Self-love, self-acceptance, self-care and much more are a few struggles I deal on an everyday basis. I never heard the saying "Love Yourself." When listening to the saying "Love Yourself" I thought to myself, I know what it means, to give yourself love. But that was the surface meaning of the saying. To love yourself has a far more deeper definition than giving yourself love. I contemplated over and over what does it exactly mean to me. As I grew older, I continued to question but I answered a few along the way. The journey is continuing to grow and learn more about myself. Now I am understanding on accepting myself for who I am and what role model I want to share with others. By learning to find your own values and beliefs of what you believe in will come will help you become your own independent individual through it course. While reading and educating myself about the world, allows me to find what I believe in and what I want to put out into the world to make change. As I continue in my journey, I will think about where I started and where I am right now. I will ask myself "Am I growing or remaining stable?" I am learning to love myself and know what my worth is. I am worthy and love myself for who I am.

As a little girl, my favorite movie and still today is Cinderella. "For where there is kindness there is goodness, and where there is goodness, there is magic." Kindness brings happiness and joy to others as to yourself. In my heart, kindness is a beautiful characteristic to share. Always be the better person and share your kindness with others because you can make a difference in someone's day. In school, I did not have the confidence in myself. My first day at a new school, I felt very lonely because I did not no anyone at the school. At lunch, I sat alone eating my food wishing the time would zoom faster and faster. I sat alone for one week repeating the same routine, sitting in the same cold chair, and negative thoughts of loneliness. One day, feeling sorry I did not have any friends to sit and talk at lunch, two new faces approached me holding their trays of food. They asked if I would like to join them for lunch. I stood up and said of course, thank you for letting me sit with you. I felt so happy and lucky to be a part of this group of people who were so kind to me, I could sit and have so much fun talking with my new friends. As the year ran from day to day, I got to know my new friends better as a person. And they got to know who I was. Since they knew the school much better than I did, they helped me navigate through the school easier to my classes. I want to tell them thank you again and share a kindness in my heart of how happy and appreciated I felt when they asked if I could join them for lunch. The goodness and kind hearted my new friends are and I know they will continue to be, I will never forget how lucky and blessed I was to meet new people. Kindness with even the smallest gesture can put a smile of happiness on someone's face. No matter how big or small the gesture if it comes from the heart, then you or whoever acts with kindness must be proud of themselves. I knew in my heart there will always be kind people in this world. No matter where you go, I know there will be that someone who will lend a kind hand.

Time is special when you are in the moment when doing what you love to do. If money wasn't an issue, my growth of being a musician would increase drastically. Music should not be limited by what you have because all I have is my guitar and myself. I do not complain about myself and my guitar but if I could buy more equipment, the growth will enhance drastically allowing me to create all the ideas forming together in my imagination. I do believe when experimentation does help musicians grow. By speeding up the tempo or slowing it down, adding some reverb to the sound, and stacking your creations all in one creating your own unique sound. I love creating my own unique sound because when I look back, I fall more in love with my imagination. I am not able to buy any equipment at the moment due to personal circumstances, but if money wasn't an issue, I would write my own album and use it for the good of humanity. I want to help others through my music as it has got me this far in being confident in myself. Every birthday, I save my money to buy new strings for my guitar. I research for the best strings that will be worth buying. I do not want to waist my money on what I thought was helpful and turns out to be worthless and a big waste of the money saved. I don't want to always want to live through life without money being an issue. But if money was not an issue I would use it on professional equipment allowing me to give back to others.

When hearing the words, "Please have your parents sign your folder" the first emotion that sets in is sadness. In school, hearing these words hurt very much because I know my parents will never come together as a family. I look down at my desk holding in my sadness. I hated hearing these words, I couldn't escape my life of two families pulling far away from each other. But thank the Lord, I am grateful I get to wake up every morning seeing my hard working dad who dedicates his life to his children. I live with a single father who provided his all to our lives. Years in which passed, but still in the past, I wake up for to get ready for another high school day, I make his coffee with cream and sugar. His smile makes my day giving me hope for another beautiful day. And a blessed day, I get to see my dad another day. As growing up in a single parents house, I felt lost and confused on love and life. My dad held his head every day giving me strength to hold my head high each day. The hurt and emotion I couldn't understand never knowing how to let it out, I look back to myself in the past and I see a new person in the present. I survived each day and my father gave me strength to push forward. Everyday, he took charge of two roles, a mother and a father. I felt uncomfortable talking about girly topics but this helped me grow closer to my dad. He gets to see me grow everyday as a woman and take charge for who I am. Yes, I do make mistakes but he will always be there to pick up the pieces. When thinking about the time the judge chose my dad to take care of me and my siblings, I thank God everyday of my life. My dad is my role model I look up to and want to be as a person. All my values, morals, and who I am as a person, even though we may have some different opinions, I will always look up to my dad from now and further in the my future life. I am now happy for who I am and proud of my dad for all the hard work and sacrifices he acted on and will continue too. I am proud of myself for who I am and how I was brought up.

