A+ Members! A Question: What Advice Would You Give Your Tween Self?

Birthdays are a great (terrible?) time for self-reflection — and what better occasion to mentally travel through time back to being a tween than Autostraddle’s 12th birthday which is on March 9?!

So, A+ friends, we’re asking: what advice would you give your 12-year-old self from your current vantage point?

And do you want to share that advice with other A+ members? Who knows? Maybe we’ll all have a very cathartic b-day situation. The advice will publish in an A+ post on March 9, Autostraddle’s 12th Birthday!

Submit your advice here. Please get your advice in before the morning of Monday March 8! That way it can be included the following day.

A stock photo of a young boy playing with a hatchet in the woods

This photo gives me the energy of my nonbinary bisexual tween self who was stressed about not understanding all of the above, just trying to figure things out in the woods. Also, I loved the book HATCHET as a tween so there’s that. (Stock photo model not associated or affiliated with Autostraddle.)

Get that advice in right here.

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Nico

Nico Hall is a Team Writer for Autostraddle (formerly Autostraddle's A+ and Fundraising Director and For Them's Membership and Editorial Ops person.) They write nonfiction both creative — and the more straightforward variety, too, as well as fiction. They are currently at work on a secret longform project. Nico is also haunted. You can find them on Twitter and Instagram. Here's their website, too.

Nico has written 238 articles for us.

8 Comments

  1. Oh wow. I’ve been pacing around my home office, muttering advice to my 12 year old self for like 30 minutes. Now all I have to do it write it down and submit it.

  2. “Keep doing what you’re doing, kid.” Also, there’s a reason you don’t mind “giving” your boyfriend to a friend who likes him more, but that’s not really how relationships work. 😂

  3. In 1967 I would tell myself that in 47 years it will turn out people like me DO exist, so when the 6th grade girls are outraged by me wearing a skirt, I should channel a not born Julia Serrano and tell them “you do you, I’ll do me” – which wasn’t a thing back then. Also not to let the bullies turn me into a doormat. And that my mother was indeed worth emulating but to understand that she was able to “SEE” farther than her mother, but I would see farther. Mostly, to tell myself that when I come out in 2014, she will say “I don’t understand it, but you’re my kid and I love you”. I wouldn’t say “things get better”, because that’s debatable.

  5. Oh gosh, I was so clueless and awkward at 12. My daughter is turning 12 this year and she’s already so much cooler than I ever was (but of course she doesn’t believe that).

  6. Your weirdness is your superpower! You’re really freaking smart, and equally emotionally wise.
    Keep journaling and reading. Get outside a little more.
    Making a mistake doesn’t mean you ARE a mistake. Make good, honest mistakes, and make better mistakes next time.
    All those things you think you’re “bad” at? You’re not. Keep doing what feels joyful!
    Other people don’t have all the answers. Trust your own self first.

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