DeAndre Carswell: "When you open up to love, you must be open to getting hurt as well. If you expect to love someone, and not have disappointment every now and then, then you don’t want love, you want something perfect. And good luck finding that."

Throughout life each of us endures both painful hardships and soaring triumphs. Lessons are inherent in each experience if we will only listen. We grow by remaining fully conscious of the gifts we are given. Our responsibility to ourselves and the world is to seek out knowledge and act on what we learn. We must breathe deeply, trust ourselves, be unashamed, and gather strength from the lessons learned on our individual journeys to become whole.

You can spend minutes, hours, days, weeks or even months over-analyzing a situation; trying to put the pieces together, justifying what could've, would've happened or you can just leave the pieces on the floor and move the fuck on.

The perfect boyfriend doesn't drink, smoke, cheat or exist.

Just because you have a past with someone, doesn't mean you should have a future with them…

Everytime you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, and a truly beautiful thing.

There are 3 sets of words that can instantly make a woman smile: "You are beautiful." "I miss you." "I love you."