Beach Voices: Guardian Scholar, filmmaker writes her own life's script
When you foster yourself, you fuel your future.
Before CSULB, I was a top-track athlete and a professional musician. But first, I was a foster child. I was adopted into a poor, working-class family of gold miners in a small town in Canada by a Finnish mother who fostered more than 44 foster children. My adopted mother is my hero and believed in the power of empathy.
I’ve lived through many character-defining moments: forced to leave home as a teenager, overcoming a disadvantaged home plagued by alcoholism and graduating high school while living on student welfare. And then, despite establishing talents in track and a professional music career, I experienced a traumatic incident that rendered me permanently disabled with Complex Regional Pain Syndrome. I decided to turn pain into power, even though I can no longer walk properly, or run with my legs, or play my guitar.
That’s why I am graduating this year as a proud Guardian Scholar with a degree in Film and Cinematic Arts, in narrative production within the directing track. At CSULB, the Guardian Scholars Program supports current and former foster youth with academic counseling, financial aid guidance, tutoring, mentorship.
My doctors, along with my Guardian Scholars super team — Candi, Howard, Cheryl and Lady O — have taught me something powerful: Even if you physically can’t run, you can keep running with your mind.
And I have. My senior film, "LANE," was selected for a Golden Globe Grant supported by the Black Alumni, Bob Murphy Access Center and Guardian Scholars. I am proud of all my peers' stories, too!
Like all Guardian Scholars, I know what it’s like to be underestimated. We all, at times, have asked ourselves on campus: How can I make it here? Will I finish? What is family?
Family is right here, next to you. You write the script for your own life.
I have had deep conversations with many of my fellow scholars about failure, success and the future. We are the 1% — rare, because we had the first opportunity as foster children to endure the harshness of life, the darkness of doubt. But in us there is nothing but light.
We must wield our marginalization as a badge of honor. It is our time to lead with love, ignore doubt and stand up against bullying using the greatest weapon — our education.
I have often said that college is my cure for my disability and that film has been my pharmacy of hope. As Guardian Scholars, we all know what being buried deep in challenges and what doubt is like. But each time we walked through the doors of the Guardian Scholars Lounge in Academic Services Room 116 — a welcoming space and the heart of the program — we no longer felt lost. The leaders found a way to foster the future and finish. And, as a result, we learned to mine the gold within ourselves. That’s why we wear gold.
Ebony Tay ‘25 is a member of the Guardian Scholars program and the Bob Murphy Access Center.
Beach Voices is an occasional feature that allows members of The Beach community — students, faculty, staff and alumni — to share their firsthand experiences. If you would like to be considered, send submissions labeled “Beach Voices” to StratComm@csulb.edu.
