Growing up in North Carolina and being a second-generation immigrant child from a multi-ethnic family, I was unknowingly impacted by my parents' combined intergenerational trauma and my own developing experience with racism and socio-economic limitations. I battled with frequent unaddressed depression, dissociation, and panic attacks. I sought out answers and support through my church at the time and their perspective seemed to increase my emotional burdens instead of leading me through a path of wellness. Facing early chronic relational trauma in my family of origin and my community, I created internal narratives of helplessness, distrust of others, and distrust of my own experience. I would not realize just how much this experience was harming me until a decade after. For my first undergraduate experience, I attended a Christian conservative college in South Carolina that disapproved of non-Christian-affiliated counseling. My depression worsened and I began to experience disordered eating patterns in an attempt to get rid of my emotional emptiness. I managed to graduate with a degree in cell biology but felt incredibly unqualified to apply for work in the biological field, so I did not. Looking back, I see that my depression and low self-worth held me back from taking a chance on an early career path for myself. I moved to Massachusetts. I attempted to pursue a career in medicine, but feared the ability to pay for applications and getting into enormous debt even if I could get in. I grew up feeling that I had no one to depend on and in that moment, I felt unable to handle the risks of investing that heavily in my future. While unsure of what to do next, I kept asking questions and seeking answers about mental health. My early experiences with emotional wounding gave me the passion to help others, so I decided to pursue a Master's degree in Counseling and worked as a Therapeutic Mentor and In-Home Therapist in a community-based setting to pay for my education. Work in a community-based setting was both expanding and exhausting. I grappled with compassion fatigue, reoccurrences of depressive symptoms, financial struggles, and existential questioning of whether I was satisfied with the life path that I had chosen for myself. While completing my Master's degree, I realized that as much as I wanted to be helpful and learn how to support healing in others, I still needed help and healing too. I considered what I needed to take care of myself so that I would not fall into feeding more brokenness into a broken mental health system with the work that I do. What I decided was I needed to find a way to fill my own life with beautiful things if I was going to be able to give beautiful things back to hurting people. The road of beautiful things that called out to me was art school. Despite how my emotional struggles impacted my ability to take an alternative career in biology, I honor my feelings and how I was facing many layers of early trauma that I did not have the tools to address at the time. Even though there are still many lessons to learn, I am hopeful that I am now going in the right direction and have the emotional tools to continue. In the future, I want to combine my love of the arts and mental health. I hope to become a therapist to creatives and artists while also being a working artist of my own.

Generational wealth means safety and the freedom to unfold. I love my mother, and she worked harder than anyone I know to create a safety net for her two children, including me. The price that she paid to ensure that our family had the school supplies we needed, food, and a comfortable place to live was to work 12+ hour days, every day, for as long as I can remember. Early on, I could recognize how her work was fueled by unending love for her children. She was great at creating safety, but it felt like there was no freedom. Without generational wealth, my mom had a difficult time leaving work to attend school events or network with the greater community to connect me with the enriching extracurricular activities that my peers were doing. I spent most of my days waiting at home after school until it was time to sleep and go to school the next day. For all the access to physical needs that I had, I lacked access to options. And these options were the foundations in which many people find their career interests and connections to pursue these careers. For my future and my generation's future, I hope to add to the physical safety that my mom worked so hard for by fostering freedom to explore interests, make mistakes, and dream for life trajectories that are enlivening instead come from a necessity to survive. What generational wealth does is lowers the stakes an individual must bear. Having additional freedom to unfold also allows for better results in the long run for an individual. Too much pressure to survive and achieve over a long time can lead to health issues due to stress, shame when unavoidable mistakes happen, and unproductive reactionary measures to ensure the survival of the individual in-the-moment instead of waiting for conditions to improve before taking action. After a winding journey through trying to balance personal economic survival and sustainability in the long-term, I am now pursuing a career in art and design. By prioritizing my interests and not giving up when mistakes happened, I am already creating the foundation that I want my children to have, even though I do not yet have the economic funds to be free from fear. Regardless of how difficult it is to earn and save money, I am not going to give up on expanding my opportunities and creating a fulfilling and sustainable life for myself and my children.

