The impact I want to make is simple: I want every child to know they matter. I want to be the adult who notices the child sitting quietly in the back of the classroom, the one carrying burdens too heavy for their age. My education is not just preparing me for a career, it is giving me the tools to become an advocate, a source of stability, and someone who helps children realize that their circumstances do not define their future. I grew up surrounded by challenges that many children should never have to experience. My childhood was marked by poverty, periods of homelessness, mental illness, and my father’s ongoing battle with addiction. There were times when I had to call 911 because I wasn’t sure if he would survive. Living through those experiences taught me what fear feels like, but it also taught me empathy. I know what it is like to walk into school carrying worries that no one else can see. Those experiences shaped my belief that one caring adult can make an incredible difference in a child’s life. Today, I work as a paraprofessional in an elementary school, where I see every day that children often need more than academic support. Some are grieving, some struggle with anxiety, and others come from unstable home environments. While teachers help them learn to read and write, I hope to help them feel safe, valued, and understood. Sometimes the smallest moments, a conversation, a smile, or simply listening can remind a child that they are not alone. My bachelor’s degrees in English and Psychology have prepared me to understand both people and the power of communication. English has taught me to listen carefully and appreciate every person’s story, while Psychology has given me insight into trauma, child development, and resilience. After graduation, I plan to earn my Master’s in Social Work so I can become a school social worker, providing counseling, connecting families with resources, and advocating for children who may not have anyone else speaking on their behalf. The people who inspire me most are my grandparents, whose unconditional love gave me stability during the most difficult years of my life, and the educators who believed in me even when I doubted myself. They showed me that kindness and consistency can change the direction of someone’s life. I hope to offer that same hope to the children and families I serve. The future I want to help create is one where children are supported before they reach a crisis, where mental health is treated with compassion instead of stigma, and where every child has the opportunity to succeed regardless of where they started. I cannot change the hardships I experienced growing up, but I can use them to build a career centered on healing, advocacy, and hope. If I can help even one child feel seen, safe, and capable of believing in themselves, then I will know I have made the impact I set out to create.

Life begins with sobriety.” Bishop Mozell Haymon’s words remind me that sobriety is about much more than giving up alcohol or drugs. It represents hope, healing, and the possibility of a different future. Although I have not seen that future fully realized in my own family, I have spent my life witnessing how addiction affects everyone around the person struggling. Those experiences have shaped who I am and inspired the career I hope to build. My father has struggled with alcoholism, substance abuse, bipolar disorder, and PTSD for most of my life. Some of my earliest memories are filled with fear and uncertainty. There were times when he was homeless, times when he attempted to take his own life, and times when I had to call 911 because I wasn’t sure if he would survive. Addiction touched every part of our family. It taught me what it feels like to wait for the next phone call, to worry about whether someone you love is safe, and to realize that children often carry burdens they should never have to bear. The hardest part is that addiction is not a story with a simple ending. My father continues to struggle. There have been moments when I hoped things would change, but addiction has remained a constant presence in our lives. Loving someone who battles addiction has taught me that recovery is not something you can force on another person. You can love them, encourage them, and hope for them, but ultimately the decision has to be theirs. While I could not change my father’s path, I could choose my own. Growing up in an environment filled with instability gave me a deep understanding of how trauma affects children. I know what it feels like to walk into school carrying worries no one else can see. I understand how difficult it is to concentrate when your home life feels unpredictable. Those experiences have given me empathy that cannot be taught in a classroom. Today, I work as a paraprofessional in an elementary school while completing my bachelor’s degrees in English and Psychology. After graduation, I plan to earn my Master’s in Social Work and become a school social worker. I want to be the trusted adult who recognizes when a child is silently struggling. I hope to provide the stability, encouragement, and support that many children affected by addiction desperately need. I also want to help connect families with resources that may give them the opportunity to heal. Although my father’s addiction has caused immeasurable pain, it has also given me a clear purpose. It has shown me the importance of compassion over judgment and taught me that every child deserves someone who believes in them, regardless of the circumstances they were born into. I cannot rewrite my family’s story, but I can dedicate my life to helping other children write a different ending for theirs.

In a family filled with dark hair and olive skin, I stood out immediately. People often asked where my red hair came from, and for years I didn’t know the answer. Later, I learned that my great-grandfather, who immigrated from Sicily and was completely Sicilian, had the same red hair. Somehow, generations later, it found its way to me. Today, I am still the only person in my family with red hair. Being different became something I grew used to. People noticed me before they knew me. They made assumptions based on how I looked, where I came from, or what they thought they understood about my life. What they didn’t see was the reality behind the smile. My childhood was marked by poverty, homelessness, and instability. My parents struggled with serious mental health challenges, and there were times when life felt uncertain from one day to the next. I remember sleeping in places that children should never have to sleep, wondering where our next meal would come from, and learning at a young age how quickly life could change. While other children worried about fitting in at school, I worried about whether we would have a place to stay. Those experiences shaped me in ways I am still discovering. For a long time, I felt underestimated. People often assume that children who grow up in difficult circumstances will continue that cycle. Sometimes, I even believed it myself. College felt like something meant for other people, people with stability, financial security, and family members who had already shown them the way. But resilience often grows in the places where hope is hardest to find. Today, I am a first-generation college student, a wife, a mother of three, and a paraprofessional at an elementary school. Every day, I work with children who remind me of myself. Some are struggling with challenges that are invisible to everyone around them. I understand what it feels like to carry burdens that others cannot see. That understanding has become one of my greatest strengths. My experiences are also why I chose to study the humanities. Throughout my life, books, stories, history, and art helped me make sense of the world around me. The humanities taught me that every person has a story worth telling and that understanding those stories can create compassion, connection, and change. When I read about people overcoming hardship, fighting for justice, or simply trying to find their place in the world, I see pieces of my own journey reflected back at me. The humanities have shown me that resilience is not just surviving difficult circumstances. It is choosing to learn from them, to grow because of them, and to use them to help others. My academic goals are rooted in that belief. I want to continue my education so I can serve children and families who may feel overlooked, misunderstood, or underestimated. I may still be the girl with the red hair, carrying a trait passed down from a Sicilian great-grandfather generations ago. But what truly defines me is not what makes me stand out on the outside. It is the determination, empathy, and perseverance that grew from the challenges I faced. Those experiences have shaped who I am, why I study the humanities, and the future I hope to build, not only for myself, but for the people I hope to help along the way. My picture is me with my 3 children from a few years ago.

When I think about my future, I think about the people who helped me through some of the hardest moments of my life and the kind of person I want to be for others. My goal is to continue my education and build a career helping children who have experienced trauma, instability, and mental health challenges. I currently work as a paraprofessional at my children’s elementary school, and every day I see how much of a difference one caring adult can make in a child’s life. Growing up, life was not always easy. My family struggled with poverty, homelessness, and mental health challenges. There were times when I didn’t know where we would sleep or how things would turn out. As a child, I often felt scared and uncertain about the future. Those experiences were painful, but they also taught me compassion, resilience, and the importance of helping others when they need it most. Today, I am a mother of three, a full-time student, and someone determined to build a different future for my family. Going back to school has been one of the hardest and most rewarding things I have ever done. There are plenty of nights spent studying after my children go to bed and moments when I question whether I can keep juggling everything. But I keep going because I want my children to see that no matter where you start, you can work toward something better. My husband, who is a police officer and veteran, has been incredibly supportive throughout this journey. Together, we work hard to provide for our family while balancing work, school, and raising our children. Even with that support, the financial strain of college can be overwhelming. Between tuition, books, and everyday family expenses, there are times when every dollar matters. This scholarship would help relieve some of that burden and allow me to focus more on my education and future career. More than that, it would be a reminder that someone believes in students like me—students who are working hard to improve their lives while supporting a family. My past has inspired my future. I want to use my education to help children who may be facing challenges similar to the ones I faced growing up. If I can help even one child feel seen, supported, and hopeful about their future, then every obstacle I have overcome will have been worth it.

Being a first-generation college student means carrying the hopes of generations before me while creating a path no one in my family has walked before. It means learning as I go, making mistakes, asking questions, and refusing to give up even when the road feels overwhelming. Growing up, college was never something I assumed would be part of my future. My childhood was marked by poverty, homelessness, and instability. There were times when my family didn’t know where we would sleep, and there were days when food was not guaranteed. My parents struggled with severe mental health challenges, and as a child, I often found myself navigating situations no child should have to face. Those experiences were painful, but they taught me resilience, empathy, and determination. For a long time, survival was the goal. Today, my life looks very different. I am a wife, a mother of three incredible children, and a full-time college student. My husband, a police officer, and I work hard to provide our children with the stability and security that I often lacked growing up. Returning to school was one of the most difficult decisions I have ever made because it meant balancing coursework, family responsibilities, finances, and self-doubt. There are nights when I study after my children are asleep and mornings when exhaustion follows me into class. But every assignment completed and every semester finished reminds me that I am building something bigger than myself. My children are my greatest motivation. I want them to grow up knowing that where you begin does not determine where you end up. I want them to see that challenges can be overcome and that education can change the course of a family’s future. My goal is to work in the mental health field, helping children who are facing trauma, instability, and adversity. I know what it feels like to be a child who needs support, understanding, and hope. Because of that, I want to dedicate my career to helping young people realize that their circumstances do not define their worth or limit their potential. This scholarship would help ease the financial burden of pursuing my degree and allow me to continue moving toward that goal. More than that, it would be a reminder that someone believes in students like me—students who come from difficult beginnings but refuse to let those beginnings define them. Being first-generation is about more than earning a degree. For me, it is about breaking cycles, creating opportunities, and showing my children that perseverance can open doors that once seemed impossible to reach. Every step I take toward graduation is a step toward a future I once only dreamed was possible.

Growing up, I never really had a clear picture of what “success” looked like. My childhood was shaped by poverty, addiction, mental illness, and instability. My mother struggled with severe depression and my father struggled with bipolar disorder. There were periods of homelessness, constant uncertainty, and a lot of moments where survival was the main focus for everyone around me. Education was never really encouraged because people were just trying to get through the day. When I became a mother at 20 and again at 22, I suddenly realized how easy it would have been to continue the same cycle. I had my oldest daughter and then my twins shortly after, and for a while I felt stuck between wanting more for my children and not fully knowing how to get there myself. My husband is a police officer, and while we both work hard for our family, balancing finances, parenting, work, and school has not been easy. Still, I realized that if I wanted my children to believe they could build a different life, I had to show them what that looked like first. That realization is what pushed me back into school full time. My goal is to become a therapist specializing in trauma, addiction, and childhood mental health. I want to work with families and children who grew up the way I did because I understand firsthand how deeply instability can affect someone. I know what it feels like to be a child who needed help and didn’t know where to find it. I also know what it feels like to become an adult determined to break those generational patterns. My plan for reaching these goals has to be very intentional because failure simply is not an option for me. Right now, I am attending school full time while raising three children. My immediate goals are maintaining strong grades, continuing to gain experience working with children and families, and eventually completing graduate school so I can become a licensed therapist. Financially, I rely heavily on budgeting, grants, scholarships, and student aid. Tuition, books, childcare, transportation, and everyday expenses add up quickly, especially with a family of five. Scholarships like this one would make a huge difference because they would allow me to spend less time stressing over finances and more time focused on school and building a stable future. I also know success takes more than ambition. It takes planning, support, and flexibility. My husband and I constantly work around each other’s schedules to make everything function for our kids. I study late at night after my children are asleep and usually plan assignments far ahead because life happens and emergencies come up. I have learned that perseverance is not always some huge inspirational moment. Sometimes it just looks like sitting at the kitchen table doing homework while helping your children with theirs too. My end goal is not just earning a degree. It is creating stability and security for my children while becoming someone who can genuinely help others heal. I want future clients to feel understood when they sit across from me. Everything I have lived through has given me empathy, determination, and purpose. I cannot change where I came from, but I can build something better from it.

What gives me an advantage over everyone else is not that my life has been easier. It’s that it hasn’t, and I kept going anyway. I am a mother of three, a full-time student, and the wife of a police officer. Life in our home is busy, unpredictable, and honestly exhausting sometimes. There are assignments due while dinner is cooking, study sessions after bedtime routines, and mornings where I have to push through stress and lack of sleep because my family depends on me. There is no option for me to simply “focus on school” without also balancing the emotional and physical responsibilities of being a parent and a partner. However, that is exactly why I believe I deserve this scholarship. I understand responsibility on a level that cannot be taught in a classroom. I know what it means to continue showing up even when life is difficult. My husband serves our community as a police officer, and with that comes long hours, stress, missed holidays, and the constant awareness that our family carries sacrifices too and because of that, I have learned how to be adaptable, dependable, and resilient. Those qualities follow me into every class I take and every goal I set for myself. I also come from a background that taught me the importance of education the hard way. Growing up, I saw what happens when mental health struggles, financial instability, and lack of support limit a person’s opportunities. I watched people I loved struggle to survive instead of truly live. Becoming a parent made me realize I wanted something different not only for myself, but for my children. I wanted to break cycles instead of repeating them. Going back to school was not the easiest path. It would have been easier to accept survival mode as my normal. Instead, I chose growth. I chose long nights studying after my children fell asleep. I chose continuing my education while managing a household and supporting a family built around service and sacrifice. I chose to believe that my past did not have to decide my future. What gives me an advantage over others is my perspective. I do not take education for granted because I know exactly what it costs to pursue it. Every assignment, every class, and every semester represents something bigger than grades to me. It represents stability for my children, pride in myself, and the chance to build a career where I can help people who grew up feeling unseen and unsupported like I once did. I am not competing with others using privilege or ease. I am competing with persistence, discipline, empathy, and determination. I have learned how to keep moving forward even during hardship, and I know those experiences will make me not only a stronger student, but a stronger person in the career I am working toward. This scholarship would not just support my education. It would support a mother trying to create a better future for her children, a wife supporting a family built on public service, and a student who refuses to give up despite every challenge life has placed in front of her.

I grew up in a single parent household where survival always came before anything else. My mother struggled deeply with her mental health, and there were many times during my childhood where I felt less like a kid and more like someone trying to hold an entire house together. There were nights I dragged my parents out of rooms after suicide attempts. There were moments of homelessness, instability, and fear that shaped the way I saw the world long before I should have had to see it that way. School was never something that was handed to me as an expectation. Nobody sat me down and talked about college applications or scholarships or careers. Education felt distant, like something meant for people with stability, money, and support systems. I spent most of my younger years focused on surviving emotionally rather than planning for a future. Then I became a mother myself at 20 and again at 22. I had my oldest daughter and later my twins, and suddenly I understood how easily cycles repeat themselves. I could see how poverty, untreated mental illness, and lack of support pass from one generation to the next. For a while, I was terrified I was heading down the exact same road my parents had walked. Everything changed when my husband and I moved away from my hometown. For the first time in my life, I could breathe. I started realizing that maybe my life did not have to look like the life I came from. Going back to school stopped feeling impossible and started feeling necessary. Not just for me, but for my children. I wanted them to grow up seeing their mother fight for something bigger instead of simply surviving day to day. Being a parent while pursuing an education has not been easy. There are nights I stay up finishing assignments after helping with homework, making dinner, and getting three kids to bed. There are moments where I feel exhausted and stretched thin. But honestly, becoming a mother is what gave me ambition in the first place. My children are the reason I finally believed my future mattered. My experiences are also what shaped my desire to become a therapist. Growing up, I saw firsthand what happens when people cannot access mental health care, when trauma goes untreated, and when people feel abandoned by the systems that are supposed to help them. I know what it feels like to grow up carrying adult problems on a child’s shoulders. I know what it feels like to feel invisible. In the future, I want to give back to my community by working with children, teens, and families who are struggling with trauma, poverty, addiction, and mental illness. I especially want to help children who grew up too fast like I did. Sometimes people do not need someone to “fix” them. Sometimes they just need one safe person who listens, understands, and reminds them that their circumstances do not define their future. Coming from a single parent household taught me resilience long before I had a word for it. Becoming a parent myself taught me purpose. Education became the bridge between the life I came from and the life I want to build, not only for myself, but for every person I hope to help along the way.

Taylor Swift started becoming popular when I was a freshman in high school. At fourteen, I honestly did not care. I was stubborn about music back then and convinced I was not going to listen to this country singer that every other girl suddenly loved. She just did not grab my attention at all. Then I turned fifteen. Her song “Fifteen” came out at the exact moment I needed it to. I had just started high school. I had dated the football player. I had met the best friend who felt like she would stay in my life forever. Listening to that song felt almost invasive in the way it understood girlhood so perfectly. It was not glamorous or dramatic. It was awkward and hopeful and emotional in the exact way being fifteen actually is. I remember sitting in my room replaying it over and over because for the first time, music felt less like entertainment and more like someone reaching through the speakers saying, “I know exactly what this feels like.” I have been a fan ever since. Out of all of Taylor’s performances throughout her career, the one that moves me most is her performance of “The Fate of Ophelia” from The Life of a Showgirl. What makes it so powerful to me is that it does not feel like a performance in the traditional sense. It feels like a wound being opened carefully in front of millions of people. There is something haunting about it. Even happily married, even deeply loved, I still found myself emotionally overwhelmed by it because heartbreak does not only belong to romance. That performance pulled memories out of me that I do not think about often. I grew up in a home filled with instability, mental illness, addiction, and the constant feeling that love could disappear at any moment. The song made me think about what it feels like to desperately want to be chosen, understood, or protected and how painful it is when that does not happen. Taylor’s performance reminded me of younger versions of myself who carried heartbreak long before I ever experienced romantic love. What has always made Taylor Swift stand out to me is her ability to create music that changes meaning as her audience grows older. “Fifteen” held my hand through being a teenage girl. “The Fate of Ophelia” sat with me as an adult woman reflecting on survival, grief, and healing. Very few artists can follow people through every stage of their lives that way. I think that is why her performances resonate so deeply with so many people. Somewhere inside her lyrics, people find themselves. I know I always have.

