"I'm running for everyone who's ever been knocked down but refused to be knocked out."

Outing yourself as an enthusiastic, young Hillary Clinton supporter borders on dangerous these days, so I hope it’s okay to spill some thoughts and feelings here instead of on my personal social media accounts.

Last year when Hillary Clinton announced her 2016 candidacy, I knew I had a generally favorable view of her based on the limited exposure I had to her and her ideas, such as this video of her kickass response to a question about her position on reproductive rights. Now that the chances were pretty high that I would be casting a vote for her—she was the only Democrat running at that point as far as I knew—I decided I should probably learn more about who exactly she was as a public official and as a person.

In true millennial fashion, I headed to YouTube and started with a search for “Hillary Clinton interview,” then proceeded to get sucked into watching God only knows how many more hours of videos of her speaking. I scoured the internet for articles about everything from her time as First Lady to her work as Secretary of State. I was completely fascinated with and, cheesy as I’m sure it sounds, inspired by this public persona whose background I had been regretfully ignorant of up until that point. I figured I would like her enough (insert “likeable enough” joke here), but intense admiration and inspiration were not very high on my list of things I thought I would find when I began my research.

All of this coincided with a period in my life of crippling self-doubt and, frankly, self-hatred. Into my early college years, I had always been a naturally ambitious, hopeful-about-the-future kind of person. Then a perfect storm of family problems, health issues, and personal failures propelled me down a spiral of depression complete with a deteriorating sense of self-confidence in my ability to achieve success. I won’t go into all of the details, but I’ll just say I fell into a destructive habit of defining my worth based on external, often uncontrollable factors. If a family member said I was fat, I was a disgusting person who should be ashamed to be seen in public until I lost weight. If I did less-than-stellar on a presentation in a class, I was never going to be successful because my communication skills were too awful for the workforce.

Therapy proved unhelpful, so I just kind of figured I was stuck this way because the thing that was supposed to “fix” depression and depression-related issues wasn’t working. Sometimes when people talk about mental health struggles, there is this underlying message that trying to find the strength within yourself to overcome them makes about as much sense as trying to cure yourself of type I diabetes. I’m not saying there isn’t a place for that perspective or people for whom it rings true, but buying into it was very harmful for me.

In my research on Hillary Clinton, I discovered someone who, after decades of relentless, public attacks against her character, has had a million reasons to crumble into a pile of self-pity and has instead built up a thick skin that enabled her to build up a resume many would envy. Someone who, in her words, refuses to be knocked out when she’s knocked down and has mastered the art of taking criticism seriously but not personally. To cut to the chase, learning about all she has been able to achieve by not giving in to the forces trying to stop her has instilled in me a little bit of hope that, with time, I can do the things I want to do too. In an interview with Oprah, she mentioned how her mom taught her that you get to choose between being the actor in your own life and allowing others to drag you into their drama and make you an actor in their lives. Over the past few months, I’ve reminded myself of that philosophy every time someone has tried to distract me from my goals. It’s worked out nicely so far and has made me feel more in control of my destiny than I have in years.

I’m not saying learning about Hillary Clinton’s background has cured me of all self-doubt overnight or turned me into Superwoman. All I’m really saying is employing some of her example in my own life has been really uplifting at a time when not much else was, and I’m really glad it was a side effect of doing research on a presidential candidate.

Of course, I could be dead wrong about her. I’ve never met her personally and will probably never be within 300 miles of her. She could be a complete mess when there are no cameras around. She could actually be the lizard person so much of the country seems convinced she is. I could just be in desperate need of a role model and therefore cherry-picking the good while disregarding the damning. But from my perspective as of right now, I really hope she becomes president for a myriad of reasons, and one of them is that I think a lot women could use more role models like her.