I did not come from the same type of cookie-cutter life as everyone else. I grew up in two households after my parents went through a messy divorce when I was five years old. I have three full siblings and six half siblings from my parents' remarriages. My family has dealt with multiple suicide attempts, pornography addictions, teen pregnancy, and an array of other worldly things that most of my squeaky-clean student counterparts never expected to rub elbows with on a Christian campus.

 

Realizing that few of my friends at school could relate to my past, I felt awkward about those areas my life and was hesitant to share openly about them. When I became a freshman RA, however, my leadership position opened the doors for many students to be vulnerable with me about their lives. I discovered a whole world of hurt, mental health, depression and anxiety, dysfunctional families, and other hidden struggles like my own.

 

I started wondering if anyone was as squeaky-clean as they had all seemed. I started wondering if I had seemed like one of the perfect ones, too. 

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Eventually, I learned a secret. No one, not a soul, fits in to the "perfect" box. We are all broken. We all have stories we don't tell.

 

Yet, somehow, most of the student body at my Christian college still holds to the assumption that everyone around us has come from the exactly the same background and life experiences. For some reason we all like to assume that everyone had the same religion, family structure, mental health, sexual orientation, etc. Maybe it would be easier if we were all the same, because nothing about ourselves could make us feel ashamed, and nothing about anyone else could make us feel uncomfortable, 

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But we aren't all the same. We aren't. And I have seen the beauty and the rich friendships that can come from being honest about our differences, honest about our struggles, honest about the stories that make us, us. 

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So I started this blog. I want to learn the real stories of those who don't fit into the mold, the misfits who are courageously honest. I want to share their hearts. I want to prove wrong the damaging assumptions that everyone is the same, everyone is put together. 

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Maybe my readers will begin to realize the secret I learned in college. Maybe my readers will meet someone new and withhold their presumptions. Maybe, through the stories on this blog, my readers will gain courage to share their own stories. 

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We are all misfits, and we need each other. I need you.

 

Let us tell the untold stories of our hidden hearts.

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