Erase.com Scholarship

At 47 years old, I’m often asked why I decided to pursue a legal career now. The truth is, it took me decades of lived experience, heartache, and healing to recognize the power of law as both a shield and a sword. I didn’t arrive here overnight. My path was shaped by watching injustice unfold in my community, the kind that doesn’t make headlines, but quietly steals futures. My goal is simple: to become the kind of legal advocate I always wished existed in my corner growing up. In rural Oklahoma, I witnessed families like mine endure poverty, discrimination, and silence. Silence in the courtroom. Silence when their rights were violated. Silence when they were too afraid or too overwhelmed to speak for themselves. I watched elders sign paperwork they couldn’t understand and young people criminalized instead of counseled. The pain in those moments etched itself into me, not as bitterness but as determination. It was through books that I began to understand the structures behind that silence. Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow opened my eyes to the mass incarceration of Black and Brown individuals and the social costs of tough-on-crime policies. Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy taught me that compassion and legal advocacy are inseparable, and that the law should never lose sight of humanity. These books weren’t just informative, they were transformative. They gave language to all the pain I had witnessed but never fully understood. Mental health has also been a personal journey. I’ve struggled with anxiety and depression, especially in my younger years when I felt invisible to systems that were supposed to protect me. But those challenges gave me clarity. They helped me understand the power of empathy and the need for accessible care. I’ve seen firsthand how mental illness is misunderstood, especially in marginalized communities where it’s too often ignored, punished, or misdiagnosed. These experiences shaped my academic journey. Today, I’m focused on social work and legal studies, with the intention of bridging the gap between mental health awareness and the criminal justice system. I want to help create policies that recognize how trauma and mental illness intersect with law and advocate for culturally competent legal support. Especially in Indigenous communities like mine, where systemic neglect runs deep. My ultimate goal is to establish mobile legal clinics for underserved rural counties. These units will offer case management, mental health screenings, and legal aid to those without access to representation. This isn’t just a career path, it’s a calling born from experience, heartache, and hope. I’ve learned that justice isn’t about punishment. It’s about dignity, understanding, and healing. And I’m committed to being a voice for change, no matter how late I’ve arrived to the conversation. This scholarship would help remove a barrier that stands between me and the mission I’ve embraced: fighting for fairness in a system that too often overlooks the vulnerable. With your support, I will not only complete my education, I’ll use it to tell the stories that deserve to be heard.