I remember exactly where I was when I got the call. My children and I were at the St. Denis Fair, down the street from our home in Havertown, Pennsylvania. Every year we’d walk there with their neighborhood friends. The kids loved it. This time was different. The air felt thick as my mother shared the news. The rides seemed louder and faster than five minutes before. I wasn’t crying yet. I was in total shock. Three to six months at best, she said. My dad was the local appliance repairman in our little two-stoplight town in North Carolina. But he didn’t just repair appliances; he helped repair people’s lives with generosity and love. When someone couldn’t afford a refrigerator or washing machine, he’d fix one himself and give it to them. Even after his diagnosis, he continued working and helping those in need. Dad had faith like no one I’d ever known. He loved the Lord and believed God would heal his glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer with no cure. Some might say we were lucky. He was accepted into Duke’s cancer research program, and we had him longer than originally predicted. I remember just as well where I was when I learned they’d exhausted every treatment. The best they could offer was another couple of months. We were en route home to Pennsylvania from our vacation in Corolla. We stopped to visit my sister who lived in Moyock, NC. That’s when I heard the news. It was like the St. Denis Fair all over again. Only this time I knew it was to be as stated. A few months later, I took family medical leave to care for Dad while my husband cared for my children in Pennsylvania. During Dad’s final months, I was the only person he’d awaken to. He knew my voice. I’d read scripture and sing to him. I held his hand as he took his last breath and felt him leave this earth. Dad, the line at your viewing wrapped around the funeral home. Your memory board was flooded with messages from people whose lives you’d touched. You hadn’t just repaired appliances. You’d made life a little more bearable for people who had nowhere else to turn. Grief is an ugly beast. It can rob you of far more than loss of a loved one. The grief that followed reached into every corner of my life, cost me my marriage, and my job. I was lost. It took me years to accept your death. I still can’t fully understand why someone as amazing as you had to leave this world in such an awful way. I’m the age you were when you left us. I have finally realized what you wanted me to see. I have a gift, much like the gift you shared with others. I embody empathy, just as you did. Psychology can teach me the why behind human behavior, but living has taught me how much compassion matters. That’s why I’ve returned to college. You showed me love is something we do. I’ve learned that love can live on even when life rips us apart. Like the plaque that hung on the wall during your illness, Albert Camus’ quote holds great truth “In the midst of winter, I’ve found within me an invincible summer”. I think that’s what you tried so desperately to tell me when you could no longer speak. I only have to see the person you saw when you looked at me. Cancer may have taken you, but your legacy of love, will forever live on.

For years, I believed there was something fundamentally wrong with me. I struggled with depression and dissociation throughout much of my teenage and adult life. Over the years, I received numerous diagnoses, tried different medications, and sought psychiatric treatment, yet one significant pattern remained largely unaddressed: my menstrual cycle could dramatically intensify symptoms I was already struggling to manage. When my children were young, those periods could become frightening. There were times when thoughts of harming myself became severe enough that I sought psychiatric help. There were also times when rage seemed to consume the person and mother I wanted to be, leaving tremendous remorse behind. I loved my children deeply. The thought that this might simply be the mother they were destined to have was unbearable. I did not want to feel the way I did, and because of them, I kept searching for help. I also experienced severe postpartum depression, yet even with years of treatment for my mental health, the possible relationship between my psychological symptoms and hormonal changes was not something adequately recognized or explained to me. Eventually, I found a psychiatrist who understood that connection. With the right formulation of medication, talk therapy, and a better understanding of how my symptoms changed throughout my cycle, I finally began to feel more like a human fit to live than a rage-filled individual who had no business being a mom. That experience is what draws me to PMDD and PME and why this area matters so deeply to me. At 52, I am pursuing an Interdisciplinary Studies degree with a focus on psychology. I do not have published research or a professional portfolio in women’s health. What I have is firsthand knowledge of what can happen when someone repeatedly seeks help while an important piece of the puzzle remains unseen. I also know what can happen when one properly informed clinician finally recognizes what others have missed. Long before I knew the terminology surrounding PMDD and PME, I was trying to understand the patterns within my own life. I searched for information, asked questions, and tried to understand why symptoms that were already difficult could become almost unrecognizable during certain times of the month. My experience has made me deeply interested in how women’s mental and reproductive health intersect. As I continue my education in psychology, one area I want to explore is how menstrual-cycle screening and symptom tracking could become a more routine part of mental-health assessment. When someone seeks treatment for depression, anxiety, dissociation, severe mood changes, or other recurring psychiatric symptoms, asking whether those symptoms fluctuate with the menstrual cycle could provide information that might otherwise be missed. This is not about reducing women’s mental health to hormones. It is about seeing women as whole human beings whose physical and psychological health do not exist separately from one another. I cannot change the years I spent believing the worst moments of those cycles reflected who I was. I cannot take back moments with my children that I wish had been different. But I can decide what I do with what those years taught me. I want my education to help create a future in which another woman does not spend years believing she is failing as a mother, a partner, or simply a human being because no one recognized the pattern in front of them. Sometimes the difference between continuing to suffer and finally receiving meaningful help is one clinician who knows what to look for. I know because, eventually, I found mine.

