My Mother is the foundation of my family. It's me, her, and my brother. Growing up, she didn't have the time to tutor me with my schoolwork or to be emotionally available to us as she wished she could have. She worked double shifts for $18 an hour during my earlier years. Due to this unfortunate deck of cards, my mental development was always in question by not only my family, but also by my teachers and advisors. From the outside looking in, they assumed that my homelife was rough and cold. From an insider's perspective, my household was loving, but chaotic at times. My Grandparents, though they lived separately, had a major impact on my childhood years, making it loving and filling in the gaps that my working mother lacked. During my High School years, I became more serious about my education, as I noticed a pattern in my family that not taking education seriously and to its full advantage will leave you with limited options. I didn't want that. I started off with B's and C's, as my average grade, slowly moving up to B+ and A-'s were my standard. I then received a full ride to the University of Minnesota, where I studied Family Social Sciences (FSOS). My academic standards from my previous schools were no longer a thought. The standard now was A's with maybe one B sprinkled into some semesters. I went from getting humiliated by getting pulled out of my standard classes with my peers, having tests run on me every day, and academic racist assumptions about my upbringing, to excelling in my family's expectations and previous advisors. With that being said, I had to understand that I indeed will have to work harder, be without the benefit of the doubt, and navigate how to mold myself in a different environment to not only be taken seriously, but for my voice to be heard as well. Using my Bachelor's in FSOS, and knowing what I know now, I broke a common pattern in my family by taking my education seriously. I believe this pattern stemmed from my Grandparents, who are still together, but that doesn’t mean all was well. This created different behavioral patterns to develop in my Aunts and Uncles, including my Mother. She didn’t take herself seriously, and she doesn’t wish the same with me, but she didn’t know how to apply these expectations as she was the middle child of 4. I, as the second-to-youngest grandchild, did notice a pattern that I mentioned above, and I found an achievable solution. Taking my life and myself seriously. From this small change, I was able to see myself in a different light. I should also say that I was 1 out of 6 African American kids, out of what I would assume to be around 60 white kids in my K-9, then going to a PWI (predominantly white institution)for High School and University, I had to learn how to navigate what people thought of me before I even met them. Thinking of every possible outcome and being hyper-focused on my emotions, on top of that, I had to prove my spot in my chair. I start my Grad program in February for Counseling and Psychology, further pursuing my spot in higher education.

Healthcare is a career that constantly needs improvement, whether that be with the technology that we use or the people who are in these career fields. I believe that the more diverse healthcare can be, the more help we can give. I specifically want to be a Marriage and Family therapist, which, in my opinion, is still healthcare, even though it does not come in contact with the physical body, but rather our mental health instead. I always like to think of it as you can’t have one without the other, and if one system of our body is down, it disrupts what our body can handle and put out. With that being said, diversity is a huge factor within healthcare in my field. Only 3% of therapists are black, and it’s even less for black men to be therapists. As we start to think systemically about why this is important with all the nuance in everyone’s lives, I would want to be the change that I want to see in the world without having my client overexplain or overcompensate their stories for my comfort. I still find it concerning how little we know about the female body to this day in Healthcare, which again I would also include the psychological aspect of our healthcare applied to our bodies as well. One example that I can think of when it comes to the underrepresentation of women in healthcare would be mental disorders. Various mental disorders look entirely different from mental health disorders in men. This is also the case, especially for black women. This is for a few reasons. The case studies that were conducted to diagnose and study these disorders used mainly white men as participants. Rarely did researchers use women or even Black and POC women as active participants in these studies. Hence, it takes longer for women, Black women, and women of color to get diagnosed and the help they need. There is also a barrier to who is giving the help. Cultural context is extremely important for future helpers in all fields. Oftentimes, Black women receive misdiagnoses, which are already hard to come by, but because there is a misunderstanding of how we present our emotions, like stress, happiness, and anger, it can very well create culture shock and misunderstanding, which can lead to a misdiagnosis by the provider. This is why I am pursuing a career in Marriage and Family Therapy, because the dynamic of how our families work, our love languages, and outlets are oftentimes misconstrued innocently without ever being checked by someone with a similar background. I have recently been accepted by my top choice grad program: University of St. Thomas. My inspiration to be a Marriage and Family therapist is a little closer for me, and I am excited to start my journey.

The learned trait of speaking up and using your voice has been an interesting one for me. Using your voice to state that a change needs to be made, whether it’s for social justice, a major correction, or even something as simple as fixing a small mistake in an order, can have benefits for individuals. However, there is an interesting section of using your voice that doesn’t get talked about enough, and that is the consequences of when you do speak up and still get punished for pointing out a mistake or calling out when there is something objectively wrong being stated. This is where I struggle to use my voice because of this unintended consequence. Oftentimes this can happen in high-stress environments, when there is bias towards the person speaking up or when it doesn’t necessarily benefit any one person, but it was the right protocol at the time. Naturally, this can have a great effect on someone’s confidence to speak up even for a simple error, especially if they know that the person who made the mistake tends not to take their own mistakes lightly or hates to be corrected. This often happens to me. I want to say this trait of mine stems from the fear of my Father’s parenting style. He was and still is authoritative. What he said goes. This created a behavioral pattern of fear for speaking up. This is even true for things that I needed urgently when I was younger, like needing food, being uncomfortable, or a forgotten item. I had to teach myself, and I am still learning, how to set aside someone's reaction to bad news and try to understand that telling them the bad news is better than hiding it from them. How they react is up to them, and they will tell me if they have the emotional intelligence to self-reflect or to attack the messenger of this bad news through their actions and words. I took a previous course on speaking patterns, which included this very concern of mine. “What if they get mad?” How the Professor put it into perspective was like this: Every time you open your mouth, you put yourself in danger because of people's reactions. You could live in a bubble where you would be safe 100% of the time, or you can experience these lessons and come back stronger. There’s no wrong choice, but one limits your world greatly. I am still working to speak up for myself, as you may have noticed that I have mostly been writing from the perspective of telling information to a second party rather than receiving or requesting information. I am still a work in progress, but having self-respect to speak up is a lesson that has to be experienced rather than just a verbal lesson.

