We all have so many faces and wear so many hats -- sister, brother, friend, co-worker etc., but how many of us actually get raw with ourselves?

Not to someone else, not what we think we're being so honest about because we haven’t ever admitted it to anyone else. But to ourselves. How self-aware are we? Do we notice the pattern we follow when we get cold? Our favorite sweater that is always donned as soon as the frigid temperature hits?

OK. Now, let’s get a little deeper. Do we know how we react when we get mad? Like, really mad. I'm not talking about being "mad" that somebody ate my leftover cheesecake, but mad because you were cheated out of a childhood or out of happiness somewhere along the way? How do we feel that? Why are we mad about that, really? Let yourself think about that.

Now, let’s take a step farther and find out every single aspect of our lives that has been affected by that and how we have allowed that single, largest disappointment to feed off of our festering wound. It's parasitic. But we allow it, daily. It chews on our corpse and consumes every last ounce of self that we are left with so many fears and insecurities that we become the guarded individuals we are today. Everyone has their triggers and abandonment issues. Get real with yourself.

In order for you to really fall in love with someone, you have to know all about them. Their favorite kind of lunch meat, their laundry detergent of choice, their favorite season and, most of all, their real personality. We fall in love with them because we think that we see a side of them that is most dear to themselves. Why don’t we explore that in ourselves?

We preach steadily about how we love ourselves and self-care. But a few bath bombs and late-night cookie dough fixes are not the self-care that we need. We need to affiliate with all of our feelings and the reasons behind them.

I will start. I am bitter as hell because I was homeschooled as a child. I feel as though I was robbed of a better education because my mom was more focused on my other five siblings. I was lost in the flow and expected to stay ahead of the tide. I feel like my parents stole whatever glamor I thought middle school held. It doesn’t matter how it was to everyone else, it matters how it was to myself.

I was the oldest of so many, so I was stuck doing chores and never got to come home from school and watch cartoons and eat snacks. I never got to escape the prison that was five siblings and a single, emotional mom.

I was so envious, and to this day, when I see a tweet or post about the “good old days” that everyone else in my generation experienced I hold back tears and secretly rage against my mother for what I feel she took from me, even when I would cry to her day-after-day begging to go to school. I feel it to this day. It's still there, and I am not even going to pretend like I am working on forgiving her because I am not. That’s me being raw with myself.

If I can do it, so can you.