Suicide was not something distant in my childhood. It was part of the air in my house. Some kids grow up afraid of monsters under the bed. I grew up afraid of silence. Silence usually meant someone had locked themselves in a room for too long. It meant I needed to knock on a door that I was terrified to open. More than once as a child, I dragged one of my unconscious parents out of their room after suicide attempts. I learned very young how to call for help, how to shake someone awake, how to stay calm when I was panicking inside. When you grow up around that kind of pain, it changes the shape of you. My mother struggled deeply with depression. My father battled bipolar disorder, PTSD, addiction, and self-destruction for most of my life. Mental illness was everywhere around me, but nobody really talked about it openly. We just survived it quietly and then woke up the next morning pretending life was normal again. So when my stepmother died by suicide, there was a strange kind of heartbreak to it. Not because suicide itself was shocking to me, but because she was the one who actually succeeded. That thought haunted me for a long time. I kept thinking about all the times I had managed to pull someone back. All the times I had sat beside hospital beds or watched my family somehow survive another crisis. A part of me, I think believed that if I loved people hard enough or paid enough attention, I could stop tragedy from happening. Losing my stepmother forced me to confront the reality that sometimes love is not enough to save someone from their own pain. That was one of the hardest lessons of my life. For a long time, I carried guilt that did not belong to me. I replayed conversations. I questioned whether there was a sign I missed. Suicide leaves behind so many unanswered questions, and the people left behind are the ones who carry them forever. Grief after suicide feels different. It is sadness mixed with confusion, anger, guilt, and helplessness all at once. Over time, I also learned something important. Surviving does not mean pretending you are untouched by what happened to you. For years, I thought resilience meant becoming hard enough that nothing could hurt me anymore. Now I think resilience is softer than that. I think it is waking up every day and choosing to keep loving people anyway. Choosing to build a life that looks different from the one you came from. Choosing to stay. My childhood and my stepmother’s death are a large part of why I want to become a therapist. I know what it feels like to live inside generational pain. I know what it feels like to be a child carrying emotional burdens that were never meant for them. I also know how life-changing it can be when someone finally feels understood instead of judged. I cannot change what happened to my stepmother. I cannot rewrite my childhood. But I can use those experiences to sit beside other people in their darkest moments and remind them that they are not alone there. For me, hope does not look loud or dramatic anymore. It looks like surviving without losing my ability to care about people. It looks like raising my children in a home filled with safety instead of fear. It looks like becoming the kind of adult I needed when I was young.

When I was little, I thought everybody lived the way we did. I thought everybody had nights where the electricity might get shut off. I thought everybody learned how to stay quiet when an adult in the house was struggling. I thought everybody watched their mother work herself into the ground while battling depression or watched their father spiral through addiction and mental illness and suicide attempts while still somehow loving him anyway. It wasn’t until I got older that I realized how much of my childhood was survival. My sisters and I mostly raised ourselves. My mom worked constantly and still we barely had enough sometimes. My dad was battling bipolar disorder, PTSD, addiction, and honestly himself. There was always this feeling that life could tip over at any second. As a kid, you don’t really understand what mental illness is. You just know the adults around you are hurting and somehow you start believing it’s your job to fix it. For a long time, I thought my life would follow the exact same path. Then I became a mom. I had my oldest daughter young, and then my twins, and I remember sitting there one day realizing how easy it would be to repeat everything I came from without even meaning to. Not because I didn’t love my kids enough, but because survival is all I had ever known. I was exhausted all the time. I was overwhelmed. I felt like I was carrying generations of hurt on my back while trying to make dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets and fold laundry. But somewhere along the way, something changed in me. We moved away from my hometown and for the first time in my life, I could actually breathe. I started realizing that maybe my story didn’t have to end the same way my parents’ stories did. Maybe my kids could grow up differently. Maybe I could too. That’s what pushed me toward school and eventually toward wanting to become a therapist. Not because I think I have all the answers. Honestly, I don’t. But I know what it feels like to grow up feeling unseen. I know what it feels like to carry shame that never belonged to you in the first place. I know what it’s like to love people deeply while also being hurt by them. I think there’s power in being understood by someone who truly gets it. I don’t think changing the world always looks big and dramatic. I think sometimes it looks like sitting with someone in their worst moment and making sure they don’t feel alone in it. I think about that a lot with a little girl named Aubree. She was one of my daughter’s friends when I worked as a paraprofessional at their school. Quiet, shy, sweet. She trusted me with things she wouldn’t tell anyone else. Then one day she disappeared from school. Months later we found out she had brain cancer. Recently, I stepped in to help homeschool her and care for her sisters while her family focused on treatment. And honestly? That’s the kind of impact I want to leave behind. Not something huge. Not something polished. I just want people to feel safe with me. I want children growing up in chaos to know their lives can still become beautiful. I want struggling mothers to know they are not failures. I want people who feel broken to realize they are still worthy of love, stability, and softness. I know what it feels like to need that person and I want to become one.

Growing up well below the poverty line shaped almost every part of my childhood. My mother struggled deeply with severe depression while trying to raise us mostly on her own, and my father battled bipolar disorder, addiction, and instability for most of my life. Even in separate households, they held the same chaos. Looking back now as an adult, I can see that so much of the pain in our home came from the fact that neither of my parents had access to the support they truly needed. Mental health struggles consumed our family, and because of that, survival always came before dreams, education, or planning for the future. I was never really encouraged to pursue college. It wasn’t because my parents didn’t love me, but because they were trying to survive themselves. There wasn’t guidance about applications, scholarships, or careers. There was stress about bills, food, emotional instability, and making it through the week. For a long time, I thought that was just how life worked. When I became a mother at 20 to my oldest daughter and my twins, at 22, I started realizing how easily cycles repeat themselves. I could feel myself heading down the same road my parents had walked. I loved my children more than anything, but I also felt trapped by fear. I was terrified that they would grow up carrying the same emotional weight that I carried as a child. I remember looking at them and realizing that if I did not change something, their future might look too much like my past. The biggest support in my educational journey honestly came from my husband and my children. My husband believed I was capable of more even during the times I doubted myself completely. Moving away from my home state with him gave me distance from the chaos I had always known. Then moving even farther away to another state felt like taking my first real breath. For the first time in my life, I felt like maybe I was allowed to build something different instead of just surviving what I had been given. My children have become my motivation in everything I do. They see me studying late at night, balancing school with motherhood, and continuing even when I’m exhausted. I honor their support by refusing to give up. Every class I pass and every step I take toward my degree feels bigger than just me. It feels like I am changing the future for all of us. These experiences are also what led me toward pursuing psychology and becoming a therapist. Growing up around untreated mental illness showed me how deeply people suffer when they cannot access help, understanding, or support. I want to work with families, children, and people struggling with trauma because I know firsthand how much pain can exist inside a household while nobody talks about it openly. I want to be the kind of safe person I wish existed for my parents when I was younger. Being raised in a single-parent household with so much instability taught me resilience, but it also taught me the importance of compassion. My support system may not have looked traditional, but the people who believed in me helped me realize that my story did not have to end where it started. Going to college is more than earning a degree to me. It is building a healthier future for my children and proving that cycles can be broken.

When I was growing up, I was taught education was important but simultaneously I was told that higher education was not achievable. My childhood was mostly about surviving whatever chaos was happening that week. My mom was a single mother working multiple jobs just to keep us afloat, and my dad struggled with addiction, bipolar disorder, PTSD, and a lot of anger. There were nights filled with screaming, police showing up, suicide attempts, and trying to keep things together as a kid when I shouldn’t have had to. Nobody sat me down to talk about college applications or future careers. We were just trying to make it through the day. That’s why being the first person in my family to get a college degree means so much to me. It feels bigger than just school. It feels like finally changing the direction my family has been headed for generations. I spent a lot of my childhood believing life just happened to you and you survived it the best you could. Going to college showed me that maybe I actually get to build something different. I also had my kids young, before I really knew who I was. There’s a lot of guilt that comes with trying to balance being a mom, a student, and still showing up for everyone around me. I hate missing time with my kids while I study or do assignments, but at the same time, they are the reason I keep going. They see me working hard every single day and I hope one day they understand that I did it to give them a softer life than the one I had. In college, I’m pursuing psychology because I want to become a therapist. Honestly, mental health has affected every part of my life. I grew up watching untreated trauma completely destroy people I loved. Addiction, violence, instability, and silence were normal in my house. I know what it feels like to grow up carrying emotional weight that was never supposed to belong to a child. Because of that, I want to help people who come from backgrounds like mine, especially kids and families dealing with trauma, addiction, poverty, and mental illness. I’ve always been the person people naturally open up to. When I worked as a paraprofessional at my kids’ school, students who were struggling emotionally would always end up talking to me. Even now, I’m helping homeschool four girls while their older sister goes through cancer treatment. I don’t really see helping people as volunteering. I just know what it feels like to need someone safe and understanding, and I want to be that person for others. Long term, my goal is to become a licensed therapist and work with people who feel overlooked, judged, or stuck in survival mode the way I did for so long. I want to help families break cycles of trauma and create healthier lives for themselves and their children. I know firsthand how much untreated pain can affect an entire family for generations, and I want to be part of helping people heal instead of just survive. To me, being first generation isn’t just about earning a degree. It’s about breaking cycles. It’s about showing my kids that healing is possible and that our story does not have to end the way it started.

My slight lisp was definitely the thing kids picked apart when I was growing up. Middle schoolers are brutal honestly, and they never missed an opportunity to repeat back an “S” word I said in a mocking voice. It became one of those things where I started thinking about every single word before I said it because I was already waiting for someone to laugh. Even if it was something small, when you are that age it feels huge. I remember becoming hyper aware of the way I talked. I would replay conversations in my head afterward wondering if people noticed it or if I sounded weird. There were times I stayed quiet in class even when I knew the answer because I did not want attention on me. It is strange looking back now because I know my lisp was never some massive thing, but middle school has a way of making small insecurities feel enormous. Even now, I am still hyper-aware of my words. I will over accentuate so that my there is nothing I can be mocked for. What is funny is that most adults genuinely do not care about things like that at all. Kids notice differences and immediately make them a target, but as I got older I realized most people either never noticed my lisp or thought it was just part of who I was. The older I got, the less power it had over me. I actually think it made me more aware of other people though. When you know what it feels like to be embarrassed or singled out, you become a lot more careful about how you treat people. I noticed the quieter kids more. I noticed when someone was getting left out or laughed at. I think that experience shaped the way I move through the world now, especially with my goal of becoming a therapist someday. I know firsthand how deeply words stick with people, especially at vulnerable ages. Honestly, I think everybody has something. Mine just happened to be the way I pronounced certain words. At the time it felt humiliating, but even though now I still have the same voices buried in my head, I’ve learned to accept it. I also think having a lisp forced me to develop confidence in a different way. I had to learn that I could not spend my whole life shrinking myself just because someone else decided to make me feel embarrassed. At some point, I just realized people will always find something to judge if they want to. Learning to accept myself anyway was probably one of the most important things I gained from the experience. Ironically, the thing that once made me scared to speak is probably part of why I care so much about making people feel heard now.

Selflessness is not something I learned from comfort. I learned it from survival. Growing up, there were many times when the adults around me were struggling so badly that the children became caretakers without even realizing it. My mother worked constantly just to keep food in the house. My father battled addiction, mental illness, and trauma from his military service. There were nights filled with chaos, fear, and uncertainty, and because of that, I learned very young how to pay attention to other people’s pain. I learned how to step in quietly when someone needed help because I knew what it felt like to desperately need someone and not have them show up. As an adult, that has shaped almost everything about the way I move through the world. One of the clearest examples of this in my life is a little girl named Aubree. I met her while working as a paraprofessional at my children’s elementary school. She was shy, soft spoken, and had a difficult home life. For reasons I still cannot fully explain, she trusted me. She would talk to me about things she would not tell other adults. Even after I left the school to focus on college classes and raising my own children, she stayed close with my daughter and remained part of our lives. Then one day, she disappeared from school. Months went by without answers. When we finally saw her again at a birthday party, I barely recognized her. She had lost her hair and looked painfully thin. That was when I learned she had cancer. Since then, I have stepped in wherever I can. I help care for her younger sisters while their mother takes her to treatments and chemotherapy appointments. I help homeschool the girls so life can feel as normal as possible during something unimaginably difficult. Some days that means helping with schoolwork at the kitchen table. Other days it means making meals, keeping the younger girls occupied, or simply being another safe adult in the room while their family carries more than anyone should have to carry. I do not consider this extraordinary. To me, this is what people are supposed to do for one another. Selflessness is rarely dramatic. Most of the time, it is exhausting and invisible. It is choosing to show up even when your own schedule is overwhelming. It is listening when someone needs to talk. It is sacrificing time, sleep, comfort, or convenience because another person’s pain matters too. As someone pursuing a future career as a therapist, I carry this belief with me constantly. I know what it feels like to grow up needing safety, stability, and understanding. I also know how deeply one caring person can change the direction of someone’s life. My goal is to become that person for others, not because I think I can save everyone, but because I believe people deserve to be seen, supported, and loved during the hardest moments of their lives. Selflessness, to me, is love put into action.

When I was younger, I thought survival was normal. I thought every child stayed awake listening for fighting in the next room. I thought every little girl knew how to dial 911 before they learned long division. My childhood was shaped by addiction, mental illness, poverty, and instability. My father struggled with bipolar disorder, PTSD from military service, and substance abuse that consumed our family. My mother worked constantly just to keep us afloat while battling her own mental health struggles. There were nights filled with fear, suicide attempts, psychiatric hospitals, and uncertainty about whether the adults around me would survive themselves. For a long time, I believed those experiences would break me. Instead, they became the reason I want to dedicate my life to helping other people heal. I am pursuing a future in therapy because I understand what it feels like to grow up without safety, stability, or emotional support. I know what it is like to carry adult burdens as a child and to feel invisible while struggling deeply inside. As I got older, I realized how many children live in homes like mine did and how many adults are silently carrying trauma they have never had the chance to process. I want to be the person I desperately needed when I was younger: someone who listens without judgment, creates safety, and helps people believe their lives can become something different. My goal is not simply to become a therapist, but to create spaces where people feel genuinely seen. I especially hope to work with children, families, trauma survivors, and people struggling with addiction or generational cycles of abuse. I know firsthand how deeply family dysfunction can shape a person’s self-worth and future. I also know healing is possible because I have spent years fighting for my own. Becoming a mother changed me even further. I had my children young, before I fully understood myself, and raising them has forced me to confront every painful part of my past. I want to build a legacy of emotionally healthy children. I want my kids to grow up in a home filled with safety, openness, and love instead of fear and unpredictability. That desire extends beyond my own family. I want to help other parents and children break cycles that may have existed for generations. I also carry a deep understanding of how complicated identity and self-acceptance can be. Watching people I love struggle under the weight of shame, trauma, and societal expectations taught me how damaging silence can become. Therapy has the power to give people language for their pain and hope for their future. I want to help provide that hope. My life has taught me resilience, empathy, and the importance of human connection. I do not come from privilege or perfect circumstances, but I come from experience, compassion, and determination. I know what suffering looks like, but I also know what survival looks like. Through a career in therapy, I hope to turn the hardest parts of my story into something meaningful for someone else.

1. When did you find TXT? Honestly, I found TXT when K-Pop Demon Hunters came out. My kids were obsessed with it, so we had all the songs playing on YouTube nonstop. One day “Sugar Rush Ride” came on automatically after “How It’s Done,” and that was when we really discovered them. My youngest daughter immediately got up and started dancing like she always does when something has a good beat, and then we all started dancing. 2. What do you think is one of the most important characteristics of a MOA? I think it’s just genuinely enjoying and supporting them in your own way. It doesn’t have to look perfect. For me, it’s about the joy their music brings into my house and how it connects me with my kids. 3. Do you have a TXT bias, and if so, why did you choose them? I don’t really have a strong bias. I like them as a group because of what their music represents for me. It’s tied to memories with my kids, so it feels bigger than just picking one person. 4. Who is your ult bias, if any, of any group? I don’t have one. I’m more here for the feeling the music brings and the moments it creates in my life. 5. What is your favorite TXT song, and why? “Sugar Rush Ride” is my favorite because it’s the song that started it for us. My youngest started dancing immediately, and now every time it comes on it brings us right back to that moment. It turned into dance parties in the kitchen and just laughing together. It’s more than a song, it’s a memory. 6. Have you had a chance to see TXT live in concert before? Not yet, but I would love to. I can already imagine how excited my kids would be, and I think it would be a memory we’d hold onto for a long time. 7. What was your favorite album concept, and why? I’m still learning more about their albums, but I love the fun, high-energy feel they have. It fits into real life so easily. It’s something we can play while cooking or cleaning and just enjoy together. 8. How are you currently paying for school? Right now I’m just trying to make it work. I’m balancing being a mom of three, going to school, and handling everything that comes with that. Financially it’s stressful, and there’s always pressure to keep everything together. We are a one income household and I am a full-time student. 9. How will the scholarship help you? What gaps can it fill? This scholarship would take a huge weight off of me. It would help fill the financial gaps that come with trying to build a better future while still taking care of my kids now. It would give me more room to breathe and focus on school instead of constantly worrying about money. It’s not just helping me, it’s helping create stability for my kids too. 10. How has TXT influenced you for good? They’ve brought a kind of lightness into my home that hasn’t always been there. My life hasn’t been easy, and that’s part of why I want to become a therapist. So having something as simple as music that brings us together, makes us laugh, and gives us a break from everything else means a lot. It’s rare to find something all three of my kids love, especially my son who is hard to please. Somehow, TXT became something we all share, and those small moments matter more than they seem. 11. How will you use your education to do good in the world? I want to use my education to help people, especially kids, feel safe and understood. I know what it’s like to grow up in an unstable environment, and I want to be someone who can offer something different. My goal is to become a therapist and create a space where people can be honest without fear or judgment. If I can help even one person feel less alone, that matters to me. This image reminds me of the closeness I feel with my own family.

