Where your passion lingers..

By definition passion is a strong and barely controllable emotion. Passion is when you put more energy into something than is required. People often tell me that they are envious about how passionate I am, but when you really look at what passion is— everybody has it in them.  Harriet Tubman said it best, “Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.”

For those who have yet to read the book I Am That Girl that Alexis wrote—do it, especially if you are struggling to find your passions in life. We all imagine having that dream job, the kind of hobbies that make us feel happy and fulfilled, and to feel comfortable in our own skin. These things come from a place inside of you where your passion lingers—find it.

My passion consumes me. Whenever I have a free minute I find myself writing, working on IATG things, reading, business planning. These are the things that I care about, the things that give me energy, the things that I need to plan my life around. Often times I find myself thinking too deeply about how to make this happen. I always feel like I need to have the answers—need to know how to get from A to B in the most effective way. Life doesn’t work that way though. Life is full of surprises and obstacles and it is impossible to predict every little thing along the way. I have to push my perfectionist tendencies aside and put positive thoughts out there and trust that my hard work will get me where I need to be. That is when I am truly consumed by my passions. 

#heartclaps

This weekend is the first time that I ever really believed that it truly is okay not to be okay. I have never been so emotionally drained and sleep deprived—and I am so happy about both of those things because I experienced the best few days of my life!

This weekend also taught me that I no longer have the energy for meaningless friendships, forced interactions, and negative conversations. The people that you surround yourself with are a direct reflection of yourself and you deserve to be around people who feed you energy and encourage your passions. To be completely honest, I was so nervous to spend the weekend with a bunch of “strangers” and even more so was surprised that I left there loving every single one of them. I can honestly say that these girls will be my forever friends. We know each other on a more intimate level than most people ever do and I trust them—huge coming from a girl riddled with trust issues.  

I learned that it is okay to show your feelings and to never ever apologize for them—this goes for guys & girls. That all any of us really wants is to be accepted for all of our faults and that crying doesn’t make you weak—in fact it shows your strength. That you own everything that has ever happened to you and it is okay to share your stories. My entire life I have tried to hold my feelings in to the point that I often make myself sick. I have refrained from sharing things that were happening in my life on so many occasions because I didn’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings. I didn’t cry. I still don’t cry much, but I’m really working on that.

I have no way to put my feelings into words about how much the I Am That Girl Retreat meant to me, but I do know that it changed my world—all of our worlds. Thank you to every single person who helped make this possible. Thank you to those who donated & shared my campaign. Thank you to the IATG team. Thank you to Jack, Audrey, & Sequoia for capturing our stories. Thank you to the IATG Board for mentoring us. Thank you to all of the incredible sponsors including GoPro, erincondren.com, & Dormify.

It is because of you that I commit to being authentic, because only then will I truly love myself.

“I fell in love with her courage, her sincerity & her flaming self respect. And it’s these things I’d believe in even if the whole world indulged in wild suspicions that she wasn’t all she should be.” – F. Scoot Fitzgerald

Strange is relative...

Every kid learns the phrase “never speak to strangers”—and for good reason. There is a lot of bad in the world, so much that parents try to shelter their children from the unknown in order to keep them safe. Personally, my mom reminded me of these words every time I left the house when I was young, but my dad had a different take on things.

He had a very rough childhood, to say the least. He grew up on the streets and was involved in gang activity at the all too young age of twelve. The “strangers” on the streets became his family. When my brother and I were growing up he warned us of all of the dangers that we might face in the world, but he also taught us to always give people a chance to prove their worth. My father is to this day one of the most accepting people I know—and because of this I am able to make friends/connections everywhere I go.

 

Being accepting of all types of people does not mean that you have to like them or understand them—it just means keeping an open mind & trying to understand their story. I visited home recently and my mom said “you never were very good at avoiding strangers, but it works for you.”  She said this because I recently got the opportunity to meet my favorite hip hop artist, Logic, all because of a “stranger” who read my blog. The stranger was Logic himself and he happened to stumble across a post I wrote about our similar childhoods & how I admired him for rapping about the positive sides of life and the fact that he doesn’t have lyrics that are vulgar towards women like the majority of rappers.

Others from his music label, Visionary Music Group, stumbled onto my blog after this and connected with me as well & I became good friends with a few of them. I have since had the opportunity to meet the majority of those involved with VMG and the music world in general all because I tried to get to know a “stranger”.

Strange is a relative word, much like normal.

Photo credit: Nick Mahar

If the world was blind...

I am often hesitant to write what is truly on my mind. Not because I am afraid to share my stories—rather I am afraid of how others will perceive them. I was struggling with this the other day when it hit me…

I own everything that has happened to me—I own my stories. If people wanted me to only write positive things, they should have behaved better.

This thought was sparked by an anonymous quote that I stumbled upon. It asked, “If the world was blind how many people would you impress?”

