As someone who has fought a debilitating chronic illness for the past eight years, I have learned bravery is a funny thing. Brave people don't know they're brave and bold people would never classify themselves as bold, these qualities are viewed from the outside looking in. After I was diagnosed with a form of dysautonomia, people kept telling me I was brave, and this bothered me for a long time. I wasn't brave, I was just a person with an illness doing what she had to do to get by. Navigating my illness has been difficult, to say the least, but I never felt like my battle was one of bravery. I felt like people were being disingenuous, it took me a long time to understand that what I saw as just getting by, was actually me being brave. Braveness is not the absence of fear, it is carrying on despite it. Living boldly is not living life at 100% all of the time, it is simply being authentic to yourself, whatever that looks like for you. Bravery can exist alongside fear, boldness can come in the form of quietude. Without even knowing it, I was living bravely by getting up every day and doing my best despite my chronic illness. I survived out of spite and carried on even when I wanted to give up. I have come a long way in my journey with dysautonomia and I cherish my good days because I know how bad things can get. I practice bravery and boldness every day by refusing to let my illness hold me back and by coming to peace with my illness and by loving and embracing myself for who I am.

My dream for my future career has morphed and changed over the years. When I first started my career as a designer, I wanted to be a storyboard artist for Disney. This is still something that I aspire to, but my career has taken me in a different direction. My current goal is to be an art director or senior designer at a company that makes a positive impact. I want my talent and time to help aid in benefiting my community and the world at large. I want to be able to use my craft to help people live their best lives, to call them to action in defending their environment, and to aid them in finding resources to better themselves. I want to bring beauty to the world around me. While my current career trajectory has changed course from my original dream of being a storyboard artist for Disney, I still hope to be able to achieve this aspiration - or at least something similar. I would love to get back into illustrations, which is one reason I want to further my education and expand my horizons. Art and design have been a part of my life since I was a child, drawing was an escape for me and helped me to express myself, my art classes in high school were reprieves from bullying, and the graphic design program at SFCC was a light amidst some pretty serious darkness. I want to put the kind of positive energy that I got from art back into the universe through art.

I want my legacy to be that of empathy. The world is full of powerful people, smart people, rich people, and beautiful people. Even the brightest of these shining stars are dulled when compared to someone who embodies empathy. The people we look to through history, the ones who inspire us to be better and to reach further are the ones who lived their lives with empathy. Mother Theresa, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr, Tenzin Gyatso, Jane Fonda, and Maya Angelou have many things in common, but the biggest trait they all share is that they are or were empathetic people. Their activism and successes were all driven by a place of empathy and this allowed them to benefit their communities and the world at large. Their contributions have created a ripple effect that is still rolling to this day, their reaches extending beyond themselves and often beyond their graves to positively influence people in their daily lives. A personal goal of mine is to positively impact my community and those around me. I strive to set an example to those around me, I try to be brave and kind, and I do my best to live with integrity and to leave people better off than how I found them. All of those things hinge on being an empathetic person. Having a legacy of power, money, or influence doesn't mean anything if your legacy doesn't leave a positive impact. If your life doesn't enrich the lives of others, are you really even living?

Some of my favorite hobbies are hiking, camping, and adventuring in the outdoors; I feel connected to myself when I am high up in the mountains. To quote Dot from The Fundamentals of Caring, "the high altitude makes the air less complicated." When I am outside, being active and enjoying nature, I feel like I can leave my daily troubles behind. When I am taking in the view from the top of a mountain, I can forget for a little while that I have a chronic illness, I can put my anxiety on the shelf for a moment, and I can erase all the sadness and pain from my life, even if only for a brief time. I have always had a soft spot for being outdoors, but my love for hiking, camping, and general adventuring was started when my husband planned a surprise trip through the Oregon coast that has since turned into an annual tradition. On that particular trip, we camped out of our car, hiked every trailhead we found, walked on sandy beaches, and explored tiny little towns that flecked the coast. One night while we were camping on the beach of Cape Kiwanda and the sun slunk lower and lower over the crashing waves, he asked me to marry him. I think my favorite thing about hiking and camping is that, even when I don't have the funds to do a big vacation, I can always take a trip to the mountains and hike until my heart is full. Hiking, camping, and adventuring bring me back to myself, they help me see the world through new eyes, and they remind me of one of my happiest moments with my favorite person.

If I could share one sentence with the world it would be this: you are brave, you can do hard things and be an inspiration; even if you feel like you're breaking, you are brave. As someone who has fought a debilitating chronic illness for the past eight years, I have learned bravery is a funny thing. I was diagnosed with Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome early in 2014, but my journey with this bitter form of dysautonomia started in 2012. Since then, people have often told me that I am brave, and for a long time, this sentiment bothered me. They postulated that since I didn't give up when I got sick, that made me brave. To me, that is not an example of bravery, but of me doing the only thing I could do when my health failed: survive. Navigating my illness has been difficult, to say the least, but I never felt like my battle was one of bravery. But that's just it, brave people don't know that they are brave. All they know is that they are reacting to a situation. They don't feel brave, they feel afraid, alone, angry, and all kinds of other things, but not brave. It took me a long time to realize that bravery is not the absence of fear or weakness. Bravery is refusing to give up, surviving out of spite, and continuing on even when you don't want to. You'll never know how many people you inspire with your actions, so don't give up. Remember that you are brave even when you feel afraid or weak. Even on your darkest day, odds are that someone is out there seeing you fighting your fight and feeling inspired by the bravery you don't even realize you have.