Essays from TLG's 2005 College Scholarships for Students of Parents with Disabilities

*(Please note: TLG's Scholarship Program ended December 2006)

We invite you to read selected essays submitted to Through the Looking Glass' 2005 College Scholarships for Students of Parents with Disabilities. The essays below were written by the eight winners and seventeen runners-up. In addition to these essays, scholarship selection criteria included academic performance, letters of recommendation, community services, extracurricular activities and awards. (For additional information about these scholarships, please see our Fall 2005 Newsletter article).

These essays describe routine, remarkable and sometimes difficult stories of parents with disabilities and their children. Individual stories are dramatic, candid, humorous, loving, provocative and moving. Mirroring the more than 200 scholarship applicants, the winners and runners-up represent amazingly diverse families of parents with disabilities across the U.S. The 2005 applicants from 38 states included those with parents who were quadriplegic, blind, deaf, amputees, as well as parents with spinal cord injury, cancer, multiple sclerosis, diabetes, mental illness, traumatic brain injury, myasthenia gravis, muscular dystrophy or intellectual disability. There was also diversity in family composition: families whose mother, or father, or both parents had a disability; parents with lifelong disabilities; parents with more recent disabilities; single and 2-parent households; diverse ethnicities and home languages including several immigrant families. In several families, the student also had a disability.

Despite the wide variation in parental disability and other demographic features among scholarship applicants, several consistent themes emerged: the normalcy of growing up with a parent with a disability, and the resilience and strength of these families despite social and financial obstacles. Many of the essays remind us that, despite some progress, parents with disabilities and their families remain largely invisible in the larger society and are often left to fend for themselves with inadequate and inaccessible resources. For many families, their best and only resources are the family members themselves.

Seventeen additional students were named as semi-finalists: Jenna Ali (Deerfield Beach, FL); Alexandra Cocchiara (Monroe, NY); Adam Dickinson (Danville, KY); Katherine Dingle (Chesapeake, VA); Summer Harris (Atkins, VA); Keith Healey, Jr. (Phoenix. AZ); Susana Hernandez (Hileah, FL); Deanne Kastine (Portland, OR); David Liu (Austin, TX); Thomas Lundstedt (Miami, FL); Savanna Meyer (Livermore, CA); Colby Owen (Virginia Beach, VA); Laura Spearot (East Hartford, CT); Anastasia Stout (Fort Meyers, FL); Joanna Tripet-Diel (Burbank, CA); and John Troynousky (Rumson, NJ).

Ultimately, it's unfair to compare one person or one family's experience with another. To be sure, there were far more deserving scholarship applicants than we had funds to award. There were also many additional essays that were equally compelling, insightful and heartfelt and we hope to include additional essays in future publications as well.

We encourage you to consider how you can contribute to other deserving students who have a parent with a disability as well as increase the resources available to their families:

• Contribute to TLG's scholarship fund.



• Become involved in our national network of parents with disabilities.



• Complete our survey of resources for parents with disabilities in your community.



• Encourage local organizations to sponsor a scholarship for a student of a parent with a disability.

Please note that all materials including these essays are copyrighted by Through the Looking Glass. If you need additional information on re-printing or using any of these materials, please contact us.