Week 8 - Integration One
Word Count: 2247 words excluding quotes
Right Where I am Meant To Be
	Over the course of the semester, I have been challenged to dive into the truth of who I am and what has helped shape me into the person I am and in order to determine and define my personal beliefs.  I believe that I am a combination of every experience and every encounter I have had in my life.  I believe that I grow by experiencing and truly feeling all of the emotions from happiness to heartbreak and anger to empathy.  I believe that I am searching for fulfilling and purposeful relationships.  I believe that my purpose is to help others realize their worth.  Overall, I have come to the conclusion that I truly do believe that I am right where I am meant to be.
	As a leader of my high school’s senior retreat, I was asked to write a reflection on the prompt Who Am I?  I remember while I was watching Brené Brown’s TED Talk, I couldn’t help but think about my retreat experience every single time Brené Brown mentioned vulnerability.  Vulnerability was a major component of my school’s UNITAS Senior Retreat.  One of the requirements for a retreat leader was vulnerability.  Brené Brown put it perfectly, “Connection is why we’re here.  It’s what gives purpose and meaning to our lives.  This is what it’s all about”  ("The Power of Vulnerability"  by Brené Brown - Moreau FYE Week One).  Brené Brown’s focuses on the idea that vulnerability is what can and will ultimately lead us to connection.  Without vulnerability, how could we ever possibly form a true, deep, meaningful connection with someone else?  My retreat experience really ingrained in me Brené Brown’s argument for the need of vulnerability.  
Writing my reflection for my retreat was truly an incredible experience for me because it allowed me to see sides of myself that I never really thought much of or paid much attention to.  I reflected on how I believe that we become littles bits and pieces of those who surround us and those who are maybe longer in our lives.  Likewise, I believe that every experience of mine has helped form my identity today.  Who would I be if I hadn’t experienced the major friendship troubles I had leading up to high school, and how different would I be if I didn’t attend the high school that I attended?  Looking ahead, who would I become if I didn’t decide to join the Notre Dame community and where would my life lead me if I did not have the new amazing friendships that I have found here in this Notre Dame community.  Although I do not know where my Notre Dame experience will lead me, I believe that had I chosen any other path, that my life would be radically different.  I attended a Notre Dame first year student send off picnic, hosted by the Notre Dame Club of Philadelphia.  There, I met one of the most incredible people I’ve ever met, and now I am lucky enough to consider her a lifelong best friend.  I am so incredibly happy and feel so incredibly blessed to have met the people I have met here and to have formed the most fulfilling friendships I have ever known.  As I reviewed the content for week four’s module, I realized that my new best friend met all of the healthy relationship and friendship criteria.  Although the healthy vs. unhealthy relationship chart was focused on romantic relationships, I applied it to my friendship.  My friend embodies all that a friend should and nothing that a friend should not.  The quality that stood out to me that I believe my friend embodies most is honesty.  In the short time we have known each other, we have grown to “share their [our] dreams, fears, concerns, with each other.  They [we] tell each other how they [we] feel and share important information”  (“Text: Healthy vs. Unhealthy Relationships” by The Red Flag Campaign - Moreau FYE Week Four).  There is another girl who I now consider more of a sister than just a friend, and together we are putting ourselves out there and getting involved in clubs together to help us grow and learn more about what we want to do with the rest of our lives.
Through my continued learning that vulnerability and connection are necessities for us and cannot exist without the other, I have decided that what might be best for me is to get involved with campus ministry and get involved with retreats on campus because I know how incredible my initial retreat experiences were, and I believe that any further retreat experience will only empower my courage to be vulnerable.
To grow, I believe that we must feel and truly be willing to feel all emotions.  A couple of years ago, following a traumatic experience, I kind of shut myself down and shut off all my emotions, forcing myself to become numb to all things ranging from sadness to happiness and anger to empathy.  It took me a while to get out of that stage, but once I did, I was able to realize how detrimental, dangerous, and unhealthy being numb to everything is.  The realization that I had become numb understandably led to sadness.  However, I was able to find joy in the fact that I was finally feeling sadness again.  The stage of numbness did not lead to any personal growth for me, but the aftermath certainly did because it helped me begin to form my belief that emotions, even the “bad” ones are necessary for us to have in our lives because they allow us to grow.  I believe that we can also apply this belief to our faith lives.  For us to grow in faith, I believe that we must falter in our faith at times.  Cheyenne shared in her reflection, “I have recently learned that even times of spiritual desolation can be perceived as gifts because they invite me to evaluate my life in its current state and trust ever more fully in the God who loves and cares for me even when I am unwilling or unable to remember it” (Text: "Student Reflections on Faith" curated by Campus Ministry - Moreau FYE Week Three).  I believe that we cannot experience true happiness without also experiencing painful heartbreak.  Likewise, I believe that we cannot have true faith without having doubts occasionally.  The concept of being unable to have faith without doubt and vice versa was discussed in my theology class in great depth in one of my Friday discussion sections.  Together, we came to the conclusion that faith cannot be true faith without doubt.  One of our arguments was that St. Thérèse even doubted her faith at times.  She claims to have temptations of atheism and is now considered a saint.  As life goes on, my hope is that I continue to be okay with feeling all emotions, rather than just avoiding them and turning numb.  I also hope that if my faith begins to falter, that instead of recognizing it as something bad, I recognize it as something necessary for growth and health.
