My interest in healthcare began long before I had the language to articulate it. My mother worked as a medical transcriptionist throughout my childhood, and while her job didn’t place her at patients’ bedsides, it placed her squarely within the world of medicine. I grew up surrounded by the rhythm of clinical language, the stories embedded in medical dictation, and the environment of hospitals where she sometimes brought me along. Those early moments left a deep impression on me. They made healthcare feel familiar, accessible, and purposeful, a place where people’s lives were transformed, not just treated. By the time I graduated high school, I knew I wanted to become a pediatric oncologist. That aspiration came from a genuine desire to be at the intersection of science, compassion, and advocacy. But life, as it often does, had other plans. I became a mother very young, married early, and had to make decisions centered around stability rather than ambition. The long road of medical training didn’t feel possible then, and I chose a more practical path: earning a degree in business and working my way into finance. Even so, healthcare never fully left my orbit. While attending college and caring for my newborn son, I became a certified nursing assistant, working in clinical settings that reminded me why I had once dreamed of medicine in the first place. Being a CNA taught me the humanity of healthcare, the patience required, the intimacy of caring for people during their most vulnerable moments, and the importance of a compassionate presence in clinical spaces. It also showed me the systemic challenges that impact both patients and providers, especially those from marginalized communities. Years later, after building a career in finance, raising two children, and navigating my own complex health journey as a Black woman living with endometriosis and metabolic challenges, I felt myself returning to the field I had set aside. But this time, I returned with clarity: my calling wasn’t simply to work in healthcare, it was to help shape it. I made the decision to pursue a Master of Public Health with a focus on epidemiology because it bridges everything I care about: data, disease patterns, women’s health, and the inequities that disproportionately impact Black women. My lived experience gives me a firsthand understanding of gaps in research, care, and diagnosis, particularly in conditions like endometriosis, which are chronically misunderstood and underfunded. These personal experiences have become fuel for what I hope will be a long-term career in research. My ultimate goal is to pursue a PhD in translational biomedical science, with a concentration in endocrinology, women's health, and the biological mechanisms underlying conditions like endometriosis. I want to contribute to research that expands understanding of how endocrine disorders manifest in women of color, how endometriosis behaves more like a metastatic disease than a benign one, and why these disparities persist. I hope to be part of the scientific community shaping new diagnostic criteria, treatment pathways, and classification debates, including whether endometriosis should be considered a form of cancer based on its behavior. As a woman in healthcare, my impact will come from bringing an intersection of perspectives: scientific, analytical, personal, and culturally informed. I want to ensure that women, especially Black women, are not dismissed, misdiagnosed, or overlooked in the very systems meant to care for them. I chose healthcare because it has always been the place where my curiosity, compassion, and purpose intersect. I returned to healthcare because I realized that the field needs voices like mine.

My experiences with mental health and substance abuse are woven into the fabric of my earliest memories. I did not grow up struggling with substance use personally, but I grew up in a home shaped by it. Both of my parents battled addiction during my childhood, my mother with cocaine and alcohol, and my father with a brief period of cocaine use before entering long-term sobriety. Their struggles created an environment marked by instability, neglect, and frequent crises, and the emotional weight of that environment shaped my mental health for decades afterward. Poverty, food insecurity, and periods of homelessness were not abstract concepts for me, they were daily realities. I learned very young how to parent myself, how to navigate chaos, and how to survive in circumstances that felt too heavy for a child to carry. Living in that environment, I internalized lessons about fear, hypervigilance, and self-sacrifice, but I also developed a unique emotional resilience. I did not use drugs or alcohol as I grew older, not out of judgment, but because I had seen firsthand the impact addiction could have on a family. It was a survival decision, a commitment to myself that the cycle would stop with me. The long-term effects of that upbringing showed up later in my mental health. As an adult, I was diagnosed with PTSD related to childhood trauma, chemical depression, and anxiety. These weren’t sudden developments; they were the natural echoes of years spent in unpredictable and unsafe conditions. For a long time, I moved through life simply trying to function, working full time, raising my children, maintaining a household, without ever having the chance to acknowledge what I had survived. My healing truly began when I allowed myself to stop minimizing my own story. Therapy became an anchor, giving me the tools to understand the patterns that shaped me and to gradually rebuild my sense of safety. I learned that recovery, even when it is from trauma rather than substance use, is not a straight line. It requires intentional choices every day: choosing rest when I am overwhelmed, choosing community when isolation feels easier, and choosing routines that support my mental well-being. For me, recovery looks like a combination of therapy, mindfulness practices, movement, structured routines, and eliminating things, whether substances or environments, that trigger emotional instability. It is a lifelong practice of knowing myself and caring for myself in ways I never learned growing up. My experiences have also shaped me as a mother. I raised two children with a deep awareness of mental health, knowing how it feels to grow up without that understanding. When one of my children struggled in school due to an undiagnosed attention-related disability, I became their advocate, pushing for proper evaluation and a 504 plan so they wouldn’t fall through the cracks. When my other child faced more complex mental health challenges, I learned how to support them through crisis, uncertainty, and fear without shame or silence. Their journeys, and my own, have shown me that mental health challenges are not character flaws but medical realities requiring compassion and resources. These personal experiences are the foundation of my educational goals today. I returned to graduate school in my forties to study public health, with a long-term goal of contributing to medical research involving women’s health, chronic illness, and health inequities, especially those affecting Black women. My history gives me a unique lens into the ways trauma, environment, and physical health intersect. I understand what it means to fall through systemic gaps, and I want to help ensure fewer people do. Continuing to manage my recovery is central to this journey. Graduate school is demanding, but prioritizing mental health is what allows me to thrive. I maintain a structured wellness plan that includes therapy, sleep hygiene, physical activity, and boundaries that protect my emotional stability. I surround myself with people who support my healing and avoid environments that replicate patterns from my past. Recovery is not something I view as a hurdle to completing my education; it is part of the reason I am pursuing this path. It grounds me, guides me, and keeps me connected to the purpose behind my work. My story is one of intergenerational struggle, but also intergenerational healing. I am breaking cycles my parents never had the chance to break. I am building a future grounded in stability, compassion, and purpose. And I am using everything I have survived, not as a weight holding me back, but as a foundation for the kind of health professional and advocate I intend to become.

