I like to write.

tumblrbot asked: WHERE WOULD YOU MOST LIKE TO VISIT ON YOUR PLANET?

I want to visit all the continents before I die.  Three down, four to go.

North America

South America

Europe

Asia

Antarctica

Africa

Australia

warm air refreshing
budding flowers and
growth and sun.
moving forward and—
the chance to spring
again.

crisp air foreboding
leaves changing and
things dying.
darkness and snow—
the chance to fall
again.

i am your spring
and you are my fall


and i can feel it with each breath
and i can taste it with each kiss
and i can hear it being said—
that things can’t grow
under the weight of snow.

and i could have sworn
i was ready to bleed
ready to be exposed
ready to need.

but here i am and
the leaves are changing.
here i am and
there’s no rearranging.


and i could have sworn
i’ve heard this same story
before.

and i could have sworn
i’ve played this same part
before.

and i could have sworn
that i was ready to be
your spring.

get out of bed.
open the window.
smell the fresh air.
can you taste it?
each day is waiting.
FOR YOU.
you have the ability
to change the world.


dive in.



be compassionate.
be fearless.
just smile.






Someone very close to me once said, The world is open to you… attack it and don’t hold back. You only live once, you might as well make a mark while you are here.

Love you, Jo.

http://news.lalate.com/2010/09/29/seth-walsh-and-asher-brown-suicides-from-bullying-rising

This story and the countless others we see in the news every year make my heart shatter. It is so devastating to see these young kids take their own lives because of something SO preventable! Bullying is no joke. It is something that is so accepted in our society as a product of that age group, but when are we going to wake up and realize the devastating toll it is taking on our youth? As a victim of bullying at that age, and as someone who wants to make a career out of working with children and adolescents in clinical psychology, this issue is very near and dear to my heart. Kids have no idea the impact they can have on an individual. It is genuinely frightening to see what kids can do when put under this ‘mob mentality’ and ‘kill or be killed’. If just one person had stuck up for Seth, or Asher, or Phoebe Prince, or Billy Lucas — or simply reached out to them, I’m willing to bet they might still be here today. I have never told my story before, but this is why I feel the need to. For anyone out there that has kids, or younger siblings, to bring up the discussion of bullying and see if your loved one is suffering at school or on other social media outlets. Forty-four states have anti-bullying laws. But many of these laws are not comprehensive and lack specific definitions of what bullying entails, which makes the implementation of policies nearly impossible.


I was in seventh grade when it all started. To be honest, I’m not sure what caused the change or why it all started happening, but I can remember one day feeling extremely uncomfortable in my own skin. The boys were whispering and laughing as I walked by, a percentage of the girls wanted to distance themselves from me, and things started happening that I didn’t understand. Balls were thrown at me at recess. Balls were attempted to be dumped on me during class. People tried to trip me in the halls. Two boys put their arms together like a gun and would make loud beeping noises as they pointed them at me when I walked by (what I later found out to be a “hair-o-meter”). And a friend finally had to clue me in — they were making fun of me because they claimed my forearms were too hairy. Suddenly the whispers became real words, “hey gorilla”, “want a banana?”, “razor”, and “shave”. “Freezer” was added to the list of names, because I wouldn’t ‘put out’. Screen names started popping up on AOL Instant Messenger that were created for the sole purpose of harrassment. “kelseyISaGORILLA”, “kelseyisacrybaby”, “shaveHAIRY”, and countless others. These screen names would come up saying horrible things about me being fat, about how I had no friends, and asking why I didn’t just “do the rest of the world a favor” and shave my arms? It escalated to such an extreme that they even told me they would be happy if I would just kill myself. I was twelve/thirteen years old. An extensive website was created for the sole purpose of making fun of me, with my picture being uploaded and put onto a gorilla’s body, with fake journal entries supposedly written by me — one even claiming I said I was going to bring a gun to school, a “spotted” section logging my whereabouts saying things like “I saw kelsey walking down the street walking her dog and her fat stomach was sticking out of her shirt”, and polls about whether I should shave, and whether I should kill myself. I attended a football game and was slide-tackled from behind, landing on my neck, and leaving the game in a stretcher.

