One of the main reasons people go away to college is to find both themselves and like-minded individuals. I myself go to school over 150 miles away from home, but it never really seems like it. You find different “families” who make you feel right at home.

I recently joined a sorority on campus and throughout the process, I was given a wooden picture frame that had been colored blue and had the words “Find your tribe and love them hard” written in its center and that command really struck a chord with me.

Find my tribe, and love them hard. At first, I was puzzled but then suddenly, I knew exactly what this present was beckoning me to do. Having always been a floater, I never really had a core group and when I thought I had found mine my freshman year, I was very quickly proven wrong and was left standing battered and alone. Something had to change. After all, isn’t that why I pledged in the first place? So I set out on a journey to do exactly that, find my tribe, my family and love them hard, do anything to help them and love them with every fiber of my being. It was hard at first, but boy was it worth it.

The first step on my journey was probably the most difficult of all. I had to analyze the friends I had been surrounding myself with and pinpoint who was there for the long haul and who was just using or profiting from being my friend without doing anything in return. When I found out who they were, I had to distance myself from them and eventually end contact with them, which is a lot easier said than done.

Removing people from my life was never something that I excelled at and most years I found myself being used at a higher and higher rate than in years passed. But slowly as I began surrounding myself with the right kind of people, creating distance didn’t seem that hard after all.

The second step was finding the right kind of people. This step kind of happened concurrently with the first, but it definitely continued after the fact. I opened my mind to people who I had previously believed to be too good for me or who were friends with people that I was not or who decided that I was not worthy of their time. And I made myself more available and open to new experiences and people than I had been previously when I had been surrounding myself with negative and toxic people.

After I made incredible friends with people I never thought possible, the third step was to reevaluate friendships who had made the original cut. While no one is perfect and you will not be the first priority every time you need them, making someone a priority is work and if they are not willing to put in the extra time and effort, then they don’t deserve you.

Step four: accept that you have worth and that some people will just blatantly not deserve you. Find people who deserve you and are willing to put the time and work in without benefit. Find people who help you prove your insecurities wrong and not make you feel worthless by exploiting them. Because those people are not your true friends, no matter what title they give themselves, they are not worthy of your attention.

The fifth and final step is to realize that prioritizing people is hard work. It is emotionally, mentally and physically draining and it is not something that should be taken lightly. But if you are willing to put in the time, energy and stress, you can love them hard, even if they are not constantly a priority. Just remember to take care of yourself as well. There is no point in putting your everything into other people while you yourself are falling apart. That is not beneficial to anyone.

Life is difficult and challenging and cruel, but if you surround yourself with people who truly care about you, nothing can stop you. Remember that you are valid and have worth and that no matter what, people will care about you.

Never accept less than you deserve. And honey, you deserve the world. If you find your tribe and you love them hard, there’s nothing you can’t do.