We used to spend every break with my grandmother and grandfather. Summer or Winter break would come around and my parents would drive halfway to my grandparent's place to meet them for lunch and then drop us off to them for the break. During shorter breaks like Spring or Fall, they would drive all the way to my grandparents and we would stay there for the week. Most of my good memories come from those visits; it often felt like they were more of a parent than my parents. During the fall break of freshman year, we found out that my grandmother was very sick. Back then they wouldn't tell us grandkids what was wrong, but I later learned that she had small-cell lung Cancer. I think there are very specific things that I remember from this time, like visiting her when she was first admitted into the hospital and the doctors trying to figure out what was wrong with her. She looked so frail being in the hospital bed. I also remember after visiting her at the hospital, my grandfather talked to the second oldest cousin and me about how we needed to be adults and take care of things around the house because she wasn't able to. During the summer of sophomore year, the doctors said that the chemo was working and that she was going to be fine. However, we lost her during fall break that year. She loved her family, especially her grandchildren, and Christmas. The first week of summer she would take us to Books-A-Million and have us pick out books to read and workbooks for our school year. She would help us with the workbooks as best she could, but since I was closer to the grades of my cousins, I would end up helping more often than not. She taught us so many life skills like cooking and baking, cleaning, and being kind to each other. She took us out to do things even though they had moments where they struggled financially. She would take us to the pool or bowling or to visit other family members. I think my experiences after losing her shaped so much of my adult life. My parents never talked to us about what we were feeling and how to deal with those feelings. My teachers would send me to the crisis counselor at school and the crisis counselor would offer for me to go home or go back to class. It felt like I was alone in trying to figure out how to understand everything going on. Before all of this, I had already had the idea that I wanted to help other people, I just wasn't sure how I wanted to do that. After this experience, I realized that no one should feel like they don't have anyone to turn to. That led me to the path of becoming a child and adolescent psychologist. I think it is so important to have emotional and mental help, especially in the age range of childhood to adolescence.

This year has been exciting and magical for me but part of that has been facing some struggles to get there. I started visiting Canada, got married, finished my Bachelor’s degree, got accepted into a Master’s program, and started the process of becoming a permanent resident in Canada. I think if this year had a soundtrack from 1989, it would include You Are in Love, Shake It Off, and This Love. Taylor Swift’s version of the 1989 album has so many fun and relatable songs, just like other albums of hers, however, I feel like these three songs in particular resonate with me for my 2023. I think Shake It Off is kind of the song that I have had to have in my mind when setbacks or negative things have happened this year. When I was growing up, I never had a great relationship with my parents and that carried on into adulthood. So when all these wonderful things happened to me this year, they gave a lot of pushback and negative responses. My husband and I had a small wedding in Canada and they were upset about not being invited (despite not interacting with each other beyond a “Happy Holiday” message for the last 7 years). When I got accepted into my master’s program, they had negative things to say about the school I got accepted into. The song Shake It Off has a lot of references to ignoring the negative things that people say about something you do and to keep being yourself and doing what you do. I think with how society has become so focused on trying to live to societal standards, the song Shake It Off really takes a step away from that and focuses on being yourself instead of what society expects you to be. This Love and You Are In Love resonates with all the positive aspects of what has happened in 2023 for me. My husband and I spent 3 years in a long-distance relationship. We met online and got to meet up once before COVID locked down everything. We finally moved in together in May of this year, got engaged in June, and married in July. Both of these songs focus on being in love and those feelings of being in love. You Are In Love looks at the amazing feelings that come with being truly, deeply in love with someone, while This Love is realizing that you both are so deeply in love with the other person.

When I was younger, I never had anyone to help me with my depression, anxiety, or migraines. My parents never took any of these seriously and chalked it up to me being a typical moody teenager. My family also never talked about emotions or mental health. After I turned 18 and moved out, I realized how unhealthy all of this was and decided to become the kind of person that I needed back then. By becoming a child and adolescent psychologist, I want to help individuals at an extremely vulnerable age learn how to understand their emotions and mental health. I want to help all children and adolescents including ones with various disabilities. By teaching them coping skills, what their emotions feel like, and how to tell what their mental health is like, they can flourish in settings that individuals without disabilities do not struggle in. When children and adolescents know these things, they can feel empowered and confident to stand alongside their peers.

I grew up in a family that did not talk about or explain mental health in any form or fashion. This made having depression and anxiety such a challenge as I had to figure out a lot of it on my own. I also struggled with my mental health when my grandmother passed away in my sophomore year of high school. I think not having anyone to support me while grieving has drastically influenced how I view life. My experience with mental health has influenced me to prioritize my mental health as well as shaped my beliefs that everyone deserves to receive mental health aid. It has also led me to the belief system of Taoism. I went through some of the toughest events in my life with a bare minimum knowledge of mental health, and it has led me to firmly believe that everyone regardless of age should know about mental health and why it is important. These experiences have also led me to follow a Taoist belief and lifestyle. I prefer to live with balance and harmony, and not hold on to negative events. This has in a way also influenced my relationships. Once I graduated high school and moved out, my relationship with my family drastically changed. They were very negative and made me feel like I wasn't good enough. This made me realize that I don't want relationships where I feel like I'm not good enough or don't belong. I currently have a very strained relationship with most of my family because they do not see or understand or accept how negatively my childhood affected me as a person. My husband's family is almost opposite of my family and while it has taken a lot of adjusting and relearning. It is amazing how much I have become a better person. My mental health experiences have had a huge influence on my career aspirations. I always wanted to help people become better versions of themselves. At first, I wanted to be a high school English teacher, however after taking a general psychology class while working on my associate's degree, I realized my calling was to be a child and adolescent psychologist. I recently finished and received a Bachelor of Science in Behavioral Health Science focusing on childhood and adolescent disorders, and am starting a Master of Art in Psychology focusing on childhood and adolescent disorders. My experiences have led me to want to help children and adolescents learn about mental health, taking care of their mental health, and how to establish healthy boundaries and habits.

