Mental Health Educational Reform

Education and psychology

Published in

The Ethical World

33 min readJul 15, 2017

The courage others see in me will without a doubt inspire them to stay strong, be courageous and not give up no matter how much of our own society refuses to understand and see as they really truly are.

Our society has become so ignorant, selfish and stubborn to living the life they need to, but it won’t happen if they don’t try. They have to after the many people who tried educating them about mental health.

These are the kinds of symptoms that people who suffer with depression experience along with numbness and paralyzing pain. The numbness is when it takes away your voice. You try your absolute hardest yet nothing happens, not one word comes out. Your lucky if you get anything out. This is exactly that I’ve been going through symptom wise and I can’t seem to get this straight to my parents and my sister.

My sister and parents think I’m making up excuses for the times that I barely made an normal regular communication with them. That’s not it at all. The numbness took away my voice, I’m lucky and they are lucky if they get anything out of me, other then when I argue. I try. They hear me but they don’t listen to me. They say they are educated on mental health and mental illness, but they aren’t as updated as it is in our new generation that mental illness is known for now.

It’s unfair, and sad yet still in its long process of removing the stigma around the subject. Going through any mental illness, we are lead to believe ourselves at some point that once we recover from it, it doenst mean it won’t happen again. It can, but not as bad if you take better care for your mental health to the absolute extent.

Recovery is not perfect and it doesn’t take one day off. Whether you take one day off your recovery or not, you’re still gonna go through at least one relapse and for sure some slip-ups along the long journey we call recovery. Recovery never ends, and humans can live a healthy, positive and empowering life with mental illness as quoted by Demi Lovato as she stated in her speech for Hilary Clinton.

Demi Lovato speaks about mental illness at DNC: 'We can do better' - video

Demi Lovato spoke at the Democratic national convention Monday evening in support of Hillary Clinton. In her speech, she…

www.theguardian.com

I’ve come to post in this post/chapter a bunch of new facts and info on my mental health issue that I really want as many of your thoughts, insights, advice, tips and more on all these. This morning my sister, Emily came in to ask me what I included in the email I had sent to my parents that lead them to choosing to cancel their plans of going to a friend’s cottage for the weekend. I explained some points of some symptoms

I’ve been experiencing and how I’ve been trying my best with what little control and energy for with helping myself get better. To feel better, to be more sociable, to be more responsible, to be more smart about my life choices with jobs, career, friends, and hoping I soon get a love life (a boyfriend, sometime soon whenever that time comes).

But as I explained some of the symptoms as explaining how much I’ve tried, it doesn’t stick nor last long enough to continue on. She doesn’t see it as a mental illness like depression. She has some friends (Kelly, Mae and Jenna who have depression and are taking pills/antidepressants) and from what she told me: they aren’t working in positive ways and make them feel like crap and others too. And my mom had a long talk with me and she still doesn’t like what I’ve done to try to get better, and she hates and is against using antidepressants.

I love myself now. Some days I don’t but I try to. I think it’s about at least if you try, that’s all that matters! ~ Demi Lovato

There are so many important things about mental health that involves loving yourself. In fact, it’s a healthy and important part of all mental health and our recovery from any addictions and disorders out there. And schools yet teach some information on mental health but not on how to love ourselves. They may educate us on sex in health class but not on taking care of ourselves.

Whether it’s taking a day for ourselves alone or spending it with some friends to pamper ourselves. Having fun, spa day, slumber parties, and the list goes on. But what we aren’t educated on is the healthy and positive ways to take care of ourselves. Not just our bodies but our brains too. How should I handle high pressured situations? We normally go with our emotions rather than logic. Why is that?

It’s important to keep in mind and practice healthier and positive mental health for ourselves for we all deserve that attention, care and treatment for our brain. When we find ourselves in hard and high pressure situations, we need to really think through enough. And to do this, it’s best to let others know that you need to really think everything in the situation on your own and will come back when your ready.

