I am a Mom and…

JP Las Vegas graduate Dallas Outlaw brought the house down when she shared her experiences as a student parent, writer, researcher, JP community member, and mom during the campus’s 2024 Voices Rising event. This is her story.

My name is Dallas Outlaw. I graduated from Nevada State University with a bachelor’s in English, and I have since started my master’s program at McDaniel College in Maryland for human resource management.

My journey started at Tuskegee and ended at Nevada State University as an English major, where I was able to not only be accepted into the DEI summit for all of Southern Nevada as a student poster presenter. I was also accepted into their creative writing space as a poet presenter, and even now, I was invited to Costa Rica to present a global sustainability paper that I wrote, most recently on community gardens for students and beyond their educational journeys.

One phrase that I actually learned through Tuskegee was to fail forward. Doesn’t matter what I’m doing. Doesn’t matter how I do it. Doesn’t matter if I show up or how I show up — to just fail forward. As long as I put that first foot forward, even if it doesn’t work, fail again. Fail again in the same direction. And that’s what’s keeping me going.

I came to be a mom at the end of my school journey, and so the want and need for me to have my degree superseded the fact that I was just a mom. I am not just a mom, and I think that it’s important to push the narrative of the support that came up with me because I became a mom while I was going through a health journey that could have killed me. And when I talk about failing forward and showing up, I had to show up for myself. I had to show that me living was worth so much more than me just being a mom, and my baby persisted through that with me. JP persisted through that with me.

It’s important to encourage women to be more than just moms because there are people in programs and places and spaces that allow us to be moms and something else: moms and a business person, mom and an English major, moms and…

And on they day where I could have not survived is the day I found out that I was pregnant. I was 99 pounds, and here he is, doing his own thing. And he was born early. And he was 4 pounds, 11 ounces. And he didn’t have a NICU stay. So moving that finish line to where I needed it to be, to when I needed to move it, was extremely important to me, and I think that other moms should know that the finish line is not where society is putting it. It’s where you are thinking about you are finished, when you are finished. And if it’s not your time to be done, then keep going.

I think that it’s important to encourage women to be more than just moms because there are people in programs and places and spaces that allow us to be moms and something else: moms and a business person, moms and an English major, moms and…

It’s detrimental to call us moms and nothing else because then we get stuck in knowing that the best thing that could have ever happened to us was to become a mom. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that statement — and it not necessarily be offensive because I enjoy it — but it’s offensive in the fact that you are minimizing my existence to only carrying babies and only making sure they make it in this world because somebody had to make sure that I made it, and it wasn’t just a mom.

I think that JP’s mission is important to interrupt two generations at a time. You guys are doing it for us and our babies. It’s important to have that support because daycare becomes an issue. Work schedules not aligning with daycare hours is an issue. Not having the money or the resources to pay for summer while we still have to work is an issue, and literally, JP fills those gaps so that we can continue to go to school, so that we can get the degrees in a timely manner or otherwise. It’s that much more important, again, to show up.

I want to say thank you, if nothing else, a proper thank you for being there when funds were low, for being there when I didn’t have a ride to where I was going. For being there to acknowledge my journey and to actually see me as both Dallas and a mom and a student and all the variations of who I am. For continuing to accept me in a nonjudgmental space. So thank you to the Jeremiah Program, to [Executive Director] Maria, to [Family Coach] Jasmine, to all of the coaches, to all of the moms, to all of the kids for accepting us and allowing us to show up and meeting us where we are. Thank you.

I am a mother. I am a sister. I am a friend. I am Dallas Outlaw.

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

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