Dear Mom and Dad,

I just wanted to take a minute to reflect on this past Christmas break and tell you how thankful I am to be your kid. This month being at home with you guys is exactly what I needed. The fall semester absolutely destroyed me in ways I was not expecting. I was taking the max workload for a student, participating in more extracurricular activities than I should have been, and I went through the hardest breakup that I've had in a long time. I stopped believing in God and gave up on my faith. I felt so lost and alone for most of the semester.

Yes, I had friends and all of my sorority sisters by my side, but my loneliness never failed to rear its ugly and sometimes painful head. I would spend all of my free time laying in bed, too sad to get up, go out, or do anything. I started to question who I was. I got to the point where I couldn't even see my future anymore because I was so sure that I wasn't going to make it to the next day. Yet, I pushed through and finished the semester somehow.

I came home from school a fatigued mess, but you somehow managed to help me find myself again. Every day you guys told me how happy you were to have me home. I don't think you understood how much that meant to me. There were times when we fought over break because I was being difficult, but I really appreciate you forgiving me because you knew that was just how I dealt with my feelings. Thank you for letting me come to you when I needed to talk and not pushing me to open up before I was ready.

The biggest thing that I'm thankful for is that you both have sacrificed so much time and energy to make me the person I am today. Dad, I think about you reading my sister and I bedtime stories when we were little all the time now. I don't know if you realized or expected that we would remember this, but it's something that has inspired me. One day when I have my own kids, I want to read to them every night too. Mom, thank you for always doing your best to keep me on track and help me deal with difficult decisions. Thank you for starting to ask my opinion on big decisions that you're trying to make. It means the world to me that you respect me enough to confide in me and let me help you the way you've always helped me.

I hope that one day I can be as great of people as both of you are. You're hardworking, strong, compassionate, and so dedicated to each other, which is something that I recognize not every kid is lucky enough to experience. I love you both and I can't wait to come home again when this semester is done.

Love,

Your little girl