To Mother From Son Past the dunes and powdered shrub Along the pale-blue northern shore The breeze hums through the rustling scrub And stirs the sand now as before A hush lolls o’er the narrow isle As gulls refrain their plaintive call The billows break in rhythmic style Brought forward by the ocean squall One settled gaze up at the sky Where clouds sail round in gentle flow Could warrant only in reply A moving solace there below Now lonely on a beach she roams With hanging head and fragile gait Nearby the house where she had grown And where she has returned of late She looks back on departed days Her years of motherhood now gone And from this sets out to appraise The worth of all that she had done Sweet memories of fondness pass Of hours by her children’s side Them playing in the velvet grass And how they filled her heart with pride Of times when she was out of line Of all she wished she hadn’t said How if she’d only seen a sign The less their tears would have been shed The thought alone brings her to weep And tears fall slowly down her face Into the sand they fade and seep Where drops of rain now take their place So back inside, her body worn She climbs into her bed to rest No longer well enough to mourn She falls asleep with aching chest She wakes in bed, but not her own The room is white and smells of clove She finds that she is not alone As faces congregate above Her sons surround the little room Each sobbing at what is to come And even in her bitter gloom She asks them all how she had done At this they all draw near her cot And thank her for her endless care They each embrace her – deep in thought And stand by waiting in despair She smiles and tells her kids goodbye Requesting that they dry their tears And letting out one final sigh Relieves the worry of her years Past the dunes and powdered shrub Along the pale-blue northern shore A son recalls his mother’s love And sand stirs gently as before

Violence is not a spice for my palate. Until recently, in fact, violence of any kind made me nauseous. The aversion developed in childhood. I grew up in a lower-class, Baptist home where my parents disregarded my autism diagnosis and took the proverb, “spare the rod, spoil the child,” much to heart. In the car, in my bedroom, dangling on a sconce back of the house, one of my father’s many work belts was stored within reach in case one of his children needed to be shown “the love in discipline.” To my parents, having been raised and seemingly trapped in poverty, life was a struggle, and we had to learn our place quickly if we were to survive. Incentives didn’t leave a clear impression like a belt or - on the off chance one wasn’t available - a power cord did. It wasn’t until I turned sixteen, after a condemning CPS investigation, that my mother and father moved on to a verbal approach. Still, those years of welts and bruises stayed with me long after the skin had healed. I understand now that the experience was trauma, but, back then, lasting into my first college term, I was too bound up with fear and confusion to give it a name. The emotions had become a way of being. They seemed to me a character flaw, a sign of weakness. They were also inconvenient. Though I spent the entirety of my undergraduate at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, I was never able to sit through a football game. I was reclusive. Even something so small as the sneers or knitted brows of my classmates while I gave a presentation brought on a stab of panic. I came to dread the most meager social interactions. That winter recess, alone in my room for the fourth day straight, I decided something had to be done. Following several years of therapy, my experiences have led me to pursue reform on a societal level. Educational programs and federal policy, I've discovered, are necessary yet underutilized methods in mental health. Take prevention for example. Students are encouraged to spend hundreds of hours every year learning about algebraic formulas and self-marketing skills for employment, yet no time is devoted to the advancement of healthy interpersonal skills, communication, coping techniques, or self-regulation. Children are taught neither what to look for in a supportive relationship with parents and authority figures nor how to seek help when boundaries have been crossed or abuse has become normalized. If we wish to see a decline in the frequency of child and adolescent mental illness, lessons drawing on therapeutic techniques should become part and parcel of our common curriculum. After all, if we can mandate physical fitness programs from as early as pre-K, why should we disregard mental health until it becomes a crisis? On a policy level, prospective parents and guardians would benefit greatly from parental and instructional education. The implementation of healthy parenting styles, effective discipline without cruelty, and encouraging communication methods are but a few areas in which a child's mental health outcomes show a marked advantage relative to her less fortunate peers. Just as premarital counseling is incentivized, we could easily incentivize pre-parental counseling. Positive outcomes might even be enhanced if tax-breaks were given to parents and guardians who participated in continuing family education programs and/or family wellness check-ups. Upon finishing my degree in Clinical Psychology, I hope to play a leading role in shifting our nation's focus from profits to personal health and prevent another generation of children thrown into a world of preventable abuse.