Dr. Julia Garcia

It doesn't make it any more or less painful.

But it's given me hope.

a way to repurpose that pain, which is one of the habits of hope.

And it has inspired a lot of the work I do professionally with prevention programs and having conversations about issues and building awareness around things.

and giving me hope that maybe in all of that pain that I can repurpose it and potentially prevent someone else's life from being taken by drugs.

And so, no, having hope even after devastation and loss, something that can never be changed, it didn't change the pain, but it gave me a path forward through it.

You can't not have the hope is what you're saying?

There's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Because in that you're still, and I think that this goes back to one of the

like debunking the myths on hope is like, you don't have to have like this insane amount of it.

You don't have to have a bunch and it doesn't have to make you be happy.

You don't have to be happy to have hope.

And I hope is about honesty and that's where you're honestly at.

And so I, I think that's just as powerful.

What happened was I was in a situation where I was leaving an unhealthy relationship, like physically running away from it.

And I get into a car with a friend who's taking me home and they didn't say anything in the car ride.

But when they got to my house, they just looked at me and they said, you know, you could be anything you want to be.

And in that moment, so I'm escaping like an unhealthy relationship and someone looks at me and says, I could be anything I want to be.

That's the last thing I'm thinking about.

It's the middle of the night.