Then that way you’ll more likely won’t regret anything when you return to the sitiuation. This method is something that our health teacher teaches us in health class in high school. When we go with logic, we make no regrets. But a lot of the time there is also emotion when making the decision to choose logic over emotion for we believe that going with the logical option is what’s best for us and in result makes us feel positive and happy emotions…

Therefore, happiness becomes more long lasting for we are more able to think better, healthier and positively which comes with living your life without a doubt and the list goes on…

Inspirational Talk

If you don’t you’ll wake up and realising there’s no us left. Don’t take divorce off the table. What I mean is sometes people think they can neglect a relationship because we’re married with kids, we’re never breaking up. But it’s not okay to be unhappy. I’m not happy and I need to tell her.

The truth is not everyone in our society gets how important mental health is along with the mental illness epidemic. It needs and deserves the attention, care, treatment and care. We all do.

It’s unfortunate that we still have a long way to go with breaking the stigma around mental illness yet in the meantime, others being in situations with the stigma, discrimination & the mental health family affair are presented, making it hard to survive it all alone. Being as the family affair of mental health as an example: where family members refuse to be open about other family members mental health overall the mental health subject itself, showing the stigma, discrimination, and self stigma attached to the stigma itself.

It’s so tragic this is still going on. Even though depression and anxiety disorders are not being viewed at taboo but others like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and post traumatic stress disorder as a few are still being viewed as taboo. This is wrong. There should nothing to be ashamed of nor wrong about living with mental illness. But those working in recovery from their own mental illnesses, should just focus on themselves in recovery. Stop trying to convince/get your family to view mental health any differently than they have been.

As much as one may think being honest with everything that goes on with oneself, one shouldn’t consider continue trying to get others close to them, even loved ones to view their illness and overall the whole subject as a whole differently. And they should do this because it’s not worth putting your mental health at risk.

Every decision you make for the rest of your life, should be one of your few main priorities of your own mental health. If something puts your mental health at risk, don’t even consider it. Your mental health isn’t worth the risk nor anything putting yourself at harm, including your continual survival/existence on earth.

Don’t kill yourself. Don’t harm yourself with razors, knives, pain killers, drugs (overdose) and other things. You are not a failure, nor anything your illness, stigma and discrimination labels you. You are not labeled by your illness either. You are much more than you may think. You may be suffering, but it’s only temporary. It just may be hard to have that hope that it does get better in your near future. You are worthy of love, affection & belonging. You are good enough, more than you may lead yourself to believe. You are special. You are amazing. You are beautiful. You are loved. You are validated, by yourself. And that’s what matters. If those who are true to you even after knowing about the real truth of you battling/fighting your own demon in your own mind, and they still support you all the way, that’s another thing that matters. But those who refuse to, stop trying to control them, or get them to view this epidemic any differently.

It’s your own mental health that you should focus on. From now on, it’s up to those who are not supportive for you in this journey of yours. And that’s the way it has to be. Two things that come to mind in recovery, is not letting your illness/diagnosis define who you are and not being ashamed of your illness anymore. That is two great things to be proud of yourself for.

Let’s fight this battle together. No one suffering with a mental illness should never feel alone when fighting the same battle everyday!

When it comes to my passion for mental health, I will not only stand up for the importance of the epidemic but also everything inside the issue alone. I’ve suffered and am still living with mental illness everyday. Ever since high school I would say that I’ve battled with depression and anxiety along with my ADHD but now being as I’m 19, almost 20, ADD.

The Fosters, Fost & Found

It’s also so that foster kids can have a voice, to be heard.

But it’s not like we can use it. They don’t let us use the internet. – Friend

Yes but your not gonna be here (Girls United, foster homes) forever, right? – Rita

“So I was hoping maybe I could record some of your stories & upload them for you? Daphne, you could talk about how hard it has been for you to get gestations with Tasha.” – Callie

“Yeah but I don’t want to mess up my chances of getting her back.” – Daphne

“My probation hearing is coming up.”

“You can risk making things harder for ourselves.”

And your so close to getting adopted, you can’t go around kicking in hornets either.

