< Back Susy's Story, 2022 Susy talks about her want for a child and how it led her to her experience with international adoption in Peru as a single woman. She discussed the impact of negative cultural views on adoption and how it impacted her experience as a parent. She then discusses the importance of belonging and the need for people to share their stories. 00:00 / 04:52 Previous Next

< Back Anna's Story Anna reflects and dedicates this story to her parents, who have always raised her and her sister with the love, support, and cherishment she’s received. She emphasizes how close her family is, how much she recalls the gatherings, and how her dad is always the life of the party, finding ways to keep everyone together. She’s really appreciative of having such supportive parents, close friends, and extended family. 00:00 / 05:29 Previous Next

< Back Nikki's Story Nikki describes her travels to Manzanillo Cuba where she and her fellow volunteers created and conducted a Kids Camp for the children of Manzanillo and its surrounding villages. She expresses the importance of perspective taking, treating others with compassion and understanding the true impact one seemingly small act can have on the lives of others. 00:00 / 02:38 As a kid in highschool I started getting involved in community outreach programs initially starting with the youth perish in my local town so there I kind of learned to have a greater appreciation for volunteering and just people in general so I think that when it came to getting a worldly kind of perspective the first time I really experienced that was when I was chosen to go on an outreach trip to Manzanillo Cuba so the basis of the whole trip was to put on a kids camp is what we called it we ran a bunch of donation sports drives in the US and then brought all of those sports equipment over to Cuba and in Ramonas we were in electricity was kind of hard to come by and in ther individual home one of the things that we brought with us to Cuba my dad had actually donated and one of the things he had always told me growing up was to leave a frisbee in the back of your car in case you get stuck somewhere and your bored or its a nice day and you want to do something fun so one thing he found online was these glow in the dark frisbees you press the button and these neon light start popping up and when you threw it it spiraled in the air and it looked really cool and so we had a couple of them growing up and I had always loved them so he had bought a bunch and donated them to the cause and I remember our first night in Ramonas we broke out the glow in the dark frisbees and me and one of the other volunteers stood out and threw it across one of the open fields it was like lightning had struck and these people had never seen anything like it before children, adults, everyone flooded over to where we were and everyone wanted a turn throwing the magical light up frisbee through the night sky and I remember hearing these whoops and hollars and screams just joyful cheers of such a small kind of thing in my mind something that I had grown up with and now I wouldnt really think os as too monumental but for someone who has never seen something like that before I think that it again brought that blissful sense of innocence back into my perspective and not only for myself reflective back on it but I hope to think that those people who volunteered and locals can think back to that beautiful starry night in Cuba, seeing that beautiful rainbow frisbee flying across the night sky for the first time and yeah that was definitely one of the most prominent kind of visual memories that I have Previous Next

< Back Ivana's Story Ivana shares a vulnerable story about her battle with anxiety and depression as a young adult in high school. She talks about how her experiences have influenced who she is today and memorializes this struggle with a tattoo on her back. 00:00 / 04:12 There is a saying, I'm not sure if you've come across it, where when it goes: “Trauma builds character”. And I definitely feel like that is something that is very true for me and how I've been able to see the world differently. There were a lot of traumatic things that I was exposed to at a young age and then also experienced myself. And I feel like the culmination of all of that led to a very, very dark point that started in high school, my junior year. That was when I first realized what anxiety was and what depression was because the symptoms were actually starting to appear within myself. And it took a lot of solitude and because… When I was going through a lot of that stuff in high school, I felt like I couldn't have any, or I didn't have anybody that I could turn to. And for a while, I wholeheartedly owed my existence for me still being here to my sister, honestly, because during that same period where I felt like I couldn't rely on my parents or couldn't rely on my friends and stuff and I kind of in turn only relied on myself. My sister, I didn't even ask her to help me - she kind of just saw and she offered her help. And I feel like that was the first person that really like listened to me, tried to really find resources to get me in treatment and stuff. My sister also has like a very mature mentality as well. So I feel like there's conversations that I was able to have - that she would be able to contribute to in a way that a lot of other people couldn't. And I think it got to a point of me realizing that a lot of what I was feeling was consequences of certain habits that I was either doing or certain habits that I had in terms of my mindset and stuff. So I went through a very transitional period of trying to really fix my mind and instead of have it be an enemy, turn it into my friend. And now that I think about it, I feel like this habit was something that was kind of enforced in me because I wasn't an athlete for so long. Like we would have to go back, for example, on my basketball team, we would have certain days where we would go watch films from my previous games and stuff like that. And at that point, you're literally going through past mistakes that you made, your coach is telling you what you did wrong, and here's how to fix it for the next time. And I feel like it could be as simple as that for situations. And I feel like that is my intention of wanting to share my story. One, I never thought that life would be like this. There was a good year/two-year period where I thought by the time I was 18, that would have been the end of my life. I'm very blessed every single day to be living the life that I do and to have the opportunity to experience life in the way that I do. I feel like I would not have been able to want to have this for everybody in life until I was able to learn a lot of things through solitude and go through those hard times to become more empathetic and become more emotionally understanding and being able to be more gracious to people and stuff. I do have a tattoo on my back that says, no rain, no flowers. And that is a tattoo that I live by because especially from that hard period of time, I'm able to experience true beauty now. And you cannot experience the beauty of flowers without having a little rain. Previous Next