Higher education isn’t just school to me. It’s honestly my way out and my way forward at the same time. I didn’t grow up in a stable home. Addiction was always there. It shaped everything. There were times when we didn’t have enough, times when I didn’t know where I’d be staying, and times when I had to grow up way too fast. When your parents are struggling like that, you don’t really get to be a kid. You learn how to read the room, how to stay quiet, how to take care of yourself and sometimes even them. You carry things you don’t understand yet, but you feel them all the time. For a long time, my only goal was to not end up like that. I just wanted a different life. Something stable. Something safe. As I got older, and especially after becoming a mom, something shifted. It stopped being just about escaping my past and started being about doing something with it. That’s where my desire to become a therapist really comes from. I know what it feels like to be a child in chaos. I know what it feels like to not have a safe adult to talk to, to feel like your emotions are too big or too much for anyone else. I also know how much it would have meant to have just one person who saw me, who listened, who helped me make sense of everything. I want to be that person for someone else. I also know that caring isn’t enough on its own. My experiences give me empathy, but higher education is what will give me the tools to actually help. It will teach me how trauma really works, how addiction affects families, how to support people in a way that actually helps instead of unintentionally hurting them. It will give me structure and knowledge to back up everything I’ve lived through. And honestly, it will give me the credibility to even be in those spaces helping people in the first place. I’m not just doing this for me. I’m doing it for the kids who are growing up the way I did. The ones who feel invisible, or overwhelmed, or like their life is already decided for them. I want to help them understand that where they come from doesn’t have to be where they end up. I want to help them feel safe, feel heard, and learn how to process what they’ve been through instead of carrying it forever. I also think a lot about parents. My parents weren’t just “bad people.” They were struggling. Addiction and mental health issues don’t just affect one person, they affect entire families. If I can help even one parent get to a healthier place, that changes everything for their children too. That’s something really powerful to me. Eventually, I would love to work in spaces where people like my family actually have access to help. Schools, community programs, maybe even opening something of my own one day that feels safe and affordable. Because one of the hardest parts growing up like I did is that help never felt reachable. I want to change that, even if it’s just in my own corner of the world. Everything I’ve been through could have gone a different way. It could have broken me in a way that I never came back from. Instead, it gave me perspective. It made me more aware, more compassionate, and more determined to build something better not just for myself, but for others too. Higher education is how I turn all of that into something real. It’s how I take my past and turn it into purpose. It’s how I go from just surviving everything I’ve been through to actually using it to help someone else survive too. That means everything to me.

Service has never felt like something I sign up for. It has always felt like something I step into when someone needs it, because I know what it feels like to need someone and not have them there. In my hometown in Florida, I volunteered with Lighthouse Ministries, working with homeless mothers. I went in thinking I would be helping them find resources, but what stayed with me were the moments that had nothing to do with paperwork or programs. It was sitting with a mother while she tried to hold herself together. It was listening without judgment. It was seeing how much they were carrying while still trying to show up for their children. I saw pieces of my own childhood in them. Instability. Fear. The constant pressure to survive. Being there for them didn’t feel like volunteering, it felt personal. That experience shaped me, but nothing has impacted me more than what I am stepping into now. A student I once worked with as a paraprofessional, who is also my daughter’s close friend, is now battling brain cancer. Watching a child go through something like that is indescribable. It is heavy in a way that sits in your chest and doesn’t leave. In the middle of it all are her three sisters, still just kids, trying to understand why their world suddenly feels so uncertain. I didn’t hesitate. I will be homeschooling her and her three sisters so they can have some kind of stability when everything else feels out of control. I will be staying with her sisters while she goes to chemotherapy, making sure they are cared for, safe, and not alone in the quiet moments when things feel the hardest. I don’t see this as volunteering. I see it as stepping in the way I wish someone could have stepped in for me when I was younger. To me, leadership through service is not about being in charge or being recognized. It is about showing up when it is inconvenient, when it is emotional, when it is hard. It is about walking into someone else’s pain and choosing to stay. It is about becoming a sense of safety for someone else when their world no longer feels safe. These experiences are the reason I am pursuing a career as a therapist. I grew up in a home where mental health struggles, instability, and trauma were a part of everyday life. I know what it feels like to carry things that are too heavy for a child. I also know how much it can change someone’s life to have even one person who listens, who understands, and who stays. I want to be that person. Service has taught me that you don’t have to change the whole world to make a difference. Sometimes, changing the world for one child, one family, is enough. That is the kind of leader I will always choose to be. I’ve attached a photo of when I volunteered for “Paint Your Heart Out” If there was an option for a 2nd photo I’d include once of Aubree, my daughters friend.

Two years ago, when my oldest was in second grade and my twins were in kindergarten, I worked as a paraprofessional at their elementary school. That’s where I met Aubree. She was soft spoken and shy, the kind of child who stayed quiet in a room full of noise. She was the second of four girls, and even at that age, it was clear her home life was not always stable. For reasons I can’t fully explain, she chose me as someone she trusted. I became the only adult at school she would truly talk to. She would come over for sleepovers, and slowly, she began to open up. She just needed someone safe. The following year, I took on six classes and had to step away from the school. Aubree and my daughter were in third grade, but even after I left, I still visited. Every time I did, she found me. That connection never really faded. Then, in fourth grade, she disappeared. She was suddenly homeschooled. Her three sisters were pulled out too. There were no explanations, no goodbyes, just silence. Rumors spread, but no one really knew what happened. Months went by with no contact. Then recently, at a birthday party, I saw her again for the first time in nearly a year. I didn’t recognize her at first. She had no hair. She looked smaller, fragile in a way that broke me instantly. I later learned she had been diagnosed with brain cancer. This was her first time being around a large group of people since losing her hair. She is ten years old. Ten years old and fighting for her life. I had to step outside and sit in my car because the weight of that reality hit me all at once. No child should have to carry something like that. Since then, I have reached out to her mother. Starting next week, I will be watching Aubree’s three sisters while she goes to chemotherapy. I will also be helping homeschool them when their mom is working. It wasn’t something I hesitated to do. It felt like the only response when someone you care about is hurting. Before Aubree, I already felt called to become a child psychologist. Children like her are why that calling has become something deeper. Aubree trusted me when she didn’t have many places to put her feelings. She saw me as a safe space, and even now, she still does. My goal is to become the kind of person who can sit with children in their hardest moments and give them a space where they feel seen, heard, and understood. Not every child can put their pain into words. Some carry it quietly, like Aubree did. I want to be someone who knows how to reach them anyway. This experience has changed how I see everything. It has shown me how quickly life can shift and how important it is to show up when it does. Supporting Aubree and her family is only the beginning. Through my education and future career, I want to continue advocating for children facing unimaginable challenges, including those battling illnesses like brain cancer. Sometimes what a child needs most is not an answer, but a person who stays.

I will say that there has really never been a time in my life that I did not face adversity. After we lost our house to a hour fire when I was 4, we hopped from house to house, couch to couch, and slept in our car for many nights. While we were facing homelessness, we also faced a lack of food, a lack of cleanliness, and a lack of basic needs. Both of my parents suffer from mental illness. My father, Bipolar 1 and my mother severe depression. There have been multiple suicide attempts, many times it was my sisters or me pulling our unconscious parents out of locked spaces while we attempted to wake them up and call 911. I spent a great portion of my childhood with supervised visitation with them while we sat at a metal table with bright LED lights shining above us. My father could not cope with his mental illness and turned to alcohol and drugs. His manic episodes led to more instability. When my mother and him divorced, me being his only biological child would spend weekends with him. His mania would lead to him playing Russian roulette with his life. Loading a revolver with one bullet and pointing at his head. Even pointing it at me one time or another. I witnessed the worst of people at a young age. I witnessed untreated mental illness and being driven to unforeseen measures because of ill circumstances. I became a mother at the age 20 and a mother of 3 at the age of 22. My experiences have made me question my own childhood. I see myself in my own children but they are experiencing innocence in ways I was not able to. I see how your surroundings a truly impact who you become. I am pursuing Therapy in order to help those children who are like me. Children who need a safe space. While I am grateful I am able to create this life for my children, I want to extend the emotional well being I am trying to create within my own family to children who do not have the same opportunities. I do not want to leave a legacy bloodline or for my name to be remembered. I want to leave behind children who have been emotionally drained that have the ability to identify their own trauma and use it for good. I am choosing to use the adversity that I faced. My experiences have shaped my perspective in many significant ways. Yes, I have my own trauma but I am able to empathize in ways that others cannot. I am able to relate and listen when others cannot because I know, I have been there and I will listen. I will be the adult that I needed when I was a child.

What I find truly fascinating about Sabrina Carpenter is her open, unapologetic sexuality. Growing up in the early 2000s, women were allowed to be sexual, but only in ways that catered to men. It was never really about owning yourself, it was about performing for someone else. As I got older and more confident, I started to question that. I wondered where the voices were that spoke to women discovering themselves instead of shaping themselves for others. I wondered whose music I could turn to as I stepped into adulthood and began to understand my identity, my body, and my autonomy. It turns out those voices did exist. They were just younger than me. Sabrina Carpenter is younger than me, yes, but what she represents goes beyond age. She represents a shift in how women are allowed to exist in public spaces. Her openness feels like it belongs to women themselves, not to an audience expecting something from them. There is a clear difference between being sexualized and owning your sexuality, and Sabrina shows that difference in a way that feels powerful and freeing. As a child, I was taught to hide parts of myself. To be modest, to be quiet, and to not take up too much space. There was always an unspoken rule that being too much as a woman would come with consequences. Too loud, too confident, too expressive. That messaging stays with you. It shapes how you move through the world and how you see yourself. Even as an adult, unlearning that conditioning is not easy. Watching Sabrina Carpenter exist so openly, even while being criticized or shamed, has been eye opening for me. She carries herself with a confidence that does not ask for permission. She does not shrink to make others comfortable. Instead, she leans into who she is, and in doing so, she challenges the double standard that still exists today. Women are expected to be desirable but not expressive, confident but not bold, visible but not unapologetic. What impacts me most is not just her sexuality, but her refusal to be shamed by it. There is a constant demand placed on women to embody sexuality in a way that pleases others while also punishing them for embracing it on their own terms. Seeing someone reject that contradiction so publicly makes it easier for others, including myself, to question it. At 30, I find myself in a very different place than I was growing up. I am learning to take up space, to feel comfortable in my own skin, and to redefine what confidence and femininity mean to me. Sabrina Carpenter’s career and presence have played a role in that. She reminds me that self expression is not something that has to be earned or justified. It is something we are allowed to have. In a world that still tries to quiet women, that kind of visibility matters. For me, it is not just inspiring, it is freeing.

My experience growing up in a single-parent household and around the LGBTQ+ community is complicated, and in many ways, painful. My mom was a single parent who worked two and sometimes three jobs just to keep us afloat. Even then, there were times when we barely had food. She was often gone, and when she was home, she was struggling with her own mental health. There were multiple suicide attempts throughout my childhood. My sisters and I learned to take care of ourselves because we had no other choice. We grew up fast, learning how to survive before we ever had the chance to just be kids. At the same time, my understanding of identity and sexuality was shaped by my father. He is bisexual, but he has spent his entire life denying that part of himself. I am the only person he has ever told. Instead of accepting who he is, he turned that pain outward. He carried a deep resentment toward women, and as his daughter, I felt that firsthand. He would talk down about women, disrespect them, and treat them as less than. As a young girl, I internalized that. I found myself trying to earn his approval, trying to be “good enough,” even though part of me knew I was being judged simply for being female. My father’s bipolar disorder, PTSD from the military, and his internal struggle with his sexuality all collided in ways that led to drug and alcohol use. That only made everything more intense. His self-hatred didn’t stay contained, it spilled into the way he treated others, and into the way I learned to see myself. One of the hardest parts of my growth has been unlearning that. I had to unlearn the idea that being a woman made me less. I had to rebuild my sense of self from the ground up, separating who I am from what I was taught to believe. At the same time, I’ve also seen what it looks like when people are able to live openly and authentically. Members of my family and community who are part of the LGBTQ+ community have shown me what acceptance and confidence can look like. That contrast has shaped me deeply. It showed me both the damage that comes from rejection and the healing that comes from acceptance. That is why I am pursuing an education in mental health. I want to help people who are struggling with identity, trauma, and self-worth, especially those who feel like they have to hide who they are or who have been taught to hate parts of themselves. I want to work with children and families so that cycles like the ones I grew up in can be interrupted earlier. I know what it feels like to grow up in instability, to question your worth, and to carry things that were never yours to carry. Because of that, I don’t just want to understand people. I want to help them heal. My goal is to create spaces where people feel safe enough to be honest about who they are, and strong enough to believe they are worthy of respect and love.

Incarceration has never felt like something distant or “other people’s problem” to me. It has been part of my life since I was little tied closely to my father’s struggles with addiction and bipolar disorder. My dad didn’t just go to jail once. It was a cycle. Drug use, manic episodes, suicide attempts, psychiatric wards, and then jail. Over and over again. As a kid, I didn’t understand why it kept happening. I just knew that things were never stable for long. One moment he could be okay, and the next everything would spiral. Police cars, hospital visits, and court dates became a normal part of my childhood. What made it harder was realizing that jail was never really the solution. It didn’t fix his addiction. It didn’t treat his mental illness. It just paused everything for a little while before the cycle started again. As I got older, I began to see incarceration differently. It wasn’t just about bad choices. It was about untreated mental health, trauma, and systems that don’t always know what to do with people like my dad. Growing up in that environment forced me to grow up fast. I became hyper-aware of people’s emotions and behaviors. I could tell when something was about to go wrong before it actually did. That awareness came from survival, but it also shaped who I am today. It made me more empathetic, more observant, and more understanding of how complicated people really are. At the same time, it left me with a lot of questions. Why wasn’t there better help? Why did it feel like everything was always too late? Those questions are a big part of why I chose my career path. I’m pursuing a future in mental health because I’ve seen firsthand what happens when people don’t get the support they need. I don’t want children to grow up feeling the same confusion and instability that I did. I want to be someone who can step in earlier, someone who can help families before things reach the point of crisis. Incarceration didn’t just impact my life through absence or hardship. It shaped how I see people. It taught me that behind every arrest or diagnosis, there is a story, a family, and often a child trying to make sense of it all. That child was me. And now, that experience is what drives me forward.

I am the granddaughter, daughter, and wife of veterans. Because of that, I have not experienced service-related PTSD firsthand, but I have lived in its shadow for most of my life. PTSD did not show up in my family as something quiet or distant. It showed up loudly, unpredictably, and sometimes dangerously. My father coped with his PTSD through drugs and alcohol. His bipolar disorder intensified everything. When he was manic, it was like living inside a storm. His thoughts became paranoid, his behavior became unpredictable, and the line between reality and fear blurred. As a child, I did not fully understand what was happening, but I knew I had to respond. I became the one pulling him out of bathrooms after suicide attempts. I became the one calling for help. I became the one trying to manage situations that no child should have to face. Some of my earliest memories are of fear. I remember him loading a revolver with one bullet, pointing it at his own head, and pulling the trigger. I remember him, at times, pointing that same gun at me. Those moments shaped how I understood safety, control, and the world around me. PTSD taught me that trauma does not stay contained within one person. It spreads. It affects families, relationships, and especially children who are too young to make sense of it. Now, as an adult, I see that impact in a different way through my husband. His PTSD looks different, but it is still present. He cannot leave the house without carrying a gun. He cannot sit in a restaurant unless his back is against the wall. He is always aware, always scanning, always preparing for something that may never happen. It is quieter than what I experienced growing up, but it is still there, woven into everyday life. Through these experiences, I have learned that PTSD is not weakness. It is not a failure. It is a response to things most people will never fully understand. But I have also learned that without support, it can isolate people, damage relationships, and create cycles that are hard to break. That is why I want to be part of the change. I am pursuing a career as a therapist with the goal of working with children and families impacted by trauma, including those connected to veterans. I want to help children who grow up in environments like mine understand that what they are experiencing is not their fault. I want to give them the tools to process fear, confusion, and instability in a healthy way before it becomes something they carry into adulthood. I also want to support veterans and their families by helping create spaces where they feel understood instead of judged. Healing does not happen in isolation. It happens when people feel safe enough to speak, to be vulnerable, and to be seen beyond their trauma. What I have learned is that PTSD does not just belong to the person who served. It becomes part of the family. And because of that, the path to healing has to include the family too. I cannot change what my family went through, but I can use it to help others feel less alone in their own experiences. That is the impact I hope to make.

