Back in Cedar City

Hello family, friends, followers, fans, and fandomeers!

Today was my first day of school in Cedar City. As I said earlier, I have been living here for a few days. I moved here shortly after arriving home in Las Vegas from my year-and-a-half-long mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Let me tell you something about return missionaries. Our first few days/weeks out of the mission, we don't want to be anywhere other than where we served our mission (for me that was Los Angeles, California). Our missions are really sacred and happy experiences for us. We miss our friends and our new home. We miss getting to teach people about Jesus Christ all day and getting to live away from the evil and chaos of the world. If you all know me, you know I love my hometown. So after living in Henderson for three days, I was starting to get okay with the idea of living in Vegas. (Because the first few days I wasn't sure. I really wanted to be in LA.) Right at that time, I had to move to Cedar City.

I suppose I'm getting ahead of myself. When I was seventeen, I started applying for colleges. I was really looking into Utah Valley University for awhile, but it got to the point where nothing was seeming to work out in my favor for that school. I stopped desiring to study there. It was very apparent that that wasn't where I was supposed to be.

Then Southern Utah University came into my path. This is the university that my sister attended, so I had visited it before. The first time I visited campus I knew that it was a university I definitely didn't want to go to. (God works in mysterious ways and His plan is always better than ours, I'll leave it at that.) But when I got to the point in my life where I needed to choose for myself what post-secondary school to attend, strangely enough SUU seemed to have all the right things. Upon searching for colleges, I realized that most universities don't have a creative writing program, and those that do typically have a poor one. SUU was one of three or four colleges I found that had a suitable program. It's also the Shakespeare capital of the world (or at least the United States), and of course you know I love that. I also around this time decided to minor in theatre and film. SUU has great programs for both of those disciplines, so I would be getting an unbelievably sound education in all of those areas. I was so excited! What really sold it is the Jumpstart program. Many places have programs to help students advance quickly through their post-secondary education, but Jumpstart is entirely unique to SUU. Other universities have looked into it to potentially adopt the program but have backed out because of how difficult it is. In this program, we are in one class of about fifty students for one year. We do all of our general education classes (except for math since the requirements by major vary so much for that class) in this one class, taught by many professors. Any professor can chime in at any point of another professor's lecture to make it more of an integrated learning experience and show how all of the different subjects of the world connect. Along with that, we study all of these things with a certain emphasis. My emphasis was in theatre and film. (I write a little bit more about it in a blog post from that time.) It's an incredible program, and it meant for me that I would have all of my general education done in one year, so after I served my mission, I would be entirely prepared to just get started on my major. It all seemed so divine, and I want to note that I knew that at the time. SUU was a gift from God to me. I was super excited about it.

So what happened that made me less than eager to go back this semester? Well, a lot. I moved out of my parents' house two months before my eighteenth birthday, and I did not take it well. I had the most charmed life at age seventeen. I had gained a new understanding of where I wanted to go in life, I lived in a city that I adored (I am a huge city girl, so anything smaller than Vegas is a no for me), I was doing stellar work in all of my performances and had finally reached a really good achievement level, started feeling comfortable in my own skin, and had amazing friends. I had it made, essentially. Which, from God's standpoint, is of course the best time to shake things up so more growth can happen. I was going through the crisis of growing up. That in itself is very difficult, especially for someone who was as emotionally out of control as I was.

When you take that into account, I had a very difficult time making friends. I am a pretty naturally closed-off person, so it wasn't hard for me to just close myself off from the world, resent everyone around me, and pretty much be bitter all the time. I didn't have the best living situation that year, so that definitely didn't help either.

If all that wasn't enough, I had just recently started to overcome a health crisis and was doing good, but when you take the above into account, my health declined very quickly. I sometimes forget just how bad my anxiety and depression were at the time, but they were very, very bad. My eating disorder behaviors that I had tried learning how to improve shortly before I moved away came back so much worse. Very few people know just to what extent my health dropped, but it was genuinely terrible. I have traumatizing memories from that period of time that I had shut out for about a year until they randomly came back to me on my mission. I do not have healthy memories of this place.

I was just very bitter at Cedar City as a whole. It was always dreadfully cold, it was a tiny town in my city girl eyes, and Utah has never been one of my favorite places; the culture there is very different from my adored hometown.

So, long story short, I was not in a good place and thus it was not a good place for me. But it wasn't anything in particular wrong with the university. I remember at the end of the school year at our Jumpstart party and looking around at everyone. They were all so close to each other. I loved all of them and they were great friends of mine. But I knew I hadn't developed even close to the relationships that they had developed with each other. I felt terrible. That feeling soon turned into a lot of regret.

