The Goostree Law Group Bright Futures Scholarship

Carleigh Lewaniak

In her essay, Carleigh shares how the loss of a parent inspired her to support those facing similar situations. Through volunteering and internship experiences, she found herself wanting to pursue a career in family law. She is dedicated to using her legal knowledge to assist vulnerable families and children. Congratulations, Carleigh, and we wish you all the best in your future endeavors!

Read Her Essay:

Through my personal and professional experiences, I have become a person who will positively contribute to the legal field and excel as a family attorney. This is a journey that began when I was sixteen years old, and my father passed away from an unexpected illness. Then, at age nineteen, my mother was diagnosed with an incurable disease. The love and family I had always known was being torn away by invisible forces that I was unable to counteract. The culmination of these events, combined with my education and legal internships, have equipped me for my legal studies and to practice family law to do what I can to provide children with the love that is so imperative to their emotional wellbeing. Below I will explain in more detail how I arrived at my resolution to be a family attorney.

Few young people in the western world have to contemplate the loss of both parents, the prospect of living without the love and support of unconditional familial ties. This is a prospect I came to know terribly well. My father died due to an adverse reaction to cancer medications for stage four esophageal cancer. I was left without a father and tasked with taking care of my grieving family while I remained in denial. My two older brothers approached this heartbreak differently: one took comfort in his faith, the other fell into a world of medicated numbness. I held each piece of my broken family together, while I struggled to find myself amidst this nightmare. When, three years later, my mother was diagnosed with an incurable disease, she faced repeated chemotherapy treatments, and it seemed that the cycle of tragedy was to be repeated. In that instant, I thought my mom was going to pass away too, leaving me completely alone at the age of nineteen. Her survival is the source of the most profoundly unexpected joy.

My own grief has for long motivated me to become involved in the support of those left vulnerable by loss or the prospect of losing a parent. I had the good fortune to stumble across a nonprofit organization called Camp Kesem which supports children through and beyond their parent’s cancer diagnosis. I was even luckier to be asked to run the entire undergraduate chapter for two years. In this capacity I was finally able to turn what my pain had taught me to the benefit of the children who needed guidance most. My chapter of Camp Kesem reached 200 children throughout the state of Michigan each year while we raised upwards of $100,000 annually to offset the costs of programming. This role showed me that I would spend my career helping families in difficult situations.

This concern for the wellbeing of children and their families informed my research career as an undergraduate. In my own empirically-driven project, I focused on the transitional periods of students with low-functioning autism and their assimilation into peer-aged environments on local college campuses. Faculty mentors and I recorded parent testimonials to conduct qualitative analyses that told me much about how families deal with difficult situations. In an additional study, a research team I joined advocated for policy change within the Michigan legislature for families with children in palliative care. Our team surveyed families enduring the agony of caring for very sick children while also facing a serious lack of resources. These testimonials helped our research team to write a proposal to contribute to the push to achieve an additional Medicaid waiver for children with life-threatening illnesses. My respect for evidence deepened as our role became that of advocating for the wellbeing of the families and their children on a statewide level.

Convinced that my future lay with using the law to protect families and vulnerable children, I applied for legal internships under the category of family law. As a result, I secured a legal internship in Eastern Michigan with an attorney who practiced family law and dealt with a variety of clients daily. She granted me the opportunity to take notes during court, interview witnesses, submit adoption paperwork requests, aid PPO claims, and much more. I found speaking with the clients before, during, and after they passed through our office to be gratifying and inspiring. We helped to bring broken families together, secure international adoptions, and mediate difficult relationship disputes. The attorney’s wisdom and the experience I gained over my three months left me yearning to dive more deeply into this world.

If I can help one family, another, and the next, I think that I will be fully fulfilled with my work and the person that I have become. Law school is the next step on my journey toward self-fulfillment and helping families that were forced to face struggles like my very own. Currently working in the higher education area of the legal environment at the University of Chicago has solidified my aspirations. Seeing so many people take a decisive step towards a career of rational humanity inspires me to follow their lead. My heart and abundant sense of compassion will fuel my fire to pursue this advanced degree and I am abundantly excited to share my passion with the legal world.