The change I wish to see in the world is simple. I want a world where people do not have to question whether they are safe being themselves. A world where children grow up feeling accepted, understood, and emotionally secure instead of learning how to survive. I know what it feels like to grow up without that kind of safety. My childhood was shaped by instability and mental health struggles. I watched my parents battle depression, addiction, and repeated suicide attempts. I experienced foster care, separation from my siblings, and the constant uncertainty of not knowing what each day would bring. I learned early how to be strong, but that strength came from survival, not security. There is a difference. As someone who is bisexual, I have also experienced what it feels like to live in a world where acceptance is not guaranteed. I have seen how quickly people can judge or reject others for something as personal as identity. That feeling of needing to brace yourself, to wonder how you will be perceived, is something no one should have to carry. These experiences are the reason I want change, but more importantly, they are the reason I am working toward it. I believe that many of the struggles people carry into adulthood begin in childhood. They begin when children feel unheard, unsafe, or like they need to hide parts of themselves to be accepted. Those moments shape how they see themselves and the world. If we can change those moments, we can change lives. That belief is what led me to pursue a career as a therapist. My goal is to work with children who feel like I once did and give them something different. I want to create a space where they feel safe to speak, safe to feel, and safe to be who they are without fear. I want them to know that their identity is not something to hide and that their emotions are not something to be ashamed of. I want to help them build confidence and resilience, not from survival, but from support. As a mother of three, this goal is not just professional, it is personal. I think about the kind of world my children are growing up in, and I want it to be better than the one I experienced. I want them to grow up knowing they are loved without conditions. I want them to see that their story does not have to repeat itself. Real change does not happen all at once. It happens in small, meaningful ways. It happens when one child feels heard, when one person chooses empathy over judgment, and when someone decides to create the kind of space they once needed. The change I want to see is a world built on emotional safety, acceptance, and understanding. And through my work as a future therapist, through my identity, and through the way I raise my children, I am committed to helping create that world.

Time management is the most obvious challenge people expect to hear about when a mother goes back to school. Balancing classes, assignments, work, and the schedules of three children is a constant, moving puzzle. My days are planned down to the hour, sometimes the minute. What people don’t often talk about is the guilt that sits quietly underneath all of it, following me through every lecture, every shift, and every late night spent studying. I became a mother before I had fully become myself. I had my oldest at 20, and my twins at 22. While other people my age were still figuring out who they wanted to be, I was already responsible for three little lives. I do not regret becoming a mother, not even for a second. My children are the best parts of me. However, returning to school has forced me to confront a complicated truth: in order to build a better future for them, I have to take time away from them now. That is where the guilt lives. It shows up when I cannot do something with them on their weekends because I have a never ending list of assignments. It lingers when I say “not right now” because I have homework due at midnight. It’s there when I am physically present with them but mentally running through assignments, deadlines, or the next exam. There are moments when I question if I am doing the right thing, if they will remember the times I wasn’t available more than the reasons why. Alongside that guilt is just as powerful: purpose. I am not going back to school for myself alone. I am doing it for them. I am working toward a career in mental health because I know what it feels like to grow up in instability, to carry emotional weight at a young age, and to wish there was someone who understood. I want to be that person for other children. I want my children to grow up seeing that it is possible to break cycles, to choose a different path, and to fight for a life that feels safe and meaningful. Balancing school, work, and motherhood has taught me resilience in a way nothing else could. I have learned how to keep going when I am exhausted, how to prioritize what truly matters, and how to give myself grace on the days when everything doesn’t go perfectly. I have also learned that being a good mother does not mean being present every second. Sometimes, it means making hard choices that will benefit your children in the long run. The guilt may never fully go away, and I’m learning that it doesn’t have to. It is a reflection of how deeply I love my children. But it no longer controls me. Instead, it reminds me why I started this journey in the first place. I am not just building a future for myself. I am building a different life for my children, one where they can feel secure, supported, and proud of the example set in front of them. And that makes every sacrifice, every late night, and even the guilt, worth it.

I didn’t grow up seeing healthcare as something distant or clinical. For me, it was always personal. My childhood was shaped by mental illness, addiction, and instability. My father struggled with bipolar disorder, PTSD, and substance use, while my mother battled severe depression. There were suicide attempts, hospital stays, and moments that forced me to grow up far too quickly. Some of my earliest memories are not of childhood milestones, but of calling 911, sitting in hospital rooms, and visiting my parents in psychiatric wards, trying to understand what was happening around me. As a child, I didn’t have the words to explain the fear, confusion, and responsibility I felt. I just knew that something was wrong, and that the people I loved were hurting in ways I couldn’t fix. Over time, that feeling turned into awareness. I became deeply aware of how much people carry inside, especially when it comes to mental health. That awareness is what inspired me to pursue a career in the medical field, specifically in psychiatry. I have seen what happens when mental health is misunderstood, untreated, or inaccessible. I have also seen the strength it takes to keep going through it. My father, despite everything he has faced, has rebuilt his life multiple times. After surviving addiction, losing homes, and enduring a life-threatening accident, he chose to go back to school in his fifties to become a nurse. Watching him continue to fight, even when things felt impossible, showed me both the weight of mental illness and the resilience people can have. Now, as a mother of three, my perspective has deepened even more. I think about how important it is for children to feel safe, emotionally supported, and understood. I think about the version of myself who didn’t always have that, and it drives me to become the kind of person I needed growing up. I plan to make a difference through my career by becoming a psychiatrist who works with children and families, particularly those from unstable or low-income backgrounds. I want to help children who feel overwhelmed, misunderstood, or alone learn how to process their emotions and build confidence in who they are. I want to create a space where mental health is treated with the same care and urgency as physical health. I also want to help break the stigma around mental illness, especially in communities where it is often ignored or misunderstood. By working not only with children but also with families, I hope to create environments where emotional well-being is prioritized and supported. For me, healthcare is not just about treatment. It is about connection, understanding, and being present for people during their most vulnerable moments. Everything I have experienced has led me to this path. While I would never wish those experiences on anyone, they have given me a level of empathy and awareness that I will carry into my career. I want to use that to help others feel seen, heard, and supported in ways I needed when I was younger. That is the difference I hope to make.

When I think about what I want to build, it isn’t something you can hold. It’s something you feel. I want to build a legacy of emotionally healthy children. I want to create environments where kids feel safe, understood, and supported in ways I didn’t always experience growing up. My childhood was shaped by instability. My parents struggled with their mental health, and my father also battled addiction. There were suicide attempts, hospital stays, and moments that forced me to grow up far too quickly. I remember being very young, calling 911 and sitting in hospital rooms, trying to make sense of things no child should have to understand. Because of that, I learned how deeply a child’s environment matters. I learned how fear and uncertainty can shape you, but I also learned how powerful it is when a child feels safe, even for a moment. As a mother of three, I now build that safety every day. I am intentional about creating a home where my children feel heard, supported, and secure. I am breaking cycles and replacing them with stability, communication, and trust. But I don’t want that to stop with my own children. I am pursuing a career in mental health to become a therapist. I want to help children who are growing up in environments like mine. I want to be someone who sees them, even when they don’t have the words to explain what they’re feeling. I want to help them build confidence, emotional strength, and a sense of stability within themselves. Building a legacy of healthy children creates a ripple effect. When a child feels safe and supported, it shapes who they become, how they build relationships, and how they raise their own families. I cannot change where I came from, but I can build something different. I can build safety. I can build understanding. And I can help build a future where children grow up feeling whole.

When people think of gifted children, they often picture high grades, strong abilities, and potential. What is less visible is the emotional weight many of those children carry. Gifted children are often deeply sensitive, highly aware, and more affected by their environments than others realize. I understand that not just academically, but personally. I grew up in a home shaped by mental illness, addiction, and instability. My father struggled with bipolar disorder, PTSD, and substance use. My mother struggled with severe depression. There were suicide attempts, hospitalizations, and periods of foster care where my sisters and I were separated. As a child, I learned how to read emotions quickly, how to stay quiet when things felt unsafe, and how to carry more than I should have at a young age. Children who are emotionally aware, observant, and intuitive are often labeled as “strong” or “mature,” but in reality, many of them are overwhelmed. I see gifted children in a similar way. Their intelligence does not protect them from emotional struggles. In many cases, it intensifies them. They may overthink, internalize pressure, or feel isolated because they experience the world differently. My goal in becoming a therapist is to support both the emotional and intellectual needs of children, especially those who are gifted but misunderstood. I want to create a space where their intelligence is supported, but their emotional world is not overlooked. Too often, gifted children are expected to perform without being given the tools to cope with stress, anxiety, or perfectionism. Because of my background, I understand what it feels like to be a child navigating complex emotions without guidance. I know what it feels like to carry fear, confusion, and responsibility at the same time. That experience has shaped how I connect with others. It has given me the ability to recognize when a child is struggling, even if they appear capable on the surface. As a future therapist, I want to take a whole-person approach. This means supporting a child’s intellectual growth while also helping them develop emotional regulation, self-awareness, and confidence. For gifted children, this might look like helping them manage perfectionism, cope with anxiety, or feel understood in environments where they may feel different from their peers. I also want to work with families. Many parents of gifted children do not fully understand the emotional needs that come with advanced intellectual ability. By helping families recognize these needs, I can help create more supportive environments at home, where children feel both challenged and emotionally safe. My experiences have also shaped my commitment to working with children from unstable or low-income backgrounds. Gifted children exist in every environment, but not all of them are identified or supported. Some are overlooked because their struggles are mistaken for behavioral issues or emotional instability. I want to help change that by advocating for children who may not fit the traditional image of “gifted.” At its core, my goal is simple. I want children to feel seen for all of who they are, not just what they can achieve. I want them to know that their emotions are valid, their struggles are real, and their potential does not have to come at the cost of their well-being. My life has shown me how deeply a child’s environment can shape them, but it has also shown me how much difference the right support can make. As a therapist, I want to be part of that support system, helping gifted children grow not only in their abilities, but in their confidence, resilience, and sense of self.

I have spent many hours wondering if my story counted as loss. I contemplated applying for this scholarship because I haven’t lost a parent in the traditional sense. There wasn’t one moment where everything changed. Instead, it happened slowly over time, in ways that were harder to explain but just as painful. I didn’t lose my father all at once. I lost him piece by piece. My childhood was shaped by addiction, mental illness, and instability. My father struggled with drug use, alcohol addiction, PTSD, and bipolar disorder. His pain showed up in ways that were overwhelming for a child to witness. There were overdoses, suicide attempts, and moments where I had to grow up far too quickly. I remember being as young as six years old, pulling him out of a bedroom or bathroom floor while calling 911, trying to keep him alive without fully understanding what was happening. Some of my clearest memories are not of birthdays or holidays, but of psychiatric wards. Sitting across from my parents at cold metal tables became something that felt normal. My mother also struggled with severe depression and attempted suicide multiple times. Love, fear, confusion, and responsibility all existed at once in my childhood, and I carried those emotions without having the words to make sense of them. As I got older, the loss became quieter, but heavier. By the time I was twenty, I no longer had a relationship with my father. Now, at thirty, that absence feels permanent, even though he is still alive. Every once in a while, I hear that he has been spotted under bridges in my hometown of Lakeland, Florida. Each time, it feels like a reminder that the person he once was is gone. I have learned that grief does not always come with closure. Sometimes it lives in the in-between. I have spent years preparing myself for the day I get the call that he has lost his battle, but in many ways, I have already mourned him. Through all of this, I have had to navigate fear, sadness, anger, and even guilt. But I have also learned something about myself. I have learned that I am resilient. I have learned how to keep going even when things feel uncertain. I have learned how deeply I value stability, safety, and emotional connection. As an adult and a mother of three, I process my experiences through reflection and intention. I may not have had the tools growing up, but I am building them now. I am breaking cycles and creating a home where my children feel safe, supported, and understood. In many ways, healing for me has come through giving them what I needed. The biggest influences in my life have been both my parents and the person I am becoming. My parents showed me the impact of untreated mental health struggles, while my own journey has shown me the importance of compassion, boundaries, and growth. That is why I am pursuing higher education and working toward a career in mental health. I want to be someone who helps children and families navigate the kind of pain I grew up with. I want to be the person I needed when I was younger. My story is not defined by what I lost, but by what I chose to become because of it.

I never really had the chance to see healthcare as something distant or clinical. For me, it was always personal. I grew up in a home where mental health struggles were part of everyday life. My mother battled depression, and my father struggled with bipolar disorder, PTSD, and substance use. There were suicide attempts, hospital stays, and moments that felt unpredictable and overwhelming. My sisters and I were placed in foster care more than once, and even though some of those homes were kind, I remember feeling deeply alone. I missed my family, but more than that, I missed feeling safe and understood. Some of my earliest memories include visiting my parents in psychiatric wards, sitting across from them at metal tables, not fully understanding what was happening but knowing something wasn’t right. As a child, I didn’t have the words to explain the fear, confusion, and love I felt all at once. I just carried it. Over time, that turned into a kind of awareness. I started to notice how much people hold inside, especially children who don’t always have the language or support to express what they’re going through. That awareness is what led me toward healthcare, specifically psychiatry. I want to become a psychiatrist because I’ve seen what happens when mental health is misunderstood, untreated, or ignored. I’ve also seen how much strength it takes to keep going when you’re struggling internally. My father, despite everything he went through, rebuilt his life more than once. After losing homes, surviving addiction, and even experiencing a life-threatening accident, he chose to go back to school in his fifties to become a nurse. Watching him fight to keep moving forward showed me both the weight of mental illness and the resilience people can have when they’re given a chance to heal. As a mother of three, my perspective has deepened even more. I look at my children and think about how important it is for them to feel emotionally safe and secure. I think about the version of myself who didn’t always have that, and it drives me to be better not only for my own kids, but for others who are growing up in similar situations. What draws me to psychiatry is the opportunity to connect with people on a human level while also understanding the clinical side of what they’re experiencing. I want to be able to help children and families make sense of their emotions, their diagnoses, and their experiences without feeling broken or judged. I want to create a space where mental health is treated with the same urgency and compassion as physical health. My goal is to work with children and adolescents, especially those who come from unstable or low-income backgrounds. These are often the kids who fall through the cracks, not because they don’t need help, but because they don’t have access to it. I want to be someone who changes that, even in small ways. Whether it’s helping a child learn how to cope with anxiety, supporting a family through a crisis, or simply being someone who listens, I want my work to matter on a personal level. Healthcare, to me, isn’t just about treatment. It’s about connection, understanding, and showing people that they are not alone in what they’re going through. Everything I’ve experienced has led me here. And while I wouldn’t wish those experiences on anyone, I can use them to help someone else feel seen, heard, and supported in a way I needed when I was younger.

I don’t want to pursue a career in the nonprofit or mental health field because it sounds meaningful on paper. I want it because I’ve lived through the kind of experiences that make you understand, at a very deep level, how much people need support, especially when they don’t know how to ask for it. Growing up, my life was shaped by instability. My parents both struggled with their mental health. There were suicide attempts, hospital stays, and moments that felt unpredictable and overwhelming. When things reached a breaking point, my sisters and I were placed in foster care. Even in homes that were kind, I remember feeling this deep, aching loneliness. I missed my parents, but I also missed feeling safe, understood, and grounded. Sitting across from my parents in psychiatric wards, with a table between us and supervision around us, became something that felt strangely normal. As a child, I didn’t have the language to explain what I was going through, but I felt everything. The confusion, the fear, the love, the instability. It forced me to grow up quickly and become hyper-aware of the emotional weight people carry, especially children. Kids experience things deeply, even when no one realizes it. That understanding has stayed with me and shaped how I see the world. Now, as a mother of three, that perspective is even stronger. I look at my children and think about how important it is for them to feel safe, supported, and confident in who they are. I think about the version of myself who didn’t always have that, and it drives me to become the kind of person I needed back then. That is what led me to pursue a career as a therapist. I don’t want to just learn about mental health in a textbook. I want to sit across from children who feel overwhelmed, scared, or misunderstood and help them make sense of what they are feeling. I want to help them build confidence and emotional resilience before the world has a chance to tear it down. I want to be someone who listens without judgment and helps them realize that they are not broken. Working in the nonprofit sector is important to me because those are often the communities that need the most support and have the least access to it. Families dealing with poverty, trauma, and instability are often overlooked or unable to access consistent mental health care. I want to help change that by being part of spaces that make care more accessible and more human. I want to contribute to creating environments where people feel safe enough to open up and receive help without shame. The impact I hope to make is not something distant or abstract. It is personal and real. It is helping one child learn how to cope instead of shutting down. It is supporting one family so they feel less alone. It is helping break cycles of trauma that can pass from one generation to the next when no one intervenes. My life has shown me how heavy things can get, but it has also shown me how much strength people have when they are supported. I want to be that support for others. Not because I have all the answers, but because I understand what it feels like to need someone and not know where to turn. If I can be that safe place for even a few people, then I know I am making the kind of difference that truly matters.

