My mental health journey has progressed a long way, and I’m proud to be able to write this essay that explains how far I’ve come and how I’ll be using my experiences in my future career as a trauma therapist. In 1991 I was born to a teen mother who was swept away by a man in his mid-twenties. My grandparents became aware that she was pregnant with me and had guilted her into keeping me despite still being a child herself. Unfortunately, my father became incredibly abusive toward her, and pressured her into a party lifestyle which ended up with me abandoned at my aunt’s house for a month as a toddler. Luckily, my grandparents picked up the torch, taking custody of me, and I was raised in their generally safe although emotionally cold household. Less luckily, my mother saw me during weekends and the resulting trauma of how aggressive and abusive she was toward me, including to put it lightly, having me get far too close with some of her adult friends as a young child, as well as the absence of my father which was often filled with broken promises, scarred me for much of my life. As I grew up, I became incredibly depressed and mentally scattered, becoming more and more dependent on the self-harm and escapism I used to cope. As I started to date, I fell into relationships with similarly abusive dynamics, and would often blame myself. Nearly all of my remaining teen years and 20’s were rife with unhealthy connections and re-traumatization. I tried reconnecting with my mother as a young adult, and she told me that she had no children, and to this day I am unable to have any relationship with her. My father lives across the country and has been a drug user for the entirety of my life, so the connection is similarly nonexistent with him. These scars run deep, and it’s been a lot of work to come to a place of acceptance with them. In one of the relationships I was in, a little over a year ago, he had pushed me into getting therapy for the first time in my life due to my suicidal spirals that spun far out of control by this point. This is the moment my life changed infinitely for the better. I found my therapist on Psychology Today, and nervously made my first appointment with her. I truly have never met anyone as patient and understanding as this woman, and she slowly guided me to realizing the abusive patterns in my relationship enough to be able to climb out of it permanently. From there we’ve started unravelling the trauma of my early childhood, which I never dreamed of being able to do with anyone, and have been able to acknowledge the pain in a way I never have before. This is a long process, and something I am still doing, but the past year has made way for more progress than I’ve ever made in my life thus far. She helped guide me toward being open to medication for my depression, which has also changed my life in ways I could’ve never imagined for the better. It makes doing the hard work of therapy much more manageable and the world seem much brighter more often. After getting out of the relationship that gave me the opportunity to meet her, I had been inspired so much by my therapist’s empathy and professionalism, that I found myself wanting to go to school to see through my high school dream of becoming a therapist as well. Through those dark years I kept telling myself that I was too old, or too broken, or that I didn’t have support from my family to be able to get through college. My therapist completely shattered that illusion for me and after this first semester I’m extremely confident in my ability to get a master’s degree and live my dream of helping others the way I have been despite any hardships or obstacles I may encounter along the way. If I can impact a client’s life even a fraction of the amount my therapist has impacted mine, I’ll consider this path worth it. Having had the experience of such pain in my life has put me in the position to be patient with anyone who may have a hard time digging out of the darkness. My therapist been an integral part of saving my life and getting me to a place where I have hope in a healthy and safe future. No other career than the thought of becoming a mental health clinician to trauma survivors in need drives me or makes me feel nearly as fulfilled, and this is why I’m seeking this scholarship, in order to help get me to the education level I need to become licensed and help others in their mental health journey and guide them toward feeling hopeful again.