Courage didn’t arrive for me in a dramatic moment. It came during an ordinary dinner with friends, a conversation that started casually but ended up reshaping the trajectory of my life. I was reflecting on how far I had drifted from my original dream of working in medicine. At eighteen, I wanted to become a pediatric oncologist. Life, however, moved quickly. I became a mother young, and practicality pushed me toward a faster, more reliable path...finance. I built a solid career, raised my two children, and kept my life moving, even as a quiet sense of unfinished purpose lingered in the background. That night, I shared how I felt too old to change course, how forty felt like I had already missed my window. One of my friends, a bit over fifty, responded in a way that stunned me with its simplicity. He said, “If I were your age, I would go back to school right now. At fifty, I don’t know if I would. But at forty? Absolutely.” It was the first time in a long time that I felt young in someone’s framing. Not behind. Not late. Just… still on time. His perspective sat with me for days afterward. I started thinking less about what I wanted right now and more about what I would regret at fifty. I pictured two possible futures: one where I was still sitting behind spreadsheets, reconciling financial statements, completing models that bored me more each year; and another where I had taken a risk and moved toward the field that had called to me since childhood. The answer was undeniable. Ten years from now, I would not regret going back to school. I would regret not going. That realization gave me the courage to begin again. I pulled transcripts I hadn’t looked at in decades, researched programs, re-learned admission requirements, and allowed myself to imagine a career that aligned with my lived experience and long-standing interests. Public health offered the perfect bridge, a place where my analytical skills mattered, but so did my passion for clinical research, women’s health, and advancing equity in medical outcomes. Starting over in your forties is humbling, but it’s also liberating. It requires honesty about the life you actually want, and the bravery to pursue it even when it disrupts everything comfortable. What gave me the courage to go back to school was not a sudden burst of inspiration. It was the quiet, grounded realization that forty is not the end of possibility. It’s the perfect moment to reclaim dreams that had been waiting patiently for me to return to them. Susie Green’s story reflects exactly the kind of courage I am trying to embody: the willingness to reroute your life with intention, the belief that it is never too late to pursue meaningful work, and the discipline to build a future that aligns with your purpose. I am choosing this path because I want to look back at fifty not with regret, but with pride that I used the second half of my life to become the woman, and the healthcare professional, I always intended to be.

Supporting others through mental health challenges has been a meaningful part of my life long before I ever considered a graduate program in public health. Mental health conditions run deeply through my family, including my children, and navigating their diagnoses has required patience, advocacy, and a willingness to learn more than what most parents or caregivers ever expect to. Without disclosing their personal details, I can say that raising two young adults with complex mental health needs has shaped my understanding of compassion in its most practical form. When one of my children struggled academically due to diagnosed ADHD, I became a persistent advocate within their school system. Ensuring they received proper evaluation, securing a 504 plan, and educating teachers about what meaningful support looked like was not just a parental duty but an introduction to the systemic barriers that so many students, especially Black children, face when seeking mental health accommodations. It taught me how vital it is for someone to step in, speak up, and create pathways where none exist. My other child’s mental health journey required a different kind of support: emotional steadiness, crisis navigation, and helping them build a network of care. Learning to respond without stigma, fear, or frustration has strengthened my ability to hold space for others, even when circumstances feel heavy. It has also shown me how deeply mental health intersects with physical health, safety, community resources, and larger societal inequities. These experiences shape the kind of healthcare professional I intend to become. Through my graduate studies in public health, I hope to contribute to research and clinical frameworks that improve mental health outcomes for underserved communities, particularly Black women and families who often face cultural, financial, and institutional barriers to care. I want to be part of a generation of health professionals who lead with empathy, evidence-based practice, and a commitment to dismantling stigma. Supporting others through mental illness is not something I do from a distance. It is lived, ongoing, and deeply personal, and it is the foundation for the work I plan to do in the healthcare field.

