Receiving this scholarship would help my family access healthy food, reduce residual stress from financial strain, and allow me to spend more time on my school work, research projects, and professional development during my 750 hours of unpaid internship. Over the past three years, my husband and I have been working hard to repatriate and rebuild our lives in America after serving with nonprofits abroad. We decided to move back to the United States so I could pursue a graduate degree in clinical mental health counseling. The glaring gaps in ethically equipped providers for vulnerable populations in areas of high need felt like a calling for me to step in. This move was well-planned, and we had sufficient funds to get us through our months of transition. We were fortunate that my husband found full-time work, and I accepted a graduate assistantship. These two roles covered our expenses for the last two years, but I cannot continue with my graduate assistantship while in practicum and internship. With the loss of my graduate assistantship income and a federal grant opportunity, we will have to operate on $10,000 less this coming year. As a mental health counseling student, I know the imperative importance of having your core needs met. As it stands now, we are just at the edge of meeting those needs and are a sick day or emergency expense away from needing additional support. Scholarships like this one are lifelines for my family as I finish my degree. These final semesters are imperative for my future professional growth. During these last two terms, I will begin an internship providing counseling services to clients in community health rehabilitation centers. These centers provide critical care to marginalized people who may not otherwise have access to critical mental health care. Last fall, our region was impacted by a tropical storm that caused record flooding, landslides, and infrastructural collapse. This catastrophe caused many to become unhoused, unemployed, and unable to recover in the coming year. The need for community mental health and substance use treatment is more critical now than ever. This scholarship would reduce stress from my day-to-day life, allowing more space for me to provide healthy and ethical counseling in our area. In addition to this professional growth and community work, I am also building out research proposals to submit for presentation. As a future counselor, I am passionate about intersectional social justice. This passion has led me to study how our profession can go even further in tackling the systemic injustices causing hardship to marginalized people groups. As I move forward into my last year of graduate school, I am seeing ever more why I pursued this career path. From the ability to stand up for social justice, working with marginalized people groups, and speaking on social issues to push my field further into whole person care, each aspect of my growth would benefit from this scholarship, compounding into lives beyond that which we can see.

I was born and raised in Appalachia, where mental illness is often masked by colloquialisms like "nerves," "feeling down," "a little peculiar," "the family condition," "given to the drink," or "lost without a cause." In my family, the cultural lack of awareness, acceptance, and access to professional care for mental illness has resulted in significant pain, fractured relationships, and ongoing generational heartache. Consequently, many family members and I have silently struggled with mental illnesses, unaware that tools, support, and treatment were available. This struggle has instilled in me a deep empathy, passion, and drive to advocate for change, education, and resources related to mental health. This passion has inspired me to pursue training as a Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor and a Licensed Clinical Addictions Specialist. As a child, I was praised for my academic performance, creativity, and overall demeanor. However, my family's lack of understanding about emotional awareness and vulnerability led me to wear a mask of the "good girl" for much of my early life. That mask shattered when I was nine and had my first of many panic attacks. In a family accustomed to discussing physical ailments, my mother reduced my salt intake and encouraged me to drink more water, believing my issues were cardiological rather than mental. I didn’t learn about generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) or panic attacks until I was a freshman in college. In a foreboding counseling office, after answering some questions and going through visualizations, I was handed a stack of papers and given the diagnosis of GAD. I left without any tools or follow-up, feeling more lost than when I entered. Looking back, I still don’t quite understand what transpired; all I know is that I left feeling even more confused. Two years later, at a new college, I experienced a therapeutic counseling space for the first time since my elementary school guidance counseling. I walked into an office with soft lighting, comfortable chairs, and a small chihuahua. There, I met a therapist named Beatrice. She was fun, quirky, and free-spirited, allowing me to be myself without imposing barriers or handing me any forms. Although I didn’t go often, the mere presence of someone who was there for me made me feel safe, supported, and able to move forward. The simple act of being seen and heard healed something in me, even if it didn’t completely resolve my GAD. After these two experiences in my young adult life, I became an advocate for talk therapy among my friends. As a young twenty-something, I encouraged my girlfriends to seek therapy and discuss their worries. These burdens felt heavy, and we didn’t have to carry them alone. While I was enthusiastic about talk therapy at that time, I still harbored significant stigmas about mental health diagnoses, treatments, and medications beyond standard talk therapy. This stigma was rooted in my family’s attitudes toward substances and the overmedication of mental illness, which led to opiate addiction in several family members. Many of them had been on high doses of opiates for years without receiving adequate care, making medication seem like the enemy rather than a symptom of a broken system. This broken system is what led me to pursue a degree in mental health. After experiencing mistreatment, witnessing overmedication, and learning the benefits of ethical treatment and prescribing, I realized how many folks go untreated each year, and I wanted to change that. As a future mental health professional, I want to work with folx to disentangle existing stigmas and open up a possibility of living with, recovering from, and learning how to accept mental illness in our lives and the lives of others.