< Back Natalie's Story 00:00 / 03:50 Previous Next

< Back Abby's Story Abby talks about her adventures while traveling. She talks about her experience studying abroad and traveling as a young kid and how that shaped her into the person she is. Scroll to listen 00:00 / 04:02 Basically, growing up, traveling was a really big part of my life, one special one that I remember was when I was going into my junior year in high school, they took us to Peru for 3 weeks. For 2 of the weeks we were living on a boat on the Amazon River which was really really cool. We were kind of like helping college students who were doing their thesis or dissertations. We were basically going in and out of the Amazon Rainforest and helping them collect data. It was an awesome experience. It made me look at my life differently, it was my first time traveling without my family. But also while we were there we were able to go to a little village for the day and the villagers just showed us around their homes but we were hanging out with all the little kids and we brought them school supplies and gifts but it was just awesome to see, it was like Christmas day for them when we came they were so excited and that really put a lot of things into perspective because coming from America we just have a lot more things than other countries do, so it was just a really awesome experience and it really shows me a lot about life and how materialistic things like that doesn’t really matter. From that traveling really became my passion, I knew I loved going to new places and experiencing new cultures and seeing different cultures. So, I knew when I came to college, I was going to study abroad no matter what. I went abroad in Fall 2021, and I went to Verona, Italy. It was one of the best experiences of my life. It was my favorite semester in college so far. I was able to travel a ton, I met a lot of new people, I learned so much about myself, I grew as a person. You kind of learn to be comfortable with being uncomfortable if that makes sense, you just are kind of thrown into situations that you usually wouldn’t be in and you kind of just got to figure it out. Like it's been an experience that pushed me so far out of my comfort zone, but it was amazing and so worth it. You just kind of got to learn to just go with the flow and stuff won’t always go the way you planned and that’s okay. My first trip was to Lake Como in Italy. It was one of my favorite trips on that I went on there, it was beautiful and so fun but I think what made it one of my favorite trips was the people I was with and we were just hanging out and having fun and getting to know each other because we were only 3 weeks in so it wasn’t like we knew each other super well. My last trip was to London, basically to London we were just being the biggest tourists you could be. We were doing all the touristy things, we went and saw the London Eye, we saw Great Ben, we saw the Parliament, we saw Buckingham Palace, everything that was stereotypical and touristy about London, we did it. My current job right now which I love is at our study abroad office at UMass. I basically just encourage kids to go abroad and tell them that they can do it, I know it's scary, but you got it. I am working for Teach for America when I graduate, before this year I've always known about it but never thought I'd be able to get in. Previous Next