Well, most of the people I know working in the system do care. And they try their best to do their jobs. And there are abuses. Someone needs to call them out on it but it’s a lot to ask of kids who could suffer the consequences. – Rita

Maybe you need to find some kids who have less to lose.

My Thoughts:

I think that no matter what may be put at risk or may be too much to lose, no one should back out. If it gets them what they want and need, there should be no second thoughts. So what if it may possibly vary whether they get what they want but that doesn’t instantly and easily mean that’s what’s gonna happen. I believe that it’s all worth the risk and sacrifice to get what we all deserve. Fight for what you believe in. Fight for what you want no matter what may be put at stake.

And Callie inspires us that “we cannot be afraid.” no matter what.

Child Youth Worker – The judge saw some website of Callie’s Fost and something and he didn’t like it, at all.

Lena – Why wouldn’t he like it?

Child Youth Worker – Apparently there’s a video where you talk about him. So the first thing you need to do when we get into that court room, you have to apologize. You need to apologize, do you understand me?

Callie – Apologize for what?

Child Youth Worker – For insulting Judge Ringer in that video you posted.

Callie – I didn’t insult him. I was just telling the truth. I’m not not gonna apologize for that!

Lena – Calle, think about this. Please, this might not be the moment for you to …

Callie – What? Stand up for what I believe in? I love you both with all of my heart and you know how much I wanna be a part of this family but I can’t take back what I said. There’s too many people counting on me. I can’t.

Lena – So you understand what this means?

Lena – What is going on?

Mariana – They’re foster kids, they’re here to support Callie.

If I were in a situation like this, I wouldn’t apologize for anything that I would’ve said in the video. I wouldn’t apologize for being honest nor for standing up for what I believe in. There’s no rules or laws against this at all so why are so many people in our society still believe that it’s wrong.

Maybe cuz we have to call them out and put it in a inspiring tone using our voices ourselves to help get the message across to them. We need to continue standing up for what we believe in using our powerful, confident and inspiring voices. We all have a voice, use your voice to inspire better and healthier change for the world.

The world needs better change. The world needs you. The world needs all of us. All of us to create better change with our creativity. Think and live creatively. Use creative arts as a way to express your feelings, thoughts and actions. Art plays a great role in these kinds of solutions and issues in our world. Think creatively, find new creative ways to do everything. It’s a better way to solve all the world’s issues and problems, including your own.

“Why do we go with the flow. Why take an easier road? Why are we playin’ it safe? Love came to show us the way. Love is a chance we should take. I’m movin’ out of the gray.” – The Lost Get Found, Britt Nicole

Stop taking the easy road in your life and make the right choices for yourself on your own terms. You don’t need anyone’s approval or vote whether you should do something or not. It’s your life, your responsible and smart enough to make your own decisions for yourself. You are mature enough to take charge of your own life without any approval of your family.

“Everybody’s gonna make mistakes, but everybody’s got a choice to make. Everybody needs a leap of faith. When are you taking yours?” – Nickelback

You need to take that leap of faith for yourself and believe me it’s part of the process of feeling uncomfortable in the moment but it’s the right thing to do. We all make mistakes, but it’s all within each of us to not let it define ourselves, destroy us, even dwelling on them all the time. We need to stop those bad habits and start practicing positive and healthier habits like accepting your mistakes, learning from them, let them make you stronger and wiser, and move on. It’s what’s healthy and best for your mental health. It deserves that and so much more!

This is your time to make things right for yourself. All on your own, know that you’re not alone in any of this.

“You gotta reach for the top. Believe in every dream that you’ve got. You’re only living once so tell me. What are you waiting for? You know you gotta give it your all. Don’t you be afraid if you fall.” – What Are You Waiting For?

Believe in everything that you do in your life that says something about who you are as your personality and your positive label to society. Give me reasons to hate you, don’t let what they have to say, drag you down. Let it make you strong enough to make you not only unstoppable, and confident but inspiring in your own creative and fun ways. Don’t to those voices, listen to yours instead.

