If I had to define myself, I would say that I am Hanna. I am a beautiful and free woman who is a daughter of God. I am Ethiopian and I am a photographer and through photography, I find joy in helping others recognize their beauty and how valuable they are.

I refuse to be defined by the world’s standards or by others’ opinions of me simply because I just don’t think it is the truth. I am very big on what is true, and I think that what God says about me is true. That’s it. Of course, like any other human being, I fall into second-guessing myself, or sometimes being discouraged, but ultimately, my foundation of truth is what God says about me. I don’t associate my identity with what the world says about me if it doesn’t align with what I believe to be true.

During the pandemic, my faith has revealed to me the weight of gratitude and what the fruit of that does. Gratitude, essentially, allows you to be at peace with what you have, even if your situation isn’t what you expected. With gratitude, you are able to determine your environment rather than your environment being the determinant of you.

Gratitude allows you to be in a posture of your own free will within any circumstance. Because you’re at peace and content with what you have, you do the best you can with what you have. You walk out of that season more enriched and confident than when you came in, and with a more matured heart.

I remember feeling content and at peace when I discovered how much I can do with what was in front of me. Because of that perspective, I was able to do more photoshoots with a positive mindset, spend more quality time with loved ones, discover new interests and hobbies, and also spent time discovering more of myself. In recognition of all these things, having gratitude, and finding reasons to be grateful, allowed me to do the best I could within the limitations of the world, but I came out of it more enriched.

A trial that I’ve had to overcome was deciding what I was going to end my undergraduate career with. It was a situation in which I thought that I was meant to complete a certain major, but I realized by the end of my second year that it wasn’t truly meant for me. It was a bit of a confusing time because of other factors in my life at the time, and also going halfway through my college career and all of a sudden feeling I’m not doing what I am supposed to be doing. Oftentimes, students settle for whatever they are studying despite their actual feelings about it, and I simply just did not want to be that student. 

I got through it by really being real with myself and talking to people who had my best interest in mind. I sought out advice from people that could help me reason through my likes and dislikes, and after some time of seeking, finding, and praying, I landed on a major that set my mind at peace, and also a major that I genuinely loved. In the end, I came out of that satisfied with my education and learning at university. 

It has impacted my life in such a positive way because I allowed myself to be influenced by what I love and stayed true to what my likes and dislike were. It shows that you should always be open to the possibility of realizing that you might not be doing what you actually want to do, and that’s just a part of the journey of learning about yourself. It’s all about how you respond to it, and I am grateful to have walked in integrity to realize that there is something else that is more suitable for me. It now gives me the confidence to think that it’s okay to try things that I might like, and it’s okay to find out that it might not be for me. It’s all a part of getting closer to who you really are.

I have so many messages for the youth, but the one that I think is one of the most important is to be in constant discovery of who you are.

Allow your Creator to tell you who you are. Live with integrity. Realize what you actually like and don’t like. Be with the people you actually want to be with because they have more influence on you than you think. Delve into things you feel drawn to, and find out what you absolutely love no matter how long it takes (there’s no real deadline).

When you are continuously finding out about the truth of who you are, you can live your life with more confidence and security in your existence. This world is moving in a direction that goes closer and closer to what’s fake, and the only way to combat it is to find out what is real, and it’s extremely important that you find out what’s real about you.