Growing up as the daughter of a veteran shaped my understanding of strength in a way that most people don’t see from the outside. To many, the military represents discipline, honor, and resilience. While those things are true, I also witnessed the quieter, heavier side of service, the kind that follows someone home and settles into everyday life. My father served in the Army and the National Guard, and while I have always been proud of his service, I also saw how deeply it impacted his mental health. He struggled with PTSD and bipolar disorder, and over time, those struggles turned into battles with alcohol and drug use. As a child, I didn’t have the language to understand what was happening, but I knew something wasn’t right. There were moments of instability, fear, and confusion that no child is really prepared for. At the same time, my father’s life has also been a story of resilience. He has built and rebuilt his life more times than I can count. He lost two homes to fires, including one that destroyed the farm he had worked so hard to turn into a full-time business. Instead of giving up, he started over again and built a fire mitigation business while working long hours as a railroad engineer. Even after a devastating accident where he was dragged by a train car and suffered multiple severe injuries, he found a way to keep going. After months of recovery and even a heart attack later on, he made the decision to return to school and become a nurse at the age of 54. Watching him fall and rise again taught me that resilience is not about never struggling—it is about refusing to let those struggles define you. But at the same time, growing up in that environment also showed me how important mental health support truly is. Strength alone is not always enough. People need understanding, guidance, and care. My father’s experiences, combined with my mother’s ongoing battle with depression, shaped my path in a very personal way. I grew up in a household where mental health struggles were a constant presence. There were suicide attempts, hospitalizations, and periods of instability that led to time in foster care for me and my sisters. Even when we were placed in safe homes, we felt a deep sense of loneliness and separation. All we wanted was to be together again, even if home was imperfect. Those experiences didn’t break me, but they changed me. They made me more aware of how deeply childhood environments affect emotional development. They made me more empathetic, more observant, and more determined to be someone who could make a difference. Today, as a mother of three and a first-generation college student, I carry those lessons with me into everything I do. I am currently pursuing a career in psychiatry with the goal of helping children who are growing up in situations similar to mine. I want to be the person I needed when I was younger, someone who listens, understands, and helps children build the confidence and emotional strength to navigate difficult environments. Being the child of a veteran has given me a unique perspective on both resilience and vulnerability. It has shown me the visible and invisible costs of service, and it has driven me to dedicate my life to helping others heal. My story is not just one of hardship, it is one of purpose. And that purpose is rooted in creating a future where children feel seen, supported, and strong enough to become more than what they’ve been through.

While I was growing up, love and identity were never abstract ideas in my life. They were people I knew, people I loved, and people I watched fight to simply exist as themselves. My sister is bisexual. My uncles, my mom’s brother and his husband, built a life together that showed me what commitment and partnership look like. My sister in laws are lesbians. To me, none of this ever felt unusual. It was just family. What made it complicated was not who they were, but how others chose to treat them. On my husband’s side of the family, I was confronted with a level of hatred I had never experienced so personally before. It was not quiet discomfort or subtle disapproval. It was loud, intentional, and cruel. My father in law went as far as harassing my uncles online, targeting them simply for existing. I watched him speak about his own daughter, my sister in law, with disgust, as if her identity erased her worth. There is something deeply unsettling about seeing a parent reject their own child in that way. It forces you to realize how unsafe the world can be, even in the places that are supposed to offer unconditional love. What stayed with me the most was not just the anger, but the resilience of the people on the receiving end of it. My sister still laughs freely. My uncles still show up for holidays with warmth and kindness. My sister in laws continue to love openly despite knowing they are judged for it. They carry themselves with a quiet strength that I deeply admire, but I also know that strength does not come without cost. Witnessing both the harm and the resilience shaped something in me. It made me realize how early the world can begin to tear someone down, and how much internal strength it takes to hold onto your identity when you are constantly told it is wrong. It also made me realize that not everyone is given the tools or support to withstand that kind of pressure. That realization is one of the reasons I am pursuing a career as a psychiatrist. I want to work with children and adolescents, especially those who are navigating identity, family rejection, and self worth. I want to help them build confidence before the world has a chance to chip away at it. I want them to understand, at a foundational level, that who they are is not something that needs to be fixed or hidden. My future activism will not just be loud advocacy, though that matters. It will also be quiet, consistent work in therapy rooms, helping young people develop resilience, self acceptance, and emotional safety within themselves. I want to create spaces where children feel seen without explanation, where they do not have to defend who they are, and where they can begin to heal from the messages they have absorbed. The people I love have shown me both the reality of discrimination and the power of authenticity. Because of them, I am committed to doing work that not only challenges hate, but actively builds people up. If the world is going to be harsh, then I want to be part of the reason someone learns how to stand strong in it.

My experience with substance abuse did not come from a distance. It was something I lived inside of. My father struggled with PTSD and bipolar disorder, and he turned to drugs and alcohol to cope with pain he did not know how to carry. As a child, I did not understand diagnoses or addiction. I only understood fear and unpredictability. I learned early that the person you love can become someone unrecognizable in a matter of moments. Some of my earliest memories are not of toys or school, but of chaos. I remember being seven years old and already knowing what it felt like to be afraid in my own home. My father would use drugs and alcohol and then intentionally overdose, trying to end his life. There were nights where his pain filled every corner of the house, where I could feel something was wrong before anything even happened. The most terrifying moments were when he was both manic and under the influence. During those times, everything felt unpredictable, like there was no way to know what would happen next. He would take his revolver, load a single bullet, and aim it at his head before pulling the trigger. Sometimes, he pointed it at me and did the same. I learned that even if I was not the one struggling, I was still affected by his actions. Those moments do not leave you. They shape how you understand safety, trust, and even love. Because of this, my beliefs about substance abuse are rooted in lived experience. I do not see addiction as weakness. I see it as pain that has nowhere to go. I saw firsthand how mental illness and substance abuse can take over a person, distorting their reality and affecting everyone around them. At the same time, I also saw that underneath that behavior was someone who was hurting deeply. That understanding stayed with me. It taught me that people need more than judgment. They need compassion, support, and intervention before they reach a breaking point. These experiences also shaped my relationships. For a long time, I struggled with trust and with feeling safe. I became hyper aware of people’s moods, always reading the room and preparing for something to go wrong. But that awareness also made me more empathetic. I learned how to recognize pain in others, even when it is not spoken. Becoming a mother changed everything for me. I now have three children who rely on me for safety, stability, and love. Being their mother has made me more intentional in the way I show up every day. I am determined to give them the kind of childhood I did not have. My past did not just make me protective, it made me determined to break cycles instead of repeat them. My experiences have directly shaped my career aspirations. I am pursuing a path in mental health because I know what happens when people fall through the cracks. I want to work with individuals and families affected by substance abuse and mental illness, especially children who are growing up in environments like mine. I want to be someone who listens, who sees the signs early, and who helps before situations turn into lifelong trauma. Substance abuse impacted every part of my life, but it also gave me direction. It gave me empathy, resilience, and a purpose. What I went through did not break me. It gave me the drive to help others feel seen, safe, and supported in ways I once needed myself.

I didn’t grow up thinking I would end up in healthcare. For a long time, life felt less like something I could plan and more like something I had to survive. My childhood was shaped by instability, by watching both of my parents struggle deeply with their mental health, and by experiencing what it feels like when the people you depend on are fighting battles they cannot always win. There were moments where everything fell apart. Suicide attempts, hospital stays, foster care, and the kind of loneliness that sits quietly but heavily in your chest. Even when I was surrounded by people, I often felt like I did not belong anywhere. Yet, in the middle of all of that, I learned something that never left me. How deeply people need to be understood. I became a mother young, and now I am raising three children who look to me for safety, stability, and love. Being a mom has changed everything about how I see the world. It has made my past feel both heavier and more meaningful at the same time. I think about the kind of childhood I want my kids to have, and it pushes me every day to be better, to heal, and to create something different from what I knew. There are moments when I see pieces of my younger self in them, and it makes me even more determined to break cycles instead of repeating them. Choosing healthcare, especially mental health, was not just a career decision for me. It was personal. I know what it feels like to be a child sitting across from a parent in a psychiatric ward, not fully understanding what is happening but knowing something is wrong. I know what it is like to feel overlooked, to carry emotions that feel too big for your body, and to not have the words or support to process them. Those experiences did not just shape me, they gave me direction. I want to become a psychiatrist because I want to be the person I needed when I was younger. I want to sit across from children who feel lost or overwhelmed and help them make sense of what they are feeling. I want them to feel seen, not dismissed. I want families to have support before things reach a breaking point. Mental health is not just important to me, it is something I have lived through, something I carry with me, and something I want to change for others. The difference I hope to make is simple, but it matters. I want to help create a world where children do not feel alone in their struggles, where mental health is treated with the same urgency and compassion as physical health, and where families are given tools to heal instead of just survive. Everything I have been through, every hardship and every moment of uncertainty led me here. Not just to a career, but to a purpose. Now, as a mother and a future mental health professional, I am determined to turn those experiences into something that helps others find their way forward too.

My experience with foster care was never one long placement, but a cycle that followed some of the hardest moments of my childhood. Every time one of my parents attempted suicide, my sisters and I were taken and placed into foster homes. Every time, we were separated. Even though my home life was unstable, all I ever wanted was to go back. There is something complicated about loving a home that isn’t always safe, but is still yours. In foster care, even when the families were kind, everything felt unfamiliar and temporary. I was surrounded by new faces, new rules, and new environments, but none of it felt like comfort. The hardest part was the loneliness. I was separated from my older sisters, who had always been my sense of stability. They were the ones who understood without me having to explain. Without them, everything felt heavier. I was also separated from my parents, and even though they were struggling, they were still my parents. Visiting them in psychiatric wards became normal. I remember sitting at cold metal tables, with distance between us, while my foster parents waited outside. Those moments didn’t feel like visits. They felt like something was broken, and I didn’t know how to fix it. Even in the nicest homes, it still felt empty. Kindness from strangers didn’t replace the feeling of belonging. I learned early what it felt like to be displaced, to live in between worlds, and to carry emotions that were too big for a child to hold. These experiences didn’t just shape my childhood. They followed me into my education. It was difficult to focus in school when my life felt unpredictable. I struggled with anxiety, with concentration, and with the emotional weight of everything happening around me. There were times when survival felt more important than school. But despite that, I kept going. I had to teach myself how to move forward, even when I felt overwhelmed or alone. Now, as a first-generation college student and a mother of three, I understand how deeply those experiences shaped me. They gave me resilience, but they also gave me a deep understanding of what children in situations like mine go through. Furthering my education is not just about building a career. It is about creating stability, not only for myself and my children, but for others who feel the same loneliness I once did. I am pursuing a career in psychiatry because I want to help children navigating trauma, foster care, and mental health challenges. I want to be someone who understands what they are feeling, even when they don’t have the words for it yet. I want to create a space where they feel safe, seen, and supported, especially when their lives feel the most uncertain. I also want to support families, because I have seen how mental health struggles can tear them apart when there isn’t enough support. I believe that with the right help, some separations can be prevented, and families can begin to heal together. My experiences in foster care taught me what it feels like to be alone in a room full of people. My education is how I make sure other children don’t have to feel that way for as long as I did. I cannot change what I went through, but I can use it to help someone else feel less alone and that is the impact I hope to make.

If you asked me who I am a few years ago, I probably would have answered with everything I’ve been through. Now, I answer with who I’m becoming because of it. I grew up in a home where love existed, but so did a lot of pain. My father is a veteran who struggles with PTSD and bipolar disorder. My mother has battled severe depression for most of her life. There were moments in my childhood where both of my parents reached such low points that they attempted to take their own lives. As a child, that kind of reality changes you. It teaches you how fragile people can be, but also how strong they have to be just to keep going. We also struggled financially. There were times we didn’t have stability, times we didn’t have enough food, and times we didn’t have a home at all. I became independent early, learning how to take care of myself and others before I was ready. I grew up fast, not because I wanted to, but because I had to. But my story didn’t end there. I am now a first-generation college student and a mother of three. My kids are everything to me, and they are a huge part of why I’m working so hard to build something different. I want them to grow up in a home where mental health is understood, where emotions are talked about, and where they feel safe being exactly who they are. I am pursuing a career in psychiatry because I know what it feels like to grow up in a home where mental health struggles go untreated or misunderstood. I know what it feels like to be a child trying to make sense of things that don’t make sense. I know how much it would have meant to have someone there who truly understood. I don’t want other kids to feel as alone as I did. Through my career, I want to work with children and families who are struggling with trauma, mental illness, and instability. I want to create a space where kids feel safe enough to speak, where they aren’t judged for their experiences, and where they can learn that what they’ve been through does not define who they will become. I also want to help parents. I’ve seen how mental health affects entire families, not just individuals. I want to be part of breaking those cycles, not just for one person, but for generations. My goal isn’t just to have a career. It’s to make a real difference in people’s lives, especially the ones who feel unseen or forgotten. Everything I’ve been through has given me empathy, resilience, and a deep understanding of people at their lowest points. Instead of letting that define me in a negative way, I’m choosing to turn it into something meaningful. I want to help the world by helping people heal, starting with the kids who need it most because I was one of them.

I didn’t choose healthcare because it seemed stable or respected. I chose it because I have lived in the middle of what happens when people don’t get the help they need. Growing up, mental health was not something we talked about openly, but it was something we lived with every day. My father, a veteran, struggled with PTSD and bipolar disorder. I watched him build a life, lose it, and fight to rebuild it over and over again. My mother battled severe depression, and there were moments when both of my parents reached such a low point that they attempted to take their own lives. As a child, that kind of reality is impossible to fully understand, but you feel it. You carry it. It shapes the way you see the world and the way you see yourself. On top of that, I grew up in poverty. There were times we didn’t have enough, times we didn’t have stability, and times we didn’t have a place to call home. I became independent out of necessity, not choice. I learned how to take care of others before I fully understood how to take care of myself. As I got older, I realized something that changed everything for me: the people I love weren’t broken. They were struggling in systems that didn’t support them, didn’t understand them, and often didn’t see them at all. That realization is what led me to healthcare, and more specifically, to psychiatry. I am now a first-generation college student and a mother of three. My children are a constant reminder of why this path matters so much to me. I think about the kind of support I needed as a child, and I think about how many children are still growing up in homes like mine, feeling confused, overwhelmed, and unseen. I want to be the person I wish existed for me when I was younger. I want to use my degree to work with children and families who are navigating trauma, mental illness, and instability. I want to create a space where kids feel safe enough to speak, where they are not judged for what they’ve experienced, and where they are taught that their circumstances do not define their future. I also want to support parents, because I’ve seen firsthand how untreated mental health struggles can impact an entire family. Healthcare, to me, is not just about treatment. It is about understanding, patience, and breaking cycles. It is about meeting people where they are, even when that place is messy and complicated. It is about giving people the tools to keep going, even when life has knocked them down more times than they can count. My story is not separate from my career path. It is the reason for it. Everything I have experienced has given me a deep sense of empathy and a drive to make sure others do not feel as alone as I once did. I am pursuing this field not just to build a career, but to build something meaningful out of the struggles that shaped me. I want my work to be proof that even in the hardest circumstances, something good can grow and that healing is always possible.

Mental health has shaped my life in ways that are hard to separate from who I am. It has been present in my family, in my environment, and in my own mind for as long as I can remember. Because of that, I learned early that not all struggles are visible, and that people can be hurting deeply even when they seem okay on the outside. Growing up, both of my parents struggled with mental health. My mother has severe depression, and my father lives with bipolar disorder and addiction. Their struggles made my home unpredictable at times, and I had to become emotionally aware very young. I learned how to read moods, how to sense when something was wrong, and how to step in and be strong when I needed to be. I took on responsibility early, not because I wanted to, but because I had to. At the same time, I was dealing with my own mental health challenges. I have struggled with anxiety, depression, ADHD, and epilepsy. There were days where I felt disconnected from myself, like my mind and body were not fully in my control. The fear before a seizure, the exhaustion after, and the constant mental weight of anxiety made everyday life harder than it looked from the outside. But I kept going. Even when it was overwhelming, I showed up. Mental health in my life has also been connected to loss and trauma. My grandmother passed away after a long battle with leukemia, and not long after, my mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer at just 35. Watching someone you love go through that kind of pain changes you. It brings fear, but it also brings a deeper understanding of how closely physical and mental health are connected. I saw how illness affected not just the person, but the entire family. Another major way I have been impacted is through LGBTQIA+ experiences within my family. My uncles are gay, my sister is bisexual, and my sister in law is a lesbian. Because of that, I have witnessed and experienced bigotry, including from my husband’s side of the family, specifically my father in law. Seeing people I love be judged or treated differently simply for being who they are was painful. It showed me how damaging a lack of understanding and acceptance can be, and how much it can affect someone’s mental health and sense of belonging. All of these experiences have shaped the way I see people. They have made me more empathetic, more patient, and more aware that everyone is carrying something, even if you cannot see it. I understand what it feels like to struggle internally, to feel overwhelmed, and to not always have the words to explain it. Because of this, I want to dedicate my life to helping others through mental health. I am pursuing a degree in clinical psychology so I can support people who feel alone, misunderstood, or stuck in their circumstances. I want to create a space where people feel safe enough to be honest about what they are going through. Mental health, loss, and the experiences of the people I love have all shaped me into someone who deeply values compassion and understanding. While these experiences have been difficult, they have also given me purpose. I want to take everything I have lived through and use it to help others feel seen, supported, and less alone.

