Ava Scarbrough

Mesa, AZ

(928) 632-3922

Avascarbrough@arizona.edu

Dear, HonorHealth,

To understand why I wanted to become a nurse comes from my past inability to help my

mother when she needed it the most. As a child your only expectation is that your mother will

take care of you and for me my narrative was flipped my mother would drink herself to sleep

while I picked up the house and put my sisters to sleep, but even at a young age I knew that

something had happened with my mother from the time I was born to 5th grade her own trauma

had caught up to her and she started self medication with drugs and alcohol. My mother has a

substance use disorder. It was hard for me to grasp at first, how my mother wanted so little to do

with her life that she would tune the world out with substance and during that time all I wanted

was to help.

When my mother first went to rehab, I was in 8th grade. I remember feeling so small and

insignificant to the world around me, and afraid. I knew nothing of her disease and I wanted so

much to be able to help her. I remember reading the vials on the drugs she would inject, I would

research adverse symptoms and try to help her the best I could. This left me to care for my sisters

as my own, furthering my love for children. As her disease progressed into heroin her mental
health started to catch up, she ended up in drug induced psychosis with multiple different

diagnoses of bipolar. The nurses that treated my mother during this time made me want to be a

nurse and not in the traditional way, I wanted to be a nurse so that I would never treat patients in

the way she was treated. They seemed to have no empathy for her disease and no empathy for

her as a person at all; they only saw her as an addict, they didn't see her as my mother who

needed help that I could not give her. From this ongoing and painful experience, I have become

the person I am today. A person who wishes to succeed in my journey to finish nursing school

and to not only survive, but to thrive in my own life. I would say my mother's best lesson to me

was in helping me develop the ability to overcome my hardships and use them to fuel me toward

positive success in my life. My time in school has accelerated my passion for nursing. Each new

thing I learn helps me contribute to the care I give. I want to be a psychiatric pediatric nurse

more than anything because it combines my passions of caring for children, spreading the

awareness of addiction, and stopping it before it takes over a person's life like it did my mothers.

I know wherever my placement is, my strongest quality of empathy will still shine through and

this is what will make me a great nurse.