My favorite book of all time is Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo. The book follows a group of six teenagers - all with intriguing backstories - who all live in the city Ketterdam. A place crawling with thieves and gamblers, while being a major port for international trade. The leader, Kaz Brekker, has been offered a large sum to pull off a dangerous heist with his crew. This is easily my favorite book because the characters all have a piece to them that you relate to, and the characters feel as though they are right next to you. The descriptions and the way that the words are used allow you to visualize in your head what the surroundings look like, how the city smells, and even feel chills from the danger. There is no part of the book that you don't feel like you're with them. From cover to cover, my eyes never left the page every time that I picked up the book. It is one of those books that slowly crawls into your heart as your reading, because everything about it is so enthralling. Another thing that I love about this book is the diversity that is within it. There are people of color as main characters, LGBTQ+ chacacters, someone with a disability, and someone who doesn't the stereotypical skinny body. Every character is unique to themselves and none of them are alike, which I feel like is something you don't see a lot in books anymore. I will never stop loving this book and it's characters, it will forever sit on my shelf and in my heart.

I have lost three people. My sister, grandpa, and myself. My sister died while I was still in middle school, and my grandpa died not too long before her. After each of their deaths, I felt like my life was falling. I remember my dad calling me and explaining everything. I remember feeling the chills go down my body. I remember my heart dropping into my stomach. Finally, I remember the hot tears running down my face. It took years to get through the fog that invaded my brain, it made that time become a blur to me. Losing someone makes you lose yourself in the process. You have to fight to get that piece of you back, and it isn’t easy. I spent nights crying and wishing that it was all a dream. I kept wishing that my dad would say it was a joke. But eventually, I pulled through. I knew they would want me to be happy and only remember the good days with them in it. I also have my own personal experience with mental health. Being depressed and anxious makes me feel like I’m exhausted but scared that I am not doing good enough. These losses made that worse, because I was trying to grieve and manage my own mental health at the same time. Now that I have persevered through those tough times, I feel so much stronger. At first when it came to thinking about what I wanted to do in my future, I was ready to go into school for biology. But that never sat right with me, I felt like I could be doing so much more with my time left. I have realized that I want to go into sociology and psychology. I either want to be a social worker or an adolescent therapist. I want to help people find a better path, and help guide them through the rough spots. I never really had someone like that, I was by myself trying to figure out which way to go in the dark. I want to be someone’s light that guides them, I never want someone to feel alone. I feel like I can make a difference within suicide prevention. When people feel isolated or think that they aren’t good enough, then they might think that the only way out of an endless cycle is to end everything. I want to give young people a reason to keep going and help them realize that things will get better, you just have to fight for it. It is always going to get harder before it starts to get better. I want to teach people to take it one day at a time, and to celebrate every single moment no matter how small the achievement was. This will make people feel seen and heard, and most importantly, that they aren’t alone.