Angol
Never be ashamed of how deeply you feel or how passionately you love. You are not too much. When your heart is kind and your intentions are pure, you don't lose people-people lose you.
Those words have stayed with me throughout my life.
Life has a way of bringing people into our world and taking them away again. Some stay forever, while others are only meant to walk beside us for a season. Some leave us with beautiful memories, others leave us with heartbreak, grief, and lessons we never asked to learn. But through every goodbye, every setback, and every loss, there is something waiting on the other side: growth, strength, and hope.
This is not a story about a perfect life.
It is a story about a young girl who struggled to find where she belonged. A story about bullying, heartbreak, friendship, mental health, family, grief, first loves, second chances, and learning how to rebuild when life falls apart.
From growing up on the coast to moving overseas, navigating relationships, battling depression, losing people I loved, finding love when I least expected it, and learning to live with unimaginable loss, this memoir is a collection of the moments that shaped me into the person I am today.
I wrote this memoir in the hope that someone reading it might recognise a piece of themselves within its pages.
Perhaps you are grieving someone you love.
Perhaps you are struggling with loneliness.
Perhaps you are questioning your worth, your future, or whether things will ever get better.
I've been there too.
While I don't have all the answers, I do know this: some of life's darkest moments can become the very experiences that teach us who we are. Strength is not something we are born with-it is something we build, one difficult day at a time.
I began writing this memoir when I was twenty years old, adding chapters as I lived them, experienced them, survived them, and grew from them. These pages contain my happiest memories, my greatest heartbreaks, my biggest mistakes, and the lessons I learned along the way.
At twenty-seven years old, I still don't have life completely figured out. I don't think any of us do.
But I have learned that healing is possible.
I have learned that love comes in many forms.
I have learned that grief and gratitude can exist side by side and I have learned that people will leave, memories will remain, and life will continue to surprise you when you least expect it.
Most importantly, I have learned that no matter how many times life knocks you down, there is always a reason to get back up.
My name is Jess and this is my story.
