Cuellar, 55, works as a visiting companion to nursing home residents—she’s had to cut back her hours on occasion to go to class. It’s been a long journey. She first enrolled in 2007 but dropped out after a year. “Life happens,” she says. Now, buoyed by state aid and her own dreams, she’s back, wrapping up coursework for an associate degree in community health care. While looking at the wood and nails, she recalls, something popped that Cuellar couldn’t quite articulate. “I felt like I should know it, but for some reason my brain just would not coordinate it,” she says. “It just triggered some sensations that I don’t think I had felt since I was young.”