Fairness, spirituality, adventure, and family summarize the values that lead my decisions in life and direct me to my purpose each day. As a future mental health provider and business owner, I aspire to live a values-driven life to provide care and service full of hope, and excellence for every person I encounter. Fairness, to me, consists of a focus on justice, equity, and decency in all aspects of life. I have experienced an egregious lack of fairness in medical and mental health care as an adolescent and adult. This lack of client-focused care is what inspired me to become a mental health professional myself. As a graduate student, I am learning about ethical codes, intersectionality, and trauma-informed approaches that place the client at the center of focus and expertise in their life. These tools counteract the prevailing expert mindset and empower the client to be the expert in their own life while I provide my clinical expertise to support their healing. This level of intentionality represents fairness to me, as I honor and acknowledge their complete story and true selves in our interactions, creating a valuable learning experience. In addition to fairness, spirituality has had a profound and marked impact on my life. From an early age, I attended religious gatherings with my family, but it was not until later in life that I developed my own spirituality. Spirituality in this sense, is a connection to one's inner life through personal reflection or spiritual connection to a religion or outside powers. I connect through my faith community, meditation and reflection, spiritual disciplines, and reading. These rhythms help center me and bring into focus what truly matters in my life. This part of my life has opened doors for my business to flourish, a return to academia, career changes, and openness to relationships with others. Without this part of my life, I would not be the generous, vivacious, and loving person I am today.  Adventure is another key value that connects with spirituality and vision for the future. Getting out into nature is my favorite way to pray, hear what I believe is God, and spend time with others. In addition to exploring the natural world, I have worked with organizations across the US, Central America, and Europe. This partnership fueled my desire for adventure. My life has been a rollercoaster, and having these adventurous seasons settles a part of myself that longs for more. These international connections propel me forward and continually improve my business outcomes. My mental health training has given me a broader scope of what it means to be human and allowed me to see others through a cultural lens, allowing space for much more nuance. Lastly, the value of family picks me up when I am down and encourages me to keep walking forward. After living so far away from many extended family members, my definition of family has expanded to close friends, colleagues, and families of faith who stood in when my real family could not. These relationships have allowed me to grow into the person I am today. With my partner by my side, cheering me on, I am supported, loved, and nurtured. Now we are back in the United States, I get the benefits of my real and chosen family. The importance of these core relationships on my mental health inspires me to help others see the broad definitions of family we can have and the depth and richness these relationships bring.  These four core values open my life to richness through embodied decision-making, deep connections, and equitable care of others.

Rural Appalachia is a place where words like depression and anxiety are replaced with sayings such as “feeling low” or having “ the nerves”. This worldview is one of many pieces that framed my and my family's perception of life, human suffering, and trial, and inspired me to pursue care for others as a mental health clinician. In my family, I was profoundly impacted by the brilliant, and the wounded pieces of our matriarch, my grandmother. My grandmother was a lifelong frenemy of the nerves. She read books, listened to sermons, called friends, and shared worries but nothing took away this pressing anxiety that plagued her constantly. This led to a degree of overmedication from doctors, which could be considered an addiction, and stayed with her until the end of her life. Being looked after by her while my parents worked, I was unintentionally immersed in and modeled an anxious, compulsive worldview. One that said, you could die at any minute, and people weren’t to be trusted, especially medical doctors. As I listened to the stories, worries, and calls, I didn’t know I was learning a way to see, feel, and experience my world. For me, all I knew was that I was praised as a great good girl who knew nothing of “the nerves.” I was the prodigal scapegoat who made it out from under this generational leech, nerves, or so they thought. I did not know I was having panic attacks and anxiety until I was in college. My college counselors, beacons of light, helped guide me and give me space to express the pent-up years of stress, strain, and anxiety. These hours in the college counseling office were transformative. For the first time in my young life, I was able to express a personal view of my experience and make choices to modify and step away from a toxic generational narrative. As I began life after my bachelor's graduation, I was met again by anxiety, only now I knew there was healing in unburdening in safe places. So, I sought out a counselor and found a clinician by recommendation. This time was different. Here I was met with rigid diagnostics, fear-mongering, and very little neutral, let alone positive, regard. I was shocked, how could this profession have helped me before but harmed me now? Disheartened with the clinical experience, I went to talk to the pastoral counselor at my church. In this woman’s office, I experienced such a stark contrast. Instead of cold nomenclature, I was met with mercy and grace- continuity of the experience I’d had years prior. When I was a few years older, I came into another episode of anxiety. This time I was serving abroad with a nonprofit youth organization led by volunteers. These volunteers had rudimentary mental health training. Tooled with pseudo psycho diagnostics and vocabulary I was accosted by their system and left alone; anxious, and ostracized in a cross-cultural crisis with nowhere to turn but inside. I was so alone and hurting, yet no one was able to stand beside me only blame, shame, and isolate. After making it home, this negative experience began to push me towards further healing and eventually into the field of mental health. Today, I am halfway through a Master of Science in Clinical Mental Health Counseling with an additional certificate in addiction studies. Seeing the number of silent struggles in my family, and experiencing such discrepancies in care from mental health providers and helpers, I feel specifically poised to take this step to a new career to provide person-centered care with an empathetic touch.

