This was sent to me yesterday by a dear friend. I needed it.

I then sent it to another dear friend. She needed it.

Every day, we all carry things with us; hopes, fears, ideas, identities…

Some of these things lift us up. Some of my labels I wear proudly:

Wife, mother, friend, daughter, grand-daughter, teacher, twin, writer, confidant, sister,

dance partier, loud laugher, decorator, front-woman for a rock band…

Yet there are some layers of myself that I wish to shed.

I will probably always be on the slightly anxious end of the anxiety spectrum.

But I would love to no longer be a sufferer. A worrier. A scaredy-cat.

Those things weigh me down. They are the labels that can make minutes feel like hours, make days feel dark and make my stomach feel like it has a led weight inside of it.

I want to be lighter.

So I am making a conscious effort to take off the things that I no longer wish to wear.

I have written many times over the past year about the shift in my friendships; that through the trauma of postpartum depression and it’s after effects, my friends have become my family. We talk every single day. They humor me when I send out 15 emails about our holiday cookie Pollyanna party, because they know how important it is for me to embrace this holiday season. They are just my people.

Then there are the new friends I have made. They have changed my life. The ones who spent last year sitting on the floor with me, as I opened up about my depression. The ones who have been so selfless. The one whom I’ve followed on the internet for years, and turned out to be even more beautiful and amazing and spectacular in person. The one who understands every one of my faults and loves me because of them, not in spite of them. The one who sees a pair of Fox leggings in the store and buys them for me, because…obviously. These friends have been a gift. I carry them with me, now.

And as far as everyone and everything else,

all the drama and the ghosts and the pain that try to cloud my mind and cause me anxiety, I am trying to let it go.

Like Elsa.

Just letting it go.

I don’t want to carry them with me anymore.

And so I won’t.