“All the hate and lies around us. Like an ember in the brush. And can you picture a world without it?. And turn it all to ash and dust. We keep waiting on a day that never comes and never comes. Too late is not a thing and we just gotta be stronger. Oh, gotta be stronger.” – Torches

We need to stop hating ourselves and others for how they are and as we are. Accept yourself as God made you to be. You are who you are for so many beautiful reasons. Take your time to discover and embrace them in every beautiful way. It’s within yourself to love you inside and out and not want to change a thing.

“Love is like a torch that’s burning bright. Carry it on, carry it on and you’ll see. Fire will shine a light on the darkest side. Carry it on, carry it on. Cause we can never right all the wrongs. So leave the past well enough alone. And say.” – Torches

Keep carrying that hope, strength, courage, confidence, power, inspiration and anything else you have with you. Never give up on what you believe in nor your dreams. Never let anything drag you down or make you lose any of what you’ve got just because it became harder and more challenging to keep going. It may be hard but that’s part of the process. It tests you to see how far you are willing and able to go to fight for what you believe in to get what you want out of that. Dont give up.

Life may be hard, tough, challenging, unfair at times but are you so much more stronger, beautiful, confident, amazing and talented more than you believe yourself to be. You may feel weak inside but don’t stop there. Don’t let that power change your direction. Stick with everything that you have and keep going no matter what happens. Keep fighting, it’s always worth it all in the long run! The benefits and results itself are part of what you get that pays off all your hard work, effort and time in achieving these hard, tough times in reality.

“We can do anything that we want.” – Shawn Desman

The truth is not everyone in our society gets how important mental health is along with the mental illness epidemic. It needs and deserves the attention, care, treatment and care. We all do.

Emotion and memory are very closely related. You know this from your experience. Go to a party, meet a bunch of new people. Which faces are you going to remember? The woman who made you laugh, the man who made you feel embarrassed, and your new boss – the ones who had an emotional impact.

So perhaps you would not be surprised to learn that the a portion of the emotion system of the brain (the “limbic system”) is in charge of transferring information into memory. From years of experiments and surgical experience, we now know that the main location for this transfer is a portion of the temporal lobe called the hippocampus.

You won’t particularly impressed by its appearance. The hippocampus is included here because it is always cited as part of the “limbic system”, and because there is striking new “news” about:

how it works;
its vulnerability to stress; and
its rich supply of estrogen and progesterone receptors.

We’ll consider each of those in turn, after we look at just what and where it is.

Finding and seeing the hippocampus

Here’s Harry. Harry’s looking to your left. His left ear would be right in the middle of this picture. Notice the green portion of the brain: this is called the temporal lobe. It lies right under your temple. Memories of names live in this left temporal lobe: particularly people’s names, names of animals, and names of tools. If you would like two paragraphs on “why these names?”.

The portion of the brain that helps those names get into memory in the first place, this hippocampus thing we are talking about, is also part of this temporal lobe. But you can’t see it here, because it’s an inside fold, not these outside folds you see above. To see the hippocampus, we’ll have to use x-ray vision. Imagine you could just squint and see right through the temporal lobe to what’s underneath. Using some beautiful images from a great medical illustrator, here’s what you’d see:

Can you see the temporal lobe, there on the outside, just as before? We’re here to look at the purple part at the bottom: that’s the hippocampus. For the moment you can ignore all the other limbic system elements shown here; we’ll be back to learn more of them in other Tours.

So, there’s that purple thing, part of the innermost fold of the temporal lobe. How “inner” is that? To see that, imagine you could look straight down from the top of Harry’s head, and use your x-ray vision to see the hippocampus, outlined in purple – you could see how far toward the middle it sits:

Ignore the lines, they’re for the poor medical students who have to memorize all the latin names of the structures shown. You can see it on the left side, outlined; the right one is also shown – see it over there on the right, in shadow a bit? A few more structures have been deleted on the right so you can really see the entire “body” of the hippocampus there, and the “head” with its bulging folds.

