In my family, I am the first. The first to pursue a college education. The first to build a life in another country. The first to show my daughter that the ceiling she sees above her is not the limit of what she can reach. Education matters to me because I understand what life looks like without the credentials to do the work you were built for. I have spent years in community service, as a mental health case worker, as an eligibility specialist, as a weekend volunteer at my church food pantry, doing work that nursing school will allow me to do more completely and more powerfully. Every course I complete is closing the gap between who I am and who I am meant to become. That is what education does. It does not change your purpose. It gives you the tools to fulfill it. Being a first generation college student means carrying something heavier than a backpack. It means carrying the hopes of everyone who came before you and could not do what you are doing. My mother believed in me enough to fund my journey to America before I even knew exactly what I was coming here to build. She never had the opportunity to pursue education the way I do. Every time I sit down to study, I am honoring that sacrifice. Every grade I earn, including my 4.0 GPA, is for her as much as it is for me. But the legacy I hope to leave goes beyond my own family. I want to be the proof that a Nigerian immigrant, a single mother, a first generation student with no blueprint and no backup plan can build something extraordinary through sheer commitment and love for the work. I want the women who come after me, the ones who look like me and come from where I come from, to see my path and know that theirs is possible too. I am pursuing nursing because it is where everything I have learned about resilience, empathy, and service comes together in the most meaningful way. I want to spend my career in urgent care and home health, reaching the most vulnerable people in their hardest moments. I want to mentor young women entering healthcare. I want to show up in my community in ways that outlast any single patient interaction. The legacy I hope to leave is simple. I want the people who come after me to have a shorter road because I walked mine without quitting. That is why education matters to me. It is not just about what I am becoming. It is about what I am making possible for everyone watching.

I have spent my entire adult life in rooms where empathy was the most important tool available. As a mental health case worker I sat with people whose pain had been dismissed so many times that they had stopped expecting anyone to take it seriously. My job was not just to connect them to services. It was to make them feel, sometimes for the first time in years, that someone in an official capacity genuinely cared about what happened to them. That experience taught me that empathy is not a personality trait. It is a practiced skill that changes outcomes. I am a first generation college student from Nigeria, a single mother, an immigrant who built a life in a new country without a roadmap. I understand what it means to navigate systems that were not designed with you in mind, to walk into rooms where nobody looks like you or understands where you came from, and to need someone to bridge that gap with patience and genuine care. Those experiences did not just shape my character. They gave me a unique ability to meet people exactly where they are, regardless of their background, their language, or their circumstances. I use that ability every day. As an eligibility specialist I fight through bureaucratic walls so that vulnerable families can access healthcare they deserve. Every weekend I volunteer at my church food pantry, creating a space where people who are struggling can receive help without shame or judgment. And I am pursuing nursing because I believe healthcare is one of the most powerful places to build the kind of empathy that actually changes lives, one patient at a time. Building a more empathetic global community does not start with grand gestures. It starts with the decision to truly see the person in front of you. To ask how they are really doing and wait for the real answer. To treat every human being as someone whose story matters. I have been practicing that in my professional and personal life for years, and nursing is how I intend to scale it. The world becomes more understanding one interaction at a time. Every client I sat with as a case worker. Every family I helped access care. Every person I handed groceries to on a Saturday morning while looking them in the eye and treating them with dignity. These are not small acts. They are the building blocks of a more empathetic world. I intend to keep building it. One room, one patient, one community at a time.

