I am a single mother that was raised by a village. My parents separated before I was born and I was raised with my aunts, my grandparents, my mom and my dad. There was a lot of uncertainty while I was growing up on where I was going to be and things like that. All of my adult life I have searched for stability and known that is what I wanted to provide for my daughter. This has impacted my journey by me not going to school until I was 27, because I thought the best way I could provide that stability was being a stay-at-home mom. Becoming a single parent is the reason for my education journey. Before my divorce I was a mostly stay at home mom, I worked part time from home, so all of the house management and child rearing was my responsibility. I was content in this life and was going to be a homemaker and work at the library once the kids were in school. Now I am trying to support us financially and do all of the things that I did before. One of the biggest ways it has shaped my life, is that I do everything that I can online from home. I work from home, I go to school online, I do telehealth appointments, etc. Because nobody else is going to show up for my daughter when something happens. Homesick from daycare? That's my deal. Has a speech therapy appointment in the middle of the day? That's my deal. Being a single parent requires constant flexibility and endless time to do all of the things that need done. It is also my reason for success. There is no chance I was going to lay down and give up, and let my daughter grow up thinking that is what we did when things got hard. No, I was going to put on my boots and figure this out one step at a time. Getting my degree is the biggest step in this journey to be able to help others, support my family, and be there for everything my daughter does. I want to give back to my community by working in the mental health field. I want to give people a place where they feel seen and heard. I want to write books that help normalize accommodations in the home for children and adults.

My struggles with mental health began at a young age, beginning with several short-term inpatient treatments in middle school to residential treatment in high school. During my freshman year of high school, I was completely pulled out from school with the intention of home schooling. I was not home schooled due to my parents struggles with substance abuse, leaving me with all F's for both semesters of my freshman year. I was going to be a fifth-year high school student, I struggled with attendance and things my sophomore year because school felt never ending, it also felt like the least of my problems that I had an algebra test the next day. When I turned 16, I got my first job, I actually started the day after my birthday, and they were able to hire me. Once I got my first paycheck my perspective on everything changed, I knew money was going to be how I was going to get what I wanted from this life. I went to the guidance counselor to find alternatives to traditional high school; I enrolled in a night school program through another school and graduated a month after I turned 17. During this time, I worked two jobs and moved in with my then boyfriend. I was going to make a life for myself no matter what it took. I continued to neglect my mental health, with bouts of crying in bed all day, to not sleeping for days at a time. I used alcohol and occasionally other substances to try to numb my "big feelings". I always maintained my jobs and showed up for the people around me. But I never showed up for myself. I got married at 23 to a guy I went to high school with who had a daughter. I knew I had to get my act together to be there for his daughter and our future kids. A few months before we got married I quit drinking cold turkey, the strongest substance in my life was an energy drink. In the beginning of 2024 we divorced, and I once again knew that I had to do something with my life. After a couple of weeks of staying at my mom's house, I got a job and started the process of applying for assistance to get our feet under us. That alone was a monumental task. I also started therapy, and seeing a psychiatrist. They have helped tremendously in understanding what is going on with me and my "big feelings". Currently I do not practice abstinence from alcohol, but I have found that while working through my trauma and being properly medicated I am able to have one margarita while we eat tacos at a Mexican restaurant, and it does not turn into anything more than that. I maintained complete abstinence for almost four years, and since exploring my relationship with alcohol have not felt the pull to move on to anything else. I am now a 27-year-old single mother, working full time in a field that I love, while pursuing an education in a field that I love. While there was a lot of twists to get here, and it is by no means what I would have written down as a perfect life, I am so happy and so grateful for all of the heart ache and hard work it took to get me here. It is me and my daughter against the world, and getting this degree is just one step in the journey of showing her not just telling her that she can be whoever she wants to be. I want to write books about mental health, and I want to work directly with people to help normalize making accommodations for yourself, that we do not have to fit into the round hole that was carved for everyone. I know that through my lived experience and through the work I have already done with people, everyone feels better knowing they are not alone, and that other people feel this way too.

My mother struggled with addiction throughout my childhood, there was good times and bad times. When I was 18 my mother went to jail and made the decision to get sober. Since she has gotten sober she has gone on to make amends, repairing many broken relationships. She has formed an amazing bond with my daughter and me. She is continuing her education and has built herself a fantastic life, she owns her car and lives in a beautiful apartment furnished with things she loves. Over the last almost decade my mother has been an inspiration to me, that you can turn your life around at any point. I have seen my mother at her lowest, and now she gives speeches at conferences about harm reduction and recovery. When my husband left, I fell into a hole that I was scared I was never going to get out. Looking to my mother and the way she started over, I knew that I was strong enough to start over and build a life that I wanted to live. In my future my daughter will look to me with the pride that I look at my mother. I pray that she does not know the hardships I faced to get there, but sees the end result of all of my hard work and knows that she can do it too. I want to become a therapist and write books to help people. But most of all I want to help my daughter. I don't want her to struggle with what I struggled with, and I don't want her to grow up how I grew up. I am doing everything in my power to break generational curses and build a life that she deserves. My childhood raised me to be strong no matter what, I want my daughter to be strong but I also want her to be soft when she needs to be. I want her to always have a safe harbor that she can come home to after a day of being strong. My childhood raised me to be independent from a very young age, I moved out when I was 16 and have been on my own ever since. I want my daughter to have the skills and know that she can do it alone, but the knowledge that she will never have to do it alone. My goals are to work for myself so that I can make my own schedule and spend as much time as possible with my daughter. I want to be there for every big event, and every milestone.

