I don't think people without anxiety can truly understand how humiliating it feels, how it debilities your life and your ability to function, how it takes away the parts of you that make you who you are. Growing up I thought it was simply who I was, but that's not to say I accepted it. I hated that part of me. I always did. I remember as a kid seemingly trivial things would send me spiraling. I would cry until I threw up, I would suffocate with my own breath, my body constricting me so I couldn't breathe, and people would make fun of me for it, would tell me I just needed to stop, that feeling that way wasn't rational. It was easy for me to learn to hate that piece of me. I stayed away from as many social situations as I could. I isolated from everyone and everything, including my family. Even outings with my close friends gave me anxiety because I was so concerned about how I would interact or how I would be perceived. I watched from behind a frosted window as the world moved on, and I stayed behind, and a part of me yearned to break the glass, a part of me envied everyone else who could interact with the world around them without thinking twice, but I was too afraid to ever cross to that other side. I was too afraid of myself. I suffered from social anxiety my entire life but it took me nineteen years to finally get an official diagnosis. After years of suffering from depression, self-harm behaviors, OCD, anxiety, and anorexia, I was admitted to an eating disorder treatment. I was given this laundry list of diagnoses, and provided with so many different medications, and it was the first time in my life I realized it wasn't just "who I was" or "normal". In college, I am pursuing a nutrition degree on a dietetics track with the hope of becoming a registered dietitian. Pursuing this career path is so important to me because as a kid who grew up hating herself because of her social anxiety, I want to help other people like me who nobody ever helped. I spent so many years of my life suffering in silence, and ultimately it was my dietitian at my school who was the first person to help me and refer me to getting help. When people think of dietitians a lot of people think only of food, but I think with my experiences, it all comes back to compassion. It comes back to showing compassion toward people whose conditions are not shown enough compassion in society.

The first time I fell in love with music, I was nine years old. I recieved a cheap keyboard for Christmas, fit for a little elementary school student like me to press buttons, make random noises, and annoy my parents. I played my cheap plastic recorder during my elementary school music classes. It was when I first learned to read notes. I took what I learned from those music classes, and then I would explore on that little keyboard when I would get home, discovering a world that was intriuging, yet somehow comforting and familiar to me. My parents noticed how I naturally inclined to music, and when I was ten years old, I got my first piano for twenty dollars off the side of the road. I started lessons with a local teacher, and I fell in love with music. From there my love only grew. I learned all the techniques of music: dynamics, articulation, accidentals, and everything else. I loved to learned everything from classical music written by Beetoven and Bach to modern songs from pop culture. When I was older, I joined my middle school and highest school band where I played in the percussion section. I picked up ukulele and guitar, and I started to write my own songs. Music was always something I loved, but it was also an escape. As somebody who is extremely introverted and quiet, expressing myself is not something that comes easily. Music provided that place for me to express myself. When I was sitting at the piano, listening to the soft chords of a guitat or ukulele, or writing melodies that were my own, it was a feeling as if somebody could hear me there. It was as if somebody was listening to a message I knew not how to formulate or express in words. I remember days when I felt music was all I had left. I remember when I didn't feel safe in my own mind. I remember when I felt hopeless, and trapped, and overwhelmed by a pain and a hatred that seemed to consume me. I didn't ask for help. I didn't know how because I couldn't describe it. I felt alone. I didn't know how to say it, and so I didn't. I expressed it through the only medium I knew how, I expressed it through music. And nobody would ever hear it but me, buas I would sit there writing songs and singing out the words I never knew how to say, I didn't feel so alone. I think the most beautiful thing about music is its ability to tell a story. If we were to listen, there is a song about everyone's story. Across the world, music is different. Different music in different places speaks to different cultures, to different experiences, to different people, to different stories. Different people writing different songs speaks to different struggles, different emotions, different feelinings. And I think what music has helped me understand is that maybe we should all listen a little bit more. There are so many different stories out there, so many songs, that maybe we would understand better if we didn't drown them out.