Education didn’t always feel like something that belonged to me. Growing up, life was more about surviving than planning for the future. I was raised by a single mother, and we struggled financially for most of my childhood. There were times we were homeless or moving from place to place, not knowing where we would end up next. Some days we didn’t have enough food. Stability was not something I was used to, so school often felt like just another thing to get through instead of something that could actually change my life. Because of everything going on at home, I had to grow up fast. I became independent early, not by choice but by necessity. I learned how to take care of myself and help take care of my family. At the same time, I was dealing with my own mental health struggles, including anxiety, depression, ADHD, and epilepsy. There were days where focusing felt impossible, where my body and mind felt like they were working against me. But I kept showing up anyway, even when it was hard, even when I was exhausted. Education slowly became more than just something I had to do. It became a way out. It gave me a sense of direction when everything else felt uncertain. It was one of the only places in my life where I could imagine something different for myself. Even when things at home were unstable, school gave me structure. It gave me something to hold onto. A lot of the challenges I’ve faced have shaped the way I see education. Watching my parents struggle with mental health showed me how important support and understanding really are. Losing my grandmother after her long battle with leukemia and then watching my mom go through ovarian cancer at such a young age added another layer to that. I saw firsthand how much physical and mental health affect not just one person, but an entire family. I saw how easy it is for people to feel overwhelmed, unheard, and alone. Those experiences are what pushed me toward my goals. I decided to pursue a degree in clinical psychology because I want to help people who feel like they are drowning in their circumstances. I know what it feels like to grow up in an environment where things are unpredictable, where you have to carry more than you should at a young age. I also know what it feels like to struggle internally and not always have the words for it. Education has given me the tools to start understanding those experiences instead of just surviving them. It has helped me put meaning behind what I went through and turned it into something that can help others. It gave me direction when I didn’t have one before. As a mother, my education means even more to me. I’m not just doing this for myself anymore. I’m doing it for my children, to show them that where you come from does not define where you can go. I want to give them stability, opportunities, and a different kind of future than the one I had growing up. I want them to see that even when life is hard, you can still build something meaningful. Looking forward, I want to use my education to create a safe space for others, especially children and families who come from backgrounds like mine. I want to work in mental health and help people understand themselves, learn how to cope, and feel less alone. I want to be someone who listens, who doesn’t judge, and who truly sees people for who they are beyond their struggles. I also want to advocate for better access to mental health resources, especially in low income communities where those resources are often limited or nonexistent. I know how much of a difference early support can make, and I want to be part of that change. The challenges I’ve faced could have easily held me back, but instead they pushed me forward. They gave me a deeper sense of empathy, resilience, and purpose. Education has taken those experiences and given them direction. It has helped me turn survival into something more. I’m still on my journey, but I know where I’m going. I want to build a future where I can not only support my family, but also help others who feel like they don’t have a way out. Education didn’t just shape my goals. It gave me the belief that those goals are actually possible.

I chose to go into healthcare, specifically psychiatry, because of how I grew up and what I’ve seen in my own life. Mental health was never something distant to me. It was always there, in my home, in my relationships, and in myself. My mom struggled with severe depression, and my dad has bipolar disorder along with addiction. Because of that, I had to grow up fast. I became really aware of people’s emotions at a young age. I learned how to read a room, how to tell when something was wrong before anyone said it, and how to be strong when things felt unstable. At the same time, I was dealing with my own anxiety, depression, ADHD, and epilepsy. I know what it feels like to not fully trust your own mind or body, and still have to show up every day like everything is fine. On top of that, my family went through a lot with cancer. My grandmother fought leukemia for six years before she passed away, and not long after, my mom was diagnosed with ovarian cancer at just 35. I watched her go through surgery and a long, painful recovery. A nurse had to come to our house every week to clean her incision, and she had drains in her body for months. Seeing her like that was something I’ll never forget. It was scary and overwhelming, and it made me realize how connected physical and mental health really are. All of this is what pushed me toward psychiatry. I don’t just want to understand mental health from a textbook. I want to be someone who actually gets it, someone who can sit with people in their hardest moments and make them feel seen instead of judged. I know how easy it is to feel alone in your own mind, and I want to help change that for others. As a woman going into healthcare, I also want to make sure people feel heard, especially women and kids. I’ve seen how often people’s pain gets brushed off or not taken seriously. I want to be the kind of provider who listens, who pays attention, and who doesn’t dismiss what someone is going through. I’m especially drawn to working with kids who come from difficult or unstable backgrounds, because I know how much those early experiences can shape someone. My goal in psychiatry is simple. I want to help people understand themselves, feel less alone, and learn how to cope with what they’re going through. I want to create a space where people feel safe enough to be honest. Everything I’ve been through has led me here. It hasn’t always been easy, but it’s given me a lot of empathy and a real sense of purpose. I’m not just choosing this path because it’s a career. I’m choosing it because I know how much it matters, and I want to be someone who makes a difference.

Cancer has affected my family in ways that are impossible to separate from who I am today. It has shaped how I understand love, fear, and what it really means to be strong. My first experience with cancer was watching my grandmother slowly lose her battle with leukemia. She fought for six years. As a child, I did not fully understand everything that was happening, but I understood enough to feel the weight of it. I remember how grief seemed to live in our home long before she passed. It was in the quiet moments, in the way my family spoke more softly, in the way hope and fear existed at the same time. Losing her was not sudden. It was something we felt coming, and that made it both more expected and more painful. It taught me that sometimes loss begins long before goodbye. Just three years later, cancer came back into my life in a way that felt even more personal. My mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer at only 35 years old. I watched her go through a hysterectomy and a recovery that seemed never ending. A nurse came to our house every week to clean out her incision. She walked around with drains in her body for six months. I can still picture it so clearly. The physical pain she was in, the exhaustion, and yet she still tried to be strong for us. There is a kind of fear that settles into you when you see your parent like that. It is not loud. It is quiet and constant. I remember feeling helpless, wishing I could take her pain away, wishing I could do something to fix it. But I could not. All I could do was watch, and grow up faster than I was ready to. Cancer changed the way my family functioned. It brought fear and uncertainty into our everyday lives, but it also brought us closer in ways I did not expect. We learned how to show up for each other without needing to say much. We learned how to keep going, even when everything felt fragile. I saw strength in a way I had never seen it before. Not as something loud or heroic, but as something quiet and persistent. Strength looked like my mom getting through another day. It looked like my family holding each other together when everything felt like it could fall apart. Through these experiences, I learned that strength is not about being unbreakable. It is about continuing even when you feel like you are breaking. I learned how important it is to be present for the people you love, because time is not guaranteed. I think about my own children especially since my oldest is the same age as I was. learned that pain changes people, but it can also deepen love and connection in ways nothing else can. Cancer also shaped the way I see others. It made me more aware that everyone is carrying something, even if you cannot see it. It taught me to lead with compassion, because you never know what someone is going through behind the scenes. Although cancer brought fear, grief, and uncertainty into my life, it also gave me a deeper understanding of resilience and love. It showed me how strong people can be, even in their most vulnerable moments. Those lessons have stayed with me, and they continue to shape the way I move through the world, with more empathy, more awareness, and a deeper appreciation for the people I love.

Mental health has never been something distant in my life. It has always been close, personal, and impossible to ignore. Some of my earliest memories are shaped by trying to understand emotions that felt too big for a child to carry. My home was filled with love, but it was also filled with struggle. My mother battled severe depression, and my father lived with bipolar disorder and addiction. There were moments of warmth and connection, but there were also moments of instability that made me feel like I had to grow up too quickly. I became hyper aware of everything. I learned how to read the smallest shifts in tone, the quiet changes in mood, the tension that could build without warning. I learned how to stay quiet when I needed to and strong when no one else could be. There is a certain kind of heartbreak that comes with loving people who are hurting, especially when you are too young to understand how to help them. That heartbreak shaped me, but it also opened something in me. It taught me that people are more than their worst moments, and that pain often hides in silence. My own struggles with anxiety, depression, ADHD, and epilepsy made those lessons even more real. There were times I felt disconnected from myself, like my mind and body were not fully mine. The fear before a seizure, the exhaustion after, the frustration of not being able to focus or think clearly, all of it deepened my understanding of what it means to struggle internally while still trying to function in the world. I know what it feels like to fight your own mind and still show up. That has made me more patient, more observant, and more compassionate toward others. Mental health has shaped the way I form relationships. I value honesty and emotional safety more than anything because I know what it feels like to not have those things. I try to be someone who listens without judgment, someone who notices when others are struggling even if they do not say it out loud. At the same time, I have learned that caring for others cannot come at the cost of losing yourself. I spent a long time feeling responsible for fixing things that were never mine to fix. Learning to set boundaries has been difficult, but it has allowed me to build healthier and more genuine connections. These experiences have directly shaped my career aspirations. I am pursuing a degree in clinical psychology because I want to be the kind of support that I needed growing up. I want to help children and families understand their emotions before those struggles become overwhelming. I believe early support can change the direction of someone’s life, especially for children who may feel confused, alone, or responsible for things they do not yet understand. Mental health has influenced my beliefs, my relationships, and my future in ways that are both painful and meaningful. It has taught me empathy, resilience, and the importance of being seen and understood. More than anything, it has given me purpose. I want to take what I have lived through and turn it into something that helps others feel less alone, more understood, and more hopeful.

Growing up in a single-parent, low-income household shaped the way I navigate challenges. My mother worked multiple jobs just to keep us afloat, yet we still faced periods of homelessness and uncertainty. From a young age, I learned to be independent, aware, and resilient. There wasn’t room to fall apart, even when I struggled with ADHD, anxiety, depression, and epilepsy. Some days, simply focusing or feeling in control of my own body was difficult, but I kept showing up. Perseverance, for me, has never been about ease it has been about continuing despite fear, exhaustion, and instability. I learned discipline on my own and found strength in circumstances that often felt overwhelming. Those experiences didn’t just teach me how to survive they gave me purpose. That purpose drives my goal of becoming a therapist. Growing up, I understood what it felt like to struggle without support, to feel unseen, and to carry emotional weight alone. Because of that, I am pursuing a degree in psychology to work with children and families facing similar challenges. I want to provide a safe space for those dealing with trauma, poverty, and mental health struggles, and to be the support system I didn’t always have. I am actively working toward this goal through my education, staying committed despite personal and financial obstacles. I also advocate for mental health in my daily life by creating open, supportive conversations and being someone others can rely on. My background has given me resilience, empathy, and a deep sense of purpose. I plan to use my experiences to help others heal and to show that difficult beginnings do not define a person’s future.

Mental health is important to me as a student because it has never been something distant in my life. It has always been present, shaping how I learn, how I see the world, and how I understand people. Growing up, I didn’t have the luxury of separating school from life. I carried everything with me into the classroom. The instability, anxiety, and responsibility were always there while I tried to focus and keep up. I grew up in a single-parent household where my mom worked two and sometimes three jobs just to support us. We lived below the poverty line, and there were times we were homeless or couch surfing. I remember going to school already overwhelmed, trying to act like everything was normal when it wasn’t. My mom struggled with depression, and my dad, who is bipolar, battled addiction after his time in the military. Both of my parents attempted suicide at different points in my life. That reality changes you. It makes you aware of how much pain people can carry behind a normal appearance. On top of that, I have ADHD, anxiety, depression, and epilepsy. I was diagnosed with epilepsy at 15, but I experienced symptoms long before that. There were moments where I couldn’t focus or felt disconnected from my own body. As a student, that made things difficult. It is hard to succeed when your mind feels like it is working against you. But those experiences are also what made mental health so important to me. Mental health matters because it directly affects a student’s ability to learn, connect, and believe in themselves. You cannot expect someone to succeed academically if they are struggling just to get through the day. I know what that feels like, and I never want someone else to feel as alone in that as I did. In my community, I advocate for mental health by being open about my experiences. I do not hide my struggles because honesty creates space for others to be honest too. Whether at school, at home, or with friends, I try to listen without judgment. Sometimes advocacy is not about big actions, but about making someone feel seen. As a mother, this matters even more. I am intentional about creating a safe emotional space for my children. I want them to understand their feelings instead of fearing them and to know that asking for help is not a weakness. My goal is to become a therapist, working with children, because I believe early support can change lives. Mental health shaped my experience as a student, but it also gave me purpose. It taught me empathy, resilience, and the importance of showing up for others.

Option 3: Relationships play a central role in both my personal and professional goals because they have shaped how I understand trust, support, and emotional connection. Growing up in an environment marked by instability, mental health struggles, and financial hardship influenced the way I approach relationships today. I learned early on how to be independent and self-reliant, but I also saw how important strong, healthy relationships are in helping people navigate difficult circumstances. In my personal life, relationships have taught me the importance of balance between independence and connection. Because I developed a sense of hyper independence at a young age, I often felt like I had to handle everything on my own. While that made me strong, it also made it difficult at times to rely on others or to be vulnerable. Over time, I have come to understand that healthy relationships are not about losing independence, but about having support and mutual trust. Romantic relationships, in particular, have shown me the importance of communication, emotional safety, and consistency. These are things I did not always see growing up, which makes them even more meaningful to me now. I want to build relationships that are stable, supportive, and grounded in understanding, because I know firsthand how impactful that kind of environment can be. My role as a mother has also deeply influenced how I view relationships. It has strengthened my desire to create a stable and emotionally healthy environment for my children. I want them to grow up feeling secure, supported, and able to express themselves openly. This goal is directly tied to my own experiences and the understanding that relationships within a family shape how individuals see themselves and interact with the world. I want to model healthy communication, emotional awareness, and resilience so that my children have a strong foundation. Professionally, relationships are at the core of my goal to become a therapist. The therapeutic relationship is built on trust, empathy, and connection, and I believe my experiences have prepared me to build those kinds of relationships with clients. I understand what it feels like to grow up in an environment where support is limited or inconsistent, and that allows me to approach others with compassion and without judgment. I want to create a space where clients feel safe enough to be vulnerable, because I know how difficult that can be. Relationships also play a role in how I hope to impact the broader community. I believe that strong, healthy relationships can break cycles of trauma and instability. When individuals have access to supportive connections, whether through family, friendships, or professional relationships, they are more likely to develop healthy coping skills and a stronger sense of self. Through my work in mental health, I hope to help individuals build and maintain those kinds of relationships in their own lives. At the same time, my experiences have taught me the importance of boundaries. Healthy relationships are not just about connection, but also about understanding limits and protecting one’s own well being. This is something I have had to learn over time, and it is something I will carry into both my personal life and my professional work. As a therapist, maintaining boundaries is essential in order to provide effective support while also taking care of myself. Overall, relationships are a guiding force in my long term goals. They have shaped how I understand trust, resilience, and emotional health. Personally, I want to build a life surrounded by stable, supportive connections. Professionally, I want to help others experience that same sense of connection and support. My goal is not only to form meaningful relationships, but to use those experiences to help others create healthier, more fulfilling relationships in their own lives. I have attached a picture of my family. Having a family of my own is what has driven me the most in my goals. To break generational traumas. I am raising the next generation but I want to use my opportunities to help more than my own children.

Growing up with a single mother shaped nearly every part of who I am. After my parents divorced, my mom became the sole provider for our family, and that responsibility came with constant pressure. She worked two and sometimes three jobs just to keep us afloat. Even with all of her effort, we still lived below the poverty line, and there were times when we struggled to meet basic needs. I remember the uncertainty and the way survival always seemed to come first. Watching her carry that weight alone showed me how hard she fought for us, even when she was exhausted. At the same time, her absence was something I felt deeply. Working that much meant she was often gone, and I learned early on how to take care of myself and help care for my siblings. I grew up quickly. I became independent out of necessity, not choice. I learned how to manage responsibilities, solve problems on my own, and push through situations without relying on others. That kind of hyper independence became a defining part of who I am. While that independence has made me strong and capable, it also came with challenges. I had to learn how to ask for help, how to trust others, and how to allow myself to be supported. Growing up in an environment where survival was the priority meant that emotions were often pushed aside. There wasn’t always time or space to process feelings, which shaped the way I handled stress and relationships as I got older. It made me resilient, but it also made me guarded at times. Despite the hardships, I have a deep respect for my mother and everything she sacrificed. I saw firsthand what it meant to keep going even when things felt impossible. Her determination and work ethic showed me what perseverance looks like. She did the best she could with what she had, and that is something I carry with me. At the same time, her struggles also showed me the importance of support systems, especially when it comes to mental health. I saw how difficult it was for her to carry everything alone, and that has influenced the way I view both family and community. These experiences have shaped the person I am today in both practical and emotional ways. I am driven, responsible, and able to adapt to difficult situations. I do not give up easily because I was raised in an environment where giving up was not an option. At the same time, I have learned the importance of balance, of allowing myself to rely on others and not carrying everything alone. Growing up with a single mother also influenced my goals for the future. It has given me a strong desire to create stability, not only for myself but for my own children and the people I hope to help in my career. It has also shaped my passion for mental health. I understand how overwhelming life can become when someone is carrying too much on their own, and I want to be able to support others in a way that my family did not always have access to. Overall, my upbringing taught me strength, resilience, and independence, but it also taught me the importance of compassion and support. It shaped me into someone who is determined to grow, to help others, and to build a life that reflects both where I came from and where I am going.

