A winning essay from our Brighter Future Scholarship contest

Addiction has affected me before I was old enough to understand the meaning of the word. My father had gained sobriety through a treatment center’s care and was working as a base director there when he met my mother during her treatment. A year later, I was born. A few years after that, they had divorced, and both had fallen back into alcohol use. Addiction wasn’t just something around me; for most of my childhood, it was the only way I knew my parents, and it became the entire atmosphere I breathed. 

Some of my earliest memories with addiction are trying to read my mother’s emotions, as they change without warning. I knew that the little clear bottle with the red top meant her mood and actions were about to be unstable. When she drank, it was impossible to know who I was living with. The first shot meant anger was going to be unleashed upon me, the second meant complete forgetfulness, and the third was unpredictable. Throughout my childhood, my mother had brief moments of sobriety, but she would slip back into the fight with the disease. By the time I was thirteen, the chaos had become unbearable. I finally made the painful decision to call the police on my mother. Afterward, I moved in with my father, hoping for safety, but his drinking had worsened. With neither home able to provide stability, I was placed into foster care. I remember the overwhelming feeling of utter loneliness, and wondering how a child could belong nowhere. 

The hardest part of my story came during that time, while I was still in the foster system and working towards the steps to move back home with my sober mom, my father lost his battle with addiction. I was fourteen. Even though I had watched alcohol take pieces of him for years, I still hoped that one day he would find the recovery my mother had. Losing him while I was already displaced made the grief heavier, almost unbearable. It felt like I had lost not only my father, but the dreams of a future where he and my mother were both sober. His death forced me to confront the reality of addiction, not as instability, but as something permanent and life-ending. Yet it strengthens my determination to break this cycle that took him from me. 

Living through addiction has shaped the way I see people struggle with it. I no longer see it as someone failing, but as a disease that steals from the entire family. I’ve witnessed the destruction it causes and the losses it brings, but I’ve also been lucky enough to see the beauty of recovery. I got to be a witness to my mother turning her life around, and I refuse to let my father’s story become something of just loss. I know today he was not a broken person, but a person who has enlightened me to fight for a better future, and beat the odds of becoming an alcoholic. I began to better myself mentally, physically, and spiritually. In doing so, I have discovered a love for learning and helping others. 

I was accepted into a university’s radiology program. I am interested in pursuing a career in healthcare because I know what it feels like to need help and not know where to find it. I wish to be a steady and kind presence for others, as I often needed growing up. Unfortunately, attending presents financial challenges that I cannot meet on my own. Receiving this scholarship will not only help me afford my education, but it will also help me continue to break the generational cycle that addiction created in my family. 

My story is not wanting to be defined by addiction, but by what I’ve built from it: resilience, empathy, and determination. With this scholarship, I can take the next steps and begin the future I deserve, not one shaped by trauma, but a future with hope and purpose, with a chance to help others heal. 

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