When I was 15 I lost my dad in his long service in the Navy. My casualty assistance officer gave me the name of an organization that supports other Gold Star Children like me. TAPS.org! I went to their many camps, events and received life-saving community and support. When I turned 19, I immediately signed up to be a mentor and was paired with several newly grieving children that lost a loved in service. The countless hours I spent volunteering over those few years taught me deep compassion and skills that I am using to become a counselor! For over 4 years I was brought on staff at TAPS and was able to take my volunteering into professional peer counseling and work with other young adults navigating parental loss in the military. And now I am setting off on a new journey in Grad school to become a licensed counselor so I can continue to embrace others in a deeper way. I will always be so thankful for that long wonderful season of my life as a volunteer and staff and will return one day in a new capacity to make a difference for children and young adults walking through grief and loss. When I was 15, the overwhelming weight of loss was all I could see ahead for my future. A wonderful staff member at the time told me that "The pain is so great because the love is so great" I have the opportunity every day to honor the love I have for my dad and his ultimate sacrifice for our country. Being able to share that truth and hope with so many who felt similar was the epitome of post-traumatic growth and understanding the true sense of serving and giving back what we have been given. My dad was a diver in the Navy and one of his favorite sayings was "The only easy day was yesterday". While that saying is so true about grief, the reality is that as we lean into healing the grief doesn't get smaller, we grow in our capacity around it to live meaningful lives despite the hardship of grief. I want his legacy of hard work and courage to be a leading force in my life as I serve others as a Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor. I will have lots of continued opportunities to serve my community as I grow in my skills and compassion.

In my junior year of high school, my father passed away during his service in the Navy. He was my hero, and while the loss is unbearable at times the post-traumatic growth I found in giving back to other Gold Star families was life-changing. After receiving support from a non-profit called TAPS.org, I began to volunteer myself and give back the hope I was given through their programs. I was matched with a young gold star child and personally mentored her throughout her journey in the programs. After graduating college with my bachelor's in Psychology I was offered a job to give back on a much larger scale as staff. Being able to embrace and support thousands of families grieving their military hero organically pushed me to pursue my licensure in counseling. Giving back changed the trajectory of my life. I still volunteer with TAPS and hope to continue adding to the wonderful work and healing they give to so many who gave all for our country. Having also a history of aging out of foster care my focus now is mainly in supporting those in our community that has also aged out. I work and volunteer with two non-profits that are making a tangible difference in serving this vulnerable population. Giving back in this way has provided so much healing for me and opened my horizons to whom I could serve as a clinical mental health counselor in our community. I feel confident and ready to continue my educational career to best my clients of many different backgrounds and life experiences.

As a single adoptive mom in graduate school and working for two non-profits, self-care is like oxygen to me! It was really hard to train, but I started waking up at 6 am every morning to workout, eat healthy, shower and have my bible study! It's been so relaxing and fun to be up before my daughter and watch the sunrise come up while drinking my coffee. I have started to pick my workout the night before and to change the theme every week to keep it interesting. This week I am doing Disney Zumba videos on Youtube! I also like to add some spontaneity in my day if my routine starts to feel like a chore! And that fills my heart to the brim with exciting adventures. One morning last week I woke up my daughter early and we went for a morning hike before school and ate the fruit and bacon I packed for us. It was a stunning memory that I will repeat often. Self-care is also being around really quality friends who are life-giving and supportive. Adopting single is not for the faint of heart, but self-care has been like oxygen in this unique season of my life.

Moving around constantly in Foster Care was a great motivator for growth. Stepping into the home of a stranger comes with an entirely new environment, rules, community etc. Learning to adapt quickly and grow with excellence as a kid and teen developed skills inside me that translates well to adulthood. I keep those skills by practicing daily in what means the most to me. My priorities of growth are my mental health, fitness, faith, and learning to be the best counselor I can be. I have routines and daily goals that shift often to keep raising the bar of excellence. Growth isn't just moving forward and getting better, it's evolving my whole self to being the best version I can for the life I know I am worthy of building. To see it happen little by little every day is so inspiring. It keeps me motivated to learn from experts in the field to never settle. It's truly about consistency and renewed motivation, and making sure to celebrate all the wins along the way!

