Evolve or remain.

1. When I was in second grade, my teacher had set up a "store" in her classroom. She handed out fake money to us when we behaved well and punished bad behavior by taking it away. Every so often she'd set out the bins with items we could purchase using the money we had saved up. At the end of the year, we were encouraged to spend the last of our money on whatever we could buy - but I didn't want anything. I didn't want anything, but I had saved about $2,000 and when I handed all my extra fake bills to her on the last day, she looked at me like I was out of my mind. The truth was, I didn't need anything or expect to get anything out of all the money I had saved up. I had just done what was expected of me as a student, and even at 7 or 8 years old I didn't think that required a reward. But that day stuck with me, because my teacher went above and beyond. She fumbled around in her desk for a while before pulling out a large bag of M&M's and handing me ...

There's been sooooooo much about this year that I never could've expected- and that's putting it lightly. I didn't expect so many brutally intimate conversations about personal battles. I didn't expect so much change to come from them, either.  I didn't expect to break a rib just a week or so after the semester started, or to have a doctor's note handed to me telling me I shouldn't practice yoga for the time being. I also didn't expect my doctor, immediately after diagnosing me, to ask me if I write. I laughed. I knew he was asking if I was into the whole journalism thing like my mama. "Ha! No," I told him. "I have a personal blog and I journal, but no, I couldn't get into that kind of writing." He looked at me for a minute, smiled, and said something I haven't forgotten since. "Hey, keep making them proud." I'm still not completely sure who he meant when he said, "them." Maybe my parents, m...