I grew up in an evangelical church setting in North Carolina that denied mental health as worthy of seeking professional support. In addition to that sickening perspective, this church setting frequently shamed the idea of seeking support that was not "Christian" or informed by conservative interpretations of the Christian bible. Mental health issues were interpreted as spiritual issues that indicated a person's failing relationship with God or Jesus Christ. My formative years began with intense motivations to avoid being "bad" or becoming "bad" in this way. Being a second-generation immigrant child from a multi-ethnic family, I was unknowingly impacted by my parents' combined intergenerational trauma and my own developing experience with racism and socio-economic limitations. I battled with frequent unaddressed depression, dissociation, and panic attacks. I sought out answers and support through my church at the time and their perspective seemed to ever increase my emotional burdens instead of leading me through a path of wellness. I would not realize just how much this experience was harming me until a decade after. For my first undergraduate experience, I attended a Christian conservative college in South Carolina. My depression worsened and I began to experience disordered overeating patterns in an attempt to get rid of my emotional emptiness. I managed to graduate with a degree in cell biology and I could not wrap my mind around what to do next, except continue running away. I decided to run away to Boston, MA where I had next to no social support. I was excited to leave behind what felt like the trappings of the South and for a time the world seemed completely open to me. I attempted to pursue a career in medicine until I realized that I kept asking questions and seeking answers about mental health and its impact on communities. I then pursued a Master's degree in Counseling and worked as a Therapeutic Mentor and In-Home Therapist in a community-based setting. I became intimate with the joys and intense pain of working in community-based services. I frequently was inspired by people's drive to heal, and discouraged by systematic limitations and vicarious trauma and administrative limitations that school systems, medical providers, and even mental health providers carried. I found it challenging to become the mental health professional that I wanted to be for my clients in this current mental health system. I also began to grapple with compassion fatigue, reoccurrences of depressive symptoms, financial struggles, and existential questioning of whether I was satisfied with the life path that I had chosen for myself. While completing my Master's degree, I realized that as much as I wanted to be helpful and learn how to support healing in others, the mental health system was not designed to properly support clinicians the way they need it. I considered what I needed to take care of myself so that I would not fall into feeding more brokenness into a broken system with the work that I do. What I decided was I needed to find a way to fill my own life with beautiful things if I was going to be able to give beautiful things back to hurting people. The road of beautiful things that called out to me was art school. I decided to apply to art school at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design as a part-time student because it was the maximum amount that I could afford. I decided to take this semester as an experiment whether this was the right decision for me or not. What I found was refreshment and vivacity that I have not felt for several years. I know that pursuing art and design is what I need to do next. Mental health will continue to be important to me throughout my life. I think without mental health, people and communities will not be able to access life and sometimes will choose to completely withdraw from it. In the future, I want to combine my love of the arts and mental health. I think that art can help some people access therapy and mental health more than other avenues. I have an aspiration of being a therapist to creatives and artists while also being a working artist of my own. and to develop this aspiration, I know I need to find my own route to art first.

When we were children, school systems made space for us to play. I have heard that play is work for a child until that child grows up and the arts become electives, if even available in some schools. There is a growing body of knowledge in the mental health field and education that play is important throughout the life span, and the Fine Arts is a sacred space where play is still accessible. Those who study Fine Arts are like medicine men who hold the soul of the collective and remind us how to dance, how to feel, and how to live again. I first heard the message "you can't make a living as an artist" from my father in the 5th grade. Unfortunately, I internalized that message before 6th grade when I had access to art electives. Despite loving arts, dance, theater, and music, when I had the choice to invest in artistic endeavors, I felt like I did not have permission to take arts electives because they were not "productive" enough, specifically I thought they were not going to give me hard skills for the working world of adulthood. Now that I have spent some time in the working world, I realize that I am never going to receive permission to do art from others; I had to give that permission to myself. Having spent time in the mental health field, I am also even more convinced how important play -- deep, flow-inducing, serious play--is to the world, and myself. After considering different Fine Arts degrees, I have landed on pursuing a career in Industrial design. I have chosen Industrial design, first because of being exposed to toy-making. I watched a Netflix documentary about toys that I played with when I was young, and for the first time, I realized that people still get hired to design toys. In addition to toys, industrial design is a career that focuses on people and how physical materials interact with people to solve problems. With the prospect of being able to help and have fun, I went looking for the nearest Industrial design program to me. I am passionate about making durable, good-quality, fun materials and for those materials to be accessible. The products that I hope to design will solve problems, but also help children and adults access their ability to play. I want to be a part of reminding the collective soul how to love life again, through the arts.

I have always been inspired by my Bolivian mother's longings and ambitions. My mother was born in the rural outskirts of Cochabamba, Bolivia. When her mother died and her father remarried, she was brought to the city and left with a family to work as a child servant beginning at the age of 8 years old. She had the opportunity to immigrate to California, USA in her mid-20s and determined that she would protect her children's opportunity to be educated, something that she did not have a chance to do herself. I learned from her to love education and appreciate the opportunity to experience anything this country had to offer. After I was born in California, my family moved to North Carolina. Here I watched as she built her own Cosmetology business, fulfilling a need in the Hispanic/Latinx market. She busily worked 10-12 hours a day, every day without fail. I learned from her that when there is passion, energy can be found to fulfill that passion. In contrast to my peers, my mother did not stay at home and despite the many hours she worked, she still tried to find ways to attend as many school events as she could. For every honors award, and every childhood certificate I would earn, she would take a deep breath and sweep me away with pride and excitement. I only now appreciate how monumental it was for her child to both receive education and to be doing well at it. I learned from her that every investment and action in the present will impact future generations. When there were people in the Hispanic/Latinx community that were experiencing financial trouble, she would be there to give loans when she could. She was not only the Hispanic community's hairstylist, but she became everyone's mother too. This social support was mutual. Later when my mother would experience marital strife and needed support leaving an unhealthy relationship, she would depend on the support and advice of her greater family that she had been investing in and supporting for years. I learned from her that if you treat a community as a family, it will become family. I continue to carry my mother's love for education, inspiration to seek opportunities, energetic passion, concern for future generations, and desire to develop a community around me. In watching my mother's life unfold, I have also developed a great desire to give back to my mother and all parents who have worked hard to dream dreams for their children. Despite the difficulties I have faced trying to develop my wealth to give back to my mother and loved ones, I am seeking out other creative, non-monetary ways to create value for others. My desire to support my mother and other hard-working parents and their families drives my desire to seek out education in design. In my pursuit of Arts & Design, I plan to expand my skills to solve human problems that are faced by immigrant families and the working class. I want quality and sustainable goods to be available to them, and to be designed with them in mind. I want to design products that will help hard-working people access time, peace of mind, and their well-earned enjoyment of the fruits of their labor.