I want to write books. I want to take all of my own mental health struggles, all of the experience from the kids I have worked with and everything I will learn while pursuing my degree and continuing to work with children; and I want to write a book. I want to normalize accommodations in the home, I want to normalize struggling with feeling like your brain doesn't work like everyone else's. I want to write a book that isn't just how to deal with a specific problem that your child has but that screams from the rooftop "YOU ARE NOT ALONE". Every book I have read about children's mental health, attacks your parenting. Blames everything on screen time, food dye, boredom, not being bored enough, genetics. But there are so many small, meaningful steps you can take to improve the functioning of your home, things that adults find useful too! Working with children the huge thing that I have seen is parents with the same symptoms that have just "dealt" with them. Whether it is lack of focus, depression, anxiety it does not matter; they were raised before IEPs and therapy were so abundant. They think something is wrong with their child because they cannot bend into the shape of what we are supposed to do, how we are supposed to go about our day-to-day business and function with everyone else. There is this too prevalent idea of "the real world won't do that". But we make our own world! Who cares if you have a toothbrush in every bathroom and that is how you remember to brush your teeth, who cares if you need a checklist by the front door to make sure you don't forget the diaper bag and your wallet again. Our home is the real world, and we can make it however suits us.

I am 27 years old and a freshman in college. The biggest challenge I have faced is finding the time to work full time, raise my daughter, and complete a full course load in school. I am proud to say that I made it out of my first semester with a 4.0 GPA. There has been a lot of late nights, multitasking and cramming at the last minute to make this happen. It has been hard to find a rhythm of when to do what, between working from home and taking classes online. I try to get as much as I can done during the day while my daughter is in daycare, but there is only so many hours in the day. The second biggest challenge has been the finances. Money has been tight since it has been just me and my daughter, with me working odd jobs on top of my regular job to keep us above water. School has been a huge money commitment, but I know that in the end it is going to pay off. This scholarship would do wonders to take a dent out of my school expenses and living expenses. Another challenge that I feel I have faced is stigma. Before my husband left, I was looked down on for staying home with my daughter and stepdaughter, now that my husband is gone, I'm looked down on for not having my degree and career figured out already or for having my daughter in daycare so that I can figure out school and work. I wanted to be there for my children, I didn't want to miss a day of playing and cooking and laughing. Starting over has been really hard, trying to sort out my emotions, while making sure that everything stays caught up and my daughter notices as little as possible. It feels like everyone else is 100 steps ahead of me, either they are done with school and are established in their career or their kids are in school and they are settled into the routine of managing their home. This semester has been a huge confident boost, that I can do everything. I can manage my home, raise my daughter, work enough to keep us going and still ace school. While it is challenging, it is not impossible. I know that I am going to succeed and give my daughter everything that she deserves.

I am a single mother who was raised by a village. I grew up staying with cousins, aunts, grandparents, mom and dad. My biggest commitment to my daughter is that she is with me most of the time. She sees her father on the weekends, and stays with my mom about once every couple of months. But she is not bounced around all over the place the way that I was. The hardest part of upholding this commitment has been finding the time to work and complete my school work while ensuring that I am spending the quality time with my daughter that I would like to. We have a system where between dinner and bedtime it is just me and her, no phones, no computers. We do sometimes watch shows on the tv, and I try for us to clean up the living room together but it is mostly spent playing, reading books and eating snacks. Reading is huge to me. Before starting my career in mental health I worked at the Jessamine County Public Library, as a teenager I volunteered at the Carnegie Center in downtown Lexington reading to kids and doing crafts based on the book. Since my daughter was born I have tried to carve out time every day for us to sit down and read, she has favorite books and has learned so many new words from the different stories that we get. I feel that reading is the foundation of learning, knowing how to read is such a powerful skill, both for fun and for practical purposes. My daughter has a slight speech delay, so we focus on naming things that we see in books, and counting and colors. As her language progresses I plan to start with small reading comprehension skills, we have started to build up on this a little by me asking her questions like "What is the bear doing?" or "Who said Boo?". This scholarship will go to school expenses and living expenses to allow me to take more time with my daughter. Finances are a huge stress for any single parent. Being able to not work overtime to save money for school will open up huge amounts of time for me to spend with my daughter and miss a lot less sleep. My biggest goal is to work for myself so that I can make my own schedule, this degree is the biggest stepping stone in that journey. I know that the missed sleep and late nights now while she is only 2 are going to pay off tremendously when she is 8 and I get to be there for every event. I love my daughter and I want to give her the life she deserves.

