Meet Shey.

I was born and raised in Tacoma, Washington. I recently graduated high school. Now I attend a university in Olympia, Washington, where I’m a nursing major.The pandemic has helped me to be alone.

I think it’s an amazing thing to be alone and in your thoughts and to reflect. Before the pandemic, we were a society that was constantly go, go, go. You’re constantly on the move and you just never have time to sit down and reflect on your life. I like to look within for my happiness so I don’t try to let outside factors weigh on me and what I’m going through.

Cultivate community that can take some weight off your shoulders

If you carry all that weight on your shoulders and you feel like you don’t have a support system that you can express yourself to, it can feel like you’re alone in a lot of things. So having a community where you can talk, I think it can be a pivotal moment to realize that it’s not bad to talk about your feelings. There are a lot of people that want to help you.

That is something that I do a lot for my friends. They’ll come to me for advice and they’re like, “Sheyenne, you have the best advice.” And I’m like, “Girl, I’m just speaking the truth. I’m just here to help you.” I love being that person for people. I love when people can come to me. I want people to care as much as I care. I try to surround myself with those people.It’s honestly a beautiful thing to see.

Journaling has helped me a lot because I don’t feel comfortable talking about my emotions with other people. If I was having a really bad day, I would journal and write down every emotion that I’m feeling. It could be good. It could be bad. I would write until I felt like I got everything off of my chest. It’s helped me because sometimes you really don’t see your progress. For me, I’ll go back and look at my journal and see like what I was feeling in that exact moment. And now when I journal, I feel like I’m in a much happier place. It’s honestly a beautiful thing to see.

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