And even a lot of guilt. I told people on my mission about it because it troubled me that much. SUU was God-given. I knew that. And my circumstances and state of mind didn't change that fact. Instead, I felt like I had abused the gift God had given me. I let resentment fill my heart towards the gate to my future that was gifted me. It was the most terrible feeling.

After that, I was determined, without a doubt, to never make that mistake again.

So yeah. Was pulling up to Cedar City, right after returning to Las Vegas from Los Angeles, in particular exciting? Was I happy to be around that culture again? No. I remember pulling into Utah a few days ago, looking around, and thinking to myself, "I have absolutely no desire to be here." I still have a hard time talking to people. I still prefer life without snow. All of those things have remained true.
But I also recognize that I am a stronger person than I was three years ago. I recognize that I learned how to overcome a lot of challenges during my time away from Cedar City. I have come more into who I am. I have learned to let myself enjoy people's company if I want to. And it hasn't been easy, especially since I'm making such a big transition right now. But like I said, today was my first day of school. My classes at the school are French, educational psychology, methods of teaching grammar, acting, and tap. All of my professors are so awesome and I am so happy. I can tell I am really where I am supposed to be. I haven't said goodbye to friends from Las Vegas or friends from Los Angeles--I still talk to all of them. But I am also okay with being myself here. It's not the town I ever picture myself living in, but it's everything I need right now. And life is never not going to be hard, but that doesn't mean it can't be happy. I am happy.

One more thing before I head out that has really helped me navigate this experience. Because trust me, it has been really hard at times. My mission therapist told me that I have a backburner confidence, so it's just time to bring it forward. It doesn't matter how inadequate we feel, how much we feel we don't fit in, how incapable we seem to be, or whatever else we don't seem to measure up on. Confidence comes from realizing that we all have the potential to be astounding. No human was born naturally worse or better than another. We all have the potential to be something great. It's okay if we're not perfect or even if we're anywhere close. As long as we are progressing and trying to do our best every day, good things will happen.

Whatever you're going through, you can do this. We got this!

Thanks and much love!

Adventures in the CLAM: BIKES?! (March 3, 2019-March 10, 2019)

 Hey, before we get right into it, for those of you that didn’t see yesterday’s post, I am going to be posting (every day) letters from my mission, telling about the adventures I had there! I’m super excited to share this with all of you. If you have any questions, please drop a comment! I’d be happy to explain things further. Enjoy family, friends, followers, fans, and fandomeers!

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Hello one and all!

The CLAM is amazing! I love it here! A little bit about the mission before I get into my area and the details of the week:

Sister Haynie (mission president's wife, she is the best and I love her) told us before we got here and said the mission was very international, which I figured just meant that it was Los Angeles so a lot of people are from a lot of different places, but no, all the missionaries are from all over the world too! Just in our apartment we have four sisters from three different countries!

In our mission we aren't allowed to eat dinner with ward members except for on weekends because during the evening is the best time to proselyte and visit people so if anyone wants to send me easy recipes missionaries could easily make that would be awesome!

Whenever we are asked to pray at a meeting we are supposed to pray in our assigned mission language, so so far I have witnessed prayers in Spanish, English, and American Sign Language.

Okay so let me just say as a missionary THE FIRST DAY TRULY IS THE WORST DAY. Once you get into the actual mission part the mission is sooo good.

In our interview on my first night in the mission Sister Haynie said that some companions you get along with no problem and you just click with, others you have to work a little hard to get along with, but she hoped my trainer was the first kind of companion. Well she IS!!! My trainer is Sister Sanerive. She has been on her mission for three months, which means she just finished her training and is now training me! She sings all the time and she seriously is such a Christlike example to me in how she serves me and everyone around me, you couldn't believe how kind and giving she is. Also she tells pretty much everyone "she didn't go to MTC!" because she was so shocked by that haha!

We live with one other companionship, Sister Thawornniwat whose release date is the same as mine (May 29), and Sister Merkley who just came from the Provo MTC!

I am serving in the Reseda area in Reseda, California! I got to meet some ward members this week and they are all super nice!

Well guess what Sister Sanerive told me when we got assigned. We are riding BIKES. Needless to say it was rough going at first but now I'm doing pretty good and I actually really love the bike!!! 😍

So some things we did this week is service at Operation Gratitude. We stuff teddy bears for children who have parents serving in the military every week so that's pretty awesome.

