Anna M. Stratulat

You have to chase the things that ignite you. You have to do the things that bring you joy. You have to surround yourself with the people who bring you back home to yourself, with the people who respect you and embrace you in ways that make you feel like you are worthy and accepted and loved. You have to do the work to heal yourself, even when it hurts – especially when it hurts, so that you do not continue to approach your life within the boundary of what is heavy within you. You have to put yourself out there, and you cannot worry about what other people think, you cannot rob yourself of experience or happiness or inspiration because you are scared of how you will be perceived. You have to be unapologetic in the way that you exist here. You have to believe that your ideas, and your hope, and your being, deserve to take up space. You have to believe that you have purpose.

Because our existence is finite. And as hard as that is to understand, as hard as that can be to connect with, from time to time remind yourself that in the most human way we are all living on borrowed time.