Conclusion: Where Do We Go from Here?

When I was younger, I desperately wanted to be small. Because I thought I was too big, I constructed myself as a walking apology, always trying to cram myself, physically and emotionally, into a smaller and smaller space. I begged the universe to make me small, to make me easy, to make me more understandable. I was begging in the wrong direction—I wasn’t looking to understand myself, I was looking for others to understand me. That kind of thinking kept me feeling both small and enormous at the same time, kept me looking out into the universe and screaming, “Who am I?!”

If you’ve been seeking an answer to the same question, I hope this book has helped you determine the answer for yourself.

You are you. You are Super You.

You are valuable. You are complex. You are substantial—you take up space. And you don’t need to be understandable to anyone but yourself. You’re a damn superhero, for crying out loud. You have powers and you have weaknesses, but neither make up who you are. You are who you create yourself to be. And my lifelong mission is for all of us to start creating ourselves positively, honestly, and intentionally. To create ourselves in ways that demonstrate how we value ourselves, and how we’re always changing and adapting. To live as little of our lives as possible on autopilot: always savoring, always taking in the world, and always adapting to it.

As I’ve written and read and reread this book, I’ve tried to read it as sixteen-year-old Emily would have read it, and then as twenty-five-year-old Emily would have read it. I hope I would have been convinced I was valuable by this book, even though the words “You are valuable” came from someone I’ve never met. I hope that I would have tried some of the techniques, even though I might have felt dumb for trying—or even more, might have felt dumb for needing to try. I hope I would have stopped my emotional noise long enough to peer into myself a little bit and realize some self-reflection wouldn’t kill me. In this I’m trying to say—though I don’t want to change the past, and I couldn’t if I tried—I would love to think I could ease the journey for someone else.

For those of you (still) reading this, and those of you who’ve crafted superhero missions for yourselves, I hope that they’re progressing—and if they aren’t, I hope you feel you have the tools to tweak those missions to suit you better. I hope you remember that you’re a work-in-progress, and treat yourself with the kindness and respect you deserve. I hope that you accept the person you are, with her strengths and weaknesses, and that you learn not to fret about the qualities you don’t have. I hope that you learn to cross-stitch, if only to cross-stitch yourself (and maybe me?) a reminder that you can only control yourself. I hope you continue to stretch and grow and look toward your Bat Signal until the day you realize you’ve reached it—and then I hope you set yourself a new Bat Signal. I hope you stay occupied with yourself, in the loveliest of ways, until you are old and gray and still kicking ass.

There are infinite ways to spend a life. Though I choose to live my life by the ideas presented in this book, that doesn’t mean it’s the right path for you. All I am asking of you, Super You, is that you choose the best way to live your life—and then you pursue it. Regardless of what you do with today, it’s going to be gone by tomorrow. You decide what to do with today.

These days, the only time I want to feel small is when I’ve had a long stressful day. Then I want the person I’ve grown to love and trust more than anyone to hug me, making me feel tiny and taken care of. But in order to get comfortable with being small, I had to get comfortable taking up space. Now, once I’ve felt comforted and small for a little while, I reemerge at my usual Super You size. Then I put on my cape and costume, and I fly. Come fly with me. There’s room for all of us.