Sister Sanerive and Sister Thaworniwatt have an English class every week and let me just say I LOVED ENGLISH CLASS. To the shock of no one but dang I love studying the English language.

We also had a sisters conference with a special guest, Sister Eubank from the Relief Society general presidency! It was great getting to meet her and hear her speak about how we are the "first responders" of the people we are teaching, how we are the people that show them the peace and safety of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I got to share with everyone at that meeting why I love Isaiah 41:10, how it helped me get through my mission preparation to know God was always with me making me strong and how that is why it is the scripture on my mission plaque. To make it even better it was on International Women's Day! 😍

Some friends I got to meet this week were:

Trinity, she will be getting baptized in about a month and we got to teach her the Plan of Salvation this week.

Steve, he was baptized in September so we read some Book of Mormon with him and spent some time with him.

Sukki, who LOVES Sister Sanerive so much haha!!! She just loves us and always gives us food and is so sweet to us. Yesterday we had a really good talk with her about Jesus Christ, the first time she had really talked about that with us so that was amazing.

I got to meet the Hernandez family for a bit but we don't have an appointment with them until this week.

Also don't worry because we are well taken care of! Our ward mission leader Brother Hart is so helpful and kind and he even buys some of our groceries for us because he says he hoped the ward members were taking care of his sons when they served missions, so he figured our parents are hoping they are taking care of us! He is seriously the best.

To close I'd just like to share the scripture we discussed with Sister Eubank this week, Isaiah 41:10:

"Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee: yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold the with the right hand of my righteousness."

Remember that this week. God, our all-powerful Father, is with YOU.

Thanks and much love!

--Sister Day

Adventures in the CLAM

Hello one and all!

Yes, I'm back! I think you all know at this point that I've been serving a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I was assigned to labor in the California Los Angeles Mission. I served a two-transfer mission, a mission designed for people to serve the Lord and still make sure their health stays in balance. It was the most wonderful opportunity. It was like God perfectly tailored everything for me... which honestly, He definitely did. He always does.

So yeah, that's why I've been inactive for a year and a half. I'm ready to get going again! I spent a few short days in Henderson with my family and have recently moved to Cedar City, Utah to continue my studies at Southern Utah University. I have big plans for the blog and the rest of my career in the future, but of course this is going to be an overwhelming start. I think the perfect place to begin would be a series entitled "Adventures in the CLAM"!

Many of you have read this series already. I wrote emails to family and friends every week about my missionary adventures with the intention of posting them on my blog when I got home. I really want to document this adventure because it means a lot to me. This experience has truly defined who I am in a way nothing else has before. I want to tell all of you about it and have it on the blog, and it will give me  time to settle into life at college and work on other bigger projects (I'm telling you, a lot is coming) but still publish content. I will be publishing every day (except for Sunday, that is the Lord's day) until this project is done. I want to document the mission, but I also want to move on with my life and do other things! With that said, "Adventures in the CLAM" won't be the only thing I write. I will take breaks to publish other things. But honestly, I did do quite a bit of good work on this series.

As a warning, these are going to be real letters that I wrote to family and friends while I was on my mission. There will be grammatical errors, misspellings, and emojis involved on occasion. But it is the same blog that we know and love.

As another warning, I am a return missionary of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and we admittedly have our own language. No one really speaks it, not even people that are members of our church. I tried to make these pieces as reader-friendly as I possibly could. However, if I make something unclear or if you ever have any questions at all, please drop a comment! I'd be absolutely happy to elaborate.

Thank you so much for staying with me. And to those of you that are new, welcome to the family!

Thanks and much love family, friends, followers, fans, and fandomeers!

Let the adventure begin!

