• What Everyone Ought to Know About Second Chances

    Back in my junior high years, there was a program called ZAP which means “zeros aren’t permitted”.  When the program was first introduced, the school showed a video.  This video gave off the impression to a, at the time, a 12-year-old girl that if you got any zeros in school that you would go to prison.  This terrified me.  I have never been a good student and I thought that something so little as a zero on an assignment meaning that I would go to prison was just something that was too realistic for me.  Thankfully, going to prison over a zero was not a thing but back then I…

  • Am I Committed to Change?

    I remember the first time I lost a friend. She lived right down the street from me and even though she was weird, I remember her well. Her hair looked like mine. In the sun, it shined a bit blonde but the red can still be seen even on the brightest of days. Her teeth were a bit cooked like her personality, but she had the best imagination possible. We would make so many worlds in our heads. The sad part is that I don’t remember these stories, I just remember her. I remember her brother showing me what had been done with his teeth, I remember her basement where…

  • Have Hope Like a Dreamer

    I am a dreamer. Everyday I wake up and I start to daydream about life and where I am headed, only to be pulled back by reality and realize that some of those things may not happen.   “I want to be an adventurer,” I say. I want to climb up a mountain, fight a bear, and come out of the fight unscathed. Or I want to be on Broadway and have an audience cheer me on.  I could even be pirate fighting with swords and swinging on a rope to another boat and take their treasure, and be known as the best woman pirate ever.    These are great and…

  • A Desire To Change

    Does Gratitude work? I feel like that is one question that a lot of people, including me ask.  It’s almost like we don’t see anything more but something on our to-do list.   I have been guilty of doing this.  I told you all during my second week that I have never seen it more than that.  Now, as we end gratitude, I can’t help thinking that I didn’t do all that I could to learn from this.   I have struggled as many people have, but I kept on seeing gratitude as something that we need to constantly have on our list, and I’m not a fan of lists.  When I…