouldn’t have met if my original plan had worked. If I wasn’t sent on some detour because of life’s equivalent of a marsh. And don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to imply that every one of life’s setbacks or detours always is always positive in some way or works out in the end. I don’t believe that. There are some things that happen that are simply awful.

But it is also true that some of my best learning has been because of detours. And I got some of my best teachers and mentors because of programs that ended or hospitals that closed. Or jobs I got because others fell through. And some of my best creating has been because we were understaffed and had to invent something new, or the electricity went out, so we had to do everything with flip chart and markers. When the trail disappears, you make your own way. And sometimes that leads to someplace spectacular. Or some place new.

© 2025 Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD

Speaking of new trails—as I have mentioned before I have a new endeavor. I have co-founded the Center for Trauma and Leadership with my colleague Carolyn Murphy. We work with leaders at the intersection of leadership and trauma. We work primarily with people who work in jobs where trauma is routine—first responders, mental health, medicine, journalism, social work to name a few. I know many of you work in trauma related fields so you may be interested in the support we provide. We do programs for leaders and coaches—both in organizations and also open enrollment. If you’d like to connect with the work we are doing there, sign up for our newsletter here.  

What is the home you carry with you?

“I have learned and dismantled all the words in order to draw from them a single word: home. ”

— Mahmoud Darwish

“So we contain that which contains us. ”

— Wendell Berry (Sabbath poem, VI) 1997

I have returned home from nearly four weeks on the road. For the past 22 years (pandemic excepting) I’ve travelled for work and generally spend two weeks a month away, sometimes three. But this binary of home and away doesn’t really describe my experience.

The dictionary definition of home ranges from a house to a family’s place of residence, to being on familiar ground. It is the place one returns to, as in a childhood home, or if you happen to be a salmon, a particular riverbed. Home is a place you are at ease. Or safe – as in safe at home base.

Home is something that is deeply personal and intention doesn’t always create the desired results. You can work hard to create a home for yourself and never quite connect with your surroundings or neighbors. You can be welcomed into a group or a community, but not yet have the capacity to accept or receive what has been offered.

If the definition of home is where we lived more permanently, we can also say it is where we can put down roots. Home is the right environment for our roots to find the nourishment they need.

Today on my hike up a nearby mountain I observed the spring wildflowers each at home at in the ground that suited them best. Each happy at their own altitude. Low down were the lady slippers, tucked under other foliage, peeking out, pink, floating.

A little farther up were the trillium, just past their bloom in a section of oaks at the edge of the road. Trillium don’t just make their homes anywhere— they are exacting in their requirements: they like the acidic oak leaves and the dappled light.  And even with the right conditions they take a long time to grow. In the best case scenario it can take two years for a seed to germinate and 5-7 years for a plant to flower.

And farther up the trail—nestled into the cracks of the granite rocks—a more easy-going flower—a columbine in a mix of yellow and red—making the most of the least amount of soil.

Maybe I’ve always had a loose definition of home. When home isn’t happy in childhood you find home elsewhere—you look for soil for your roots wherever you can. From a young age I learned that the idea of home wasn’t limited to the house you lived in or the people you lived with there. At first, I found it in school and in books. And then I found it in the houses of friends, in the tents and troops at Girl Scout Camp and in the house and family I lived with as an exchange student. Home was the college campus where I spent four years with women who are still some of my best friends, and in the gardens which I’ve created in the houses where I’ve lived. I’ve found it in the many, many homes and families I’ve been welcomed into and in workplaces where I create and work with purpose.

Because I travel at least two weeks a month I often call home the place where I am staying. On one work trip to Cambodia, we left the hotel and work venue in Siem Reap and went away for the weekend to Battambang. I got horribly sick on the trip and endured a 7-hour boat trip back to Siem Reap. Walking into the hotel lobby I exclaimed to my colleague, “I’m so relieved to be home” to which she replied, “Really, you couldn’t be farther away.” But I meant, at that moment, that I was back in a familiar place, with my familiar bed where I could finally lay down.

Today on my way home from my hike I could see the surrounding mountains. I live in a valley that at one time was a glacial lake—it’s like living in the world’s largest bird nest—you can see the edges of it and feel nestled in a vast space. I have often pondered how you carry home with you. Or how you make a nest in your heart.

Growing up with trauma I needed to build a new version of home in my heart. And traveling for work I was tired of feeling exiled from the experience of home. I needed another way to think about home.

So I made nature my home. And now I can find home anywhere. And I can feel found anywhere. If landscape is home and trees and flowers and rivers are family, then I am always home. If I can see trees, or mountains or the horizon—I can breathe. I can relax. I know where I am. I know who I am. I know that I am connected. I know there’s always a way home.

© 2025 Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD

100 Poems: Home Christan Wiman (Editor)

I Want to Sing

I Want to Sing

‘Isn’t all grief a prayer?’

you asked.

I rolled my eyes.

The animal of my grief

is feral and hurt,

and I hide him

under a heavy blanket.

There is no poem.

All the words

I want to say

rise from my heart

and crumble apart

when I open my mouth--

fragments of silence.

I want a voice

as sharp and clear

as the cardinal perched

in the side yard.

I don’t know whether

his song is celebration

or sorrow, but I want

to learn how to

sing those things

with my whole body.

I want to be

the red thing

against a blue sky

breathing in all

of the pain

and filling the silence

with song, whether

grief or love—

singing so loud

I can be heard

above the hammers

fixing the roof

next door.

I want to be the red thing

among green leaves

steady and strong,

though the wind

tosses the branches

back and forth.

I want to sing

a melody so pure

I pierce your heart—

your burden lightened,

suddenly,

by my song.

© 2025 Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD

*A shout out to Cohort 30 of the Teleos Coach Development Program who, this week, each found their clear voice and inspired others, including me, to do the same.