So, Stay True To You.

Authenticity- Of undisputed origin, genuine.

What does it even mean to be authentic today? We as a society are so conditioned to look the same way, find the same things interesting, and say the same things. The other day I was wondering If I could choose any trait, what would I want to be known for? After thinking about this for a while I decided on authenticity. 

It’s a very crucial time for me! Which has been so exciting but also definitely stressful. I was stuck between two schools just a few weeks ago. On paper, one school looked more impressive. The pressure of going somewhere that was more prestigious was overwhelming. I genuinely believed that my family would be more proud of me if I attended said school, I also was infatuated with the idea of presenting myself as quite an impressive scholar. Right when I was practically ready to commit, I realized this was just not me. I was trying so very hard to be something that I was not. I thought about my, at the time, second choice. The campus was energetic and fun. I felt so welcomed and could easily envision calling this place my home. I realized that if I was honest with myself, this school was infinitely more “me”. The day after I came to this realization I put my deposit down. To my surprise, the world did NOT come to an end. My family was so supportive and told me countless times how proud they were of me. I haven't thought twice about my decision since. 

This crazy direction change made me think about the importance of being authentic to ourselves. That one decision could have altered the next four years of my life. Another thing going on at the moment is how we seniors are presenting ourselves to future college friends. It is so easy to display ourselves as something we are not over the phone. This is nothing new, as by now we are all very aware that social media is just a highlight reel. I've been trying SUPER hard to be authentic throughout this process. I was super lucky to find a roommate who makes this so easy. I figure that it is much better to be real now so that when I touch down on campus, I haven’t catfished my whole personality. Plus!! We should not surround ourselves with people who we have to alter our personalities for. Own your quirks girl. 

So my current goal is to be true to what I feel needs to be said, what I find interesting, what I want to wear. Life is way too short to put on an act! I hope that you all feel motivated to do the same. The world is totally more interesting with a variety of people being who they are. Remember, struggles may be inevitable, but struggling in silence is not. 

XoXo- Tara :)

So, Let Us Be Here.

So, it’s my senior year, and quite honestly I don’t feel as if I’m on top of the world like High School Musical 3 led me to believe I would. I’ve been struggling with the feeling that I’m not doing enough to capture my last year of high school, my last year living with my mom, and my last year seeing the girls who have been my best friends since fifth grade every day.

Have you ever cried on your birthday? I definitely have once or twice (every single year.)! I read an article by Refinery29 on the weird tendency, and how it’s really NOT a weird, but common thing. In said article psychologist, Ash King, stated one of the best ways to avoid these cake day blues is to lower our expectations. We put a lot of pressure on ourselves to feel a certain way just because it’s our birthday. These expectations make it THAT much worse when things aren’t perfect.

Objection relevance? Well, senior year has kind of been feeling like a birthday to me, and I’m sure some of you are right there with me. I had these crazy expectations that I was going to be doing fun, interesting things all the time and spending the whole year on cloud nine. Don’t get me wrong, I DO have fun. However, I am also dealing with college applications (hell), schoolwork, and all the other dilemmas I carried from junior year.

So I am currently trying to dispose of these expectations, not because I don’t wanna be happy and live up my senior year, but because I want to let myself feel what I’m feeling, and work through things without the pressure of them not fitting my “senior year criteria”. If not completely rid ourselves of expectations, maybe we can try to replace them with some more realistic standards. For instance, I EXPECT myself to spend time with the people I love this year. I EXPECT myself to savor the last months of being a kid who lives with her parents.

Let’s all step back and be where we are now with no expectations of where we need to be or what we need to be feeling. Thinking too much about the point in our lives in which we stand takes away all the fun. Let’s be here. Remember, struggles may be inevitable, but struggling in silence is not.

XOXO- Tara

So, Do it For You.

15-year-old Tara would have rather stared back at Bloody Mary in the flesh than see herself in a bikini when she glanced in the mirror. Now, today I may be 17, but I still have that insecure little girl in me. Who we were, will always be a part of who we are. Who are we to disappoint those youthful versions of ourselves, to not do better for them, to let ourselves rot in the same thoughts that they did?

I went to the beach yesterday. I put on a near-microscopic bikini, as a teenage girl does, and despite all the love and help that has consumed me for the past two years, I still found myself beyond insecure taking off my cover-up. The same insecure feeling that has haunted me for years, as it does thousands and thousands of other girls. Younger me would have hidden her body in a towel or failed to even have taken the cover-up off in the first place. So yesterday, I took that cover-up off for that insecure young girl who didn't have the confidence to. The world didn't stop spinning, no one froze and pointed, or made a comment…because who really cares? Pop your ish girl. I ate fries, and ice cream, and laughed, not once thinking about what I was wearing for the rest of the day. 

