When my daughter was born, the doctor handed her to me and said, "She is going to be a big one!" The nurses were astounded at how much she ate the first day. They instructed me to supplement with formula as I would never be able to keep up with her appetite. I was not alarmed at first, but with passing time concern grew as my little girl became more and more obsessed with food. As a single mom I did not have the resources to provide healthy nutrition for my child. I was, in all honesty, very uneducated about food and the dangers that were hidden in processed ingredients. Our dinners were usually fast and from a can. When my daughter was four years old my growing concern became panic. I was cleaning her room and discovered an empty box of frozen corn dogs shoved behind her bed. Sick to my stomach I confronted this little four-year-old girl who started crying as soon as I showed her the empty box. She told me that she could not help herself, she was always so hungry. She had eaten all six corndogs, frozen. This began an endless cycle of doctors, nutritionists, and even eating disorder clinics. They could find nothing wrong with my little girl. Physically she checked all the boxes of perfect health, but her weight kept climbing. When she was fourteen years old, she weighed nearly three hundred pounds. As a nurse I was terrified of the health crisis my daughter was facing. The nutritionists and eating disorder coaches were all very kind, but it was always the same advice: Fruits, vegetables, whole grains and limit processed foods. I was a single mother earning less than twenty-five thousand dollars a year as an LPN. The price of foods that were healthy was beyond my reach. Not one person ever told me how to afford the food that my daughter needed. This is why I am returning to college to earn my bachelor's degree in nursing. I believe that information is the key to helping parents face this growing health problem and with a bachelor's degree more doors will be opened to me, and I may be able to incorporate my ideas to further healthy food education. I believe that nutritional education should begin at the very first OB/GYN appointment that a mother attends for prenatal care and with every subsequent appointment, culminating with the birth of the child and then beyond at every well-child check. Concise, accurate information should be provided with real, evidence-based material that is easy to understand for all economic and educational backgrounds. Sensitivity to parents of low-income households should be paramount. Easy to access programs that are dedicated to providing healthy food options to people of lower economic status should be incorporated and then promoted by all health care providers. Cultural, economic and educational differences in our population should be a key training platform for health care providers so that they may approach each of their patients appropriately. There are so many ideas that I have to help parents understand the importance of nutrition; I cannot fit all of them in this short essay. I will end with this: I love my daughter with my entire being. I have watched her struggle throughout her entire life with food and obesity. I want to take that away from her. I want her to be happy; I want her to know that she is beautiful and intelligent and so important to this world no matter what size she is. I am doing this in honor of her.

In the early 1990's Karen Fuller Brannon became the first female Marine to become a fighter pilot, eventually earning her "Wings of Gold". She was commissioned for a time in 'El Toro' California which also happened to be the same base where my husband was stationed. By the time she arrived in El Toro, Miss Fuller Brannon had made a name for herself. The first female fighter pilot was big news to the young Marines on base and word spread like wildfire. Stories were told and retold. Someone saw her land a jet, another saw her walking with the flight crew into the officer quarters. The mere glimpse of the woman would guarantee someone fifteen minutes of fame at chow hall later when they would regal their fellow soldiers with the tale. My husband, Matt, and his fellow Marine and good friend Mario were working on the flight tarmac one morning shortly after Karen Fuller Brannon had arrived. They were running back and forth along the asphalt, fueling up the planes, jets and helicopters for the day. Mario was talking a mile a minute, which Matt never minded. An occasional nod in the general direction of Mario was enough to keep the flow of conversation rolling and Mario never seemed to run out of things to say. Matt was bent over a fuel line when it dawned on him that Mario had stopped talking. He looked over at his friend and saw Mario standing in the middle of the runway with a look of absolute wonder on his face. "It's her!" he said in awe. Curious, Matt turned to look. About a hundred yards away a young woman, clad in flying gear was walking toward a jet. She was too far away to see clearly but her stride was commanding, and she approached the massive jet with confidence. The two young men watched as the woman climbed up into the front pilot seat where she bent her head and began working with the controls. "This is crazy, no one will believe us" Matt said to Mario. "You have to go over and say hi." Matt grabbed Mario by the shoulders and began dragging him toward the jet. Eventually both Marines were running full speed. Neither wanting to miss this once in a lifetime experience. When they approached the jet, they slowed to a walk. Shyness overcame them as they drew nearer to this famed lady. It was Mario who gathered courage first and yelled up to the woman. "Hi! Can I get your autograph?" The woman looked up from the controls and stared down at them. Then a wide smile crossed her face. "Sure!" she said and bent over and scribbled something on the notebook she had been working on. She tore the page out, folded it and handed it down to the two men. Mario grabbed the folded paper and held it reverently to his chest. The two men backed away with massive grins on their faces and then turned and ran toward the hangar, Mario clutching the autograph. When they arrived at the hangar they stopped and Mario eagerly opened the folded paper. This is what it said: "Darla, Crew member" In silence Mario refolded the paper and looked at my husband. "We will never speak of this, agreed?" Matt nodded. He kept that promise to Mario until the day he told me the story, many years later. I laugh to myself when I imagine what was going through Darla's mind the day two young Marines came out of nowhere and asked for her autograph.