Final Statement

Hey guys, I promised one last post before I go, so I'm coming through on that. I did have a plan for a final post, but I decided not to go through with that. Instead I'm going to just leave a final statement.
I know that God lives. I know He is our loving Heavenly Father. I know He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, so that we all may be saved if we repent. There is so much LOVE in God's plan. He prepared a way so that everyone could be happy.
I know the Book of Mormon is true. It is the word of God. The Book of Mormon and the Bible go hand in hand. They are best pals; they perfectly support each other.
I know Jesus Christ's church was restored by Joseph Smith many years ago. Joseph Smith was a prophet called of God and we have a living prophet still today, Russell M. Nelson. Heavenly Father will always provide us answers if we ask for them, and living prophets is just one of the many ways He helps and guides us.
I am so excited to go to the California of Los Angeles mission and invite others to come unto Christ. I am scared out of my mind. It's intimidating to have to do something different and not even really know what's going to happen. But there's nothing I want to do more. This is exactly where God wants me to be.
I will not be keeping the blog updated every week about my mission endeavors. My personal Facebook account will be active while I am serving my mission, so after reviewing the guidelines regarding that, I didn't feel comfortable having the blog active. It would go against the rules of my service. However, I love ALL OF YOU and I don't want anyone to be left out of news on what I'm doing if they don't want to be. If you want to receive weekly update emails about my missionary service, you can sign up for that here.
I also made a California Los Angeles Mission playlist featuring a bunch of songs about the cities in my mission! I think it's adorable so if you guys are looking for some jams about the LA area, I've got you covered.
And since those songs are about the place I will be serving and not about the purpose of my service, I also made a worship playlist for you guys to enjoy as well.
And one more thing: my mission has an Instagram account! Follow the California Los Angeles Mission @clamgram16 on Instagram to see what me and my fellow missionaries are up to.
Thank you all so much for the love and support. I am so happy to be doing what I'm doing right now. I love you so much, and I'll see you in a bit!
--Elizabeth Day

My Mission Q&A

Hello everyone!
Um, the only update I really have is that I saw Dear Evan Hansen and it was absolutely incredible. It's a life-changing show and in the words of that one guy in "You Will Be Found", "Everybody needs to see this."
This blog post was very unplanned. Many of you saw that I posted a really big video project yesterday, "The Jumpstart Documentary", where I finally told the full story of what I did my freshman year of college. I really enjoyed making it and I hope you all enjoy it too!
Normally I wouldn't post a video and a blog post two days in a row, but something very unexpected happened last night. I've been preparing to serve a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for about a year now. This required an application process which was pretty long for me. I submitted my application to serve in October. Church leaders seek revelation from God and I am assigned a location. Well, yesterday I was given my assignment! I received my mission call and I couldn't be happier. A lot of you have had a lot of questions regarding my call. I've tried to give some of you some short answers, but I thought it would be better if I fully explained everything here for you all. Here's the things about my call that people are the most eager to know.
You got a mission call?! Yes I did! I've been assigned to labor in the California Los Angeles mission for a two-transfer mission. I report on the fourth of March.
What's a two-transfer mission? If you don't know, most missionaries serve a full-time mission, which for sisters is eighteen months long. Two-transfer missions are to make sure that a missionary is prepared to serve full-time. I had to complete a lot of counseling and evaluations to submit my mission application. My circumstances were taken into consideration in my application so I will be serving a two-transfer mission so that we can be sure I am ready to handle missionary life. The two-transfer mission means I will be serving a mission in the Los Angeles area (yes, I go directly to Los Angeles!) for three months. In the last of those three months, I will have to go through more evaluations on how well I am doing in missionary life. Once the three months is completed, there are a few things that could happen. If it is determined that I am unable to handle serving as a missionary, my mission will be complete and I will come back home. However, if they find that I'm doing well in missionary life, I will be able to serve the remainder of a full-time mission, so fifteen more months. At that point I will go to a Missionary Training Center, which most missionaries go to at the start of their mission, for two to eight weeks. Then I will either go back to the California Los Angeles mission, or I could even be assigned to serve somewhere else for the remainder of my mission. So there is still a lot about the future that is unknown! But we at least know where I will be starting my mission and where I will be until, in the words of Dear Evan Hansen, "end of May or early June".
