In December 2024, after 4.5 years of working towards my Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering, I finally graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. At that point, I knew I would be putting a bookmark in that chapter of my life and it was time to pursue something
Up to the point of my senior year of college, in the 8 years since my mom died, I had basically been a straight A student. I never had any worries about failing any classes. I never even really had any worries about getting below a B. I have mentioned
At the time, I thought my summer in 2023 was the best summer of my life. I was living in Chicago, had what I thought was my dream job, was living in a city with people that I considered friends, became super close with my roommate, was working out daily,
For most of my life, I lived in a victim mentality. I felt that life wasn't fair and that bad things kept on happening to me. Not only did I feel this, but I lived as if it were true. I embodied it in my everyday living and
I had never really heard the word spirituality before. I definitely didn’t know what it meant or that the concept of spirituality would change my life in such a profound way. I don’t think the life that I was living could have been any further away from what
Life is confusing. One minute my mom was here, we were talking on the phone about my girl problems and the next, I got called home from camp because she was in the hospital. A few hours later and she was gone. What does that mean she died? Nobody that
After my mom passed away, I always dreamt of helping others who were in a similar situation to me. People who had been struggling with losing a parent at an early age, people who would wake up everyday, not wanting to get out of bed, wanting to die. The only
While I was in treatment, one of the things we had to do was complete assignments. Assignments varied from writing letters to people in our life to filling out different types of worksheets that they had prepared. This assignment in particular was a worksheet that helped me determine what my
From the day that I started therapy, as early as fifth grade, I began learning and understanding things in my life cognitively. I then attempted to implement these ideas into my life, change my behaviors around them. This is the very basis of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT). What I struggled
It was Grade 9, after Christmas break when I heard for the first time that my friends were interested in smoking weed. At this time, I did not really feel apart of the group. This was the peak of me feeling like an outsider among my friends. Up to this
It was early 2024, just over 3 months before I got sober, when the beginning of the end of my addiction happened. I was sitting on my couch in an apartment that looked like a tornado had just ran through it. That tornado though, was just a blackout drunk Jason.