I have not yet walked into a hospital in scrubs with my name on a badge. But I have spent years doing the work that nursing is made of, and I know without question that this is what I was built for. My interest in nursing was born from loss. My aunt suffered a stroke in an overwhelmed emergency room that did not have enough nurses to reach her in time. I stood there helpless and I walked out of that hospital carrying a grief I still hold and a purpose I have never once put down. I was going to become the nurse she needed and never had. That decision has not wavered a single day since. What has shaped my journey is everything that came after that moment. I became a mental health case worker and learned that healing begins long before any clinical intervention. I learned to sit with people in their pain without rushing them toward being okay, to ask the question nobody else had asked, to stay in the room when everything in the environment said move on. I carry those lessons now as an eligibility specialist, fighting every day through broken systems so that vulnerable families can reach the care they deserve. And every weekend I show up at my church food pantry, placing groceries into the hands of people who are struggling quietly and need someone to look at them like they matter. I am a single mother from Nigeria raising my daughter alone, maintaining a 4.0 GPA, building this path without a blueprint. My journey has not been straight or easy. But every hard thing I have walked through has made me more certain of where I am going and more equipped to be present for the patients who will one day be in my care. Outside of nursing I am passionate about my daughter, my faith, and my community. My daughter is the reason I have never considered quitting. My faith is the reason I show up for people even when I have very little left to give. And my community is where I practice every day the kind of care I intend to bring into clinical spaces. These are not separate from nursing for me. They are the foundation of it. Mary Jane Beck found joy during her hospital stay through the compassion and warmth of the nurses who cared for her. That does not surprise me. A kind and capable nurse does not just treat illness. She lifts people through the hardest moments of their lives. She makes a frightening place feel a little safer. She reminds a patient that they are seen and that they matter. That is the nurse I am becoming. Every single day.

Nobody tells you about the silence. When you leave Nigeria and arrive in America alone, you expect the challenges. The paperwork, the new systems, the unfamiliar everything. What you do not expect is the silence of not having your people around you. No mother down the road. No aunt to call when things fall apart. No village. Just you, a new country, and the quiet understanding that everything you need, you are going to have to figure out yourself. That silence became my biggest challenge. And it shaped everything. I came here with ambition and very little else. I did not anticipate becoming a mother so soon after arriving, and I certainly did not anticipate doing it alone. But life did not ask my permission. My daughter arrived and suddenly the stakes of everything doubled. Every decision I made was no longer just about me. The financial pressure of tuition, rent, childcare, and groceries with no family support network to fall back on was the kind of weight that does not show up on any form you fill out but sits on your chest every single day. There were moments when the isolation of being an African immigrant raising a child alone in a country still learning your name felt impossible to carry. In Nigeria, a child is raised by a community. Grandmothers, aunties, neighbors, family friends, all of them showing up without being asked because that is simply what you do. Here I had none of that. Every gap that community would have filled, I filled alone. Every hard day that someone would have helped me through, I walked through by myself. But that challenge also taught me something I could not have learned any other way. It taught me that I am stronger than I believed. That the same stubbornness that brought me here could carry me through anything this country put in front of me. I stopped waiting for the village and became my own. And slowly, I started building one around me, through my church, through my community service, through every person I showed up for as a mental health case worker, as an eligibility specialist, as a volunteer at our food pantry on Saturday mornings. The challenge of coming here alone, without a blueprint or a safety net, and building a life anyway, has made me the student, the mother, and the future nurse I am becoming. I carry a 4.0 GPA not in spite of everything I have been through but because of it. Cyrilla Olapeju Sanni never had the opportunity to go to college. I do not take that for granted for a single day.

I did not choose nursing. It chose me the day my aunt suffered a stroke in an emergency room that did not have enough nurses to save her. I stood there helpless, watching a woman I loved slip away in a system stretched too thin to reach her in time, and I walked out of that hospital with a grief I still carry and a purpose I have never put down. I was going to become the nurse she needed and never had. That moment is the foundation of everything I am building. I am a single mother from Nigeria, raising my daughter alone, maintaining a 4.0 GPA at Malcolm X College, working part time as an eligibility specialist connecting vulnerable families to healthcare they cannot navigate alone, and volunteering every weekend at my church food pantry for people who came to this country the same way I did, full of hope and figuring it out without a guide. None of this has been easy. All of it has been necessary. Every experience has pointed me toward nursing and toward the communities that need compassionate care the most. Mighty understood something that I believe deeply. That helping someone pursue their dream is one of the most powerful things you can do. He gave everything he had so his daughter could become a nurse, and he never got to see her graduate. That kind of love and sacrifice does not go unnoticed. It lives on in every patient she has ever cared for. I think about that when my own path gets hard. Someone believed in his daughter enough to give everything. My mother believed in me the same way. That belief is what keeps me going. If I had the opportunity to create something fun to make the world a better place, I would create a mobile community health carnival. Not a clinic. Not a waiting room. A carnival. Something that travels into underserved neighborhoods with music, food, laughter, and free health screenings woven into every corner. A place where children get their vitals checked while playing games, where adults learn about managing chronic conditions through cooking demonstrations and friendly competitions, where mental health professionals are available not behind closed doors but out in the open, approachable and present. A place that makes healthcare feel like something that belongs to the community rather than something the community has to beg for access to. I want it to feel like a celebration because I believe that is what healthcare should feel like. Not a burden. Not a fight. A community coming together to take care of each other with joy and intention and love. That is what Mighty’s spirit looks like to me. Generous, creative, and completely focused on lifting others up. I intend to carry that same spirit into every room I walk into as a nurse.

