When I was born, I was addicted to methamphetamine because my biological mother was addicted to it. My older sister too. We, along with the children who came after us, were taken from her at a very young age. Now, I always knew I was adopted, because my great-aunt adopted me. She didn’t tell me the full story though, I was only told that my mom did drugs, not that she did drugs to deal with all of the trauma and pain from when she was a child. So for a long time, I wondered why my mom would choose drugs over me, why she couldn’t just take care of me, when in reality, she couldn’t even take care of herself. Once I learned what had happened to her I’ve only held sympathy for her in my heart. On the other hand, my sister, Juli, didn’t know until 5th grade. One day, she was waiting for the person she knew as her mom at school, when our biological mother came out and started talking to her like they had never been separated. When she told her parents about it that night at home, they knew they had to come clean. Learning this destroyed my sister. Her siblings weren’t fully her siblings, she had siblings she never knew about until she was 10. Again, she was not told the whole story. She was told every bad thing that our mom had done to her when she was under her care, but not why she was so mentally out of it, maybe because they didn’t know, maybe because they didn’t want her to know. To this day, I don’t know if she knows what happened to our mom, but we don’t talk about her much. However, we have talked about all the struggles we’ve gone through with knowing we were adopted. We sometimes say we’re like the two sides of our mom, mania and depression. She mania, and I depression. For example, Juli once told me that she had driven 2 hours to buy substances because she was withdrawing and yelled at the dealer because she was out of gas and money. And on the other end of the spectrum, I once got a kidney infection from an UTI after laying in bed for 2 days because I couldn’t make myself walk 10 feet to the bathroom, and also couldn’t bring myself to tell my mom I had done that to myself. Now, she is 2 years clean (with a newborn!) and I haven’t had a UTI for a whole year. While we had the same biological mother, the environments we were raised in caused us to have different mentalities and behaviors. A lot of mental health issues can be hereditary, but just as many can be created by environmental conditions. The coping mechanisms and healing process is also heavily influenced by both of these. This can not only be seen in me and my sister with our mom, but also in my mom with her mother and father. I’ve seen what mental illness has done to just about everyone in my family, but I’ve also seen what people can do if they have something to look forward to. Of course, a goal can’t be too enormous or detailed, as that can be over whelming, however, I’ve created a plan that has me looking 10 years into my future. I am going to go to college to become a Cosmetic Nurse, to help with peoples’ quality of life, and then to Medical School to become a Dermatologist to continue helping people, just at a more medically involved level. I do not have an exact time frame for anything but my first 4 years of college, I plan to be a full-time student, so I will get this done in 4 years. Beyond that, I don’t know and I’m okay with that. I don’t know what will or won’t happen along the way and that’s scary, but it makes me want to work for it even harder to ensure that I’m putting myself in the best position possible in case anything bad does happen. Mental health is a very big struggle and I am very grateful to be able to work on myself and to start over coming it. I encourage everyone to do their best everyday, because that at least means they were trying and they should be celebrated.

Yes, I was in the foster care system from age 1-2 when I was adopted by my foster mom. I am going to The College of Idaho to participate in their Cooperative Nursing Program with Idaho State University. I am majoring in Biomedical Science, and minoring in Communications, along with two other undecided subjects. I will graduate with a Bachelors degree in Science from The College of Idaho and a Bachelor’s Degree in Science of Nursing from Idaho State University. When I get my Bachelors Degrees, I plan to help the people around me stay healthy. I will be going into the Cosmetic Nursing career field, so I can learn about how different things we eat or put on our bodies affects us. I plan to research how to help with hair, skin, and nail issues like certain cancers, autoimmune diseases, and alopecia. I will also be learning to do injections, microdermabrasion, and laser hair removal, among other cosmetic things. Once I am an established Cosmetic Nurse, I will go to Medical School to become a Dermatologist. From there, I will continue to research different aspects of hair, skin, and nail health. The healthiness of these things can directly relate to a persons quality of life, as certain things are underlying causes of diseases or illnesses. I plan on creating a social media presence to share my knowledge on these topics. To successfully do this, I’m going to take business and marketing classes along side my nursing prerequisites. I everyone to know the easiest and safest ways to keep themselves healthy for as long as possible, while also knowing the warning signs of possible cancers, diseases, etc., without them having to pay to come see me as a patient. Now, hopefully, I am not in too much debt by the end of this plan and it doesn’t take me too long to start getting a big savings going. When I have the resources, I’d like to open up my own Med Spa/ Dermatologists Office. This is another aspect where the business and marketing classes will help me, along with the social media presence. If people know my name and trust my advice, they will want to come into my business to be seen by me or my colleagues. Writing out the entire plan step by step makes it seem a little intimidating, but taking it one step at a time, focusing on the present so I know my future will be bright makes it feel better. I’m very excited for this next chapter of my life to begin, and I thank everyone who helps me along the way.

