I think every girl at one point in their life comes to the realization that they’ve become like their mother. Most people meet this realization, however, with much hesitation and anguish. Many resent the idea of becoming like their mothers. While I’m only 18, I realize I have become my mother and wish I was even more so. This is for you, Mom. Thank you for all the things you passed to me, but especially for all the things you didn’t.

I’ve become my mother and I am so thankful. Thank you for teaching me, especially how to be humble.

Thank you for teaching me to take everything with a grain of salt, and not to read into the situation too much (even when you really want to). I’ll always be grateful that you made me a fighter instead of a follower. Thank you for teaching me to go after my dreams, and for never questioning your daughter’s future plans, especially as a broadcast major. Thank you for letting me know that if these plans don’t end up working out, you’ll support me every step of the way.

Me, my brother, and my mom

Thank you for being my friend when I need it, but always being my mom (you know what I mean). Thank you for proofreading every paper, for making me work hard, and telling me to stop worrying about my grades so much.

Mom, I wish I could have your sense of humor. I strive every single day to carry myself with the confidence that you do. I love that you’re always the life of the party, and I love that you know how to have fun.

I wish I could have your knack for reading people, and wish I could cook like you. You’ll never understand how highly I think of you, and how much I wish to be just like you, even though I already am somewhat.

I am so incredibly grateful to have had such an amazing mother, friend, therapist, and confidant in my life, and I owe it all to her.

While this entire post may seem cliché, and everyone may swear their mom is the best, I know that my mom and I have something uniquely special that absolutely cannot be replaced.

So, Mom, I’m sorry I’m so messy. I’m sorry that I can be a little too feisty, and that I am incredibly stubborn. You always know when I’m hungry, and thanks for always having snacks ready when I am. I may be an adult know, but I for sure don’t know what I’m doing, and will forever need you around. Thank you for these things, and for everything else that I could not even manage to write into this post.

They always say “try to give your kids more than your parents gave to you.” Every time me and my brother hear this, we laugh because we know that will never be possible for us when we have children someday. I only hope one day when I become a mother I can be half the person that you are, and I am proud to say that I’ve become anything like my mom.

Thanks for being my person, Mom. Like you always told us when we were little, “I love you forever, I’ll like you for always, as long as I’m living, your mom I will be.”

(Written by Emmy Jewell)

Positivity is a strange concept.

It can be elusive and hard to find, but it has the power to move mountains. The best part about positivity is that it is easy to find if you know where to look for it.

At this point it is a broken record, all of the quotes about happiness, about how confidence comes from within, and the concept that your thoughts define you. Though we hear them all the time, we rarely implement these sayings and adopt them as personal mottos. That being said, these clichés dictate my mindset.

I am a 20-year-old college girl navigating life and homework one day at a time. However, in addition to the constant stresses of being a college student, I work to support myself. When I am at school, I am completely self-sufficient, paying for everything that I need from books to shampoo.

I come from a single parent household that resembles the Gilmore Girls (although substitute their various gentleman callers for pets). As a result, I work as many hours as I possibly can.

I often have peers ask “Why do you work so much?” or “How do you get it all done?” and I occasionally hear statements such as, “I could never do what you do” or even, “You seem so okay with everything you have to do.” When sharing my story, people are most surprised by my lack of negativity regarding my situation, but this is purposeful.

When I was little, my dad left my mom and me, and was re-married roughly a year later.

Unfortunately, around the same time, my grandmother decided to walk away from my mom and me as well. My mom decided to move us to Minnesota so I could be around my aunt, uncle, and cousins, who my grandmother had cut off as well.

My relationship with my dad growing up was somewhat nonexistent, which was partially his fault, partially because my step-mother resented my existence, and partially because he moved back home to England.

Summers spent with him and my step-mom and half sister were generally pretty miserable. My dad was always preoccupied with his job and my step-mom was constantly criticizing how my mother (who I was, and still am, fiercely defensive of) was raising me, combined with some additional commentary on my looks or how my presence was an inconvenience. Needless to say, I preferred my mom, and even to this day she remains my favorite person.

Following my dad and step-mom’s divorce, my dad and I have attempted to repair some of the broken bridges. But this has presented challenges of its own.

So on any given day, you can assume I am rushing off to work, or returning home from work to do homework, or balancing relationships between my dad and sister, or missing my mom, all in the state where it all began. As overwhelming as it can be, especially now that I see my dad more often, I rarely believe that my life warrants the comments I get from my peers.

Though I have moments of feeling down, they are not frequent.

This is because while growing up, my mom stressed that dwelling on the negative things will only make them seem like bigger problems than they are. She instilled in me the importance of positivity.

My mom and I are both Christians and she often quotes Philippians 4:8 which states, “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”

There are many bible verses that stress that what you think is what you become. If you seek out the bright side or silver linings in any negative situation, you start to change your outlook on life. Do this enough, and soon you’ll find that it becomes easier to see the good things that are abundant in your life.

Even while writing this, I recognize that my life could be so much worse. I have gained so much from my life experiences, including an amazing relationship with my mom, a strong work ethic, and an understanding that life is too short to be unhappy.

Changing your mindset can be incredibly difficult, because we seem to be hardwired to have pity parties on a daily basis. But you have to start with reminding yourself that there is nothing that you can’t handle.

We are all a lot stronger than we think, we just have to tap into more confidence. Positivity comes from within and you can’t wait for others to bring happiness into your life.

