When I made the career change from libraries into the social services field in my early 30s, I had a 5-year plan: finish my bachelor’s in psychology, work for 2 years with child protection services (CPS), then go back to school part-time while working full-time for a master’s that would lead to a career in therapy. I had no doubt it was a solid plan. Plans are what mortals make while the Gods laugh. I made it as far as working for CPS in my state before chronic health challenges hit, back-to-back and repeatedly. I suddenly had significant pain in multiple joints and inexplicable chronic fatigue after even mild to moderate effort. I was passing out on the couch after work every night, even though I napped through my lunch break during the day. My doctor ran tests but could not find a cause. I was told it was probably fibromyalgia and I just needed to exercise more. Exercise left me more exhausted and sicker than anything else. In addition to the physical health challenges, I was also learning my lifetime struggle with depression would continue to be lifetime after multiple medication attempts failed to control symptoms – I was officially treatment resistant. I dived into my own talk therapy, working with a therapist that integrated my minority faith religious practices with typical talk therapy methodologies. Together we found coping strategies to minimize symptoms that worked most of the time while I maintained consistent therapy. If only my physical health had been as easy. After several years and doctors passed, I was diagnosed with degenerative disc disease in my spine, osteoarthritis in several joints, and finally – eventually – ME/CFS, a chronic health condition that causes post exertional malaise – severe fatigue and illness after exertion past the body’s window of tolerance. Exercise really was making me sicker; several doctors just did not listen to me. I started listening to my body and giving it the radical rest it required. I slowly started to recover a little more energy; I stopped passing out immediately after work and stopped needing naps during lunch. I will never be cured of the chronic pain or the ME/CFS; both will get worse again in the future. My baseline has improved enough at this time that I am now able to return to school for my Master of Social Work degree, the degree that will move me toward my goal of becoming a therapist. I still have the underlying need to help marginalized communities access the mental health services they need, especially those from minority faith communities like mine and those in the LGBTQ community. These communities have traditionally faced discrimination when seeking mental health services and I would like to be a part of the solution. I now also have an understanding that those of us with disabilities and chronic health conditions face a special kind of medical trauma while attempting to access treatment for conditions that are not well understood and I learned the hard way that not all mental health professionals are equipped to treat this particular type of trauma. Being granted this scholarship would help make this dream a reality and help alleviate the stress caused by the financial burden of graduate school tuition while living life with chronic illness and disability.

I experienced or heard half a dozen distinct stories across my life of people being told by their therapist or counselor that their religious beliefs were wrong or should otherwise be left behind and the individual should convert to the therapist’s preferred religion to help or cure their mental health. While some of these stories pre-dated the rising tide of cultural competency entering the mental health field, not all of them do – stories still come across the social media thread with minority faiths more heavily impacted than any major world faith. I let it slide when I was newly converted in my minority faith and the therapist in my college campus counseling center frequently made microaggressions about my beliefs. I just accepted that ignorance of others was the price to pay for choosing to dive into a lesser know spiritual path. Ten years later, as a volunteer clergy member of my faith, when I heard a member of my religious group talking about a previous counselor telling them to leave their faith and “go back to church” to fix their mental health problems, I got angry. That was the first moment I fully realized just how badly the mental health field needed more diversity in its ranks. If more people of minority faiths joined the field, there would be more options for adherents of those faiths to seek services without facing ignorance and outright discrimination. Several years later as I was learning new things about myself, I started interacting more with the LGBTQ community and by extension various parts of alternative lifestyle communities. Once again, I started hearing stories about people facing microaggressions, ignorance, and discrimination from mental health providers. This is about the time I returned to school to finish an undergraduate degree in psychology to transition into social services for my day job. I decided the goal was to work for a couple years after obtaining the degree, then go back for a master’s degree so I could become the therapist that all these communities needed. The planned was slightly derailed when I began developing chronic health challenges two years into my new career. I saw numerous doctors but never got full answers. The tests all came back normal but I had no energy for much of anything except work. The plan to attend grad school part-time while working full-time could not work when I passed out on the couch after work every night. In my 12 year career in social services, I have worked in several areas: CPS, community mental health wraparound, permanent supportive housing, and aging/disability services. I have developed a variety of useful skills including crisis de-escalation, harm reduction, motivational interviewing, risk assessment, case management, and goal setting and tracking. My health has finally improved enough to return to grad school to be able to do the main thing I originally set out to do: provide therapy services for marginalized communities that even the mental health field often does not know how to handle.