Things got so bad that I legitimately contemplated suicide. Everything I knew, my entire world, was complete misery. I dreaded going to school. I tried to fake sick on several accounts just to stay home. It got so bad and I felt so desperate that I ended up printing off the website and giving it to my mom and her boyfriend at the time (who is now my step-dad, Thom), and had to explain everything that was happening. Thom drove to each of the boys’ house who created the website and showed their parents what they had done. As you can imagine, the website was gone within the hour, but the bullying at school didn’t stop — in fact, “tattle tale” and “mama’s girl” and “cry baby” were added onto the list. It wasn’t until graduation day that I was free from it all. I survived the junior high bullying, but I can 100% understand the situation that caused these kids to take their lives. Bullying is no joke. This is an unbelievably serious problem that we have in our society. We need to raise awareness and create stricter policies. I have no doubt in my mind that my teachers and school administrators knew what was happening to me. I know this because I went to them, I pleaded with our assistant principal that action should be taken, and none ever was. I tried to handle it on my own before it became too much to bear. Luckily, I chose to involve my parents instead of something drastic against myself. But I truly feel that’s all it was — simply luck. It is so easy to see why some kids would not want to get their parents involved. In certain ways, things got worse for me once I did. That is why it is so important for parents and older siblings to be aware. I remember my mom saying, “who cares what they say? when I was in high school they called me a “freezer”, too. it just means you respect yourself and you should be proud they think that of you.” She has no idea the impact that had on me. That is what kept me going through each day, knowing that to some degree my mom had been there, too, and she made it out just fine. Parents, older siblings, and most of all to the peers: bullying is not something to take lightly. Don’t let your loved one be the next victim to hatred and disapproval.

Ah yes, another hot-button, controversial topic that I — of course — have an opinion on. Love me some politics.


Let me start by saying.. it is ridiculous to assume we can tell them they cannot build a mosque, no matter where it is. It is sheer ignorance for Americans to say that an Islamic Community Center (much like a YMCA) that is actually three blocks away from ground zero (how far away is far enough away?) is “spitting on the graves of the dead”. It is not only completely naive but moreso unfair to group these extremist terrorists to Islam and Muslims as a whole. There is nothing even remotely similar to the ideologies of these two groups. Do we not understand that there were plenty of Muslims who were also killed in the 9/11 attacks? Have we forgotten that Muslims are the ones terrorized, killed, and tortured by these terrorists more than any other group?

They are on our side.


Nothing should supercede America’s principles of religious freedom. If our government steps in and says no mosque in lower Manhattan, where does it end? America will no longer be everything that America is and stands for. It would change our country entirely. Now, if you ask my opinion on whether the Cordoba Initiative (the organization behind the planned community center) has chosen the best spot, or the most sensitive spot, or the most humble spot — no, of course not. If it were up to me, if I were in charge, I would move it to somewhere else. While you can’t group present-day Germany with Nazism and Hitler, it would be in bad taste to build a German cultural center near Auschwitz. But to demand that our President and our political leaders step in and say no would be to demand that America lose its core values.

Islam is a religion of peace. The word literally means “submission”. There are crazy radicals who use this religion to fuel hatred and terror in the name of the same God. But they are not Muslims, they are not to be the face of Islam — for they could not be farther from what the religion is founded on and what its followers believe in. Do we not have these radicals in every single religion? Is Catholicism completely invalid because of a select number of pedophilic priests? Are all Buddhists evil because of extremist monks bombing Christian churches? If we are going to win this war against terrorism, we need to stand all together. Stop the prejudice, stop the hate, stop the ignorance.


I stand for peace.

I have been a Christian for 7 years. Sure, I grew up being told the story of Christianity, but I didn’t find it for myself until my sophomore year in high school. The biggest problem I had with it was I saw the people that claimed to follow this man named Jesus, and they weren’t something I wanted to affiliate myself with. Hypocrites, adulterers, judgmental and close-minded people who put themselves up on a pedestal because of something they believed in when they forgot to get to know their God at all. I watched my Catholic school teachers preach God’s word and then scold me for my socks being too short, or my shirt being untucked — but turn a blind eye to the bullying and abuse I suffered from my peers right under their noses. I saw people spit Bible verses at each other, twisting and manipulating their context and meaning to further their own selfish agenda. I saw my friend’s father wake up early every morning to read his Bible and attend daily mass, and insist that his family do the same, and then sit down on the couch in the evening and drink a 12-pack of beer to himself and go into a rage and physically abuse his son. I saw hate crimes and slander all in God’s name because of ignorance and fear. If this is what Christianity was all about then I was done.

