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petewentzisblack1312 · 3 years

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Hi… I wanted to ask this on anon so I didn’t ask on your personal, idk if this is too personal or anything to ask but

Do you have a problem with people saying they have a mental disorder if they don’t have a diagnosis? Like for me so… I have been diagnosed with anxiety but I am like 99% sure I have bipolar disorder. And like I know you can’t diagnose me so I’m not going to go into depth with my symptoms but ever since I was like, 11, I used to get very depressed to the point where I contemplated ending it but then i would snap out of it and I think for me my manic phase are hypomanic bc ive never experienced like the full range of those symptoms but my depressive phases get very rough esp if I have external stressors but it will go through what I assume to be these phases like sometimes within the day esp if I have a stressor.

I am in nursing school and I work at a psych hospital so like this isn’t coming out of nowhere, I am very familiar with all mental disorders and it was actually during my psych nursing class and learning about bipolar disorder that I was like… hm… why does this feel like a mirror right now. I am aware I should get to a therapist and get an actual diagnosis (if I had money I would lol) but like idk. Idk if it’s worth going to my doctor at my physical and being like “hey I think I have this” I am lucky enough now that I am in a good place and can manage my symptoms but I am terrified I will go through a stressor again and lose it so idk. I mean I feel like I already know the answer but I wanted to ask anyway to see your take :/

Anyway idk as a future medical professional I think self diagnosis got a bad rep and it’s like idk I think for mental disorders esp you can tell if you have anxiety and it’s a persistent problem. You can tell if you have depression. I know bipolar disorder is harder to diagnose but idk I think since I’m in the field it’s easier? Idk I felt like a sense of relief with learning about it and finding similarities and being like “well maybe that’s why I’m like that”. But idk now I’m feeling uneasy bc I don’t have a diagnosis and I don’t want to be like, stepping over people who were diagnosed. Thank you in advance if you read all this and yeah I’m sorry I know it’s a lot and this is controversial

ok this is a long post so im putting it under a cut but tldr, no i dont have a problem with it. it doesnt matter if you actually have an illness, it matters if you find a solution to your problem. if treating yourself like you have a certain condition makes it easier to go through life, then keep doing what works for you, you are doing nothing wrong. this all goes for physical and mental illnesses.

im a firm proponent of self diagnosis. i wouldnt be here if i didnt have the confidence to research mental illnesses and advocate for myself. as someone who is extremely familiar with the medical profession on account of being the daughter of a doctor and a nurse and spending my childhood running around a hospital, im extremely privileged to even have the knowledge and ability to do so, and i try to bear in mind the understandable hesitancy of people without this advantage. i know that you are well within your right to refuse medication that makes you sick, i know that you can complain about a doctor that isnt listening to you, i know that you are allowed and encouraged to be adamant about things you are told dont matter, and in addition to that, i have a VERY well known doctor and a nurse in my corner, and i am STILL treated as though i do not understand my own experiences enough to have any authority more often than i am not.

the reason self diagnosis gets a bad rep imo is because people have constructed this boogeyman of the worst case scenario, people collecting mental illnesses they dont have for attention as opposed to what it is, people doing research into their experiences and making theories on what they have so they can manage it. youll often see the take of "i dont hate self dxd i just hate people who do it for attention" and i think thats very irresponsible considering a symptom of many mental illnesses is thinking youre faking it and doing it for attention, nevermind the fact that attention seeking behaviour is literally a symptom of many mental illnesses people often dont want to empathize with. gatekeeping whos illness is real just keeps people who need help out. i could go into an anarchist screed about democratizing health, but basically, as someone whos life has been saved by my insistence on self diagnosis, and whos life has been made significantly easier by treating myself as though i have the conditions that i theorize i have, self diagnosis saves lives, and i, as an advocate for disabled people of all kinds on my island, will never put any conditionals on self diagnosis. it doesnt matter if you find the right name for your problem, it matters if you find a solution that works. i have yet to meet any of these fabled people who never try to receive a professional opinion, only people who literally cant.

as for feeling guilty, ill repeat how i opened this answer: it does not matter what exactly your problem is, it matters that you find a solution that works. in medicine generally, there will be a wide spectrum of problems with overlapping treatments, things which are similar but distinct, things which look identical but are completely different and at different levels of concern. it doesnt really matter which grab bag of bullshit your brain is reaching from, it matters that you know how to deal with what it throws at you, whatever that may be. dont worry about getting it right, worry about getting it working. okay?

