He said, "this imbalance and degeneration is a result of miniature traumas or injuries over time that has caused this, but you never noticed it because you began to compensate and your body and muscles and trained themselves to live with the hurt and make that the new normal!"

Whew! Imagine me sitting in the doctor's office and hearing these words. It was like this man got my life together and he didn't even know it. My body had become so used to living with the pain of the results of all these mini-traumas and it had adjusted and that my new normal. The only way to get this "undone" is to have someone pop and pull it back in place.

If I enter into a situation already allowing myself grace, I am able to accept whatever the outcome may be. It is inevitable that something will happen and I will not be able to reach a certain goal. Basically, shit happens. But if I always remember that, then it can remove some of the pressure from myself. 

"To be quite honest, I think for a good portion of my life I was scared to go by Joy Melody because it brought about some type of sadness since I was named after my mother. But now I view it as powerful. 

When I speak my name, I speaking elegance, strength, and perseverance. When I walk into a room I bring along with me everything my mom taught me by my dad naming me Joy Melody. I am a miracle. I am an anomaly. You will treat me as such."

It's for us who may not eat ramen noodles every night (because sodium) but peanut butter and bread have made a gourmet dinner a many a night. This is for us who ran outta swipes in the cafeteria but we are still hungry. It is for us who have had to decide to eat dinner or put gas in the tank so we can get to class or work. This is for us who have stood in line at our institutions like it was Black Friday to make sure financial aid has our forms that they never got, but we all know that means they lost them.

Whatever my big sister did, I wanted to do the exact same. Isn't that it how goes though, the youngest always tries to emulate the older siblings. I had two amazing older siblings. We all shared a room growing up. Not only did we share a room; we shared close to hand-me-downs and hand me ups, we shared books, we shared toys, we shared laughs, we shared movies, and we shared dolls. But as we grew older, we slowly wanted to become our own people.