The climate crisis is a concept that should be inherently alarming to all of humanity, not just because of the rate at which it is happening, but because of the lack of action being taken against the issue. Since I was young, I always had a passion for the environment; I always understood that it was important to take care of the planet. It wasn't until I was older that I realized that the planet was dying. It wasn't until I truly grappled with the issue that I became afraid. To this day, nothing makes me more afraid than watching fires blaze untamed across a natural land, witnessing more and more species be labeled "critically endangered" before being lost forever, and hearing of more natural disasters striking communities. Nothing makes me more afraid than knowing that we are slowly killing our home, and nobody is doing anything to stop it. In my daily life, I would like to say it is a deep righteousness that compels me to wake up every day and make the choice to do the right thing for our planet, but really it is fear. At first, I thought that a single person like me was too insignificant to make a difference, but then I realized that whether or not it was true, I could not stand by to watch our planet die without doing what I could. For me, this change started with food. I started eating vegan, and this change in turn allowed me to combat the meat industry. The meat industry is devastating to the environment, guzzling down much of Earth's freshwater resources, contributing to deforestation by requiring so much land, releasing high emissions of greenhouse gases, polluting waterways, and is ultimately ethically unsound. Before it was easy for me to look the other way because as a little kid, I didn't have much control over my food choices. As I got older, I did have the choice, and so I encouraged my family to also start eating plant-based to combat the devastating environmental impacts of the meat industry. And then I realized I could have a bigger impact, and so I strived to do so. I joined my school's environmental conservation club where I was involved in advocacy, trash cleanup, and recycling. I stopped using single-use plastics, and I combatted food waste by starting composting. In even the smallest aspects of my life, I wanted to make a difference, and so I became cognisant of my water usage, more aware of if I left lights on in the house, or if I let my car idle. I think the best method to convince others to help the environment is not necessarily by instilling fear, or by forcing a solution. The best method is to display facts, to lead by example, and to convey hope. That's when people listen. My friends and other people in my life slowly started to see the changes I was making. Small changes that would seem trivial were enough to make people notice, was enough to make people question their impact and what they could do better. And one difference seems so small, but one difference is all it takes to spark sustainability and drive the path of change.

Growing up, I never would have considered myself to be strong. Since a young age, I have always been small, skinny, shy, and self-confidence didn't come naturally to me. In many aspects of my life, I have considered myself to be weak, and when I would compare myself to the people in my life, I would see myself as incapable. I grew up in sports. I tried a little bit of everything from basketball to soccer, skiing, and hiking. With time I fell in love with running. I started running in kindergarten. I ran with my parents, and as a kindergartener would, running for me defined sprinting in short bursts of excitement, and then walking until I could finally breathe again. I have always loved athletics, loved to be outside, loved to be moving, and above all, I have loved to challenge myself. As I got older, I came to define what athletics meant to me, and while it meant drifting away from some sports, it also meant finding the athletic activities that would shape my life. At the start, athletics was something fun. To this day, I still find athletics to be fun, but with time it progressed into something more than that, it progressed into something that shaped me into who I am today. For all the times in my life when I was weak, when I was running through trails, or sumitting mountains, or sprinting to reach a finish line, I was strong. Humanity often characterizes strength as something so physical, something that equates to being big and bulky. In our media, we see superheroes, fitness models, and bodybuilders. If we don't fit that mold, then we can't be strong. I never did fit that mold, and so by definition, I was weak. What athletics taught me was that I didn't need to be a Herculean Greek God to be strong. I had worked hard for my body, had fought through exhaustion, had reveled in discomfort, had nothing given to me, and had earned every step. All my life I had looked in the mirror, and seen a reflection that the world would define as weak, that was imperfect, that wasn't good enough. Nobody taught me the courage behind being strong. I learned it by doing. It started as a love for being active, and it taught me everything I know about myself. At eight years old when I was the only one to be able to run a 5k without walking, it built my foundation of resilience, and from there the passion only grew. From hiking all the 48-4,000 footers of New Hampshire in one summer to breaking school records in cross-country and track and field, and winning my first ever (extremely hilly!) marathon at seventeen years old, athletics taught me love and happiness, but it also taught me strength. And the impacts of athletics didn't just end with me being fast, or successful, or strong; for me, it was never truly about that. My experiences in athletics paved a road for the rest of my life to live a lifestyle where I can be happy and healthy, and can share that passion with others as others did for me because athletics isn't so much defined as being the best athlete as it is about learning what makes you feel strong.

