Loving Life Summer Edition 2014 Volume 8.7 | Page 12

I plan to establish an organization which aims to tackle community health disparities and spread public health
awareness, proactively through the youth. I’d like to overturn the vacuous apathy and stigma toward addressing mental health status that is especially concentrated in urban communities. In my experience, I’ve realized
that people need coping mechanisms to help them along the rough patches in life. We all go through things no
matter what age we are. I’d like to provide an alternative outlet. Furthermore, I realize how much ignorance
(just simply not knowing) and inaccessibility contributes to people’s poor health and circumstances. This will
be a monumental stepping stone. You probably think I’m all over the place! But it will all mesh in the end!!!
You’ll see –and if it be God’s will I’ll be sure to do it all. I still want to work in the criminal justice system and
I’d love to be a labor assistant one day. These are my goals! I’ll just have to take it one step at a time – and of
course I’ll get my Masters in Public Health (MPH) next year in the fall of 2015. In the meantime, I’ll be working on different aspects of my ultimate “Dream” over the next year and stick to it.
Q) Where do you see yourself in 5 to 10 years?
A) In the next 5 to 10 years I’ll have my MPH, have established my organization, and be working on a PhD. I
love learning. There is no question that I’ll be working to continue it as far as I can!
Q) Who inspired you most and how?
A) I have been inspired by many. It would really be hard to name just one person. I realize that I like to take a
small piece of everyone and anything that I can as I go along the way – so I sincerely extend a huge thanks to
everyone that I’ve come across in life. However, I’d like to commemorate my degree and my undergraduate
experience as a major source of my inspiration. In all modesty I’ll say that I’ve gone through a series of compromising changes throughout my college career at Bucknell University. Without Women’s and Gender Studies or Sociology I wouldn’t be the woman I am today. As a freshman, I struggled to process the confoundedness
of what my blackness had set out for me as a woman of color at such a small, liberal arts college, as Bucknell. I
had become more of a minority than I ever bargained for or imagined being in my entire life. Thanks to feminist and social theory I’ve learned to celebrate difference and understand the essence of my own existence in
respect to the people around me. I now have the tools to synthesize and critique the world. These studies have
been my saving grace and that means the world to me. This is what lights the fire beneath my wings. I want to
share this with as many people as I can.
Q) How have your relationships with God and with LFCC influenced your life to this point?
A) I’m far from perfect –that is a fact! However, I am incredibly blessed to have been raised in the church. The
ministry has definitely not gone in vain. I’m no Holy-Roller, obviously, but I can be a “Jesus-Freak” at times,
and by that I mean that I’m not afraid of the Gospel and that I carry my cross wherever I go! I have my LFCC
family to thank for that! You can ask any one of my friends. I will shout and scream “Hallelujah,” stop and fall
to my knees to pray, or blast my gospel music in front of anyone! I take pride in that, as I think that I very well
should! That is what gets me through both my hardest and happiest times. All my friends know that if anything that they can definitely come to me to talk about God, religion, or just for prayer. It is one thing to talk to
your friends about what bothers you and just vent or complain, but it is another thing to be able to talk about
God, your psyche, or your spirituality. Nagging and complaining won’t help you get your mind right! We all
need someone to lean on and we all need prayer. I’m so grateful to have friends that I can go to and talk about
the goodness of God with, friends who will pray and fast with and for me on bended-knee even when I don’t
have the strength to do it myself – and I’m also glad to be that for others. You attract what you give out. My
relationship with God is the guiding principle of my life!