With four siblings who preceded her at Bishop McNamara High School in Forestville, Maryland, Aliyah Thomas said there wasn’t really any decision to make about whether to go there herself. “Everyone at McNamara already knew me,” when she started four years ago, she said.

That community stretching across nearly two generations of Thomas siblings – her eldest brother is 18 years older than her -- is part of what has kept her on track with schoolwork and holding onto her faith in God as her mother battled breast cancer and died when Aliyah was 14, the day after her Confirmation.

“She was not able to be there because they were getting her set up in hospice,” Thomas said. “I was so young, I thought that meant she was getting better. But she told my siblings not to tell me how sick she was.”

The very next day after her mother died, Thomas said she insisted on going to school. “I tried to power through. I knew I couldn’t let my grades slip. That’s not what she’d want. She told us, ‘I don’t want you to let this control your life. Cry and move on.’ I’ve made it my mission to make her proud of me.”

Still, losing her mom before she even started high school was hard then and still is difficult sometimes now.

“I struggled with my faith,” Thomas said. “She was such a good person. It hurt me to think that God had taken her from me.”

But a crew of “unofficial mothers” at Bishop McNamara, along with her siblings, helped keep Thomas on track. Dean of Students Laura Keller heads that list. “She’s been a rock” of support, Thomas said.

Thomas has racked up an impressive list of activities through high school: she dances as part of Bishop McNamara’s traditional African music and dance group; she has learned basic American Sign Language and since she cooked her first scrambled egg at age 2, she has expanded her repertoire so that she cooks regularly for her dad and herself. Oh, and, as she mentioned as an afterthought near the end of her interview with the Catholic Standard, she competed in the Miss District of Columbia Teen USA pageant.

Still, the last year and half of her high school experience was not what she had in mind, since so many activities were canceled or put on hold due to the pandemic.

“I had so many plans,” she said. “I imagined my senior year so much, it was terrible not to be able to have a last homecoming and other events. I haven’t been able to see friends, my boyfriend.” But she’s encouraged that there will be an in-person graduation for her class this year. And the fall semester will find her at Towson University with a major in psychology.

Thomas said the assistance she got from others in dealing with her mother’s death led her to plan a career as a psychologist, to help other people deal with the hard things life throws at them. Growing up in an area where she said she is constantly hearing of kids her age being shot or stabbed, falling into drug use or taking up prostitution, she even started a small nonprofit, aiming to help girls and women deal with or avoid being subject to domestic violence.