Anxiety has restricted me in numerous ways. It has caused missed assignments, broken relationships, and lost opportunities, leading me into many dark places before I even understood what was happening in my mind. Like many others, I sought help but encountered labels and medical jargon instead of receiving personalized care, coping skills, or therapeutic counseling. Looking back on my childhood, I remember the worried nights I spent staring at my ceiling, crying alone. To cope with my fear, I would think about rainbows, animals, and beautiful places, repeating these visions in my mind until I eventually fell asleep. I once had an anxiety attack in front of my family, and I recall the buzz of the streetlight and the hum of insects settling down in the grass. The violent images of wars and attacks from the news triggered a spiral in my mind that I can still see clearly. Years later, in my first year of undergraduate, I was struggling with life transitions, romantic relationships, and the trauma of a car accident from months earlier. I felt alone and reached out for help. Met with a cold introduction, some forms, and a light mental assessment later, I left with only a stack of papers. No further words were given, just a piece of paper with a title as heavy as stone printed General Anxiety Disorder. This interaction gave me no tools and didn't help me keep my assignments in order, work with my thoughts, or step into new ways of behavior. After this first experience, I continued to reach out for help, working with several counselors in college. Their methods brought some peace, but I was too afraid to be honest to start the road to change. It wasn't until I was in my early twenties that I found ways to manage and cope with an anxious mind. During this time of my life, I began to engage in spirituality. This connection to faith and new ways to engage with meditation helped me learn to be still, focus on presence, connect to myself, and look to higher powers in times of stress. Once 2020 rolled around, I reached new levels of anxiety and lost many of the social and spiritual supports I had come to rely on. In this season, I was fortunate to receive a gift of counseling from a family member. This initial experience with a counseling intensive reunited me with the wholeness I had known before and became a way mark for me to look back to when my anxiety would flare up. Now as a graduate student, anxiety manifests in ways that limit my ability to maintain and build new relationships, as well as take calculated risks for my well-being. It has held me back from getting medical care, going on trips, and stepping into connection with my cohort. I am working with a counselor regularly to learn how to live life as a person with anxiety. This ongoing support is helping me gain coping skills and reach levels of healing and peace I didn't think possible. As someone who is the first of her family to experience healing and freedom through mental health counseling, I wanted to take a stand for so many like myself, and those in my family who needed support like this. I am now pursuing a Master of Science in Clinical Mental Health Counseling. As a counselor, I will not simply help others find healing for their hearts and minds. I want to reunite humans with the dignity and care they have too often been robbed of in our healthcare system.

Success for me would be serving communities in need by providing critical mental health care that is currently unavailable. Across the country, and especially here in my home state of North Carolina, there is a deficit of qualified mental health providers. In the United States of America, mental illness is four times more common than heart disease. Despite this common occurrence, over 28% of adults in America with symptoms of anxiety or depression reported an unmet need for counseling. This unmet need is likely due to 46% of citizens living in a mental health provider shortage area. In North Carolina, that percentage adds up to around 4 million people. (Hasteline, 2023; MHA, 2022; Parry et.al, 2023). In practice, my success would include establishing a 501-c3 non-profit organization. This organization would serve two purposes: establishing an on-site behavioral health center that connects mental health care with gardening and nature and supporting my research and outreach to performing artists in training. These two focus areas encompass my heart and my healing. As a farmer's daughter, my heart has always been with the land. My goal is to return to my family farm and establish a haven for people from all backgrounds to come and receive counseling. My husband and I have been trained and currently practice regenerative agriculture. I would integrate this training with my counseling experience to help others connect with all aspects of themselves, helping them become leaders in their healing process and leaving empowered, restored, and ready for what life has coming next for them. Secondly, I want to help college performing arts programs establish holistic plans for their students to become refined artists while retaining their identity and creative sparks that led them to the arts. Having completed hours of counseling and creative work to recover the pieces of myself that were starved out in my rigorous undergraduate experience, I understand the personal pain and resilience it takes to complete the course. To achieve this second goal, I plan to use an elective in my graduate program to complete a literature review on current statistics about mental health in collegiate performing arts programs. After graduation, I plan to continue my research, to establish a resource, or modality by which college arts programs and counselors could work together to establish the holistic framework mentioned above. If I am selected to receive this scholarship, it will positively impact my plans in many ways. These extra funds will allow me to take additional classes to expand my expertise, complete research studies, and present at and attend professional conferences, which can increase my chances of obtaining further grants. Additionally, it will lessen my financial stress allowing me to take better care of myself and direct more focus to my current studies. My dreams are vast, but I know success is not only feasible, it is within my reach. With further community involvement, education, and research, alongside your financial support, I am one step closer to providing quality care to marginalized North Carolinians and young artists in need. Sources Cited: Haseltine, W. A. (2023, September 22). Solving the mental health provider shortage. Psychology Today. Mental Health America (MHA). (2022). Adult Prevalence of Mental Illness. Mental Health America. Parry, M., Lombardi, B., & Lanier, P. (2023, October 3). Responding to North Carolina’s Behavioral Health Workforce Crisis. Carolina Across 100.