for advice on how to deal with doctors, its helpful to pose it as a hypothetical as opposed to an absolute. when i bring up things im dealing with that i have a theory about i say "i think i have x" or "i think i might have x" or "i have a lot of symptoms of x". doctors are often egotistical and are easily challenged so it helps to pose it at a problem they can solve as opposed to one youve solved for them otherwise they get spooked. in my experience posing it this way leads them to actually interrogate this line of symptoms, and theyll ask you why you think that, and you can bring up symptoms that led you to that conclusion, and ones that give you trouble especially. for example, ive said "i think i may have autism or adhd? or both" to several doctors, and they either agree with me (i believe its been put in my file as a possibility now although i cant get an official test done due to financial and resource restrictions) or they ask why i think so, and i detail what i believe is due to my autism. its small, but this reframing helps a lot.

i think this covers all you said but my head is empty as hell.

#dils declares #mental health //#hospitals //#i hope i hit everything!!

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meredithritchie · 5 years

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Mask of Anonymity: Anonymous Asks as a Teen Outlet

[The following is an article I wrote for a campus submission. I retained the rights to publish it here, as well. It regards my experiences as a fandom blogger.]

“Hi, I’ve been suffering with what is probably depression for years without any help and recently it’s been getting worse,” begins the anonymous message that drops into my inbox one night. It’s a teenager asking me how to keep themself stable until they can get a diagnosis from a pediatrician. I tell them I’m proud of them. I tell them I’m not an expert. I tell them to be kind to themself. I tell them they’re loved.

Since founding my Tumblr blog in April of 2017, these messages have become almost routine. In just a few months of actively posting my fanedits and fanfiction online, I amassed almost five thousand followers. In this particular fandom, where the most popular bloggers have ten thousand followers, that’s a dramatic amount. Via the blog’s anonymous ask feature (colloquially called “anons”), anyone in the world can drop a question into my inbox without revealing their username, even if they aren’t one of those five thousand. Many if not most of these followers are minors, and some of them are not even of the minimum age to use the site: thirteen. My sister is twelve and loves watching fandom videos on YouTube, and in one year, she will be old enough to make an account with access to my blog and the blogs of all five thousand of my followers. I wonder if she’ll be one of the faceless messages I get in my ask box.

“Could I ask for some advice? It's about gynaecologists and vaginal health while being trans.”

“What I’m wondering is, how did you go about narrowing down lists of colleges to go to?”

“I basically cant[sic] think anymore and it's really hard to do school work because of this. Do you have any advice?”

“How does one stop obsessing over someone, when that person will never be theirs?”

“Hey I really need some help like older sister stuff help”

“I had a breakdown at school today. At least I think that’s what happened because I don’t remember it clearly.”

Some of it is generalized, and some of it is specific, but it all comes from a recognizable place of teen struggle and fear. Sometimes these messages linger in my inbox, as I try to struggle for just the right words. Other times I feel urgency, and dash off a response as quickly as possible. I re-read the post later and wonder if I said the right things, if I said what I meant. I’m not the only one.

Other fandom blogs, some even larger than I am, have turned off anons or closed their ask box entirely because of an influx of personal rants, requests for help, and even suicide notes. While Tumblr’s anon feature is meant to be a place for shy and intimidated users to express themselves in a way that isn’t possible via conventional social media like Facebook and Twitter, the double anonymity of a hidden screenname offers confidence to say things that are otherwise difficult or even unsayable. When it comes to personal questions and statements, many young people lack a safe location to speak them, and the ask box offers a unique relief. Many teens don’t want to speak to their parents, teachers, or guardians about their sex life, their mental health, or their personal problems. Even Googling answers sparks fear that a teacher will confiscate their phone, or a parent will borrow their laptop, and evidence will be left in view. With a generalized segregation of America by age, most teens also don’t have other adults which they can speak to on a friendly basis, let alone speak to face to face for advice on difficult issues. Often the only adults that young people interact with face-to-face are authority figures like older relatives, teachers, and coaches. In the absence of face-to-face interactions, teens instead turn to the leaders of their fandoms, who often foster online personas as Fandom Rens, Moms, Uncles, and Sisters. Plenty of older fandom members cultivate this image, though “older” is relative and in a small community these members may be only eighteen or nineteen years old, though they are generally in their twenties and thirties. While many fandoms have a primary userbase of tweens and teens, these senior members often run the most popular blogs and produce the highest quality fanart, fanfiction, and other fan content. During fandom “discourse,” these older members often lead the way and resolve conflict.

