Lyn Sepersky, University of Wisconsin – Wisconsin, $1,500
By Lyn Sepersky
I was supposed to feel heard. I was supposed to feel loved. But in the pews of the Catholic Church that raised me, I felt nothing at all.
For so long, I was told that God would listen to and provide for my needs. In return, I was supposed to listen to him: follow his will, listen to his words, play by his rules.
I was living for someone else, a deity who I believed would fix me — yet it was when I left his church that I learned I could change it myself. I learned that I, on my own, was enough to change the world, a lesson that many other Americans are currently learning.