On the way home we saw countless fireworks going off. Now realistically, yes it is the Fourth of July weekend, but sitting there with my best friends, I just thought of younger Tara celebrating. Celebrating the healing I had partaken in, celebrating how good life can be. Let’s do more of that! More of doing the “scary things'' that hold us back. More of just doing better for ourselves of today, ourselves of last year, and so on. You deserve that, younger you deserves that. Remember, struggles may be inevitable, but struggling in silence is not. 

XOXO- Tara🤍

So, Is Everything Forgivable?

Forgiveness.

With Dr.Ira Gelman

It’s not sadness. It’s not anger. It’s a lack of forgetting. It’s the fact that time can't change how wrong and shallow their actions were. It’s the fact that they would do it again and probably have. It’s the fact that they don’t deserve to feel like they got away with it. It’s the way I can still feel the emotions they inflicted on me, months after what they’ve done. So if you can’t tell by now, no, I don’t think everything is forgivable.

      Now I know what you may be thinking, perhaps this is a pessimistic view, maybe I'm biased or just too opinionated…so I figured I would get a professional's take. Earlier this month, I met with Dr.Ira Gelman who graduated from Temple University with his doctorate in 2014.

     Upon my initial question, is everything forgivable, Dr.Gelman said, “HELL no, certain things are so severe, they can not be forgiven.” Glad we were on the same page. So how do we draw this line between forgivable and not, what are the deciding factors of letting go? After some discussion, we came up with two pretty general criteria in order for something to be truly unforgivable. 

1. Was their intention to hurt?

2. Were they aware of what they were doing?

Now something to keep in mind is, people lie, so you need to trust your gut when assessing these situations. For instance, not one cheater is going to admit they had the intention of hurting you, but I'll be damned before taking their word for it. 

The next question I had for Dr.Gelman was, is it better for our mental health to forgive people? This question was definitely a loaded one. In response, Gelman said “It is not healthier. It is not healthier to fall back. What we must do is begin the process of moving on. Sometimes we may not be able to move on but leaving them behind assures us they won't do it again. This process is worth it.” 

As the discussion furthered, Dr.Gelman brought things to my attention that I hadn't even thought about entering the session, such as forgiving OURSELVES and letting go of grudges for the greater good of OURSELVES. Gelman essentially stated that we don't have to be full of hate. We can give ourselves the gift of moving on while withholding our forgiveness from those who do not deserve the privilege. We can accept apologies without letting them back into our lives. We can forgive yet not forget. 

Yet again I’ve found that most of the answers I seek in life, tell me to essentially listen to my gut as it tells me to do what's best for ME. We can normalize putting ourselves first and surrounding ourselves with people who choose not to hurt us. Surrounding ourselves with people that have our best intention in mind. Surrounding ourselves with people who are not going to do things that we need to question if we are capable of forgiving in the first place. Stop wasting your time on bums, let go. Remember, struggles are inevitable, but struggling in silence is not.

XoXo- Tara🤍

So, You Are a Winner.

What makes me significant? I can not stop asking myself this damn question. The past two weeks have been hard. It has felt like an ongoing fight between a chronic lack of motivation and an overwhelming feeling of insignificance. As I was stressing about what to write for you guys, I came to the realization that it would be so fake of me to produce some article displaying the side of me that has it all together. The goal is never to appear as some girl boss who has all her ducks in a row, because that’s a fat lie. I don’t have it all together, my room currently resembles a pig sty, my grades could most definitely be better, and writing this post took way longer than it should’ve. I made this blog to help some of you realize how relatable your lives are and to do so, I need to be so real about my own. It’s so ok to struggle, it’s what makes us human.
Significance. I keep asking myself what makes me significant. What is it that is making my life worthy of recognition? This has got to be in the top 10 worst questions to ever ask yourself when you feel you are already spiraling. We are all so hard on ourselves. I don’t know about you but if I’m in my bag and somebody asks me what I’m doing with my life, I don’t care if I just single-handedly cured cancer, I am gonna have a meltdown. We need to start recognizing our small wins, if we hold ourselves to these unreal standards we are never going to feel like we have done anything significant, and that feeling absolutely sucks. How do we detect one of these small wins you may ask? Well, I think first you have to identify what mental state you are in. If I’m having a bad depression day and I manage to not take a 4-hour nap, that’s a win. However maybe if I’m having a good day I can hold my daily wins to a bit higher standards…like cleaning my room or getting a decent amount of school work done.
When being discharged from rehab, the other patients go around and give you “gifts”. These gifts are really just tips or hopes they have for your future. On my last day at the Renfrew Center, a friend I made during my time there, gave me the gift of grace. Grace for myself. I can’t express how important I believe it is for us to learn how to forgive ourselves. To learn how to appreciate ourselves. To learn how to show grace to ourselves. You are gonna start detecting a lot more wins, when you start showing yourself this grace.
The point really is, you are significant regardless of how much you got done today, what makes you a winner is the fact that you are still gonna get up and try again tomorrow. As cheesy as it sounds, we are all winners, and we are all significant…even if all we got done today was the day itself. I am so proud of you. Stop wasting time beating yourself up. Remember, struggles are inevitable, but struggling in silence is not.
-XOXO, Tara🤍