Education is important to me because it represents stability, opportunity, and the ability to break cycles that I grew up in. My childhood was shaped by poverty, periods of homelessness, and constant uncertainty. There were times when survival came before everything else, including school. Because of that, education was never something I could take for granted. It became something I had to fight for, something I had to choose even when life made it difficult. To me, education is not just about earning a degree. It is about creating a future that looks different from my past and proving to myself that my circumstances do not define where I am going. Living with ADHD, anxiety, and depression has also shaped how I experience education. There have been moments where focusing felt impossible and where I doubted my ability to succeed. At the same time, I was growing up in a household where mental health struggles were constant. My mother’s depression and my father’s bipolar disorder and addiction created an environment that was often unpredictable and emotionally overwhelming. Because of this, education became more than just academics. It became a way for me to understand what I was experiencing and to make sense of the emotions and behaviors I saw around me. Learning about mental health gave me language for things I had felt for years but could not explain. Education gives me the tools to turn my experiences into something meaningful. It allows me to take what I have lived through and use it to support others in a real and impactful way. I am pursuing a path in mental health because I know what it feels like to grow up in an environment where support is limited and understanding is not always present. I want to be the person I needed when I was younger. I want to create a space where children feel safe, heard, and supported, especially those who come from unstable or difficult backgrounds. The kind of legacy I hope to leave is one centered around mentally healthy children. I want my work as a therapist to have a lasting impact not just on individuals, but on families and communities as a whole. When a child is given the tools to understand their emotions, process their experiences, and build healthy coping mechanisms, it can change the course of their entire life. It can also break cycles of trauma that often pass from one generation to the next. That is the kind of change I want to be part of. I often think about how different my own childhood might have been if I had consistent mental health support. That perspective motivates me and reminds me that the work I want to do is meaningful. Every child I help has the possibility of growing into an adult who is more self aware, more stable, and better equipped to navigate life. My legacy is not about recognition or personal success. It is not a name or a bloodline. It is about impact. I want to help create a generation of children who feel understood, supported, and emotionally strong. Education is the foundation that will allow me to do that work with knowledge, skill, and purpose. It is the bridge between where I started and the difference I hope to make in the lives of others.

My values have been shaped by my lived experiences rather than anything I learned in a classroom. Growing up below the poverty line and experiencing periods of homelessness gave me an early understanding of instability and survival. There were times when my family struggled to have enough food and times when we didn’t have a permanent place to call home. Alongside that, I have lived with ADHD, anxiety, and depression, while also witnessing my mother’s depression and my father’s bipolar disorder and struggles with addiction. Because of these experiences, my values are rooted in empathy, perseverance, responsibility, and advocacy. Empathy is at the center of who I am. I have seen what people go through behind closed doors, and I understand how complex mental health really is. I know what it feels like to struggle internally while still trying to function in everyday life. Because of that, I try not to judge people quickly. Instead, I take the time to understand them and recognize that behavior is often shaped by trauma, environment, and circumstances others may not see. This value will strongly influence my work in mental health because I want to create a space where people feel safe, heard, and understood. I want my future clients to know they are not alone and that their experiences are valid. Perseverance is another value that defines me. Despite the instability I grew up with and the personal challenges I have faced, I have continued to push forward. It would have been easy to give up or lose direction, but instead I chose to pursue an education and a career where I can help others. That decision reflects my determination to turn my experiences into something meaningful. In the mental health field, perseverance will help me stay committed even when the work becomes emotionally demanding. Progress is not always immediate, and healing takes time, but I know how to keep going even when things feel difficult. Responsibility has also played a major role in shaping who I am, especially through my role within my family and as a mother. I have had to take on emotional and practical responsibilities from a young age, often being strong for others while managing my own struggles. That sense of responsibility has stayed with me. In my future career, it will guide me to show up consistently and professionally for the people who depend on me. In mental health, that means being present, reliable, and creating a stable environment for clients. If I pursue business, it means making ethical decisions and building something that prioritizes people and long term impact. Advocacy is another value that is deeply important to me. I have seen firsthand the impact of untreated mental health struggles, especially within my own family. I understand how damaging it can be when people feel unsupported or misunderstood. That is one of the main reasons I want to become a therapist. I want to be someone who helps others feel seen, heard, and less alone. I also want to be part of reducing the stigma surrounding mental health, particularly for individuals from underserved or difficult backgrounds. Overall, my values come from real life experiences that have shaped the way I see the world. They influence how I treat others, the goals I set, and the kind of work I want to do. Whether I am working in mental health or business, I will be guided by empathy, perseverance, responsibility, and advocacy. These values will continue to push me toward creating meaningful change and helping others in a way that is genuine and lasting.

Growing up in a family where mental health struggles were a constant presence shaped the way I understand the world long before I had the words to explain it. My mother lives with depression, and my father has bipolar disorder. Both of them have attempted suicide multiple times. Those experiences were not distant or abstract for me. They were part of my everyday reality. As a child, I learned very quickly that emotions could be heavy, unpredictable, and sometimes overwhelming in ways that affected not just one person, but an entire family. Because of this, my understanding of the world developed through a lens of emotional awareness and survival. I became highly attuned to the moods and behaviors of others, especially my parents. I learned how to read the smallest shifts in tone, energy, or expression, because those shifts often meant something bigger was coming. While that awareness helped me navigate my environment, it also meant that I carried a level of emotional responsibility at a very young age. I was not just a child. I often felt like a caretaker, someone who needed to anticipate problems before they fully surfaced. At the same time, I was dealing with my own mental health challenges. Living with anxiety, depression, ADHD, and epilepsy created an internal world that was just as complex as the one around me. There were moments when I felt overwhelmed by my own thoughts, struggling to focus, to remember things, or to feel grounded in my body. My epilepsy, especially being stress-induced, made everything feel even more intense. Stress was not just emotional for me. It had physical consequences, which added another layer of fear and unpredictability to my life. These combined experiences deeply shaped my goals for the future. I have chosen to pursue a career in clinical psychology because I know firsthand how critical mental health support can be. I have seen what happens when people do not have the tools, resources, or support systems they need. I have also seen how powerful it can be when someone feels understood, heard, and supported. My goal is to become a therapist who can provide that kind of space for others, especially for children who are growing up in environments similar to mine. I am particularly drawn to working with children because I know how early these experiences begin to shape a person’s sense of self and the world. Social and emotional patterns are often formed at a young age, and without guidance, they can become deeply ingrained. I want to be someone who helps interrupt cycles of trauma, who teaches children how to understand their emotions, and who shows them that their experiences do not have to define their future. My own life has shown me that healing is possible, but it often requires support that many people do not have access to. My relationships have also been shaped by my experiences with mental health, both in positive and challenging ways. On one hand, I have developed a deep sense of empathy. I am able to connect with people on an emotional level, to listen without judgment, and to offer support in meaningful ways. I understand that people are often carrying things that are not immediately visible, and that has made me more patient and compassionate. On the other hand, growing up in an environment where I often had to be the strong one has made it difficult at times to be vulnerable myself. I am used to being the person others rely on, which can make it hard to ask for help or to fully open up. There is a part of me that feels responsible for maintaining stability, even when I am struggling. Learning to balance that, to allow myself to be supported as well, has been an ongoing process. Trust is another area that has been shaped by my experiences. When you grow up with instability, it can be difficult to fully trust that things will remain steady. I have had to work to build a sense of security within myself, rather than relying entirely on external circumstances. This has made me more independent, but it has also required me to be intentional about building healthy, supportive relationships where trust can grow over time. Despite the challenges, my experiences with mental health have given me a perspective that I would not trade. They have taught me resilience in a way that is deeply rooted in lived experience. I have learned how to keep going even when things feel overwhelming, how to adapt to uncertainty, and how to find meaning in difficult circumstances. These lessons continue to guide me, both personally and professionally. More than anything, my understanding of the world has been shaped by the belief that mental health matters deeply. It is not separate from the rest of our lives. It influences how we think, how we connect with others, and how we move through the world. I have seen the consequences of untreated mental health struggles, but I have also seen the strength it takes to keep going despite them. My goal is to take everything I have experienced and use it to make a difference. I want to contribute to a world where mental health is taken seriously, where people feel safe asking for help, and where support is accessible to those who need it. My past has not been easy, but it has given me a sense of purpose. It has shown me the kind of person I want to be and the kind of impact I hope to have.

Living with epilepsy has shaped my life in ways that are both visible and invisible. I was officially diagnosed at fifteen, but looking back, I know my experience with epilepsy began long before that. For years, I felt like something in my body was not quite right, even if I didn’t have the language to explain it. I would experience shaking, intense migraines, and what I now understand to be auras. At the time, those moments felt confusing and isolating. I didn’t know what was happening to me, and that uncertainty made everything more frightening. Being diagnosed brought a sense of clarity, but it also introduced a new set of challenges. One of the biggest ongoing struggles I face is with memory and concentration. I often feel forgetful, like thoughts slip through my mind before I can hold onto them. Focusing on tasks, especially in school or high-stress environments, can be incredibly difficult. It is frustrating to know that I am capable of understanding and learning, but sometimes feel held back by something I cannot fully control. This has impacted my confidence at times, making me question myself even when I am trying my best. Another major challenge is navigating environments that can trigger my symptoms. I have learned that my epilepsy is stress-induced, which means that situations involving pressure, anxiety, or overstimulation can become overwhelming quickly. Certain environments, especially those that are loud, chaotic, or emotionally intense, can make me feel like I am on the edge of losing control of my own body. That feeling is hard to describe to someone who has never experienced it. It is not just fear of having a seizure, but the deeper fear of not being able to trust your own mind and body in that moment. The auras I experience are particularly unsettling. They feel like a warning, but not one I can always act on. It is as if my body is trying to tell me something is wrong, but I am left in a space where I cannot fully stop what is coming. That in-between state can feel isolating, like being disconnected from the world around me while still being physically present in it. Combined with migraines, which can be debilitating on their own, these experiences make everyday life feel unpredictable at times. Despite these challenges, living with epilepsy has also given me a deeper understanding of resilience. I have had to learn how to listen to my body, to recognize my limits, and to advocate for myself in situations where others may not fully understand what I am going through. It has taught me patience, especially with myself. There are days when things feel harder than they should, and I have had to learn that it is okay to slow down and take care of myself without feeling guilty. Epilepsy has also shaped how I see others. Because I know what it feels like to struggle with something invisible, I have developed a stronger sense of empathy for people dealing with their own challenges. It has made me more aware of how important it is to create understanding and supportive environments, especially for those who may be silently struggling. While epilepsy continues to impact my life, it does not define who I am. It is one part of my story, but it is not the whole story. I am still learning, growing, and finding ways to navigate the world on my own terms. Even on the hardest days, I remind myself that I have made it this far, and that strength is something no diagnosis can take away. - I have uploaded a picture of my family. Having epilepsy can sometimes affect my everyday function. There is a picture of my sisters and I. I had already begun experiencing auras at this age and did not know. The last picture is me at 20 with my oldest. I was a high risk pregnancy with her and my twins due to the fact that I am epileptic. I had to switch medications during my pregnancies and they were less effective which influenced my work and every day function.

As a full-time employee, a full-time college student, and a mother of three, my life is defined by responsibility. Behind that responsibility are challenges that are not always visible. Living with ADHD and epilepsy has shaped the way I learn, the way I function, and the way I see myself. For a long time, those challenges made me feel limited. Over time, they became the reason I grew. One of the most defining challenges I faced was returning to school while managing my health, my job, and my family. After becoming a mother at a young age, my focus shifted entirely to raising my children and creating stability. Education became something I had to put on hold. When I made the decision to go back to school, I was not just stepping into a classroom. I was stepping into something that once felt out of reach. Balancing everything at once forced me to confront my learning differences in a new way. ADHD made focusing, organizing, and managing deadlines difficult, especially while juggling work and parenting. Epilepsy added another layer of uncertainty, as I had to constantly be aware of my health and the possibility of a seizure interrupting my daily life. There were moments when I felt overwhelmed, when assignments piled up, and when I questioned whether I could truly succeed in a college environment. One moment stands out clearly. I remember sitting at my kitchen table late at night after putting my children to bed, staring at an assignment I could not seem to complete. I was exhausted from working all day, mentally drained, and frustrated with myself for not being able to focus. In that moment, it would have been easy to give up and tell myself that maybe I just was not capable of doing it all. Instead, I made a choice to try again, differently. I began to change the way I approached my learning. I broke assignments into smaller, manageable pieces. I created structure where my mind struggled to find it. I allowed myself to ask for help instead of staying silent. Most importantly, I stopped viewing my challenges as weaknesses and started seeing them as something I could work with, not against. That shift changed everything. Through that experience, I grew in ways I did not expect. I became more disciplined, more patient with myself, and more resilient. I learned that success does not have to look perfect to be meaningful. Some days, success is simply showing up, even when everything feels difficult. I also gained a deeper sense of confidence, not because things became easier, but because I proved to myself that I could handle hard things. This growth has influenced every part of my life. It has made me a stronger student, a more present mother, and a more determined individual. It has also shaped my future goals. I am pursuing a degree in clinical psychology because I want to help others, especially children, who feel limited by their circumstances or their learning differences. I understand what it feels like to struggle silently, and I want to be someone who helps others find their strength. My challenges have not disappeared, but I no longer see them as barriers. They are part of my story, and they are the reason I continue to push forward. Growth, for me, came from choosing not to give up, even in the moments when it felt impossible.

As a full-time employee at an elementary school, a mother of three, and a non-traditional college student, my education is not just a goal. It is something I have fought to come back to. I am Puerto Rican, and my life has been shaped by hardship, responsibility, and resilience. Because of this, I am working to address my current and future student debt by balancing full-time work, careful financial decisions, and a commitment to finishing what I started. I became a mother at 20, and then a mother of twins at 22. At an age when many people are still figuring out who they are, I was learning how to take care of three children and create stability out of very little. My dreams did not disappear, but they were put on hold. Now at 30, I have returned to school with a sense of urgency and purpose that comes from knowing exactly what is at stake. This is not just about a degree. It is about building a life my children can depend on. Living with epilepsy, chronic migraines, and ADHD has made that path even harder. There are days when my body works against me, when the pain is overwhelming, or when focus feels impossible. There are moments where I have had to push through exhaustion, fear, and uncertainty just to meet the responsibilities waiting for me. But I keep going. I keep going because my children are watching, and because I know what it feels like to grow up without stability. I refuse to let that be their story. These experiences have shaped not only my strength, but my purpose. They are the reason I aspire to become a therapist. I want to work with children and families who are navigating trauma, poverty, and mental health challenges, because I understand what it feels like to carry those things quietly. I want to be someone who sees people fully, who listens without judgment, and who helps others find a way forward even when life feels overwhelming. Financially, I am doing everything I can to reduce the weight of student debt. I work full time while attending school, even when it means sacrificing rest and time for myself. I budget carefully, prioritize essentials, and apply for scholarships because I know that every dollar I do not have to borrow matters. My husband, a Marine and Army veteran, and I are focused on creating long-term stability for our family, not just for today, but for the future we are building together. My plan is not only to reduce debt now, but to create a career that allows me to give back. By continuing to work while earning my degree, I am limiting how much debt I will carry. At the same time, I am pursuing a path in clinical psychology that will allow me to support others while providing financial security for my family. I want my children to grow up seeing that no matter how difficult the path is, it is still possible to build something better. Higher education is expensive, but for me, the cost has always been more than financial. It has been time, sacrifice, and perseverance. Still, I continue forward. I am not just investing in my future. I am breaking cycles, creating stability, and building a life rooted in resilience, compassion, and purpose.

Living with epilepsy, chronic migraines, and ADHD has shaped nearly every part of who I am, from the way I understand myself to the way I move through the world. These are not just conditions I manage. They are experiences that have deeply influenced my beliefs, my relationships, and the future I am working toward. Epilepsy has taught me what it feels like to lose control of my own body. There is a constant awareness that at any moment, something could happen that I cannot stop. That kind of uncertainty changes you. It has forced me to become more self aware, more prepared, and more resilient than I ever expected to be. At the same time, it has shown me a level of vulnerability that many people never have to face. I know what it feels like to rely on others, to need help, and to navigate moments where independence is not guaranteed. Because of this, I move through life with a deeper sense of empathy, understanding how fragile things can feel beneath the surface. Living with severe chronic migraines has added another layer to that experience. Migraines are often dismissed, but they can take everything from you in an instant. There are days when light is unbearable, when focusing feels impossible, and when simply existing feels overwhelming. On those days, getting through even the smallest tasks becomes a quiet act of strength. These experiences have reshaped the way I define success. Strength is no longer about pushing through without struggle, but about continuing forward even when your body is working against you. ADHD has challenged me in different ways, especially with focus and organization, but it has also shaped how I think and see the world. My mind does not always follow a straight line, but that has given me creativity, energy, and the ability to connect ideas in meaningful ways. Learning to work with my mind instead of against it has taught me patience with myself and compassion for others who may feel misunderstood. These experiences have deeply impacted my relationships. I listen differently. I notice the small things. I try to understand what someone might be carrying even when they do not say it out loud. As a mother and someone who has taken on caregiving roles within my family, I have learned how to show up for others even when I am struggling myself. That balance has shaped me into someone who is dependable, present, and deeply compassionate. My understanding of leadership comes from these experiences. To me, leadership is not about being the strongest person in the room, but about being the one who understands, who listens, and who creates space for others to feel safe and seen. I lead by continuing to move forward despite my challenges and by being open about my experiences to reduce stigma. These experiences are the reason I aspire to become a therapist. I am pursuing a career in clinical psychology because I want to support individuals, especially children, who are navigating mental health challenges, trauma, and neurological conditions. I know how isolating it can feel to struggle in ways that are not always visible, and I want to create a space where people feel heard, valued, and safe enough to be honest about what they are going through. My disabilities have not defined my limits. They have shaped my purpose. They have taught me resilience, deepened my empathy, and given me a reason to help others. I plan to use my experiences to build a more understanding and compassionate community.

