"It Only Takes a Moment" by Jeffrey Lewis is inspirational and sort of soothing. The songs in my playlist emphasize resilience in the face of adversity and persistence in pursuing one's goals. I've used these songs as motivation to keep trying when everything else was saying quit. The artists that I featured openly share pieces of their lives that help others feel a little less alone. More connection, interdependency, feels necessary in this brand new year, and the vulnerability of this music has helped me to stay soft in the places it's needed and to toughen up everywhere else.

So much more of the world's information is accessible to so many more people through the work of Radia Perlman. Her work to develop a programming language for use by pre-literate children is deeply admirable to me. She's had an impact on globalization by doing the work that underpins the modern internet and helps to connect us all in ways that continue to expand. One of the things I hope to accomplish through STEM is to help elevate the priority placed on preventative and holistic healthcare in local public school systems. Athletic facilities are constructed in local schools for athletes, but I'd like to see them modified for inclusivity in ways that allow children with ADHD and similar diagnoses to succeed in school and life, as well as ways that allow disabled children to exercise. I theorize that the STEM gender gap is exacerbated by the ADHD diagnosis gender gap and am interested in researching this theory. I know that children perform best when given the tools that each of them needs to succeed, and I'm interested in the areas where the STEM gap between the genders intersects with the American public education system's standards for behavior and its curriculums. The modern world has necessitated some changes, and I'd like to help people cope through therapeutic healthcare. It's my hope to work collaboratively with local healthcare resources to bring better preventative healthcare and more opportunities for girls to the public school system.

I was eight when I had my first depressive episode. Well, the first one I have records of writing about, at least. I thought I had no words that suitably conveyed my distress, and I didn't. I did howevere write a poem about my raw young feelings that Reader's Digest later chose to publish in one of their hardback compilations. I was not taken to a therapist or doctor and continued to have depressive episodes throughout my young life. Other signs and symptoms of my undiagnosed connective tissue disorder continued to develop, and they took their toll on my functionality. The effect on my performance at school wasn't enough to raise red flags at any of the schools I attended, though I was frequently absent from school due to illness or injury. I fell more and more often through adolescence. I was struggling due to joint instability, limited proprioception, and the myriad of other issues that come with connective tissue disorders that present like mine. I just didn't know it yet. I wanted to be a professor of literature at the time. Books were something I could handle without excessive pain. As a college student I had another depressive episode and sought care in the best way I knew how at the time, though I was not equipped to advocate for myself adequately. I couldn't stop the disruptions in my life that my mental illness caused alone. I did my best to make use of the resources my university at the time provided but I could not manage to elevate my mood or manufacture the required motivation. My past performance in school reflects my struggles with my disability, but it's only in hindsight that these things have become clear. In 2009 I was forced to face the reality that my grade point average couldn't take any more semesters that I registered for but could not attend and would therefore fail. I dropped out, put my stuff in a five by eight foot storage unit in central California, and took the train back to Oregon. At this point I gave up on finishing my degree, and tried to figure out what came next. At 30 I was finally diagnosed with a connective tissue disorder called hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. This news caused my mental health, or at least my mood, to take an unexpected upswing. Diagnosis made my life make sense in a way it never had before. There was suddenly context for my frequent childhood dislocations, my persistent intolerance of exercise, and my struggles with my mental health. I wasn't a lost cause, and I wasn't dying. I could acknowledge my chronic pain and illness for what it was and do what I could to mitigate it. So, slowly at first, I started trying to feel better. Though there is currently no cure for what I have, there are treatments, which include medications that help manage my symptoms as well as physical therapy to improve my strength and stability. At this point entrepreneurial thoughts were focused on both the trade of vintage and handmade goods online and the consulting industry. Physical therapy has saved my life, and it has changed the way I think. It has helped me reverse some of the effects my disorder had on my body while I went untreated. It has helped me find safer ways to move so that I don't have to be afraid of moving anymore. Some of the effects have been straightforward, the kind most people expect when they hear the term physical therapy, like having gotten stronger. My balance and coordination have improved over time as I continue to work with a team of physical therapists familiar with hypermobility, postural orthostatic tachycardia, and Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. My endurance and stamina continue to grow as I condition my cardiovascular system to work more efficiently. Other benefits have surprised me, like discovering that once my body is in the right condition for it, I thoroughly enjoy lifting heavy weights. Or finding that I admire the patience of my physical therapists when I struggle with a new concept and am not patient with myself. Exercise has changed my mind for the better. I find myself sleeping better. I look forward to working out because I'm now able to benefit from it. I've found the ideas that I have around business shifting as they're influenced by the relief I know is possible through physical therapy. I continue to expand the list of ways in which I can help myself and others like me to mitigate their symptoms and/or increase their quality of life. I am eager to pay the gift of relief forward to others who are struggling with chronic illness and their mental health. My goal is to finish the undergraduate degree that I began right after high school so that I am eligible for the graduate degrees necessary to work in therapeutic healthcare. My experiences have provided me with the ability to empathize with others who struggle with their mental and physical health. I believe that I can help others in the ways that I have been helped and hopefully, in some new ways. Nowadays my entrepreneurial ideas include eventually starting a home fitness supply company and/or gym that centers the needs of my fellow disabled people, bringing more variety to compression gear for both patients and athletes, and gaining the certifications required to begin working at the clinic where I receive physical therapy. I get excited when I figure out a new way to stabilize one of my joints, or a fabric I haven't worked with before that has promise for compression applications, or when I set a personal record while weight lifting. None of my goals would be possible if my diagnoses hadn't forced me to reconsider how I looked at myself and how much I am capable of doing. Depression lies, but if we argue with it enough, if we therapize and medicate and manage and exercise, we get the last word.