“Discourse” in fandom is not like discourse in the academic sense. While academic discourse encompasses many elements of rhetoric and debate, fandom “discourse” is essentially a euphemism for argument, frequently with an ethical element or discussion of “problematic” behavior. This discourse can involve either relationships between real human beings like celebrities and fandom members or the content of any fictional work contained in the fandom canon. The wide umbrella of “discourse” covers everything from discussion of whether a fandom celebrity’s recent comment was racist all the way to whether fanwriting two characters romantically is incestual when both characters are figments of a third character’s imagination. In essence, discourse gets hairy, complicated, and even philosophical. Like real political and social issues and like fandom itself, discourse gives some young people a sense of belonging and also the feeling that they are on the side of right and reason. An individual’s choice to participate in discourse becomes part of their identity.

In this way, fandom becomes what Mary Louise Pratt refers to as a contact zone, “where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other.” Through fanfiction “AUs” (alternate universes) fans of color write white characters as PoC, queer fans write cisgender/heterosexual characters as LGBT+, and neuroatypical fans write neurotypical characters as autistic, depressed, anxious, or otherwise neuroatypical. While alternate universe only emerged as a genre with the rise of the internet, these stories reflect a longer history of the insertion of the subordinate into dominant texts. Pratt refers to a text called The First Chronicle and Good Government, in which a man native to South America uses the language of his colonizers, the Spanish, to talk about the experience of the indigenous people, “in which the subordinated subject single-handedly gives himself authority in the colonizer’s language and verbal repertoire.” Through this text, Pratt touches on what she calls transculturation, a product of the contact zone, in which “members of subordinated or marginal groups select and invent from materials transmitted by a dominant or metropolitan culture.” In the modern world, the dominant culture produces Steve Rogers, a cisgender man, and fandom reinvents him as a transgender man. The dominant culture creates Hermione Granger and Harry Potter, two white children, and fandom reinvents them as black and Indian. The dominant culture offers Legolas and Gimli, both ambiguously straight, and fandom reinvents them as a gay couple. For young marginalized people encountering this kind of contact zone for the first time, fandom becomes a community that is irreplaceable and unique, where they have the ability to express themselves and see themselves in characters.

Between the aspects of community in fandom itself and the discourse which offers a cause and creates both positive and negative relationships, it is hardly surprising that young people turn to fandom elders when they encounter a problem. After watching older fandom members participate in, manage, or even quell discourse, younger fandom members begin to look up to them as people who have all the answers, as leaders of this unique community. The availability of anonymity makes the opportunity even more enticing. A kind older fandom member becomes everyone’s shoulder to cry on, everyone’s outlet, and everyone’s therapist. While this may serve as a resource for plenty of teens, there is always an associated toll taken on the mental wellbeing of the members who serve them. Fandom creators want to help their followers, but may be struggling with their own past or present depression, anxiety, PTSD, eating disorders, body image issues, and attacks on their identity.

Self-proclaimed “Fandom Grandpa” @randomslasher (known in the community as LJ) runs the largest art and writing blog in my fandom and has struggled with a history of anon rants and anon requests both to themself and to their partner Thuri, who also runs a popular blog. As long ago as 2013, LJ posted, “I don’t think I will ever understand people who hide behind a mask of anonymity for the sole purpose of making someone else feel bad. Just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should [emphasis original].” LJ has made additional posts before and since requesting that people abstain from ranting into their inbox, but the issue continues for LJ and other major bloggers who gain new followers every single day. Many of these anonymous messages are never published, as evidenced by posts like this one, which appeared on LJ’s blog in 2018: “Anon i’m sorry to hear that, but that wasn’t a safe ask to send someone without a trigger warning, and i won’t publish it. Try to get help if you can.” The message of the post alone is ominous, and one can only guess at the content of the ask.

The teenage years are known to be a time of struggle, both personal and social. This is significant now more than ever as depression and anxiety rates among teens rise, and many teens experience suicidal ideation, unhealthy relationships with their own bodies, and struggles with their gender and sexuality in addition to the classic problems of teenhood which should be no more serious than asking someone to homecoming, getting a driver’s license, or taking a chemistry exam. However, as student struggles become more severe, especially among marginalized groups, resources to cope with this period is not moving apace, and young people use fandom as a resource to get answers and to express themselves. Older fandom members are suddenly bearing the weight of hundreds of teen struggles, and most of them have no formal training or resources to cope with them.

