By definition, a Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner (PMHNP) is a registered nurse who specializes in mental health care across the lifespan. This is the career path that calls to me. PMHNPs assess, diagnose, and treat mental health disorders, provide crisis support, and medication management. In becoming a Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner, I aim to not only treat patients, but to advocate for their right to choose their treatment path. While mental health practitioners are typically trained in either conventional or holistic treatment methods, the average American is looking for a marriage of the two. The beginning of my journey to becoming a psychiatric nurse practitioner was entirely introspective. I was a child with high ACEs (adverse childhood experiences) and low self-esteem. I grew up with parents who had depression and compulsive behaviors. I experienced a lot of fear, shame, and confusion as I silently navigated the realities of their conditions. It was hard to talk to explain to my friends that they couldn't come over because of hoarding or because one of my parents was in a pattern of isolation. My own depression went undiagnosed for over a decade and I struggled in grade school with self-harming behaviors. As a kid, professional help wasn’t available. I went through seasons of chronic pain, chronic illness, academic performance issues, and financial turmoil that can all be tied to the emotional chaos of my childhood home. While I can openly discuss mental health with some family members today, it used to be a completely taboo subject. My journey into the professional world of mental health was sparked by an earnest desire to understand my own story and to experience a more regulated self. After graduating from Belmont University in 2016, I became a Board-Certified Music Therapist. The most rewarding part of my job was leading in-patient and out-patient psychiatric group sessions. In 2018, I shifted my work to public health initiatives and developed a mobile food bank model. The food bank delivered over eighty-thousand pounds of fresh produce, free of cost, to Nashville families living in food deserts. I saw a need for healthcare providers capable of addressing both mental health challenges and underlying medical conditions like diabetes and obesity through a culturally sensitive lens. Many community members were genuine in their desires to improve their health, but did not know where to start. Others struggled to keep up with their ever-growing lists of prescriptions, many of which were addictive or riddled with unpleasant side-effects. My drive to become a Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner stems from a desire to provide patients with options for high quality pharmaceutical as well as non-pharmaceutical care. Ultimately, I believe that patients deserve to be well informed of their options for treatment and to have a high quality of life. For this reason, I am delighted to share that I have been accepted into the #2 PMHNP program in the nation, Vanderbilt University. I am energized by the prospect of participating in an integrative and holistic model of mental health care. I aim to treat psychiatric conditions and to bridge the care gap between physical health and mental health.

As a young Girl Scout, I often heard the phrase “always leave a place better than you found it”. It wasn’t enough to simply abstain from causing damage. I was being commissioned to actively contribute to the betterment of my environment and fellow man. This is what kindness is: extending consideration beyond that which is self-serving. For this reason, I consciously choose to behold others with compassion and curiosity. Furthermore, I choose to exemplify generosity of time, attention, space, and resources. While kindness is often mistaken for weakness, a thoughtful look into the heart of the matter reveals that operating with kindness takes great strength and tenacity. Though I’ve been exercising my capacities for consideration since my early years as a Girl Scout, my greatest opportunities to extend kindness arrived on the heels of the COVID-19 pandemic. On March 3rd of 2020, I arrived on site to the North Nashville tornado crisis zone early in the morning before Metro first responders. I was armed with a food truck full of blankets, canned food, and water bottles and a mental list of families and elderly neighbors I was determined to locate. I spent the next 17 days sorting through the devastation of dangling power lines, tossed cars, stunned residents, and gutted houses. Along with my 4 coworkers, I ran a disaster zone triage hub from which the West and North Nashville Police Precincts and a revolving door of over 7,000 volunteers performed debris clearing, wellness checks, and door to door delivery of generators and rescue packs. These were long days in which I witnessed more structural and emotional devastation than I have ever seen in my life. I found inspiration and motivation in the anecdotes of survival and deep expressions of gratitude offered up by the tornado victims. In just over two weeks, we manually cleared 10 square blocks of debris clearing the way for emergency vehicles and phase two supply deliveries. On March 20th of 2020, Nashville announced a shelter-in-place ordinance. Our bustling disaster zone became a ghost town overnight–as did the rest of the city. At the time I was employed as a minimum wage non-profit program coordinator running a multi-site food rescue program which provided produce and health foods to Nashville families living in certified food deserts. The volunteer force upon which myself and my neighbors relied – composed mainly of church congregants and college