Over the past ten years, I have worked in many environments, fields, and locations. I spent two years as a Choral Arts teacher, served as a missionary abroad for two and half years, and even spent a summer in a little camp store in Montana while volunteering with a ministry in the national parks. Each of these experiences has showcased my love for one thing, people. As a choir teacher, I introduced appropriate behavioral health tools to help my adolescent students give voice to their experiences. As a missionary, I learned alongside people from many cultures and worked with them to better their communities. While working seasonally in Montana, I learned to appreciate the beauty of seasonal work and how to embrace and honor those who choose a nontraditional career path. These experiences pointed me to what I believe is a piece of my true calling, to become a Clinical Mental Health Counselor. I am pursuing my Master of Science in Clinical Mental Health Counseling at Western Carolina University. Becoming a counselor encompasses the attributes of teaching, missions, and retail work I loved most, getting to know people and helping them see the brilliance of who they are. Across the country, and especially here in our home state of North Carolina, there is a deficit of qualified mental health providers. In the United States of America, mental illness is four times more common than heart disease. Despite this common occurrence, over 28% of adults in America with symptoms of anxiety or depression reported an unmet need for counseling. This unmet need is likely due to 46% of citizens living in a mental health provider shortage area. In North Carolina, that percentage adds up to around 4 million people. (Hasteline, 2023; MHA, 2022; Parry et. al, 2023). I want to serve the community and be a piece of the solution to this shortage. My ultimate goal is to establish a 501-C non-profit organization. This would serve two purposes: establishing an on-site behavioral health center that connects mental health care with gardening and nature and supporting my research and outreach to performing artists in training. These two focus areas encompass my heart and my healing. As someone who has completed a collegiate performing arts program degree, I understand the personal pain, and resilience it takes to complete the course. I want to help colleges establish holistic plans for their students to become refined artists while retaining their identity and creative sparks that led them to the arts. In addition to this, I want to work to establish a haven for people from all backgrounds to come and receive counseling. This center would be integrated with nature, and gardening practices, which have pulled me out of dark places more than once. If I am selected to receive this scholarship, it will positively impact my plans in many ways. These extra funds will allow me to take additional classes to expand my expertise, complete research studies, and present at and attend professional conferences, which can increase my chances of obtaining further grants. My dreams are vast, but I know they are achievable. With community involvement and your local support, I am one step closer to providing quality care to rural North Carolinians and young artists in need. Sources Cited Haseltine, W. A. (2023, September 22). Solving the mental health provider shortage. Psychology Today. Mental Health America (MHA). (2022). Adult Prevalence of Mental Illness. Mental Health America. Parry, M., Lombardi, B., & Lanier, P. (2023, October 3). Responding to North Carolina’s Behavioral Health Workforce Crisis. Carolina Across 100.

As an adult graduate student, you would think my go-to movies and shows are intellectual, cutting-edge, or, dare I say, boring. But, lately, it has been quite the opposite. The witty, dramatic, tear-jerking, and comedic shows have caught my attention, lightening my heart and mental load. Of those shows, one sticks out as a clear winner for my binge-worthy series, and that is "Never Have I Ever." "Never Have I Ever" follows a teen girl starting her freshman year of high school. Unfortunately, this first year contains one of the most traumatic events of her young life. A high-achieving young teen, Devi, loses her Father right before her eyes at an orchestra concert. This tragic moment leads her to counseling, outbursts, and a level of emotional turmoil no person should ever experience. However, this process of watching Devi work through grief and trauma in counseling while "messing" up and being a teen outside those safe walls is exactly why I love "Never Have I Ever." You see, I have experienced trauma, and massive loss in my life. As a 28-year-old woman trying to recover pieces of her that seemed lost in the "before", I could see so much of myself in Devi. Recovering from trauma can almost feel like a second adolescence, bumping into unknown boundaries, heightened emotions, and constantly feeling a bit of confusion, anger, or hurt. As I watched Devi walk through her high school years, slowly healing small pieces of her shattered self, I too was being put back together. Each time I stepped into the world of Sherman Oaks, Devi's hometown, something within me felt known, seen, and allowed to be here. Whether it was Devi's therapist's wisdom, her mother's patience, or her friend's outrage at her "selfish" behavior, these moments always spoke to me, asking me to go deeper to find myself and my healing, too. I don't know what you've been through in your life, but I know most of us have been or will be going through high school, and the turmoil that is adolescence. Stepping into Devi's story, learning about the complex lives of those around her, and watching them all bloom into hopeful young adults stepping out of high school into the real world was an honor. Watching "Never Have I Ever" may not change your life, but its story was a beautiful step in bringing me fully back into mine.