Three reasons to care about the hippocampus: memory, depression, estrogen

First , this part of the brain appears to be absolutely necessary for making new memories. If you didn’t have it, you couldn’t live in the present: you’d be stuck in the past of old memories. And this is common: Alzheimer’s disease affects the hippocampus first and severely, before other parts of the cortex (later, the frontal lobes too). So memory is usually the first thing to start to falter in Alzheimer’s – the ability to make new ones, that is. Who visited yesterday? Where did I put the car keys? Why isn’t there any mail today (when you brought it in 3 hours ago)?

Secondly , the hippocampus seems to be involved in severe mental illnesses. In both schizophrenia and some severe depressions, the hippocampus appears to shrink. However there is recent evidence that this shrinkage can be reversed and perhaps prevented in people with depression and bipolar disorder, with effective treatment. You’ll find a summary of this research in Part Two of the essay on the Brain Chemistry of Depression. One of the mini-chapters there includes this story about neurogenesis, the birth of brand new brain cells, which occurs in the hippocampus and frontal lobes.

Third, the hippocampus is known to be directly affected by estrogen. Look at these slides from the important work of Catherine Woolley and colleagues at Northwestern University:

The slide on the left (a) shows the arms and branches of a hippocampus nerve cell. The bumps are places where connections to other cells occur (“synapses” – for a diagram of what synapses look like and how they work, read the section on how antidepressants work inside cells). The slide on the right (b) shows the same thing – except this cell was exposed to estrogen. If you look closely you’ll notice that there are more bumps, and the bumps are bigger. The whole thing is “spinier” (which one would you rather brush against if they were rose bushes, for example?) So, estrogen increases “synaptic density” – the number of connections to other nerve cells – in the hippocampus especially.

There is research on the role of estrogen in preventing Alzheimer’s; on its role in causing seizures, perhaps through this increase in synaptic connection; and on the relationship to “trophic” molecules that are now thought to potentially be the basis of depression and protection against depression (for more on that subject, read the how antidepressants work inside cells” section). Since you may have made estrogen much of your adult life (at least a 50% chance, right?) I thought you might want to know where the affected-by-estrogen hippocampus is. Here’s more on Hormones and Mood.

For those of you who are really interested in the hippocampus, read on for more pictures and details. The rest of you can Tour elsewhere if you wish.

More details of hippocampus shape and location

Ok, so Harry is fortunate to have a fairy godmother and she’s going to take him to dinner now – well, 2/3 of him anyway. The last third will stay behind for us to look at, and it’s Harry’s right “third”. So where Cindy got split down the middle, Harry will divide along a line back from his right eye. His nose and left eye and left ear and everything all went for dinner. You can see the other half of his right eye and his (maroon) right temporal lobe, below. If you’ve got the geometry of this picture, you’ll understand that you’re looking at the inside of his temporal lobe, instead of the outside of the left one you saw at the start of this Tour. If you’re lost, check out the next photo below.

Here’s a look at Cindy’s brain again: her entire right half.

If you’ve read the mood Tour , you’ll recognize the red and blue areas. Now notice the yellow outline: that’s her right temporal lobe, poking out from behind the brainstem. You’re seeing the inner surface of the temporal lobe there.

But to find the hippocampus, we have to look farther up the temporal lobe, and Cindy’s brainstem is in the way of our view. The yellow outline traces the temporal lobe, if we could see it behind the brainstem, and the green X marks where we should be looking.

To see it, we’ll look at Harry’s temporal lobe again, outlined in maroon:

TP marks the “temporal pole”, the front of the lobe. But within the lobe, right there on its inner surface, is the structure we’re after: the hippocampus, outlined in white, and marked HIP. (AMG is the amygdala). Try comparing this view to the artist’s view from the same perspective, above. (Cindy’s pictures are sections of real brain; Harry’s are called MRI’s – in case you wondered.)

The smaller the hippocampus becomes. The cells and networks literally deteriorate.