Then life circumstances had me reeling and feeling the need to once and for all figure out what I believed in and why — despite human portrayal of religion. It took me a long time to realize that spirituality and religion are two entirely separate entities: one about God and the other about humanity’s interpretation of Him. One all holy and the other unclean. Humanity at its core is broken, ugly, and selfish. From our very first words we never had a problem saying “mine”. We had to learn slowly over time how to take another’s perspective and how to empathize with each other. So if religion is humanity’s interpretation of spirituality, it is bound to be flawed, manipulative, and imperfect. But just because we do an atrociously awful job at reflecting who God is and what He stands for doesn’t make HIM flawed, manipulative, or imperfect. Christianity teaches that we are to love each other as God has loved us, because our love comes from Him. He pours into us so that we can pour into each other. We are not to pass judgment on each other, because who are we to condemn someone else? We all struggle with something — just because someone else’s struggles are different than yours doesn’t make you a better person. We are equals in the eyes of God and we are here to serve Him and each other — not alienate anyone for what they do or do not believe. He is the ultimate judge of the heart and thank God it is not up to us.

So, Christians all over the world… stop giving us a bad name. It’s not about what you’ve done or haven’t done. It’s not about following a set of rules. It’s not about invoking fear into the hearts of non-believers. It’s not about what you say, it’s about knowing that you are loved unconditionally and using that joy in your heart to love others. It’s about HIS love for us, that He gives unconditionally and amazingly that allows us to have the ability to love each other in a fraction of a way that He has loved us. So stop fighting over the details. All that matters is that every day we are forgiven and loved. We live in perfect freedom because of an incredibly all-loving Creator. So what about that, exactly, has caused you to spread such hate and judgment?



“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” -Ghandi

Here we go. Yep, I am opening this can of worms. Because I cannot stand listening to the media and every other uninformed American on this issue any longer.

People are being kidnapped in Phoenix, and not every couple weeks or so, but every day in the city of Phoenix alone. The city has been blighted by roughly one kidnapping each day over the last four years. And who is doing the kidnapping? Illegal immigrants and drug dealers. Illegal immigrants are sometimes the victims, yes, but they are the violators as well. But you’re not hearing that part of the story, are you?

You’re not hearing about the creeping third-world atmosphere spreading into Phoenix and throughout Arizona, along with all of the other border states. You’re hearing about the nerve of lawmakers who want to get a handle on their state before it spins even more out of control than it already has.

You’re hearing about fans in Chicago, who are 1,804 ignorantly blissful miles from Phoenix and have actually no idea what is going on, that are boycotting the Arizona Diamondbacks when they come to town to play the Cubs. And you’re hearing about people, mainly Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, calling for the MLB to move the All-Star Game set to be played in Phoenix in 2011. And All-Stars are being asked by no less a moral authority than The New York Times to come down with “a case of the Arizona flu” rather than play in that All-Star Game.

Because their baseball team has everything to do with their lawmakers, and because it is so outrageous that a state would demand that every member of its population be in this country legally.

And of course, that article in the Times was written by an elderly gentleman who lives in an exclusive part of Long Island and won’t have to come within 1,000 miles of the third-world violence that escalates by day in Phoenix. Must be easy for people like him to be so pretentious as to urge MLB players and other rich athletes to make a stand against Arizona’s immigration law when they aren’t the ones trying to live there. From the viewpoint of their gated communities, sure, the new immigration law might look like “an injustice” and like “racism”.

But people are dying in Phoenix.

They are being yanked from their homes on a daily basis and tortured, mutilated, and killed. Why? Because there are bad people living there, and it’s not the legal citizens of the state. Now, are all of the illegal immigrants participating in this? Of course not, not even most of them are, but illegal immigrants are responsible for the home invasions and kidnappings and tortures.

Am I saying this law is the only answer? No. But I am saying that property values in AZ are dropping faster than almost anywhere else in this country. And I know that Arizona has massive crime issues, specifically of the drug and violence variety. In recent years its murder rate has been two and even three times the national average. And the numbers are due to the influx of illegal immigrants. This is not a simple issue. There is not a simple solution. But right now, there is no solution. And while Obama, celebrities, Sharpton, and the rest of the media can comfortably sit thousands of miles away and shake their fists at Arizona for taking action, I say screw you. Screw you for being so unbelievably insensitive and ignorant to their predicament. And instead of sitting in your private jets looking down on a state just trying to survive, if you disagree, propose a better solution. Because action needs to be taken.

Is there the possibility of racial profiling in Arizona, where police with “reasonable suspicion” can ask for verification that a person isn’t an illegal immigrant? Sure there is. Police aren’t looking for thieves or drug dealers, who by definition could be anyone. They’re looking for illegal immigrants. If you can remove the issue of “race” from the search for “illegal immigrants,” please tell me how to do that. And until someone figures it out, I’m inclined to let the police of Arizona do their job. And we should let the Arizona Diamondbacks do theirs as well.