Alli-Kate.

It's crazy how everything around us changes, but pieces of us will always remain the same.

While cleaning out my closet to move to college, I found an old journal entry from when I was 9. The entry asked me if I could wish for anything, what would it be? In my big, childlike handwriting, I wrote the sentence: write a New York Times bestseller.

Flash forward to today. I may never become a New York Times bestselling author, but it gives me peace to know I am still the child I have always been, no matter how much dark ink has split on the pages of my story. My first year of college, everything changed. Yet, my pen continued writing, no matter how jumbled the words became. 

Through every loss, through every change, there is a piece of all of us that remains the same. Sometimes, we just have to simplify our lives once again. We have to block out all the noise, all the distractions, and remember who we once were, and who we still are when no one else is watching. I will always be Alli-Kate, the 9 year old with the big hair bows and even bigger dreams.