My first 11 years I lived with the label of ADHD. The word "patience" had almost become a trigger word for frustration and self-loathing. There was very little ability to grasp and be successful in the expectations of others when it came to being patient. Hurry up and wait for the bus, be patient in line, don't squirm in your seat waiting for the next problem. There was never a moment where my being patient was celebrated because the bar was always rising and I was becoming further and further behind. Once I hit middle school, I had the craziest teacher with the biggest heart. She truly saw me for my high intelligence and the unique skills I had inside me to be successful in life. In reality, I do not have ADHD, trauma, and neglect masked themselves behind typical behaviors that my teacher just seemed to have saint-like patience for. What needed healing was my nervous system and she provided a safe space to learn to do that well. Learning the art of patience actually calmed the storm in me and allowed me to engage with the present moments I was missing. To pause and to wait is to be present with myself and the world around me. I learned to hear sounds, feel sensations, and breathe into hard and simple moments. The quiet became solitude and the chaos around me didn't stop until aging out of foster care, but learning patience kept me out of trouble and allowed me to sit in hard stuff without rushing. It taught me greater compassion for others and being able to sit with them and not rush them into fixing things or healing. Learning patience has become an essential tool in my journey to being a therapist!

Generosity means leaving others better than when you found them. The impact and extent to how that happens can look a million different ways, but it's always measurable for the good it inflicts. Being intentional and truly seeing others can be the simplest way to live generously. To keep our eyes open to those around us that need to be seen on a deeper level. To invest time, effort and ourselves into the lives of others with no expectation of a return. I feel as though we have traded the idea of healthy boundaries for an aversion to being inconvenienced. We must realize that doing good is more about hard work than the selfie that's taken at it's completion. I am tired of the loud generosity plaguing this generation. To me, it's the quiet simple consistent moments of kindness that lead to a truly generous life. With the rise of social media and tiktok I wish I could say that my time is always generous, but it's honestly not. I am working on it for sure, and wanting to instill in my adoptive daughter the joy of being present with others and the hard work it takes to live with others in mind. To truly leave folks better off than when we both find them!

As a former foster youth who aged out of the system without being adopted my journey to now has been full of hard choices and making one good decision after the next. Statistically less than 3% of foster youth go on to graduate college. I have graduated and now attending for my masters in LCMHC to support other foster youth! I have unfortunately lost two parents to suicide after their selfless service in the Navy and being a Firefighter. Their heroism is my legacy, and the strength it took them to seek help was inspiring. They were both 4th degree black belts and encouraged me to pursue my dreams in martial arts as well. The lessons and self discipline I learned from years of Bushin Kai and Jui-Jitsu gave me a mental fortitude to say no to the easy ways out of dealing with my pain and struggles. My personal faith as a Christian and the support I received in school pushed me to find a love for helping others and essentially giving me focus to thrive in impossible circumstances. My parents did not graduate college and both served in helping fields right out of high school. They wanted better for me and always made school a priority. I have learned that I can help others with a greater level of excellence through gaining wisdom and knowledge through school. Being in foster care from my preteen years til 18 took those educational dreams out of focus but I had a wonderful teacher who truly helped get back on track and even graduated early. Once in college I became passionate about psychology and understanding all I could about PTSD in the Military and Suicide. I found this organization called Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors and they supported me really well. I started volunteering to mentor their younger children whom had just lost a parent or sibling to Military suicide. After graduating with my bachelors in Psychology TAPS hired me full time to help support the organization and their efforts to support families of military loss of all relationships and causes of death. While working for them, I was given the immense privilege of sitting under some of the leading experts in Suicidology and postvention work with survivors of suicide loss. I now have several highly sought after certifications in programs like ASSIST and Crisis Prevention Planning. Even being able to befriend a hero in the field of grief work, Dr. Alan Wolfelt from the Center for Loss in CO. I took no opportunity for granted, soaking in every bit to one day be the most effective with my own clients as a therapist. Upon licensure as LCMHC, my goal is to work with foster/adoptive families through a modality called Trust Based Relational Intervention. It has been a game changer in the foster care community and my home as a foster/adoptive parent. The children that have come through my home are all leveled much higher than most foster children and come with unique and challenging circumstances that have given them little to no success in a foster home. Through learning the principles and implementing the strategies in my home several of the children have now been successfully adopted into other familes. The goal as a future therapist would be to impower, teach, write, speak on furthering these principles to empower parents, educators and their care team to treat children hollistically instead of the current one size fits all approach to mental health care. In mixing my passion for foster care/adoption and suicide pre and post-vention my goals are to be a loud voice for change in both fields and especially as they connect very frequently. I have already overcome so much personally and with incredible accountability, and mentor-ship I know that I will go extremely far in my goals. My own adoptive daughter is only 10 years younger than I am, we are both single and joke often that we will one day be making trouble together in a nursing home. I love her dearly, and so proud of the extraordinary challenges she has overcome in her own life and journey. Loving her back to life will forever be my greatest accomplishment this side of Heaven, but my ceiling is her floor. And I want to keep moving forward to create a better system and shatter more limitations so she can truly soar in her own dreams. I have traveled the world, and hope to continue as I grow older. The perspectives that come when you realize how small you truly are in comparison to this giant world is humbling. But it is also a wonderful reminder that there are so many folks out there trying to do the most good as well, and working together and lifting up each other voices is the greatest strategy I have in overcoming any obstacle between myself and my future goals.

