My mother has been the source of my greatest strength and I continue to be proud of who she is. My parents divorced when I was in middle school, but even before they officially separated, I only remember being raised by one parent-my mom. As I look back on who raised me to be the strong, independent woman that I try to be now, I understand that all those lessons were taught to me by my mom. She raised two kids by herself while working three jobs to afford rent and anything we needed. She never let us feel the stress of money troubles, and always encouraged us to find extracurricular activities that made us happy. She supported me when I took up horse riding, which was expensive, but she always made shopping for the gear I needed a fun time. My mother never spoke badly about my father, even though he gave up his legal rights as a parent when I was 13, and I have never seen him since. He refused to pay his required child support for my brother and I, which increased the financial stress my mother carried. Through all of this, she refused to say a bad word about him so we could make our own opinions about him. My mother has struggled more than she needed to in order to provide the best childhood for my brother and I, and I wish to make her proud and her sacrifice worth it by pursuing a college education and hopefully becoming successful enough to provide a stable place to live, as she is currently living with her mother-my grandmother- due to financial struggle. My mother has always pushed us to be creative, and I have pursued that creative freedom in my chosen college degree. I am double majoring in Apparel Design and Merchandising. This requires a very full course load and little free time. I also work on campus, as well as being a member of a school club. I wanted to fully embrace the college experience so I could gain all the skills, experiences, and connections I need to thrive in the work force when I graduate. I am currently entering my last year of college and will graduate in the spring of 2026. I have pushed myself in my education because I want to make my mom proud of me, and I hope as she sits in the audience of my graduation ceremony, that she will look back on all the struggles, breakdowns, and calls that started with me crying from the stress and know it was all worth it.

I have a family that has been heavily impacted by heart disease. My mother's fathers had 4 brothers and 1 sister, and most of them have had operations done on their hearts, whether those procedures were stents or bypasses. My grandfather acted as a father to me until I was 16 and he passed away in cardiac surgery. He had gone through a 5 bypass surgery just 4 months before. His surgeon told him to completely change his diet by becoming vegan, to help his heart recover. He had never gone a day without some sort of meat protein, so this was very difficult for him, so he asked that I help him in his struggle to change his diet. We spent weeks gathering cookbooks and trying new recipes and protein options. We would cook dinner together and find out what types of meat substitutes we hated(jackfruit). I started to eat solely vegan food to support my grandfather, and I hope I was able to provide strength while he was struggling to change his habits that had been in place for over 60 years. Over the next 4 months, my grandfather lost a lot of weight, which his surgeon was very happy about, since it put less stress on his heart. Unfortunately, his heart was still struggling, and he went back into surgery on October 28th, 2018 and his heart failed during the procedure. I was at the hospital with most of my family waiting for him to get out of surgery, and I can remember almost everything that happened when the surgeon came out to tell us that his heart had stopped. I remember the act of kindness of a woman who was walking by and stopped to hug me and gave me some support. Since he passed, I have continued to eat as a vegetarian, and have put lots of thought into my nutrition to try to help my heart's health. I know my whole family in much more conscious of what we eat and how we exercise to hopefully delay any heart complications we will face as we get older. I still struggle with the loss of my grandfather every day, and I will never stop regretting that we didn't start changing his diet or eating habits sooner, so we could have had more time with him. I was 16 when he passed, and it made me much more aware of the health complications that I faced due to my family's genetics. I hope I have started soon enough by changing my lifestyle to hold off any severe heart complications and I will continue to follow a heart healthy diet and exercise routine while hopefully making my grandfather proud.

@emilybonora

I grew up as a plus-size person and finding my sense of style while I was in high school was almost impossible when there was nothing in my size. I grew up borrowing my mother's clothes when I wanted to wear something cute, but her sense of style was not my own, so even if I put together a cute outfit, I didn't feel like myself. When I got my own source of income, I discovered online shopping and websites that had clothes that fit my body and my style. However, the quality of the clothing was very poor and the clothes pieces would fall apart after a couple of uses or shrink when being washed. plus size fashion show It is very important to me for any plus-size person to be able to see a fashion show where the models look like them. I believe that fashion brands should be showing what their clothes look like on a wide range of body types, and having different styles of clothing that fit different body types best, because there is a wide variety of body shapes when a person is plus size. I hope to one day be able to host or see a fashion show that has all types of body types, including plus-size, mid-size, straight-size and disabled bodies. Every person deserves the chance to see their body type on a runway, wearing clothes that would fit their body and style. In developing any plus size clothes, I always go over the measurements for the sleeves because I have been in many scenarios where I was trying on clothes in a store, and even if the body fit, the sleeves were almost always too tight, which made me feel very self-conscious when I would walk out to show my mom, and it was very visible that the arms were uncomfortably tight. This caused a severe dislike and hate for my arms, which I have spent a long time working through and changed into loving every part of myself. With my clothing brand, I am going to be very aware of what fabric I will be using to make clothes so that every piece is of a good quality that feels luxurious against the skin. I have often looked at my smaller friends clothes and felt them and have never understood why the materials their clothes were made of could not also be made into plus-size clothes. I have never been able to find a good quality plain cotton t-shirt for plus-size people, which is very frustrating. I hope to be able to provide that for plus size people, so they can have comfortable and well-fitting clothes that will be able to last a long time so that investment in their clothes will be worth it. I am going to be very aware when pricing the clothing I design because I want my items to be as affordable as possible. I want my clothing to be as accessible as possible, so I will try to keep the cost as low as I can while also keeping in mind the pricing of the quality fabric and the time it would take to make it. I often run into situations when the quality of a product does not justify the price, even if the item is my style. I hope anyone who would buy my clothes would be satisfied with the price and quality of my work.

My passion is fashion and costume design. I have changed my major in the past year to fashion design in order to focus on my passion and help other people like me to feel comfortable and seen in their bodies while wearing clothes in their own style. I am a plus-size person and have been plus-size for most of my life. When I was in high school, I realized that I was not able to buy fun or trendy clothes or clothes that fit my style because of my size, so I started to design and make my own clothes. I felt like I had more control over what I could wear if I could make my own clothing or alter second-hand clothes to fit me. My mother is a single mother who raised 2 kids by herself with little help. She always tried to hide how difficult it was financially for her when we would go back to school shopping, so I felt better that making my own clothes lessened the cost for my mom. This means that I have always chosen the cheapest education option as well. I went to community college for my first two years before transferring to the university that I am attending now. Now that I am paying for college, I need extra help in covering those costs. I would say I am probably more right-brained, as I have lots of creative hobbies such as embroidering and knitting. I grew up going to quilt shows with my mom and grandmother, because they work together as a fabric business. They would have a booth at a lot of quilt shows, and I would go with them if my school schedule allowed it. My mom would buy me a small project to keep me interested. These projects were all little handstitched crafts that I would work on and learn new stitches. I decided to continue making crafts such as those when I got older and have found a passion in adding little embroidered details onto my clothes or purses. I use my left brain when thinking through any purchase I make, whether it comes to specific groceries or deciding whether the quality of a clothing item would be appropriate for the price. I like to buy things online, where I can clearly see all the items in my cart and the total price, so I can take out whatever I decide is not worth the price.