Matt Joseph Diaz

This is literally the cutest, happiest thing you will see all day.

While every generation has its triumphs (Barack Obama, gay marriage, legalized marijuana) and missteps (Ed Hardy Shirts, Lost, making Gerard Butler famous,) millennials are actually a lot better than we get credit for. Need proof?

I’m about to be in the midst of a depressive episode. At times like these, I’ve learned to take a step back from social media. While I do ultimately believe social media is a force for good, a means through which we can connect to, learn more about, and inform one another, there’s a real problem with how mental illness is portrayed there.

Vulnerability is a sign of strength, not weakness, and those who see being open and sincere as symbols of fragility have a skewed idea of vulnerability. It takes NO strength to close yourself off from the world — to refuse to be who you are because you’re afraid of the reaction of those around you. Feeling deeply and openly, even in the face of resistance, is what takes true strength.

Though it's worth noting that my weight was beginning to become a health concern, I’d never considered my body a “problem” until I heard how doctors talked about it. In the same way a hurt child won’t start to cry until he sees the worry in his parent’s face, I never felt bad about my body until the first time I felt like I was being looked at with disgust. So whatever route you decide to take with the health of a child, make sure it’s treated as a growing opportunity and not a solution to a problem. Your children are not problems — they are the foundation upon which the adults of tomorrow will be built.

This week: Find what fuels you, and don't beat yourself up if what's fueling you right now is "surviving."

Taking the time to find clothes that I liked, to dye my hair, and get tattooed — for the first time I was building a place of my own.

When I lost that ability for a while, being too weak and swollen to really put the effort in, it felt like I’d lost a part of myself. It felt like I’d regressed, like I’d gotten to the finish line and was forced back into the race.

This is the trap we fall into when we discuss recovery, emotional development, mental health, or body image: believing there’s a destination.

I've long considered myself a collector of failed relationships. From the girlfriend I asked out during a bar crawl and dated for eight days to the conservative Christian who thought her love was “saving me from a life of debauchery,” I actually gained a little pride from my list of failed love affairs. However, while these relationships were problematic, what made them “failures?”

When you go through a difficult, traumatic, or transformative experience, there’s a part of you that wants to hold onto the person you were before it happened. You try so hard to hold onto a simpler time–a time when things weren’t so scary. But you can’t.

I feel equipped to talk about the intricacies of the body positivity movement; for with all its beauty and empowerment, there are aspects of body positivity that try to control how others view and treat their bodies. Though I understand the intention, behavior like this flies in the face of the ideals the movement is trying to create. Put simply: it's time we stop trying to police body positivity.