I left Nigeria with ambition, a suitcase, and my mother’s voice in my head telling me I could do anything I put my mind to. She had funded my dreams before I even knew what they were, believed in me before I had the evidence to believe in myself, and sent me into the world with the kind of certainty that does not leave you even on the hardest days. I was the first in my family to pursue a college education in another country, stepping into an unfamiliar system with no roadmap and no one who had walked this path before me to show me the way. I figured it out as I went. I am still figuring it out. Being an immigrant means building in real time. It means learning the rules of a country that did not design its systems with you in mind, navigating institutions that can feel cold and confusing, and doing all of it while carrying the quiet weight of everyone back home who is watching and hoping. There were days the distance felt impossible. Days when the financial pressure of tuition and rent and childcare and groceries made the whole thing feel like too much for one person to hold. Days when I wondered if I had asked too much of myself. But I did not come this far to stop. I became a mother not long after arriving, and I am raising my daughter alone without the village that was supposed to surround us, without the aunties and grandmothers who would have made this lighter. That reality could have been the thing that ended my education. Instead it became the reason I refused to let anything end it. She is watching me. Every single day she is watching me choose this path, and I intend to be worth watching. My career aspiration is nursing. I chose it because I have lived on the wrong side of an understaffed and overwhelmed healthcare system and I know firsthand what it costs when there are not enough compassionate hands in the room. I have worked as a mental health case worker, learning that presence is medicine before any prescription is written, sitting with people whose pain needed a witness before it needed a remedy. I work now as an eligibility specialist, fighting through broken systems every day so that vulnerable families can reach the care they have always been entitled to but were never shown how to access. Every weekend I volunteer at my church food pantry, serving people who came to this country the same way I did, full of hope and figuring it out without a guide, and making sure that however they feel when they walk through that door, they leave knowing someone was glad they came. Nursing is the most complete expression of everything my immigrant experience has taught me. How to keep going when the path is unclear. How to show up for people who feel invisible inside systems that were not built for them. How to carry someone else’s fear without making it your own. How to build something real and lasting from very little. I came here with everything I had. It turns out that was always enough.

My mother told me I could do anything I put my mind to. She said it so many times and with such certainty that eventually I had no choice but to believe her. So I left Nigeria. I came to America as a first generation immigrant, the first in my family to pursue a college education, with nothing but ambition and the quiet stubbornness of someone who has no backup plan. Nobody warned me how hard it would be to do this alone. To become a mother without a village around me. To stretch every dollar between tuition and childcare and rent and still show up to class. To carry the weight of being the first, knowing that every step you take is also the path you are laying for the people watching you from back home. But every hard thing I have walked through has pointed me in the same direction. I worked as a mental health case worker and learned that what people need most is someone who will not leave the room. I fight every day as an eligibility specialist through broken systems for families who cannot fight alone. I show up every weekend at my church food pantry for people who came to this country the same way I did, full of hope and figuring it out without a roadmap. Nursing is the fullest expression of everything my life has been teaching me. My experiences did not just inform my purpose. They are my purpose.

