When you are young you feel like the world is your oyster and that nothing can stop you. We have all been there before we entered an older phase in our lives and needed to slow down slightly and get serious about certain things. But when you are a free spirit and just want to enjoy life, be careful how you go about that. You may wake up one morning and find out that everything you got so used to doing is now going to change forever. Will you be ready to handle the responsibility of a situation when it arrives? That’s a big question that all you young people out there need to ask yourselves. Take this story here not just as a cautionary tale, but as an inspiring tale as well about a girl who faced a challenge head-on. We only wish that if something like this happened to us, we would be able to deal with it just as bravely.

Meet Melissa
Melissa was just a girl growing up in a small town in California. She was very active and was characterized by all her friends at a young age as being a tomboy. She didn’t mind being teased about it though, she wore it as a badge of honor in most cases.

When she was just a kid, Melissa would always dream about what she would be when she got older. She was interested in so many things that she really had no idea where life would take her. All she knew was that she was open to exploring and being the truest version of herself.