I read about judges who had changed the course of history with a single ruling. I read about lawyers who fought for people who had nobody else in their corner.
And I thought: That is what I want to do.
I want to stand in a courtroom and fight for people who have been thrown away.
The irony of that desire was not lost on me.
I had been thrown away. My parents had discarded me like I was nothing. And that wound, that deep burning wound of being rejected by the people who were supposed to protect you, fueled everything I did. Every paper I wrote. Every exam I studied for. Every late night I stayed up reading case law while Zara slept beside me.
I was proving them wrong.
I was proving that the girl they threw out in the dark was worth something.
By the end of my first year at community college, I had a 3.9 GPA. My academic adviser, a man named Professor Lewis Holden, pulled me aside and told me that with grades like mine, I should be thinking about transferring to a four-year university.
He said there were programs for nontraditional students, for single parents, for people who had overcome adversity.
He helped me start putting together transfer applications.
In the summer of 2009, Grandma Lorraine had a minor stroke. She was 77 years old.
I drove down to Shepherdsville as fast as I could with Zara in the back seat. And when I walked into the hospital room, she was sitting up in bed, irritated that the nurses would not let her get up and walk around.
That was Grandma Lorraine.
Even a stroke could not keep her down.
But the stroke changed things. She could not drive anymore. She could not send money as regularly because her medical bills were adding up.
I told her to stop sending me anything, that I was managing, that she needed to take care of herself.
She argued with me about it, of course.
She said taking care of me was taking care of herself because it gave her purpose.
During that hospital visit, she told me something I did not fully understand at the time.
She said, “Joan, I have made sure you will be taken care of. No matter what happens to me, you will be taken care of. Do you understand?”
I nodded, but I thought she was just being reassuring.
I did not know she was talking about something specific, something concrete, something that would change my life years later.
In the fall of 2009, I transferred to the University of Louisville with a scholarship that covered most of my tuition. I was 22 years old, a junior in college, and a single mother of a five-year-old.
I majored in political science with a minor in philosophy.
I joined a study group made up of other nontraditional students, older adults going back to school, veterans, single parents like me.
We pushed each other. We held each other accountable. We celebrated every small victory together.
I graduated from the University of Louisville in May of 2011 with a Bachelor of Arts in political science.
I graduated summa cum laude.
Grandma Lorraine was in the audience in her wheelchair, pushed by a home health aide, wearing a purple hat she had bought specifically for the occasion. When my name was called, she raised both hands above her head and clapped, and I could hear her voice cutting through the crowd, shouting:
“That’s my granddaughter!”
I cried.
I stood on that stage in my cap and gown and cried in front of thousands of people, and I did not care.
That same day, after the ceremony, I called my parents’ house in Hillview.
I do not know what possessed me to do it. Maybe it was the emotion of the day. Maybe it was the part of me that still wanted them to be proud of me.
My mother answered.
I told her I had graduated from college.
There was a long pause, and then she said, “Good for you.”
Two words.
No warmth. No pride. No curiosity about how I had managed to do it while raising a child alone.
Just good for you, spoken in a tone that made it clear she did not actually mean it.
I hung up the phone and made a decision.
I decided that I was done reaching out.
I was done extending olive branches to people who only used them as firewood.
If my parents wanted a relationship with me, they would have to be the ones to come to me.
They would have to earn it.
In the fall of 2011, I enrolled at the Brandeis School of Law at the University of Louisville.
Law school was a different animal entirely. The workload was staggering. The competition was fierce. And doing it as a single mother with a seven-year-old child was something most of my classmates could not even fathom.
There were times when I brought Zara to the law library with me because I could not find a sitter. She would sit at the table next to me coloring in her books while I read constitutional law.
The librarian never said a word about it.
I think she understood.
I took out student loans. I worked part-time at a legal aid clinic. I applied for every scholarship I could find.
And through it all, Grandma Lorraine called me every Sunday.
Her voice was weaker now, her words sometimes slower, but her faith in me never wavered.
She would ask me about my classes, about my professors, about what I was learning.
She would say things like, “Joan, you’re going to sit on a bench one day. I can feel it.”
And I would laugh and say she was dreaming.
But she was not dreaming.
She was prophesying.
Law school consumed three years of my life, and those three years tested me in ways I did not think were possible.
There were moments when I considered quitting, not because I could not handle the academics, because I could. My grades were strong. My professors respected me. I had a particular talent for constitutional law and judicial procedure that surprised even me.
But the exhaustion was relentless. The financial pressure was crushing. And the loneliness was a constant, quiet ache that never fully went away.
Zara was growing up. She went from a quiet little girl who colored in the law library to a sharp, witty kid who asked questions that sometimes caught me off guard.
In the fall of 2013, when she was nine, she asked me a question I had been dreading. She asked me why she did not have grandparents on my side. She said the other kids at school talked about visiting their grandparents for the holidays, and she wanted to know where mine were.
I sat her down on the couch in our small apartment, a two-bedroom unit I had moved into near campus, and I told her the truth.
I kept it simple, but I did not sugarcoat it.
I told her that when I was very young, my parents made a choice not to be part of my life, and that it had nothing to do with her. I told her that sometimes adults make decisions that are hurtful and wrong and that the people they hurt have to find a way to keep going anyway.
She looked at me for a long time and then said, “So they missed out on us.”
Not a question.
A statement.
Nine years old, and she understood it better than I did at 16.
Grandma Lorraine was the only grandparent Zara knew, and she adored her. They had a bond that was beautiful to watch. Grandma Lorraine would send Zara handwritten letters, little stories about animals and flowers and adventures that she made up just for her.
Zara kept every single one of those letters in a shoebox under her bed.
She still has that shoebox today.
In the spring of 2014, during my final semester of law school, Grandma Lorraine was hospitalized again. This time it was more serious. Her kidneys were failing, and the doctor said she might need dialysis.
I drove to Shepherdsville every weekend, bringing Zara with me, and we sat by her bedside and read to her.
Sometimes she was alert and laughing and telling stories about her teaching days. Other times she was tired and quiet, holding my hand with her thin fingers, looking at me with an expression I could not fully read.