My mom’s birthday has always fallen on spring break for my entire life. Every year, we would have a celebration with birthday cake and my grandparents would cook her jumbo fried shrimp. I vividly remember eating birthday cake for breakfast the morning after my mom’s birthday. She would say “there’s no rules on spring break” and cake for breakfast it was. My mom didn’t (and probably still doesn’t know) how much these little reminders of having cake for breakfast influenced me giving myself grace. I say to myself probably at least once a day “there’s no rules.” Sometimes this is to justify having mac and cheese for the 3rd time that week, or sometimes it’s to let myself have a complete breakdown when I least expected it. Either way, there is no manual on how to grow and heal, on your own, at 23. 

I hear all the time people giving themselves rules that really make no sense to me. At work the other day a woman told me that since she had bread on her sandwich she couldn’t have french fries. Unstandable if you are trying to lose weight, and I am by no means saying that we should not have our boundaries *que my last blog.* But now the real question is who is setting these boundaries? Are you setting the boundaries because you would like to live a healthier lifestyle? Or is instagram setting the boundaries because your body does not look like the women who get the most likes? Although this models a relationship with food it is applicable to rules in all settings of our lives. My mom modeling breaking the societal “rules” for something that brought happiness and did not hurt anyone demonstrated to me that I have control over the rules on what makes me happy. I have control on how I choose to heal. 

I try to practice giving others grace in hard situations, but I have a little harder time with myself. I have written before about how living in Arizona has been hard for me mentally, but the last two months are basically that x10. I have been going through possibly one of the hardest breakups thus far, on top of living across the country from the people I have felt the most comforted by. I have had many days where people would ask how I was and I would say “I’m okay” because even saying good felt like a stretch. But please hang with me, because this entry is not taking a dark turn. 

It is really easy for us to follow the rules that society places on us. Whether it is how we are expected to heal after something traumatic or the job that we are supposed to have after college, the outside voices can get really loud. So loud, in fact, that they begin to sound like the truth. There are no rules on how to heal from something that feels like your soul has been crushed and there are no rules on who we are supposed to be when we’re 23. I have said before that the year that I lived with my parents after college was my trial run of true growth. I am here now to say that she learned and she grew, but this period of my life is where the real transformation is going to happen. And it has started with giving myself grace. 

In a spit of anger I said “I am writing a book on finding faith and confidence and now I have to start all over.” At the moment this felt like the exact truth. I felt like everything that I had worked for had been ripped from me and everything that I saw myself as was now overshadowed by not being wanted. I have had to sit on this comment and think to myself “is this the truth? Do I really have to start over?” The answer I have found is no. Although I do need to take back the pieces of my heart that are broken, I have all of the tools to do so. I can feel my past self sitting on the back porch of my parents house who shared a similar but lesser feeling, as she was starting over. She worked so hard to give me the tools to make this move across the country: she read the books, she wrote everyday and she did an outside workout to get her body connected to her mind. She put in the work to remind me that it is doable, even from afar. Our past selves are our biggest fans. 

I guess what I’m trying to say is that we are allowed to heal however best fits us, and what fits me might not fit someone else. Just because I feel broken right now does not mean I have to start over. Because as I have said before, I am her. I am each and every version of myself that has walked these steps to bring me to this very moment. I have decided that I am allowed to cry in the shower, I am allowed to lay in bed, I am allowed to go hiking by myself, I am allowed to text who I want, I am allowed to have good days even when I feel sad and I am allowed to eat cake for breakfast. There are no rules when you’re 23 but if I have any advice it’s to give yourself grace and to make your own rules. Do things that make you feel good and don’t ask society for permission. You are allowed to still be confident even when things don’t work out in your favor. There is a light behind that next corner that we turn when it comes to self realization and growth.