I first learned to be quiet about pain during my period long before I learned to name what "clinically significant" actually means. In clinical rotations, I've watched how easily severe mood symptoms tied to the menstrual cycle get folded into "just PMS" — a phrase that ends the conversation before it starts. That framing isn't just imprecise; it's a barrier. It teaches patients to downplay symptoms that, in a different context, would trigger a full workup, and it teaches new nurses like me that the cycle is background noise rather than clinical data. I'm graduating next September and going into labor and delivery, a unit that sits at an unusual intersection for this issue. L&D nurses are already trained to screen for postpartum depression — it's built into our workflow, our discharge teaching, our follow-up calls. But PMDD, and premenstrual exacerbation of existing psychiatric conditions, rarely gets asked about in that same structured way, despite the fact that a patient's history of severe premenstrual mood symptoms is one of the strongest predictors we have for postpartum mood complications. The infrastructure for catching this already exists in my future unit. It's just pointed in the wrong direction — backward-looking after birth, not forward-looking from a patient's cycle history. The concrete thing I want to do is simple, and deliberately so: build PMDD/PME screening into the prenatal and postpartum intake conversations I'll already be having. Not a new program, not a grant-funded initiative — just a question added to the history I'm already taking, and a habit of treating "I feel like a different person the week before my period" as clinical information rather than a complaint to sympathize with and move past. If a patient discloses a PMDD history, that's a flag for closer postpartum mood monitoring; it's a reason to loop in behavioral health before discharge instead of waiting for a six-week checkup to catch a crisis already in progress. I don't think PMDD and PME will move from the margins because of one new specialist or one new clinic. I think they'll move because nurses in high-volume, high-trust touchpoints — the ones already asking about mental health, already building rapport during a vulnerable moment — start asking one more question and taking the answer seriously. L&D is exactly that touchpoint. I want to be one of the nurses who stops treating the menstrual cycle as background noise and starts treating it as a chart of information patients have been handing us for years, mostly unread.

Hello, My name is Summer Jackson Addiction does not always look the way people expect it to. Mine did not involve a substance. It involved a deck of cards.To understand why, you have to understand where I came from. I grew up as a caregiver. Some of my siblings are on the autism spectrum, and from a young age I learned what it meant to be patient, to pay close attention, and to meet someone exactly where they are. There was no room for frustration or shortcuts. Care had to be intentional. Love had to be shown through action ,through showing up day after day in the small, quiet ways that do not always get noticed but matter more than anything. That upbringing did not always feel like a gift. It felt like responsibility. But it was quietly shaping something in me, a genuine desire to be there for people in their most vulnerable moments. Still, carrying that much weight at a young age left me searching for something to hold onto. Some sense of reassurance that everything would turn out okay. That search eventually led me to tarot. What began as simple curiosity about the future slowly became an obsession. I was spending money I did not have reading after reading, deck after deck convinced that the next one would finally bring me the peace of mind I was looking for. It felt like gambling, because in many ways it was. I kept chasing certainty in something that could never truly give it to me. The thing about looking for answers outside of yourself is that it keeps you from finding the ones already within you. My turning point came when I finally got still and asked honestly what am I actually afraid of? The tarot was never really about the future. It was about control. About wanting someone or something to tell me that things would be okay. When I faced that fear directly, I did not need the cards anymore. I needed to build something real, something rooted, something that no reading could give me but that I could give myself through hard work and purpose. Nursing draws on everything I have lived. It calls on the patience I developed caring for my siblings learning to communicate across differences, to never rush someone who needs more time, to find a way in when the door is not obvious. It calls on the deep empathy that comes from watching people you love navigate a world that was not always designed for them. And it calls on the self-awareness I found on the other side of my struggle ,knowing what it truly feels like to be overwhelmed, afraid, and in desperate need of someone steady and present. I want to be that steady presence. The future is not something you predict. It is something you prepare for. And after everything I have been through, I have never been more prepared or more ready than I am right now.