These are lost children looking for an identity, looking for a way to feel strength, to feel like they matter.

‘We don’t know where we’re going, we don’t know what’s going to happen, but no one can take away from you what you put in your own mind.’ ”

Time doesn’t heal. It’s what you do with the time. Healing is possible when we choose to take responsibility, when we choose to take risks, and finally, when we choose to release the wound, to let go of the past or the grief.

overnight. And you’re never going to be glad that he’s dead. But you get to choose a way forward. You get to discover that living a full life is the best way to honor him.” Last year I received a Christmas card

Survivors don’t have time to ask, “Why me?” For survivors, the only relevant question is, “What now?”

in your pocket you already hold the key: the willingness to take absolute responsibility for your life; the willingness to risk; the willingness to release yourself from judgment and reclaim your innocence, accepting and loving yourself for who you really are—human, imperfect, and whole.

And to be free is to live in the present. If we are stuck in the past, saying, “If only I had gone there instead of here…” or “If only I had married someone else….” we are living in a prison of our own making. Likewise if we spend our time in the future, saying, “I won’t be happy until I graduate…” or “I won’t be happy until I find the right

But you can choose how you live now. My precious, you can choose to be free.

be passive is to let others decide for you. To be aggressive is to decide for others. To be assertive is to decide for