Emotional Strength by Leo

Emotional Strength by Leo - January 2026 Scholarship Essay

Have you ever gone through something so difficult that it made you unable to sleep at night? I had countless nights like that in 2025. Lying awake, staring aimlessly at my eggshell white ceiling. In many ways, I’d like to say last year was the most painful year I’ve ever experienced in my nineteen years of life. It was never physical pain besides the occasional seizure because of my epilepsy. No, the real pain I experienced was emotional pain. It was because of something physical that happened to someone I loved. This gave me emotional strength. That person I loved was my mother. She was diagnosed with cancer. Let's rewind.
I want to go to college to be a better writer and author, and jump into a career in the entertainment industry, but I struggled to find a college that had the right accommodations for my epilepsy. Anything that resembled promising would cost all my limbs. It still does. So I took a gap year to save money and work on my novel, which is currently in the editing process. That gap year is when I had the most difficult experience of my life.
One morning, I got up to go to work at 4 AM, earlier than I ever had. My Mom was helping me get ready since shes normally up at this time. I was eating breakfast, and I had a seizure at the table. Mom was trying to get me out of the seat, but couldn’t, so she had to wake my Dad. Two months later, Mom broke the news that she had mouth cancer, and that morning was the first time she felt a striking pain in her mouth. That hurt me deeply.
My Dad is usually the tough-knuckled one emotionally and physically. He is a cabinet maker who beats his body to a pulp every day. But the first time I saw him talk about Mom’s cancer was the first time in my life I had ever seen him cry. Our family was emotionally in shambles.
I cried too. I was on my knees in the shower, pleading to God, saying, “Please heal my mom!” over and over again in agony, tears as much pouring as the water was pouring on me. I even tried to make deals with him. I told God, “Please don’t take her, take me!” Truth is, I love Mom more than I love myself. Some might call that depressing, but that's just how I feel.
Mom finally got sent off to surgery for a couple of weeks. She was two hours away. I couldn’t drive there; I didn’t have a car. I never got to see my Dad because he would stay with Mom as long as he could every day, right after work. So I was stuck at home. Alone. My Dad bought a crap ton of microwavable and oven-heated meals. That's what we lived off of. On the very rare occasion he couldn’t go to the hospital, we would eat at the dinner table. And the meals would be dead silent. What are we gonna say besides "how's your day," and then respond with "good"? I got to see Mom once in the hospital after she had just recovered from her surgery. I thought it would make me feel better to see that she was okay. Honestly, it scarred me. Because I saw my Mom’s neck terribly scarred and swollen up the size of a helium balloon.
But through all of that, one thing stuck out. My ability to keep myself together. A lot of the time during the day, I was too sad to cry. I learned how to go in and out of work and how to be around people with a fake smile on my face. Because when I'm ringing someone up at the register, and they ask how your day is, no one really wants to hear “Oh its awful, my mom has cancer, and I can't get her out of my mind, and I'm gonna go sulk when I get home.”
Luckily, the surgery was a success. There was a long process of helping my mom around the house because she was attached to an IV that we would have to put food and water into so she could eat and drink. It was funny because she would say I think tonight I'm having hamburger-flavored food. When really all it is is unflavored protein shakes. She also had to learn how to speak again.
This experience taught me a couple of important things. The biggest thing it taught me was emotional strength. I had never dealt with tragedy, loss of life, breakups, or anything so detrimental; it would break your heart before this, so I feel like it gave my brain some calluses. Going into this next chapter of my life, it prepared me for tough battles along the way. It also taught me that no matter what you’re going through, someone always has it worse. I never understood how badly someone could be physically wrecked until I saw my Mom in that hospital bed. I can confidently say that the emotional strength I gained helped me cope with my Mom’s cancer and made me a stronger-willed person in the future.