All my life, I have always been quiet. I am reserved and often keep to myself, and when I speak to others, I take the back seat; I silence myself so that others can be heard. It's not something so much that other people have forced upon me, but something that I have forced upon myself, something that I have done my whole life, and something that along the way became second nature to me. The silence, keeping it all to myself, and listening instead of speaking, it was just who I was. I don't think I ever saw it as a problem. I was quiet and introverted, and that was just me. I kept to myself, and that was okay. I was satisfied with being a listener. But then as I got older, I realized that the silence and the listening equated to suffering in silence and trapping myself alone in a world where nobody would understand me. I have always loved to write. Since elementary school when everybody else would be doodling, I would be filling my notebook from cover to cover with words and stories. I was that nerdy kid who would spend my free time writing stories, who would challenge myself to write an entire novel in one month (and do it twice!). I was the one who would get excited about school writing assignments, who would sit on the tables outside during recess writing while everybody else played. I have always loved to write. To other people, writing was viewed as something solely academic. It was something that kept them trapped in a school setting. They wrote, but only as an incentive to get good grades. To others, it was a barrier, but to me, it was my escape. And as I entered high school, writing was more than something that I loved, it was a way for me to speak when nobody would hear me. That's not to say writing was always the first place I went. There were times when my mind was covered in shadows, and I couldn't see anything clearly. I started looking at myself, started looking at my reflection, and seeing someone broken. When everything was dark, when I could only see a broken reflection, I tried to fix it. And I think the more I tried to fix myself, the more I lost myself. I was quiet and reserved and would not speak to anybody about it, so it was all trapped within me. And the more I kept it to myself, the more afraid I became, because I knew that nobody could save me and because with time, I learned what I was capable of doing. There were a lot of ways I tried to get away from it all, a lot of ways I tried to fix the brokenness. Writing was the only way that took me away from the darkness. And what I found was that the most powerful thing about writing was not that it made everything bad go away, it was in the way that it could tell a story. Words are the most powerful means we have to make a difference in the world, and by telling our stories, our words take upon meaning. The power behind words isn't in how loud we shout them, but in how we choose to use them. I believe the moment we pick up a pen, we have a choice, and the best choice we can make is to use our words for good.

Food is something that we all need to survive. In theory, food is a simple concept—a means for the body to obtain energy to be able to perform metabolic procceses—but ultimately, what food truly encapsulates is much more complicated. Food is influenced by so many different factors ranging from cultural backgrounds to social life and emotions. It is something that is uniquely individual and personal to all people, but has been divided into catergories that deem it either "good" or "bad." The concept of healthy eating has been distorted because all our lives, we are taught to eat less, to eat foods low in calories, to reduce our intake of fats, and to pick the salad instead of the big juicy burger. As a vegan, I can't say that a burger ever tempted me, but all the same, I came to believe that all of these things encapsulated what healthy eating meant to me. Depriving our bodies of the food that it needs to function will never define healthy eating habits. Healthy eating stems not from a hatred of your body, of thinking it is broken and wanting to fix it, but by believing in your body and trusting by giving it what it needs it will be able to function as it should. It's a lesson that is hard to learn when you let food control your life, and a lesson I had to learn all on my own. When I tried to control food to fix a body I always viewed as broken, it was when I allowed food to control my life. As an athlete, the affect of my broken relationship with food was prominant. I developed anemia and other nutrient deficincies associated with depriving my body of what it needed. After every practice I went to and after every run I tried to enjoy, I found myself feeling injured and depleted. I was exhausted and weak, and after a while I think I realized that I was sick, but was too afraid to get better because I wanted to be able to control food to fix a body that I hated. Ultimately, I think what became worse than all the physical fatigue I faced was the barrier I had formed around food in my mind; the barrier that told me I wasn't good enough and that I didn't deserve to eat because my body was broken. This unhealthy realtionship I had with food consumed my life, and after a while I realized it didn't need to be that way. I wanted to be able to live a life where food wasn't a number for me to count, but something that could nourish my body and my mind. I found a passion for food; I started to bake and cook healthy vegan foods. I gave my body the nourishment that it needed, and as the control food had over me loosened, I found I was happier and stronger than ever before. Allowing myself to have healthy eating habits allowed me to go out on runs and enjoy every step instead of fixating on the calories burned. Healthy eating habits allowed me to eat foods that would fuel me for my everyday life. Most importantly, in rebuilding my relationship with food and developing healthy eating habits, I was finally able to focus on my life for what made it whole, and not for how food defined it.

