Excel Center graduate gains new outlook on life

Life hasn’t been easy for many of the MERS Goodwill Excel Center graduates, but the light and joy on their faces at Thursday night’s graduation reflects the changes in their lives.

Graduates receiving high school diplomas were Miranda Doolin, La’Shanna Harmon, Courtney Johnson, Dillon Robinson, Ashley Baird, Elbert Horton Jr., Jesseliz Howard, Sumeja Keserovic, Melissa Miller, Astasia Phelps, Chris Scheerer and Kayla Simpson.

MERS Goodwill Excel Centers Superintendent Dr. Eric Knost said, “Our students deserve their diplomas for the time and dedication they have given to make a change in their lives and the barriers they’ve overcome.”

Many of the students sharing their pilgrimages shed tears and said “thank you” to their families and friends who helped along the way.

One student earning her diploma and putting happiness into her life has covered a great distance, former Bosnian refugee Sumeja Keserovic.

Her dad was in the Bosnian War, which she said, “was getting really bad. They were basically killing people over their religion.”

Sumeja had a brother who died before she was born.

“When they had me, they called me their miracle baby because I survived,” she said. “My parents wanted a better life for me. When my mom was pregnant with me, my dad was actually a prisoner of war. He had escaped before my mom gave birth to me. They were both in the same hospital. My mom was giving birth to me. My dad was admitted to the same hospital for all his injuries.”

The United Nations offered a new life and her parents came to America and selected St. Louis as their new home. Her parents had a second daughter, Makayla, after arriving in Missouri.

“Growing up wasn’t the easiest,” she said. “My parents, all they did was work. All I had was my grandma. My grandma was like my mom, basically, until I was 15.”

Sumeja had to deal with her grandmother’s death.

“I had never seen my dad cry. It was my dad’s mom. Seeing him cry, I knew I couldn’t cry. I couldn’t want him to see me cry, because I was the oldest sibling,” she recalled. “I didn’t want him thinking I was just going to let everything be a wreck. I tried to stay strong for my dad. I pent up all that emotion. What I’ve learned is if you pent it up, it’s eventually going to come out.“

Sumeja dropped out of Lindbergh High School her senior year to work a second job to help pay her mother’s medical bills and she got her first DWI at 19.

“I didn’t realize I had a drinking problem until in my late 20s,” she said. “This is not okay. Why was I drinking every day? Because my life was fine. My parents helped me get my first apartment. I had a paid off a car. I had everything I wanted, and I was still drinking every day. It didn’t make sense to me.

“I had to take a step back and realize I’ve caused havoc in my life and was getting in trouble with the law. I had to do something. Years went by, I was 29 turning 30, I caught another DWI and I had violated my probation.”

She asked her attorney, “Would it be better if I turned myself in on this charge? He said, ‘Yes, that would be the best thing.’ I went to Hillsboro Jail in Jefferson County. I turn myself in. I stayed in the jail for eight and a half months.

“I kept praying to God. I was always close to God. I always prayed, but I had distanced myself after losing my grandma. I wasn’t happy. I couldn’t find happiness in anything even though my dad raised both of us girls to always be happy, find the light in anything, in any situation. I couldn’t find that light. It was because I had lost myself in the drinking habit I had.”

Sumeja thought after jail she was headed to prison to do shock treatment.

“I was willing to accept 120 days, but then I started praying about it,” Sumeja said. “What do I do? That’s when the Recycling Grace application kept popping up on my bunk. I was like, I’ll go ahead and do this. It didn’t become a stipulation of my probation until I went in front of the judge. I told the judge, this is what I want to do. The judge had every right to deny it. He could have said ‘No, I don’t want you to do that. I want you to go to prison.’

“He had mercy on me. He had grace on me. He literally said, ‘I want you to go ahead and complete that. I want to see your success.’ It’s like every point I hit I could have fallen down but I promise you, it’s like God had his hand on me the whole time that I was going through jail.”

She said she hugged her parents and told them, “Look, I gotta go do this for six months. I want to, I chose to come here because I knew I had to do something. I knew if I stayed in that same environment with those same friends, I was going to risk going back to doing exactly what I was doing. I did not want that. So I came to Poplar Bluff for Recycling Grace, and that changed my life completely.

“It has opened my eyes to my life. It’s opened my eyes to show me what my full potential is. I never knew that I could be the person I am now, without drinking. I always thought when I was drinking this is just life. This is how life is.”

“Now, I have a completely different transformation — that’s not how life is, you can make your life however you want it to be,” she said.

She had a job when she decided to get her diploma, but she was thinking, “God, is this what I’m going to be doing the rest of my life? I kept praying. I heard the Excel Center was accepting applications. Let me take a shot and see how many credits I need. I knew I only needed a few credits. I told my parents I would finish it.”

The Excel Center staff said she could finish the two credits in one term.

“I was a week behind, they still let me start. I caught up with everything, which was crazy, because I was so far behind. All the classes, they put out multiple things every single day, and I had already missed five days,” she said.

She quit her job to go to school Monday through Friday.

Now that she’s graduated, her plans are to stay in Poplar Bluff and attend the Three Rivers College nursing program.

“I’m staying, because I’ve built such a great relationship with all the women here and even the house moms. I am planning on staying here because they told me this would be the best decision, because I have all the support. I told them they’re definitely right. All my support is here. I’m not saying my parents don’t support me, they support me. They’re proud of me. I don’t want to have that same crowd around me.”

Sumeja’s learned, “I’m very headstrong. That’s part of what my dad taught my sister and I. He always told us. ‘This is a tough world, you need to be headstrong,’ and he would know.”

Sumeja described her experiences with Recycling Grace and the Excel Center as eye-opening.

“You can put your best foot forward every single day. Your life can be different. I’m happy every single day. All the girls here, tell me, you’re like the light in every situation. I try to stay positive all the time. I’ve succeeded in so much and everything that I’ve done, I’ve succeeded. It’s given me nothing but hope for my future.”