The day my aunt died, I made a promise. I was standing in an emergency room that had run out of enough hands to save her. She had suffered a stroke, the staff was overwhelmed, and the shortage of nurses in that room cost her life. I was not a nurse then. I could not do anything. I just stood there and watched, and I made myself a promise that I have been keeping every day since. I chose health because health chose me first, through loss, through watching the system fail someone I loved, and through years of working inside that same system close enough to see exactly where it breaks down. I am an undergraduate student at Malcolm X College pursuing nursing, building this path one course at a time while raising my daughter alone and working part time as an eligibility specialist, connecting vulnerable families to care they cannot access on their own. Before that I spent years as a mental health case worker, sitting with people in their hardest moments and learning that healing is as much about presence as it is about medicine. Every weekend I volunteer at my church food pantry, showing up for people who are struggling quietly in my community and need someone in their corner. I did not come to this field because it was easy or because it made financial sense for someone in my position. I came to it because I have lived on the other side of inadequate care, and I cannot unknow what that feels like. Every dollar I spend on school is pulled from somewhere else. Every hour I study is an hour borrowed from an already stretched day. I understand exactly what this scholarship is talking about when it says that the cost of healthcare education makes these careers inaccessible. I am living that reality right now. And I keep going anyway because the alternative, giving up on becoming the nurse my aunt never had, is not something I am willing to consider. The difference I hope to make is rooted in everything I have already been doing. I want to work in urgent care and home health, in the rooms and homes where people are most vulnerable and where a nurse who truly sees them can change the entire outcome of their care. I want to be the provider who takes the extra five minutes, who asks the question others skip, who makes a patient feel like a full human being rather than a number on a board. Beyond individual patient care I want to be a presence in my community that shows Black women and immigrant women that this path is possible. That you can come from somewhere else, build something real with very little support, and still become the person your community needs. I want to mentor the women coming behind me the way I wish someone had been there to mentor me. Jeune-Mondestin believed in making a difference through health. So do I. I have been doing it in small ways for years. Nursing is how I intend to do it for the rest of my life.

I am a Black woman, a single mother, an immigrant, a student, and a community servant. I did not arrive at any of these identities easily, and I have not navigated any of them with a safety net beneath me. I came from Nigeria, built a life in Chicago from the ground up, and somewhere in the middle of raising my daughter alone and working part time and studying and volunteering, I found a purpose so clear it has carried me through every hard day. I am going to be a nurse. Not because it was the easiest path but because I have seen what happens when there are not enough of them. My aunt suffered a stroke in an emergency room that was understaffed and overwhelmed, and she did not make it. I stood in that hospital knowing I was helpless, and I walked out knowing I would spend the rest of my life making sure fewer families stood where I stood. That loss gave me my direction. I have been moving toward it ever since. I understand what Michele L. Durant understood, that education is worth fighting for even when the system makes it harder than it should be. Black women carry heavier financial burdens through school, graduate into wider wage gaps, and too often build their careers without mentors who look like them or understand where they came from. I have felt every layer of that reality. I work part time as an eligibility specialist while attending Malcolm X College, connecting families to care they cannot access alone, stretching every dollar I have between tuition and childcare and everything else that comes with building a life without a blueprint. But I keep going. Because my daughter is watching. Because my community needs what I am becoming. Because my aunt deserved better and so does every patient who will one day sit across from me. The impact I intend to make is direct and community rooted. I want to work in urgent care and home health, reaching people in crisis and in their homes, in the spaces where compassionate care is most needed and most scarce. I already serve my community as a volunteer at my church food pantry every weekend, showing up for people who are struggling quietly and need someone in their corner. Before that I spent years as a mental health case worker, learning that what people need before any clinical intervention is simply to feel seen and heard by another human being. That is the nurse I am becoming. One who brings clinical skill and genuine humanity into every room. One who understands what it means to navigate hard systems while carrying heavy loads because she has been doing it her whole adult life. One who will mentor the Black women coming behind her, the way I wish someone had been there to mentor me. Michele Durant was a forever student who believed education could change things. I believe that too. Every course I complete, every shift I work, every Saturday I show up at that pantry is me building the kind of change she understood was possible. I am exactly who this scholarship was created to support. And I will spend my career proving it was worth it.

