Nobody gets to name you. You are not forgettable. You are not replaceable. You are not your pain. You are sacred and special and alive.

Be loved. Be known. Love people and know people. Be so brave as to raise a hand for help when you need it. Make friends and make sure they know they matter. Be loyal to them and fight for them. Remind them what’s true and invite them to do the same when you forget. If you do some losing or you walk with someone else in their defeat, live with dignity and grace. It is the middle finger to the darkness.

There's room for magic and inspiration. There's room to live a better story.

And God must be a pretty big fan of today, because you keep waking up to it. You have made known your request for a hundred different yesterdays, but the sun keeps rising on this thing that has never been known. Yesterday is dead and over. Wrapped in grace. Those days are grace. You are still alive, and today is the most interesting day. Today is the best place to live.

We are all a people in need. We are not perfect. We are not machines. We make mistakes. We need grace. We need compassion. We need help at times. We need other people. And that's okay.

Love is a thousand things, but at the center is a choice. It is a choice to love people. Left to myself, i get quiet and bitter and critical. i get angry. i feel sorry for myself. It is a choice to love people. It is a choice to be kind. It is a choice to be patient, to be honest, to live with grace. i would like to start making better choices.

More than anything, my wish for you is this: That when your awful darkest days come, you will know you're not alone. Pain will tell you to keep quiet, but that's a lie. Life is fragile and we all break in different ways. I hope you know you can be honest. I hope you know that you can ask for help. Did you catch that? It is absolutely positively okay to ask for help. It simply means you're human. Help is real and it is possible; people find it every day.