A welcome back letter to myself and to you.

I've been doing a lot of thinking about what it means to be free.  I used to think freedom meant moving up to a later curfew, having a locker instead of an elementary school desk, getting my license so I could drive for as long and as far as I wanted while playing DJ to my naive teenage thoughts, moving out on my own and drinking coffee like an adult in the morning, being in a relationship, being single, being able to jump down any road at any time or say yes to adventures th

When I was younger, I used to dream of what my life might look like at 23.  I thought ' by then I will be married with my first child and killing it as a boss lady.  I'll be a teacher, have five dogs and Crayola markers in every existing colour '... being that I was seven.  Skip forward to today, writing this the day before my 24th birthday,  I can say with absolute certainty that 23 was everything I hoped for and nothing I expected.    No, I'm not married, nor do I have any

Letting go is the same thing as holding on.  Letting go of the way you thought things should go, the person you thought someone would be, the way you pictured your life at this age, the idea of a memory you play in your mind a million times just wishing to go back to it's sweet simplicity; we cling to these thoughts like oxygen to breathe and we tell ourselves - This is safe.  This is right.  This is the only way things would be okay. Letting go is the same thing as holding o