I was addicted to methamphetamine when I was born. Now, I am graduated 6 months early as my classes’ Valedictorian. When I was younger I dreaded doing anything. And anything means everything. Going to school was the biggest one, talking was another. I was diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder and General Anxiety Disorder at 14 and Disruptive Dysfunctional Mood Disorder at 16. It was relieving to know that there really was something wrong with me, but for a while, it didn’t really change anything. For a long time, actually. It honestly wasn’t until about 2 years ago when I moved from Pocatello, Idaho back down to the Treasure Valley and met my English teacher, Eric Smith. He taught me about grit and that if you want to do good things in your life, you’ll have to go through the bad. He told us about when the young men were getting drafted for World War 2, they were dropping like flies, while the veterans were staying as healthy as they could. This was because they were conditioned from previous wars and were used to their environment, unlike the young men who had just come from school. While mine isn’t so drastic, one example of grit for me, was if I wanted to graduate early I couldn’t have early release or a late start. He also encouraged me to fully grasp my independence after getting kicked out by my adoptive mother. I got a job and I kept working hard until my last day, even on the days where younger me was coming out and wanting to curl up into a ball and not do anything. I’m very grateful I stuck through this though because now I’m at another, busier job, and sometimes the slow days feel like the busy days at my first job. I feel like I truly know what grit means because I took the time to better myself for myself. Had I not worked on my mental health issues, I wouldn’t have graduated early, much less with the Valedictorian award. I wouldn’t have had 2 years of work experience by 18. I wouldn’t be where I am now if I hadn’t learned about grit and how to really execute and enforce it properly. You don’t let yourself fail because it’s hard, you try your hardest until it’s so easy you don’t have to try anymore, you just do.

When my biological mom gave birth to my older sister, it was clear couldn’t take care her, much less herself, so she was taken from her by her father. Then, two years later my mom had me. And a few after me. My mom was the oldest of 3 girls born to two drug addicts. My grandpas brother was predator, and he raped my mother repeatedly. My mom felt like she was supposed to protect her younger sisters from that side of their uncle so she did. She let do it to her so he wouldn’t do it to them. Because my grandparents were drug addicts, they weren’t on the best of terms with everyone and something lead to a group of men kidnapping my mother, and torturing and raping her for a week. After these, along with many other traumatic incidents, she turned to drugs to try to help herself. However, schizophrenia runs in the family and didn’t have the grace to skip over her, making her crazy from the trauma and the drugs. Growing up, I always knew I was adopted, but not why. Nobody knew how to explain such disgusting things to a 5 year old, so they didn’t. I grew up wondering why my mom didn’t want me, not knowing it was actually the matter of why she couldn’t take care of me. It wasn’t until I was a teenager and my aunts were telling me about their childhood and they started to talk about my mom. Mental health problems have affected everyone in my family at one point for one reason or another, and being a low income family, it’s hard to get health care, especially mental health care. I hope one day everyone has access to healthcare.

My dream is to become a nationally recognized Dermatologist. Now, this is a pretty big dream but it’s mine and I can’t wait for the steps to start falling in place. First, I plan to go to The College of Idaho and Idaho State University to participate in their Cooperative Program to become a Registered Nurse, where I will graduate with a Bachelors degree in Science and a Bachelors degree in Science of Nursing. I want to go into the cosmetic nursing field, where I will learn to do injections and laser hair removal. I will also learn some of the esthetician side of it, like chemical facials and microdermabrasion. This step is just so I can save up money and gain more experience for my future schooling/jobs. Once I’ve saved up enough money, I will find the medical school that is right for me and continue my education. Once I’ve become a certified Dermatologist, I would love to open my own clinic and run my own practice with cosmetic nurses as well as dermatologists and even some estheticians to cater for people who can’t afford the more expensive treatments or products. I know that last part would be very complicated so I plan on taking some business and communication classes along side my biomedical classes. I love talking about my dream with my family because they are very excited to be having the first nurse/doctor in the family. We also have some bad skin genetics, like cystic acne, eczema, and psoriasis, which is why I want to go into Dermatology. I’ve always helped my family with their skin problems when I can, telling what to use, what not to mix, etc. Fully knowing the science and reasoning for how ingredient react with skin is very interesting to me and I can’t wait to learn about it and teach my family about it as well. Like I said before, it’s a big dream. And an expensive one at that. Currently, I have about 6.5k left to cover the rest of my tuition for my freshman year, after some scholarships, grants, loans, and including my savings, as I’m paying for my tuition by myself. When I go to school I’m going to continue working my current job, as well as applying to campus jobs because my hours at my current job will be down, but I will need to continue to save money for the remainder. Im excited to continue my education and I’m grateful I have the opportunity to.