MAGGIE | WILDFLOWER | HOUSTON, TX

STORY Growing up where I did, school wasn’t a main priority.  I dropped out of high school my senior year [after being sexually assaulted by a fellow student] and it was no big deal to those around me.  But I knew I wanted more. I needed more. I did get my GED and then enrolled in community college.  I was the first person on both sides of my family, cousins, aunts, uncles, to go to college.  I married young and had kids with a man who was abusive, but I persisted.  My 4th daughter was born 5 days before my last semester of nursing school started.  I was back at school when she was 2 weeks old.  My teachers were so afraid I was going to fail boards that they charged me with plagiarism twice!  Both times I sat for the academic board and proved my innocence.  I won. Then I passed state nursing boards with a perfect score.  The day I found out, I left my now ex husband.  That was 2014.  Since then, I have spent every moment healing past traumas, and letting the woman of honor that lives i