I cannot say that I chose nursing. Nursing chose me. I grew up the second oldest of eleven children. Impoverished is not a word that I use often but that is how I grew up. My parents were both brilliant people who had never thought about a higher education for themselves. My mother, because she was a girl and girls did not go to college. She became a hairdresser instead. My dad had the mind of a genius, but his father was the town drunk and to get away from that life he joined the army and went off to Vietnam. When he came back, he became a welder, albeit a welder with the mind of Einstein. Although they were poor, my parents believed very strongly in life and went about it with gusto resulting in the grand total of eleven children. My mother was a natural born teacher and we all learned to read and write from her. And it was from her that I learned that you can follow your passion. At any age. Like most kids, I aspired to make my parents proud, and they had always been advocates of caring for the poor and needy, which is ironic as they were the poorest of the poor themselves. But to give them something to be proud of I decided to become a CNA. I walked into the Good Samaritan Nursing home as a nineteen-year-old college drop out. My CNA license was fresh in hand, and I was confidant, cocky and sure that I was going to be the best CNA they had. I cried myself to sleep later that night. For the first time in my life I witnessed how fragile the human being can be. I was devastated and did not want to go back to work the next day. I could not change another adult diaper; I could not feed another adult human being. In 1995 the nursing homes were far worse than they are now. People were tied down in their beds crying out, nursing staff was short staffed and short tempered. I hated it. For all of one week. Something happened in that week. I began to see the change I could bring to these people's lives. I had found my place. Caring for people in need opened something up in me that I did not know existed. I was good at it. I loved these people that I cared for. I saw glimpses of the people they used to be before life deposited them into a smelly nursing home. I made it my daily challenge to make their lives better because I came to work to care for them. Eventually I took the leap to nursing school for my LPN. I graduated after eighteen months and my role in the nursing home changed. I became a leader of others, directing and navigating the ship. It was a different kind of hard but again, I found that I was very good at it. I stayed in the role of LPN for twenty years. I had always believed that a four-year degree was beyond me, I had passed that chance years ago. It was my mom who changed my mind. At the age of sixty she returned to college. At the age of sixty-five she walked across the auditorium stage to receive her Baccalaureate Degree in teaching. Her eleven children stood up and gave her a standing ovation as she was handed her diploma. That was ten years ago and she is still teaching. I want to grow up to be like my mom.

I have been in the health care field for over thirty years. I started at the age of nineteen and worked in long term care for ten years. At the age of twenty-nine I returned to school and studied for my LPN at a technical school. I graduated and continued working in long term care and transitional care for the next ten years. At the age of forty I moved into the clinic setting, working with family Practitioners. I eventually moved into a procedure nurse role and have been doing specialty injections and allergy shots for the last seven years. Throughout my career I have admired the RN role, I even went so far as completing classes with the thought that one day I would enter a nursing program and fulfill my dream. The years passed, as they tend to do, and I was busy with my family and career. I watched as nearly all of my ten (yes ten) brothers and sisters went off to college and graduated with Bachelors, Masters, and even one PHD. As the eldest of the eleven kids, I was very proud of their accomplishments. We had grown up very poor, but our parents had encouraged a college education for us all, in part, because they themselves were never able to go. I was unable to continue college when I found myself pregnant and very single. Instead, I obtained my LPN and started to work full time to support myself and my daughter. My mother was my ultimate inspiration. She was a simple hairdresser who had eleven children. She was a great mother and a natural born teacher. She could take the most illiterate person and teach them to read in less than six months. My father was a quiet man but brilliant. the research world lost a great man when he dropped out of college after four days and went to welding school instead. Poverty begets Poverty and my parents were no exception to that rule. They, however, had much grander plans for us. My father's favorite expression was 'being poor is no excuse for being dumb'. School was encouraged, enforced and held to the highest esteem after religion. My mother taught each of us to read and to write. She was there throughout our years of school, many a late night going over homework, studying for tests, putting last minute touches on science projects and when the eleventh child graduated from high school, she decided that it was finally time for her. At the age of sixty she enrolled into college and at the age of sixty-five she walked across the stage to receive her Baccalaureate degree in teaching to the applause of her eleven children and one devoted husband. My mother taught me that there is no end date for learning or for growing. There is no end date for becoming a more fulfilled, educated member of society. I am fifty years old and I want to grow up to be like my mom. I want to be the inspiration to other LPN's who think it might be too late for them, for other women who crossed into their fifties or sixties and think that the time to educate themselves has passed them by. I want to prove that it can be done.