My favorite way to help others is just by being there for them whenever they need. I love doing things for other people that make them happy which also ends up making me happy seeing their reactions and appreciation. I love volunteering for the less fortunate and doing the best I can to give back to my community and those around me. I like to think that I have a pure, caring heart but I do not actually believe it until my friends and family tell me how much of a nice and loving person I am. I obviously am not able to help out the entire world, which if I could I would because it hurts me seeing others hurt, but I like to do anything I possibly can to make a difference in someone's life just by being an open vessel, a shoulder to lean on. Just by being open and understanding to others is sometimes the most helpful I can be, and that is okay with me as long as I know that I am helping them in some way and if they need more help than I can give them then I will find them that help.

I had to persevere earlier this year when my grandmother, unfortunately, passed away. It had been 3 years since my family and I had last seen her because she lived in Mexico and we live in Florida, so just the fact that we did not get the opportunity to say goodbye was extremely hard for us all. She had been in and out of the hospital but nothing was ever mentioned to be life-threatening and we all assumed she was getting better because she was released just 2 days before she passed. She passed away on January 14, 2022, that day I had gone out to lunch with my friend, and both my parents were working so we stopped everything, my mom was able to find a flight for that night and we landed in Mexico at around midnight on January 15, we made it to my grandparents' house at around 4 AM where we saw my grandma in a coffin surrounded by beautiful flowers. We were completely unprepared for this. My mom, dad, and I were exhausted from being awake for over 24 hours as we were constantly on the move. That whole weekend felt like a fever dream, and it was honestly the longest I had been off social media, I was living in the moment, honoring my grandma while enjoying time with family. I miss my grandma every day but I know she is proud of all the things my brother and I have accomplished. At first, it was hard to wrap my mind around the fact that she will not get to see me graduate from high school next month especially because I am her only granddaughter but at the end of the day, as much as it hurts, she is always cheering me on.

The experience that sparked my passion to want to enter the social work field was not because of my own first-hand experience but one that was very close to home so I did get to witness it almost as clear as if it was an experience of my own. There is so much to share about this experience but for the sake of the required word count, I will share a very summarized version. 3 years ago, in 2019, my 4 little cousins (ages 1-10 at the time) were taken away from my aunt by CPS (Child Protective Services) in New York - where they were living for the past 2 years - due to the irresponsibilities and bad choices my aunt was making which flipped the lives of my 4 little cousins completely upside down. Watching my own family being taken away and placed into a foster home for months was heartbreaking, they were so little and so unaware of what was going on, I can only imagine how scared and traumatized they may have been and possibly still are. The biggest blessing of it all was that during those months in the foster home their social worker did everything they could to not separate my cousins from each other, since they were all different ages they were meant to be placed in different homes but their social worker fought for them, and that is what I want to do. I want to be a social worker and keep siblings together because at the end of the day it is not the child’s fault as to why they are taken away from their parents/guardians so they at least deserve to stay with their sibling(s) if they have any. I also want to ensure each child that they are loved and cared for and be there for them whenever they need. They deserve to have someone that they love and trust by their side if that is at all possible, whether that person is a sibling or just myself. So I want to be a social worker because I want to help out anyone I can, and I believe I am a very good listener and an easy person to talk to so I would love to be a social worker more than anything. Also, thankfully my cousins are back home now with their father where they are meant to be, healthy and going to school.