https://medium.com/@jamievaron/breathe-you-re-okay-a5644c4e96e4#.salpayf0d

I want you to know that you can try to be better, you can work hard, you can do all the things you think you need to do, but none of that will do anything to prove to you that you are worth your space in this world. The only person that can decide that is you. You. You decide how much space you get to take up. You decide how much your voice is worth. You can work yourself ragged and accrue everything you ever thought you needed, but if you don’t believe who you are underneath the glitz, nothing will matter. A fevered mind has a funny way of turning gold into dust. I want you to know that there’s nothing to prove, that even if you do all the things that you or someone else told you that you couldn’t do, there will be no glory in it. There is no glory in living a life in search of undoing a feeling.

I want you to know that if you need to feel loved, please look around at your life and see the magic everywhere. You may not have a thousand friends or a perfect family, but you have your people and they matter, even if the number of those you can count on is in the single-digits. Don’t throw that away looking for more. I know it seems like admiration, fame, social validation make you feel the love you may not feel for yourself, but it’s so fleeting it’s dangerous to stake anything on. Attention is not love. Double-taps are not reminders of your adequacy. Favorites, likes, followers are not an indictment of your value, no matter how big or small the number reaches or falls. If you’ve found yourself entirely too consumed with the digital trail of admirers you do or don’t have, you need to remind yourself that you are valuable, as you are, with nothing or no one paying attention. Your value exists without condition. I want you to know that strength is not what you think it is, what the world has told you it is. Strength is not your loud voice, your angry rally cries. Strength is in keeping a positive heart in a negative world, a sensitive soul in a cruel world that often feels beyond the realm of soulless. There is a strength in not letting this world swallow you and spit you out as someone who thinks preaching their opinion off the highest mountain is what brave people do. Courage is listening when your knuckles are going white from clenching down on the arms of your chair. Courage is respect and not letting any number of heartbreaks sour you from believing that there is good, there is love, there is something in this mad world to have hope for. I want you to know that, within you, lies something integral to this world. You’re a puzzle piece that fits into the grander framework of humanity. Today is a whole new day and you can turn it all around in one quick decision to do something, anything different than how you’ve done it before. Change comes slowly and then all at once. You will think you’re going down the long tunnel of darkness until it happens, until you’re renewed. Trust that it’s coming. Trust that something bigger is forming. Trust your tender heart. Trust your wild ideas. Take the chance. Say no when it doesn’t light you up. Follow whatever within you tells you that you’re doing something that makes you come alive. I want you to know that the only waste here would for you to sleep through your life. The only thing you could do wrong is to opt-out of who you are, to forgo whatever fights to come out of you.

https://medium.com/@jamievaron/why-you-can-t-think-your-way-into-self-acceptance-66ee793d5b47#.my698o15e

There will be so many people like you once you start sharing who you really are. You will start writing the truth, not some “branded” version of yourself zipped up perfectly for public consumption. No, this will be messy, weird truth and you will sift through your past to dig up even juicier, messier, weirder truth and you will keep sharing it. It will free you.

You will learn how to be the perfect woman: accommodating, chill, nice, deferring. Then you will meet an older woman who busts through your life and demands you stop being these things. You will then disappoint a lot of people and it will feel uncomfortable right before it feels so fucking freeing you can’t believe it took you so long to use the word “no” in a real way.

You will have to give yourself permission to be great. You keep wanting someone to come along to give you permission to share all your gifts with the world, don’t you? You think big names, big websites, fancy titles, and fancy paychecks actually permit you to be talented and loved, but they don’t. You permit you. You tell yourself what you’re worth. You determine your value. Then, you make demands.

All your big ambitions will be nothing if you are not joyful and happy in the mundanity of life. You will avoid the mundane for so long that you will feel a constant dissatisfaction, unless you are doing Big Things and making Big Announcements. Eventually, you will simplify and you will find joy in the little things. It will be a fucking revolution and it will be the only thing which will give way to those bigger ambitions. You will thrive, but only by tiny, everyday steps, the ones you’ve avoided for most of your life.

https://medium.com/@jamievaron/20-real-things-i-wish-someone-had-told-me-when-i-was-a-teenage-girl-8d04ec9291b0#.h0bigolcl