For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a romantic. Romance novels, chick-flicks, love songs, wedding photographs, and people recounting their own love stories, I ate it all up. I longed for the day I’d get my first kiss, and dreamed about how wonderful it would be to have a boyfriend, and eventually, a husband.

When I was 18, I experienced my first break up, a part of love I’d never given much thought to in my sole and heavy focus on “Happily Ever After.” Up to this point, I’d never allowed myself to cry over a boy, but then again, I’d never loved a boy like I thought I loved this one. I will spare you the details of how I felt because I’m sure you can draw upon your own experience of feeling that a part of your heart has been ripped away, and that there is simply no way you will ever regain it.

I was hopeless for a good long while after this breakup. I was bitter. I thought men were pigs. I refused to read love stories, or listen to love songs. I started a love affair with my last name, and promised myself I would never give it up to a man who would probably leave me. While I’d spent my whole life up to that point being the optimist, believing in romance and love, devouring every romance novel I could get my hands on, I became a cynic.

Until one day, my mom marched me down to my room and made me throw out every last reminder of my first love. She made me throw out the letters, the dried flowers from the bouquet he’d given me on valentines day, the stuffed bunny he’d used to ask me to prom, and the shoes I’d been wearing when we first kissed. It was refreshing, a release I didn’t even know I needed.

Then, we had a nice long talk about hard things. My mom’s mom, my Grandma Lee Ann, died when my mom was 17, and for the first time in my life, I asked my mom how she felt in those immediate days and months that followed. Let me tell you, my mom had to do some hard things, things I can’t imagine having to do at any point in my life, let alone as a teenager.

To this day, my mom is the definition of quiet strength, elegance and optimism. She’s never let the trials define or harden her. So I asked her, as we discussed all the hard things, “How did you go on? How were you not mad?” She told me that what was done was done, her mom was gone, and being upset and bitter and hopeless wasn’t going to bring her back. My mom still had a whole life to live, and although that life would be indescribably harder now that she didn’t have her mom, she wanted to live a happy life. She didn’t want to lose hope, she didn’t want to be bitter.

I felt ridiculous for the way I had been feeling, and the things I’d thought, and the attitude I’d adopted in the aftermath of my first breakup, and I decided I wanted to be like my mom. I didn’t want to be a cynic anymore. I wanted to be happy again.

At the same time, I was going to college and taking a “Studies of Short Fiction” class from a man who became my all-time favorite professor. I don’t remember what piece of fiction we were discussing this particular day, but when he called on me and asked my thoughts on the piece, I said, quite lamely, “I liked it.” Then, probing deeper as all literature professors do, he said, “Why?” and I went on to explain how I liked the relationship between the two main characters, because although it was only a short story, and we only saw a snippet of their relationship, you could see it was a good one, and I said, “I’m a hopeless romantic, it gives me hope for my own good relationship.” And then my professor looked at me and said, “May I suggest becoming a hopeful romantic instead?”

Between ridding myself of the reminders of my first, and failed, relationship, the deep desire to be like my mom in the face of hard things, and the admonition to approach life and love full of hope, my world, which lost love had once turned upside down, was right again. I was happy, I believed the love story I so desired was out there, I became the hopeful romantic.

So why am I telling you all of this? What does this experience have to do with you? I learned, through all of this, that life is so much better when you’re hopeful. Life is hard, love is hard, there’s no doubt about it, but wherever you are, whatever your past experiences may have been,

And in case you were wondering, I did get the love story I always wanted. Zach is everything I wished for and more. Loving him, and being loved by him, restored all the little parts of my heart I thought I’d lost forever. He is my dearest friend, the love of my life, and I gladly surrendered my last name to take his. In the beautiful words of Emily Bronte, “He's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”