My Mother is the foundation of my family. It's me, her, and my brother. Growing up, she didn't have the time to tutor me with my schoolwork or to be emotionally available to us as she wished she could have. She worked double shifts for $18 an hour during my earlier years. Due to this unfortunate deck of cards, my mental development was always in question by not only my family, but also by my teachers and advisors. From the outside looking in, they assumed that my homelife was rough and cold. From an insider's perspective, my household was loving, but chaotic at times. My Grandparents, though they lived separately, had a major impact on my childhood years, making it loving and filling in the gaps that my working mother lacked. During my High School years, I became more serious about my education, as I noticed a pattern in my family that not taking education seriously and to its full advantage will leave you with limited options. I didn't want that. I started with B's and C's, as my average grade, slowly moving up to B+ and A-'s were my standard. I then received a full ride to the University of Minnesota, where I studied Family Social Sciences (FSOS). My academic standards from my previous schools were no longer a thought. The standard now was A's with maybe one B sprinkled into some semesters. I went from getting humiliated by getting pulled out of my standard classes with my peers, having tests run on me every day, and academic racist assumptions about my upbringing, to excelling in my family's expectations and previous advisors. With that being said, I had to understand that I indeed will have to work harder, be without the benefit of the doubt, and navigate how to mold myself in a different environment to not only be taken seriously, but for my voice to be heard as well. Using my Bachelor's in FSOS, and knowing what I know now, I broke a common pattern in my family by taking my education seriously. I believe this pattern stemmed from my Grandparents, who are still together, but that doesn’t mean all was well. This created different behavioral patterns to develop in my Aunts and Uncles, including my Mother. She didn’t take herself seriously, and she doesn’t wish the same with me, but she didn’t know how to apply these expectations as she was the middle child of 4. I, as the second-to-youngest grandchild, did notice a pattern that I mentioned above, and I found an achievable solution. Taking my life and myself seriously. From this small change, I was able to see myself in a different light. I should also say that I was 1 out of 6 African American kids, out of what I would assume to be around 60 white kids in my K-9, then going to a PWI for High School and University, I had to learn how to navigate what people thought of me before I even met them. Thinking of every possible outcome and being hyper-focused on my emotions, on top of that, I had to prove my spot in my chair. I start my graduate program in February for Counseling and Psychology, further pursuing my spot in higher education. In conclusion I gained important insight about resilience, discipline, time management and the importance of education. These traits that I picked up over the years aren't going anywhere, and I hope to gain more as I enter this new chapter in my life.

In a world that supposably everyone is your enemy, being a POC can be not only challenging but potentially deadly in some cases. With that being stated, I need to focus on mental health and positivity. One of the ways I can successfully do that at this day of age is knowing my success and growing from my failures, and learning from my failures. Knowing how my family and ancestors found their success from the ground up not only helps me stay focused but also helps with my life struggles. My biggest blessing in disguise would have to be the tragic death of George Floyd. A death that was once again unnecessary, preventable and a biased target made against another black man that did the bare minimum of a crime and their sentence was a death case. That period of my life made the world more aware of our struggles, spread awareness of microaggression remarks that make us feel uncomfortable, and just downright racism in the workplace and society. After quarantine people were very careful with the words they said about anyone that was a POC, this, after bullying of my skin, hair, and lips, we are one step closer to getting our equality in America. One of my family's success stories was my aunty. She had a kid while she was 17 years old and was left alone to care for my cousin. This may sound like a sob story but she now has so much experience in so many fields, has a great house, and lives very comfortably. She's currently a computer programmer for a company. It reminds me to keep going when things seem to be at a loss.

This issue was definitely a generational thing as generations ago by we need to teach the younger men in our community how to act around anyone identifying as a woman or non-binary. We need to teach the norms of how to act to our younger generation not only to men but also to anyone identifying as a woman or non-binary because if these lessons go on unlearnt the same actions towards women such as catcalling sexual assault, sexual harassment, and any other form of de-humanization towards women. This issue will keep happening not only on the streets but in the household classrooms and bus stops. I believe the only way that we can really make a difference in the world it's just either teaching that in the classroom or just sitting down and having a talk once a week with the children in the house. A simple talk can really change a perspective or a path of life a person can go to, and if it's a repeated talk to a person of course that topic will be stuck to that person. A little goes a long way. That’s with almost anything in life. Another way to help women feel safer and not having the need to have wolverine fist with their keys, or having to wonder which outfit to wear to not get cat-called, is to have a specific branch of law enforcement that deals with harassment from any party. Of course, this won’t fix the issue but it will definitely help the problem and keep most of us safer on the streets heading to our job, car, or apartment. It’s sad this is even an issue and this needs to stop as soon as possible. The statics of how man women will get raped before the age of 18 is scary and the number of non-reported vs. reported rapes is even scarier. As a victim and a survivor, this angers me that the men we know that did this are either a family member or a close friend we know. This can be avoided by not victim-blaming and actually have the person who committed the crime to be held, judged, and prosecuted in court. There definitely is an empathy factor involved but when I look back I regret not reporting my abuser to the police and have him serve the time he deserved. This world needs to be educated on women’s problems and we need to have fast solutions to not only have a safe environment to work in but to also come home to.