< Back Megan's Story Megan (20) tells a story about the most important person in her life, her grandfather “Poppy”. She talks about a road trip to his log cabin in Vermont, the many stops on the way, and their special relationship. 00:00 / 04:41 The most important person in my life was my grandfather, Poppy. We were really close because he lived down the road from me growing up. I was over there all the time whenever my parents were working or needed to do something. My grammy, she would always have cinnamon raisin toast with butter ready for me anytime I was there with a glass of chocolate milk. And Poppy was so adventurous. I didn't even realize how old he was. He would ride bikes with us and play basketball. It was always a really great time there. One time, I remember going over there. My parents didn't just drop me off. They stayed. What happened was my and Poppy, they were going to move further north. Then they ended up moving to their dream log cabin in Vermont. And this was a really special place. It had a river, and it had a train too that would shake the house, but it was now 3 hours away. Even then, he would drive to, like, to see me play and, like, my band performances and softball games and everything. In March of 2022, my grammy had passed away in a car accident. And so, because my puppy was always putting everybody before himself, he didn't know that he had cancer. And so, after that accident and my grammy's passing, he received his lung cancer diagnosis. And so, he ended up having to leave that Vermont log cabin, and he had to move in with my parents. Now he was starting chemotherapy and would require a lot more assistance. I was away at school. And so, during this whole time when Poppy was receiving these treatments, I really wasn't there. It wasn't until the summer break when I was able to come home that I saw him again and we were able to spend so much time together. It was really like how it was when I was younger when he lived so close. It was really awesome. We went fishing. We would just like old times, we would it was really great. But then he decided that he no longer wanted to continue with the chemotherapy because, like I said, it was taking a great toll on him and his body, and the risk wasn't worth it at that point. He made the decision to stop, and it was really sad. But I just wanted to, like, enjoy every second with him because he is so special to me. During this summer, every weekend, he would ask me to take a ride up to Vermont to go visit his house, his log cabin, because he hadn't been up there since, you know, months prior, in August of 2022. We went on a big road trip to Vermont. It was really a road trip to remember. He sat in the passenger seat playing DJ. He brought along all of his CDs and was, like, switching them every so often, but we made many stops on the way. We stopped at each and every one of his old houses. We stopped to at old friends' houses, old churches. We stopped at his old realtor's office and old restaurants that he would have great memories. So, this whole trip took us a really long time. But whenever he would say, hey, Megan. Like, can we just stop at this one more place? I would say, yes. Of course. So, I would just make sure that I would say yes to everything because I knew that this was really special for him. When we got to Vermont, we ate frozen meals that my mom prepared for us, and we slept in sleeping bags. And we just enjoyed the time in the moment. After that trip, in August, I had to go back to school in September, so it was really hard to leave. In November of 2022, I got a call from my parents saying that, Poppy had had a stroke and that I should probably come home. So, I did not take this lightly. I had this gut feeling, and so I just drove home that night just to be safe. And, when I got home, he wasn't awake at that point. He wasn't talking or anything. But I got to see him one last time. And everybody that came over, all my family members, we all slept over at my house just to make sure that everybody was there. And then the next morning, he took his final breath. It was Veteran’s Day. So, when the funeral home came, they put a flag over him because he was a veteran of the army, and so that was really special to everyone there. And then we saw him drive off, and we just stood there and watched him turn the last corner. Previous Next

< Back Sam's Story In this story, Sam discusses her passion for women's health through her own life experiences. Sam's college experience has allowed her to surround herself with groups of people who lift up and support one another. 00:00 / 02:57 Sam: I would consider myself the typical College student. I am currently pursuing a degree in public health with a focus on women's health. Based on my personal and family experiences, I have become a really strong advocate for women's health, and my mom was a big influence in that she raised me to always kind of put yourself forward and never take no for an answer. And my friends have also instilled that, and they've been an inspiration in my life. My mom was a big factor in influencing my decision to go into public health and women's health specifically. Sam: She has a reproductive condition called endometriosis, which I inherited from her. And she kind of always made sure that health comes first as physical and mental health before you do anything else, because if you can't be your best self, then you're not going to be of service or helping others. Joining a sorority in College, I found a really solid group of friends where women support one another. That's kind of like the core of our friendship is we're going to push each other to do our best and be our best selves. I specifically have probably four or five made friends where we all just like, go big or go home in our friendship. Sam: And that's been really inspiring and public health because I want to do good for them and support them as women as well, because I had only been in a class of maybe 15 my whole life. So my freshman year classes were 300 lectures, and I was very nervous that I would kind of get lost and fall behind in my academics, which are very important to me. But my mom reminded me to be an advocate for myself and use the voice that I have. I was able to push through and make it a home, really. In high school, I did a club called ModelUN, where it was like a mock trial debate team. Sam: And one of the projects that we did was really influential in my decision to go to public health. Also, we were talking about sanitation and refugees in developing countries. So when I got to College and I realized that I could do that for a major, I was like, oh, let's do this. This is so interesting and tied into women's health. I mean, I have a voice. I wanted to be able to use it for those who are afraid to or are able to. And that's really where I am now. That's what got me here. Previous Next

