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For The World Changers:

Hope is not the sock that went missing in the dryer.
“If you Google the word “homeless,” you’ll receive more than 35 million images of people wrapped up in blankets, alone or with family, huddled together for warmth. Some hold signs of promise scribbled on slabs of cardboard boxes.” – Click photo to read on.

Scribble love on chalkboards. Graffiti it on subway walls.
“Up until last month, I had no idea what To Write Love On Her Arms was. But now I know that it’s one of the most important awareness organizations out there.” – Click on the photo to continue reading.

I am learning, with each new email, that we are all hiding behind the Cool Factor.
“These days, I am living in my Gmail inbox, breathing in stories of souls who come to me with heavy hearts. But if you asked me what I’m doing, I’m just as likely to tell you I’m in the business of designing fashionable kneepads.” – Click photo.

For my future fearers:

On those days, you feel like God has coaxed you into a pinball machine and let his buddies have at it.
“I promise you won’t ever know what today’s going to hold when you slip out of those comfy covers and step barefoot onto the cold cold floor. There will be days of elation and days of depression.” – Click photo to continue reading.

“It’s warmer in the water.”
“The future is 34 pushpins pressed into a map of the United States. It’s hiding somewhere beneath the precision with which each was pinpointed. The future is shy and unforgiving and anticipatory and oh so unknowable.” – Click photo to read on.

How many Almost-Journeys will we Dodge before we land the one that forces us to pack paper bags with clanking spoons and cheap plastic cups?
“The car salesman from the Honda dealership down the street is telling me I’m good enough. ‘She’s the one going to grad school,’ I say. ‘Don’t put yourself down like that,’ he tells me. ‘No,’ I explain, backtracking. ‘I want to be done.’ ” – Click the photo to continue reading.

For my jesus lovers:

The Girl Jesus Asked To His Middle School Dance
“I was raised hardcore Catholic. No, not the girl in plaid pleated skirts with my button-down twisted in on itself. Not rule-breaker, the line-walker, or the daily devotionalist. I glared at those who dared to enter the church doors like it was a semiannual sale at Victoria’s Secret.”

If Jesus had a car thousands of years ago, you think he would’ve passed that up in favor of walking across the desert for 40 days?
 ”My mom never told me not to talk to strangers on the Internet. If she had, my life would’ve turned out drastically different. My dad wouldn’t have driven me—on his 40th birthday—to a golf course down the road from our house where I would, presumably, meet a boy I’d never met face-to-face.”

Maybe this time He will tell me what Doors I’m allowed to keep.
“God gave me two options: lose her or let her grow up. I opted for the latter, sometime between baking Spanish sugar cookies with my boyfriend and spending every free moment at Sonic. She once stood at the end of our driveway with her purple Pocahontas suitcase. Now she stirs the small town where she dropped her Louis Vuitton luggage.”

For My Broken Hearts:

The Heartbreak Healer. The Future Finder. The Boyfriend Bully.
“I want to shake her shoulders and tell her to stop pining for the boy who has his fingers running through another girl’s hair. Stop standing on his front walkway, waiting for him to hand his heart to her. Stop slow dancing to the sound of his heartbeat against her head on our living room couch.”

I’m sure you’re about as likely to seduce a stop sign as I am to curtsy at a traffic light.
“Tell you what, little girl: you stop flirting with the speed limit and he’ll stick around. That’s right. Don’t you bat one more eyelash at that bright neon sign. What, you’re probably thinking, could she be talking about?” – Click photo to continue reading.

Hopeless Romantic: One Who Writes Books To Fall In Love
“All I knew for sure, at seventeen, was that I’d never fall in love with a boy in the state of Pennsylvania. And maybe if I wrote a 50,000-word novel, arguably semi-autobiographical, and made the protagonist fall in love with a sweet Southern drawl and a boy whose name later turned out to be…”

For my friendship bridgers:

These are my Backpack Words.
“I’d like to tell you my therapist never had any Backpack Words for me. There was nothing worth stuffing into my backpack like those pamphlets with smiling children on the covers in waiting rooms. I’d like to tell you those four months I spent carting my baggage up two flights of stairs wasn’t worth it.”

My Friendship Manifesto
“I believe in group text messages. I believe in saying “best friend” and meaning it. In sitting in diners with a cold cup of hot tea for two hours. I believe in answering the phone at two a.m. At four a.m. I believe in listening, no questions asked, to the voice on the other end of the line.”

 Happiness is playing hide-and-seek in your best friend’s basement.
“I am sitting crouched under the bar, and my eyes still aren’t adjusted to the lack of light. Creepy Halloween music plays in the background, and I’m playing that game where you close your eyes, click your heels together, and pretend you’re Dorothy.”

for my Love letterers:

Let her dance across notebook pages and down abandoned hallways. Let her breathe.
“Hannah. Hannah. Hannah. You are a blessed girl. You and I were spun from the same spool of thread, meant to shine in the windowsill of some corner craft store. Instead, you ended up as a sweater shipped across the country. You were born to know the world beyond the department store. To never settle for the pokes and jabs and taunts…”

And girl, you’re going so far.
“Thursday night I knocked on Brooke’s door and just started crying. And not the wiping-a-few-stray-tears-away kind, either. I’m talking full-on can’t speak crying. Some things, my dear, will never change. Brooke told me something pretty radical, something I still don’t quite believe, to make me feel better. She said I’d been through…”