When growing up, I always looked up to people who succeeded in their life. All around me, I wanted to be a person who succeed and achieves others goals. But I never looked at myself as a role model. As I matured, thoughts roamed my head of wanting to be someone else and asking "Am I able to succeed as others do." I compared myself with my failures to others success. By repeating the pattern over and over, my self esteem dropped drastically. I looked to myself as if I was never going to succeed in life. All the negative thoughts and comparing my life to others life, drove me to the ground. I felt lost, unhappy with who I am. Listening to others opinions on how this is the only way to be a role model through success. All of a sudden, I saw a post about seven boys who want to make a change. A quote woke me up and spoke to me, as if someone heard my voice crying for help. "I have many faults and I have many fears, but I am going to embrace myself as hard as I can, and I’m starting to love myself, little by little," quoted by Kim Namjoon. The quote spoke to me saying we will all go through hardships in life, we will make mistakes, but I need to be proud of who I am no matter the wrongs and rights I have acted on. I need to love myself for who I am. While I continue to grow up, I want to be my own role model. I want to share my stories and help others who need love and support. I want to inspire others as I grew to inspire myself. As I continue, I am learning each day new things I love about myself and to know we are not perfect, but still hold a smile. I begin to look at my own life to what brings me passion and what I want to do for my life. I love to help others with my whole heart. As I achieve my own goals, I want to help others achieve their own goals and know they can do it.

During this terrible time, we are all experiencing hopelessness in this pandemic. But this is not stopping me from achieving my goals and achievements. My passion is music. I love to write my own songs and experiences to be shared with others. In my lyrics I highlight the goodness of be who you are meant to be, what you want to do in life, make it happen. I personally touch on self-esteem, confidence, and loving yourself. I went through many experiences of feeling I am not good enough to accomplish anything in life. But all the negativity brought myself down not allowing myself to live life and be happy. I worried so much on other's opinions. Now, I overcame the hardship of growing up and loving myself for who I am. I want to spread joy, positivity and happiness to other though my music. I want each person to listen to my songs and realize they are not alone in this journey. I will stand beside them in their good days and bad days. We are human beings. We are not perfect. We learn and experience, why not experience all the good things life has to offer us.

Personally, I pray every night to my Savior Jesus Christ. I talk to Him about any event happening in my life. In my past, I never had a close relationship with Him. One day, I went through a hardship of depression, and loneliness. I needed someone to talk to where it was only myself and someone else. The first person who came to mind was Jesus Christ. My thoughts took over my actions and did not know what direction I need to follow to help myself. I prayed everyday asking for forgiveness for my thoughts and a sign of hope at the end of the tunnel. In my experience, I came across a cardinal. I searched up cardinals and it says they are sent from heaven to watch over us. An epiphany exploded in my thoughts, I am loved, I am supported, I am strong, I can get through this. I knew my Lord Jesus Christ is here will me at all times, watching over me and loving me. He will not take me down a road I am not capable of or not strong enough. Until that day, my relationship grew stronger. He will be by my side through the tough days and the good days. But knowing he is here for me and is guiding my righteous path, I will forever be a follower of Jesus Christ.

We should all experience traveling in our own state, our own country and across the seas. Traveling consist of many opportunities to find yourself as a person and who you want to develop as an artist. Experience is key to success in my own eyes. The more you experience the more stories and perspectives you observe around you. By learning on this journey will allow you to teach your experience to others. One idea in which you will come across are cultures. You will experience a variety of cultures allowing yourself to learn and adapt with the languages, clothing styles, foods, and much more. Cultures are beautiful because the proudness of being part of a community give love to one another. Another idea you will come across while traveling is making your own decision. The topic of deciding what you want comes with a huge responsibility of your needs and wants. While deciding, your character as a person begins to form. Ask yourself is this good or bad for me, will this journey enhance or destroy my way to success, what will serve me and what won't serve me. Take charge of your life in making small decisions first then begin to take charge of tough problems. You are the only person who decided for yourself, no one else. The last idea you will come across while traveling is deciding what you want to do with all the experience you journey through, and now what is the next step. The question of now what do I do with my life? Think about what you learned and what you want others to inspire to. Reach out your voice of experience and share. Your perspective and life journey can inspire others to go forth a prosper upon their own life's. Now you have shared, let those you reached your voice to follow into their own life's journey of traveling. Traveling is full of new life experiences. We are put on this Earth for a purpose, now go ahead and live life.