Vivian Nunez

“I graduated in college in 2014 and at the time, I thought I was going into the media route as I interned for companies like Cosmo and Seventeen. In November 2013, my grandmother got sick and she was in and out of the hospital. I was her primary care taker and I would have to commute back and forth from the city. And at the time, I didn’t intern the second semester of my senior year – which was great in retrospect because it allowed me time to really think about what I wanted to do.She had passed several months after being in the hospital, in March 2014. That put me at a crossroads with what I wanted to do with my life. And going back a bit further, my mom passed away when I was 10 years old. My grandmother had raised me since then, acting as my second mom, so that shook me in a really good way. It was the first time I identified as someone who didn’t have a mom. Not having the role a mother meant for me was so hard because for so long I was her granddaughter and her caretaker. And now I was just Vivian. I didn’t know what that meant. It was so overwhelming and it was the first time I acknowledged the anxiety I had, and had started to undergo anxiety and depression as well as starting to have panic attacks.During that time when she passed away and nearing graduation, I had talked to a couple of people in finding my passion and the thought of what am I going to do with my life. I needed that time to grieve and I felt this huge transition of what it was like being a kid then being 21 years old and having life just happen. So with school happening, my professors were sorry but I still had to get things done, and since I had to give myself time to grieve… I had realized I had nothing that helped me feel like I was a part of a community. And community is a huge driving force in my life and I felt alone at the time.I’ve always been a writer, so at the time I just needed to write. I bought the domain and literally had no idea what to name the website, so I was on my Spotify playlist and a song by Luke Bryan came on called Too Damn Young, which has nothing to do with the website because it’s a party song, and I just wanted to call the site ‘Too Damn Young” because that sounded pretty bad ass. That’s how it was born! So on May 28^th, the day after I graduated from college, is the day I officially launched the website. Which at the time I had spent about 3 months working on the website and I spent the next 8 months fleshing out the content myself and if you go back enough, you can tell it was kind of like a diary for me.There was a moment for me that took me about 8-9 months to not feel ashamed and proud to say “I run a website for teens and young adults who have lost someone they loved” without mumbling under my breath or saying it with a sense of ‘crap what am I doing with my life?’ when someone would ask me what I did. It took me a while to get there because it is something that is vulnerable and invites questions, which at the time I wasn’t ready to answer or was afraid to answer because I was thinking too much of what other people thought about me. And the minute I stopped doing that, I was free. I was able to go into this with my whole heart and commit because it really is cool. The stories I publish are sad because of loss, but they are also badass because they’re unapologetic. I am so proud of my girls who publish these stories because overall, it makes me braver. When someone tells me that I’m doing something good for other people, for the most part I see it from the perspective that they save ME. And I don’t see it as me saving them. It’s been a learning experience, but definitely a good one.In the next year, I want to put down roots. I see myself setting down these roots and a part of this goes back to the fact that I lost someone so young and having that mentality that another shoe is going to drop. And in the past year, I’ve finally let go of that idealism and have just been genuinely enjoying the middle part and I know people don’t do that much and would rather celebrate when something happens – but we have to think to ourselves, what if that doesn’t happen? The fact that you got this far is so worthy of celebration, so why not?I feel like 2DY and I have grown together. But 2DY has grown up a lot faster than I have and I’m kind of following suit. I’m actually going to speak at the UN leading a seminar on vulnerability and leadership and I can tell you right now, I don’t know how I got here, but I am definitely enjoying it while I am here. It’s surreal, and I’ve never been out of the country, and the fact that I’m going out of the country for the first time to Geneva to speak at the UN is incredible. I keep telling my therapist, 23 is the year I write a book about. Because it’s definitely had its ups and downs but has taught me so much!The next year of my life, I want to put together a book proposal for 2 Damn Young because I believe that these stories are worth a spot at Barnes and Noble. So many stories aren’t told in terms of grief because there’s always that one-sided depiction of how someone is supposed to be grieving or how sad it’s supposed to be. And it does suck, and there are some days that suck more than others but at the end of the day, I wouldn’t be who I am if I hadn’t experienced the losses that I did. So yes, I do see them as losses in terms of losing my mother and grandmother, but it would be unfair to them and their memory to the life I want to live if I didn’t see them as gains in some way – like if I didn’t gain anything from them. I want to give my story a place to live, and everyone else’s story a place to live.Everything has been full speed ahead and I’ve just been kind of going with it. There have been so many things in the past year that I’ve been doing for just me. This is also the year that I genuinely fell in love for the first time. Though it didn’t work out, how great is it to know that we are capable of falling in love and feeling love? I genuinely did not know that this would be something that would happen for me because so much of my life has been being afraid to love because of loss. It was almost like step A was loving and step B was losing. And it was scary. I didn’t really notice it until someone else told me and it’s cool to know that it happens outside of you – like you don’t have to put any effort aside from that because it happens when it happens and it’s a great feeling. And no one has to validate those feelings, because they are my feelings and that’s enough. That was a really big thing to learn along with what anxiety taught me because a lot of people don’t get anxiety or depression, so when I let go the need to define it because it is what it is because it is… it was that sense of freedom that comes with it.I’ve grown so much in this past year and it’s been awesome.People say life is short, which is true. But it’s less about life being short and more about at the end of the day you want to live a life well lived and length doesn’t connote a life well lived – but what does? So when you figure out what that means to you, then the definition the world gives you is almost irrelevant because what is going to make you happy? This year especially, is when I put my happiness before anything. I genuinely keep telling people I’m the happiest I’ve ever been because I 100% attribute that the fact that I’m trying to be happy. People tend to think that happiness is something that happens to you, and you wake up one day and become happy and it’s not. It’s all about intentional living, surrounding yourself with the people who make you happy, doing the work that makes you feel like you have a sense of purpose, dating the guys who challenge you and make it worth your while to sit on a couch with someone, and just having that mentality of making things fun.I’m learning to set down roots and roots are less a place and more people. I’m setting down roots in people and I’m not afraid of that. It’s amazing to know that I’m making these connections with people I genuinely like hanging out with and are equally as supportive and inspire me to write and do the things I love. There is nothing in my story that I intended to be this way. And looking back at two years ago at someone who had a panic attack outside of a ZARA because I had nothing on a schedule with so much time and nothing to do with it, to be able to say that I can live my life without a schedule and manage my time and be happy is probably the biggest accomplishment in the last two years.”

Vivian is a beautiful soul and incredibly talented person who has created a sense of community based off vulnerability and story telling. She also happens to be the first person we had a chance to sit down with over coffee in New York and we couldn’t be happier! After sharing her story about loss and how it ultimately helped her get to where she is today – literally speaking at the UN in Geneva and establishing roots for a safe haven for people who’ve dealt with loss – we are completely awe-inspired! She created something from the ground up with happiness as her only goal in mind.By creating the Too Damn Young platform, she not only allows a space for people to share their stories of grief, but growth as well. With these stories, she’s able to share with the world how overcoming these obstacles, we ultimately become so much stronger and are able to tackle what other hardships may come our way. We’re big fans of her writing for Medium, MTV, Forbes, and continue to follow her journey with the platform she’s created. We couldn’t be more excited for her and only hope to continue celebrating the little wins and the middle part of our lives alongside her!

Follow Vivian

Website: medium.com/@vivnunezInstagram: @vivnunez Twitter: @vivnunez

Follow Too Damn Young

Website: toodamnyoung.comInstagram: @2DamnYoungTwitter: @2DamnYoung