To see through the eyes of someone who does not have psychological or medical care is to see through the eyes of someone who is living in fear. At a young age, I realized that, in different ways all people need someone elses help at some point in their lives. I witnessed first hand how hard life can be without access to counseling and medical services. Growing up, I lived with a single mother who worked three job and had to raise myself and my sister alone. Without someone to help my mother and give her an outlet, she was constantly exhausted and saddened by our way of living. Additionally, not only was my mother raising us alone, she was raising us while battling a long time war with hepatitis C. For years, while my sister and I were in school, we were constantly aware that we did not have the resources or help that all the other children had. When we needed or wanted someone to talk to and felt that we could benefit from counseling, we could not see a therapist because we could not afford it. For this reason, we learned to grow up quickly and counsel each other in school and our social lives with only our mother’s help.
When my sister or I needed to see a doctor we had to go through an exhausting process of calling every clinic throughout our city to see if they had space to take us that day, week or even month. Upon waking into clinics for both psychological or medical care, the scene that one sees is something that can only be truly understood by those who have experienced it first hand. The clinics are small, hot and filled to the brim with men, women and children who need help and have no way to access it. Upon entering a clinic one may see children crying, exhausted mothers and overall, people who feel that they have nowhere to turn and no one to help them. The overwhelming sense of fear in the room is mixed with worry about who the doctor or therapist will be and if they will ever get to see them a second time. Other concerns lay in the fact that those who were there for emergencies such as rape or sexual assault, had no one to advocate for them and did not know where to access therapeutic resources for their trauma. Additionally, without the ability to even simply reach a doctor that they can develop a close relationship with, women have even less resources available to them then the rest of the clinic’s population. Upon this grave realization, I knew that I had a strong passion to help women with their reproductive and psychological needs that was driven by my overall deep desire to bring psychological services to those that need them the most.
While I had experienced what medical care was like when one did not have resources, it was not until I did hospice care for both of my grandparents through college that I realized my passion for psychological care.During the time I spent taking care of my grandparents, I watched as their psychological states changed from simply aged to distant and detached. I experienced days in which I would walk into my home, met by an 80 year woman accusing me of being a burglar or a stranger. As this began to happen more frequently and as I learned more about psychology and the biology of the brain, my desire to help those who need psychological care but cannot obtain it reached its peak. It was then that I knew the best gifts I could give another person are access to services and resources. While attending Mills College, providing peer based clinical and psychological resources to the students was made one of my top priorities. I ran and was a board member of an on campus free clinic called the Mills College Women’s Health Resource Center. Our main focus was to provide free and confidential resources to students who could and couldn’t afford the on campus student health plan or who would rather seek out services provided on a peer to peer basis. This allowed me to not only provide medical resources to students but also to hold events that introduced students to topics surrounding sexuality and health that they had not been exposed to. I was and still am very focused on showing women at my college that not only could they explore their health and sexuality without scrutiny, but that simply expressing themselves in a healthy way was a positive experience.However, my desire to help others truly became clear to me when my family and I became homeless when I graduated college. Due to my mother being sick and unemployed most of my college career, by the time I was a month away from graduation she an my sister were living out of a car and living off of the money my mother made from selling her art and the money I made at both of my jobs. Knowing I could not attend graduate school if my family and I were homeless and my mother still did not have proper medical care, I dedicated the last yea to helping others in any way I could.
After graduating college, I began interning for Bay Area Women Against Rape, on the crisis hotline and as a member of the sexual assault response team at Highland hospital. While working for BAWAR, I counseled survivors of sexual assault and molestation. This work completely reaffirmed my ever increasing passion for women’s health. With every client, in addition to simply having someone to talk to, they left our time together with a better understanding of how to connect with others on multiple levels and a belief in their own personal power as survivors. Working for BAWAR strengthened my faith both in myself but also in other people. By doing this work, I have learned that there is a longing in every person just to be heard and understood. With every volunteer position I am given or hot line call I take, I am hopeful that I am helping someone see that strength can be found in simple human connections.
Obtaining my doctorate in clinical psychology will allow me to take a raw desire to help others and watch it blossom into a resource. With this carefully cultivated resource, I will be able to help those who do not have access to medical and psychological care. My future goals involve both private practice work and opening my own women’s free clinic. In my private practice I hope to create long lasting connections with my patients and help them move closer to psychological health. In opening a women’s free clinic I hope to provide women and children with medical and psychological services that they would otherwise not be able to access due to lack of insurance or needing resources that are not covered by their insurance. I intend to use my education to provide a true personal connection to trauma survivors and help them understand the personal tools they can use in order to maintain psychological and physical health.
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