How do you feel about it? I am overjoyed. When the call was being read to me (It wasn't under exactly normal circumstances that I received my call, but then again my entire mission application process was pretty abnormal), I couldn't stop thinking about how perfect it was. Every detail, the two-transfer mission, serving in the Los Angeles area, my report date not being too soon or too far away, it all felt so perfect. I have been waiting a very long time for this but I know it was all worth it. My assignment was definitely inspired by God.
Are you excited? Absolutely! I know one reason this question was asked was because just under a year ago I said that I knew I didn't want to serve a mission in LA, haha! As you can see in "The Jumpstart Documentary" in the link at the top of this post, I spent some time with Jumpstart in the LA area for a few days in our second semester. What I didn't know at the time was that I was literally in my mission, in the place I would be serving a year from then. The areas we were in, like Santa Monica and Universal City, are within my mission boundaries. It was on that trip while we were driving through the beautiful night on our way to our hotel that I realized I would never want to serve a mission there. (In the place I would be serving a mission. I just can't get over that.) But the reason I said that is because I have such a strong desire to live in LA. I think it is so beautiful, I love big cities, and I want to work in the film industry. So I didn't want to serve a mission there because I didn't want to serve a mission somewhere that I planned on living in the future. So yes, while I said I don't want to serve a mission in Los Angeles, I am ecstatic! I can feel that it's right, I love it there, and I'm certain it's going to be amazing. Plus I've wanted to serve a mission for so long. Now that I know when and where I'm going to be doing that, now that it's really time to go, how could I not be excited about that?
Are you nervous? Absolutely! All the worst things and all the best things always make me nervous, and this is definitely among the best things I'll ever do, so I'm undoubtedly terrified. However, I don't think I'm nervous for the reasons that most of you think I'm nervous for, haha. Either way though, the fact that I'm nervous doesn't really matter to me at all. Because what am I gonna do? I can tell that this is a part of my life purpose. This is something very important to me. Something very important in general. Being nervous doesn't change that, and it doesn't have to affect how I work and what I do either. Being nervous is just a feeling. I acknowledge that I'm nervous, and I move on. Anything's possible to work through with God on your side.
Can I receive your emails? No you can't, but not because I'm being a jerk. Let me explain. If you don't know, us missionaries are told to update our family and friends once a week on what/how we are doing. Most people send out a weekly update email to all of the family and friends that ask to receive them. I won't be doing that. Instead I will make sure the blog is updated every week with my missionary adventures. You will be able to stay informed on my mission life right here! Which is great not only because it keeps a record of my time serving God but also because not all of my readers know me personally, so you guys will be able to stay up-to-date too. If you want to contact me personally, you will be able to do so by emailing me at day.elizabeth@myldsmail.net. I'll be able to respond to emails once a week.
I am so excited for this next chapter of my life. Considering it takes a lot of preparation, I'm going to be taking a break from the blog for the remainder of my time in the Las Vegas valley. I have a lot of things I need to do to get ready to serve and just some loose ends that I want to tie up in my life before I go for eighteen months. I'll do one more post before I leave, and after that the blog will be updated weekly on how I am doing.
Thank you all for the love and support. I am incredibly happy about all this and excited to see how everything goes. I love you all.
--Lizzo

