one of these days it's gonna be right soon, you'll find your legs and go and stay gone

In just over a week I will be turning 21!  It is impossibly exciting and scary all together. Although this summer has been terrible for the most part, I am excited to make 21 my best year yet.  Like most 20-somethings, I am at that suffocating in-between place in life.  Having just graduated from college, I took the summer off.  I had planned on travelling Europe and having adventures, but painful family matters kept pushing my plans farther and farther from sight.  I won't let that hold me down, though!  Everything happens for a reason, and even though that reason is often hard to understand in the moment, it is important to have faith.  You must have faith, girls!

So in the greatest leap of faith, I will be jumping out of a plane at 9,000 ft for my birthday!  After that, who knows what will happen!  It is taking immense strength at this point in my life to remain true to the person I am with the values I have. Shouldn't I be like everyone else? Go out? Party? Be in a relationship? Shouldn't I want what everyone else seems to want? Money? Security? Comfort?  The shoulds are always scrambling around my head, confusing me.  Fight back against them, my dears!  Live outside the norm! Do something exciting and different! Those that try to put you down for it are simply unhappy with their own un-lived lives.

It's funny. I'm in my 20's and I feel like I should be this grown up, adult-like person already! Society tricks you in to thinking you need to be a certain way by a certain age.  But we are still babies!  If not now, then when?  Why do we feel we need permission to live?

So stop asking for permission from others and give it to yourself!