A boy I once dated told me he wanted to be a lawyer because his dad was a lawyer, and it seemed like the right thing to do. When I told him I wanted to be a writer because it seemed like the ONLY thing to do, he told me writing was not a legitimate profession. I decided, while he fondly admired his parents’ law degrees and sipped mint juleps, that I would write him up and down, backward and forward, inside and out, until he had no choice but to eat his own words for breakfast. That boy soon became nothing more than a few lines in this little love story…And a lawyer. It was then I realized I was never cut out to be the girl who gets the guy at the end of the romance novel. In fact, Nicholas Sparks didn’t write a single love story with me in mind. Nicolas Sparks wrote me out of all his stupid love stories the minute I learned how to pick up my pen and write the …

Occasionally it happens. I come face to face, or screen to screen, with one of them. Haters. I’m not talking about challengers. Anyone who’s down to get in the ring and have a mutually beneficial, respectful, and critical discussion about creative work is welcome in my corner, whether we agree or not. That’s my JAM. But giving into haters means making withdrawals from my own bank. And let me tell you something, I HATE spending my money. You can imagine how I feel about wasting my emotional currency on trolls. Have I accepted that there are people who roll their eyes at what I do? Sure. Relentless learning and sharing in the name of self-improvement and personal discovery isn’t for everyone. Some people are cool with coasting. But will I spend any fragment of time past this blog post worrying about what they think? Nope. Do their perceptions of my work ethic play any role in forming my reality? Abso. lutely. not. One of the greatest lessons I’ve learned so far is that I don’t …

A note before I dive in: As a writer (and a white person) with a creative outlet and some semblance of an audience, I will never be someone who sits on the sidelines. This blog is a place where all races, religions, sexualities, and genders are welcome and respected. This is a place where I will support and fight for these same groups, and their rights, continuously. If that bothers you, you know where the X is. Feel free to click it. If you align  yourself with racism, I don’t want your page views, or your political ones.  There are certain moments in history you hope will never be repeated, moments you hope you never live to see or experience. Reality shattering, soul shifting, mind rocking, heartbreaking moments you prayed would never come. Watching white supremacists march down the streets with conviction in their eyes, hatred in their hearts, and fire in their hands is one of those moments. The Vice documentary left me in a sloppy mess at my desk. Each time I watched …

I’ve always loved discovering other people’s scars, secretly tucked beneath collars and cuffs. I love fingers delicately dancing over calloused strips of discolored skin. A chin gash. A drunk mistake. A skinned knee. A tree climb break. Nobody makes it through life unscathed. But have you ever noticed we’ll brag about hitting every branch on the way down before we’ve confronted why we climbed that damn tree to begin with? What were we trying to find up there? Or what were we leaving behind down below? Our physical scars are merely poof that we survived something greater than the initial fall. So we defend our leftover battle wounds and put our healed up bodies on display like battered trophies. We rarely discuss our emotional scars, giving little credit to the intelligence it takes to overcome the internal trauma. We convince ourselves and others that our visible scars make us braver, stronger, and in the same breath, deny that the area is still a little tender. That we’re still a little broken. But we’re all a …

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the last year, it’s that in most situations, you’ll stumble upon your biggest breakthroughs just beyond what you think you can stand. Endurance is a magnificent thing. If we choose to actively pursue it, our capacity to bounce back stronger after emotional trauma is a nod to how remarkable the human spirit is. I think we assume we can’t do something simply because it looks scary, because it hurts, or because it seems difficult. To gain access to that type of endurance, you have to surrender to the growth it lends itself to. That type of growth takes hard work and heart work,. There are no shortcuts. Which leads me to the piece you’re now reading. Publishing this is well-beyond the edge of my comfort zone. I’m taking a big step here. I’ve avoided for this piece for an entire week. I could sit here and say I don’t know why, but I do. Because, hello! It’s scary. It hurts. It’s difficult. It doesn’t mean I haven’t moved …

We talk so often about practicing self-love, which I believe is the greatest gift we can give ourselves. But if we’re being real (which we always are here) loving any person, all the time, including ourselves, is hard. Sometimes, you can’t. Sometimes you’re not equipped to love yourself that deeply at the drop of the hat. Loving yourself that deeply in every moment is exhausting. Sometimes, it’s enough to simply like ourselves. Let’s start there. Let’s start with thinking about our best qualities, and projecting that energy out into the world. Because I’ll tell you something. I am OVER the mindset that we are all supposed to sort of hate ourselves, using qualifiers to sheepishly admit our few redeeming qualities. Let’s start with finding reasons from within to be confident instead of looking to others for validation and acceptance. Let’s look in the mirror and let go of that one glaring flaw in favor of appreciating all the things the universe got right in assembling us. And in the name of not being the BIGGEST …

  From grade school through college, I grew up playing an array of team sports, from soccer, to track, to volleyball. The first team sport that really grabbed me was basketball. There was something uniquely exhilarating about sprinting up and down the court, facing off against someone of similar-ish stature, and often times having to root my feet and use my body as a human shield. This, of course, was done all in the name of stopping the other humans wearing the different colored jerseys from getting a little orange bouncy ball into my team’s basket. The camaraderie, the support, the blood, sweat, tears, the gnawing of mouth guards in between whistles and referee sign language, the green gatorade bottles, the sound of the buzzer, the last second shot. I loved it all. One of my most vivid memories from the basketball days of my youth is standing at the free throw line for hours at a time. A moment of uninterrupted silence in a hushed gymnasium, just me and the basket. My free throw …