This political cartoon addresses a serious and difficult subject that I both suffered from and saw many others struggling with throughout high school.

It’s about the power of words and how strongly they affect us. One word or phrase is not heavy on its own, but we tend to carry all those words with us, especially when we hear them repeated a lot or they come from our family or friends. Then they become heavy and tangled. As if it wasn’t bad enough to struggle under their enormous weight, we were constantly told that there is only ONE way to success and happiness – that we didn’t have a choice in climbing that increasingly narrow slope that was the path of a life already laid out for us by the expectations of others.