“Sophie” is a sophomore at West Ottawa with an undercover blog that has everyone wondering who she is. With her 80-100 weekly views, word is starting to get around about this mysterious girl.

  In June 2014, Sophie decided to go undercover. As an insecure 13 year old, she found who she was through writing. Back at Harbor Lights, Sophie didn’t feel she could be honest with how she felt. Kids making fun of the emotions she had made it hard for her to be real with her feelings. When she started her blog after her 7th grade year, she was very unsure how to be real with her readers. Sophie then made the decision to go by an original name to keep her identity a secret from the outside world. She found blogging helps her to be more real with herself. “I feel I can be more honest about my feelings over the internet and not have to worry about the other kids coming up to me the next day and making smart remarks about what I wrote,” Sophie said. She says that the more and more she writes the more she’s letting herself be real.

  “I started my blog to let myself feel things that I didn’t think I could feel any other way. With society telling us where to go, what to do, and how to feel, I have come to realize this is the one way where I can be me,” Sophie said.

  As Sophie reflects on her last two years of writing, she notices the impact it has had on her. She sees how much she has changed. “I have found that a lot of times writing out what I’m thinking of helps me to process what I am going through,” Sophie said. While attending high school, Sophie has seen many changes in herself. Throughout this year with being undercover, Sophie has seen that she is being a lot more honest with her feelings through her writing. She has seen in herself that she’s not trying to have it all together and letting herself be real with her readers. As Sophie writes, she has seen a positive change about how she sees herself. “I used to see myself as an awkward and insecure kid who couldn’t work up the nerve to talk to anyone,” Sophie said. Now that she’s two years into her blog, she has seen that not only her writing has gotten better, but so has her communication skills.

  In many posts, Sophie has showed herself in different ways. The post that she has truly been herself in was “Lost Myself To Find Myself.” Throughout her post she writes about how she has bottled up her feelings and lost so many of her friends because of how foolish she was being. By the end she wrote about how going through everything she did helped her to find herself again. “I wrote ‘Lost Myself To Find Myself’ to really be raw with my readers. To show them that I am not perfect and I screw up sometimes, too. I wanted to write about something I felt many people could relate to on a personal level,” Sophie said.

  Soph. Allie Lange, who has been a reader of Sophie’s blog since she started, talked about how she has seen how much Sophie has grown not only as a writer, but as an individual. “Looking back at her posts I can see how much her writing has changed and how much better she feels as a person in the end. She truly feels that she’s making an impact on the 80-100 readers she has weekly. It’s honestly a beautiful thing,” Lange said.

  Lange would also agree that Sophie’s post “Lost Myself To Find Myself” has made the biggest impact on her. “Sophie is so real with her writing. She really gets on a personal level with her readers and makes them feel like they aren’t alone through the hardships they may face. I specifically remember a time when I was feeling down about myself. I had opened Sophie’s blog up, like I do every week, to see if there was any new posts. Just a few days before, Sophie had written a post called ‘Call Yourself Beautiful In 908 Words’ as I was reading through I started to sob. She really hit home with what she was saying. One of her lines was ‘Look in the mirror and know that you were made the best of the best of the very best.’ Sophie truly cares about her readers and how they’re feeling. That is just one of the many ways Sophie has made an impact on me,” Lange said.

  Soph. Cecilia Van Loo has been a reader of Sophie’s blog for almost a year. She loves the humor, yet seriousness that her blog has to offer. The amount of content in Sophie’s blog that relates to her life is beyond belief. “Every time I read her blog it makes me feel like we somehow are connected on a deeper level. Her posts make me feel like I am not alone in this world,” Van Loo said. As Van Loo reads through her blog weekly, she has noticed that many of Sophie’s posts have had an impact on her daily life. It was hard for her to narrow down just one. “If I had to chose just one post that Sophie has written that has had the most impact on me, it would be ‘Holding Too Much.’ Throughout her writing she talks about how she’s holding in her feelings and taking responsibility of too much in her life.  Sophie talks about how there isn’t enough time in the day to do homework, spend time with your family, go to sport practices, eat, respond to texts, and still get the recommended 8 hours of sleep at night. I personally relate to this because I have a busy schedule and time management is a big thing in my life,” said Van Loo.

  Even though Sophie’s undercover and no one quite knows who she is, she’s still making a big impact not only with the kids at West Ottawa but other kids who glance through her blog on a regular basis. Some may look at Sophie as an idol but honestly, she is just a regular high school student like the rest of us.