❤️ This Poem By Anaïs Nin:

Thanks for everything, Kepner

You didn’t have it all together when you first came on the scene. You weren’t really sure what your exact purpose was, but you knew you had one. It was so easy to see you had a heart of gold and while you were a bit idealistic for my usual tastes - you were genuine. I liked that. 

I watched you struggle, make mistakes, and fail. I saw you get knocked down more times than I can count, but I also saw how many times you got back up. People didn’t make it easy for you. It was a little too easy to pick on you and pick on you they did. You were the butt of many jokes, but you took it right in stride and kept your eye on what you wanted. You knew who April Kepner was and that is all that mattered. 

I watched you fall in love with your best friend. I watched you change a young man who could have taken a very different path without your influence. It was so frustrating that you couldn’t see yourself the way he saw you. It was even more frustrating to see you make the wrong choice when the right one was in front of you. You were finally coming into your own professionally and I wanted to scream that you couldn’t seem to get it together personally. 

I watched someone who had always been so calculated and cautious throw it all to the wind and take a risk. I watched her finally follow her heart. You married your best friend and were the happiest you’d ever been. The kind of happiness that is palpable. Yeah, it was crazy but that’s what made it all the more wonderful. 

I watched you struggle through the early days of marriage. Learning to live together, learning to share finances, learning to navigate the differences in beliefs, and the Mother-in-law. Oh, the Mother-in-law. I sat in my living room with my jaw on the floor the night you very abruptly announced you were pregnant. I was so happy watching you prepare for the addition to your family. This person who had struggled so much in the beginning had finally come into her own. Trauma surgeon, wife, and very soon….Mom. 

I cried as you were given the worst news possible. I sat there shocked as you made the hardest, most selfless decision a person could possibly make. I sobbed as you struggled with the decision and gave birth to your baby boy. My heart was broken as you let him go. 

I watched you struggle in the aftermath of losing him. I watched you push everyone and everything away. For someone who had been knocked down time after time and gotten back up - this was bigger than all of that. You couldn’t find solid ground and you did what you had to do to survive.

I watched as you discovered that sometimes the hurt is simply too great, but that second chances were possible. I was equal parts horrified and elated to watch your baby girl come into the world. I was so certain she would be the road back. Things didn’t go quite as I’d hoped or even liked, but you made it. At the end of this wild ride, you made it. From the highest of highs to the lowest of lows, you made it. 

In a world full of Merediths, I thank you for teaching us it was ok to be an April. It was ok to march to the beat of our own drum. It was ok to fall down sometimes just as long as we got back up. It was ok to make mistakes. It was ok for life to be a mess. It was ok to stand for what we believe in even if it’s not the popular thing. It was ok to not be ok. It was ok to be ourselves.

So, at the end of her 9 year journey, I simply want to say thanks for everything. I laughed, I cried, I grieved, and I celebrated while watching the crazy, wonderful, messy, beautiful life that was April Kepner. 

The perfect thing is, the habanero really set you up. [★] for @touchinganelectricdove.

I love Link and his close ups were gorgeous but let's not forget about this beauty! I mean, look at him!

- Just thinking about our track record in hotels. - What about it?

A coping thought I have is no matter how large my feelings feel, the universe is larger than them. I can walk outside, look up, and see all the room I have to let go.

Sarah Drew and Jesse Williams sweeties I’m so sorry a psychopath showrunner ruined 9 years of your work

I'm in awe of how eloquently and profoundly expressed that was. I also want to thank you so much for sharing that! What they have done with such an amazing character and true love story is tragic and devastating but we take back the power to decide it doesn't end that way.

I was 13 when Jackson stood up at April’s wedding. I squealed and spent the whole day on twitter and on this blog that was already called queenkepner. Their love story inspired and excited me so much that I decided to try and write fan-fiction for the first time.

I was 16 when Japril The Movie came out, and I dreamily watched as a decade of their lives unfolded in front of me. While the end had me in tears, seeing their lives flicker in front of my eyes, I remained hopeful they would make their way back to each other.

I was 18 when they reunited in Montana, and though I had lost some faith in the show, I watched the episode anyway. I felt like a 13 year old staying up in her dimmed bedroom all over again. I started writing again after the episode, something I’d long forgone, fueled and excited by their love.

This year, I will be going to university to study writing and literature. I’ve started my own book, I’m in the midst of writing a Japril fic with well over 30,000 words, and none of this would have ever happened without Jackson and April’s love story.

They compelled me at an age where I didn’t know much about love, showed me what it’s like when two people become best friends after a tragedy, and when best friends turn into something more. Their clumsy relationship in on-call rooms, his stoic perseverance to let her get married, the storm inside of him when he saw the love of his life about to marry someone else. Then, a blissful marriage, she’s the one and i love our secret marriage bubble and a love so real and so profound I haven’t felt the same for a fictional couple since. Through weddings and child loss and divorces and child birth, they remained each other’s person, and I will never believe the terrible writing they’ve given us this season in order to fit their own twisted narrative.

Jackson and April are soul mates, and they are fictional, which means I choose to decide their story doesn’t end like this. I’ll leave you with this quote, which fits many of the things that I still wish to say, 6 years after I created this blog for them. To Sarah and Jesse, you remarkably brought together two characters that changed my life, I thank you. To Jackson and April, you showed me what an epic, world-shattering and soul-searing love is. Thank you.

For you, a thousand times over.

❤

I hope you guys like…eventually live the life you want to live and I hope nothing haunts you for too long and I hope you’re all kind to yourselves