One of my greatest accomplishments is earning my bachelor’s degree and I will shout it from the roof top! There may be people in your life that do not recognize your accomplishments, but do not let that stop you from feeling proud of what you did. Though a typical four-year-degree journey might not sound like a unique experience, I will ask you to grab a comfy seat and settle in because my education journey was anything but typical and definitely not just four years. Allow me to share how that journey led me to one of the most profound realizations of my life:
My parents divorced as I entered high school. My now single-parent-Mom with four teenage daughters, worked two jobs to support us. As you can imagine, this left my sisters and I to take responsibility for ourselves and the guidance I wished I had for my future was not there. I viewed school as an obligation that, as long as I received a “C” or better, my parents had no involvement in.
My senior year was the first time someone had spoken to me about making an actual plan for my future and it was my high school counselor. Apparently, my average GPA was just below the requirement for one of the state scholarships available. I honestly hadn’t thought about college up until that point, but was told if I can get straight “A’s” and have no more than 5 absences, I will graduate qualifying for this scholarship.
This was the first time anyone had challenged my ability to perform in school or given me a goal to strive to achieve. I decided at that point, regardless of college, I was going to earn that scholarship. I did, in fact, earn straight “A’s” that year and only missed 3 days of school when I traveled to see my high school sweetheart graduate from military bootcamp. I showed up tired, sick, or emotionally drained. However, I did graduate and earn that scholarship.
The day I finished my final requirement for my high school graduation, I remember feeling so relieved that I was finally finished with “required schooling.” Any schooling I chose to do beyond high school would be because I want to, not because I was forced to. That thought was exciting but I still did not really think about what I would do at the state college I had just been given a scholarship for.
After high school graduation, I started working at a popular restaurant in our city with most of my co-workers being college students. As the fall semester was about to begin, my new friends were all enrolling in classes and I decided I might as well do the same. I went into the state university without a clue and sat with the admission counselor as she explained I could pick any one of the degree majors to study. I did not equate a degree to a career at that point, so I was just excited to learn whatever I wanted.
Looking at the options for majors, I had always wanted to be a dancer, so when I saw Dance as a degree option, I excitedly selected that even though I had never taken a dance class before in my life. I registered full-time for classes and jumped in headfirst only to discover that college classes move really quickly and, not being an experienced dancer, I had no idea what I was doing. I felt like a fraud and quickly dropped most of my courses. I only kept two classes because they just happened to be easier and did finish out that first semester.
I decided college wasn’t for me.
I ended up getting married to my high school sweetheart the following summer and became a Military Wife. I spent the next 5 years lost in the working world as we moved from place to place. I didn’t have a lot of experience or skills, so I bounced around jobs for years. In my marriage, I felt less-than. I was only nineteen when we got married and having raised myself into adulthood, I really lacked the skills needed to maintain my adult life. My husband looked down on me even though he wasn’t the one at home to maintain everything and frequently made negative comments about my abilities. I spent years feeling inferior to him.
He had a career that made more money annually than I ever had, but let’s be real, a military salary is not living large. Even still, I desired to have an income greater than or equal to my husband’s. So in 2009, I finally decided I needed to educate myself in order to have that type of career and my journey to earn a bachelor’s degree for the career possibilities began. I enrolled in courses online with a second degree change to Early Childhood Education as I was pregnant with our first child and figured that would be a career I would excel in.
During my first semester, our beautiful daughter was welcomed into the world and by the end of that semester, we learned we would be making the international move to Japan. Since my schooling was online, I kept going through this move, but decided to change my major again; this time to Human Services. Through my own breastfeeding journey, I decided I wanted to become a Lactation Consultant. Unfortunately, there is not a degree program other than nursing that includes all the required courses to become licensed. The human services degree was the closest I could get online.
Being overseas with the military meant my husband was deployed much of the time, so I quickly began operating as a “single parent.” Despite all those changes, I continued school and maintained the Dean’s List (4.0 GPA) through my first year. However, all that progress came to a halt as I realized my degree program heavily focused on the criminal justice system and this held very little interest for me. In fact, I hated it.
Ultimately, I switched back to Early Childhood Education again (now the fourth degree change), but became pregnant again shortly after. I struggled through my pregnancy and I decided to put my degree on hold. Our son joined us in 2013 and six weeks later, we did the international move again back to the United States. While we were overseas, the military paid my husband more, so we needed to plan for the income decrease.