So, It’s Not That Deep.

If you've spoken with me personally, you have definitely heard me say “we are all living the same life.” Now I genuinely believe this. I don’t think we realize how similar our thoughts are to one another. Earlier this week I found myself choking on NOTHING in the midst of class, I began chugging water like it was the first liquid I had seen after trudging through the dunes of the Sahara Desert. The embarrassment that followed this scandal was insane. I sat there reflecting on every life decision that had led me to this point…but why? Why was it that big of a deal? Why am I so embarrassed about coughing, in fact why do I find myself so embarrassed of EVERYTHING?? Now I know this is not a me problem. I have spoken with so many who struggle with this same thing. So why do we feel like this, and how can we handle it?
Let's dissect this coughing incident. What is it that makes us so embarrassed about these irrelevant situations? Is it because we feel judged? I mean if we are being so real, no one is gonna remember you had a tickle in your throat 30 seconds from now. Think about it this way…would YOU still be thinking about someone coughing 30 seconds later, if so…you NEED to get a hobby. If there was less judgment, there would be so much less embarrassment.
We need to start taking a second to ask ourselves, is this really that deep? Most of the time the answer is no, as teens we tend to blow things way out of proportion. We need to stop letting ourselves get SO embarrassed about things we can’t control, the things we love, or the things we say. If someone is judging you for any of these, it’s embarrassing for them not you. I also can promise you that you are not the only one feeling like this. One in every three teens deals with social anxiety. One in every three teens is ALSO embarrassed to cough in class. One in every three teens knows exactly what you're going through, and is there to support you. There is such power in relating to each other. There is such power in knowing that you have that community standing with you.
Stop letting embarrassment and shame eat up your teenage years because they are gonna go by way too fast. No one important is judging. So do whatever makes YOU feel good without bringing shame and embarrassment. Stop giving a shit, it’s not that deep. Remember, struggles are inevitable, but struggling in silence is not.

XOXO-Tara 🤍

So, Where Do We Start?

Well to be so real, in order to start we first have to stop. Stop letting our circumstances control our lives. Stop ignoring our emotions. Stop wasting the best years of our lives. Stop giving a shit about anything that is not helping us thrive and grow as individuals. So how do we stop? How do we let go of these restraints that we have grown so accustomed to? Well, I don’t know if there's a simple answer to that, but I can let you in on the three tips that began my journey…three tips that have given me more life and less stress.
1. Stop throwing yourself a pity party. Good people go through bad shit. All we can do when our circumstances are far from bright is figure out how we are gonna fix it. We need to stop waiting around for someone or something to solve all our problems. We are capable. Now I get how hard it is to not mope around when life kinda sucks, I promise you we have all thrown some pity soirées, whether it was caused by a partner, family, mental struggle, school, or the many other struggles we teens face, I promise you life is gonna go on, we have so little time to be young and dumb so let’s stop wasting any of it dwelling on things that have already happened. We can’t change the past.
2. Start doing things that make you happy. Life is gonna be a million times better when you stop doing things because of expectations or the aesthetic and start doing them because you love them. If someone is judging you for what you love they gotta go anyways. Forget about what people are gonna think and start choosing things for you.
3. Surround yourself with people who are pushing you to thrive. We are so much of who we surround ourselves with. We need to be with people who have goals and drive. Be with people who are FUN, people who wanna go out and do random stuff. If you’re spending every weekend sitting in a basement bored, I promise you it’s time for a change. Push your friends to get out there, and step outside their comfort zones, in return they will do the same for you.
Three steps to get started. It’s always the right time to commit to self-improvement, you deserve it. We need to let go and have fun while we are young and responsibilities are few. Remember, struggles are inevitable, but struggling in silence is not.
XOXO- Tara🤍