Nicole Carson grew up outside Detroit. When she was ten, her family lost their home. Cardboard boxes for furniture. A mattress on the floor. Ten moves in eighteen years, hotels before apartments. Medical and dental needs went unmet. Whatever money there was went to her brother’s crisis. At fifteen she was working at Wienerschnitzel for $4.25 an hour, babysitting, and cleaning houses to help her family make ends meet — taking toilet paper from McDonald’s so there was more money for food. Like a lot of teenagers carrying more than they should, she found ways to make the pain quieter. Self-medication was how she dissociated from what she couldn’t yet name. She understands that road from the inside.

Her parents came into parenthood already carrying wounds that were never treated. Her mother — a survivor who came to this country before Nicole was born, built a life from scratch, and kept everyone else going — put her own needs so far down the list that most of us never knew they were there. Her father worked hard, spent long stretches on the road, and had no tools for what he was feeling. Family members lived with co-occurring diagnoses — Autism, ADHD, Bipolar disorder, anxiety, depression — with no language, no support, and no path to care. Poor regulation skills handed down through generations. Not from lack of love. From a complete absence of tools.

From community college to her Master’s degree it took a long time and a hard road. In between, Nicole was a team mom, a classroom mom, an inventor, a business owner. She drove kids to speech and vision therapy. She built a air conditioning business with her then-husband. The dream of High Hopes was always there. It just took a while to get there. And through all of it, in the background with no family support to lean on, her brother’s mental health crisis was still happening. Just like when they were children.

Nicole volunteered as a therapist for Pathways to Independence for almost ten years — unpaid — because she believed in their mission and recognized the women she was sitting across from. They had grown up in neglect, trauma, and instability. That is where this work really started. She earned her clinical hours in special education and behavioral health programs across public, non-public, and private schools throughout Orange County. At forty — post-divorce, raising three kids — she went back to graduate school for her Master’s in Counseling Psychology, then earned her Pupil Personnel Services credential to support student mental health throughout OC schools.

At fifty she was diagnosed with ADHD, anxiety, and depression. Suddenly a lifetime of climbing twice as hard made sense. That same brain — the creativity, the ability to see something that doesn’t exist and build it anyway — is why High Hopes looks the way it does. ADHD made the climb harder. And it made the destination possible.