Social Work Month 2023: Breaking Barriers with Miranda Lopez
"I have been breaking barriers by going against all the odds, and remaining resilient even when I felt I had every reason to give up. At 18 years old, my mom passed away from ALS, a neurological disease. This was the start of a new life for me. For the years prior to her passing, she was battling this vicious disease and as her caregiver, I watched a piece of her die more and more each day. My mom taught me many things, but she did not teach me how to live without her. I was forced to grow up quick, and take care of myself completely. I had no clue how I would get through day-to-day but I knew I just had to. Not only for myself, but for my mom watching down on me, and my siblings who look up to me. Since the 2nd grade, I've wanted to be a Social Worker and I've had this ideal plan, but of course things don't always go as planned. I prevailed through undergrad, paying completely out of pocket and even nearly failing out of school. For graduate school, my goal was to take a year off in between undergrad and grad, and then find a job that could fund my Master's. Fast forward to after finishing my Bachelor's of Social Work at Medgar Evers College in 2021, I knew what I wanted to do, but did not know how I was going to do it or where to even start. Now at 25 years old, the goal I set for myself, prematurely and as a child, has come to fruition and I am doing exactly what I set out to do, when I set out to do it. For my time in undergrad, I work 2 full time jobs, sometimes 3. A question I got asked so frequent, was "how do you do it?" and I never know how to answer that because I genuinely don't know, I just know that I have to and I can't afford to give up."
~Miranda Lopez, MSW student and scholarship recipient through the Social Work Opportunities for Leadership in Addiction and Recovery (SOLAR) Program