I have always struggled with my mental health. From a very young age I knew I felt things in a way that other people did not feel them. As I grew older, I learned about the ACEs and how they affect you and realized that a lot of what I was feeling was because of trauma. After several years of therapy and finding a medication combination that worked for me, I finally felt stable. I became a Kentucky Youth Peer Support and now work as a Behavioral Health Technician remotely helping with mental health evaluations on children. I also coach from lived experience to help other kids with "Big Feelings". I work with kids on basic skills like mindfulness, organization, and impulse control. I work with families as well as teenagers on an individual level. My favorite is working with the teenagers, they are the hardest to win over and the most rewarding once they begin to open up to you. My big goal is to continue to work with children and teenagers. There is something so rewarding about watching families develop these skills that set their children up for success. I would like to one day write a book about the solutions I have helped families find and help normalize accommodations in the home as a precursor to medication. I am currently pursuing an associate's in arts with an interest in psychology, my plan is to go to EKU for my bachelors and masters program. I currently work part time, attend school full time and am a single mother to my two year old daughter. I am so thankful to be in school and be pursuing a career that I am passionate about and know that I can make a difference in. Outside of helping other people my goal is to provide everything that my daughter needs. I want to be there for every soccer game and PTA meeting. My goal is to work for myself and set my own schedule, so that I can be a huge part of my daughter's life, not have to be a restaurant manager working 60 plus hours a week which was my previous career plan. I know that there is a lot of steps between me and my end goal, and a lot of hard work but I will continue to make good grades, be present in my daughter's life and give this career my all.

I became a single mother at the beginning of this year, before that I was a stay-at-home mother to my daughter and stepdaughter. Putting my life together has been hard this year. The biggest thing that changed was viewing myself as someone who could do it all. I needed to be somebody who could work, pay bills, cook, clean and go to school. The thing I have struggled with most is finding the time in the day to get everything done. I am going to build a life that my daughter deserves, no matter what it takes. The first thing I did was find a job that I could do from home, while I figured out what I was going to go to school for. Before I was a stay-at-home mom I got my Kentucky Youth Peer Support Specialist certification, I knew that I wanted to work with kids and make an impact. The next step was getting my daughter enrolled in day care and adjusted to being away from me. Now as of this semester I am also a full-time student at Bluegrass Community and Technical College getting my associate's in arts with an interest in psychology. I knew I needed a job that would give me flexibility in my hours, pay enough to support us and I needed to do something good, that would make an impact in people's lives. I have become a master of planning and of doing things on my phone while I'm waiting places, there is not time to waste anymore. While I'm writing reports for work I'm also cooking dinner or listening to the audio of a textbook while I fold laundry. The one thing I do where I'm not multitasking is the hour before bedtime with my daughter, we play and read books and do bath time. I have an amazing community of people who love my daughter and have empowered me to be able to work and go to school. We get together so that only one person has to cook dinner, or one person can finally tackle the mountain of laundry they have, or I work on my computer in the living room; there's only one house to clean up and all of the kids get to spend time together. Being able to schedule my own hours so I can continue to be a part of this community is huge to me and a huge drive in my desire to work myself.

My goal is to work with children and teenagers. I currently have my Kentucky Youth Peer Support Specialist Certification, and work doing mental health evaluations on children as a behavioral health technician. I would like to specialize in Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and Autism and work to help children and teenagers find coping skills to manage their symptoms before trying medication. I think that Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is overly medicated in young children and that there are ways to help manage the symptoms and develop skills to overcome them without immediately trying medication. I struggled a lot growing up with mental health issues and was overly medicated from a relatively young age for mood disorders. I think I could make a large impact in a few kids' lives by working directly with them and their parents to create a home that is more adapted to their abilities. One day I would like to write a book with what I have personally experienced and what I learned working with these kids to try to normalize coping strategies and accommodations in the home instead of jumping straight to medication to manage behaviors. One great example of accommodations in the home that I recommend is a picture to do list in the bathroom if a child is struggling with self-care routines. It takes less than 30 minutes to put together and print out, provides a clear visual instruction of what needs to be done and helps to build the habit. An alternative to this is strategic placement of items in the bathroom, a child that is not remembering to brush their hair certainly won't remember if the brush is in a drawer completely out of sight. There is also a difference between a child that is reluctant to engage in a task because of sensory issues etc and a child who is genuinely forgetting, I try to get to the root of the issue with the task before making any suggestions on what I think would help in their follow up report. I enjoy working with families to find solutions and involving kids in what their day looks like. I think by normalizing alternatives to "doing things correctly" we can impact a lot of children's lives, because not everyone's brain works the same way and not everyone's bathroom needs to look the same way. This is obviously a really small and specific example, but I think it really exemplifies what I want to do and how I want to work with families to improve the functioning in their household.