I didn’t plan on making it past fifth teen years old let alone have a career of any kind. I have been struggling with my mental health from the age of ten and tried many times to end my life. Thankfully I was unsuccessful and can tell my story today. I have been in and out of treatment for my mental health and nothing was seeming to help. I was just going through the motions and not really trying. Things were looking like they were going to end badly. Until the day I decided that I didn’t want to hurt myself anymore. I realized that life could be worth living and I decided that I wanted to help others like me. That was one of the best days of my life and has truly been one of my biggest blessings. All of this lead to my decision of going to school for ABA therapy. ABA is a type of therapy that helps autistic children. My goal is to be the person that I didn’t have growing up. Life is hard for everyone at times and especially for autistic people such as myself. The world is full of challenges and I want to help navigate other autistic people through that using my own experiences and knowledge. At the end of the day I am so proud of myself for doing what was impossible many years ago for me. Planning for a future is something that I had never done until recently and it’s so refreshing and rewarding to know that I am going to make an impact. Helping others has always been a passion for me even when I couldn’t help myself. Feeling alone at such a young age because of my autism and not knowing that there are other people struggling with the same thing was such a hard experience. I want to help autistic children not have to go through the same pain I experienced as a child. Nobody deserves to go through that which is why I am so passionate about becoming an ABA therapist. I can’t wait to prove my younger self wrong and live the fullest and most impactful life I can because my self made limits have been broken. I hope my story can show others that there is hope and that through my career I can impact the lives of many autistic children. Thank you for taking the time to read this and for letting me share part of my story.

From a very young age I have struggled with my mental health and been diagnosed with multiple conditions including autism. Due to my own struggles particularly with my autism, I have this overwhelming drive to help other autistic people thrive and adapt. In order to help other autistic people (specifically autistic children) I am pursuing my bachelor's degree in ABA therapy at Purdue Global. Once I finish school, I plan to work in an ABA center as a board-certified assistant behavior analyst. Before I got diagnosed with autism, I felt extremely alone and like nobody would ever be able to understand or relate with what I was going through. I want to be the person that little me never had that understands and can help navigate the world. Being autistic, I found that I have set these perceived limits on myself and told myself that I can't do certain things because of my diagnosis. I want to show these children and at the same time prove to younger me that just because someone has autism or struggles doesn't mean that they can't have the life they want. Thank you for your time and allowing me to share some of my story.

My name is Zella Clendenen, and I have survived multiple suicide attempts and battle with mental illness'. I've been struggling with my mental health for as long as I can remember and things got unbearable when I was fifteen years old. I distinctly remember the sirens and being terrified. At that point in my life, I felt so alone and was hurting very deeply. After my first attempt and many months of hiding my self-harming behaviors the many hospitalizations and treatment center stays began. I was all about going home so I toughed it out and showed them the progress they wanted to see in order to go home faster. The last time that I tried to take my life things could have ended very badly. After having a seizure, I was sent to another hospital to make sure everything was stable for five days. I don't remember much from that time in my life but looking back at pictures now I can see the pain and loss of hope in my eyes. I was sent to yet another inpatient hospital that I don't remember much about. Multiple months after that attempt my school recommended that I go to Calo which is around a yearlong residential program. I hated it so much and began to do my usual routine of getting out as soon as possible. Until the day that lit my spark again. I was in family therapy with my dad and that day i decided that I was done with hurting myself. I was done with the cycle and the pain. I was done trying to get out as fast as I could. I was going to get better, and I was going to work as hard as I could in order to achieve that. Of course, things didn't just magically fix themselves when I decided to get better but now that I was giving it my all I was seeing progress. I was unpacking years of trauma and hidden feelings. The day I graduated from Calo and high school I was terrified. I was doing so much better but that nasty what if things go back was nagging me in the back of my mind. I have been home from Calo for about four months now. I have a future for the first time in a very long time. I am in college, and I am putting in the work and I see that reflected in my grades and assignments. I can proudly say that the suicide attempt that I talked about earlier will be the last one I ever have. Every day I am breaking the cycle and proving to myself that I deserve and can build a life worth living. I hope that anyone else who has ever felt the way that I have can find the match to relight their spark like I have done. It's not always easy but at the end of the day nothing good ever us.