#writing

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sheislegend23 · 6 years

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10.21.18

Here it goes:: the topic today is PCOS.

PCOS means polycystic ovarian syndrome. There are a lot of things that you can google, but I am going to be talking about my own personal journey and what that means for me now in this moment in time. There’s TMI in here, but reading personal accounts has helped me broaden my mind and knowledge and has certainly helped me realize I’m not alone in my struggles.

First thing you should know is that while some little girls plan their weddings, I planned baby names. I used to say I wanted as many children as I could, and I have ALWAYS wanted to have a family of my own.

Body wise, I was healthy and “normal” until I was about 8 or 9 years old. I slowly gained weight and got “husky”, but nothing to be terribly concerned about. By 12, I was obese. I didn’t get my first period until I was 16, which some say is just being a late bloomer, but in my case was probably the beginning effects of PCOS.

At 11, my parents divorced and my dad and I went off our own way. We had a huuuge learning curve, and I remember eating spaghetti with sauce (and when that ran out - butter) for weeks at a time until he got paid again because spaghetti was cheap, cheap, cheap. We moved again and again and readjusted our lifestyle over and over so we would never have to go back to those rough days, but that period of time was when I went from “husky” to obese.

I hated my body and didn’t understand why eating what was presented as “healthy” as a child wasn’t helping me. At 14, I started dance classes and later tried out and made my high school drill teams. All the dancing and cardio didn’t help my waistline. I didn’t let anyone’s mean comments or my fat body stop me from dancing, which inspired some and repulsed others. I didn’t have regular periods which I chalked up to being so active and fat at the same time. A stressed out body could possibly decide that’s not the best place for a baby to grow, right??

Enter adulthood. Here’s a few things I learned::

1.) Bread is NOT healthy. My mother drilled in my head that bread is good for you and could be a good anytime healthy snack as well as something you HAD to eat at least twice a day. Not sure where she got that information because, especially with my body type, starch and carbs are the enemy. I didn’t learn this til much later, I will alert when it is time.

2.) I have ADD. Specifically, ring of fire ADD (NOT ADHD) which helped explain why I am patient and extremely slow to anger, but once I’m angry, just back off and let me blow off my steam to cool down again. I thought it was because I’m southern. This diagnosis was at the age of 19.

3.) I have PCOS. The doctor I went to perhaps had good intentions, but conveyed very incorrect information and can give you, the reader, a glimpse at how one obese patient was given said info.

At my first OBGYN appointment, she told me that with 95% accuracy, I definitely had PCOS. She glanced over what that meant, but then came to the part she grilled me on - my weight. My weight was most likely causing the PCOS so if I could just stop eating bad and go exercise, I could probably reverse the effects and have a normal body again. I explained that I had danced for years and hadn’t eaten that terribly since I had had to at 12, and she said that I simply must not have been exercising hard enough and eating too much. Insert a HUUUGE eye roll here because as any drill team alum know, it’s plenty.

The real troubling thing came next when I talked about my want for a family in the future. She looked at me very gravely and said that my chances for conception are extremely slim, and if I ever did successfully conceive and didn’t miscarry, I would need to quit my job and stay at home and never be stressed for the whole 9 months because I would be at a very high risk of miscarriage up until the baby came out. Also, “don’t get attached to the first one” because I will likely lose it. Reminder:: A REAL DOCTOR TOLD ME THIS. AT 19. For real.

Her solution: birth control. I was very weary of all types of female birth control because there are a lot of side effects. I took them for a few months, and then stopped.

I don’t hold any ill will towards her, but I later found out that that information is VERY incorrect. My journey however has included believing that lie until 2 years ago.

Shortly after that, I found out I had ADD, so I started taking adderall. I took a high dose because my fat body would absorb it, and when friends or whoever would ask my dosage and I’d tell them, they were horrified and assured me that my heart would definitely explode and they were surprised I wasn’t already dead as a door nail. That’s the problem with opinions, it’s all very personally based. They weren’t thinking of MY fat body at all.

The adderall worked wonders. I could concentrate! I could multitask! I stopped making so many dang piles! Mostly, I stopped eating. I ate regular or smaller meals at “regular” times in the day and if I skipped something, it didn’t matter because I was definitely not hungry.

