For over thirty years my family and I have spent summer after summer vacationing on a small island located off the coast of Georgia known as St. Simons Island. I love this island and over the past twenty years of my life it has come to be my home away from home during at least one week of my summer. My family has memory upon memory built around this location and its surrounding islands. One of my uncles even got married on Jekyll Island.

If you're reading this and are not already aware, St. Simons is apart of Glen County Georgia which is currently in the direct path of Hurricane Matthew. As I sit on the couch at home on this beautiful Columbus Day weekend watching the live updates of the storm from the National Weather service, my heart is aching. My heart is breaking for my beloved island.

My late grandfather, Richard Henry Dominguez, found the Island after he believed that the pervious vacation spot Hilton Head Island became to crowed; therefore leading him to find St. Simons. Although I never met my mother's father, due to the fact that he passed away in a car accident in December of 1995, before I was born in June. Unfortunately this means that he has never met any of his twenty-three grandchildren.

However, Richard was able to leave his children and Grandchildren a legacy that will never be forgotten. I have so much love, respect and admiration for a man I never even met and I have so much to thank him for; one of those things being the beloved vacation spot that has been a part of my life long enough that I don't actually know my life without it.

St. Simons has seen my family through every stage of our lives thus far and will continue to do so. The island has been a dear place to the Dominguez clan for longer than I have lived on this earth.

Therefore as Hurricane Matthew has been making headlines, I can help by thinking of my island. In the wake of Matthew that is now headed further down the coast at as a category one, I have a few things to say to my beloved St. Simons.

To My Beloved to St. Simons, I love you with my entire being and thank you everyday for helping make me the young women I am today.

To all those who have made St. Simons their year round home and have evacuated due to the storm or remained on the Island all of you are in my prayers as are all other affected. Stay strong, and my family and I will see you soon.