I write this sitting in my robe, attempting to tackle the mountain of tasks before me. Ongoing chronic body pain, paired with anxiety and some form of executive disfunction, does not make graduate school easy. That said, after 28 years of life I am learning how to have self-compassion and work with my beautiful body instead of against her. One way my mental health affects my academic and personal life is procrastination. Whether it is fear of the unknown or inability to get my brain going in the morning, procrastination is my go-to gear. It is a double-edged sword. I cannot start a project, but two days before it is due, my brain activates and is ready to go. Procrastination can make planning and working ahead difficult. What I like to do, to work with my brain, is to give myself personal deadlines outside of the time due in class. This way, I have the pressure of a timeline, but the flexibility if needed. Another way my mental health affects my life is lack of sleep. Because I have an anxious brain, I can have vivid dreams that wake me up and often struggle to quiet my thoughts enough to get to sleep. This affects my ability to clean the house, finish assignments, and hang out with family and friends. Additionally, it wears me out and makes the tasks I have to do take even longer. A coping mechanism I often use is leaving my phone outside the room. When I do this, I choose to read a book instead. The definitive end to the chapter gives my brain a feeling of accomplishment and resolution that satisfies those worried thoughts and allows me to sleep. A third blockade for me in my mental health is insecurity and self-doubt. Now, everyone struggles with this from time to time. However, with anxiety, you cannot affirm it away. Seeking affirmation, craving approval, and rigid perfection often prevent me from being myself, speaking my mind, and getting close to others. The fear of rejection, being misunderstood, or missing the mark leaves me paralyzed with fear. I am currently working through this in counseling. With the help of a compassionate advocate, I can take small steps towards wellness. These struggles impact my daily life, but I am learning to meet myself with kind eyes, and a compassionate heart. Self-acceptance is one way I am working towards mental health daily. My goal is self-compassion, I want to go one step at a time. Self-acceptance allows me to turn in assignments that aren't perfect, delay a task to give my body the rest it needs, and even tell others I need alone time to recuperate after an anxious day. This small step has given me so much freedom in my personal and academic life. It has allowed me to begin to see myself as a flawed, imperfect, human that is equally brilliant, smart, and kind. The little day-to-day acceptance of the messy room, less-than-perfect reaction, or even late assignment allows me to move forward in life. I hope to one day be free of anxiety, and able to function on a higher level, but in the meantime, I can give myself compassion and grace to exist freely as me. I am worthy of love, care, and attention even when the world is knocking on my door with things to do. I hope that finding the balance between self-acceptance and perseverance will help me achieve my goals in academia and beyond.

I am a first-year graduate student studying at Western Carolina University to become a Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor. Before this, I worked with international non-profits, supported communities through expressive arts events, and spent two years teaching choral arts. This wide range of experience has resulted in a passion for artists and advocacy. Research shows that those pursuing creative careers have higher instances of mental illness compared to other fields. However, there is a lack of resources catering to this population. I want to use my degree to bridge this gap. Building on my previous experiences, I want to continue advocating for more research into artists' mental health, becoming a counselor for collegiate arts students, and working towards building a collaborative framework for collegiate and conservatory-level programs to promote mental wellness and creative well-being for artists of all disciplines. As a graduate student, I can begin to work towards this goal through a specialized placement during my contact hours and a focused independent study elective. The counseling program partners with local mental health providers each semester to help students earn their 200-600 contact hours. I plan to request a placement in a college counseling center to build my working knowledge of the higher education system and build my counseling skills working with college populations. In addition to this placement, I plan to use one of my elective credits to complete an independent study. This study would aim to conduct research focused on collegiate artists' mental health to build a readily available resource for students, faculty, and staff involved with college-level arts programs. This resource would be an interactive web page to provide these populations with resources to build sustainable rhythms of self-care, offer perspective to promote positive change, and workable toolkits with links to access mental health services in their area. All of this is not possible without funding. To pay for my first semester I have taken out federal loans, and hold a graduate assistant position. My husband works full-time to support our household expenses. The support of scholarships would further encourage me to offer my best, take risks, and seize opportunities provided through these funds, my program, and the university. To me, scholarships are more than a check; they are a partnership and investment that I don't take lightly. This support would relieve a financial burden on my household. My spouse and I are actively working to get out of debt and keep a steady monthly budget to monitor our expenses. The cost of living in our area is very high due to tourism and housing shortages. The inflated basic living expenses have affected our ability to pay off debt and caused us to tighten down on even essential line items. Your investment in my future would help us become more financially independent, freeing up time and mental energy to refocus on my well-being so that I can complete and excel in my degree program. Receiving a scholarship would show me that my ambitions are worth investing in. As such, this investment should mutually benefit both parties. I plan to use these funds to propel myself into my studies and support my well-being. My current goals are within my reach. As I pursue a degree in mental health counseling, supported by these funds, I can begin to support the well-being and dreams of other deserving humans just like me.

