When Feli­cia decid­ed to return to col­lege, she was­n’t sure where the deci­sion would lead.

The 48-year-old moth­er had already earned her asso­ciate degrees in psy­chol­o­gy and behav­ioral sci­ence, but after watch­ing her son, Ace, nav­i­gate his own chal­lenges in school, she began think­ing more seri­ous­ly about how she could turn her expe­ri­ence sup­port­ing young peo­ple and fam­i­lies into a career.

Feli­cia had become some­one oth­er par­ents and young peo­ple often turned to for guid­ance, par­tic­u­lar­ly when they were strug­gling to find resources or under­stand how to sup­port their chil­dren. Return­ing to school offered a path toward doing that work pro­fes­sion­al­ly.

Today, Feli­cia is study­ing LGBTQ Stud­ies, with minors in Coun­sel­ing and Social Change and Psy­chol­o­gy, at San Diego State Uni­ver­si­ty. Her 18-year-old son, Ace, recent­ly grad­u­at­ed from high school and is begin­ning his own col­lege jour­ney at Gross­mont Col­lege, with plans to even­tu­al­ly pur­sue archi­tec­ture.

Nei­ther expect­ed they would become col­lege stu­dents at the same time.

For a fam­i­ly nav­i­gat­ing high­er edu­ca­tion with­out gen­er­a­tions of expe­ri­ence or sig­nif­i­cant finan­cial resources to fall back on, how­ev­er, get­ting there has required more than decid­ing to pur­sue a degree. Tuition is only part of the cost. Books, trans­porta­tion, school sup­plies and every­day liv­ing expens­es can quick­ly make con­tin­u­ing an edu­ca­tion finan­cial­ly dif­fi­cult.

Those pres­sures now exist twice with­in the same house­hold

Feli­cia is bal­anc­ing her edu­ca­tion with the respon­si­bil­i­ties of sup­port­ing her fam­i­ly. Ace is begin­ning col­lege while think­ing about expens­es as basic as a back­pack, text­books and trans­porta­tion.

Both received schol­ar­ship sup­port through Nation­al Rain­bow Col­lege Fund (NRCF), help­ing pro­vide the finan­cial sta­bil­i­ty they need to con­tin­ue their edu­ca­tion.

“We don’t always have that kind of built-in fam­i­ly assis­tance,” Feli­cia said.

Instead, they’ve built their own.

They sit togeth­er with lap­tops work­ing through schol­ar­ship appli­ca­tions. They remind each oth­er about dead­lines and read one another’s essays. Feli­cia helps Ace nav­i­gate appli­ca­tions and col­lege process­es she has only recent­ly learned her­self, while Ace offers encour­age­ment when his mom begins to ques­tion whether she can take on the next chal­lenge.

For Ace, watch­ing his moth­er and step­fa­ther return to school also changed what he imag­ined for him­self.

“I def­i­nite­ly got inspired a bit, because I was like, okay, I could actu­al­ly do this,” he said.

For much of high school, Ace assumed he would grad­u­ate and begin work­ing. Col­lege did­n’t always feel finan­cial­ly real­is­tic. But see­ing his par­ents pur­sue their own degrees made high­er edu­ca­tion feel more attain­able.

“I did­n’t want to just bounce around jobs for­ev­er,” he said. “I would like to actu­al­ly get a degree that I can do some­thing with.”

With­out schol­ar­ships, Feli­cia said, their edu­ca­tion­al plans would look very dif­fer­ent.

“I don’t think I would have even attempt­ed to go through col­lege,” she said.

Schol­ar­ship sup­port has also helped Feli­cia pro­vide the sta­bil­i­ty she wants Ace to have while he pur­sues his edu­ca­tion. She wants him to be able to save what he earns while she con­tin­ues cov­er­ing neces­si­ties such as hous­ing, food and his phone.

NRCF’s pri­va­cy-first schol­ar­ship pro­gram is designed to pro­tect access to high­er edu­ca­tion for LGBTQ+ stu­dents and allies, includ­ing stu­dents whose finan­cial sta­bil­i­ty, safe­ty or fam­i­ly sup­port can­not always be assumed. Stu­dents do not have to make their per­son­al lives pub­lic to receive sup­port.

For Feli­cia and Ace, that sup­port is help­ing them main­tain their edu­ca­tion­al momen­tum while also cre­at­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties beyond the next semes­ter.

Ace hopes to even­tu­al­ly trans­fer and study archi­tec­ture. Through NRCF, he has also been con­nect­ed with a men­tor who can offer guid­ance in a field Feli­cia read­i­ly admits she doesn’t know how to nav­i­gate her­self.

Feli­cia is look­ing for­ward to using her edu­ca­tion to help young peo­ple and fam­i­lies find the guid­ance, sup­port and resources they need to nav­i­gate chal­lenges in their own lives.

The sig­nif­i­cance of their shared jour­ney became par­tic­u­lar­ly clear when Feli­cia and Ace attend­ed San Diego Foundation’s annu­al Schol­ar­ship Cel­e­bra­tion—not as a stu­dent and his guest, but as two schol­ar­ship recip­i­ents.

Sit­ting togeth­er among stu­dents and donors, they real­ized how unusu­al their sto­ry was.

“That was sur­re­al for me,” Feli­cia said.

Ace agreed. Until then, attend­ing col­lege along­side his mom had sim­ply become part of their fam­i­ly’s life. At the event, he began to see it dif­fer­ent­ly.

“I thought, oh, I guess this is spe­cial.”

Their sto­ry is also a reminder that edu­ca­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ty doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly move through a fam­i­ly in a straight line.

Some­times a par­ent shows a child that col­lege is pos­si­ble.

Some­times a child gives a par­ent a rea­son to return.

And some­times they’re fill­ing out schol­ar­ship appli­ca­tions at the same kitchen table, fig­ur­ing it out togeth­er.

For Feli­cia, receiv­ing sup­port has already changed how she thinks about what she may some­day be able to give some­one else. She and her part­ner have talked about even­tu­al­ly spon­sor­ing a stu­dent them­selves.

“If we could get to the point where we could spon­sor a kid,” Feli­cia said, they would have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to “pay it for­ward and also help that many more kids.”

See­ing the sup­port Ace has received has made that pos­si­bil­i­ty par­tic­u­lar­ly mean­ing­ful to her.

Sup­port NRCF Stu­dents today.