Support Samantha’s Lifelong Dream after Graduation!

Hi everyone! I’m Samantha - a now COLLEGE GRADUATE as of last week after 15 years in the making!!!! (I finished with an 3.98 GPA!) Asking for help is something that is… very, VERY hard for me. However, I’ve tried to change that narrative over the years - and your support as I’ve rebuilt my entire life has meant the world to me - and makes asking for help now a little less frightening!

Freshman (2010). Senior (2025!)

In 2014, addiction forced me to walk away from my education Spring of my Senior year at Penn State. I tried to go back two years later, failed, and had accepted that I’d always be a drunk failure who would never achieve her dreams - a thought that solidified as I worked dead-end jobs for the next 8 years.

But oh, how wrong I was! I am now almost 6 years sober and have worked so hard to build an entirely new life and me that I’m proud to be. I have helped many friends get sober and make positive life changes, I’ve been teaching English to newly-arrived refugees, tutoring university writing, teaching kids-adults rock climbing and skating… and now I have, at long last, graduated summa cum laude from Oregon State University as of June 14th with my English degree! I truly never thought I’d live to see this day. But I’ve persevered. Yay!! :)

I have learned that nothing worthwhile is ever easy: getting sober and rebuilding my life has not been easy. Giving up the life I did build and loved to move towns and go back to school to struggle as a 33 year old who killed a lot of brain cells in addiction has not been easy - but doing it all again now, while making the biggest leap of my life so far, while needing to ask for help.. is even harder.

In late March I was accepted into a TEFL certification program in Prague to teach English abroad - a program that I’ve dreamed of doing for over a decade!! In July, I will be doing the hardest thing I’ve done yet: leave the place I’ve built my beloved sober self and called home, Oregon, to move abroad and start to live this long-awaited next chapter of my life. My dream is finally coming true and I’m scared!!

If you know me even a little bit, then you know that traveling abroad has been a dream of mine since I was a child. 5th grade me wanted to be a Social Anthropologist studying the tribes of Africa! I read Geography books for fun, renaming myself after European cities. By middle school I dreamed of hosting my own comedy travel show! But.. I’ve never stepped foot outside of the US :( This program is the first real step towards the life I’ve always dreamed of: traveling, writing, teaching, helping others - I plan to get my Master’s abroad after teaching for a year to either keep teaching, or help others in recovery rebuild their own lives.

Unfortunately, as a full-time student this year, I have been unable to save much money - and money that I was hopeful for to make this massive move, fell through :( I’ve been trying to do this all alone: selling all my things while balancing 16 credits, work, teaching, volunteering, trying to make time for friends.. It’s been a lot! I’m tired.

So, I’m doing the hard thing and asking for help for the first time, instead of just deciding that “if I can’t do it alone, then I shouldn’t do it.” Instead, I’m fundraising in hopes to cover:

Truly anything helps, even $5! Or $1! I also understand what it’s like to not be able to give anything, so even sharing with others (got any rich friends or family? Haha..but do you?) or kinds words of support as I continue selling off all my belongings this next month I have left in Oregon….. well, I’ll be eternally grateful for all of it.

I fly out from Oregon on July 15th to be with my family in Pennsylvania who couldn’t make it to my graduation for a few precious weeks before I fly to Prague (with a one day layover in Dublin, Ireland as my first country ever!!) on July 29th. I truly will miss you all and my life here. But if I live in the US again, or this doesn’t work out, I’m coming back to Oregon. I’m having a REALLY hard time with it all, and have been hardcore grieving, but this has been my dream for so, so long. I need to try it. I love you all!!!!!