The day I decided to become a nurse, I was not in a classroom. I was standing in an emergency room watching my aunt die. She had suffered a stroke. The hospital was overwhelmed, the staff stretched impossibly thin, and there simply were not enough nurses to reach her in time. I stood there helpless, holding onto hope that kept slipping away, watching a woman I loved fall through the cracks of a system that was supposed to catch her. She did not make it. And I left that hospital with a grief I still carry and a purpose I have never put down. I want to be a nurse because I know what it costs when there are not enough of them. I know it not from a textbook but from the most painful moment of my life. That experience did not break me. It built me. It gave me a direction so clear that everything since has been about moving toward it. I am an undergraduate student at Malcolm X College working toward nursing school while raising my daughter alone and working part time as an eligibility specialist, connecting families to healthcare they cannot navigate on their own. I know what it means to fight for someone inside a system that was not designed to make things easy. I do it every single day. And every day I do it, I think about my aunt and about the nurse I am going to be because of her. My goal is to work in urgent care and home health, the environments where people are most vulnerable and where a nurse with real compassion can make the biggest difference. I want to be in the rooms where it matters most. I want to be the person who shows up and stays, who treats every patient like the only patient, who understands that behind every chart is a person with people at home who love them and are waiting for them to be okay. Outside of school I volunteer every weekend at my church food pantry, serving people in my community who are struggling quietly. I have learned that caring for people is not something you clock in and out of. It is a way of moving through the world. As a nurse I intend to bring that same commitment into every shift, every room, and every patient who needs someone to truly show up for them. My aunt deserved that nurse. I am going to spend my career being her for someone else.

1. I know the exact moment nursing stopped being a career option and became a calling. My aunt suffered a stroke, and the emergency room that was supposed to save her was overwhelmed, understaffed, and stretched beyond its limits. Too many patients. Not enough nurses. Not enough hands to reach her in time. I stood there watching a woman I loved slip through the cracks of a system that was not designed to fail her but did anyway. I could not save her. I was not equipped to. But something shifted in me that day that has never shifted back. I made a decision standing in that hospital that has driven every choice I have made since. I was going to become one of the hands that shows up. I was going to be the nurse my aunt needed and never had. That loss gave me direction. I am now an undergraduate student at Malcolm X College working toward nursing school, building this path one course at a time while raising my daughter alone and working part time as an eligibility specialist connecting families to healthcare they cannot navigate on their own. Every late night and long shift is connected to that hospital room, to my aunt, to the promise I made that her experience would not be wasted on me. I chose nursing because I understand from the inside what it feels like to be on the wrong side of the shortage. I want to spend my career making sure that fewer families have to stand where I stood, watching someone they love run out of time. 2. Human touch is not always physical. Sometimes it is the way you say someone’s name when you walk into the room. Sometimes it is the extra minute you spend explaining something a second time because you could see in their eyes that they did not understand the first time but were too afraid to say so. Sometimes it is simply the decision to stay present in a room instead of moving on to the next task, to let a patient feel that in this moment they are the only person who matters. I learned what human touch really means not in a classroom but in the work I did as a mental health case worker. I sat with people who had been failed by systems and dismissed by providers and had quietly stopped expecting anyone to truly see them. What they needed before any treatment plan or medication adjustment was the experience of being heard by someone who was not in a hurry. I watched people open up and begin to heal not because I had all the answers but because I made them feel safe enough to be honest about how they were really doing. I carry that lesson into everything I do. As an eligibility specialist I fight through broken systems for families who feel invisible inside institutions meant to serve them. Every weekend at my church food pantry I hand groceries to people who walked into this country with nothing but hope, and I make sure that how I look at them communicates something no policy can mandate. You are seen. You matter. You are not alone. In nursing, human touch is the difference between a patient who follows through on their care plan and one who never comes back. It is the difference between someone who feels safe enough to tell you what is really wrong and someone who nods and leaves with the same pain they arrived with. Mary Lou Losinger understood this. She brought a good bedside manner not just to her patients but to everyone around her, because she understood that the way you treat people is the most powerful clinical tool you will ever have. That is the nurse I am becoming. Technically prepared and deeply human. The kind of nurse who makes people feel that they were worth the time.

