I was born and raised in Quebec City, Canada, and I had a pretty uneventful childhood. My father was a lawyer, so I thought I would follow in his footsteps from the time I was young. In Quebec, we have a peculiar education system where we attend two years of pre-collegial studies in either humanities or science before starting our bachelor’s degree. Because I was considering law at the time, I did two years of humanities. Following those two years, I was accepted into law school but soon realized that my idea of justice and the law were two vastly different things. Although my father was a lawyer, and my stepfather was a judge, I felt a powerful sense of inner conflict with my values and integrity. For the longest time, I had wanted to be a lawyer; this goal went away suddenly, and I wanted to see what else the world had to offer.

This was when I started traveling around the world. I first traveled across all the United States, visiting the national parks and hiking in the mountains. After that, I went south and visited Mexico and Central America. During this trip, I visited Costa Rica for the first time. I stayed there for six months, studying organic agriculture and permaculture while living at a farmhouse. My eyes were opened to the beauty of living a simple life. People eat fresh mangoes and avocados, live by the river, and ride horses. The warm climate was a drastic change to the chilly weather in my hometown.

My time in Costa Rica flew by, and before I knew it, I was back in North America. That is when I met my first husband. We had two kids while living in the Ozark Mountains. My first child was born right before September 11, 2001, which was a time that I will never forget. I remember people putting out flags all over the place and walking around with guns. Having grown up in Canada, which is a very peaceful place, I was intimidated and decided to raise my kids in a calmer setting where they could learn about peaceful ways of engaging in the world. I wanted them to know important values such as cooperation versus competition and experience the beauty that I had discovered while traveling the world. At the time, technology was starting to take a prominent place in children’s lives. I did not want them to become absorbed in television and electronics. For all these reasons, I decided to move to Costa Rica.

We packed everything into a 16-foot trailer and drove down to Costa Rica. The drive took us a few weeks, and all along the way, people were mesmerized by my two blonde-haired blue-eyed children, who were 2 ½ and 9 months old. When we arrived in Costa Rica, we found a beautiful farm that could only be accessed by parking the car on the main road and hiking in two miles — that is where I raised my kids. Shortly after buying the farm, my husband and I got a divorce, which made me the sole provider and nurturer of my children. I brought everything into the farm on horseback or foot. I built three houses in the middle of an empty field surrounded by primary rainforest. Over time I set up gravity-fed spring water for drinking and solar panels for electricity. We had a large garden and rode horses. This little oasis became our home. 

We lived there for 12 years, and during this time, my kids were mostly homeschooled. There was a school a few miles from our home, but the teacher angrily yelled at the students, and I did not want to send them there. Their entire lives I had been the center of their universe, and they were content being homeschooled. However, when they became teenagers, they began to gravitate toward their peers, and they wanted to attend regular school. For six months, they made the two-mile hike to school, where they could socialize with kids their age and work on their Spanish. That was the main reason I wanted to send them there because they were so far ahead of the children their age. I wished there was a school where they could make friends and obtain a higher level of education.

At this time, I got my midwifery education through the Midwives College of Utah. Most of the learning was online, so I completed the coursework from my remote jungle hub, and the clinical work was done in Utah. After returning from Utah, I worked as a midwife near our home. Sometimes I attended births in the jungle where we were four hours from the nearest medical facility. I was confident in my midwife skills, but I felt it would be even better to have more skills and knowledge. There was one time we transferred a client to the nearest hospital for an emergency caesarean delivery. It was this gorgeous brand-new hospital. The baby was breech, so I told the client it would be best if we had a physician perform the delivery. When we arrived at the hospital, the doctor was nowhere to be found. At this moment, I realized that the brand-new facility was worthless without the ability of a physician.

In search of a better education for my children and a substantial work opportunity, I moved my family to Utah. I arrived with a suitcase and two kids. I was offered a position at that time. They picked me up from the airport at 10 p.m., and by midnight I was already attending a birth. We were super busy, doing about 220 births per year. Working at that clinic was so rewarding, but I remembered my time working in the jungle, and those experiences shaped my desire to further my education and become an obstetrician.

We lived in Spanish Fork, Utah, so the two closest options for me were Brigham Young University and Utah Valley University. It had been a long time since I had been a student, and I had never taken the ACT. Many prerequisites made applying for school a very daunting process. My daughter was in high school at the time and was taking concurrent enrollment courses through UVU. She was the one that encouraged me to apply to UVU, whose open-enrollment policy gave me a chance at furthering my education. As our first UVU student, my daughter graduated high school with 45 credits of completed college coursework.

Many people have the misconception that open enrollment means you receive a lower level of education. This could not be further from the truth. I had so many amazing professors that invested their time and talent in me. I am a firm believer that you reap what you sow. I see people that live so close to a university and take it for granted, saying, “I’ll do college next year.” After 12 years of living in the jungle, where accessibility to higher education was inexistent, I was grateful for this opportunity.

I was fortunate enough to receive a scholarship that enabled me to open my midwifery practice. Being a midwife and a student was difficult because I was always on call. This meant that I had to plan for the unplannable parts of my life. If a test was open for three days, I took it on day one. I did not have the choice to procrastinate. My professors were always understanding of my situation and accommodated my needs. Thanks to their dedication to teaching me, I am graduating with a biology major and chemistry minor in December 2020 with a 4.0 GPA.

Following graduation, I hope to attend medical school. One of the reasons I would recommend UVU is because of its engaged-learning efforts. I was able to research an area of study that is foundational to my desired medical specialty. Someday I want to use my skills to provide care in rural areas and offer medical support to those in need. UVU opened the door for me to further my education and achieve my dreams.