Humans of Downey - Maddison

"When it comes to our spirit and soul, as humans we're designed in a very specific way so that our personalities are the unique parts of ourselves. With emotion, whether it's pain or joy, those all come out through our personality, but that is what makes us the same. We all have that spirit, that soul. There are very specific things that drive people and they are all very different. But that drive, I think I'm the same as everyone else that wants to get somewhere. Specifically, I share a desire to be significant, a desire to have my life count.

"I am unique in something that I've experienced within the past year, an extreme loss in a weird way. My older sister, my dear sister, we almost lost her to a very rare disease. But she survived, she made it. But she isn't the same. It is a very interesting grief to process because there is a handbook on how to handle grief when you lose someone. But when someone is still there but they're not quite the same, how do you grieve that loss and how do you embrace the something that's still there?

"For me, the only way I've been able to process this loss is to be creative: through painting, through music, through expressing how I'm feeling in sound waves and in color. I think that's unique to me because that's how I've experienced it. My parents went through the exact same thing, but they experienced it differently. The 20-year-old people I know don't have that script. It is my own and I own it wholeheartedly. I've taken that and worked on turning it over for good, not letting it hinder me, but to use it in a way of saying, 'OK, how can I use this to love on other people through this pain that I've experienced.' I think some people might turn inward after experiencing something similar. So, that's my goal every day. How can I show people that they are loved and they do matter. That's a really hard thing to do."

~ Maddison