Ayanna Lawson

During my high school career, my life changed for the worse. On November 2, 2016, I woke up to a major house fire. Everything my mother worked hard for was gone. Twenty five days later, my father passed away due to kidney failure. These two traumatizing events were an obstacle and setback for me and my family. The thought of my father never being able to attend another birthday, award ceremony, or even coming home again left me feeling void, empty and powerless. I questioned life and my future. It was hard for all of us, especially my mother. She felt alone, and although she was the primary breadwinner of the family due to his illness, she wasn’t a single parent. Being alone was not a part of her plans. Despite all of this, she found us another home and took extra care to talk with my sisters and I about moving forward and staying focused. Then another setback, my mother was hospitalized due to a stroke in December 2017. She lost the use of her entire left side, walking, and the ability to use a potty chair. She spent 2018 in a nursing home. It was hard but we saw her everyday. We all had faith that she was progressing but just at a slow pace. On September 5, 2018 I became an orphan. My mother passed away on my first day of school. Senior year, no parents, heartache and a ton of things to accomplish to secure my future. I cried for about a week then I knew it was time to seize every opportunity and moment to secure a path for my future. This horrifying situation hurt me but it helped me in so many ways because I now know the real definition of being independent. 

Financially not having a mother or father in my life anymore caused me to grow up faster than I expected. Throughout all my four year of high school, I worked many jobs but I always had both of my parents to fall back on. Being that I was graduating from high school in a few months everything financially for me fell into my lap. My family helped out as much as they could but when people have their own children I was not their top priority. I have had many hungry nights and I went without a lot of things I wanted. 

If my parents had life insurance, I would have been financially stable. I would have been able to pay for proper counseling, I would have been able to come to college with savings, I could have more time to mourn and not have to work all the time. My parents not having life insurance pushed me to being an adult and take care of myself faster than any other teenager. Fast forward a year later, I am now a freshman at Delaware State University and I am majoring in Political Science to pursue my career as an attorney. Receiving this scholarship will change my life in so many ways. Not only will this help me with me getting my college degree but it will also be history in the making. Growing up as an African American female in poverty on Detroit’s east-side, statistics always showed my chances of being successful to be very low. I was constantly surrounded by family running the streets, dropouts, and teen parents. Despite all of the negativity around me, I know I want to further my education and become a lawyer, businesswoman, advocate, and spokeswoman.