A 2019 study found that college students spent 8-10 hours on their phones per day (Penglee, et al., 2019). When on the phone, algorithms make the digital world more entertaining, providing relatable content specified to each user. This curated content makes it harder for individuals to put down their devices and engage in other less appealing priorities (Zakon, 2020). As we engage with this curated online world, we are naturally drawn to negative headlines more than others, driving more and more negative content to our feeds (Robertson, et al., 2023). What can we do to enact positive change in a world of social media, pushed by formulas and negativity? I believe the answer is to use the tool itself, social media. Providing positive, informative, and engaging content on social media is one way I can enact change in my world. With over 1400 friends and followers, I have already seen the impact I have by sharing hopeful, honest, or educational pieces of my story. As a poet and prose author, I often use florid language to describe hard emotions and trying situations in my personal life. Over the past five years, I have been sharing these poetic perspectives on social media platforms. As I have shared these poetic perspectives, friends, family, and acquaintances have responded in cacophonous gratitude. People share how my words positively impacted their day, or how no one has ever put words to how they were feeling, and even comment on my bravery for putting myself out there. My small acts of expression push the boundary on appearance, rage, and clickfocused social media. As I share reality, in its challenging and beautiful forms, I am providing a window of hopeful reality into the not-so-real world of social media. As an aspiring mental health professional, I feel I can build on this momentum and begin to share more light, hopeful, and educational content. Posts as simple as "Comment one thing you are grateful for today", "Share a funny story with me today", or "Why are you happy to be alive today" offer people a chance to positively reflect on their situations, and help build pathways of positivity into our brains to combat the negative stream of media we are faced with each day. With news outlets, content creators, and corporations pushing their products, headlines, and perspectives, why can't I share my own view with the world? Sharing positive prompts, writing poetic perspectives, and engaging in public gratitude with my social media following are easy, simple, and sustainable ways that I can enact positive change wherever this career may take me. Penglee N., Christiana R.W., Battista R.A., Rosenberg E. (2019). Smartphone Use and Physical Activity among College Students in Health Science-Related Majors in the United States and Thailand. Int J Environ Res Public Health, 16(8),1315. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16081315. Robertson, C.E., Pröllochs, N., Schwarzenegger, K. et al. (2023). Negativity drives online news consumption. Natural Human Behavior, 7,812–822. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01538-4 Zakon, A. (2020), Optimized for Addiction: Extending Product Liability Concepts to Defectively Designed Social Media Algorithms and Overcoming the Communications Decency Act, 2020 Wis. L. Rev. 1107

As I pursue my M.S. in Clinical and Mental Health Counseling, I have been reflecting on the pieces of my journey that have propelled me forward into this field. Through my pain, positive experiences with counseling, and knowledge of populations in need, I feel called to walk into this field, to offer support, and to propel communities into health. Throughout my adult life, I have worked with, and been a part of many different organizations, some affiliated with faith. During this time, I experienced trauma and grief, a lack of corporate support, and misguided counseling services that caused more harm than good. The place that was called to feed, house, and comfort, has closed out, starved, and wounded too many. This experience has created within me a desire to be not only trained, but certified as a licensed mental health professional; to provide tools, support, and intervention for those who struggle to find it within their community organizations. In the summer of 2019, I was alone in my apartment. I had just finished my first year teaching and was walking into a fabulous summer. Suddenly, a text with a news article landed on my phone, with the question "Is this redacted name?" I was stunned. The article was about a local man who had been arrested on child sexual abuse charges. Who was this man you ask? He was only one of my dearest friends, who had been in that same apartment just two days earlier. What I felt then, as I now know, was a sudden shock and a wave of grief. For weeks I could not come out of it. Our group met together and debriefed on the situation, but this news continued to shake me. We could not find answers, and our friend group began to isolate from one another. I needed support but had no idea where to turn. What I needed at that moment was an advocate. I needed someone in my church, friend group, or sphere of influence to turn to me and show me there was a way out. I think the problem was, however, that no one else knew or had access to local resources, support, or connections, that didn't come at a high cost. This part of my summer season stands out as one of my hardest to date. The lack of affordable, certified, or informed care left me isolated and disheartened. Not only did this experience show me the gaps in community care in my home country, but I also experienced the lack of corporate support as a missionary abroad. With the COVID-19 pandemic shutting down many avenues of community and support, the country I served was also extremely isolated. The volunteers I worked with were stranded on social islands. Many had been in their homes with no contact for weeks during the height of the pandemic. These experiences left a mark. Each day I met people who had personal struggles, relational tensions, and leftover trauma from the time that changed us all. All the while, these