I have never been particularly good at fitting into boxes. I danced ballet for years and still love to dance. I write because sometimes words reach places ordinary conversation cannot, and I believe art can give meaning to people who are struggling to find their way. I owned an antique store and loved discovering value and beauty in things someone else had overlooked. Give me a patch of dirt and I will happily turn it into a vegetable garden, grown without pesticides or chemicals, because I care about what comes from the earth and what I put back into it. I am equally content sitting with Judi, my 84-year-old former English teacher, helping clean her home and listening as she shares stories from a lifetime I don’t want anyone to forget. I am a mother and grandmother, entrepreneur, writer, gardener, dancer, caregiver, student, and perpetual question-asker. At 52, I am also a first-generation college student at William Peace University pursuing an Interdisciplinary Studies degree with a focus on psychology. For much of my life, these interests seemed like separate pieces of me. Education is helping me understand that perhaps they never were. They are rooted in people, meaning, growth, and my belief that something - or - someone should never be dismissed, simply because another person fails to see its value. That is also why an interdisciplinary education makes sense for the work I hope to do. Human beings do not exist in neat categories, and neither do the problems affecting their lives. Psychology can help me understand the person, but poverty, education, housing, culture, family, geography, and opportunity all shape that person’s circumstances. I want to understand how those pieces intersect so I can help create solutions that address the whole rather than one isolated part. My greatest dream is to create a Village of Hope for displaced women. I envision more than temporary shelter. I imagine a community where women have room to breathe and begin building again, with access to education, psychological support, practical resources, creative expression, gardens, and people who recognize their potential before circumstances convince them they have none. I want to bring that same philosophy to rural communities, where lack of access can too easily be mistaken for lack of ambition. I believe meaningful service begins by listening to people, understanding the barriers they actually face, and helping create opportunities that allow them to build rather than simply receive. This scholarship speaks of encouraging young adults to explore diverse interests, remain curious, and serve their communities. At 52, I cannot convincingly call myself a young adult, and I won’t try. But curiosity does not have an expiration date. Neither do ambition, purpose, or the ability to make an impact. I would never argue that I am more deserving than a younger student. I am asking to be considered just as deserving. I have dreams that require an education, work I intend to do, communities I hope to serve, and plenty of future in which to make good on that investment. Maybe I was interdisciplinary long before I knew there was a degree for it. Perhaps I was never meant to fit into a box. I was meant to learn how all the pieces fit together.

The Advantage of Lived ResilienceI Ideserve this scholarship because my education is not a tool for passive advancement; it is an active investment in a proven survivor. What sets me apart from other applicants is that my academic achievements are not built on a foundation of stability, but on a testament of sheer resilience. When I first graduated from high school, I could not afford traditional college. Refusing to let financial barriers halt my progress, I pivoted to cosmetology school to gain tangible skills and enter the workforce. I built upon that foundation by transitioning into retail cosmetics, eventually rising to become a personal wardrobe consultant for Nordstrom. Driven by a relentless entrepreneurial spirit, I eventually leveraged these skills to open my own small antiques business. However, launching just before the pandemic, the venture was met with the sudden and devastating economic shutdown of COVID-19. Like many small business owners, I watched my hard work collapse under the weight of market conditions completely out of my control. With no financial safety net or family assets to fall back on, I lost everything and entered homelessness. Today, as I pursue my Interdisciplinary Studies degree with a focus on psychology at William Peace University, I am simultaneously navigating the profound challenges of housing insecurity. While many students compete with the advantage of financial security and parental backing, I compete with the unmatched grit of someone who studies, dreams, and executes while rebuilding a life from the absolute ground up. My advantage is that I have already been tested by extreme adversity, and I have chosen growth every single time. My career trajectory gives me a distinct competitive edge in the entrepreneurial landscape. Surviving the collapse of a business during a global health crisis did not break my ambition; it gave me an invaluable, real-world education in market volatility, economic risk, and crisis management. I have experienced the highest highs of corporate consultation at Nordstrom and the lowest lows of economic displacement. Combining that practical business ownership experience with the study of psychological behaviors at William Peace University gives me a profound understanding of human motivation and organizational resilience. I do not just understand business frameworks theoretically; I understand them through the lens of lived experience at every socioeconomic level. This makes me a stronger, more empathetic, and more adaptable leader than anyone who has only studied business from the safety of a traditional classroom. This unique blend of corporate consultation, first-hand business ownership, and psychological education allows me to see potential where traditional metrics see risk. My lived experience has taught me that individuals who struggle are not inherently bad, just as those with financial fortune are not inherently good. Failure is often a matter of timing and economic circumstance, not character or capability. This perspective forms the blueprint of the organizational psychology consulting firm I will build after graduation. My business will deliberately offer employment, training, and mentorship to those with non-traditional paths, prior business failures, or histories of homelessness. I want to build an enterprise filled with individuals who possess a fierce desire for self-betterment but simply lack access to opportunity. Winning this scholarship does more than ease a financial burden; it directly fuels an entrepreneur who is already forward-focused on systemic change. Many applicants offer future potential, but I offer a proven track record of maintaining a relentless focus on higher education through the darkest corners of adversity. I deserve this investment because I will use the financial freedom it provides to finish my degree, build a high-revenue enterprise, and immediately pull others out of the dark. My light does not flicker under pressure—it sharpens, and this scholarship will ensure it shines at its absolute brightest.

