The loss of several close family members in 2021 have impacted the way I view what’s important in my life and motivated me to continue pursuing my dreams. In 2021, I lost my grandfather, grandmother, and I miscarried my baby. To say that it was difficult year is an understatement. My grandfather passed away first, we knew his health wasn’t in the best condition but it was still sudden. He called my mother to tell her he had been bleeding. In the time it took her to drive him from his home to the hospital, he was unresponsive. The hospital put him on life support and it seemed like with each hour another organ was failing. That night the hospital staff told us to start preparing for the decision to remove him from life support. My mother had completely broken, she wasn’t able to make the decision and I didn’t want that burden on her. I stepped up and made the decision for our family to have it removed. My role in his death and the grieving process was to be my family’s rock. I didn’t have the opportunity to grieve myself. A week later I found out I was six weeks pregnant. We were so excited to be growing our family of three to four. We wanted to wait until I was out of my first trimester to share the news with our families but we couldn’t contain it and only made it two weeks before telling them. It wasn’t even a week after that, that I miscarried. My grandma was the first person I told about the miscarriage because she really was my best friend and we told each other everything. At the time, she was in the hospital with Covid and Pneumonia but she seemed to be making a full recovery. That was the last thing I told her before she passed away unexpectedly from pneumonia complications. I wish I would have talked about how much she meant to me, how much I loved her, anything else besides bad news. The year 2021 taught me that anything can happen at any given minute. The death of my grandparents and my miscarriage made me confront my regrets. Like I should have visited them more, I should have called more, and any regret a person could possibly have. During my grief I identified what mattered most to me and that was my family. I don’t want to lose another person close to me and have those same regrets. I started focusing on reaching out to my family more often and spending more quality time with my four year old daughter. Their passing also motivated me to keep reaching my dream. Since I was a little my dream has always been to be an attorney. My grandparents were the biggest supporters of my dreams, they never failed to let me know I could do anything I set my mind to or express how proud they were of me. I remained in school throughout the trying times in 2021 and am still currently enrolled maintaining a 3.4 GPA. No matter the circumstances I will not stop pursuing my dream until I’m a lawyer. I told them I would be an attorney one day and I want to honor them by showing them.

I support equality and diversity by speaking up when I see injustice and creating space in my life where any individual would be welcomed. I was raised in a household where my parents were both woman. The woman that my mother married was in the room when I was born, so there was never a time in my life that I didn’t view that as acceptable or normal. I have earlier memories where our family would be either out at dinner or an amusement park and strangers would make rude faces or comments towards them. At the time I didn’t understand it was because they were in a same sex marriage. As I’ve gotten older I can clearly see the injustices in this world. I would never want to make someone feel less than, over what to me is trivial things. Like gender, race, or sexual orientation. I don’t allow shallow minded people in my circle because I don’t want to be associated with that. I don’t want to constantly debate that every individual deserves the same freedoms, respect and compassion. When I do witness injustice taking place I’m the first person to speak up and defend the situation. If I chose to sit back by not saying anything I would be enabling that person’s behavior which I won’t allow. I still maintain respect and integrity when doing so. I am using my voice to educate in hopes that they see their views in a different light.

My reason for suffering with PTSD was not from military affiliation. To be frank, I was not even aware that you could have PTSD unless you were in the military until I was diagnosed at the age of sixteen by my therapist. My PTSD stemmed from witnessing my younger sister in her attempt of suicide and watching my family frantically cutting the rope to get her down and perform CPR on her lifeless body. It happened 6 days before my sixteenth birthday and the experiences I faced afterwards I brushed off as depression. The night terrors, night sweats, panic attacks, hyperventilating from crying while asleep was all just brushed off. It reached a point that it was affecting me socially by causing me extreme social anxiety and that’s when I chose to seek help professionally. I don’t really know what I learned from battling with PTSD. Maybe that our minds are only capable of so much trauma before it just breaks. That trauma can manifest itself in ways you wouldn’t imagine and emerge when you least expect it. Or maybe that the experiences you try so hard to move past your entire body remembers so vividly and won’t let go. I use my experience with PTSD to make people aware that it can affect anyone. I also use my experience to empathize with people and their trauma. You may look at someone’s trauma compared to yours and assume “that’s not that bad,” or “they will get over it,” but you truly never know what someone is dealing with. We are all given a plate to carry our load, some big and some small. Some individuals get multiple and can juggle them while others aren’t able. At any point either person could drop and break their plate. It’s important that regardless, we offer support to any individual in their personal trauma and urge them to seek professional help.