students with community service requirements – dissipated instantly and I was left alone to handle the heavy manual labor. For the first few weeks, I would stay up late at night reading internet articles with ever changing covid safety guidelines, ensuring that my efforts were CDC compliant. For many months, PPE was either unavailable or reserved for hospital workers. I reached out to local Nashville fashion houses to commission the production of fabric masks to protect my coworkers, law enforcement partners, and remaining volunteers. I would drive to Trader Joes, Whole Foods, and Costco and move several hundred pounds of food by hand from the loading dock into our retrofitted sprinter van, (affectionately named Big Bertha). I did this repeatedly, one box at a time in rain, shine, or ice 9 times a week. I knew the work we were doing was life sustaining for many Nashville families, especially in the wake of damaged roofs and furloughed jobs. The intensity of my work continued like this for the next year and a half in which I moved roughly 300,000lb of food. In Fall of 2020, Metro Nashville Public Schools announced that classes would commence in a virtual learning format. It was a difficult adjustment for many families. I recall my coworkers sharing stories about trading off “school duty” with their spouses and trying every trick in the book to help their kids stay focused, engaged, and socially connected. For the Preston Taylor and North Nashville families we served, the situation was much more dire. These households were typically run by single mothers working multiple jobs to support multiple kids. For many, staying home to supervise virtual school was out of the question. Others faced hurdles like lack of wifi, computer literacy issues, and safety concerns in the home like faulty plumbing, lack of adult supervision, or disconnected heat and power. Hunger was also a common issue, as families living below the poverty line tend to rely on school lunches in order to meet their children’s most basic nutritional needs. With these families in mind, myself and 4 coworkers started a Virtual Host School which served roughly 30 students ranging from kindergarten to high school seniors. We turned card tables into students desks, raised money to purchase laptops, and ran our own passenger van bus route before and after school. Every day I served 30 cold breakfasts, 30 hot lunches, and prepped 100+ snack bags to provide for our students and their hungry siblings. Each week, more kids would show up as word spread amongst neighbors, siblings, and cousins that there was “a place to go” and free food. We did loads of laundry, unclogged toilets, and handed out free hygiene products. We installed a playground and cleaned up skinned knees. We curated a children’s library filled with black authors and black protagonists with kinky hair and relatable narratives. We kept up with homework assignments, tutored STEM, and did our best to stand in for parent-teacher conferences and IT crises. We broke up fights, proctored exams, counseled teenagers relationships, and took turns leading P.E. class. We did this full time for two semesters, finally closing the school at the end of April 2021. This year, I developed a written list of my personal values: kindness, growth, peace, wisdom, and health. I see kindness as a way to maintain my hope in humanity. Without it, I am lost. Operating from these principles has allowed me to embrace the indomitable nature of the human spirit.

Sometimes it can feel like the loudest voices in life are the ones of doubt, ridicule, and criticism. As a black woman, I am confronted daily with stereotypes about my anger, my body, and my intelligence. Sometimes the negativity comes from the media, but hateful voices can originate from somewhere closer to home. I used to find myself utterly shaken by a few biased words from well-meaning teachers, acquaintances, and neighbors. I’ve long since learned the importance of protecting my inner peace and filling my environment with words of encouragement, sustenance, and meaning. This year, as an act of self-love, I developed a written list of my personal values: kindness, growth, peace, wisdom, and health. Then I took some time to clearly define what each of these words means to me. Operating from these principles has brought so much joy and healing to my life, allowing me to embrace the indomitable nature of the human spirit. I feel sure of who I am and am able to make significant life decisions with confidence. When I examine the Eight Attributes of Black Excellence, I resonate most strongly with number seven (Develop and Possess Grit) and number eight (Dare to Take Calculated Risks) and am able to draw parallels to my values of kindness and wisdom. Kindness is often mistaken for weakness. A thoughtful look into the heart of kindness reveals that to wield it consistently and with great impact, one must embrace the seventh attribute and possess a great deal of grit. I see kindness as a way to maintain my hope in humanity. Without it, I am lost. For this reason, I consciously choose to behold others with compassion and curiosity. Furthermore, I choose to exemplify generosity of time, attention, space, and resources. On March 3rd of 2020, I arrived on site to the North Nashville tornado crisis zone early in the morning before Metro first responders. I was just a volunteer armed with a food truck full of blankets, canned food, water bottles, and a mental list of families and elderly neighbors I was determined to locate. I spent the next 17 days sorting through the devastation of dangling power lines, tossed cars, stunned residents, and gutted houses. Along with four fellow food ministry volunteers, we ran a