I still desired to help provide for our family and my husband didn’t help me feel valued as our children’s caregiver. I decided to enroll in a brick-and-mortar university; this time for Nursing (#5). I felt extremely pressured to choose a degree that could guarantee an income that proved my worth and my desire to become a Lactation Consultant still stood. Becoming a Nurse first seemed like the best option especially if I worked in Labor and Delivery. This became the new plan, however, as I continued on that degree path, I realized that my family is the most important thing to me. I couldn’t fathom actually working a Nurse’s schedule and being away from our kids so much.
By this point, my interest in psychology kept growing the more courses I took and I decided a better family option would be to become a counselor. However, I wanted to work specifically as a high school counselor as a major passion I had developed with all my degree changes was future planning. I learned in order to become a school counselor, you must first teach for a minimum of two years, depending on your state requirements. This became my new career plan.
However, I had no idea what I would teach in high school, since that is where I wanted to focus my counseling. I did not really think through switching my major to just Education, but instead wanted a full degree in the subject I would teach. I decided on Political Science (#6), thinking it would be easier to teach than the other subjects, but quickly changed to Psychology (#7) when I realized this can be taught in high school. This was the field where I found most of my interests anyway.
As much as I felt I had already been in college forever and despite the courses I had already completed, the multiple degree changes made many of my courses unusable in the new majors and it seemed like I repeated my second year of college over and over again.
With this feeling and family struggles mounting, in 2015, I once again put my degree on hold to focus on our family. Our marriage fell apart that year with the kids and I moving across the country together to start our lives over. Struggling to find employment to provide for my family now as an official single parent, I saw a degree as my only option for a good paying career. Shortly after my divorce, I enrolled online again, but this time for Cognitive Psychology; my eighth degree change. Returning to college quickly proved to be too stress to balance as a single Mom and my degree was on hold, yet again.
The few years that followed were sprinkled with happiness as I found my current husband and remarried, but also torment as my ex-husband kept us in and out of court constantly. I had left him because of his abusive behavior, but what I didn’t know at the time was that post-separation abuse was worse than what I ever dealt with in our marriage. I had spent years at this point with his insistent gaslighting, stalking, blaming me for everything, lack of healthy communication or boundaries, and the ever-present and constant threats of more court and it had taken a toll on my mental health.
By 2019, I was struggling and knew I couldn’t keep going down this road of depression and anxiety that I had functioned under for so long. I reached out for professional help because I felt at the end of myself and didn’t know how to move forward. I felt like life was just going to consume me completely and I would just waste away under its weight. I did not want to die, but I could see that becoming a reality if I continue down that road without help. It took tons of mental work and self-improvement, but in time, I began finding my way in this world and life started looking up.
The following year, my desire to finish my degree returned and I gave husband an ultimatum. This was when COVID quarantine began, so figuring I just needed a project to work on and I told him straight, “we either get a puppy I can train, or I will be going back to school.” We welcomed a puppy shortly after and she did help that desire…temporarily. However, the degree-itch became overwhelming in 2021 and my husband fully supported my desire to finish my degree. With nothing holding me back, I enrolled online once again with Counseling as my ninth degree change.
However, now being out of my previous abusive marriage and having gone through counseling, I remembered that my original excitement about college was the education, not the career after. I connected that my struggles to find a degree I truly wanted came from placing my worth in the monetary value of the career prospect that degree could offer.
Through all these years and degree changes, I finally realized I only really wanted my degree so I can be an intellectual contribution to society. I just wanted to learn and be educated. It seems so simple, but that concept of just wanting to learn without equating that to a monetary value took me YEARS to understand and accept.
From there, I changed my major THREE more times (we’re at TWELVE, people) before realizing I could pretty much customize my degree by choosing Interdisciplinary Studies (more than one disciplinary). For my thirteenth and final change, I filled my degree with what I wanted to learn. I chose the two discipline areas of Behavioral Science, which focused on Life Coaching as well as Health Science with a focused on Wellness and Behavioral Change.
While attending full-time online, I had also started my own business and ran it successfully during that time. At the start of 2023, I decided to add in an extra course each semester with a new goal of graduation that year despite already having a full schedule. I felt so close, yet still so far away, I just wanted it to be completed. I knew I could handle the extra course load as I had been successful in school for the past year.