What Stops Us From Progressing?

Hello everyone!
As for what I've been up to, I've mainly been attending my brother's various concerts and performances that he's been doing for the Christmas season. I was lucky enough to have my sister and niece with me for a few days, and I've finally started really going out to view the films I want to see before I serve a mission. (Bohemian Rhapsody and Mary Poppins Returns were great, by the way.) I'm doing well and I hope you all are too.
Today I'm writing about something I have given a lotttttt of thought. I think we would all be agreed that a major purpose in life is to progress, to get better every day and learn. The reason this has been on my mind for the past year or two or three is because it's something I've had to realize so that I would be able to get better. There is something that paralyzes many of us and stops us from progressing entirely. I know it's been a roadblock for me during many times of my life and on occasion still can be. There are surely multiple answers to this question, but I honestly notice this frequently among a lot of people. What stops us from progressing?
A lot of the time, the answer is perfectionism.
Which to get more specific also means immediate perfection. We have an expectation in our minds of how we're supposed to do something, something that we are undoubtedly falling short at. So we say, "Okay, I'm going to do this. This is exactly what I'm going to do." And that's a great thing! It's good to have an end goal. The problem is, I so often see people expect immediate results. They get up the next day, try to accomplish this goal immediately, and when they aren't perfect at something that they haven't been doing for quite awhile, when they can't be perfect that very second, they hate themselves. They consider themselves a failure. And they give up. They decide there is no longer any hope for them. They're never going to get better.
Guys, it's not going to work that way. That's never going to happen. Being perfect in a day isn't going to happen. Being perfect isn't going to happen. But improvement is going to happen, and getting good and great and wonderful is going to happen. But it's not going to happen in a day, more than likely. It's surely going to take a lot of time. Progression takes time. Days, weeks, months, years. Forever. And that is not a bad thing. Constantly trying to be better gives our lives purpose.
As should be done with just about every big "project" of sorts, outlining the steps is important. I've found when I want to get better at something, I have to think about what I'm going to do every day. And at the end of the day, I evaluate myself. Did I improve from where I was yesterday? Where did I fall short? What can I do tomorrow to make sure I do better at the things I did poorly today? And I do them. And little by little, I start to get better at the things I want to be better at. By not being hard on myself, by showing myself love and kindness and patience, I actually get better. Back when I used to expect perfection right away, my life was at way more of a standstill. I genuinely improve myself this way.
For example, in 2016, as many of the people that know me very well and personally are aware, I had an identity crisis. And I mean a major one. It was pretty messy. It got to the point where within that year I asked myself what I wanted, yes me, a person who's always been wildly ambitious, and I had absolutely no idea. I was surviving day by day and it was the worst year of my life. That's not to say absolutely nothing good happened that year because that's not true, and it's not to say that that year was not at all constructive because that is in no way true as well. But it was a really devastating time of life and a lot of things contributed to that. One of the things was my absolute self-loathing in the beginning of the year. I realized how bad that was, and I knew I should not hate myself, and so I decided not to. I thought about how many times a day I said "I hate myself" every day. It was an overwhelming amount. So one day I was like, "Okay, I'm going to stop."
Breaking bad habits is not easy. That day, I had only been awake for about two hours and I had already said I hated myself around six times. I realized I failed. I didn't do what I wanted to do.
My heart broke. I cried pretty much that entire day.
When my mom got me from school and something was quite obviously wrong, I told her what my goal was and how I hadn't been able to do it. I was so sad. And that's when she told me that yes, I shouldn't be saying that to myself. But it's hard to get to the point where you are able to love and be kind to yourself. So I shouldn't have expected myself to be perfectly kind to myself after just one day. I just needed to keep working on it. Eventually it would get better.
And it was true. Whenever I was unkind to myself, I would just be like, "Hey, stop that." I started writing a list of things I liked about myself, just one thing every day. And over time I got a lot kinder to myself. I started showing myself a lot of love and respect, or at least as much as I was capable of. When I started showing myself patience, I started actually getting better.
As even more of you know, I saw a therapist this summer as a step in submitting my mission papers. That included doing a few tasks that would change and better my way of living, to not go into too many details just yet. A lot of the time it was really hard. And a lot of the time I didn't do as well as I hoped I would. I had progressed to the point in my life where I was no longer paralyzed and devastated by not being perfect, but still a little disappointed, and scared to how my therapist would react when she heard what I hadn't been able to accomplish. But when I went back for another counseling session and reported on what I had done, she was happy with my work. Because I hadn't been perfect, but she also told me that I never would be because being perfect can't happen. But she could tell that I had gotten better at what I was trying to improve on. I had completed the objective without even realizing it. The point wasn't to be perfect, it was to be aware of myself, which I had done.
Accepting that not everything you do is going to be perfect is essential to doing better. Things don't grow without patience and love.
Something else that I've noticed that has to do with perfection and happiness. This will really make you significantly happier, seriously. Not only are you not going to be perfect, but your life isn't going to be perfect. Bad things are going to happen to you, and you're going to feel negative emotions such as sadness, anger, and fear. All of this is fine, and let me tell you why. I'll start with why it's okay to feel negative emotions.
A lot of people think they can control their feelings. And by that I mean that they can control what they feel. They can't. Sometimes you are just going to be sad. (That's okay, but I'll get to that in a bit.) Because of that, they're afraid of feeling, because they think that means the feeling owns them, and that they have to react to a negative feeling in a negative way. That is in no way true! Who is possessing who? You own the feeling, not the other way around. It can't do anything on its own. So if you feel a negative emotion, that's fine! You don't control what you feel, but that doesn't mean you have to let it control you. If you're feeling sad, get some work done and do something special that makes you happy. If you're angry, take a walk and do some journaling exercises. If you're scared, pray and read a book. If you still feel negative, it's okay! It's just a feeling! It doesn't define you! You don't need to be devastated because you're not perfectly happy all the time. When I have a bad day but want to have a positive attitude, I don't pretend everything is fine. I say, "Yeah, I'm having a really bad day, but I'm not dead, so that's a good sign." Because the feeling isn't controlled but the attitude is. Attitude is just how you react to feeling. So you can be sad and still have a positive outlook! They are allowed to coexist! In fact, I've found that in the long run people that never admit they feel sadness or any negativity usually end up sadder in the long run. Tell the truth. Say, "Yes, I do not feel well today, but that is not going to kill me and I'm still going to do my best today."
