Empower Her Mission to Heal War-Torn Lives

As a new student entering college, I’m extremely aware of the financial burden that this entails. Toccoa Falls College is my dream college, and it is where I will be able to obtain my degree of choice in order to pursue a degree in Counseling Psychology and Global Engagement.

Raised in a household with four children, my parents made sacrifices to allow my mother to dedicate herself to educating me and my siblings at home. With my mother staying home, our family relied on a single income. Through this upbringing, my parents have instilled the value of hard work and perseverance. Along with this, our family has endured an unusual amount of medical trials between my mom, myself, and one of my brothers. In my lifetime, my family has faced nearly 40 surgeries. Between these medical hardships and the single income, it has made it challenging to save for my college tuition, let alone the textbooks, housing, food, and other costs.

As the first child in my family to attend college, I feel the need to lighten the financial burden as much as I can, especially knowing that as I finish college, my goal is to move to the Middle East to help refugee women and children. Unfortunately, with this dream, it is vital for me to have no debt holding me back from bringing hope and healing to the war-torn Middle East.

The $5000 goal I have will be used to pay off the remaining tuition for this first year of school. If nothing else, my prayer is that this GoFundMe account will help bring hope and encouragement to anyone reading my story that God has written:

As I lay in bed, my eyes drift closed. I sink into a dream where I see a girl who has been through twelve surgeries, including more treatments, blood draws, scans and tests than she can even count. Cleft Palate. Single Kidney. Advanced Pediatric Papillary Thyroid Carcinoma. Thyroidectomy. Radioactive Iodine Treatment. Cancer recurrence and neck dissection. Kyphosis and Spinal Fusion. Retinal Detachment and Scleral Buckle. Paralyzed Vocal Cord. These are all words that most teens have never heard of, yet these are all the things she endured in just 16 years. She’s scared, lonely, and shy, yet also mature as she had to grow up faster than the typical child.

Sometimes the appointments were so often that it was as if she lived at the doctor’s office or hospital. I see her being wheeled back to the operating room, over and over again, over a dozen times, tears rolling down her cheeks each time. I see her alone during a seven day complete isolation from everyone for one of her cancer treatments at just nine years old. After her spinal surgery at thirteen, I saw a girl with a scar from her neck to her waist, fighting hard against depression. I saw a girl who had lost her voice time and time again due her cancer causing a paralyzed vocal cord and a series of 6 vocal cord surgeries bringing only temporary solutions. She struggles with talking, singing, and even breathing correctly at times, always seeming to run out of breath.

My eyes jerk open and I breathe heavily. I feel the pain from the dream, but I also feel something else - a warrior’s spirit. My eyes drift closed again, and I see the same girl from the other dream, but something is different about her. She’s defeated the mental lies that told her she would never recover, that she would never be strong enough, that without her voice, she would never have a purpose. She’s now stronger than ever, a leader and someone who has a goal to make a difference in the world and to spark change. She’s trying to pursue an education in order that she might help others. She looks back on her past and is grateful for every single one of those hard and trying moments. She knows that it’s made her strong and brave and that without those moments, she would never be who she is today. Today, she stands as a young woman who not only completed high school at the age of 17 with a weighted GPA of 4.27 but also graduated Magna Cum Laude with an Associate in Arts degree from her local college. Despite facing numerous trials, she remained focused on serving others, demonstrating her commitment to giving back to her church and community, which had provided crucial support throughout her challenges. With a steadfast dedication to service, she gave over 1000 hours to volunteer work over the course of her high school years.

Despite enduring significant physical and mental hardships, she refused to give in to defeat. Instead, she pushed herself to overcome the darkest moments and emerged from them stronger and more resilient. Her accomplishments extend beyond the realm of academics, serving as a testament to her profound personal growth and development. Through that growth, she is now determined to use her trials and traumas to make a difference in this world. She now sees that if she hadn’t lost her voice, she would’ve never found her purpose.

I open my eyes and realize that this isn’t actually a dream. This is my reality. This fall, I intend to further my education at Toccoa Falls College, where I aim to pursue a double major in Trauma and Crisis Counseling along with Global Engagement. Upon college graduation, I plan to serve with Compassion and Mercy Associates (CAMA) in the Middle East, using my counseling degree to council women and children who are suffering from severe PTSD from war and abuse trauma. I plan to use my Global Engagement degree in hopes that it will be able to help me see the world and how I can cope with all the culture shock when I go overseas into the hardest and most dangerous places.

Women and children from war-torn countries are ravaged with traumas, many of them have lost most or even all their family members. Their trauma is unbearable, and they wonder how they can go on without their home. Without their family. Some end up not surviving, while others choose to keep fighting their trauma. Some move to a surrounding country, becoming a refugee. Unfortunately, when they thought they would find a new life, they were disappointed to find that they would experience even more trauma. Upon moving, these women and children must give up everything they ever knew to accept a “new life” in a place they know nothing about. These changes create even further trauma.

These women and children need my help. This is the very reason that I am pursuing my college degree. I plan on helping as many of these children and women as possible. I desire to help them fight through their trauma that haunts them every day. This is my overall goal in life: to bring peace to refugee women and children who are fighting alone through their memories of war and losing their loved ones.

I firmly believe that one person has the power to create significant change, and I hope to be the one that sparks this change. My mission is to help others see that there are people who care about them, assuring them that they are not alone in their struggles. I will help women of all ages while also establishing children’s programs focused on overcoming fear and finding joy and happiness again. I hope to empower the younger generation, providing them with the necessary tools to help them navigate life’s challenges, and encouraging them to pursue an education, so they, too, can be someone who sparks change.