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Emily Manzo had never even dreamt of college. Now that she was here, would she survive? By Kimberly Felton

Imposter. How long before everyone knew she didn’t belong here? She wasn’t rich. She wasn’t white. She didn’t know those Bible stories that came up multiple times a day.

Did everyone know it already, just looking at her? Did they see straight through her?

Emily Manzo was used to being an imposter – used to hiding. She was 17 when she finally told the police the truth: “My sister isn’t lying.”

Confronting a Hard Truth

Her sister wasn’t lying about their parents’ drug addiction or physical abuse. She was the only kid telling the truth. Police had shown up before, and every time Emily said what her parents told her to say: “My sister has mental issues. She’s lying.”

But something shifted in her that day. “I just knew that in order to support my siblings, my mental health and our safety, something needed to happen.” Standing in the yard with the police, she looked at an officer and told the truth for the first time.

They believed her and they believed her sister. And then Emily, at 17, was a foster kid.

The police dropped her off at her foster home around midnight. Emily remembers little: a kind woman offering food; a teenage girl with an extra bed in her room.

Slowly, she learned to trust the safety of Brigett and Mike Eisele’s home, shifting from surviving the present to dreaming of the future.

“My foster mom asked, ‘So, what do you want to do?’” Emily recalls. “And I said, ‘I don’t know, probably work at Subway.’ And she’s like, ‘Ohh.’”

Emily laughs now, but says it took time to realize that her strengths of compassion and responsibility fit one career field particularly well: nursing. In addition to school, she had worked full time at Subway the previous couple years to support her four younger siblings.

Dreaming didn’t come naturally. Yet dozens of scholarship applications later, the Ford Family Foundation recognized her potential and gave her a scholarship good for any Oregon school.

That was four years ago. Today, after graduating in May, Emily is the proud recipient of a nursing degree from ºìÐÓ¶ÌÊÓƵ Fox University.

Be Known? No Thanks.

As much as Emily wanted to be on campus, she was also scared. “You’ve done harder things in life, you know,” Brigett teased when Emily balked at living on campus.

“These people don’t care about me. They wouldn’t understand the things I’ve been through. They are privileged,” she told herself as she trekked between her dorm, classes and the cafeteria her freshman year. The isolation of secrecy that began in childhood was amplified by the serenity of a creek running through a canyon, fir trees and a bell tower – all evidence of a life that wasn’t really hers.

“Near the end of freshman year my therapist was like, ‘You’re a big girl now and it’s time to do big-girl things,’” Emily recalls. “She said things I needed to hear. Sophomore year, I came back kind of different.”

Over the next three years, Emily took a job in admissions, purposefully overcoming her fear of judgment from strangers. She shared an on-campus apartment with five women, creating some of her favorite college memories around potlucks and late-night movies. She joined the Women of Color Collective as treasurer, mentoring younger students and building the kind of community she’d run from her freshman year.

During a Juniors Abroad trip to Thailand and Cambodia, Emily learned she was not alone, even in those parts of her life she wanted to hide. “I learned that my classmates also had experienced brokenness in their lives,” she says. “This was pivotal; it forced me to see how I view others, and that I am not the only one who has struggled in life.”

Invasive Grace

When Emily was 10, her aunt accidentally ran over a rabbit. “I was like, ‘Ohh, we’re going to hell!’” she says. “God was this entity up there somewhere; you have to do good or he’s going to punish you.”

So when she arrived at ºìÐÓ¶ÌÊÓƵ Fox, she avoided God – or tried.

“I felt I wasn’t deserving of his grace, and never felt he was close because of all of the terrible things I endured,” she says. “But the great thing about Fox is it’s hard to deny faith when it’s in front of you. There are so many testaments to the work of God here. And when something’s in front of you so much, you can’t escape it, you know?”

The trouble was, how would she get to know God better? “I thought, ‘OK, I need to come up with a study guide,’” she says. She got a Bible, used Bible app reading plans and watched Bible Project videos.

“I am unashamed of who I am or the things I have been through in life. I am thankful for every hardship I have faced; it’s part of my testimony.”

“I stopped looking at God as someone who punishes and instead as someone who gives all these opportunities and areas to grow.”

During Emily’s senior year, Pam Fifer, dean of the College of Nursing, was hospitalized with cancer at the same hospital where Emily worked as a CNA. More than once, Emily visited her. “She said she wanted to learn a bit about who I was as a person because she knew I had a story to tell.”

As Emily shared her story during visits, Pam prayed for her and urged her to share her story with others. “She said she knew I would be a great nurse who would consider these experiences when caring for patients,” Emily recalls. “She told me she could see God working in me. That was the first time someone told me that. It meant others could see God’s work shining through me, which meant I was making a difference – the difference I want to make in the world.”

In the months before she died, Pam helped solidify in Emily a sense of hope and purpose.

“I am unashamed of who I am or the things I have been through in life,” she says. “I am thankful for every hardship I have faced; it’s part of my testimony. God changes people’s lives, and we need to lean into that and, in return, change our lives for him as well.

“There’s a word for that – grace. Just grace.”