I grew up in a single-parent household after my parents divorced when I was seven, but instability had already shaped much of my childhood. When I was four years old, our home burned down. I don't remember every detail, but I remember the feeling of losing something that was supposed to be safe. After that, home was never just one place, it was wherever we could stay. I am one of three sisters, raised in a Spanish and Italian family where love was always present, even when stability was not. We lived below the poverty line, and for much of my childhood, we were on and off homeless. From the time I was four until I was about twelve, we moved constantly, staying with relatives, friends, or wherever there was space. "Home" often meant a couch, a floor, or a temporary place we knew wouldn't last. There were days when we didn't have enough to eat, and nights filled with uncertainty. As a child, I didn't always have the words for what was happening, but I felt it deeply, the stress, the fear, and the emotional weight carried by my family. I learned early how to be aware of others' needs, how to step in and help care for my sisters, and how to stay strong even when things felt overwhelming. Those experiences didn't just shape my resilience, they shaped my purpose. Growing up, I saw firsthand how deeply people can struggle, especially when they don't have the support or purces they need. I also saw how mental health challenges can affect a family and how difficult it can be to navigate those challenges without guidance. Because of this, 1 am pursuing a career in clinical psychology. I want to be the kind of person I needed growing up-someone who listens, understands, and helps others feel seen during their most difficult moments. My background has given me a deep sense of empathy and a commitment to helping others. I understand what it feels like to live with uncertainty, to struggle silently, and to carry responsibilities at a young age. These experiences have not only shaped who I am, but they have driven me to build a future where I can provide support stability, and compassion to others who need it most. The pictures I am uploading are the most recent of Siesta Lago, which is the longest place I lived in Kissimmee, my recent picture of my daughter and I, and then my sisters and I. Yes, I very much am the whitest one.

Recovery, to me, is not a single moment but an ongoing process of choosing change, even when it is difficult. It is about healing, accountability, and learning how to live differently after experiencing pain. My understanding of recovery has been shaped by my father’s struggle with alcohol addiction and the life-threatening consequences that followed. Growing up, I watched my father battle alcoholism alongside his mental health challenges. His addiction affected our entire family, creating an environment filled with instability, uncertainty, and fear. As a child, it was difficult to separate who he was from the behaviors driven by his addiction, which left me feeling confused and overwhelmed. Everything changed when my father had a heart attack and underwent open heart surgery. That moment forced a reality that could no longer be ignored. Recovery became urgent and real. It was no longer just about change, but about survival. Through this experience, I learned that recovery is more than stopping harmful behaviors. It is about rebuilding a life, repairing relationships, and developing healthier ways to cope. It also requires forgiveness and persistence, even through setbacks. Watching my father confront his addiction showed me that change is possible, even after reaching a breaking point. It also inspired my decision to pursue a career in clinical psychology so I can support others facing similar struggles. To me, recovery means hope. It is the belief that no matter how difficult the past, there is always a chance to move forward and rebuild.

A second chance, to me, means the opportunity to redefine who you are instead of being permanently defined by where you started. It means being seen for your growth, your effort, and your potential rather than your circumstances. Growing up, my life was shaped by instability, poverty, and the lasting effects of mental illness within my family. As the daughter of a veteran who struggled with bipolar I disorder, addiction, and the impact of his service, I was exposed early on to the realities of trauma and how deeply it can affect a person and those around them. At the same time, my mother’s severe depression created an environment where emotional support was not always consistent or available. Because of this, I grew up quickly. I learned how to take care of others, how to navigate difficult situations, and how to survive in an environment that often felt unpredictable. While I may not have had a traditional or easy childhood, those experiences shaped my perspective and forced me to develop resilience at a young age. I saw firsthand how circumstances, especially those outside of a child’s control, can influence behavior, decisions, and opportunities. That understanding has stayed with me and continues to guide who I am today. A second chance is about recognizing that people are more than their past. It is about understanding that growth is possible, even after difficult beginnings. I have taken intentional steps toward creating a better future for myself and my family. One of the most important changes I made was committing to my education. I am currently pursuing a degree in clinical psychology because I want to help others who are facing the same kinds of struggles I witnessed growing up. I want to be someone who provides support, stability, and understanding to those who may feel overlooked or misunderstood. In addition to my education, I have taken on one of the most meaningful responsibilities in my life, being a mother. Raising my children has strengthened my commitment to growth and change. I am determined to give them a different foundation than the one I had. I teach them empathy, emotional awareness, and the importance of understanding others rather than judging them. I want them to grow up knowing that their circumstances do not define their worth or their future. At the same time, I recognize that every generation faces its own challenges, and I strive to stay open, adaptable, and present as they grow. If awarded this scholarship, I would use the funds to continue my education and reduce the financial burden that comes with balancing school, family, and daily responsibilities. This support would allow me to focus more fully on my studies and continue working toward my goal of becoming a licensed therapist. It is not just an investment in my education, but in the impact I hope to make in the lives of others. Looking ahead, my goal is to work as a therapist, particularly with children and families who are dealing with trauma, mental illness, and instability. I want to help break cycles that often go unaddressed, especially in communities where resources and support are limited. I believe that early intervention and compassionate care can change the trajectory of a person’s life. Beyond my career, I plan to “pay it forward” by being a source of guidance and support for young people who may feel lost or unheard. Whether through mentorship, community involvement, or my professional work, I want to give others the same sense of possibility that a second chance represents. My story is not defined by where I started, but by the choices I continue to make. A second chance is not something I take lightly, it is something I work toward every day.

What makes me a leader is not a title or position, but the life I have lived and the responsibilities I have carried from a young age. Growing up in a household shaped by mental health struggles and instability, I often found myself stepping into a caregiving role early on. With my father battling bipolar I disorder, addiction, and the lasting effects of his military service, and my mother struggling with severe depression, I learned how to take care of others before I fully understood how to take care of myself. That experience, while challenging, taught me resilience, awareness, and a deep sense of responsibility. Being in that position required me to become emotionally intuitive. I learned how to read a room, anticipate needs, and respond with patience and care. These are not always recognized as traditional leadership qualities, but they are at the core of what it means to lead—being able to support others, stay grounded in difficult situations, and make thoughtful decisions even when circumstances are overwhelming. I became someone others could rely on, not because I was asked to, but because it was necessary. My leadership has continued to grow through my role as a mother. Raising children has strengthened my ability to guide, nurture, and lead with intention. Every day, I make choices that shape not only my children’s lives but also the way they will interact with the world. I strive to lead by example, teaching them empathy, accountability, and the importance of understanding others. I want them to grow up knowing that strength is not just about independence, but also about compassion and connection. Being a mother has also taught me adaptability. No two days are the same, and no challenge comes with a clear set of instructions. I have learned how to problem-solve, remain patient under stress, and continue moving forward even when things feel uncertain. These are leadership skills that extend beyond the home and into every area of my life, including my education and future career in clinical psychology. Additionally, my experiences have given me a strong sense of purpose. I am not only leading my family, but I am also working toward becoming a therapist so I can support others who may be facing similar struggles. I want to use my voice and my experiences to advocate for mental health awareness and to help create spaces where people feel safe and understood. Leadership, to me, means using what you have been through to guide and uplift others. Ultimately, I am a leader because I have learned how to carry responsibility, navigate hardship, and still move forward with empathy and determination. My past has shaped me, but it has not limited me. Instead, it has given me the strength to lead with compassion, to support those around me, and to work toward building a better future for both my children and my community.

I plan to use my unique talents and skills to help build a more empathetic and understanding community by becoming a therapist and working directly with individuals who are struggling with mental health challenges. My personal experiences have given me a level of empathy and awareness that cannot be taught through textbooks alone. Growing up as the daughter of a veteran who struggled with bipolar I disorder, addiction, and the lasting effects of his time in the military, I witnessed firsthand how mental health can impact not only an individual but an entire family. At the same time, my mother’s severe depression shaped the emotional environment of my childhood, further deepening my understanding of how complex and overwhelming these challenges can be. Because of this, I have developed a strong ability to recognize emotional distress in others, even when it is not openly expressed. I have learned how important it is to listen without judgment, to be patient, and to approach people with compassion rather than assumptions. These are skills I carry with me into every interaction, and they will be central to my work as a future therapist. As a therapist, my goal is to create a safe and supportive space where people feel seen, heard, and understood. I want to work with individuals who may feel overlooked, including children, families, and those affected by trauma, addiction, or mental illness. I believe that many social issues begin at a young age, and by supporting children early, we can help prevent cycles of trauma from continuing into future generations. I want to help my clients build confidence, develop healthy coping mechanisms, and understand that their circumstances do not define their worth. In addition to my professional goals, I am already working to build a more empathetic community through my role as a parent. I am intentional about raising my children to think critically about the world around them, to challenge stereotypes, and to approach others with kindness and understanding. I want them to recognize that everyone has a story, even if it is not immediately visible. By teaching them empathy and emotional awareness, I hope they will contribute to a more compassionate and inclusive society. My family history has not only influenced my career path, but it has also given me a deep sense of purpose. I understand the impact that mental health struggles can have, but I also believe in the possibility of healing and growth. By combining my personal experiences with my education in clinical psychology, I aim to be someone who can bridge gaps in understanding, reduce stigma around mental health, and support others in finding stability and hope. Ultimately, I want to be part of a community that values compassion, connection, and understanding. Through my work as a therapist and my role as a parent, I will continue to use my experiences and skills to help create that kind of environment—one where people feel supported, respected, and empowered to grow.

Growing up as the daughter of a veteran has had a profound impact on the direction of my life and my career aspirations. My father’s service in the Army and National Guard shaped not only his identity, but also the environment in which I was raised. After returning from his time in the military, my father struggled deeply with his mental health. He developed bipolar I disorder, and over time, he also became dependent on drugs and alcohol. As a child, I did not fully understand what he was going through, but I felt the effects of it every day. His instability, emotional highs and lows, and substance use created an unpredictable and often overwhelming home environment. At the same time, my mother struggled with severe depression, which added another layer of complexity to my upbringing. Instead of having one stable parent to lean on, I often felt like I was navigating a world where both of my parents were fighting battles that I could not see or fully comprehend. This forced me to grow up quickly. I became more aware of emotions, behaviors, and the weight of mental health at a young age. While these experiences were incredibly difficult, they also shaped my sense of empathy and my desire to understand why people suffer in the ways that they do. Watching my parents struggle made me realize how deeply mental health can affect not just an individual, but an entire family. I saw how untreated or misunderstood mental illness can lead to cycles of pain, addiction, and disconnection. At times, it felt isolating and confusing, but it also sparked something in me. I began to ask questions, even as a child, about why people behave the way they do and what could be done to help them. I did not want others to feel as lost or unsupported as I often did growing up. These experiences are a major reason why I chose to pursue a career in clinical psychology. I want to become a therapist so that I can support individuals and families who are facing challenges similar to the ones I witnessed firsthand. My father’s struggles with bipolar disorder and addiction, along with my mother’s depression, have given me a unique perspective. I understand, on a personal level, how mental illness can shape a person’s life and relationships. More importantly, I understand how important it is to have access to compassionate, effective care. I am especially passionate about helping those who may feel overlooked or misunderstood, including children of parents with mental health issues or veterans dealing with the lasting effects of their service. I know how important it is for people to feel seen, heard, and validated. I want to be someone who can provide that sense of safety and understanding, while also helping individuals develop healthier coping mechanisms and a stronger sense of self. Rather than allowing my past to define me in a negative way, I have chosen to use it as motivation. My experiences have given me resilience, empathy, and a deep commitment to helping others. They have shown me that even in the most difficult circumstances, there is potential for growth and healing. I want to be part of that healing process for others. Ultimately, being the daughter of a veteran who struggled with mental health and addiction has shaped not only who I am, but who I hope to become. It has guided me toward a career where I can turn my experiences into something meaningful, helping others navigate their own challenges and find a path toward stability and hope.

Growing up below the poverty line and experiencing homelessness from a young age has deeply shaped the way I see people and the world around me. Those early experiences exposed me to both the harshest and most complicated sides of humanity. I learned quickly that people are not always kind, that systems are not always fair, and that circumstances can define opportunities in ways that are incredibly difficult to overcome. At the same time, those challenges gave me a sense of awareness and resilience that continues to guide me today. Because of what I have lived through, I feel a strong sense of purpose in pursuing a degree in clinical psychology. I want to work with children who are facing their own struggles, especially those who may feel overlooked or misunderstood. I believe that many of the social issues we see in the world begin taking shape in childhood. The way a child understands themselves, their environment, and their worth can influence the trajectory of their entire life. As a future therapist, I hope to be someone who can intervene early, offering support, stability, and encouragement when it is needed most. My goal is not only to help children cope with their circumstances, but also to empower them to rise above them. I want to help build confidence in children who may have been told, directly or indirectly, that they are not enough. I want to help them recognize their own strengths and develop a sense of identity that is not defined by trauma, poverty, or societal expectations. Breaking generational and societal cycles is not easy, but I believe it starts with changing the way young people see themselves and their potential. In addition to my future goals, my most immediate and meaningful contribution is raising my own children. As a parent, I am constantly aware of the responsibility I carry in shaping how they understand the world. I want to teach them that although the world can be difficult and, at times, unforgiving, it does not have to define who they become. I am intentional about helping them see beyond stereotypes and assumptions, encouraging them to think critically and approach others with empathy rather than judgment. At the same time, I recognize that raising children comes with its own challenges, especially when their experiences differ from my own. As someone who grew up in poverty and became a young mother, many of the societal issues I faced were immediate and unavoidable. My children, while not facing those exact same circumstances, will encounter their own unique struggles. This requires me to remain open, adaptable, and willing to learn alongside them. I cannot assume that my experiences will fully prepare me for theirs, but I can provide them with the tools to navigate whatever they may face. Ultimately, my life experiences have instilled in me a deep commitment to growth, both personally and within my community. Whether through my future work as a therapist or my role as a mother, I strive to contribute to a world where children feel seen, supported, and capable of creating something better for themselves. I want to be part of a generation that does not simply endure hardship, but actively works to transform it into strength, understanding, and meaningful change.

I grew up below the poverty line. While education was drilled into my head, it was never truly something I thought about past high school. I had dreams, but I lacked the background or support to achieve them. I was told that I would get pregnant by the time I was 16 and that I was lazy. When I had my oldest daughter at 20, after 2 years of floundering after high school, I pretty much thought the future I had been instilled with was set. Two years later, at 22, I had my twins, and I fell further into my own self-pity. While loving my children and feeling a sense of pride and protection over them, I knew I wanted to give them someone to be proud of. After leaving the Marines and enlisting in the Army, my husband deployed, and I spent the entire first year of my twins' life as a young, single mother. When he came back, my husband and I moved from our home state of Florida to Texas. Truly alone in a new state with 3 small children at 23. I began thinking about going back to school, but the thought of starting college after I struggled to pass high school terrified me. I reached out to schools and then backed out repeatedly. By the time it was time for us to leave Texas, my husband and I had researched all 50 states to determine where we wanted to settle, leaving Texas and Florida behind us. On April 6th, we got into our SUV and blindly drove from Texas to Wisconsin with our then-5-year-old and twin 3-year-olds, who turned 4 two weeks after we moved here. The first time ever being here on the day we moved into our apartment. Within 5 months, we bought our house, and we both had well-paying jobs. A job I hated. Within a month of moving into our house, I started at another position, but due to staffing issues, I was laid off a week later. I cried to my husband about not knowing what I wanted to do, what would make me happy. He told me that he thought I should just go to school full-time. A week later, I was officially signed up for the fall term. I was terrified. I knew I had hobbies, but nothing I thought would be career-worthy. I began working at my children's school 1 year into school. I realized I had a passion for working with kids, kids who needed someone not to teach but to listen. I write this because it took until I was 26, with 3 kids, the house, and the husband, for me to realize I wanted to go back to school. On the outside, only having a high school diploma was okay; it worked out, and I was successful, but I needed more for myself. My family is my success, but I want to show them and other students that you can do it out of order, you can have the road mapped out, and still take multiple detours. It is your own. I will never regret going to college and the opportunities it has opened up for me and my family, because I was the first to have the courage to do it.

Growing up, my family struggled. I grew up below the poverty line and spent many nights homeless on sidewalks or sleeping in cars if we were lucky. At 8 years old, I had experienced the worst of people and had a worldview that was skewed by my own reality. At 20 years old, I had my first child, and again at 22, this time twins. My own experiences as a mother have twisted me into pretzels as I have faced challenges from my own trauma, refusing to repeat my own experiences. After working as a paraprofessional at the elementary school my children attend, I realized I had a talent for helping troubled students open up by sharing my own experiences to show them they are not alone. This created a fire in me and a newfound passion. My passion is to be the person that young me wished that I had. That is why I decided to go back to school and pursue child psychology. I want to not be the voice, but help their voices grow in confidence. Not only for my own children, but for the next generation of children. The legacy I want to leave behind is not a bloodline or my own achievements. It is a generation of children who grow into kind and loving adults. It is to leave children who have felt heard at least once in their lifetime, who feel their voices are not silenced, and who have the tools to continue breaking cycles. My strength has always been my empathy; it is not fake. It comes from a place of walking miles and miles and miles in their shoes. It is how I am able to use my own trauma to empathetically parent, and it is how I am able to see the world in a different way. I am passionate about finishing school. To finish my bachelor's and to pursue my master's, because I want to show my children that your experiences do not define you, but they can shape you in positive ways if you let them. My childhood was less than ideal, but I am hopeful that I can use those injustices to help others, so at the very least, younger me did not suffer in vain. Her experiences helped someone, and she can smile knowing that she is helping other children and being the adult that she needed while she was in need.