As another semester comes to a close and some of us are graduating very soon, while others have more time here; it is important to remember to thank your parents and guardians. We can become so blinded by our search for independence and quest for our purpose in life that it’s far too easy to forget who got us to where we are now.

Nothing makes me tear up faster than thinking about how much my parents have sacrificed for me to have a good life full of opportunity and love and to know what a blessing it is to have people rooting for you. For those of us who have this in our lives; now is not the time to take it lightly. Thank your parents and then thank them again. Start to think of ways you might be able to repay them even if it is in the smallest of ways. Remember how scary the real world feels to us right now and think about how it can be just as scary for them too, but they make it look so easy to care for you on top of it.

Thank them for supporting your dreams whether they agree with them or not, whether it makes money or not, whether it’s dangerous or not. Thank them for being a phone call or a text or a drive or flight away. Thank them for their patience, their understanding, and their forgiveness. Thank them for helping you see reason in the heat of the moment, since they have been through it all before. Thank them for continuing to give you advice even though you don’t listen to them as much as they’d like. Thank them for not saying “I told you so” when they were, in fact, right. Thank them for showing compassion when things felt like they were impossible, and thank them for giving a gentle nudge when you began to go off track.

For my friends who have different circumstances, thank your parents or guardians anyway. Thank them for showing you independence and allowing you to be as headstrong as you are now. You know you can conquer this world with everything you have inside you. They gave you life and since then, you have given yourself everything else. Thank the ones who supported you enough to get here even if your most active supporter was yourself.

I know when I walk across that stage in just a few short weeks, only a very small part of it will be for me. The truth is that I will be walking as a thank you for all that I have been given thus far by the two people I love most in this world.

Thank you mom and dad, I couldn’t have done it without you.