I was out with my dear friend James last night and we were talking about this concept. I told him that I often use negative emotions to do positive things. How I've been feeling a lot of fear this year. But I'm not going to be able to control the fear. So instead I choose how I react to the fear. I use fear as an opportunity to have faith. I pray. And when I pray to God I say, hey, I'm really freaking out right now, but I know that You are in charge of what's happening to me so I'm going to just let You have control right now, even though I am very scared. I use the negative emotion to do something positive.
Now I'll tell you why it's okay to have negative things happen to you. It's kind of the same thing. Negative things are not going to stop happening to you. We are mortals living in a crazy world. I'm not here to discredit your pain by saying this either. I know a lot of hardships have come to you all. I just have noticed that I have felt a lot happier when facing my problems with this concept.
A lot of the time bad things happen to us that are not in our control. And while that can be devastating, we can't be owned by the bad things that happen to us. Because bad things are never going to stop happening. We deserve happiness in spite of this. I'm not even saying to say that everything's fine. Again, telling the truth is okay! Saying that things are hard is okay! As long as we keep trying. Progression and happiness happen when we are patient and keep trying. When we accept that negative things are going to happen to us. When we say, "Okay, this is not good, but I am still good, and my life is still good and can be good, I just need to keep doing my best."
To better explain, I'll give you an example. This is something I admittedly really hate that a lot of my friends do. Most of my friends don't participate in this in the way that I hate. But this evil thing that I so despise is the concept of Finstas.
For those of you not in the loop, a Finsta is an Instagram account that is typically much more private than your main account. The average Finsta that I've seen has less than fifty followers and posts about every day, while their main account, primarily used for photos of themselves and other aesthetically pleasing things, is open to the general public and posts at the most once a week.
A lot of people I know use their Finstas as a way of documenting their life, and I get that. Not everyone wants to be obnoxious (@ you, Lizzo) and have their life as an open book for the world to see. Some people really like photography so they want to have an account dedicated just to that. I get it. The problem with Finstas, however, is that a lot of the time they are used to separate a person's life into good and bad. Their pretty life from their real life. Their perfect life from their messy life. And these people frequently end up very sad because they are not able to live up to the expectations they made for themselves. Life is very messy, but their Instagram self demands that everything be perfect and beautiful.
If you follow me on the blog's various social media accounts (I'll post references to my social media at the bottom of this post for those of you that want them), you already know that my posts are pretty messy. I do what a lot of people don't do. I talk about the good and the bad. The very beautiful and the very ugly. I don't see why I shouldn't tell the truth. When I say that something bad happened to me, I'm not saying my life is over and that I'll never be happy again. I'm just saying that something bad happened to me. But it's fine, because that's not going to kill me. I'm okay with the fact that good things and bad things are going to happen to me in my life. I know that life is never all good and all bad. The lows and the highs balance each other out. I am always going to have a mix of positive and negative experiences in my life. And that's awesome. I possess the capability of being okay no matter what.
I wasn't always like that. In previous years of my life, when I was like fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, I would worry so much over so many things. And I don't mean so many things at once. I just mean when something would resolve itself it always seemed like something new would come up that had me stressed again. I would so frequently say to myself, "If this one thing would just resolve itself, then everything would be great. My life would be perfect."
I can't believe I ever thought not only that my life would ever be perfect, but also that I could only be entirely happy if my life was perfect.
I thought that way until right before my senior year of high school when I received a priesthood blessing. I was told that just because not everything was right didn't mean that everything was wrong. That phrase has stuck with me ever since, and the past three years of my life have undoubtedly been the happiest because of that. I realized that having problems didn't need to devastate me. I would just continue to work through them when they needed work and ignore them when they could be ignored, and continue to love the good things in my life, and continue to know that I am wonderful and I am okay. I have tried to live my life by that phrase ever since.
I so frequently see people say that whenever something good happens to them they don't let themselves feel happy because they know something bad will happen that will ruin it for them. This thinking assumes that anything will ever be perfect, and it won't. It also assumes that negative occurrences and feelings have to dictate how we live our lives. Bad things happening to you doesn't mean you can never be happy, just like good things happening to you doesn't mean you can never be sad. Negativity isn't going to kill us. We just need to be patient.
To conclude, you're all really loving people. You show a lot of care to others; I know this about you. Start doing the same for yourself. Why should you expect perfection out of yourself and no one else? We are all just trying our best, and if we keep doing that we're going to get better. That's the good news. If we just keep trying things are going to get better.
Perfection isn't a possibility. We see our friends without makeup on and tell them they're beautiful but when it's us we swear we're hideous and no one could ever like us this way. We put a filter over our photos because there's no way we look good enough without one. We all see the fake aesthetic homes on Instagram, we all go to each other's houses, we all apologize for our home being a mess, we all say it's okay but don't believe it's okay when it's us. I'm so tired. I'm so tired of all the wonderful people around me being so mean to themselves because they are not instantly what they think they should be. In the words of Thomas Sanders, "Even a little progress is progress."
Thank you so much for reading. Keep this all in mind. You're doing you're best, you're getting better, and that's awesome.
I love you endlessly.
--Lizzo