On weekends, sometimes I would want a break. So I wouldn’t take my adderall and I’d sleep and sleep and sleep and then binge eat and go right back to sleep. My roommates were worried but I felt so healed and cleansed with all that sleep, I wasn’t worried at all.

I grew skinnier and skinnier, and my PCOS symptoms had began to disappear. I was having regular periods, I wasn’t growing hair in weird places, and BY GOD, I could cross my legs like a proper southern belle. Everyone was soooo proud. I was proud, my family, my friends. Everyone from high school was wondering, “how did she do it?!?” My self confidence grew, and for the first time in my life, I started dating.

One day, I met the man who would be my husband. We both expressed our want of children which raised a big ole question:: how could I treat my ADD without adderall? I was scared because I knew what being on adderall is like and what not being on it is like, and my identity as an adult had revolved around and relied on it. If I stopped the medicine, I would get fat again! I was just about to get into single digit clothing, I was beautiful, and yet, I knew I had to stop.

I couldn’t think of any good time to stop, so I just did cold turkey. I was ridiculously tired for 2 weeks, and then I started to feel normal again. Sure enough, I started gaining weight again, eating a lot more, etc etc. I had my soulmate, so it didn’t seem like such a bad deal, but it was depressing nonetheless. The cringes on faces when they saw my weight regain was painful, talks about “what happened to you???” stung, and I felt so ashamed.

Insert that number 1 revelation, bread is BAD. Bad, bad, bad. I learned all about processed foods, and tried the keto diet. It worked and I lost a little bit of weight, but it was unrealistic for long term. Once you’re off keto, all that weight springs back on you, and so it did.

After our marriage, I was off insurance for some time and when I got back on, I was put on metformin for my A1C. My day to day numbers are fine, but my A1C number was ridiculously high. It’s under control now, and we are looking to the next step.

I have researched PCOS and here is the real kicker:: it makes it hard to lose weight but if you could just lose weight, it would get the symptoms under control. However, one of the symptoms is that it is hard to lose weight. It’s a great big freakin’ circle. I’m not talking “stop eating bread” hard. I’m talking “don’t even think about looking at carbs” hard. The only thing that helped was dropping all carbs and then I got yelled at for a non balanced diet. IT’S FRUSTRATING!

Here’s my plan:: cut out things in baby steps.

Step 1:: no more drinking my sugar intake. Proud to say, I have completed this step. This is one southern woman who drinks UNsweet iced tea and water only, please.

Step 2:: no more fast food. Still working on this one, it’s so easy and yummy but I have cut it to once a week.

Step 3:: no more junk food.

Step 4:: healthy meals only.

The scary thing is that the help for conception is all very expensive. The words of my previous OBGYN keep swimming through my head. I struggle to force myself to go to baby showers because while I am thrilled for my friend and their new little one, I am envious and that is an ugly color. Every time I see a child that’s been abused, it makes me tear up because I would love to adopt a child and love them to pieces. Adoption isn’t an option for us sadly due to things out of our hands (still looking into this, but the process of adoption of American children is hard and expensive), but the thought still hurts.

God wouldn’t put such a strong desire for having children in my heart if I wasn’t meant to have any, right?

I hope that anyone who got this far will remember this:: a lot of this struggle was silent as it was happening. I certainly know that if given the choice, I would have the correct BMI for my height. I didn’t choose this struggle, and unkind words make it harder to shoulder. As the Beatles say, “I get by with a little help from my friends.” Thanks to those who have supported me and let me vent to them about these struggles, and for those who have been with me as I navigate my way into the future.

#pcos #polycystic ovarian syndrome #attention defecit #fat #fat women #lose weight #goals #bodypositivity #struggle #infertility #pcoscysters #obesity

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braverstrongerconfident · 7 years

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Confident, Confidence, Confianza!

Confident: Feeling or showing confidence in oneself; Self-assured.

Did you know that research shows that:

“7 in 10 girls believe they are not good enough or do not measure up in some way, including their looks, performance in school and relationships with family and friends.”

“92 percent of teen girls would like to change something about the way they look, with body weight ranking the highest.”

