When I was eight years old, my mother died from brain cancer in 2014 that has impacted my life forever. Ironically, I understand Lesley Holloway’s motto that she followed after the death of her father Curtis Holloway: “Everything is Figureoutable.” By April 2021, I “figured out” that I needed to make a change in my life due to my dad’s alcoholism that created an unstable home for my brother and I. Since our mom’s death, our dad has entered rehab facilities for over 345 days, staying a minimum of 30 days at a time. I chose to live with our grandparents that was a hard decision for me, but I knew it was best for my mental health and my future. I hoped my dad would focus on himself and stay sober, but this wasn’t the case. He had to sell his home in March 2022, forcing him to move into his mother’s home. He has been unemployed for five years due to his declining health and addiction to alcohol. To cope with the absence of both parents, I concentrated on my classes and cheer at McKinney North High School, trying not to be consumed with the hardships in my life. I have worked every summer since my freshman year in high school: snow cone/drive thru soda shop clerk, lifeguard, and Sky Ranch Christian camp counselor where I will work this summer. My financial aid and scholarships will continue to help my grandparents with my living expenses at Texas A&M in College Station where I will be a junior elementary education major. My grandparents are retired and are in their 70s and also help my brother with his living expenses. As a way to escape the sadness in my life, I focused on my church activities and educational goals, graduating with a 3.9 GPA in high school and a current 3.6 GPA at Texas A&M. I led the McKinney North cheer team to multiple awards in state competitions as co-captain my junior year and captain my senior year. I have been fortunate to lead a somewhat “normal” life because of my mother’s parents providing a home for my brother and I. They have supported me not only financially but also emotionally by motivating me to be the best version of myself every day. I plan to honor them by graduating from A&M and by striving for excellence in every area of my life. My mom and my grandmother have both taught me to never give up no matter how difficult my circumstances could be. My mom continued to teach fifth grade at our school after her diagnosis in January 2011 until the day before she passed away. This shows her determination and strength despite frequent headaches and seizures. My grandparents did not give up on the court system because they became our “managing conservators” after going to court five times. My grandmother was successful when the Texas legislature passed the Chelsea Maddux Law to protect children by adhering to the divorce decree of a deceased custodian. These situations will push me to be successful as I have a mindset to achieve my goals. My grandparents’s support has been instrumental to me as a child who has lost a parent because I have stability in my life that always seemed to be changing. They were my biggest supporters at cheer and dance competitions. As a child without a mom and an absent father, I needed this stability, and I’m thankful that my grandparents provided a loving home for my brother and I.

When I was five years old, my mom was taken by ambulance from our school. I didn’t understand the diagnosis of brain cancer, but I knew this disease caused my mom to have seizures and headaches. Five months later, a surgeon removed a small slow glioma but was unable to remove a larger diffused mass. She continued to teach fifth grade until the day before she passed away on September 9, 2014, being absent from teaching for her surgery and recovery and quarterly MRIs at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. My mom taught me many lessons during the three years and nine months she lived with brain cancer. I watched her live each day to the fullest with hope after she discovered Head for the Cure (HFTC) on Facebook. This first 5K run in Frisco, Texas, in 2011, raised awareness and funds for brain cancer research. After my mom saw a friend post that she would participate in HFTC, she responded that she would join her that evolved into 186 Sweet Chelsea team members, including me. In May six days after my mom’s brain surgery, she stepped across the finish line to join her teammates, including students, parents, co-workers, family, neighbors, friends, and dance and baseball families. The following year she walked the 5K course and jogged the following two years with her teammates. In 2015 the Sweet Chelsea Team honored the memory of my mom, raising approximately $45,000 for brain cancer research since the first HFTC event. This May our Sweet Chelsea team will return to support brain cancer research that will become a family tradition. Because of my mother’s example of facing adversity with courage, I knew I had to make a decision to help create stability in my life. By April 2021, I decided it would be best for my brother and I to permanently move into our grandparents’ home where we lived for eight months with our mom after our parents’ divorce. Unfortunately, he has been treated for alcoholism for as many as 48 days at a time, including one time before our mother died and multiple times following her death. My brother and I would stay with our mom’s parents during his absences. After five court cases, a judge ruled that our grandparents would become our managing conservators, becoming financially responsible for us. Our dad has been unemployed since March 2020. My mom’s influence as a teacher has led me to choose teaching as a career. The days following her death, I understood the impact she had on students at our school when additional counselors arrived at school to help students and staff to cope with our loss. I also felt her passion as a teacher when we stayed after school with her while she tutored students and prepared lessons for the following day. As an educator, I will strive to follow my mom’s dedication and continue to encourage others by staying strong in my faith and believing in God's plan. I'm thankful I can apply for the Kyla Jo Burridge Memorial Scholarship to support my grandparents with my expenses at Texas A&M University. I’m a sophomore elementary education major with a 3.6 GPA. My grandparents are in their 70s and also pay living expenses for my brother who is a junior in college. I have worked every summer since 2022 and will return this summer at Sky Ranch Christian camp as a youth counselor. Although my mom's passing has affected my life forever, I have been able to see that God has been by my side through all my challenges and sadness.

