I remember when I was five, or six years old, being repeatedly asked the same question. What do you want to be when you grow up?

As a child, I had a lot of ideas. But that's all they were...ideas. I wanted to be a gymnast and go to the Olympics; I wanted to be a famous author; I wanted to this or that. So many dreams, yet no understanding of how to achieve them.

Fast forward to now. I'm a lot older than five, and I still have no idea what I will be when I grow up. A friend recently told me on this subject that she felt she had been told many times growing up, that she could be anything she wanted to be...but was never told she could be anyone she wanted to be. I bet many people could relate to this statement. I know that I sure can, and I think this is part of the problem many people face today. Are we truly satisfied with who we are?

Growing up I had one goal that I continue to go back to. The one thing it requires, however, is that I be my true, authentic self...always. I've had my fair share of negative people come in and out of my life, but one thing that remained constant was the message I got starting at a very young age. A dream is a dream. It can be achieved if you really want it to, but when you're told, time after time, that you're not talented enough, you're not pretty enough, smart enough, thin enough...that you're just not good enough, it starts to stick. I learned to believe those lies. I began to tell them to myself. Convince myself they were true, because after all, these were people I trusted, who said these things over multiple years. If they were telling me this, it must be true. Until I learned otherwise.

Only within the past few months did I realize that I needed to make a change. I needed to do things differently. I had been to treatment on more than one occasion for multiple things, yet there I was, living the same life, doing the same things. I didn't understand why I wasn't better. The simple answer that I finally realized, is that I will never fully be better. I will not ever be recovered, as so many people strive to be. I will be in recovery for the rest of my life. That sounds scary on some levels, but recovery doesn't mean relapsing left and right, but it also does not discount relapse. Being in recovery is one of the strongest things anyone can ever do, because there will be good days, and there will be not so good days, and that's okay, because it is all part of the process. It takes an enormous amount of strength and resilience to continue to fight for who you are. This is exactly what I do, as a survivor in recovery.

If I hadn't made changes in my thought patterns, behaviors, attitudes...I would not be where I am today. I would not be learning to be content with myself. I would not be so many steps closer to living out that dream. For me, meeting myself for what seemed like the first time is the most important thing I will ever do. Without knowing who I am, I would never be satisfied in anything I could do.

I believe kids should have the freedom to be whomever they want to be, inevitably leading to whatever they want to be. They should be allowed to be kids who will grow into strong, confident, leaders because kids are going to change this world for the better. All it takes is one child's dream.