Mental illness has shaped my life in ways that are both deeply personal and central to the woman I am becoming. I grew up in conditions that no child should have to navigate, including years of homelessness, neglect, and profound instability. Those experiences left a lasting imprint, and as an adult I have been diagnosed with PTSD and chemical depression. For a long time, mental illness felt like something I was simply trying to outrun. Now, I understand it as part of my story, not the definition of it. My relationship with mental health became even more layered when I began living with chronic illness. I have endometriosis, a condition known for high rates of comorbid depression because of the relentless pain and the way it can make your world feel very small. When you are fighting a body that doesn’t always cooperate, it becomes easy to lose sight of joy, energy, or possibility. I experienced those moments, too. But instead of closing me off from the world, these challenges sparked a lifelong commitment to understanding women’s health, especially the health of Black women, who remain underrepresented and under-researched in medical literature. Mental illness in my life has not been a single event; it has been a thread running through different seasons. I have had to learn resilience that is not romantic or inspirational, but practical: getting up every day despite emotional heaviness, building routines that support my well-being, asking for help when needed, and allowing myself to imagine a future larger than my past circumstances. That practice, quiet, persistent, often invisible, is what has carried me into graduate school. Studying public health has given me both language and direction. I understand now how trauma, chronic illness, and health inequities intertwine. I also understand that the experiences I survived give me a unique lens into why research, advocacy, and culturally competent care matter so deeply. My goal is to contribute to medical research focused on metabolic and hormonal disorders in Black women, including conditions like endometriosis that are frequently dismissed or misunderstood. I want to help create the data that saves lives, changes treatment standards, and expands the way we talk about women’s pain. Mental illness has also shaped the way I show up for my family. As a mother of two adult children, I try to model what it looks like to break cycles, seek support, and continue growing at any age. Returning to school full-time while managing chronic illness and working to improve my mental health has shown them that delays don’t erase dreams. It has shown them that healing is possible, and that purpose can still be built from circumstances that were never in your control. This scholarship would help me continue my education without sacrificing my stability. The financial pressure of graduate school can intensify mental health symptoms, especially for students like me who do not have a safety net to fall back on. Support like this makes it possible for me to focus on my coursework, my research, and my long-term contribution to the communities I care about. My experiences with mental illness have shaped me, but they have also equipped me. They have made me empathetic, determined, and committed to a future where no one feels unheard or unseen in their own health journey. That is the future I am working toward, and the future this scholarship would help me reach.

The life of my dreams is quiet, purposeful, and deeply rooted, both in the land beneath my feet and in the work I contribute to the world. It’s a life where I wake up every day knowing that what I do matters, not just in theory, but in the lives and bodies of Black women whose health outcomes have too often been overlooked or misunderstood. I see myself working in medical research, focusing on the metabolic, inflammatory, and endocrine conditions that shape the quality of our lives, including endometriosis, a disease that is still misunderstood, still underfunded, and still wreaking havoc on millions of women. In my dream life, my work helps shift that reality. I imagine myself part of research that clarifies what endometriosis truly is, how it behaves, and how to diagnose and treat it earlier and more effectively. I imagine contributing to studies that influence policy, reshape medical education, and increase visibility for women who have spent years advocating for themselves in systems that weren’t designed to hear them. That, to me, is meaningful work, work that changes trajectories, work that gives relief and answers to women who have suffered in silence. But the life of my dreams doesn’t end in the lab or clinic. When I picture the fullness of my future, I see a rural homestead, a place with wide, open land, fruit trees, and raised beds overflowing with food. I see chickens, goats, maybe even cattle. I see a place where the pace of life slows down enough for me to breathe deeply and be present with my family. A place that is both sanctuary and legacy. Homesteading speaks to something ancient in me, something about autonomy, nourishment, and wholeness. It represents the ability to grow what sustains me, share what I have with my community, and create generational stability for my children and grandchildren. I imagine mornings tending to the garden before diving into research, evenings cooking meals made from food grown right outside my door, and weekends filled with family, rest, and joy. In this imagined future, my work and my home are reflections of the same core value: care. Care for my body, my community, my lineage, and my purpose. I don’t dream of a life defined by constant grind or survival. I dream of a life defined by balance, meaningful work that serves others and a peaceful home where I get to exist as my whole self. The scholarship would bring that dream closer by easing the financial pressure of graduate school while I continue building a life that merges scientific impact with personal wellbeing. It would support my ability to stay committed to my education, to my long-term vision of contributing to research that uplifts Black women, and to my family’s dream of creating a self-sustaining homestead. The life of my dreams is not extravagant. It is intentional, abundant, and rooted, and every step I take in my education brings me closer to living it fully.