I always wanted to be a midwife and read anything childbirth related, starting in middle school. But my upbringing in a low-income, mental-illness riddled home that believed education wasn't nearly as important as devoting all of our time to God and the world's end got in the way of me pursuing my dreams from a young age. It took many years of deprogramming myself from those thoughts as an adult, and in the meantime, I raised my own family of four children while working full-time. After spending a year recovering from a traumatic brain injury and subsequent surgery, I decided to go to school with the encouragement of my husband and from my desire to show my children, who were nearing college age, that it's okay to pursue your dreams. Starting in 2018, I began working a second job as a midwife's birth assistant and spent three years doing that as well as raising my family and working my full-time job, and I began taking classes part-time. I quit my jobs to go to school full-time beginning in 2021 and want to make my dreams a reality very soon.