-Question submitted by Anonymous

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Dannielle Says:

uuhhhhhmmmm….. “uhm”

The first step in being comfortable with who you are is being totally okay with the fact that you have no idea who you are. 

We all get so caught up in figuring out who we are that we forget to actually live life and learn who we are…does that make sense? I have a feeling you’re like ‘i might be gay but being gay is gross’ …okay ONE, being gay isn’t gross, so there you go…you can move past that now…. TWO, at the end of the day, you’re going to end up falling in love with whoever you fall in love with REGARDLESS of whether or not you WANT to be falling in love with them… so like… you should just live life and pull up your bootstraps and stomp through the dense and dark forest of life because let me tell you something…

The more you try to avoid your feelings, THE MORE FEELINGS YOU FEEL. The more you’re like ‘i dont want to like them’ the harder you fall for them. The more you’re like ‘i should get a sensible job,’ the more you daydream about painting all day. The more you’re like ‘my friends are just mean to me for funzies, i won’t say anything,’ the more you wanna step on their shoelaces. 

Feel your feelings, don’t be afraid to feel. Don’t be afraid to go after what you really want. Don’t be afraid to say what you feel. Don’t be afraid to be you and it’ll be a lot easier to figure out who ‘you’ is… right?

Kristin Says:

AY to the fucking MEN.  (amen).

First of all, I UNDERSTAND.  Let me tell you, I have been in that place where my mind has been absolutely consumed with trying not to think about the one hundred million things that I cannot stop thinking about.  I have been in yoga, in church, in the park, at school, on the subway, at work, all the while thinking only about trying not to think about all the things I was thinking about…

Dannielle is the most right she has ever been…the more you fight those thoughts, the more it is going to be a battle, and the less it is going to be you growing up and figuring yourself out.  Now, either way you are going to wind up at a point where you love who you love and that will never change, but the way you can move through it a little more easily is by telling yourself at every turn that NO ONE knows who they are at every moment in their lives, that who you are today may not be who you are tomorrow, and that whoever you are is an incredible, brilliant thing.

Breathe. 

I’m serious.  Stop what you are doing right now and take a deep breath.  Feel that air in your lungs?  That is what makes you a living human being, and it is the same air that makes the rest of us living human beings.  You are a human being, and right now “being who you are,” means being someone who remembers to breathe, someone who allows themselves to be confused, someone who explores that confusion, and someone who trusts that what you feel in your heart is not wrong, bad, or ugly.