I'm done trying to meet so many expectations. I'm done trying to be perfect at everything I do. I'm done trying to be the woman, or person, I think I need to be. I'm just going to be me.

We have all heard the phrase, "Just be you." Well, as I was growing up as a little girl, people say this or something like this to me and I would think, "Yeah, how could I be anyone else?" But as I grew up I realized how much your identity gets warped and twisted into something that even you yourself can't recognize.

Let me start off with a little story. When I was about twelve years old I wanted to be a professional soccer player. Looking back on this dream I can't help but laugh and find it extremely unrealistic. But growing up this was a huge deal for me and I took it very seriously. I would go home after school and practice my dribbling in the backyard or practice my shooting by kicking it at my neighbors fence pretending it was the goal (which was not very appreciated by my neighbors I might add). I would daydream about wearing a United States soccer jersey and run out on that field with people clapping for me. This dream was very much a part of me.

But all of this changed when reality set in and I no longer thought I could play the game I had once loved.

I was a huge tom girl. You would never see me in something other than a t-shirt unless my mother forced me to wear a dress for church or the Holidays. I usually wore my hair up in a pony tail and you can forget about me wearing any form of makeup. Now, all this wasn't a problem until I started the stage where "boys" became a huge thing.

My friends would talk about them all the time and decide which one they wanted to date and many of them actually did start dating someone, if you can even call it that. Well, all my friends had these "boyfriends" and I was left alone. Of course I started wondering why no boy wanted to date me and this caused me to look at my outward appearance very harshly.

I began what is now a life long issue of nitpicking everything about my physical appearance. And this just got worse and worse as I got older.

So, I stopped pursuing my dreams of becoming a professional soccer player and started pursuing becoming what I thought a "girl" should be. I wasn't being myself. I wasn't being me.

This is just one of the many examples in my life where I have let people's opinion's and expectations dictate what I can and cannot be. And most of the time I didn't even realize I wasn't being myself. I just thought that I was being what I was suppose to be. And because of this mindset, because of this thing I believed to be true I started feeling not "good enough."

Well, I am here to tell you to START being YOU.

If you don't like to wear high heels. Don't wear them. If you don't like wearing mascara or any makeup for that matter don't put it on. Just because society and others around you make you feel as though because you are a female you need to abide by these certain standards that doesn't mean you need to fall victim to it.

And believe me, I have been a victim of this more often than not and I continually struggle with this but I YOU don't have to.

You are beautiful and wonderfully made.You are uniquely created for something bigger than yourself. So, don't let this world take away your individuality. Just be you.