By giving meaning to hardship through words, you can structure a life around your values, your strengths, and your intentions. You get to choose how you show up. I created these affirmations to help us fully inhabit ourselves and our more difficult experiences, so we can tell a story of strength and perseverance.

When we carry the people we've loved in our hearts, in our conversations, and into the work we do and the actions we take, we bring them forward and allow them to not only be an element in our lives still, but to make an impact. In that same way, they bring us forward, toward them. We do this thing, together. We rebuild, together.

Over a decade after losing my brother to suicide, I still wonder “Why him?” and grieve for what could have been. We need to be allowed those times, too. We need to say “Let me be angry.” “Let me have this pain.” “Let me find my way through it.” We must be allowed to be real and human. There is always work to be done.

Courage is the virtue that drives us to follow through with our intentions & to embody all the virtues we identify with. Courage is many things: showing up for difficult discussions, choosing vulnerability over comfort, forgiving ourselves & each other. Together, we can practice courage in small ways. It's how we grow.

When I was in my lowest place, that was sacred ground. Thinking about how desolate I felt being in that place, it reminds me that I’m a much stronger version of myself only because of the weakness I’ve felt. May these words of strength help you see that you, too, can bloom from nearly anything.

You’ve loved, and you’ve lost. You have carried what couldn’t be fixed. You’re still learning the meaning of forgiveness. You're in good company here. Which leads me to share this poem with you, called "The Unbroken." That's how I like to think of you and I.