Just watching “13 Reasons Why” Beyond the Reasons on Netflix again and I can completely relate to so many things they are talking about mental health and all else that they cover in the 29 minute episode! With the depression, PTSD, trauma, yet overall the mental illness. As well with advocating for mental health. Bringing mental health into the teaching curriculum.

One other thing so that I can’t imagine what it’s like for others like Jessica’s character who experienced sexual assault. I really don’t know but it’s something that’s important about being a victim yet a survivor of sexual assault where one is able and more than capable of moving past it in a way that doesn’t necessarily forget about it, but see all these kinds of huge and life-impacting moments can teach us, and then just focus on walking forward with our heads held high and proud of who we are, and all that we have become and all that we want to achieve with our life ahead!

Mental illness should be treated as much as physical illness. Both are equally important and without being healthy of one, the other suffers and one becomes fully unhealthy and rather at risk with their health!

It’s so crucially important to take care of yourself no matter how odd or weird it may be to treat yourself with self care and self love. Self compassion and empathy that we express for others.

Battles with mental illness:

Mentally sick?

Depression?

Recovery?

Recovery defined in depth detail:

Positive versus negative

Telling our stories around mental illness and other such stories that inspire and encourage others to share theirs is such a huge and crucial part of many different things. Sharing our stories around mental illness overall mental health is an important part of breaking the stigma around it.

We have accomplished some sort of progress in breaking the stigma and discrimination particularly with depression and anxiety, but others like schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress disorder, bipolar disorder and others are still being viewed at “taboo”. We need to continue doing our parts in this epidemic and educate ourselves more of it and others that we love both our friends, families, co-workers and other people we associate ourselves in reality to help contribute to further progressing in breaking the stigma around mental illness overall mental health.

We need to do all we can to contribute. And believe that both small and big acts with one’s contribution to shedding light to this epidemic count and will show great changes in our society!

Demi Lovato’s Speech, Supporting Hilary Clinton

Like millions of Americans, I am living with mental illness. But I’m lucky. I had the sources and support to get treatment at a top facility. Unfortunately too many Americans from all walks of life don’t get help either because they fear the stigma or cannot afford treatment. Untreated mental illness can lead to devastating consequences including suicide, substance abuse & long term medical issues.

We can do better. Every one of us can make a difference. By getting educated on this epidemic and its frightening statistics by breaking the stigma, I urge every politician to support laws that will provide access to better health care and support for everyone.

This is not about politics. It’s simply the right thing to do.

I’m doing my very small part by having the treatment centre that saw me through my recovery on tour with me so that at least a small group of people even for a brief moment can have the same support that I received. It may not be a lot but we have to believe every small action counts. I stand here today as living proof that you can live a normal and empowered life with mental illness.

We all have imperfections and many people choose to dislike them or even hate them.

Hears a thought: choose to love us anyway. Even though we have many imperfections about ourselves. We deserve to be loved, to be wanted, accepted for who and what we truly are! And so much more! Choose to see the “good” in people and in th world! You would make life easier on so many people in this “beautiful, amazing” world we live on! Stop suffocating people with your “ugly” words. Choose to speak “beautiful” words instead! Some people may think it may not be something they’d enjoy or want to but if they just give it a try, who knows, it might stick with them forever! It can change the world! For the better! For the best. You will be amazed at what that can do! I know I was once I became open to “no judgment or any negative comments about myself and others”.

That alone can have a huge affect and a lot of potential in the world! Don’t choose to ignore something like that. Give it a try. Try new things. You might like something. Be open to trying new things even if you think it will be a lot of work. Something’s don’t take a lot of work to achieve in the world! Anything like that can never be ignored, judged nor token for granted!

A Great Role Model

Selena has always been a great role model for me over the years and I’m ever so truly grateful to have role models like her to look up to! I believe we need more of our own all around us (not just celebrities) but our own friends, family, etc to look up to. People who we can go to for advice, a shoulder to cry on & someone to be inspired by when we need the inspiration at times in our lives. Having role models are crucially important to have in each of our individual lives. And so here are a few of my fave lyrics from one of my old yet still fave in 2016 of her song “Who Says”.