I did not choose nursing. Nursing chose me the day I watched my aunt suffer a stroke in an emergency room that was too overwhelmed to save her. There were not enough nurses, too many patients, and a system stretched so thin that the people inside it could not give her what she needed in time. I stood there helpless, watching a woman I loved slip away, and I made a promise to myself that has driven every decision since. I was going to become one of the people who shows up. I was going to be the nurse my aunt needed and did not have. That moment is the reason I am an undergraduate student at Malcolm X College pursuing a path into nursing. It is the reason I wake up early, study late, and push through the exhaustion of working part time and raising my daughter alone while building toward this goal. The pain of losing my aunt did not break me. It gave me direction. I am drawn specifically to urgent care and home health because those are the environments where people are most vulnerable and where the right nurse can make the biggest difference. Urgent care is where people show up scared and in crisis, needing someone who can hold both their medical needs and their humanity at the same time. Home health is where you meet people in their most private and unguarded moments, in the spaces where they feel safest, and where trust becomes the most important tool you carry. I want to work in both because I understand from personal experience what it feels like to need care in a critical moment and not receive it in time. Christina Taylese Singh was following her calling when her life was cut short. She had earned her degree, she was on the edge of fulfilling her dream, and she ran out of time. I think about that kind of loss often because I understand what it means to have a calling that burns in you, a direction so clear it feels less like a choice and more like a responsibility. I carry my aunt’s memory the way Christina’s loved ones carry hers, as a reason to keep going, to not waste the time we have, to do the work that matters before we run out of chances. My commitment to this field goes beyond the classroom. I have spent years serving my community in ways that have prepared me for nursing more than any single course could. As a mental health case worker I learned that healing begins long before any prescription is written. As an eligibility specialist I fight every day through broken systems so that vulnerable families can access care they are entitled to. Every weekend I volunteer at my church food pantry, showing up for people who are struggling silently and need someone in their corner. I have been practicing the heart of nursing for years. I just need the credentials to do it fully. Christina deserved more time. My aunt deserved better care. I cannot change either of those things. What I can do is show up every single day, learn everything this field requires of me, and become the kind of nurse who makes sure the people in my care feel seen, heard, and fought for. That is my why. It has never been anything else.

I am a single mother, a volunteer, a community worker, and an undergraduate student at Malcolm X College working toward nursing school. I came from Nigeria, built a life from scratch, and found a calling so clear it has never once let me go. I want to be a nurse because I have seen what happens when people do not have one. I have seen the gaps, the cracks, the moments when the system fails the most vulnerable people in the room. I want to spend my life filling those gaps. Service is already the shape of my days. I work part time as an eligibility specialist, connecting families to healthcare they cannot navigate alone. Before that I was a mental health case worker, sitting with people in their hardest moments and learning that presence is sometimes the most powerful thing you can offer another human being. Every weekend I volunteer at my church food pantry, showing up for people who are struggling quietly and need someone in their corner without judgment. The cause I am most deeply invested in is healthcare access for underserved communities. I have watched people avoid care because the system felt hostile, because no one in the room looked like them, because the barriers were too many. I believe compassionate healthcare is a basic human right, and I intend to spend my nursing career fighting for that belief one patient at a time. My hero is my mother. She is the reason I believe that love is not a feeling. It is a decision you make every single day, especially on the days when it costs you everything. She funded my dreams before I was even sure what they were, supported my decision to leave home and build a life in a country she had never been to, and never once made me feel like her sacrifice was my burden to carry. She kept telling me I could do anything I put my mind to, and she said it with such certainty that eventually I had no choice but to believe her. She raised me to show up for people, to give without keeping score, to find purpose in service rather than recognition. Every time I stand at the food pantry, every time I fight through a broken system for a struggling family, every time I choose my daughter over my exhaustion, I am doing exactly what my mother taught me. Addie James Hamerter was a woman of quiet strength who spent her life making sure others had access to what they deserved. My mother is that woman in my life. She is the reason I am still standing, still studying, still going. If awarded this scholarship, the impact would be immediate and real. As a single mother working part time while attending school, every dollar I spend on education is pulled from somewhere else. Tuition, textbooks, transportation, childcare — the costs of simply showing up to class add up in ways invisible to those who have not lived them. This scholarship would mean one less thing standing between me and the nurse I am working so hard to become. I am not asking for a handout. I am asking for a hand. There is a community that needs the nurse I am becoming. This scholarship helps me get there.

