There are characters you admire. There are characters you love. Then there are characters who feel like they somehow crawled out of your own imagination before you ever knew how to put yourself on paper.

For me, that character has always been Jo March.

I joke with my friends that Louisa May Alcott should have asked permission before creating Jo, because sometimes it feels less like she wrote a character and more like she copied and pasted myself onto the page.

Little Women has been my home when I have been lost. When I don't know what to read, I return to it. When life feels overwhelming, I return to it. When I need to remember who I am, I return to it.

Louisa May Alcott didn't just write my favorite book.

She wrote the story that taught me how to become myself.