“I wouldn’t wanna be anybody else. U made me insecure. To me I wasn’t good enough. But who are u to judge. When your a diamond in the rough. I’m sure u got somethings you’d like to change about yourself, but when it comes to me, I wouldn’t wanna be anybody else.”

Selena Gomez, is someone who I’ve looked up to for years and had since her single “Who Says” came out that I wanted to start choosing the person that I wanna be rather than someone that i’m not chosen/demanded by the expectations and standards of society.

And then there was Demi Lovato, where I had found a picture of her with no filter (no makeup) and inspiring her fans to basically be their natural looking selves. That encouraged and inspired me to start working towards feeling comfortable in my own skin enough to accept myself as I am (appearance and all, all of me) as I am with no temptations or urge in giving into the pressure/power of society’s expectations and standards. I didn’t really make any progress. Just felt so ugly in my skin to the point where I wanted to change who I was and my flaws, believing that my flaws were a huge chunk of what made me feel ugly, the other is society overall.

And then after all I went through with my mental health, during the stages of my recovery, around March-April of this year, I had started to slowly love myself, and accept myself as I am. As God made me. Self acceptance, self love: these things are what I wanted to start gaining but didn’t know how to.

Until I found myself watching Penelope, I was inspired from the movie to slowly, gradually wear no makeup and that would help me not be ashamed or uncomfortable in my own skin, as I truly am. I am who I am and I don’t ever want to let anyone or anything change my thoughts on who I want to be in this life, of all reality.

“I am imperfect just the way I am, because I’m completely comfortable with that!”

For so many years from starting to wear makeup, I had hidden not only my inner and outer beauty, but also my true and real self. For years since I found a picture of Demi Lovato with no filter and inspiring her fans to go bare (natural), I set a goal for myself to work towards that along with improving my face complexion and overall self esteem and confidence enough to have enough courage to go out in public just as the person God made me with no filter and not be ashamed or afraid of what society would say or think about me.

Since a year that it started, I had always cared about what others thought about me dictating and changing my direction every time which ended up choosing the person I ended up being from that. And for years I had hated how society had affected me like that. I wanted to break that barrier, that curse that had always won against me every day. But after trial after trial, nothing changed nor improved in the ways I wanted to from working on that goal of mine.

And as for all I’ve been through with my mental health and low or lack of self esteem/self love, I kept struggling feeling confident and comfortable in my own skin like a great example, Demi Lovato in her Confident music video. Many times throughout my past life, I thought I knew who I was and who I wanted to be but deep down, especially knowing now, that’s not at all the person I wanted to be. At a certain point in working on my goal, I so desperately wanted to change all of my flaws for they had made me feel so ugly inside and out, I felt so disugested with myself for I wasn’t accepting of my own body, personality, and my whole self that God made me as.

Looks and all, I wanted to change them instead of accepting, respecting, understanding and being confident as God had made me. Becuase I just wanted to have naturally wavy or straight hair rather than the natural curly hair that God and my parents gave me. Which has been the reason behind why I have been straightening my hair everywhere I go out in public. Along with feeling more like a part of the person that I wanted to be, look along with working on improving, working on myself to feel that confident, young, beautiful, amazing, talented, happy self that I was working on achieving.

For years I never knew what beauty (beautiful) was supposed to look and feel like. I looked up to celebs like Nicole Scherzinger from the Pussycat Dolls (looking at her figure, and wanting to have her figure), but deep down, I shouldn’t look up to someone like her for that reason. I should look up to role models like Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez, Madison Beer, Demi Lovato and others who inspired, encouraged, and idolized the right things in their fans. It took me a while after watching “Penelope” and “Girl Meets Flaws” from Girl Meets World to understand and start using those new knowledge I gained from them to help me accomplish this goal of mine. To understand what true and real beauty looks and feels like. To not change for society but for myself for that’s why I should change a part of myself.

