Every year I pick a word to guide my yearly journey. This year I chose the word "Self" as in, self-help, self-care, and self-awareness. I have been struggling with self-love my whole life, being bullied since an early age for either my battle against the scale or my sexual identity, self-care just meant to live and let live back in those days. Today I have a better grasp on what self-care really is for me, it involves raising my serotonin and oxytocin to levels that I can not only manage but can improve my quality of life. Battling anxiety and depression became much more doable once I started Bullet Journaling, planning my days and emptying my mind of worries, developing a system that worked for me to keep me on task and with anxieties at bay. Beyond my journaling and planning, cooking has become a great source of peace to me. when I come home from work and need to simply exist for a couple of minutes, just to decompress from the day, I make dinner, I use this time for me and only me. These things keep me motivated and keep me moving forward in my self-care. It may not look like a bubble bath, candles, and a glass of wine as others may swear by, but it is peaceful, enlightening, and just what I need most of the time.

There is something to be said about coming to a new country without any friends. When I moved to the United States from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, my friendship pool seem to have been drained and depleted. As the days pass by and turn into months the most important conversations and interactions I had were inside of my own mind. I was only 17, and as a teenager turned into an adult I needed more and more the connections I had with my friends back home. The saving grace of my time as a high-school student in the USA was the advance in virtual friendship systems and the eye-opening and heartwarming internet applications that made it possible for me to continue to strengthen my friendships even though I was so far away. Friendship took a different meaning to me during those years, friendship started to mean less the need to be together and more the reliability of being there for someone else no matter what obstacles. Friendships are the basis of formative years, as one grows into oneself, the influences from their peers are intrinsically connected to the type of person one will become. I am so grateful for those great friends in my early adulthood, that are still friends today, for helping me feel safe and feel loved even though I was miles and miles away.