Someone once told me I wasn’t college material. For the majority of my life, I believed this to be an absolute truth. I accepted it blindly from someone who should have wanted to see me prosper. It took many years, immense determination, and a lot of life experience to unlearn that false narrative. At 19, I left my two-stoplight hometown in North Carolina. While I did not believe I belonged in college, I knew I needed to learn. Moving across multiple states, I immersed myself in different cultures, raised two incredible children independently as a single mother, and built a successful career as a wardrobe stylist for high-net-worth individuals and ran an antiquities business. These roles required an intuitive understanding of people and the value of history—traits I now bring to my Interdisciplinary Studies degree with a focus on Psychology.My journey is about the radical act of reopening doors that have been shut for too long. Over the years, my resolve has been tested by severe health challenges—including a hearing disability, spinal disc degeneration, major depressive disorder, PTSD, and adult ADHD. At age 45, I escaped an abusive situation and moved back to North Carolina to rebuild my life from scratch. Later, during the pandemic, I lost my business and have spent the past two years navigating the constant uncertainty of housing and food insecurity. Yet, I refuse to let this recent season of hardship dictate my destination. I am not starting from scratch; I am evolving, applying the same entrepreneurial spirit that fueled my business into a commitment to academic excellence.I believe in the power of positivity and the reverse domino effect. As a child, I loved creating intricate domino mazes with my father. I can remember the overwhelming sadness that hit after watching the last domino fall—feeling that we’d spent so much time standing them all up just to watch them collapse. Today, I see our broken society as a downward chain reaction. But I believe it takes just one person who is strong enough to start the process of standing them back up. With each additional set of hands that comes after, the lifting becomes easy and seamless. I can be the one who starts because I know I am strong enough to encourage and hold the weight of others until they are strong themselves.I have spent my life practicing this philosophy, proving that true selflessness is a radical willingness to give when someone else’s need outweighs our own comfort. During my years of entrepreneurial success, a professional colleague faced a devastating separation, leaving him without transit and unable to pick up his young son for custody visits. Recognizing the psychological toll, I chose to gift him one of my own cars. Later, when a young working mother navigating English as a second language began struggling due to failing eyesight, I quietly purchased her prescription eyeglasses. In both moments, I chose to hold their weight so they wouldn't fall.Now, at 51, I am no longer afraid. I know with absolute certainty that I am college material, but securing financial aid is necessary for my academic survival. Winning this scholarship is the vital bridge between my current struggle and the professional stability I am working toward. I want to be the definition of what courage looks like: an entrepreneur and student who has the audacity to study the complexities of the human mind while fighting for a place to call home. With this degree, I am ready to turn my resilience into a new legacy, blaze a path for my adult children, and prove it is never too late to stand again.Key

Returning to college as an adult is a deliberate choice to reclaim a trajectory that was temporarily interrupted. For years, I built a successful career as a personal wardrobe stylist and ran an antiquities business. These roles required a deep intuitive understanding of people—a trait I now bring to my Interdisciplinary Studies degree with a focus on Psychology. However, for the past two years, I have navigated the challenges of housing insecurity. While this chapter has tested my resolve, it has not erased my capacity for empathy. Instead, it has solidified my belief that true selflessness is a radical willingness to give when someone else’s need outweighs our own comfort.My philosophy of selflessness is rooted in a childhood memory. As a child, I loved creating intricate domino mazes with my father. It was meticulous, difficult work to place each piece without knocking the others over. While it was exciting to watch them seamlessly fall in beautiful patterns, the end always brought an overwhelming sadness. We had spent hours standing them up, just to watch them fall. Today, I look at our fractured society and see that same downward chain reaction. I believe in the power of positivity and the profound impact of paying it forward to create a "reverse domino effect." Our society does not have to keep falling; it takes just one person who is strong enough to stand against the momentum and start lifting others back up.I have spent my life striving to be that first domino. During my years of entrepreneurial success, I realized that resources are simply tools to restore human dignity. When a professional colleague faced a devastating separation, stripped of his transit and unable to pick up his young son for custody visits, I chose to gift him one of my own cars. I refused to let a lack of transportation collapse a father’s bond with his child. Later, when a young working mother navigating English as a second language began struggling at work due to failing eyesight, I quietly purchased her prescription eyeglasses. In both moments, I chose to hold the weight of others until they were strong enough to stand on their own.Today, as I navigate my own season of housing instability, this philosophy remains my North Star. I refuse to let my recent hardships turn my focus inward. Winning this scholarship is the vital bridge between my current financial struggle and the professional stability I am working toward. I am not starting from scratch; I am evolving. With a degree in psychology, I will combine my entrepreneurial spirit with a deep understanding of the human mind. I know I am strong enough to encourage, support, and lift others. By standing tall through my own adversity, I am ready to inspire a network of hands to join me, proving that together, we can easily and seamlessly make our communities stand again.