Fishers of Men-tal Health Scholarship

I was raised in a devout Christian household where positive values and biblical lessons were woven into the fabric of daily life. My parents modeled faith not only through words, but through the way they lived, serving others, showing grace in adversity, and trusting God’s plan in every season. These early lessons shaped my heart for service and my understanding that every person is worthy of dignity, compassion, and care. Growing up in the church, I heard Matthew 4:19 many times: “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” As a child, I understood this in the context of evangelism, sharing the Gospel and helping bring others to Christ. As I matured and witnessed the mental and emotional struggles of people both inside and outside the church, I began to see a broader meaning. Being a fisher of men also means reaching people where they are, in their moments of deepest need, and offering them the love, hope, and healing that Christ offers, sometimes through prayer, sometimes through presence, and sometimes through professional mental health care. My own journey into the mental health field began with a recognition that faith communities often encounter complex struggles,addiction, depression, anxiety, trauma, but do not always have the tools or training to address them effectively. I have seen friends and family members battle the silent pain of mental illness while keeping up a strong exterior at church, unsure if it was safe to speak openly. I have also seen how substance abuse and mental illness can intertwine, making the road to recovery even steeper. These experiences have reinforced my conviction that the mental health field needs more professionals who approach their work with both clinical skill and a Christ-centered heart. I began my career in 2014 as a case manager at Telecare, working with individuals living with severe and persistent mental illness. Many of my clients faced co-occurring substance use disorders. The work was challenging and often heartbreaking, but it also deepened my empathy and strengthened my resolve. I learned to listen without judgment, to celebrate small victories, and to see each client as more than their diagnosis. I moved into leadership roles as team lead and later clinical director, guiding teams through crises, including the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. In those years, I witnessed the resilience of the human spirit, but also the devastating impact of untreated mental illness and addiction on individuals, families, and entire communities. While working full-time, I earned my master’s degree in Marriage and Family Therapy, and I am now in my final semester of my PsyD program. Balancing advanced studies with a demanding career has required discipline, faith, and a clear sense of calling. I believe God has equipped me for this work, using my professional training and my spiritual foundation to help bridge the gap between faith-based and clinical mental health support. In February 2025, I opened my private practice, Connection Matters Family Therapy. This was more than a career move, it was a ministry. My practice serves individuals, couples, and families, offering trauma-informed, culturally responsive care. I accept multiple forms of insurance and offer sliding-scale rates so that cost is never a barrier to care. I also envision expanding the practice to include group therapy, workshops, and community education programs that equip churches and faith leaders to recognize and respond to mental health and addiction challenges. My beliefs shape every aspect of my work. I believe that each person is made in the image of God and carries inherent worth, no matter what they have endured. I believe in the power of restoration, that people can recover, rebuild, and thrive with the right support. I believe that mental health care, when grounded in compassion and guided by ethical practice, can be a reflection of God’s love in action. These beliefs influence my relationships with clients, colleagues, and the broader community. In relationships, I strive to embody the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. In professional settings, this means leading with integrity, listening more than I speak, and treating every person with respect. In personal relationships, it means being present, extending grace, and remembering that everyone is fighting battles we may not see. My faith also teaches me to guard my own mental and spiritual health, so I can continue to serve effectively without becoming depleted. My career aspirations are both practical and visionary. In the immediate future, I will complete my PsyD and continue to grow my private practice. Over the next several years, I plan to hire additional clinicians, develop specialized programs for individuals with co-occurring mental illness and substance use disorders, and strengthen partnerships with local churches, schools, and nonprofits. I also want to create training modules for pastors and ministry leaders, equipping them to recognize warning signs, provide appropriate support, and connect people to professional resources when needed. I see my work as an extension of my faith, a way to live out Matthew 4:19 in a modern context. To be a fisher of men in the mental health field means casting the net of compassion wide enough to reach those who feel unseen, unloved, or beyond hope. It means meeting people in their pain and walking with them toward healing, offering both professional expertise and the assurance that they are not alone. The Fishers of Men-tal Health Scholarship would directly support my ability to finish my degree and move into the next phase of this calling without financial delay. More importantly, it would affirm the value of integrating faith and mental health work in a way that honors God and serves His people. I am committed to using my education, leadership experience, and spiritual foundation to make a tangible difference in the lives of individuals and families struggling with mental illness and addiction. In every client interaction, every team I lead, and every program I build, my goal is to reflect Christ’s love and to help people move toward wholeness, in mind, body, and spirit. I believe this is the work God has set before me, and I am ready to keep casting my net.

