I feel good tonight. The kinda good that gives you peace in your heart and catches you off guard. Stopping you in your tracks because you realize your humming a song and its joyful.

Looking over my shoulder at the depression I was in just a few weeks ago and I’m not really sure who that girl was but, she was in me… not apart of me. The same girl who was angry, tired, scared and sad… that was, broken… but that is not who I am.

Maybe I just needed to fall into that place for a bit. Get lost in the chaos that makes me believe I can not get through something or past it. Listening to the false sense of self that blames and argues with what is actually so.

We can not change what has happened.

I am not what has happened to me. I am not a victim of my life. I am not a victim of my circumstances.

Every trial I have endure in this life has made me better. Stronger. Tougher. Lighter.

Every trial showing me something else I can drop off my back that I don’t need to carry. Teaching me to let things slip between my fingers… because none of it belongs to me anyway, to any of us.

It will crumble into sand and be whisked away by the winds of time and in the end, our lives were never ours… What we thought was breaking us, was molding us into teachers. Showing those who are still here and those are sure to come, what roads may lay ahead for them too.

None of this is “ours.”

We are simply passing through. For those of us consumed by the visions passing before our eyes, those, so overwhelmed… because we think what we see is real. Hell it’s tangible. We can hold it. Embrace it. Fight it. Squeezing it to our chest so tightly for fear of letting go, much like a small child holds tight to their blankie.

Yet, in the end, our hands will be folded empty, over our empty bodies and the only thing left to remain will be the impact we had on those around us. The lessons we shared, compassion we gave and the examples we set. The kind words we spoke, encouragement we whispered and the embraces we held.

That is what defines us.

Not what we did, nor what happened to us or who we were, but who we were being.

So, who are we being… right now?

“When the clouds disappear and the rainbows appear, let us go out and impact our world. For the only purpose we can give to weathering the storm, is to show others how we set our sails.”

Write back soon, love Annie.

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