The day I got diagnosed with autism I found out through a phone call from my parents. At the time I was in Timberline Knolls, a now shut down residential faculty. I was fifth teen years old and up until that phone call I thought that there weren't any words to describe my struggles. I had been struggling for quite some time at that point. At ten years old is when my mental illness and autism traits started to show. I was at Timberline Knolls for attempting to take my life multiple times up to my admission. I had tried countless inpatient and outpatient programs as well as medication and therapy. Nothing was helping and I just kept getting worse. When I found out I was autistic is felt less alone. There are others who struggle like me and I finally started to feel heard. I wish I could say that being diagnosed magically changed everything. It helped but it couldn't fix all of my problems. After being in and out of inpatient hospitals and Timberline Knolls I was still deeply struggling. This past year I got admitted to Calo yet another residential treatment program. I moved states away and I was miserable. Until the day I decided that I wasn't going to continue the cycle of hurting myself and being stuck in pain anymore. That decision has completely changed my life for the better. Yes, I am autistic and yes, I still struggle but it's how I am choosing to handle and grow from these things that matter most to me. I am now in college, and I am learning to live again. I am so thankful every day that I have chosen to keep going and stay. Thank you.

As someone who has struggled with suicide and mental illnesses for almost nearly my whole life I cannot express how much suicide prevention and just mental health resources in general matter. Looking back if there was less stigma and more education around suicide and mental health just in general I think my story would have had the potential to be different. I’ve been to countless psych wards and residential facilities with my families hopes that I would finally be able to keep myself safe and find some joy in my life that I was lacking. When I finally decided that I was done hurting myself last year while in treatment I am finally able to start finding ways to make a life that I want to live. It is so important that I had access to the resources that I did. Mental health has a lot of stigma around it especially on social media such as TikTok. There are creators who are positive and educate people but there are also people who encourage and feed into self destructive behaviors such as self harm. I have struggled withe self harm for many years now and I can say from experience that social media can definitely strengthen the destructive cycle. I want to be someone for others who are struggling that is uplifting and educational. I wish that I would have had a positive creator like that in my life when I was just desperately looking for someone who understood my pain and struggles. I never thought that I was going to live to see eighteen let alone go to college. Now that I am in a better place and able to look towards the future I decided that I wanted to prove myself wrong and get an associates degree. Being autistic school has always been very anxiety inducing and since I didn’t think I would be alive I didn't let it matter. I wish I would have let high school matter more to me. Now that I will be going to college I have the chance to experience it in the full and let it matter. I have always believed in kindness but my struggles have made kindness so much more valuable to me. Small acts of kindness can be all someone needs sometimes to choose to keep going. Being a light in someone’s life who is struggling is literally life saving for that person in my experience. There have been many people who have showed me that life may be hard but they are there to hold my hand and make it worth living. As a career I want to do something that involves people especially children. I want to be a person in their life that they know they can go to about the hard stuff such as mental health. Sometimes all it takes is one person to help someone decided to try. Thank you so much for this opportunity and giving me a place to share some of my story.

The first time I had thoughts of sucide I was ten years old. Now many years and many treatment facilities ,medications, and therapy later I am in a much better place. My mental health journey has truly shaped who I am. My mental health conditions make a lot of thing difficult such as relationships. My mental health as put a strain on a lot of my relationships. I struggle a lot with codependency and feeling like I constantly need someone to be whole. Being autistic as well it makes relationships very difficult. At the same time though I also love in such a unique and beautiful way that often take for granted. Since I didn’t find out that I was autistic until I was older for the longest time I thought that there was something wrong with me. I felt so alone and I just with everything in me wanted to be “normal”. I came to the realization recently that normal doesn’t even really truly exist. I’ve spent so long striving for something that is impossible. I realized that it is time for me to learn to appreciate who I am and not feel the need to change it. For the longest time I had no goals because I didn’t think I would have a future. After many suicide attempts I finally realized that I don’t want to hurt myself anymore. It just wasnt acheving what I thought it would. In fact it was making things so much worse. When I finally started planning for a future I knew that I really wanted to go to college. Being autistic I never really thought that I was capable of college. I am so glad that I was able to look past my self set limit and I was able to get into a local community college. I can’t wait to earn my degree and show myself that I can do anything I put my mind at. I’m slowly building up my life worth living. It’s been a long journey to get to the place I am now. My dad always says that the hardest things help shape who you are. Without all my struggles I wouldn’t be the same wonderful and kind person that I am today.