< Back Sophia's Story Sophia reflects on her difficult high school experience after transferring schools, which led to isolation, academic struggles, and severe depression. Over time, this culminated in a crisis during junior year, but support from counselors, teachers, and an alternative program director helped her begin to recover. Through patience, understanding, and gradual progress, she regained hope and was able to successfully graduate on time. Ultimately, the experience taught her the importance of accepting support from others and recognizing her own resilience. 00:00 / 04:30 I feel like mostly where I really saw change and how I saw myself was in my senior year. Halfway through freshman year, I decided to transfer by myself to my local public school, and that is where I would say everything started to crumble and fall apart. I really struggled with making any friends, especially since it was halfway through the school year. Everybody already had their established friend groups. Then I'm also a very shy person, so that just all compounded into me not having anyone to be with in my classes. I would avoid going to lunch and eating, and that manifested itself into me, staying home from school. I would not go for days at a time, and I ended up almost failing every single class in my freshman year. And this repeated itself, this process of me staying home for weeks at a time for my sophomore and my junior year, all the way up until my senior year where I really felt hopeless. That that entire the entire process of me, like, not going to school, from freshman year onwards caused me to develop pretty severe depression and anxiety, which that high school experience really brought the depression out. I ended up, in my junior year making an attempt on my life because of the loneliness, because I had saw online, on social media that all of my friends were hanging out on a day that I had decided to stay home. And that was really just, like, my breaking point, and I felt like everything was pointless and hopeless. Like, seeing the amount of people that came for me that cared about me really showed me that my life was valuable, but I still struggle to find the value. I felt broken. I felt like something was truly wrong with me. I felt like I wasn't meant to live a good life. I remember I wrote that in my journal. Like, I'm not meant maybe I'm meant to just be unhappy. My guidance counselors had to step in, and they had to place me into this alternative program that my high school offered. And I had gone from honors classes to being put into the college prep. I was I connected myself worth to my academic success. And seeing that I like, I couldn't handle the work of the honors classes, that just really made me feel just cemented the fact that I was different from my friends, that I was that I wasn't well, that I was not doing well mentally, and that just really broke me. When I first got put into the program, I knew that it was going to help me. I knew that I was put into it to help me. That's what all my counselors said, my teachers, my mom. That's what they all said to me. So, I started going through the program. I had a lot of support, particular from the program. I director, her name was miss Mac, and she would always give me kindness and give me grace. There would be days where I would go for just an hour, and I would get overwhelmed and anxious. And I would ask to leave, or I wouldn't come in until noon. She still always welcomed me into the program with old open arms. With her help and also with the help of my teachers, they talked to them about how I was feeling. I felt like they wouldn't give me any grace, but they were the most, they were so understanding. And I think just having their grace, having their kindness, just knowing that they wanted me to succeed really helped give me the hope that I could actually graduate, on time with all of my classmates and all of my peers, that I could actually do the things that I had set out for myself to do at the beginning of the year when I thought that I couldn't get through it, when I thought that I couldn't even, like, make it out of bed. For senior year, me at the end of the year versus senior year, me at the beginning of the year, completely different people. By the end of the year, I saw that all of my hard work actually did pay off and that I actually was going to be able to walk with all of my friends, to graduate with all of my friends. I felt like, at the beginning, I felt like I wasn't doing anything with my life, but not but towards the end, I felt like there was something that I could be that I could do. Like, even though I had gone through all of this gone through all of this suffering that I could, in fact, get it all done. So, I'm really thankful to those people in my life, that senior year because without them, I don't think I would have managed to graduate on time. I don't think I would have even been able to start my college career when I did. It just taught me that it's hard for me to rely on people, but I do need to rely on people in order to succeed. Previous Next

