publishing peace

In high school I went to an unbelievable program called "Be The Change". It was an absolutely indescribable experience focused on letting down the walls around our true selves and using who we really are to change the world. One of the exercises we did was called "Real Talk" where we would sit in small groups of strangers and share things about ourselves most people didn't know, starting with the phrase, "if you really knew me". Today, for those of you who read my words but don't really know me, I'd like to introduce myself using some real talk. This might be the scariest thing I ever write and let people read, because so much of me is in these words, and a lot of it is information you wouldn't know unless I told you. So here I am, telling you. Hopefully you can see me clearer. If you really knew me, you'd know my name isn't Em, it's Emily. You'd know I changed it in the seventh grade when I got fed up with how many

"Courage is not the absence of fear; rather, it is the judgment that something else is more important than our fear." All my life, I've wished I were braver. It's true! I have wished that I had courage to do things I saw other people doing. I wished I were not so cautious so I could go out and do crazy things with my friends without worrying about getting in trouble. I wished that I could say that funny thought I had in class loud enough to let people hear, and I wished more than anything that I could tell people what I really thought about them without worrying what they'd think of me. In a recent conversation with my mother, though, she told me that she thought I was brave. "You've always put yourself out there," she told me. "You knew you could fail, but you tried anyway, and because of that you had experiences other people won't have." This came as a bit of a surprise to me, so I asked her for examples, and she talked