volunteers continued to work daily to better their community. It is humbling, but also harkening. Many of these volunteers struggled to get out of bed, maintain healthy relationships, or even support their self-care needs. After pouring themselves out, supporting their community, and carrying families through a pandemic, something had to give or get brushed aside while the work carried on. Among my recovering colleagues, I was also struggling. The transition to this new culture created large amounts of stress. My husband and I were each provided with a mentor within the organization to walk us through this process. However, I lacked the verbiage or training to explain what was going on within me. Later I learned about the idea of cultural stress, transition chaos, and weathering those storms. However, the organization didn't have a healthy onboarding, mental health, or human resources department, so we were left stranded trying to stay afloat with very little to stand on. These two experiences alone do not anger me, but instead grow my desire to learn more about healthy, ethical, and professional mental health care. I do not want to condemn these organizations, communities, or people, but instead return to offer support from a well-trained professional. That said, there is one situation that has caused me pain, with which I still struggle to reconcile. A few years ago I was overseas for a group training in cross-cultural work. We had a small team, and I struggled with the relational dynamics. Our leaders had been through a seminar for lay counseling and were doing their best to hold us together. However, for me, it all reached a breaking point and I burst into tears. I had never been out of my country for this long, a fellow teammate had just verbally berated me after being approached for conflict resolution, and I was exhausted from trying to make it all work. I was sobbing in my room, and my leader walked in and told me I needed to "self-soothe." I couldn't talk to her because she needed to hold a boundary, and my husband had to leave to go with the team on assignment. There I was alone, in a foreign country; a grown woman sobbing in pain because I was misunderstood and undersupported. Following this situation, my leaders did not validate me as an adult, or provide me tools for stress management. Instead, I received a book recommendation; a self-diagnosis handbook for a behavioral health condition. This book provided no tools, only examples of childhood trauma that led to behavioral outcomes. I was in a crisis moment and offered little to no compassion, support, or tools to help me recover well. These moments of shortfall in the religious sphere have left me healing yet challenged. I cannot continue without taking steps to mend the broken systems. I want to not only offer forgiveness but to play a proactive role in change. As a Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor, I hope to bring new perspectives and offer pieces of training for organizations such as these. I know that healthy counseling and support exist because of my own experience with licensed mental health workers. In the past, I have sought short-term issue-based counseling multiple times. Whether it was due to past trauma or a current relational struggle, my experience with licensed counselors was overall positive. In these environments I let down my walls, received tools, and had moments of personal breakthrough. This healing reverberated to others around me. These experiences also help form the foundation of what I know to be true about licensed counseling and certified mental health support; it works. As you can see I have many different passions pushing me toward my career as a Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor. From personal pain, grief, and trauma, to public need, and potential growth, the opportunities to offer my support to communities are endless. Two specific areas I am exploring and want to offer support to, are the public servants in our communities, and college students. I desire to walk alongside these populations as they establish a healthy sense of self-worth and identity so that they can flourish in their interpersonal relationships and personal pursuits. As seen in my previous examples, people who serve work endlessly. Whether it is nurses, doctors, teachers, or preachers, all have a passion for others and often forget about themselves. I want to offer a place of healing and relief for these public servants in our communities. My big goal is to create a residential retreat-style home for pastors, medical professionals, educators, and first responders. I want to use certified counseling techniques, beauty, and good food to serve those who so dedicatedly serve our communities. I hope to begin work on this vision after I have worked in public agencies or alongside private practice professionals. In addition to this vision, I want to research and support collegiate performing arts students. As a former performing arts student, I have felt the pressure of a performance-based degree. This population can often be overworked and undervalued. As an undergrad, I struggled with identity issues, and prioritizing my time for personal success. I want to work alongside local institutions to help establish structures that will support their performing arts students. In the short term, I will be working towards researching current efforts within this field, in cooperation with universities. In the future, I hope to establish a support network tailored specifically for students in the performing arts. Artists are the soul of our generation and don't deserve to struggle mentally because of time or financial constraints. As I pursue my M.S. in Clinical and Mental Health Counseling I hope to continue to refine my vision and purpose in the mental health field. This degree is helping to equip me to effectively provide positive intervention and clear steps forward for numerous individuals. I know that as I work with clients, churches, or other organizations to prioritize mental health, we will surely make this world a healthier place to exist.