Throughout my life, I have found myself continually searching for fulfilling and purposeful relationships, so I have come to the belief that in everything I do, I end up searching for these relationships and connections.  The most meaningful relationship I will ever have is the one I have is the one with my best friend.  He came into my life when I was at my absolute lowest, and he helped me more than I could ever even begin to explain to anyone.  I am forever grateful for getting to experience a relationship as purposeful and special as the one I have with my best friend.  I am also aware of the impact that my best friend has had on my life.  He has influenced me in so many incredible ways.  My group of friends and I at home spent many of our weekends together, and working on the Where I’m From poem reminded me of all the times we spent together and strengthened my belief that I am searching for fulfilling and and purposeful relationships because all of my relationships with my home friends are ones that fill me with life and bring me nothing but happiness.  They are truly life-fulfilling and meaningful.  Knowing now that I am searching for relationships and friendships that will fill me with life, I can engage in activities and communities on campus that will lead me to the people that will provide those relationships for me.  I have already been lucky enough to find a great group of girls in my dorm, and I can get involved in things like campus ministry and service opportunities because people involved in both of those are typically the kind of people who I find the most amazing relationships and friendships in.  I will forever cherish the relationships and bonds I formed with girls from my high school who were involved in campus ministry, like I was.  Another thing that I can do when searching for these life-fulfilling relationships is to avoid any bias I may hold against someone or a group of people because I may be able to find incredible relationships and friendships with the seemingly most unlikely people with the seemingly unlikeliness possibly stemming from some implicit bias or personal bias.  In her TED Talk, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie stated, “The consequence of the single story is this: It robs people of dignity” (Video: "Danger of a Single Story" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Moreau FYE Week Seven).  I can try my best to not fall into the trap of single stories and meet new people with an open mind, in hopes that they might eventually become someone in my life who I form a purposeful and meaningful relationship with.
My last prominent root belief is that I believe that my main purpose is to help others realize their self-worth.  After a traumatic experience a few years ago, it took me until the spring of my senior year of high school to begin to realize my self worth and to get rid of my self blame that was completely unwarranted.  Like me, many people struggle with seeing their self worth.  As David Brooks said in his TED Talk, “We live in perpetual self-confrontation between external success and internal value.  The tricky thing about these two sides of our nature is that they work by different logic” (Video: “Should You Live for Your Resume or Your Eulogy?" by David Brooks - Moreau FYE Week Two).  In my experience, I have encountered many people who have placed success over self worth and in doing so, lost complete sight and knowledge of their self worth.  After experiencing my own revelation of my self worth through my first retreat, which was centered around training to become a retreat leader for the other seniors in my graduating class, I became determined to be a factor that led others to revert back to recognizing and acknowledging their self worth, rather than disregarding it, like I had done.  As a retreat leader, I was able to create a community for my small group that was centered around learning to love oneself and gaining self respect and self worth.  Looking ahead and reflecting on David Brooks’ wise words, I hope that I can continue to be someone that people rely on to help boost self worth and to grow in a way that allows others to strive for success without losing sight of themselves or losing respect for themselves.  My belief that I am meant to provide help to others who have lost sight of their self worth has led me to be looking into applying for the Notre Dame Vision program, where I could again be lucky enough to have the experience of helping to lead a retreat.  While being there for whoever may need me and encouraging self growth, I need to be mindful to also remind myself and others that we cannot learn to love ourselves and realize our self worth without the one who loves us more than anyone else: God.  As Carla Harris stated, “We cannot love the God whom we cannot see if we can’t love the brother whom we do see” (Video: “2021 Laetare Medalist Address" by Carla Harris - Moreau FYE Week Five).  To be able to love God, we must also know how to love those who surround us.  I personally struggled with this when I began losing sight of myself and my self worth.  When I initially started losing my self worth, I began to push away the people who meant the absolute most to me.  Someone I pushed away the most was my best friend, who I mentioned earlier when discussing relationships.  Thankfully, no matter how hard I tried to push him away, he stuck by my side and helped me regain sight of my self worth and helped me realize that the people I was pushing the furthest away were the people I actually loved most in my life.  By recognizing my love for those around me, I was able to recognize my love for God, and begin to recognize love for myself and my own self worth.  The overall experience was very painful and heartbreaking for me to go through, so I believe that one of my main purposes is to help prevent anyone else from going through the things that I went through.  For me, it started with little things, so now something I make sure to always do is whenever I hear anyone say anything slightly negative about themselves, I make it my goal to make sure that they know their opinion is not the truth and they have so much more to offer than they may think that they do.  I have noticed one of my closest friends here is struggling with self acceptance and the idea of self worth, and I believe that we were put in each other’s lives for a reason, and I really hope that I can help her realize how incredible and worthy she is, even if she disagrees with me for the time being.
 I believe that I am a combination of every experience and every encounter I have had in my life.  I believe that I grow by experiencing and truly feeling all of the emotions from happiness to heartbreak and anger to empathy.  I believe that I am searching for fulfilling and purposeful relationships.  I believe that my purpose is to help others realize their worth.  After reflecting on my core beliefs and my past experiences and how I can integrate them into my new life here at Notre Dame, I have found that I am right where I am meant to be.