My faith has kept me strong through many challenges I have faced since my mother’s death when I was eight years old. I learned to move forward by leaning on Jesus each day and allowing him to shape and transform my heart. By knowing the Lord and his character, I have been able to cling to the hope I have in Jesus during the most difficult circumstances. The Lord never promised humanity a life of comfortability and zero trials but instead promises He will be with us during difficult times. I have seen the Lord show up in my life time after time. Even though I have walked through seasons of grief and sorrow, those are the moments that the Lord revealed Himself to me. My journey with Christ began when I was eight years old during my first Christian summer camp at Sky Ranch in Van, Texas. This experience was one of my biggest blessings in my life because I told my mom that I had accepted Jesus into my heart during camp. Four months later in September 2014 my mother’s suffering from brain cancer ended after living a life of faith and courage since her diagnosis in January 2011. Although my life was full of grief and sadness, I had just learned about the gospel, knowing that my mom was going to Heaven to be with Jesus. I learned to move forward by leaning on Jesus each day and allowing Him to shape and transform my heart. Another challenge that I have faced each day is that my father is an alcoholic. After my mom passed away, I saw him continue to struggle from this disease, causing me to feel upset that the Lord would allow this to happen. But as I got older, I realized that the hardest things I walked through shaped my trust and faith in God. I know that even though my earthly father would fail me from time to time, my heavenly father is always beside me. I am also grateful for my camp counselors at Sky Ranch who helped me grow into the woman of faith I am today. They set the example of what it looks like to trust in the Lord's plan even when it doesn’t make sense. Their influence also led me to return this summer to Sky Ranch as a youth counselor for the second year. I give the Lord thanks each day for preparing me with this opportunity. It is through His grace and mercy alone that I am able to invest in the lives of children who may have similar situations as me. He has also led me to follow in my mother’s footsteps to become an elementary teacher after I graduate in 2027. I am currently a sophomore at Texas A&M University in College Station with a 3.6 GPA. I’m also the assistant chaplain of Chi Omega sorority and a youth leader at my churches in McKinney and College Station. Unfortunately, I qualify for the need of financial assistance since my grandparents are financially responsible for my brother and I. In 2021 the court appointed our mother’s parents as our managing conservators after their five attempts in court. They are retired at ages 74 and 77 and are also helping my brother with college expenses. My father has been unemployed since March 2020. My mom's passing and the months that my father was in and out of rehab have affected my life forever. I will continue to encourage others through my personal experiences by staying strong in my faith and believing in God's plan.

