If I could sit across from my 13-year-old-self right now, I think she’d stare at me wide eyed, somewhere between disbelief and admiration. Not because I’ve “figured it all out,” which I most certainly haven’t, but because I’ve kept and continue to keep going, even when I don’t know how.

I was 13 when I was diagnosed with Autoimmune Lymphoproliferative Syndrome, an extremely rare autoimmune disorder that even many healthcare professionals to this day are confused by. At an age when most kids were worried about what to wear to school or how to pass their next quiz, I was learning how to pronounce the name of my condition and what it meant to live in a body that didn’t always feel like my own. There were many hospital visits and medications accompanied by a laundry list of side effects, and a lifelong experience of learning how to advocate for myself in a room full of doctors that barely know what’s going on in your body. That girl – the one with the IV in her arm and hope in her heart – she had no idea how strong she really was. But she kept going anyway. And I kept going too.