Dear Mum and Dad,

Hello! I hope you are well and living life to the fullest. I miss you and can't wait to be home in Maine with you and the kiddos again.

I'm doing fine! I have a couple tests coming up, and that weird guy texted me again, but my friends are the best! I got to eat outside the other day, which was so nice! It was almost 74 degrees today!

I just wanted to say thank you for everything. I know it's hard being so far away, and I feel it too. Thank you for giving me the right amount of independence to let me go out into the world, and for being the home to come back to when my road looks long.

Thank you for always being supportive, and for sending me little notes, food, and encouragements in the form of emails and Facebook messages. They honestly mean so much to me, and raise my spirits a lot. Often hearing from you is just what I need.

Thank you for always being ears for what I have to say, and for tolerating me when I think I have some deep insight from the week. I love that I can share those things with you. Thanks for hearing me.

Also, thanks for raising me how you did. I can't tell you enough how thankful I am for that. I feel like the world is ready for me (even though for the most part it's not). I am no longer stumbling through life, but finding my way through the woods with knowledge.

Thank you for fueling my love for words. My shelves are full of all the memories and love from my childhood and teenage years that I can now filter into my major and my love for novels and the spoken word. Thanks for reading to me.

Thank you for giving me siblings. They make life so full of laughs, lessons, and games that I wouldn't trade for anything. I get annoyed at them sometimes, of course, but without them, what would I be?

Thank you for tolerating my weirdness, my puns, awful jokes, and dad sweaters and flannels that never seem to end. Thank you for introducing me to football and letting me love it like a frat boy on Sunday afternoons. Thanks for tolerating my obsession with Harry Styles, dogs, and Chacos.

Thank you for loving me, and accepting my flaws. Someone said that flaws make the constellations in the sky; if that's true, no one can love the sky as much as you have loved me. I am so endlessly grateful to you for that.

Thank you for letting me go. i absolutely love where I am right now, and could not have asked for a better road to get here. It was not the prettiest, smoothest, or straightest road, but it is mine, and you paved it for me. So thank you. It will never be enough. But thank you. I am forever blessed.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Your affectionate daughter