High school passed and I moved away from Toronto. I had been accepted as an Ivey HBA into the University of Western's business program. By the end of that first year, I knew I wanted to enter the animation industry instead. I transferred to Sheridan and began preparing my portfolio to enter Sheridan's animation program for the following year. However, several things were happening in succession that to led to a choice.

My mother had been living on student loans on York University's campus. OSAP finally cut off her funding and it led to a bout of women's shelters and homelessness. Being out in the open lead to her causing public disturbance and the police being called. They seized and hospitalized her at CAMH, who called to let me know she was being housed and treated there. I worked out the paperwork to become her substitute decision maker, for she had lost that right when she became considered a danger to the public. And my first decision was, of course, that she needed to remain on treatment.

I went to Toronto and visited her at the mental ward. The change was noticeable. She was calm and quiet - or maybe just sedated - and everything she said was normal. Her hands kept shaking, she told me. We sat in her room and I hated it. It was too narrow; I felt like I could touch both walls with my arms out. Everything was white except the tacky little blue flowers on her bedsheets. She had her toothbrush in a ziploc, she had two sets of clothes, and she had what looked like a bunch of scarves spilling out of a yellow No Frills bag. It was no home.

She asked me if I could tell the doctor she didn't need treatment. I said no. She told me she didn't think she could live there anymore. It made my eyes well and I told her that it was just for a little longer. That was a spontaneous lie on my part, but I had realized several things in the moment.

The first realization was that there was no pleasure in being sane if all she could do was sit in that room. The second was that this was my mother's first month of lucidity and she was coming back into a world where she had no money, no skills and no home. I felt immeasurably guilty for studying blissfully in another city while knowing she had been between women's shelters on the streets of this one. She didn't need the promise of my future success; she needed help on her feet right now. I weighed my priorities and knew that I wanted to help her. School could wait another year, but I had been waiting for this moment for all my life - the moment I realized my mother could be okay. That she had a second chance at life.

I moved back to Toronto, took up my old job and found a cheap basement apartment for the two of us. In order to be released, my mother signed an agreement promising to stay in the area and return biweekly to CAMH for her shots. I accompany her every second Monday/Tuesday.

My goal for last year was to get her financially stable enough to pay for her apartment and food, so that I would be able to move away once again for school. This was more difficult than it seemed. She had accrued an unbelievable amount of student debt from living on OSAP for nearly a decade. I got her signed up with ODSP and that helped - between ODSP, my job and her job, the monthly payments would be manageable along with rent/food. So the next step was to find her a job.

Finding a job was surprisingly easy - cashier positions at Chinese supermarkets - but keeping it was not. My mother went through more than six jobs last year and through no fault of her own. There is no cure for schizophrenia, only dampening of the symptoms, and the shots along with medication for side effects has my mother considerably doped up. She was slow and she forgot things, she would tell me; the bosses were very angry at her. Hearing this always made me want to storm into their store and kick down their fruit stands, but I would tell her that it was okay and that every lost job meant more experience. She would find the right place eventually.

To my surprise and relief, it was true. She has kept her current cashier job for almost half a year. A co-worker picks her up and drops her off, and she eats her meals there. She tells me her feet hurt, but when I worry and ask if she is working too many hours, she says that she likes being productive and she wants to save money for me to go to school. It's an incredibly ironic idea - but also touching. This is the type of person my mom is.

What I have written is not quite volunteer or community work. If I had the time, I would love to volunteer at an animal shelter and rave about it here. But when I think about making differences in people's lives, there is nothing I am prouder and happier about than the improvement of my mother's life.



I originally attended Ivey Business School at Western because I planned to become an investment banker. It was not a career I was thrilled about, but there were pros and cons to all the careers I had considered, and investment banking won out in the end. My change of heart is due to something so trivial it will probably make you facepalm. Western had a comprehensive career test on its website that I took out of curiosity halfway through the year, and the first result given back to me was animator. And I went, oh - wow - I forgot that existed. It had never come up before. After extensive research, I felt like a fool, because everything about that career and industry resonated with me.

Fast forward to now: there have been times where I felt ashamed or embarrassed around my friends because I have fallen behind in school.  I accept that those feelings will come and pass. The bigger picture is clear, especially as I write this application: I am so relieved with the way things have turned out. Growing up, I thought I would hate my mother forever because I couldn't fathom her ever getting better. I felt like an orphan determined to shake off their past. But now I am in an alternate reality where my mother works and lives normally, where we share favourite restaurants and argue about what movie to see at the cinema.

The break was worth every minute because it allows me to return to school with the freedom to focus completely on my studies. I am in a happier and even more independent place. I am not a college freshman anymore, worried about appearances or partying; there's nothing more I want to do than return to school and prove that this scholarship is not going to waste. I had a lot of time to reflect whether animation really was for me, and there was not a single day that I didn't feel excited by the prospect of having a career in the field. I am full of hope for the future. I can't help but believe in myself, and I hope you will too.