In my 8th grade year, Mrs. Witmer went beyond her duties as a teacher to support my well being inside and out of the classroom. I was not in foster care at that time and had been reunified back home to a toxic and abusive environment. She would get to school every day almost 2 hours early to work. I would join her and complete tasks around the class and the school together. Very often she would have a treat or special breakfast waiting for me. We would talk about life, what we were currently reading, and all the stories we wanted to write. In class she would leave me notes on my desk to encourage me and write extra feedback on assignments to be silly and supportive. Towards the middle of the year we had a student move to our area in response to losing their home in hurricane Katrina. She gathered presents, clothes and even Christmas decorations to help make their stay in our city warm and welcoming. That student and I became very close as she joined our morning hangouts and sometimes even going for ice-cream after school. Mrs. Witmer was a safe place to be ourselves, and to heal with each other through talking about our struggles and experiences that most other students wouldn't understand. One of my classmates who lived next door to me mom passed away suddenly and Mrs. Witmer joined us at the funeral. She made a beautiful pie and collected money from the school to help support my friend. We sat next to each other at the funeral and seeing her cry out of heart break for his loss moved me dearly. Later that year things at home got worse, and I stopped coming in the mornings before school. I pulled away from my friends and barely spoke or engaged while at school. She immediately started to find creative ways to encourage me to communicate. I remember walking into her classroom and sitting down in my seat after the day was over. I wanted to be there and not go home, but I also was not ready to share the reality of what I was facing. I didn't want to go back into foster care with the possibility of going into a group home or with another terrible family. I was finally in the same home as my little brother again and my mom was really trying. I felt so overwhelmed and voiceless. Mrs. Witmer brought over the cookie that she had been saving for herself since lunch and wrapped her big fuzzy coat over me. She didn't ask me a lot of questions, she just promised to be there for me for whatever I needed. When Mrs. Witmer placed my journal in front of me and wrote "I wish we could change places, you are so brave but I am here to help. What can I do?" That sentence has been a constant reminder of her deep care and how simple it can be to help someone find their voice. Through writing she helped me find the words to advocate for myself and even eventually went to court with me when I testified. I was placed back in foster care, but to this day she calls to check up on me and is so proud of my accomplishments. I have my voice now thanks to Mrs. Witmer, and I will always keep using it in her honor!

To diverse is to make the biggest impact possible, and to further ideas that improve the quality of life for everyone. As a former foster youth who aged out I am very familiar with the lack of voice that foster teens are given in care. Now that I have started building a beautiful life that I love, my ambitions are to teach and inspire all those behind me to advocate for themselves. Using social media and platforms like TikTok, I have been able to create a following of over 46 thousand people who also want to see change for foster kids. Technology opens an unique door for powerful and creative voices to speak in ways that help other's feel the weight of their messages. As I learn and grow in my ability to story tell through social media, the world continues to open as I elevate other voices from all walks of life. It is amazing to me how much technology evens the playing field for anyone willing to learn can make a huge impact and create ways of open communication that originally felt impossible. In the near future I am launching an app that connects story telling, spoken word, community and resources for those in and out of the foster care system. As other's stories and voices are elevated through technology, we are all elevated as better communities. We are healthy as a whole when those around us who were once voiceless become heard. The voices of the few are becoming louder and more defined as technology grows with us. The app will just be the beginning as technology evolves and the idea of community changes with each generation. Recently in my Occulus Virtual Reality Headset I was attending a virtual open mic where folks from all over the US and some other countries were able to hear my heart and experiences. I was able to take my message of hope and healing through community and create conversation about needed changes in the foster care community. Technology like this could absolutely be our future! It is important for me to stay connected to learning and growing as I build raw, authentic community through technology. From taking classes online to researching trends and current events, the insational need to keep learning has already brought me to incredible heights with technology. I am incredibly thankful that the door for women and almost any voice now has seats at the table towards growth in so many areas of culture.