NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — The newly crowned Miss Kansas, Ayanna Hensley, is still running on adrenaline and shock after being crowned in Pratt on Saturday.
"I don't think it will set in until a couple weeks down the road," Hensley said. "It's still just so surreal to me. When it was time for crowning, the feeling, you can't describe. The best way I can describe it is static. When you're holding hands with the first runner up or the current Miss Kansas, you just never really know, but at that moment, you know, you're both so qualified and you're both so ready for this moment. If you look back at my crowning moment with my awesome first runner up, Jetta Smith, she was actually speaking over me, she was speaking over the legacy that I'll leave as Miss Kansas and as Ayanna, myself. I'm getting really emotional in that moment. From that moment on, it's been a whirlwind."
Hensley's platform of ACEs Low: Overcoming Adverse Childhood Experiences is personally important to her.
"It entails going through your past and being able to work through the things that haunt you at night," Hensley said. "It's obviously geared towards children, because they are able to digest it a little bit faster. It's really fresh for them and obviously that catapults them into a brighter future."
For Hensley, her faith has helped her to become the person she is today and overcome her own childhood trauma.
"My parents were really young when they had me," Hensley said. "I was the result of a teen pregnancy. Obviously, there was a lot of growing on both ends that was involved. My parents struggled with addiction in and out of my life. That was just a form of inconsistency. The biggest thing I struggled with is a very inconsistent childhood and even early adulthood."
That's why she wants to spread the message to kids and to Kansas that you can recover and become whatever you dream to be, even a Miss Kansas winner. The date for the Miss America pageant has not yet been announced.