Ta’Myiah Reed

My name is Ta’Myiah Reed and I am eighteen years old. My whole life I watched my mother struggled as a single parent and I watched as she threw herself into her work. When my father passed away it left my mom paying all the bills and trying to make sure we have everything we needed and wanted. It was definitely a struggle for my mom trying to do everything on her own being that we went from having two incomes to having one income to take care of a family. This affected me because my mom went from working three days a week to six days a week so she was always too tired to do anything with us.

We didn’t ask for much because we knew that a roof over our head was expensive enough, and to watch my mom work birthdays and holidays with no time off killed me inside. My junior year my mother was diagnosed with cancer and I so desperately wanted to get a job so that I could help with bills. We soon lost our home and I had no way to tell people what was going on all I could do was cry. I was in a type of pain I felt no one could understand; I felt like my last parent was being taken away from me and that the nightmares I had were coming true. We moved back home and I had to stay with different people to get to school all the way up in Charleston.

Once my mom was better to start working again I stood with her every step of the way, by this time I was in twelfth grade. I had to get up at 3:00 AM with my mom to go to her job in the morning just for me to go to school. My mom worked at a dialysis clinic that started early in the morning's, so I would sleep in the car and until it was time to get up to catch the bus. I missed days from school to take care of my grandmother who had cancer, I went days without sleeping, I help run my ROTC organization of over 200 cadets, drop three AP classes and more just to fight for the chance to attend college. I barely had a bed to sleep in; I would come home with so much work that I never made it to bed.

I have study until the break of dawn and I have managed through it all. This was very hard for me but I did not complain. I have a great ambition in life to become a successful African American Female Orthodontist and I won’t let it fade because I can’t afford my education. Since the 8th grade I have been using my free time to research anything to do with dentistry. I noticed that I hated to see others upset and in my heart I just wanted to see others smile as much as my dad made me.

On top of everything I was doing, I still was volunteering to my community. My most recent give back to the community was folding an American flag for a close friend that lost his life in a car accident. Many people have asked how did I do it all, How could I wake up so early, deal with my organization, start my own peer tutoring program, keep up my work in classes and still have the energy I have. My response was simply not only is my determination built of steel and I want to make my family proud but also I want to be a role model to students everywhere who think giving up is an option or that they can just throw their dream away. I want to show them that through it all I made it and I'm still fighting and they can do the same. I would much rather show this world that a young woman in a world against her can be successful, rather than stay a negative statistic in the eyes of man.