Choosing not to give in to that power from those part of society convincing millions to be someone that they are not. We all need to set ourselves free from this epidemic/issue for it has made us a bad version of ourselves rather than anything that has a good influence on ourselves in result. We all should set our minds to letting our voices be heard to inspire, encourage, and create a better future and a better world for we all know that the world needs to change, so does our future. We should inspire the right, healthy & positive things in the world to create better change for a better world. The world needs and deserves exactly that.

And so lately as of today, I’ve thought long and hard and have decided to continue wearing my natural beauty as God gave me and own it! I’m gonna embrace it as much as I want to and not let nor give in to what society has to say about that. I am who I am and i’m not gonna be ashamed of that girl, soon to be a women that I am. And I inspire and encourage others to do the same. It’s time for us to take off our masks and show the world who we really and truly are under that mask and not have an regrets, second thoughts on doing exactly that. This is our time, it’s our life and our world and we have to make it all what it should be. We can do anything we set our minds to as inspired by both Selena Gomez & Justin Bieber. So what are you waiting for?

Like quoted in Penelope “It’s not the power of the curse, it’s the power you give the curse.”

It’s a sensation of being afraid all the time but not even knowing what it is your afraid of. And it was at that point that I began to think it was just too painful to be alive and that he only reason not to kill ones self was to as not to hurt other people.

I’m in serious trouble and we need to something.

If I’m not the tough person who could make it through a concentration camp, than who am I? And if I have to take medication, is that medication making me more fully myself or is it making me someone else?

Is that I knew objectively speaking that I had a nice life and that if I could only get well there was something at the other end that was worth living for.

Let’s continue to stand up for those who are vulnerable to being left out or marginalized. Hillary Clinton

We all need to stand not just by ourselves but everyone else that’s on our side to stand up, inspire and create better change in the world.

“Be the change you want to see in the world.”

There was a girl I knew. Who always wanted to be the one to stand out from the crowd. Always believed that she was gonna live her dreams. That what went down was gonna come around. For all the doubters, non-believers. The cynical that once were dreamers. One of these days you’ll open up your eyes. And you’ll realize.

That girl was a one-time teenage drama queen. A hyped-up everyday wannabe. But she’ll have changed her destiny. Now she’s a somebody. That girl was a wild child dreamer. But she’ll find herself ‘Cause she believes in nothing else. Then you’ll look back and you won’t believe. That girl was me.

Armed with an attitude that she knows how to use. She’s gonna get there any way she can. Now she knows what she wants. No one is gonna stop her. Nothing’s ever…

Armed with an attitude that she knows how to use. She’s gonna get there any way she can. Now she knows what she wants. No one is gonna stop her. Nothing’s ever gonna hold her back.

One of these days you’ll know that you were wrong. Who would’ve known?

That girl was a one-time teenage drama queen. A hyped-up everyday wannabe. But she’ll have changed her destiny. Now she’s a somebody.

Life isn’t work with art. You gotta paint it colorful. Can make it anything you want. Don’t ever stick to any rules. You don’t need a high IQ. To succeed in what you do. You just gotta have no doubt. Just believe in yourself.

Power:

The government is known as having a lot of power in the world. The power to control/be in charge of what we are limited to in life.

One thing I know they gave us is: freedom of speech. Now all of a sudden they chose to limit us of what we can and can’t say. When you think of what’s truly right and proper in life for power, we should be the only ones who have that kind of power of what we can do in life. What we say and do, to what we want to do with our bodies, our life and such. They have the right to have a say but doesn’t necessarily mean you have to follow their thoughts on something. It’s our life, our body, our mouth, we have the power and choice of what we do with them. The government does but isn’t the proper choice to follow/obey. They can’t make us obey anything we don’t want to. Yeah sure something’s is expected and truthfully a proper thing to follow, but anything else, should be in our control. And they can never have an effect of what we choose in life.

Pain, thoughts, emotions

We have to remember that it’s okay to be sad, its okay to cry, its okay to not feel okay. It’s not okay to hold it all inside. We’re only human, we don’t have to have it together all the time. – Tracey Bazso