As I look towards the future, I see myself as an elementary school teacher, following the career path that my mother chose. In order to accomplish my goal in becoming a teacher, I will complete my degree at Texas A&M University and teacher certification program. After gaining experience as a teacher, I may consider a second certification to become a counselor to help children face some of the adversities that I have experienced in life: my mother’s death from brain cancer, my parents’ divorce, and my unstable home life when my father was absent many times while he was in rehab facilities for his alcoholism. As a teacher my goal is to not only educate my students but to also prepare my students for the world through character development. I remember some of my educators teaching me life lessons outside of the curriculum that I found to be the most rewarding and applicable in my life. The teachers who demonstrated that they cared more about their students as individuals rather than about their grades set a standard that I want to follow. That is the teacher I want to be after I graduate in May 2027. I want to learn the challenges that each student faces, not only in the classroom but also in their lives at home. I can relate to being a child facing loneliness after losing a parent as well as living in a broken home and unstable environment. The education system is in critical need of teachers who have compassion for all students, not only the students who struggle educationally but also socially or emotionally. My counselor at my elementary school where my mother taught fifth grade realized the impact of the loss of my mother. He assigned a PAL (Peer Assistance Leadership) high school student to mentor me. Fortunately, I paid this kindness forward by participating in this program at my high school for two years. Seeing the kids’ faces light up each day when our PAL’s team arrived at their elementary school is a feeling that I remembered since the third grade. I believe I can bring this passion into my classroom, modeling one of my best teachers in high school. She was my PAL teacher who guided our class as mentors for younger students who were often times special needs students. This program also stressed community involvement. One of the reasons I admired her as a teacher is because she taught my class the importance of giving back to our community as well as the value of mentorship. In this class I was able to experience the joy that comes when unselfishly serving others rather than focusing on ourselves. As a teacher, I want to volunteer in my school, community, and church, setting this same example as my PALs’ teacher so my students can learn to unselfishly help others.

In my 19 years I have experienced several challenges that have shaped who I am: my mother’s diagnosis of brain cancer in January 2011; my parents’ divorce in August 2014; my mother’s death in September 2014, and my father’s addiction to alcohol that created an unstable home for my brother and I. In order to deal with the loss of my mother and my unstable home life, I found that dance classes and competitions and even my homework were ways to cope with the sadness in my life. My mother lived each day to the fullest with brain cancer except when she suffered from headaches and seizures and had brain surgery in May 2011. She actually taught the day before she passed away. I was in the third grade at my mother’s school, and my brother was in the fifth grade in a class near my mother’s room. From 2014 until 2021, we lived without my father at home for over 300 days while he attended alcohol treatment centers for as many as 30 days at a time or detoxed at home alone. My brother and I stayed at our mothers’ parents’ home during his absences. Each time after he returned home from a facility, I had hope that he wouldn't relapse. However, my hope was always crushed. We also watched our dad struggle to find a job when his 14-year career ended in July 2018. Because of his disease, my dad lost a new job in March 2020 and is still unemployed. In April 2021 my brother and I decided it would be best for us to permanently move into our grandparents’ home. I had hoped that this would give my dad the opportunity to focus on himself and stay sober, but this wasn’t the case. He had to sell our house in March 2022 that forced him to move into his mother’s home close to where we had lived. I spent my freshman and sophomore years working on myself, trying not to be consumed with the hardships of my past. By the end of my junior year, my father began the application process for a liver transplant at a Dallas hospital. Although he was denied a liver by the review board in April 2022, he was given a second chance at life with a liver transplant on May 27. My challenges have led me to follow in my mother’s footsteps as an elementary teacher. As a way to cope with my loss, my school counselor assigned a Peer Assistance Leadership (PAL) program high school student to mentor me. Fortunately, I paid this kindness forward by joining PAL my junior year and mentoring students. Seeing the kids’ faces light up each day when our PAL’s team arrived at their elementary school is a feeling that I remembered from the third grade. My grandparents are financially responsible for my brother and I as court-appointed managing conservators after filing five court cases since our mother’s death. Therefore, scholarships and financial aid will help them to pay for my courses at Texas A&M where I am a sophomore education major, finishing my freshman year with a 3.8 GPA.. I have also worked in the summers as a life guard and camp counselor at Sky Ranch Christian camp in Van, Texas. I appreciate the opportunity to apply for a scholarship that honors Heather Lynn Scott Daniel whose story is similar to my mother’s life. Both were educators who were also mothers of two young children when a disease ended their lives.