In my sophomore year of high school, my grandmother passed away. I had a better relationship with her than with my mother so when she passed, I was so lost and confused both emotionally and mentally. I feel like I remember so much from that time and the biggest thing that stands out to me is how alone I felt while grieving and trying to understand everything. My parents were never very emotionally involved during my upbringing and in the days following her funeral, they didn't interact with my siblings or me. I also remember going to school when we got back and my first-period teacher sent me to the crisis counselor gave me the option of going home or going back to class. The counselor didn't mention anything about the grief cycle or how grieving worked. I believe this situation played a huge role in how my views on mental health changed. After this series of events happened, I turned to books about coping and emotions similar to what I was feeling and it made me realize that no one should feel so alone, lost, and not understand what was going on in a life event. These books also made me realize that my childhood was not the best and was traumatic. They led me down the path of figuring out why I would act certain ways and how to manage emotions and help my mental health. I believe that everyone deserves to have what I got out of those books but from talking to someone. Everyone deserves to have guidance and care, especially with their mental health. Another thing that has inspired me to pick a career in the mental health field is a TedTalk that I watched while working on my Associate's degree, and the speaker was discussing how we should aspire to "Be who you needed when you were younger". After watching this TedTalk, I became so passionate about this quote and decided that I was going to work with children and adolescents so that they have someone who can teach them to care about their emotions and mental health as well as have someone that they can confide in about whatever is on their mind. These stages of development are so important in how a person creates and views themselves, which can be confusing without guidance on how to take care of themselves and build positive habits. By becoming the kind of person that I needed when I was younger, I can help younger people who are struggling with figuring out who they are, teaching them to take care of their mental health, helping them create positive self-care habits, and break generational cycles that might be holding them back from becoming the best version of themselves. I think this quote has inspired me so much to join the mental health field because I didn't really get to have someone in my life who cared about what I was feeling and how it was affecting me until I met my husband a few years ago. I think many of my struggles from adolescence and childhood have encouraged me down the path to becoming a mental health professional because I can relate to how many individuals at this stage in life feel, from struggling with depression in middle and high school to struggling with general and social anxiety to living in a household where you feel unwanted and not good enough to be there. Sometimes our own experience is the best teacher of how to handle situations as long as we are able to keep our own emotions and thoughts in check. By taking care of our past traumas as professionals, we can use them to assist and assess situations while maintaining the idea that we are there to help the clients and the clients are the focus. By having these experiences and learning to work through them and learning different coping skills, it could be easier to explain emotions, thought processes, and coping through situations to individuals who come to receive care from me. I also think it is important for children and adolescents to not feel like they are facing the world alone and have no support, I strongly believe that children and adolescents who do not have a support system or struggle to create one are more at risk for developing psychological disorders and those disorders becoming the worst version of themselves. I have also been inspired by the desire to teach people healthy self-care and coping skills. I believe that many people think they have healthy self-care and coping habits but those habits are actually harmful or can become harmful. I think this happens for multiple reasons, the main one being that they do not realize or understand how a certain habit can turn into a harmful one despite various ideas or suggestions from individuals who are not professionals in the field claiming that they are professionals. While this is not the easiest issue to tackle, however, I believe that as a field we need to take steps to ensure that everyone is receiving accurate information especially as mental health issues are on the rise and the stigma around mental health shifts to people being more open to working on their mental health. I also believe that many people do not realize how easy self-care can be, from going on a short walk to writing about your day for 5 minutes to cleaning a little clutter there are so many activities that are considered self-care that can be done in less than 15 minutes. Self-care and coping activities are essential skills to learn at any age, especially since a lot of them can build on each other. I think that by starting self-care skills, coping skills, and learning about emotions at a young age can help the mental health crisis because people will become more aware of signs of emotional and mental health struggles and, I believe, become more considerate of other people's struggles. I take pride in being a great listener and problem-solver when people come to me about an issue or problem they are facing and I think both of these skills are so important when working in the mental health field. You have to be able to listen and understand what a person is saying as well as determine if they have something they are not saying from what they are saying. You also have to be able to help them problem solve their problems. As a future psychologist, I believe that it is not my job to solve people's problems or straight give them solutions. I think it is so important that if someone comes to me for mental health aid, we develop skills for them to use whenever they need those skills. If I were to just give them a solution, then that solution might not work for them and set them back even more or they might not actually develop skills from that solution to implement it later on. By being good at problem-solving, I could have solutions in mind already and how to get to those solutions which would translate into being able to guide a client to problem-solve their problem. I think subconsciously my passion for learning has also influenced and inspired me to become part of the mental health field. The field involves always learning as our techniques are backed by research and research can change how we should be using our knowledge of the field. I think another part of this is how each client is different so we are always learning something about a disorder. In a field that is always changing from societal views and is influenced by those views and cultural views, it could make a huge difference in being willing to learn new things as potential clients could feel more welcomed in my care as I learn how their beliefs affect them seeking mental care and be able to explain how their beliefs work with their mental health. Growing up I wasn't sure what I wanted to be as an adult. As an adult, I have come to realize that I want to be someone who helps people, especially children and adolescents, learn to take care of their mental health and why taking care of it is important. I believe that everything in my life has inspired me to help others and care for them, but certain events specifically led me to want to become a psychologist. From not having anyone to teach me how to care for my mental health to not having anyone explain how I was feeling when my grandmother passed away to having to learn about grief and processing it on my own, these events inspired me to be a mental health professional.