< Back Annabel's Story Annabel, who recently uprooted her life in North Carolina and moved to Northampton, MA, discusses how she ended up living in the city and her close familial relationships that led her there. 00:00 / 03:21 Stephanie: Speaking of Northampton, how did you even end up here? Like, how did you know this town? Because it is so small. Annabel: It is so small. I had been visiting here for a number of years because my daughter, who is a writer, and her husband is a publisher, they were living in Northampton and were - and Amherst and Northampton both have a huge community of writers. I ended up visiting frequently, and then 12 years ago, almost 13 years ago, they had a child who was born four months early. And she only weighed a pound and a half, and ended up having a lot of medical crises. She had a feeding tube and a trach. Stephanie: Oh, my God… Annabel: And, ended up spending four hundred and [sic] days in three different hospitals. Thank God she was in Massachusetts because she had some fabulous care here. Stephanie: Yeah. Annabel: She is doing really really well now. Um, and if you didn’t know, if you didn’t see the scar in her neck you wouldn’t know she had a trach. And, ironically, as a two year old, I had a trach… Stephanie: Oh… Annabel: Because of a really bad case of bronchial pneumonia, and ended up with a trach. So, we may be the only grandmother team… Stephanie: Yeah, that has… Annabel: that have the trach scars. Anyway, so I came up here a great deal while she was in the hospital - or, those 3 hospitals. And finally, I just thought, “I want to move there. I want to be near her,” so that was the reason I ended up here. And I’m so glad. I’m almost 75, and if you had told me I would make friends as good as any friends I’ve ever had I would not have believed it. So, I count my blessings that I ended up here. Stephanie: Yeah, that sounds really, that everything worked out, basically. Annabel: It did. It really did. Stephanie: Yeah. And was it hard making friends here? Annabel: I think at first, because I didn’t think that I could ever make friends like the ones I left behind, particularly back in North Carolina, I wasn’t reaching out. But finally, my daughter is best friends with another writer, whose mother moved here from California, and both of them kept saying “You’ll love each other if you get together!” and we instantly did. And then, I joined a church at the same time as another friend and we’ve become best friends. So I'm just amazed. I did not expect - I knew I would be happy here because of my daughter’s family. And there’s another family, they’re very close to me and I love them. I didn’t think I’d have peers as friends, but I do, and I’m so glad. Yeah. Previous Next

< Back Hellen's Story Hellen describes the way her house represents Africa from the mustard-yellow color on the outside to the smell on the inside and the white lace sheets over the doors. Her parents incorporate many pieces of Kenya with them in their home in the US, and continue many traditions from their past. 00:00 / 03:42 Previous Next

Hannah talks about the risk that she took in studying abroad in Amsterdam and her experience amercing herself in the culture by herself and how it impacted her future career path. Hannah's Story Hannah talks about the risk that she took in studying abroad in Amsterdam and her experience amercing herself in the culture by herself and how it impacted her future career path. Scroll to listen Hannah's Story 00:00 / 02:07 Would you tell me about a time that you took a risk? A time I took a risk was going abroad last semester, my fall semester, senior year to Amsterdam. And I know it's like cliche like, oh yeah, you like go abroad, whatever. But I really wanted my abroad experience to be as natural as possible. I didn't want to go to an American school in a foreign country. I didn't want to go to a school where I knew I was going to be surrounded by other American college students. I really wanted to just like go abroad and experience like culture shock like head on. So I decided to go to fret university type in Amsterdam, like by myself. I didn't know, I didn't know it was. So when I got there, I literally like booked my flight a week before and just got on a plane and shipped myself off to Amsterdam knowing no one. And yeah, that was the time I really did take a risk. And what did you learn about yourself? Did learn that taking a risk is not only can I do it and I'm very capable um but like it just gave me that confidence that I can take risks in the future. And that taking risks actually is a good thing. And I have so many positive outcomes from doing it and I really have made some of my best friends um throughout the world just doing that experience. And so post grad, I'm a senior. So I'm graduating next at the end of the semester in like a month, which is terrifying. But I, I decided to take a job in South Korea, um, teaching English, which I never, I never would have done, had I not taken that risk to go to Amsterdam because it's like a similar situation where I don't know a soul there. I don't know a soul in Seoul. Um, but I, I don't know anyone there. I'm just going by myself to a country that's thousands of miles away, um, with a 13 hour time zone, like, and I'm ok with it and I'm excited for it and I'm, I'm not crying because of stress this time, but I'm really excited.