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It's Never too Late


Going to college has always been one of my dreams. I grew up watching Denise attend school at the historical (yet fictional) black school, Hillman University, on A Different World. I couldn't wait to attend an HBCU and dreamt about all of the people I would meet and the memories I would make. I had my life all mapped out. After college I would work at a prestigious law firm as the top defense attorney, get married to the man of my dreams, and have three beautiful brown children. Unfortunately, I didn't factor life happening into my dreams, so boy was I surprised when it hit me like a ton of bricks extremely early in my young years.


At the age of 16 during my sophomore year I witnessed something tragic happen at my high school and it changed me forever. I dropped out, and soon after went directly to Grafton Job Corps in Massachusetts. After my first week there I signed up for my GED. I finished the test within 30 minutes, laid my head on my desk and went to sleep for the remaining two hours of the testing time. I passed with a high score and attained my GED before I even had a drivers license.


Life continued to hit me from every-side for the next five years and before I knew it, I had become a single, teen mother, living on my own in the projects and working full-time to provide for my son and I. My dream of college became a distant memory.


While I never got a chance to attend college, God has allowed me to do things, sit at tables, and go places that honestly my lack of education should have never allowed. He gave me supernatural wisdom that has opened doors that the enemy tried to bolt close.


Yet at the beginning of 2022, the Lord began to press on my heart that it was time for me to go higher. It was time for me to go deeper in what he has purposed me to do. It was time to go back to school. So after much prayer, I took the step and I registered for Middlesex Community College.



On the first day of school I claimed my seat in my first class, Intro to Human Services, I was the third person to arrive in class because, let's be honest, ya girl was super anxious. I didn't know what to expect and didn't want to miss anything. As each person arrived and took their seat I wondered what their story was, how did they end up in this class. It wasn't long before I realized that I was one of the three oldest people in the class and everyone else had just graduated high-school, I mean had JUST graduated months before. As my professor began to speak and share about all that we would be learning during the semester, I couldn't help but feel scared. I had a moment where I began to doubt that I could handle this. Are you crazy Sana, you have a ton of things happening in your life right now, what are you thinking? I began to feel the heaviness of the responsibility, this was day one of the next at least five years of my life. Do you have the capacity for this Sana?


I forced myself to snap back into my present reality and allowed myself to feel me. I began to speak to my own doubt and worry. I allowed myself to feel my body in the chair, my feet on the floor (well in my case, handing just over the floor), and the air in my lungs. Breathe. Sana.This was day one, only focus on day one. We'll deal with each day as they present themselves but for now, today is what is before you. Soon after I realized that I was exactly where I needed to be, when I needed to be. I will finish.


I want to encourage you of the same thing. You are right where you need to be, when you need to be. It may look like a bad place and feel like a hard place, but it's the place God needs you to be, to get you to where he needs you to be. Don't give up, don't give in, Just BE.


Until next time Family,

Sana L. Cotten, LMFT Loading!


Photographer: Sazjanee Ford

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