I grew up with a disability, but I thought it was all in my head. I was told not to be so lazy, not to sleep so much, that I just needed more sleep, not to eat as much, to eat more, to take my vitamins, to stop complaining. Meanwhile, my body was telling me that I was not alright no matter how hard I tried to comply with well-intentioned advice. I started falling whenever I tried to run as a small child, so I stopped trying to run unless compelled to by an authority figure, in which case I would try my hardest and still fall. The one person in my young life who intervened at a moment that I needed it most was a custodian at my junior high, who happened to be driving past the track on his groundskeeper's cart as I was told by my PE teacher, yet again, to run the mile instead of walking it. I don't think I had made it more than a few steps before I collapsed. Randy, the custodian, scooped me up with the one arm he had and carried me to the groundskeeper's cart, and then drove me to the nurse's office. He carried me into the nurse's office and insisted that she contact my parents and didn't leave until she did. Taking my health seriously was a gift given to me by a stranger that I would like to be able to pay forward in the future. I was diagnosed at thirty with a connective tissue disorder called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, with comorbidities that include Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome. For thirty years, I struggled to keep up with my abled peers, believing the things about myself that others with good intentions and bad information continued to say. I'm thirty-three now. For the last three years, I've been learning how to live in my body in a way that isn't punishing, a way that respects my humanity, a way that is sustainable and won't result in early stress-based death. I've been learning how to love myself. One way that I have learned to manage my health is through physical therapy. I have been fortunate enough to find a local physical therapy clinic specializing in the treatment of my conditions. I was fortunate to stumble upon a doctor who could tell me, after all these years, that I have something that other people have, that there are more like me and that it's not all in my head. I am disabled. I am not lazy. The diagnosis didn't exist when I was a child. Even if it had, there's a significant change that I would have slipped through the cracks. My family of origin was chronically underinsured due to poverty, so diagnosis wouldn't ensure that I would receive care because there was never enough income to afford it. Improving access to healthcare for those who live below the poverty-line could help kids in situations like mine live lives that do not harm them, and it's important to me to contribute to that work as much as I am able. My decision to return to school can be credited almost entirely to my experience growing up with hEDS, and my ability to return to school has been massively impacted by physical therapy. My desire to specialize in the study and treatment of my condition is rooted in a desire to prevent in others the immense confusion and hurt I experienced as a child when being told to do things I was conscious would harm my body. I'd like to finish my degree-in-progress, a B.A. I began right out of high school and was unable to finish due to what I was not aware at the time were symptoms comorbid with my condition. After finishing that degree, I am interested in pursuing either a local accelerated B.S.N. program or preparing for medical school or a DPT program with a B.S. I intend to use multiple modalities in the treatment of connective tissue disorders and dysautonomia, and I'm interested in working with local researchers to make progress on the findings around these disorders. I'm also interested in the mental health comorbidities of connective tissue disorders, and would eventually like to participate in research around alternative treatments. I look forward to the opportunity to make a difference for others like Randy, my physical therapists, and my other therapeutic providers have done for me.