Rachael Maza is an Australian actress, narrator and director. She has acted in the film Radiance and on stage in The Sapphires, and worked as a TV presenter on ABC’s Message Stick and SBS’s ICAM. She is currently working as part of The Black Arm Band. In 2007, she and her sister began co-writing an autobiographically inspired theatre show Sisters of Gelam.

Hi Rachael,

I know this will sound really odd, but I’m writing to you because I am actually you, but a lot older – in fact I’m now 50 … I can hardly remember being you. 13? I know I was in year 8 in Dover Heights High School, an all-girls school in the eastern suburbs of Sydney whose claim to fame was that Ita Buttrose and Renée Geyer went there. I remember my best friends: Renee, the Jewish redhead with braces, and Naomi, who lived in the same street – Stafford St Paddington – and was your handball/tomboy buddy. And her house was always riddled with mangy cats! I know you quite enjoy school. You’re actually quite good at most subjects including Maths, Science and Music.

Although you have a couple of good friends, you’re really quite shy … You won’t always be shy! And if it’s any consolation, those bloody big buck front teeth of yours (one with the big white mark) won’t always be the bane of your existence – in fact, even though you never get braces they sort of sort themselves out. Also you finally get the white one capped and eventually you never even think about your teeth at all … in fact, you even get compliments about how good your teeth are. How funny is that!

I laugh when I think about that time some girls threatened to bash you up – inviting you to meet them at the basketball court after school – but they didn’t show. I admire that about you: you really were strong in your principles, and always quick to defend others who were being treated unfairly. This didn’t go unnoticed. Many years later a woman came up to me. She introduced herself to me saying we went to school together. I looked hard and thought maybe I recognised her, but really I didn’t. She said, ‘I remember you because you were one of the only ones who talked to me even though I was fat.’ So I guess your sense of fairness and equality made some people’s lives along the way a little easier.

One thing I would like to say to you, though, is, ‘I know you think of yourself as indistinct, even invisible, but trust me – you’re not!’ I look back at photos of you and you’re such a beautiful young woman, maybe a little gangly, but with a beautiful smile and heart, and I wish you could know that now, back then … I wish you could enjoy your beauty, your warmth, your generosity, your humanity, and know how you inspire this in others. In fact I wish you could sit with me now and look back at all these photos and laugh with me … and see the absurdity of it all. I could tell you of all the wonderful adventures you will have, how you will have little tastes of love, little tastes of a career, but actually you will always be the same you that even 40 years later is not looking for the end goal, not aiming for this thing called success.

In fact you will continue to take life as it comes, each adventure as it unfolds, always open to what comes next, never staying in any one thing for too long … (That’s not entirely true – this last job has lasted over seven years, which, let me tell you, is a world record!) But you will mostly always be happy!

One thing to note, though – the secret to your happiness is keeping healthy and being in and amongst people. Your hardest times will be when you let your health go down and lose touch with the people who matter to you. But I guess you can only learn this for yourself and maybe even that was a valuable lesson you will need to have.

Anyway, have a great life, I know you will. The biggest thing for you to remember is to love the you that you are at any given moment. This will take you a long time to learn, but maybe you can get there a little quicker than I did … Because at the end of the day – it’s all codswallop anyway – life is what you are living right now and nothing else, so enjoy it now!

Also, I just want you to know how much I love you.

Big hugs,

Rachael