My father died by suicide when I was 5 years old. In the years that followed, I was bullied for that loss, told to get over it, and made to feel different. I struggled to find support in the school system but found comfort and safety in my church community at the time. Several members of the church would regularly take my mom and I out to lunch or invite us to attend community events with them. I always knew that they would support me no matter what, and that my mom and I could rely on them in our times of need. In the years after I began to find more comfort in the weekly ritual of church and more meaning in the scriptures discussed. I’ve also always had a love for choir and music. Getting to hear the thunderous organ and the mighty voice of the choir was a thing of wonder for me as a child. My father was also one the best baritones my small Mississippi church had ever heard, and our shared love of music continues to connect us and was one of the things that got me through his death. When my grandmother, with whom I was extremely close after my dad's death, died suddenly and traumatically when I was 13, I struggled with extreme anxiety and feelings of isolation and grief. We had also moved and hadn’t found a church that worked for us yet and it was difficult for me to get through a school day. It was during this time that I connected with an equine therapy center that focused on working with children with loss, trauma, and abuse. I used to joke that I was going to "horse camp for traumatized kids." But I found incredible healing and acceptance, both from the staff and the horses there. A few years later I started volunteering with the center that had helped me so much through a very dark time in my life. I’ve been a volunteer for 5 years now and plan to continue working with the organization for many more. I am now motivated by my own experiences as a child who lost her father at a young age. I had trouble finding the right therapeutic supports, as do many of the kids I work with. I volunteered with a young woman whose life I saw transformed by finding the right combination of medications. I was in awe at the positive change in her, and that experience has inspired me to become an adolescent psychiatrist. I’m very interested in the psychology of grief and how it presents in adolescents and young adults. I also know that mental health struggles can be so vast and should be treated very holistically. A mental health journey is one that will last a lifetime, and combinations of therapy, medication, spiritual support, etc. can all be needed to help effect lasting change. Finding and creating support networks is crucial. I want to be part of helping others find the balance of supports that works for them because there is no one size fits all path to recovery. With this in mind, I had the unique opportunity to be part of a national team developing a teen-led grief support curriculum. With a team that ranged from a social worker to a med student to three high schoolers, we tested the proposed curriculum. Though we all had a shared bereavement experience, each of us had access to different grief resources and tools that had led us on our own path. As someone who had experienced traumatic and stigmatized loss, I helped the group understand that losses can be perceived very differently and made sure the language and tone of the curriculum reflected that. One example of this was that instead of saying “your loved one,” I encouraged the team to change the wording to “your person who died” in order to acknowledge that stigmatized grievers may have a complicated relationship with the person who died. I also worked to make sure that the curriculum remained accessible to teens with rural backgrounds and fewer educational or socioeconomic resources. The original curriculum assumed that participants would have knowledge and experiences that reflected a privileged background. So, I advocated for language and concept changes that would better serve teens. Because I was included in this space, I was able to bring different perspectives that improve a resource and made it more accessible to an increased number of people who would benefit from it. I will admit, throughout all this I have had moments where I struggled to find the motivation to keep pursuing my goals. I felt like my grief and my own struggles with mental health would never end and it shook my faith. I didn’t know where to turn and so I looked inwards and began to reflect on the work I needed to do within myself. It was a very humbling experience, and I felt guilty for only turning to God when I was most in need. But it was comforting knowing that even in my weakest moments of doubt and hardships that I would be welcomed with open arms. Since that experience I’ve been able to find a community and continue developing my relationship with God. I’ve joined the Episcopal Student Fellowship group at my college and feel such a sense of joy knowing that during my continued work in the mental health field, that I will have a supportive, caring community. Through my experiences I have become a more empathetic and open person. I live my life in a way that serves others and I hope to foster more understanding and love within different communities. I have come from a place where I had little hope to a place where I can be a source of hope for other kids and teens with death losses. The systems that exist, especially school systems, are not set up well to support bereaved children and those struggling with mental illness. Last fall I was able to testify before my state legislative committee for families and children about my experiences and what help that I needed that didn't yet exist at the state and local level. I want to fight for others to get the help and supports they need, and I have already started using my voice at a state and national level to do that. I know that this is my life's work–improving the experiences of others who have experienced significant losses and mental health struggles, and I’m so grateful for the opportunity to answer my calling.

I struggled for over a decade with poor mental health which led to substance abuse issues and physical health problems. Specifically, I struggled with depression and anxiety which took all of the joy and happiness out of my life. Many days I struggled to get out of bed or perform basic self-care tasks such as showering and brushing my teeth. I have been hospitalized multiple times, sought therapy and counseling, and tried many medications to help with my poor mental health before I was successful in finding what works for me. My struggles with mental health ultimately gave me a new lease on life and a perspective that I would not trade for anything. Today, I am grateful for the life that I have and for all of my blessings. I cherish the relationships I have with family and friends and have empathy for people who are struggling. Once, I was hopeless and full of despair to the point of being suicidal, but today I am full of hope, gratitude and a desire to be of service to others. I am in recovery from alcoholism and drug addiction, and I attend twelve-step recovery meetings regularly to try to help others. I also am an active member of my church where I volunteer in our food pantry and outreach program. I read the Bible, pray and meditate, and try to continue growing in my relationship with God every day. With God all things are possible. In the darkness of mental illness and substance abuse, I often isolated and shut the world out, but now fellowship with others is a big part of my life. I have built a strong network of people who I can relate to and talk to when I need support. I know that I never have to fight my battles alone. My struggle with mental illness has taught me much about what is truly important in life. I am not very concerned with money, material possessions, status, fame, fortune, etc. I know that these things are not the source of happiness. This is evident when we see rich and famous people who seemingly have everything they could ever want commit suicide. Without mental health, nothing else is worthwhile. I try to have compassion and understanding for others and be of service whenever possible, always putting my trust in God first and foremost. This way of life fills me with more contentment and peace than any amount of material wealth could. I know from experience that many individuals with mental illness suffer in silence either due to the stigma associated with mental illness or the hopelessness that comes with it. I think it is very important for people to feel comfortable and not ashamed of talking about their mental health struggles. I am attending Wilmington University to pursue a degree in Psychology followed by a Master's degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling. I believe individuals who struggle with mental illness and/or poor mental health deserve to have access to affordable and timely counseling. I plan to become a licensed mental health counselor to help make that a reality in my community.