Woman Who Walks Alone

Daily writing prompt

What advice would you give to your teenage self?

View all responses

When I was a teenager, my mom said not to worry what other people think, but when you’re young, it’s hard. Halfway between childishness and adulthood, you spend hours, sometimes days, navigating social customs. You want to believe it’s okay to toss society’s venom to the wind, to pretend the angry buzz of their words is less than a hornet’s sting to your heart.

If I could speak to myself back in middle or even high school, I would say, “Albert Einstein once said, ‘The woman who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. The woman who walks alone is likely to find herself in places no one has ever seen.’”