I am the daughter of a violent offender—a statement that makes most people shutter. The thing that people don’t understand is that this statement does not define who I am as a person, nor does it define my father. I understand that more often than not children follow in their parents’ footsteps; however, mine have always encouraged me to follow my own path & to learn from their mistakes.

We are all so quick to judge every book by its cover, there is a reason those words are considered to be “cliché”. The trick is to look a little deeper. If more people did then they might understand that sure, I may be the daughter of an ex-con, but I am also a sister, a girlfriend, a college graduate, a former collegiate student body president, a dreamer—a girl who chose to define herself.

If the world was blind, would people still see your beauty?

Why I love QuESt.

Photo by: @jbenavente_ 

If you’ve ever met me or read my blog then it is pretty obvious I am a complete hip hop head. I’ve talked about my all-time favorite songs & about some of my personal story that relates to them BUT I rarely mention individual rappers. This kid is different though, & he definitely deserves a shout-out.

So everyone knows that I am obsessed with Logic’s music, but in a roundabout way, that lead me to meeting QuESt. A few years back I read about him on a few different hip hop blogs & listened to his song Everybody Has A Story (to see the exact blog post, click here). I was impressed with the message behind the song and continued to see him all over the blogs for a while, but then it slowed down. That happens a lot in hip hop, especially underground hip hop, so I didn’t really think anything of it. But then, QuESt opened for Logic on the Welcome To Forever tour. This caught me by surprise because I hadn’t heard anything from him in a couple years. And then Visionary Music Group signed him Summer 2013 and I began to see more and more.

In January, Logic read my blog for the first time which then lead to other VMG members reading it as well, including QuESt’s manager, Dino (shout-out @rhymestyle). We talked about music and I got the opportunity to hear some of QuESt’s newest project. When I visited family back home in California, I was able to meet both QuESt and Dino. We talked about our favorite hip hop artists, albums, songs, etc. and agreed that our favorites revolved around the stories behind the words. Throughout our conversations it was very clear that everything that QuESt raps about comes from real life experiences. He would be telling me a story & one of his songs would instantly pop into my head—they are literally the soundtrack of his life.

He may not know good coffee (sorry I had to), but he sure as hell knows music. If you love hip hop, you’ll love QuESt. To see his official twitter page click here.

Not just a women's movement.

People often ask me why I Am That Girl is important to me. This is why.

Four facts from my friend Amanda’s gender study course at Boise State today:

• Women are a more valuable illegal trade commodity than drugs or firearms because they can be sold up to 15 times a day, 365 days a year, for the rest of their lives. 
• There are 107 million females missing from the world today.
• Sex trafficking starts with girls as young as eight years old through brothels & forced marriages.
• Despite regulations in western nations, in some cases, sex tours from the US to the Third World are offered as means by which lonely men can find a mate.

I Am That Girl is a global movement that empowers girls to be the best version of themselves. It is a family—a community of strong, beautiful, and inspiring young women. It is a form of healthy media. Above all else, it is a safe place to sit and talk about real stuff.

This is one of those real things.

People have a tendency to turn their shoulder to things that they don’t understand. For example, a significant amount of people have never heard of the Holocaust or don’t even believe that it ever happened.  Exact numbers will never be known, but an estimated eleven million people died as a direct result of the tragedy.

How can eleven million people die and the world not know about it? I mean, that is a huge number.

Okay, so let’s go back to the beginning. How can there possibly be 107 million missing females in the world?

Many Americans believe that this is a distant problem to them; however, sex trafficking is happening in our own back yard. According to DoSomething.org, between 14,500 and 17,500 people are trafficked into the US every year. The International Labour Organization estimates that females represent the largest share of victims.

So what is the point of this post (or rant if you’d rather)? I just want people to be informed. I truly believe that awareness is the first step in eradicating sex trafficking. Females should never be treated as a commodity.

Reference: 

11 Facts About Human Trafficking (n.d.). In DoSomething.org. Retrieved April 17, 2014

Light my soul on fire.

My father has been in and out of jail/prison my entire life and as a result I am all too familiar with barbed wire, electric fences, cinderblock walls, and security checkpoints. By the time I was eleven I had visited the courthouse more times than the average person ever will. 

Lately, my father’s past has come up a lot in regard to my own life. People are quick to judge me because of my experiences when I was a child. But the thing is, that’s never really been my life—not by choice anyway. However, those struggles became the fuel that lit a passionate fire within me. 

Recently, I was having a conversation with three friends on a warm sandy beach about how attitude and determination make all the difference in life. Each one of us came from completely different backgrounds, but we all made the same decision to live a better life than that in which society predicted for us. One simple commonality in regard to our attitudes about life literally paved the path for one of the most inspiring friendships.

It is hard to come alive when your critics are constantly trying to break you down, but the world needs more people like you. More people who aren’t afraid to face their fears and defy statistics. It took me a long time to figure this out.

Tim Ferriss said it best, "If you are insecure, guess what? The rest of the world is too. Do not overestimate the competition and underestimate yourself. You are better than you think."

After all, once you have accepted your flaws no one can use them against you.