Disney Princess Series: Merida

Hello all!

I am an aunt now! My beautiful niece Brook was born about a month ago and she is the love of my life. I was lucky to spend Thanksgiving with her, my parents, and all of my siblings.

I also got to help my high school choir program with this wonderful show they do called Cabaret Night. They have a dinner before the show and then the students put on a beautiful theatre revue show. I got to help with the choreography and blocking, and they all did a fantastic job.

In other news, I got to see Vocal Point live in concert which was super awesome (As well as Basic Academy's Take Note! Great job kids!) and I've even been on a couple dates, which probably wouldn't normally be a super huge deal but I hadn't been on a date in a year and a half HAHAHA so that was pretty exciting.

Today is a big day, being our final post in the Disney Princess Series! I don't have any spicy introductory facts for you this time. I'll just come out and say I'll be featuring Merida today.

Truth be told, it took me a long time to be a fan of Merida. I don't really like Brave. (I also don't really like Disney's gross one-word film titles that have nothing to do with the film--Brave? Tangled? Frozen? I mean, I'll give Frozen some credit because I guess it is about frozen hearts and frozen land and whatnot. But other than that, I'm literally disgusted. The titles are lame and irrelevant. That was a really dumb and borderline random side rant, but I feel pretty strongly about it.) I'm not sure I've seen the whole thing because I think there are a few scenes of the film that I know of but can't quite recall seeing, and have a little bit of a hard time remembering the details and chronology of the story. It does have a fun plot line, I'll give it that. But that's not just because the film is generally unavailable to me, but also because I don't like it enough to want to watch it whenever. The tone of the film just isn't my style. That's kind of the point of Merida, if you read up on the creative process behind her, that she doesn't have the same tone as the other Princesses, but I really enjoy the tone of the other Princess films, so I suppose that was kind of problematic for me. However, I was really determined to find something to like about this lady, not just because I want to have something I like about each of the Princesses, but also because I'm a women support women type of gal, and I think we gotta stick together no matter what, whether we vibe or not. So while I don't really have any super specific plot points that make me admire who Merida is, I do have some things about her character and personal development that I really love.

First of all, seeing people in their element and doing what they love is the most beautiful thing in the world, so when we get to see Merida out and about and climbing mountains and whatnot, and being so joyful, and seeing what a free spirit she is, that's just awesome to me.

Also how Merida takes control of her situation and fights for what she wants. Being the prize in a contest is definitely not ideal. Merida really wasn't really wanting to get married at all, much less like that. I think it's totally cool that she competes for herself, taking control of her situation in the best way she could, winning herself her freedom, which at the end of the day is all she really wants. Kind of similar to my own favorite Princess. Plus, she totally showed off her talents in the process, and that's awesome.

A really bothersome thing about the film for me was how when Merida's mother turned into a bear, because Merida gave her a spell, Merida kept saying over and over that it wasn't her fault. Like, girl! Stop trying to take the blame away from you! You literally did that to your mom! But that was really unfair of me. That's something very unfair that a lot of people do frequently. Expecting a character to have no flaws is pretty much the worst. Like, where's the human quality there? (Although, sometimes as people we don't even allow real humans to have flaws, so that's not good.) But in the reality of the thing, that attitude of Merida's was really good for the beginning of the film because it brought about a favorite plot point of mine. Pretty much all of the problems in the film come from Merida and her mother, Elinor, just not understanding each other. I love how Merida took the time to be with her mom, to let her mom take care of her and to take care of her mom in return, and how it allowed them to see a little more eye-to-eye, to do what's best for them both, to help their relationship grow and help them genuinely show love for each other, and be able to feel love from each other.

And can we talk about this woman going through everything she did to save her clan, and to fight Mor'du, it was so beautiful to me. Such determination. Absolute fearlessness. Wonderfully fierce. So beautifully brave.
I really have developed a love for Merida. She's wildly original, unashamed of who she is, a very bright and beautiful lady, very loving.

I hope you enjoyed this post, and I hope you enjoyed this series as much as I did! I'm a huge Disney fan (even after all this time of writing and posting about it all the time I'm still not sure whether or not that's closeted information), and the Princesses have always been a favorite of mine. The displays of grace, kindness, courage, joy, and fierceness are great examples to me and women everywhere. I simply love them.

And I simply love you.

For your reference, if you're interested in reading the rest of the series again or for the first time if you're new or if you missed it, here are the links to the posts introducing the series and featuring Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora, Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, Pocahontas, Mulan, Tiana, and Rapunzel.

Thanks and much love!

--Lizzo