Megan Wagstaff

I grew up in Laketown which is a small town on the south end of Bearlake Utah. My grandma lived a couple blocks from us and we were really close. I spent a lot of time at her house and she always made me feel safe. When my parents separated when I was 10, I would go to Laketown to see my dad every other weekend. He eventually bought a house that shared a yard with my grandmas house so she took care of us a lot while my dad worked. When I became a teenager I was dealing with a lot. Not only was I dealing with the typical teenage things like boys, trying to fit in, etc. but I was also struggling with multiple moves which resulted in getting used to new schools constantly. I was also struggling with getting along with my new my step-dad and having a large combined family which I often felt lost in. Whenever I would visit my dad and my grandma could see that I was struggling she would throw me her keys and say "Let's go for a drive around the lake". To drive around Bearlake took about an hour so it gave us plenty of time to talk. She gave me a safe place to talk about whatever I wanted. I told her my frustrations with my step-dad about boys breaking my heart, about the challenges of fitting in new high schools at 16. At that time she was the only one that I felt truly cared and listened to me. It also gave her time to give me life advice that has carried with me all my life. One of the biggest life advice she gave me was to live my life and make sure I have a career to be able to take care of myself. She had been married right after high school because that was the culturally thing to do. She always told me she wished she had gone to college and lived her life before she got married. That drove me to be the first one in my family to graduate college and have a successful career. Those drives shaped me into who I am today and showed me that the right people will show up in the ways you need them to, even if it's just a drive around the lake.