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I want you to know that one day, you will have your heart be broken, and it’s going to hurt so bad that you will feel like the world is going to end. But you will get over it. You will outgrow heartache. You will learn your best lessons because of pain

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How do I tell her to be her beautiful, bright self in a world that will go after that beauty, sometimes in dangerous ways?

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I can only hope that you now have the highest standards in what guys who desire to date you should do.

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From when you are old enough and can understand, your sister will tell you that you were adopted, grown in a lab, or found in the dumpster. You will question your parents for years because of this.

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Being a little sister can be tough at times.

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She was precocious, sassy, funny. Now, seven years later, she was calling me from jail.

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What I do want you to know is that it’s completely okay to be unsure about your future. It’s okay to want to study to be a nurse one semester or want to study English literature to become a professor the next.

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Her mistakes helped you to avoid similar obstructions. “Mental note to self: get caught throwing a party in mom and dad’s absence… major suffering ensues.”

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8. When did she get so cool? How is she so calm and collected?

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I should be able to look at you objectively, in all your importance and all your insignificance, and I should be able to shrug. But I can’t.