I spent many days with my grandmother: a southern woman who made the best friend okra and award-winning pies. She was everyone's favorite Aunt and the family heirloom, so to speak. Everyone knew "Aunt Sarah", and her many worried ways, but no one ever talked about how those worried ways pointed to a hard, crippling generational issue: anxiety. "It's just my nerves, Kalli, they're driving me nuts," she would say, and all I could think to say back was "I know Mammaw, it's hard." "Do you get nervous Kalli?" What a question! Did I get nervous? Of course, I did; in a crowd of people trying to think what to say, at a family party wanting to find a quiet room, or resting in my bed fearing the house would burn down. I pause, should I share precious information? No, I decide I cannot. Before I get a chance to eke out an answer, "No, Kalli, you don't get nervous. You're such a good girl." I smile, "That's right," I think, "I don't get nervous. I'm such a good girl." Years go by in my young life. I remember worried nights staring at my ceiling alone, crying. I never questioned the legitimacy of these thoughts. I just accepted them as a battle I had to fight. However, it shifted one day, I had an anxiety attack in front of my family. There is not much I can bring to mind from this night. My mom took me out to the yard and asked me questions. I recall the buzz of the street light, and the hum of the insects bedding down in the grass. I can still see the violent images of wars and attacks from the news that triggered the spiral in my mind. The details surrounding this night are fuzzy, but this moment was significant. This moment marks the moment of acknowledgment that something within my brain wasn't processing truth from fallacy correctly. I had become anxious; I did get nervous as a good girl. Years later, in college, I was struggling with life transitions, romantic relationships, and the trauma of a car accident from months earlier. A cold introduction, some forms and a light mental assessment later I leave with a stack of papers. No further words were given, just a piece of paper with a title as heavy as stone printed, "Generalized Anxiety Disorder." I went away empty-handed and heavy-hearted. This didn't help me work out my harmful romantic relationship! This didn't tell me why I never felt safe being myself around others! This didn't help me stand up to my professor and be honest about my desire to leave the program. No, this didn't help me at all! This cold-handed diagnosis pushed me further into myself and further away from getting the help I needed. You see, it is so true that anxiety impacted me in many ways. I don't know how many plans I'd backed out on, days I had lost, or friends that had slowly drifted away. Those days, minutes, and hours spent in anxiety I still can not restore. That said, what I feel has impacted me the most is the broken systems and mindsets that negatively shifted my understanding of myself and others. Lack of proper education in schools, workplaces, and places of worship had pushed me to suffer in isolation, lying to my family, hiding from my friends, and being ostracized and labeled in workplaces. This cultural stigma of and refusal to acknowledge mental health forced me to adopt coping mechanisms, unhealthy behavior, and negative mindsets before I knew how to drive. That's what I want to help change. This fall, I take the first step to pursue a dream: starting my studies for a Master of Science in Clinical mental health counseling. My vision is to become a bridge for others to reach wholeness and restoration through clinical counseling. Scholarships will provide financial support to allow me to pursue the Master of Science in Clinical Mental Health Counseling. Once licensed, I hope to establish a non-profit or personal business to restore the well-being of the servants in our communities who often lack emotional and mental support. I hope to provide people with a haven of healing and rejuvenation through a retreat-style homestead that combines regenerative agriculture, counseling, and hospitality. The goal is to go beyond simply healing the hearts and minds of others. I desire to restore the dignity of men and women who have not been given space, education, or time to release the heavyweights that have held them, their families, colleagues, and communities back for generations. I am walking forward with hope and belief that it is time to release shame and accept our brokenness as a brilliant part of being human. It is time to walk towards wholeness in the presence of a healthy community. This is my dream; personal value restored, generation patterns deconstructed, and men and women walking in healing and wholeness for generations to come. I may not change the world, but I know I can at least offer safe space and love for those with heavy and burdened minds.

I grew up in a family dotted with undiagnosed mental illnesses. Addiction, anxiety, trauma, and abuse were part of the family tapestry but rarely addressed as more than a mere blemish on our name. My grandmother's dependence and control were just leftover symptoms of a bygone time. She, just like her mother before her, was a woman with too much to worry about and not enough time. Platitudes like "that's just the way they are" allowed for over-medication and the normalization of unhealthy patterns. I spent many days with this grandmother: a southern woman who made the best friend okra and award-winning pies. She was everyone's favorite Aunt and the family heirloom, so to speak. Everyone knew "Aunt Sarah", and her many worried ways, but no one ever talked about how those worried ways pointed to a hard, crippling generational issue: anxiety. "It's just my nerves, Kalli, they're driving me nuts," she would say, and all I could think to say back was "I know Mammaw, it's hard." "Do you get nervous Kalli?" What a question! Did I get nervous? Of course, I did; In a crowd of people trying to think what to say, At a family party wanting to find a quiet room, or Resting in my bed fearing the house would burn down. I pause, should I share precious information? No, I decide I cannot. Before I get a chance to eke out an answer, "No, Kalli, you don't get nervous. You're such a good girl." I smile, "that's right," I think, "I don't get nervous. I'm such a good girl." Years go by in my young life. I remember worried nights staring at my ceiling alone, crying. I never questioned the legitimacy of these thoughts. I just accepted them as a battle I had to fight. However, it shifted one day, I had an anxiety attack in front of my family. There is not much I can bring to mind from this night. My mom took me out to the yard and asked me questions. I recall the buzz of the street light, and the hum of the insects bedding down in the grass. I can still see the violent images of wars and attacks from the news that triggered the spiral in my mind. The details surrounding this night are fuzzy, but this moment was significant. This moment marks the moment of acknowledgment that something within my brain wasn't processing truth from fallacy correctly. I had become anxious, I did get nervous as a good girl. Years later, in college, was struggling with life transitions, romantic relationships, and the trauma of a car accident from months earlier. A cold introduction, some forms and a light mental assessment later I leave with a stack of papers. No further words were given, just a piece of paper with a title as heavy as stone printed "Generalized Anxiety Disorder." I went away empty-handed and heavy-hearted. Anxiety has limited me in many ways, but I feel these broken systems perpetuate my limitations. These quick fixes that place labels and give information, without personal care and counseling, have harmed not only me but the generations of women who have gone before. Fixable patterns of behavior caused by undiagnosed mental illness have led to suicides, overdoses, and ostracization of many members of my family. Mental illness has had a profound effect on so many of my loved ones, and myself. However, it has given me the empathy, passion, and drive to push forward for change, education, and resources for each and every human on this earth.