disaster zone triage hub. Our hub hosted the West and North Nashville Police Precincts and a revolving door of over 7,000 volunteers who performed debris clearing, wellness checks, and door to door delivery of generators and rescue packs. These were long days in which I witnessed more structural and emotional devastation than I have ever seen in my life, but our efforts changed the lives of hundreds of people. Executing kindness and compassion at this level takes real grit and tenacity. It is not for the weak of heart, mind, or soul: possessing grit allows us to be better versions of ourselves today than we were yesterday. I greatly value wisdom. To be wise is to be humbly connected to truth and power greater than ourselves. For this reason, I enthusiastically pursue the integration of knowledge with experience. Furthermore, I choose to operate within my capacities and my boundaries. As a recovering people pleaser, embracing wisdom as a value has served me well. Wisdom has taught me to protect my time and my energy, to seek counsel from my elders, to give back and encourage young people, and to approach life with a healthy amount of caution. As I continue to pursue my dreams of embodying Black Excellence as a healthcare provider, it is time to grow in my capacity to take calculated risks. I intend to begin my career as a PMHNP in a role that provides exposure to patients of varied cultural, ethnic, religious, and socioeconomic backgrounds. In ten years, I see myself opening a holistic wellness and trauma care clinic, offering pharmaceutical and evidence-based non-pharmaceutical treatment options. As a more seasoned provider, I would like to conduct research that better illuminates the relationship between attachment styles, socio-economic conditions, and chronic psychiatric conditions. I find myself energized by the prospect of participating in an integrative and holistic model of mental health care. Pursuing these endeavors will take an ever-increasing tolerance for calculated risk. For this reason, I am particularly grateful to black physicians and specialists who have affirmed my professional aspirations through their respect, time, energy, and valuable insights. Together, with their support, I can dare to ask more from myself.

My 4th grade teacher peered over me with a deeply concerned look, fussing about something. I don’t recall. Curled up on the floor in the hallway–knees to chest, my tiny fists clenched–any words spoken were completely lost on me. My body felt tight and empty with skin on fire. My voice was stuck. Surely something was in my throat? I felt far away and so very small. This is my earliest memory of depression. It was the first time the “dark cloud”, as I used to call it, came to visit me. Over time, my depressive disorder and dissociative episodes grew more frequent. My knowledge of mental health began whenI took a Psychology class in high school. Suddenly, I understood that disorders of the mind were just as real as disorders of the physical body. In my earnest efforts to understand myself and the world around me, I became fixated on sleuthing out a clinical diagnosis. This “Sherlock Holmes” approach to psychology carried into my college years. My attempts to provide an explanation for any and all human behavior gave me a false sense of safety and control. Meanwhile, my depression carried on unchecked and unacknowledged, evolving silently like mold growing under a rug. On the surface, I appeared to be thriving. As a woman and a black student, I faced unique challenges and expectations that left me believing I had no other choice but to appear to thrive. I founded a new club, tutored my peers, volunteered in the community, held a job, and always contributed to classroom discussions. My hair, makeup, and vintage style clothing were always on point. Under the surface, however, I was not okay. My bank account was overdrawn and my hair was falling out. I struggled to get out of bed nearly every morning. I was constantly emailing professors with lame excuses and asking for deadline extensions. My appetite was a pendulum. Some weeks I ate my emotions while some weeks I missed meal after meal until my blood sugar plummeted. My final grades always reflected the hidden mental health struggle of each semester, and I felt deep shame about that. Today, my approach to mental health affords grace and compassion for the human condition. I believe that our mental status is dynamic and complex. While there is a place and purpose for clinical diagnosis, our sense of self should not revolve around a static label. I believe that we should view mental health through the lens of wellness, rather than a paradigm centered on disorders and illness. In other words, mental health care should affirm personal and communal values and increase quality of life. As an act of self-care, I have refined and developed my own personal values: health, growth, kindness, peace, and wisdom. Operating from these principles has brought so much joy and healing to my life. While my capacity for professional and academic achievement has grown as a result of this shift, my most precious achievements are no longer about grades or a perfect resume. I am most proud of my ability to approach my inner world with curiosity–rather than criticism. My loneliness teaches me that I need connection and perhaps to pick up the phone and tell a trusted friend that I’m struggling. I’ve learned that being heard can be healing in and of itself. I cherish my breathing exercises, therapy sessions, meal prep routines, and morning walks without my phone. Most of all, I am proud that my “dark cloud” is now an old friend who visits briefly on occasion and then goes on their way without a fight.