When Rebekah Moreno finally pursued her dream of becoming a nurse, the school she applied to doubted her homeschool diploma. HSLDA intervened.

Rebekah was born with a benign brain tumor that caused hydrocephalus, a condition in which excess fluid builds up in the brain. By the time she was 17, she'd undergone 7 surgeries.

Her time in the hospital led to her dream of becoming a nurse. “My whole life I stayed in hospitals,” she said. “I had wonderful nurses that I just really loved and appreciated.”

One of them potentially saved her life by noticing something was wrong during a routine checkup. Her care resulted in an emergency surgery.

Another offered to braid her hair and sit and talk with her prior to one of her surgeries. “Hospitals are a scary place,” Rebekah said. “I would get anxiety attacks every time before a surgery.”

“She just sat and talked with me and braided my hair,” Rebekah said. “And that just made me feel so cared for and so comfortable. My anxiety left because she took that time to sit with me.”

Those experiences solidified Rebekah’s dream of becoming a nurse. “I wanted to make people feel the way that she made me feel,” she said.

Rebekah was homeschooled through high school. After graduating in 2015, she took a gap year and moved to Colombia to work for a missions organization—she taught English and did some administrative work. She only intended to be in South America for 6 months, but she ended up loving it and met her husband there.

They got married and lived in Colombia for almost eight years before moving to the US.

While she was in South America, she thought she had missed her opportunity to pursue nursing, but when she and her husband moved back, she realized it wasn’t too late. “This is my opportunity to restart that dream,” she said.

She immediately took an accelerated phlebotomy course in order to get started in the medical field, and then applied to a bunch of nursing schools, including her dream school—Chamberlain University. She also got a job as a phlebotomist in a hospital.  

But then an adviser from Chamberlain said her high school transcripts didn’t meet the application standard because they were issued by her parents instead of a state-approved school or a homeschool organization. “She kept saying my high school transcripts from my parents wouldn’t be sufficient,” Rebekah said. “I felt like she was trying to tell me I was not educated.”

The counselor said her only hope of moving on in the admissions process would be to take the GED. Rebekah walked away from the conversations with her admissions counselor extremely discouraged. “I felt really disqualified,” she said.

Her mom was furious when she told her what happened, and she reached out to HSLDA for help.

HSLDA attorney Will Estrada sent a letter to the school explaining Rebekah’s education was sufficient according to the laws of Illinois and that she did not need to get a GED––reinforcing what Rebekah and her mom already knew. The letter also offered a conversation to discuss the school’s concerns.

A few weeks later, shortly before the beginning of the semester in Chamberlain, Rebekah received her acceptance letter. Looking back at the events of last semester, she remembers how challenging it was before HSLDA got involved.

“I just really felt like they were trying to disqualify me,” she said. “Because of my medical condition, I just believed a lot of lies over the years about who I am,” she added.

Through it all, Rebekah's dream did not waver. Even though some people in her life doubted her ability to pursue nursing because of her middle condition, she persisted through the doors God opened for her.

She looks forward to continuing her nursing education at Chamberlain and to helping patients feel the same comfort and inspiration she felt from nurses when she was a patient.

“If you have a dream, chase after it,” she said. “Climb that mountain. People might be laughing now, but they're going to be amazed when you make it to the top.”