Dear Anita

I was just thinking about you 🙂 hope that you had a good new year. hope that you are well.

I struggled so much spring 2020 going back to school studies after spending time at home and had to withdraw from my classes to take a mental health break. I spent time with a trans support group and made some great friends that helped me. It was quite tough because I felt like I wanted to give up at that time but my friend ashley and another trans friend liam helped me by talking with me about my gender dysphoria. I spent time in nature, enjoying the trails and decided to take a sustainability farm class in fall 2021 and it was lots of fun. I have continued to work on the farm helping plant vegetables and fruit trees. I realize that I love nature and being outside. I decided to do double degrees: biology (less stressful then biochemistry with less labwork) and environmental science. The two degrees work quite well together and I enjoy the internship opportunities for them especially since there’s many opportunities to work outdoors. however, it’s still a bit hard for me at times because the memories i held back are coming back and working through them. i repressed them for quite long working on just surviving so now i’m acknowledging many memories letting go, forgiving things. i still struggle with trying to understand myself at times because of many years hiding emotions from emotionally unsupporting parents but working on reconnecting with myself. It’s hard for me to learn things sometimes because i’ve been protecting myself for so long so sometimes I shake when learning new things and i feel a bit distressed because sometimes other people understand the things that i’m still working on. what i really want to work on, and am struggling with is communicating my emotions because i feel like even though i can talk about them i’m not sure i am expressing them adequately. i still feel like whenever i talk with authority figures like my academic advisors about things even though i do communicate things with them sometimes they aren’t understanding things and it makes me sad. Maybe it’s because I’m not really sure if I’m getting my point across to them. I don’t know how to explain to my academic advisors that I spent so much time chasing things that I had interests in but later realized didn’t make me happy on the inside so now I’m taking extra school time to plan things out and rebuild things growing plants, enjoying nature following my heart. Although they just see it as me taking more time in school dawdling i feel like i’m taking the classes that i should have taken long ago had i known that this was what i wanted. i love studying living things in nature and helping preserve it so biology and environmental science fit well together. it is a bit stressful doing two degrees though. but i find that the environmental classes are lots of fun. I just wish that I could work on communicating things better with my advisors about things but it is a bit hard.

Thanks for checking up on me. Hugs