I was born an identical twin. Being a twin, it is impossible to explain what it is like. It is one of the best gifts you can be given in that you have someone who will understand you better than anyone else, but at the same time, being a twin takes away from individuality. Being genetically identical to another human, I didn't always consider myself to have attributes that were unique to only me. It was hard for me to recognize myself for my individuality when my whole life my sister and I were always referenced interchangeably. People were quick to identify us for our identical appearance, but seldom pointed out the things that made us different. As I got older, I found that my individuality increased. I took the passions I had that were unique to me, and I found that it was those passions I had that truly set me apart. For me those passions I had mostly centered around food and athletics. Both of these seemingly unrelated topics, I found ways to incorporate them into my life to make them fit together. My main passions in athletics are running and hiking. I have run distances up to a marathon, and have hiked all the 48-four thousand footers in New Hampshire. And I think what makes me unique in this passion, is that I don't shy away from the pain and suffering associated with it; in fact, there is nothing I love more than hitting that wall of mental and physical torment and then continuing to endure. Ultimately, that's what drew me to my passion for food as well. For me, food always scared me. The thought of food made me feel uncomfortable and afraid. I knew it would be extremely difficult for me to ever repair my relationship with food, and with the challenge that it presented, it was exactly that which drew me back to food. I think that those passions I had, and the unique challenges associated with them allowed me to give back to the community in my own way. As a twin, my sister and I had always loved to give back to the community, and we always did it together. Together we both volunteered at the SPCA as our love for animals paralleled. We both joined the environmental conservation club because we both were passionate about saving the environment, and we both volunteered with NHS because we were both academically motivated. Since a young age, I always tried to give back to my community in any way I could, but it had always been intertwined with my twin. My passion for food and athletics allowed me to give back in my way. As I continued to pursue athletics, I was able to use that as a platform where I could reach people in my community. I was the captain of many of my sports teams, and as I became more of a leader, I was able to increase my impact. I was able to spread the importance of a healthy lifestyle, something that I had been passionate about and that was unique to me. I gave people the means to have a healthy relationship with food, and at the same time helped people find love in athletics. Had I never found these things unique to me, I don't think I ever would have been able to inspire others to find their own unique passions that would in turn encourage them to be uniquely themselfs.

Before food was my passion, food was my fear. I was scared of eating the wrong foods, scared of eating too much food, and scared that food would make me gain weight or make me"fat", a term which unjustly has been villanized by society. I would weigh myself on a scale multiple times a day, afraid to gain weight, and punishing myself if I had by not eating. Every day I looked in the mirror, and looking back at me was a girl who was malnourished and sick. But looking at myself, I couldn't see what my reflection showed me. I was never satisfied, not unless I restricted more calories, lost more weight, or exercised more. I am an avid athlete: throughout my life, I have played basketball and soccer, run cross country and track, hiked all the 48-four thousand footers in New Hampshire, and even run a marathon. Being an athlete has always shaped my life, when I reached my freshman year of high school, I let it define my relationship with food. With my sports and my running, I would burn more calories than the average person, while also eating significantly less. I never saw myself as unhealthy; I thought eating less, exercising more, and not gaining weight made me healthier. But it never made me happy. I was exhausted trying to please myself by manipulating my body to be perfect every time I looked in the mirror when deep down I knew it never would be perfect. My sophomore year was the year I started plant-based eating. This decision was not based on my disordered eating habits or the image I held of my body. Since I was a child I knew I always wanted to be a vegetarian. For me, it started because I loved animals, and I found eating meat to be unethical. As I got older and I got to better understand human impact on the planet and climate change, I wanted to be able to make a difference, and my food was my first step. With the meat industry being one of the biggest culprits in terms of water usage, greenhouse gas emissions, and pollution, when I paired it with the poor ethics associated with the treatment of livestock, becoming vegetarian was an easy choice for me. I developed a plant-based diet with the sole intention to benefit the environment. What I hadn't expected was that it would help me repair my relationship with food. It wasn't a drastic improvement—I still ate less than I should, and I was still self-conscious about my body—but by developing a plant-based diet, I started to find joy in finding new recipes and baking and cooking. Slowly I moved away from all animal products to develop a vegan lifestyle, and at the same time, I learned from other athletes (Allie Ostrander, Shalene Flannagan, Molly Seidel...) what it meant to be an athlete, and how food was an essential component. My relationship with food never became perfect, but becoming vegan, and learning from other athletes, made me find joy in creating healthy foods that I knew would make me feel confident in my skin, and that would make me both happier and healthier. My goal now is to major in nutrition, and not only teach people about food, health, and the importance of proper nutrition, but to teach people how to be confident in their bodies, and to love food without fear.