In my opinion, the best way to do this is to start counting your blessings everyday. Having a good hair day? Getting a college education? Having someone in your life who cares about your well-being? Watching an episode of your favorite show on Netflix? These are all things to be happy about. Much like every cliché in the book, the small things are just as meaningful and important as the larger scale things.

Instead of focusing on what is going wrong in your life, think about positive outcomes for the situation you are dealing with. By dwelling on the hardship of it all you allow the situation to get the better of you. One of the best quotes I have found is by Henry Ford, who says, “Whether you think you can, or you can’t – either way you’re right.”

Believing in yourself and thinking positively can be life changing. Sooner or later that positivity that has the ability to move mountains translates into the ability for you to move mountains, or at the very least face any obstacle that comes your way.

(Written by Anonymous)

As most people will tell you, high school is not easy.

I went to a small, all-girls, private school in Greenwich, CT, which was my own personal version of hell. I was out of place in so many ways when I started 9th grade. These girls bought backpacks worth hundreds of dollars, while I bought mine for $20 at Target.

They were all so beautiful. The majority looked like Barbie dolls: tall with straight, silky hair, skinny and radiating with confidence. Meanwhile, I was tiny with thin, frizzy hair, quiet, and meek. Keep in mind, there were a few special butterflies like myself, but I stand by the fact that most girls were outwardly flawless.

Still, I tried to keep positive and enjoy my experience for what it was.

However, when you’re trying to discover your identity, it doesn’t help when you’re surrounded by women who show you everything that you are not. My meager confidence dwindled, and I started to keep my head down. I tried to be friends with some of the kinder girls, and that worked out for a while.

I got particularly close to one girl, Anna, and we became best friends. She had severe depression and anxiety and needed me there to help her and be there for her; a role that I was more than happy to take on.

When Anna’s troubles got too much for her in 12th grade, she decided to transfer to a high school in a different state.

I was left alone.

I thought that some of the other girls we would hang out with might reach out to me, given how devastated I was by Anna leaving. But instead, they took her transfer as an opportunity to stop hanging out with me once and for all. As it turns out, they only tolerated me because they had been friends with Anna many years before I arrived.

I spent the remainder of my senior year alone, surrounded by a sea of girls who acted like I was invisible. By the time graduation came about, I was beyond relieved to never have to step foot in those halls again.

I left immediately after graduation to find work at a beach town in Long Island three hours away so I would not have to run into anyone I knew. I left high school with a mistrust of females my age that reached down to my core.

I would avoid other girls at all cost, for fear of being shunned.

I hated how the girls in high school made me feel, and that hatred generalized itself to include anyone who reminded me of them. My mother, who had always been an amazing supporter for me, decided that I needed to overcome my fear of women before entering college, and I think a part of me agreed with her.

As a graduation present, she wanted to sign us up for a surf trip in Nicaragua. The catch? It was ONLY girls.

I have loved surfing since I was little and the idea of a surf trip sounded incredible to me, but I did not want to go.

The idea of spending a week with only women terrified me. After much debate, I decided that I could not miss out on an opportunity to surf in a country on my bucket list, and I really was hoping that my least favorite gender would redeem themselves.

The day my mom and I arrived at the surf camp, we were greeted by the women who ran the camp, who were (to my delight!) two beautiful, tall blonde women, just a few years older than me. I couldn’t swallow my disdain.

We met the other women in the program: another mother-daughter pair and the other female surf instructors. The instructors explained to us that each day, we would go to a beach and the instructors would take us into the ocean and coach us to improve.

Being already proficient at surfing, I assumed that I could just go out into the water and surf alone and would not have to interact with the others. With that thought in mind, I slept peacefully that night.

As the week went on, I found that all of the women in the program were individually inspiring. The two blonde women, Noelani and Lauren, were encouraging and supportive. They helped me improve my surfing, and I found myself wanting to spend time with them.

As it turns out, Noelani didn’t like the people she went to college with and did not enjoy her experience there. She showed me that it was okay that I didn’t fit in during high school and made me realize that there was much more to come.

Halfway through the trip, tragedy struck at home.

One of my sister’s friends was killed in a boating accident. My mom and I were shocked and devastated. Noelani, originally from Hawaii, showed us how to make leis out of flowers to celebrate her life rather than mourn her death. Together, we released the leis into the ocean and prayed for her soul.

Surfing was something that was always extremely important to me, but until this trip, my mom had never stood up on a surfboard. Noelani and Lauren brought my mom and I closer as they helped her reach her goal. When my mom first stood up on the board, I was glowing with pride and felt like my mom was proud of me.

All of the mother-daughter pairs at the surf camp had different qualities. The mother, Shelly, seemed hard and strict at first, but throughout the experience she softened.

The daughter, Maya, was about 12 years old and loved to read. She was tiny with short dark hair, and I couldn’t help but be reminded of myself when I was her age. She would tell me about her stories, and I would tell her about mine. I could tell how much she looked up to me.

On the final day of the trip, Noelani asked me if I had reached the goal I set for myself on the first day: to master dropping in on steep waves. While I did reach this goal, I admitted to myself and Noelani that I had also reached a different goal: to love myself for who I was.

My friendships with these women made me realize that my problem wasn’t with women, it was with myself. People are going to act how they are going to act, and there is nothing I can do about that. What I can do is not let others dictate my self confidence.

It has been a year and a half since that surf trip, and ever since then, I remember that I choose my own worth. I choose what impact I am going to make. I choose.