Road To Legacy

 Life. It's sometimes sucky. It's sometimes the greatest thing since sliced bread and Betty White. Other times, it's just plan awful and you want a restart button. Life changes constantly, and sometimes that's what makes it so horrible.  Change can be anything. Change can be as small as changing what coffee cup you drink out of, or as big as your boyfriend graduating without you when you were supposed to graduate with him. Change is hard.  That's where I'm at right now. My whole life feels like it's spiraling into something that I can't control- and usually I'm okay with that, but being a titleholder and becoming accustomed to having everything planned out literal months in advance and having everything done and prepared for has spoiled me. I know what's about to hit me. I know what's coming, and that's why nothing can catch me off guard and blindside me. But this... I was never prepared for this. I mean I thought I was. But I'm not. ...

 Happy Mental Health Awareness Month everyone! As many of you (my readers) know, I am a survivor of Depression, Anxiety, and Anorexia. To pay tribute to this month and what I stand for, I have reached out to other titleholders across the nation and asked them to share their story with me so I can bring it to you. Last post, we had Miss Mile High, Shannon. This week, we have Miss Lancaster County, Kayla Myers! Her social impact Initiative is #choosehealth. She is vying for the job title of Miss Pennsylvania that will be held on June 17-19, 2021!  1: What made you choose your SII? I chose my social impact initiative #ChooseHealth as health and fitness has dramatically changed my life for the better and has allowed me to flourish as an individual. I believe a healthy lifestyle is important for everyone as there are innumerable benefits of living a healthy lifestyle, such as preventing disease, improving mental health, relieving stress, and creating a space for socialization. It i...

 As time moves on, I realize that I am not the only one who has suffered through the lonely road of mental and eating disorders, Shannon Hannaway, a fellow titleholder based out of Colorado, was generous enough to share her story with all of us! 1: how has mental and eating disorders affected you?   Besides seeing it from the outside watching loved ones struggle and die by suicide, I have been impacted by mental illness for as long as I can remember. Growing up I had anxiety with panic attacks, but due to a lack of education and awareness I didn’t know that was what I was experiencing. It took a head injury and Children’s Hospital Colorado for me to get the help and diagnosis I needed from their concussion team. With their help, medication, and therapy I was able to get my anxiety managed and actually came off all of it completely by the time I graduated high school. Unfortunately, my freshman year of college I experienced severe emotional trauma that led to PTSD, and unipolar...

 Good evening ladies and gents, this week has been so busy with all the sports getting underway, but now my attention lies on this next week: NEDA week, National Eating Disorders Awareness Week, and no better to kick this week off with a compelling and inspiring interview with a former colleague of mine who I hold in very high esteem, allow me to introduce Ms. Gabby Cox and her journey with Self Image, Body Positivity and EDs.  1: Which eating disorder(s) did you have? All of this basically started when I was 12 in 5th grade. I had stopped playing sports and had acquired some unhealthy habits. My parents eventually started making me play a sport of my choice so I could be active again. I chose to play soccer because I had played as a child, and my dad played professionally and was a well known coach for over 20 years. Well I quickly realized that I was not very good because I was not in good “soccer shape.” One summer, my dad and I trained everyday and from that training, I wa...

I was born and raised a non-denominational Christian with more of a traditional Pentecostal twist. I was raised on the mission field, I was raised with the thought that mental health was demon possession/ oppression. The bible does talk about people who were possessed by demons that did have similar symptoms to mental health disorders, but obviously, they are not the same thing.  As I have mentioned before, my depression didn't hit me until I was 13-14 years old, but I was mostly silent about it because of my upbringing. I remember when I told my mother that I had attempted to kill myself and she grabbed me and screamed a prayer over me. Now that I am older, I can understand the panic but as a thirteen year old child, I was scared out of my mind. Not only was I brought up in a Christian household that had conservative, traditionalist views on the matter, I was saved when I was six years old and have been a Christian my whole life. As a Christian, it's hard to understand why the...

 January 22, 2021, I became Miss Southeastern Louisiana University 2021. Thirteen months of my life was poured into my university competition. It all paid off, I learned how become a title holder, but within this process, I learned what it meant to be a spokesperson for my cause. I learned how to be a voice for those who don't know how- or when to speak up.  Being a title holder is going to be a lot, but being someone with a cause to back up is going to be even more responsibility, but I wouldn't have competed if I didn't believe I was prepared. I created this blog to share my story, and hopefully inspire others around the world to do the same and lower the stigma that surrounds counseling and recovery. To show that I support those who are willing to fight for a better tomorrow for themselves.  My year of reign will consist of meetings, appearances, speeches, and talks with students, groups, organizations, and administration. I will meet with the Health Center, Counseling...

As a child, I had a very good childhood growing up, and then everything changed once I moved from Peru to the United States again. The depression, anxiety and anorexia all set in and I was so, so along going through that. My parents didn't understand what I was going through and thought that I was demon possessed. They didn't believe in counseling but threatened to put me in a mental hospital. I went through this for years, by myself, putting on a brave face because I was terrified of being put in some mental ward.  This post is about support groups. Support in general, really. Being someone who didn't have that much support going through what I went through, I want to make sure that everyone I come across didn't feel like they were alone. Having support around you, helps you admit that you need help. That's what happened to me once I got to college and once I had a friend that is always there for me but will give me tough love to get me through the day and help me ...