The Detour That Changed My Life

May 5th, 2026

This weekend, I graduate with my Master’s in Social Work. I cannot sit for my licensing exam until the end of the summer because of clinical hours, but I still get to walk across that stage!

My parents missed my bachelor’s graduation, so they insisted I come home for this one. I leave in two days, already anticipating that damp New England breeze that greets you like a slap to the face.

The last time I walked, my best friend Tori and I led the graduates into the pavilion. We were both on the Student Government Association board, she as Vice President and me as Class Treasurer. The entire board was women, which feels even more meaningful now than it did then.

We stood at the front of that ceremony for what felt like hours, waiting for names to be called, time stretching itself thin. I remember that season of life as heavy in a way I did not yet have language for. Quiet. Unsteady. Suffering with a dysregulated nervous system I did not know how to name, only feel. If I am honest, I was lost in it.

This time feels different.

Three years later, life has shifted in ways I could not have planned for. It is strange how transformation rarely announces itself, how it only becomes visible in hindsight. Now, days before this next graduation, I feel something I once had no access to. A regulated nervous system. A grounded sense of self. A steadiness that allows me not only to hold my own experiences, but to help others hold theirs.

When I look back at that earlier version of myself, I can see her more clearly now. I did not know her yet, but she was already becoming.

At the time, I was headed toward law school. I knew my career had to involve helping others the same way I had been helped, through exploring the outdoors, patience from those around me, and learning how to communicate with the world in a way that felt honest and alive. It made sense on paper, but something in me knew I was being pulled toward something more human, more relational, more felt.

Two weeks before my program was set to begin, I withdrew. I chose a job in a mental health facility instead, and without realizing it, I began building a life inside the work I was meant for.

For two years, I sat with people at their lowest points. Some were caught in looping histories they could not escape. Others drifted in and out of conversations only they could hear, speaking to empty space as if it might answer back. It was heavy work, often heartbreaking, always human.

Most of my time was spent with adolescents, a world that carries its own chaos. These were kids moving through suicidal thoughts, overwhelming emotion, and the sharp edges of growing up too quickly. It was unpredictable, exhausting, and strangely full of life.

The people I worked with became something like family. That tends to happen when days stretch into 8 to 16 hour shifts, weeks folding into 40, sometimes 72 hours of shared intensity. Code greens. Code oranges. Moments that required everything from everyone. One of those days left me with a concussion from a fourteen year old, who then wrote me an apology note the next day.

And still, what stayed with me most was the quiet in between.

We met them with sarcasm, steadiness, and care. We colored when words were too sharp. We played basketball in a fenced in court. We watched the same four DVDs repeatedly (even though we had a hundred to choose from). We sat in circles over Bananagrams, Palace, Skip Bo, letting connection happen in the ordinary.

It taught me something simple and lasting. Not to take things personally. To listen differently. To understand that expression often arrives disguised as chaos. And that sometimes, a handwritten apology says more than any conversation ever could.

That was when it settled in me. Whatever came next had to involve teenagers. And somehow, it also had to include the outdoors, something open enough to hold what cannot be contained inside walls.

So here I am, years later, in Idaho. Graduating. Stepping into licensure as a therapist. Working in prevention in a role I genuinely love, helping teenagers build relationships, communicate with clarity, and learn the shape of their own boundaries.

This summer, I plan to explore how to more intentionally bring the outdoors into that work, to let nature become part of the way healing and learning happen. It feels like a continuation of everything that brought me here.

And the best part is still this.

Every day, with a regulated nervous system, I get to offer the steadiness I once needed.

Sarah Amoros