In response to an exhilarating, thought provoking, STEAM class at ISU, this blog article emerged. I had explained to Dr. Malone that soon I was going to write my response to her class and asked for her to share. Upon hearing the question, my first reaction to this question was, how cliché. Then the wheels started turning, “Wait, how old is my younger self?”. The ISU student responded to my question, “18”. Well, darn it I thought, I’m not the panelist with that question to answer. When I was 18, what I needed to hear and believe was that “You are going to be ok”. Internally my pain was deep, my smile was a way to hide that from others. Anxiety disorder was not something we talked about. Sadly, we did not talk about anything that was not positive. But this really is not about how deep the pain was at 18, it is about what I needed to hear and believe. As creatures, we are continuously changing. Who you ...
He has the same sparkle, she said to herself as she tilts her head to the side. What did you say about the road up ahead? which is all she caught from the conversation. In a strange way she feels like she is in a trance, everything in her head went silent after stepping foot on this part of the path. The familiarness with everything is like she had done this before, like she knows who this is. But she has never traveled this path, never been to these woods. How could this be? She never ventured outside the palace. He looks at her with curiosity, but kind eyes and asks, "are you ok?" Her instinct was to lie, to say, oh yes, I am just perfectly fine. Then the words started stumbling out of her mouth as if someone else was speaking. "Nope, I am not fine, I seem to be lost…very lost. Then she cleared her throat, the whole point of taking this path was to find two men that robbed me of my life. ...