First of all, happy twentieth birthday and congratulations. A lot has happened since you turned nineteen.

As I was preparing for my birthday this year, I began to reflect on all the ways that my life has changed since my eighteenth or even my nineteenth birthday. Facebook's "On This Day" feature is particularly good at helping me with this, reminding me every morning to revisit the "fake-booking" of my past. (Fake-booking, for those of you who don't know, is a term used for the phenomenon of filtering your social media to only include your happiest moments. You create a fake, filtered, and glorified version of your own life to make yourself appear to be happier, more successful, or just generally better than your friends or followers.)

The morning of my twentieth birthday, I opened the memories tab to see a picture from high school of a gift I'd received on a whim. The gift produced laughs from my friends and I, as it related to an inside joke that we had shared. I smiled at the photograph and continued to scroll, looking at birthdays past and wishes from my parents and friends.

The idea of my twentieth birthday was bittersweet for a few reasons.

My twentieth coincided with World Pancreatic Cancer Day. Six years ago, my grandfather passed away after a short battle with late stage Pancreatic Cancer. He was a huge influence on my life, my childhood, and my passion for music. He was one of my biggest supporters, and I was absolutely crushed when he passed away. In the six years since his death, I've learned more about his life, his relationship to music, and his cancer. I'm now pursuing a Music Therapy degree, and I hope to one day help a wide variety of clients, some of whom may be cancer patients.

My twentieth birthday, in some ways, marked the end of one of the most emotionally and mentally difficult years of my life. On my eighteenth birthday, I drove one of my best friends home from school as we laughed about the memory that I briefly shared earlier. I began my nineteenth birthday with a two and a half hour phone call with the same best friend. We laughed at memories and shared our hopes and dreams for the next year. The following winter, the same friend died by suicide after struggling with (what is believed to be) an undiagnosed mental illness. This was the first birthday in a while that didn't include snarky remarks from this friend and I missed him a lot, even before my birthday arrived. As I reflected, I felt an immense amount of gratitude because my nineteenth year also included some of my favorite memories with this friend.

As my birthday approached, I found that I was content with leaving the teenage years--a time of memories, laughs, and love, but also a time of immaturity. In reflecting on the way that the last year challenged me, I said this to one of my friends:

"I am in no way grateful for this chapter of my life, but I am learning to accept the fact that this chapter will continue to shape me as a person and affect the ways that I live my life and continue to pursue a career in music therapy."

This is a long winded way to say that I know what I'll be wishing for when I blow out the candles on a birthday cake with my family next week when I see them.

I hope that my twentieth birthday brings a year of growth. I hope that, when this article pops up in my Facebook memories next November, I am a different person than I am today.

Here's to twenty, here's to growth, and here's to change.