My Gift--Johanna

I’ve always believed that each and every person held a gift, something that they were given to make them individuals, unique, special even. I am no person to tell what each and every person's gifts are because that would mean I would have to live their life, in their body, mind, and soul to find the one gift that makes them who they are. I am no mind reader, and I am no perfect person, I strive and live my own journey, my mistakes, my pains, my happiness, and even my grief and through all of this I’m still on my own path trying to recognize who I am and what my gift is.

For as long as I can remember in the ripe years between 7 and 13, I was a very sensitive young girl who felt everyone’s emotions and only wanted to make them happy. I wanted to make someone feel joy and strength when it seemed like there was no hope, understand their pain and hope I can truly understand them as individuals. See, the world needs hope, it needs someone who wants to help, and I don’t believe that there is a person who doesn’t want to be helped because if that were the case what hope would humanity have. There has always been this fire inside of me burning to be let out, to show the world that we all can help, to be compassionate and kind, be a person filled with curiosity and faith in the unspeakable, to shine in a world that’s full of dark.

Birth, babies, and children all screamed to my subconscious. Everytime I would meet a new baby and all I wanted to do was handle them with care and love, they needed that. At age

13, I realized what my calling was I wanted to be a nurse, not just any nurse but a neonatal nurse, someone who takes care of babies who are in the most critical stages of their existing life, all I wanted to do was to nurture them back to health, to give them the chance to breathe, to live, to make mistakes, find love, live a full life that I was living then. I knew to become a nurse that I would have so many long years and a hard journey to get there and even once I’m there to continue on the difficult path that I set out for my life. From that moment I vowed to have good grades, and starting middle school to have a 4.0 and to never lose that. I was very mature for my age, I just wanted to have a future and I knew I could obtain it if I just worked hard enough. I took ROP career ready classes like Health Care Occupations and Medical Assisting because I wanted to show my family that I was serious about being a nurse. I started volunteering in a Rehabilitation hospital as a Unit Support volunteer, where I could meet patients who needed extra care. I was determined to get to my goal and hoped that my accomplishments would lead me to where I am today.

Like every story, though there is good, there are also bad and difficult times, my story is no different. An important piece of my story which I didn't mention is where I got my strength, compassion, understanding, love, hope, joy, and my need to serve others from. My grandmother, the woman who showed me to be all those things is the reason that I am here today. In my Junior year of high school, one of the most critical years of my school life was also one of the most difficult years of my personal life. My grandmother was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's Disease or other known Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which is a very rare condition. My grandmother was struck with this disease at 86 years old, and it was the most devastating news I could hear. To try and cope with my pain, I intellectualized everything, I wanted to be one step ahead to understand what will happen, what can help her, who do I need to become in order for her to be okay. Along with my mother, my grandmother raised me, she taught me to

love life and to speak spanish, to give others what they need even if I don’t have something to give. This disease took her too soon, within shortly 6 months the woman who had a strong will to live and a fighting spirit, wasn’t able to get her life back. Yet, I wanted to repay what she had done for me my entire life by being the nurse in hers. When she passed, it was the worst time in my life, but I knew life didn’t end for me, that I had to continue becoming the person she needed and wanted me to be. When one life ends another is born, maybe her spirit was born in me to continue my journey. I knew from the moment she got sick to the moment she passed and after that I needed to become what I always believed I was destined to be, if not for me then for her.

I’ve learned that not everyone has solely only one gift, I believe that everyone has their own whether it be one or twenty, that gifts are what are given to us at the beginning of our life but as we grow up more are added. From a young age, compassion, kindness, forgiveness were my gifts, and now I added more to my life-long list and now they come from grandma, strength and perseverance are my new found gifts. I believe that a person’s joys and future should be determined not by the mistakes they have made, or the grief they have felt, but by the person who they have become when all of these situations are said and done. I wanted to be a nurse since I was 13 years old, my only reasons being because it was my passion, yet now it’s my passion and the yearning to honor the life of my grandmother. I never gave that up. So all along I am certain that this has always been my gift.