“1 in 4 girls today fall into a clinical diagnosis – depression, eating disorders, cutting, and other mental/emotional disorders. On top of these, many more report being constantly anxious, sleep deprived, and under significant pressure.” (The Triple Bind, Steven Hinshaw) Before college I was confident! I had just graduated at the top ten percent of my class, my GPA was a hair away from a 4.0 and I was accepted to many universities. Heck! I was going to UCSD which at the time and still is one of the top universities for majors in Political Science. (Just checked... U.S news ranks it #8) I was SET! I was going to do it and do it big! Not for one second did I think this was going to be hard! BUT.... College put me through the ringer mentally and emotionally! At the end of my first quarter my confidence went from 100 to 0, real quick! I received my transcript and had one B and two D’s! That B meant nothing to me! Nothing at all!!! What stood out even more to me was the little red words at the bottom of my transcript *ACADEMIC PROBATION* Guys! I had NEVER been on academic probation! My lowest grade ever was a C and it didn’t matter to me because it was probably in math! Hahaha! But that first quarter in college killed me. I can still remember that quarter I came home. My self-esteem was down the drain. I literally sat there and pondered not going back. Maybe this place really wasn’t meant for me. Maybe I had defied the statistics in high school because I went to a low-income school. For the next few days all I could think about was statistics and what researched showed... I thought about my ethnicity, my gender, my upbringing and some of the following... “Latinas hold only 7.4 percent of the degrees earned by women”

“In 2012, Hispanics accounted for just 9% of young adults (ages 25 to 29) with bachelor’s degrees.”

Maybe I really wasn’t meant for this... This university was too big! I was too small and not smart enough to do this. I remember sitting there telling my mom how I felt... All she could do was tell me that it was my choice and my call. I knew her heart was breaking because there was absolutely nothing she could tell me to make it better. In that moment I decided to give it another go. I mean what was the worse that could happen? I would be kicked out but at least I would know that I failed, got back up, and tried again!

Thank God for courage to try again!

The next quarter I came back! Still a little worried and anxious that I might not make it but confident that I would give it all I had. I tried harder, asked questions, went to office hours and did whatever I could to make sure I was understanding the material. Ladies and Gents it paid off! I got a 4.0 and went from Academic probation to Honor Roll! I regained my confidence! I was not going to be another statistic! I would not drop out or be evicted from the premises! LOL

After that quarter I genuinely believed I could do anything I put my mind to! Not going to say everything was smooth sailing! There were quarters that were harder than others! There were times I wondered if I would make it through the next 3, 2, 1 years. There were plenty of times I thought of throwing in the towel. Plenty of times I wished for someone who was the color of my skin who understood my struggle! & thankfully I found those women towards the end of my undergraduate career! I truly do not think I would have made it without them! Today I hold my head high because although I missed graduating with honors (by like point something! Hahah!) I graduated UCSD with two Bachelor’s and a few classes away from a minor. I studied abroad in Berlin, Germany, interned at the court house, helped run and won a mayoral campaign! I mean, it was epic! & I am so PROUD of myself!

It’s not about my accomplishments, what I do, or what I’ve done.

It IS ABOUT the time I wish I had someone who truly walked in my shoes and could relate to me on a personal level. It IS about all the women out there who feel limited by what society tells us we can do. It IS about my Hispanic/Latina sisters who have the statistics and sometimes even familial stereotypes stacked against them! It is about ALL of us who lack confidence! Who lack role models! And who lack courage! It IS also about ALL of us who want more for ourselves! More than our mothers, fathers, ancestors. Etc! It is about ALL those who are seeking to pave new roads! Take courage and be confident in this!

YOU and ONLY YOU can stand in your own way!

You and ONLY YOU can limit yourself!

You are not destined to be what statistics say you are! You WILL fail/fall at some point in life but only you can choose to stay there! You will cry and it will be hard but YOU need to decide to get back up.

I pray that wherever you are on your life journey you have the CONFIDENCE to get back up! The confidence to take that job opportunity! The confidence to take the leap of faith! And if you’ve fallen and have hit rock bottom I pray that you understand that there is only one way left: UP! I pray for a spirit of confidence upon your life! & I wish you nothing less than success because you deserve it!

I can not end this post without giving glory to God! Because in my toughest moments he has been my resting place! My source of confidence comes from him! I am grateful.

“Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it out to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” Philippians 1:6

Articles: https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/reports/2013/11/07/79167/fact-sheet-the-state-of-latinas-in-the-united-states/

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/04/24/more-hispanics-blacks-enrolling-in-college-but-lag-in-bachelors-degrees/

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