Empower yourselves with a good education, then get out there and use that education to build a country worthy of your boundless promise. - Michelle Obama

For me, becoming isn’t about arriving somewhere or achieving a certain aim. I see it instead as forward motion, a means of evolving, a way to reach continuously toward a better self. The journey doesn’t end.

Every time I meet a child I think, who knows what’s going on in her life, whether she was just bullied or whether she had a bad day at school or whether she lost a parent — that interaction that we have with that individual, that child for that moment, could change their life … so we can’t waste this spotlight. It is temporary and life is short, and change is needed. And women are smarter than men.

Your story is what you have, what you will always have. It is something to own.