There is a particular kind of silence that lives in a mental health case worker’s office. It is the silence of someone who has been holding everything in for so long that they no longer know how to let it out. In my time doing this work I sat with people carrying that silence, people who had been suffering for years before anyone thought to ask them how they were really doing and actually waited for the answer. That experience changed me. It is also why I believe mental health awareness is one of the most urgent conversations my generation is not having enough of. In this work I witnessed what happens when mental health goes unsupported for too long. I saw people miss appointments not because they did not care but because they had no transportation, no childcare, and no one in their corner. I sat with people whose families dismissed their pain as weakness, who were told to pray more and complain less, who had learned to perform being okay because the alternative felt too dangerous. I watched people make real progress and then disappear back into broken systems, and I carried that weight home more nights than I could count. This work teaches you quickly that mental health is not just a personal struggle. It is a community failure every time someone suffers alone because no one created a space safe enough for them to be honest. But I also witnessed the other side. I saw what happens when someone finally feels heard. When a person who has been closed off for months suddenly opens up, not because anything dramatic happened but because someone stayed in the room long enough and asked the right question. I learned that healing does not announce itself. It arrives quietly, in small shifts, in the moment someone starts speaking about themselves with just a little more kindness than they did the week before. Those moments reminded me why this work matters and why awareness is the first step toward making more of them possible. As a single mother raising a daughter alone I also understand this from the inside. I know what it means to keep going when you are running on empty, to hold everything together on the outside while quietly struggling within. That personal understanding deepened my empathy for every client I worked with and made me more committed to breaking the silence around mental health in my own relationships and community. It is also a big reason I am pursuing nursing. Mental and physical health are not separate, and I have seen that firsthand. Untreated depression shows up as chronic pain. Unaddressed anxiety walks into urgent care looking like a heart attack. I want to be the nurse who recognizes what is underneath, who asks the question others skip, who treats the whole person and not just the presenting symptoms. Tammurra Hamilton wanted people to feel seen and heard. That is the simplest and most powerful thing we can offer each other. I have spent years trying to do exactly that. I intend to spend the rest of my life doing it in every room that needs me.

I know the exact moment I decided to become a nurse. My aunt had suffered a stroke, and the emergency room was overwhelmed, understaffed, and stretched beyond what any system should ask of the people inside it. Too many patients, not enough hands. The care she needed was there somewhere in that building but it could not reach her fast enough. I stood there feeling completely helpless, watching a woman I loved slip through the cracks of a system that was not designed to fail her but did anyway. I could not save her. But I made a decision in that hospital that has never left me: I was going to be one of the hands that shows up. I was going to be the nurse my aunt needed and did not have. Cindy J. Visser understood something I believe deeply, that nursing is not just a career. It is a way of channeling love into action. She gave decades of herself across hospital floors, urgent care, hospice, and home health, meeting people in their most vulnerable moments with empathy, compassion, and professionalism every single time. That is the nurse I am working toward becoming. Not just technically skilled but genuinely present. The kind of nurse who remembers that behind every chart is a person with a family who loves them, the way I loved my aunt. I came from Nigeria and I am raising my daughter alone in Chicago while completing my undergraduate studies at Malcolm X College. I work part time as an eligibility specialist, connecting families to care they cannot navigate alone. Every weekend I volunteer at my church food pantry, serving people who are struggling quietly and need someone to show up without judgment. Before that I worked as a mental health case worker, learning that sometimes presence is the most powerful medicine you can offer. I have been preparing for nursing my entire adult life. I just have not had the title yet. I want to work in home health and urgent care, the same settings where Cindy poured so much of herself, because that is where the most vulnerable people are. The ones who cannot always make it to a hospital. The ones who fall through the cracks the way my aunt did. I want to be the nurse who reaches them before it is too late. Who notices what others are too busy to see. Who takes the extra five minutes to listen and to stay. The nursing shortage that took my aunt is still real. Too many patients, not enough people willing to do this work the way it deserves to be done. I want to be part of changing that, not just by filling a position but by being the kind of nurse who makes patients feel safe enough to come back. The kind of nurse Cindy was. She lived a life of empathy, intentionality, and service. I find my purpose in the same places. Every patient deserves someone in that room who truly cares. My aunt deserved that. I could not give it to her then. I will spend the rest of my career making sure others receive what she did not.

