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You Are Everything You Need To Be

Today as I was getting off the phone with my grandma, she asked me if I'm tough, and I told her I kind of have to be. Her response was something I won't forget. 

"I think Hannah Leigh Tobias is everything she needs to be."

I feel like it's fair to say that that kind of closing remark, followed by an "I love you," would be comforting to anyone -- but it hit me particularly hard. I don't know why. Maybe because I'm busier than I've ever been, or maybe because of how emotionally heavy what I do tends to be, or maybe because my brain just seems to be programmed to believe that nothing I'm ever doing is good enough. Maybe because everything lately has been messy. Maybe because it's felt like I haven't had time to sit back and breathe between the long hours of classes, the three different jobs, the chores, the bills and the social plans. Or maybe it's because I just needed to hear it. 

If I'm being honest, it's definitely that last one. I just needed to be reminded of what I've already known for a long time. I am everything I need to be. Even when I don't feel like it. God knows there are plenty of those moments. So how about a little life update? 
I was asked a couple weeks ago why it's been a while since I've shared any of my work, and my heart broke a little bit. I've been keeping most of my recent work very hidden for reasons I'm not ready to talk about yet. I'm still filling entire notebooks in one or two days time.. I'm just very rarely publishing and I hope you can respect that. It's hard for me, as a writer, to experience things from a state of intense vulnerability without feeling like I owe it to you to turn it into art. I will, and that's a promise. But give me the space and the time to feel things out first. Let me find myself. Let me learn. Let me grow as a woman and as an artist and I swear, what comes of it will be worth the extended periods of silence.
My best friend finally turned 21 this past Sunday, and her whole family invited me along to dinner to celebrate. We spent the evening sampling beers, and I was the only one who remembered that these are called flights. So thanks, dad. I hope you're proud. 
But really, we savored the company of each other. If someone had told me years ago that the neighbor girl I grew up watching Disney movies and making Easy-Bake oven cinnamon rolls with would still let me love her decades later, I wouldn't have believed them for a minute. 
If someone had told me that her family would feel just as much like family to me as my own, I also wouldn't have believed them. 
If that makes me an idiot, so be it.
Sipping Guinness with them that night was the best, "you were wrong" I've ever heard from the world.
They have really let me stay. All 21 years. 
Cheers to that.

A couple nights ago my uncle made the ten hour trip to Wichita and I spontaneously drove across town for the third time that day just to see him and the rest of my family. I got to catch them up on my life, and they listened. They caught me up on theirs, and I listened. We had powerful conversations, laughed until we cried, stayed up a little too late and made plans to do it all over again the next day. By the next night I was already low on gas, but as I turned the corner onto my grandma's street and watched the sun fall for the night, I couldn't help but feel luckier than ever. 
Growing up, I remember being very angry when my mom would be driving us somewhere and stop just to admire the sunrise or sunset as it happened. I remember voicing that anger, too, telling her it was stupid to park the car just to look at the sky as if we'd never see it again. I hate that. I hate knowing I said those things. I hate the middle-school version of myself for thinking that being early to classes I didn't like at all anyway mattered more than stopping to take in those moments of color- the same ones that take my breath away now. 
Because now, I'm 21 years old, and I spend hours of my day in the car or walking. Those hours usually include a sunrise or a sunset, and sometimes both. And now I find myself doing the same thing my mom always did. I'll stop whatever I'm doing just to watch as the sun rises in the morning or melts away as the days wind down. 
And it gives me peace.
Knowing that the sun will set no matter how hard a day has been and rise again in the morning regardless of how unprepared I am for it is one of my favorite things. I had a half-sun carved into my skin forever as a reminder that I should live my life under the same idea. That my circumstances should never dull my light. 
Ink credit: Tim Gomez at Artist at Large World Headquarters

So hey, things are wild. That's okay. 
They're pretty great, too. 
Change and challenge have been pretty strong themes in my life recently. A lot of things have been intimidating and unfamiliar, but nothing that will stop me from doing everything I can to make the world better. I'm very excited about a lot of big things that I'll share with you soon, and in the meantime I encourage you to love on your people extra hard. 

I also want you to know, in case nobody has told you lately, that you are everything you need to be. 

xox,
until next time


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