"I want to be able to help more people because I enjoy to help people. It makes me happy to see other people enjoying themselves and kind of feel that relief after all that stress. The challengesI have experienced have given me the strength to advocate for Black Lives Matter and against police brutality." - Sophia, 12 years old
My name is Sophia. I am 12 years old and I'm from Boston, Massachusetts. In the beginning of 2020, I had a rather tragic event happened in my family where I had to move in with my grandparents. And I had spent a really long time away from my family and I hadn't been in contact with them. Throughout this time, something I had picked up to like kind of give me that support I needed was drawing. So I had, throughout this time, I had continued to drawing and this event that had happened, I definitely had an impact on the way I had acted and who I had considered friends and stuff like that and who I had trusted, but events happened. And I eventually moved in back with, I moved back with my parents. Then I had to go back with my grandparents and while I was there for the second time, my uncle, I had been very close with, had gotten into a car accident and went into a coma. And I was, I was really devastated because I had been personally, I was really close with him and I think that it was definitely a hard time for me because having to live with my grandparents, not being able to see my parents and the pandemic going around and my uncle in the hospital was kind of like a big thing for me. And I was only like 11 at the time. So I was rather immature, but kind of having this kind of made me think about all the things that are going on in the world, not just for me, but for other people too. And that kind of made me recognize. Like the things that are happening as in like air pollution, racism, like religious rights and stuff like that. Right. Then I moved back with my parents after my uncle had recovered from his coma. Is He ok now? Yeah, he's okay. Now he's living with my grandparents now, little by little, he gets better. I am glad. Yeah. Kind of throughout this time that I had. And like the two years that this had happened, it was definitely a really rough time for me just to have a younger brother with me as well. And I had to kind of take care of him and it really made me kind of look into the things that are going on in the world and kind of. It changed me a lot. Definitely kind of being able to see like what's wrong and what's right in this world and how things need to change and the ways I can help to make that change. It was a lot on me throughout this time. I had been thinking about all the things that had happened and how, how I'm supposed to stay strong and how I need to help my brother. And I need to support my grandparents, right. Because they're trying to help my uncle and me and my brother. I was thinking, how can I support this? And what are some things I can do to help them and to help me, I want to be able to help more people because I enjoy to help people. I, it makes me, it makes me happy to see other people enjoying themselves and kind of feel that relief after all that stress. So I really, I think advocating for my topic kind of all this event had kind of given me the strength to advocate for black lives matter and advocate against police brutality.