My daughter calls me Mama like it is the only word that has ever mattered. She is two years old, she laughs at everything, and she has no idea that she is the reason I have never once thought about quitting. I came from Nigeria with nothing but hope and the will to build something real. I am raising her alone, without the village that was supposed to be around us, without the family that would have made this easier. I work, I study, I serve, and I do all of it in a country still learning my name. Most days I run on love and stubbornness and the belief that everything I am going through is getting me ready for everything I am meant to do. That purpose is nursing. Not because it is practical, though it is. Not because it is stable, though I need it to be. But because I have spent years sitting with people at their lowest, and I have learned that what hurting people need before anything else is not a fix. It is just someone who is not going to leave. I learned that as a mental health case worker, sitting with people whose pain needed someone to witness it before anything else could help. I carry it now as an eligibility specialist, pushing through broken systems every day so that families who deserve care can actually get to it. And I show up every weekend at my church food pantry, handing groceries to people who came to this country the same way I did, full of hope and figuring it out alone. I have not been waiting to serve. I have been doing it for years. I know what it feels like to need someone and not find them. I know what it is like to walk into a room and feel like people have already decided you are too hard to understand, too foreign to be taken seriously. That experience shaped me. It is also what will make me a great nurse, because I have never forgotten how that felt, and I have made it my business to make sure the people I work with never feel that way. As an undergraduate student at Malcolm X College working toward nursing school, I bring all of this into every late night and every long shift. I do not see it as a burden. I see it as the only response that makes sense given everything I have seen and everyone I have sat with through hard times. Sgt. Albert Dono Ware gave his life serving a country he chose, not because it was easy, but because the call was stronger than the cost. I feel that same pull. Mine does not lead to a battlefield. It leads to a bedside, to the moment when someone is scared and needs a person who truly understands what that feels like from the inside. Someone who will not pretend they cannot hear you just because your accent sounds different. Someone who will not stumble over your name and give up, as if the name your mother gave you is a problem rather than something precious. Someone who will see you as a person first and never as a burden. Someone who will stay. That is who I am becoming. Honestly, I already am that person. I just need the degree to prove it. The African diaspora in America is hurting in ways the healthcare system keeps getting wrong. I know this from my own experience, from walking into appointments and feeling the energy in the room shift before anyone spoke. We are the mother who stops going to the doctor because the last visit made her feel like a problem. We are the woman who leaves a clinic feeling worse about herself, not because of her health but because of how she was treated. When someone in that room looks like you, everything changes. You feel safe enough to ask the question you were holding back. You actually come back next time. Representation in healthcare is not just a nice idea. It is medicine. Every Black woman who becomes a nurse is making a real difference just by showing up. But one person cannot carry this alone. Nursing schools need to do more than admit Black and immigrant women. They need to support them all the way through with real funding and real commitment, not just an acceptance letter. Community organizations need to be the bridge between diaspora families and the healthcare system, reaching people before things get to a crisis point. Providers need real training in how to listen across cultures, not a one day workshop but a genuine shift in how they show up for patients. And institutions, governments, and community leaders all need to work together on this, not separately. This is my everyday reality. I live it as a student, a worker, a mother, and a woman from a continent that has been overlooked inside these systems for far too long. My daughter will not remember these years. But she will grow up knowing her mother did not give up. She will know her mother served, stayed, and kept showing up for people who needed her. I do not have a perfect story or a straight path. What I have is a life built around service, a community I already show up for, and a calling that has never once gone quiet, not through leaving home, not through raising a child alone, not through any of it. It is not too much. It is exactly enough. And I am ready.