However, as I set out to achieve this goal, life took a difficult turn just four months into that year. Our lives as a family were turned upside down and we were dragged through a journey to hell and back. You can read more about what led to this HERE, but this all occurred just three semesters from my degree completion. I decided to close my business to focus on the kids and my degree in order to push forward with the extra courses. This was also necessary because I began really struggling with my health to the point the Doctor’s believed I was dealing with a cardiomyopathy (weakening of the heart muscles…spoiler, my heart is fine).
Our family struggles had quickly turned into a major custody battle so by now, my anxiety had become unbearable. In my second to last semester, I was required to take a course about divorce and its impact on children. This one hit WAY TOO close to home. Halfway through that semester, I was severely behind on my assignments struggling to focus with everything going on and feeling extremely triggered in writing every essay required of me. I was dealing with the negative impact for our children from my divorce in real time while also struggling with the negative impacts on myself.
Then everything changed.
One evening, I had a complete emotional breakdown as I came to terms with the fact that I felt it was literally impossible to finish my courses and that I was a failure. So close, yet so far away. I had been trying to get this degree for so long and I just knew if I stopped now, AGAIN, I would likely never finish. It had been thirteen years and now these two final semesters were going to be the end of my dream. I ugly-cried as husband and the kids silently stood there with me. They didn’t know what was going through my mind, but they were there for me.
In that moment of defeat and hopelessness, I remembered just how many obstacles had come my way in those thirteen years. No matter what happened, I kept going and kept trying. The past 8 years in particular had been the most difficult and I cannot tell you how many times I wanted to just give up.
But I realized in that moment, with those who love me and support me rallied by my side, that the main thing that has gotten me through all those hard times wasn’t my support system. It was my deep-seated belief in myself. I never knew how, but I just knew it was possible for me if I just tried. I hadn’t given up on myself yet, so I wasn’t going down without a fight this time.
The tears of despair that ran down my cheeks were transformed with gratitude towards myself for never giving up on me. I knew in that moment, after all this time, I just had to keep going because somehow, someway, I would make this happen. I submitted one assignment at a time, did the best I could, and passed that course with my one and only “C.” I did not care, because at least I didn’t fail.
At start of my final semester, our custody battle had dramatically progressed in problems and intensity. My anxiety was all consuming, but I found relief through an amazing counselor. I was diagnosed with Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and I learned about how this shows up in my physical health (which explained why my heart was being impacted even though it was structurally healthy). As I learned to cope with my anxiety, heal from my trauma, and find my self-worth again, my most impactful moments came from seeing myself for the warrior I am.
I had been fighting for myself for years and yet, never truly saw my worth or value. But now I finally did.
As I desired continued personal growth, I struggled feeling like I was remaining stagnate, encapsulated in a cocoon of past struggles. Through healing I learned that it is the struggle out of the cocoon that gives the butterfly strength to their wings. Without the struggle to be freed from its captivity, the butterfly would not have the ability to fly after.
The moment I submitted my last assignment, I recorded a video of it on my phone. It lasted seven seconds and only consisted of me clicking the submit button on my final assignment. Those seven seconds mean the world to me and I am grateful to have taken the moment to document it. In December of 2023, I graduated according to my goal for that year and had never felt so accomplished. The only instances that stood remotely close are the two natural childbirths I willingly endured prior to this moment. However, those did not take nearly as much dedication and perseverance as this did, so I stand so super proud of what I did.
Shortly after my graduation, while still dealing with our custody battle, my son made a comment about my degree being “worthless” because that is what his Dad (my ex) had told him. This made a lot of sense to me now understanding how my ex’s emotional abuse played into my diminished self-worth, but this comment didn’t bother me now.
NO ONE CAN TAKE AWAY YOUR KNOWLEDGE NOR CAN THEY DEEM ITS WORTHINESS.
I will only quickly point out that my ex does not have a bachelor’s degree in any subject, so his opinions on my educational worth are irrelevant to me. I know the value of my knowledge and frequently share it with others to their benefit. I also know the effort it took to earn that knowledge and it will go to the grave with me. Nothing anyone could say to me would take that knowledge away. And I refuse to allow myself to think they can. In my healing journey, I am no longer encapsulated by the pressures of external acceptance.
Today, I stand here choosing freedom with open wings strengthened from somewhere deep within my soul. Through the struggles to achieve self-acceptance, I discovered the power my wings hold. Not because they are giant in size. Rather because something deep within the soul that strengthened them whispered, “I believe in you.” And that’s where my power lies…within me.