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Throughout my life, I would hear constant stories about my parents and their devoted faith to each other. Their love, support, and encouragement created the most ideal scene for my siblings and me to live the childhood dream. Conflictingly, in the United States, we suffer from a 50% divorce rate that is higher than most countries around the world. My parents were born and raised in Laredo, TX, and joined the middle class of America. My mother is a middle school reading teacher and my father worked as an oil field worker after the divorce. He drove 18-wheelers day and night across the south Texas area and transported oil and various objects to different companies. The night of December 11, 2014, my father was driving an 18-wheeler, which contained …show more content…
Two years before, my life was going a slow downhill spiral and my father’s death pushed it off the edge. I could see and feel my parents’ marriage failing beneath me, pulling me down into a pit of despair. Their exchange of dissatisfied looks and constant fighting struck me like a dagger. Weeks and months passed until the day I dreaded arrived. “We have to talk about something very important,” my mother whispered with her comforting voice, but there were tears in her eyes, and I knew what was to come. The news was heart-breaking and disappointing to my two brothers and I, I had always took pride in the fact that my parents’ marriage had withstood the 50% divorce rate in America. We continued to live in our home with our mother, but we would often visit my father, because of the strong untarnished bond between my father and his children. A year after the divorce, he decided to get a new job as an oil field worker, after countless attempts to make him reconsider the tiresome, dangerous, and over-working job, his stubbornness and will to succeed encouraged him to stay. One night
When I was born, my mother breast fed me for two weeks, I stayed in the hospital room with her instead of going to the nursery, and she was home with me for the first five years of my life. My father worked and my mother tended to the home, with the help of her mother and grandmother. I ate Gerber baby jarred food and my mother read to me every night. My family did not adhere to many other cultural norms however. It was culturally expected that a husband and wife would have a home, with stable jobs and an established relationship before having children. My father was eight years my mother’s senior, and my mother was only 18 when I was born. My mother never earned her high school diploma. My parents were married the month before I was born. My father worked in construction and had a criminal record. Every single one of these descriptions violates the cultural norms of where I grew up in North Carolina. Although my story starts to sound a lot like a Lifetime movie, my mother defied all odds to provide a safe and secure haven for me. “When they sense that a parent is consistent and dependable, they develop a sense of basic trust in the parent” (Crain, 283). I could rely on my parents and trust that they would be there to take care of me which lead to my development of “the core ego strength of this period: hope” which emerges from the child developing a favorable balance of trust over mistrust. “Hope is the expectation that despite frustrations, rages, and disappointments, good things will happen in the future” (Crain, 285). My mother is the living embodiment of that sentiment. As early as I can remember, I can remember her insistence that as long as we were together, we were
I’ve never heard of any childhood quite like yours. I was shocked by the personality and character of your parents and how they raised you and your sibilings, “The Glass Castle”. I understand why people call your parents monsters. I will admit that the thought crossed my own mind on multiple occasions. However, I have also never read a book or a memoir that required so much thinking . With every page I read I was able to learn about the struggles & hardships you dealt with as a child and I tried to see a deeper meaning. When I did that, I saw your parent’s intentions behind everything they did. I began to understand what you saw and still see in your parents.
Growing up, I always assumed that my parents would grow old together. I fantasized about introducing my future children to their still-married grandparents and attending, if not personally planning, my parent’s fiftieth anniversary celebration. Although my parents fought and struggled with areas of perpetual disagreement, somehow things always worked out and in my naivety, I believed they always would. However, as time progressed, the unresolved, and in some cases unspoken, issues that had plagued my parent’s marriage since its conception festered and ultimately reached intractable proportions. As a messy divorce loomed, each parent explained his version of the events and “irreconcilable differences” engendering a separation. Although the facts presented in each account matched, my parent’s respective interpretations of the facts differed greatly. As I listened to my parent’s rationalize their inability to get along, I realized that although my parent’s stories did not match, neither party was actually lying. Each parent simply presented to me his or her version of the reasons for divorce. I knew that somewhere hidden in the subtext of my parent’s explanations laid the truth. As I sifted through the slightly convoluted information, I began to wonder, “Is reality a relative concept?” After reviewing my personal experience, Christopher Durang’s play Beyond Therapy, and Edward Albee’s Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf?, I reached the conclusion that, as inherently paradoxical as it seems, reality exists as a relative concept.
I was barely 17 when I returned home. Even though I was so young my father gave me huge responsibilities involving the family mines and other enterprises. Since I was home, my mother focused on my little sister’s education. She took her back to New England to attend a school suitable for proper young ladies. My eight-year-old brother went along, as he w...
At the young age of ten, I was faced with a situation that has had one of the largest influences in who I am today. My parents’ divorce has and still currently plays a role in my life that has affected my drive for motivation bringing diverse perspectives. At such a young age, I was filled with such remorse, discouragement, and fear. My educational abilities were collapsing, along with some of my common social activities. I was absent-minded due to my adolescent understanding and confusion of the situation. I became emotionally depleted coming eye to eye with what I was promised would never happen. My personal connections with my family gradually became diminished, from what I kept so valuable. I was placed in a situation that tore apart my contentment, arrogance, and self motivation. It wasn’t until years later, I took my position as a chance to transform my bleakness into a strong desire for greatness.
When I was only nine years old I sat on my mother’s lap and heard the news that would impact my life indefinitely. When I learned that my parents were getting divorced, I never expected there to be any positive effects. However, in dealing with this drastic change in my life, I became a stronger person in numerous ways. Carrying my new maturity, new self-sufficiency, and new resilience on the weight of my shoulders these past 9 years have proven to me that I will succeed in life. Undergoing my parents’ divorce has heightened my level of maturity. I’ve learned life skills that allowed me to improve my self-sufficiency. Furthermore, going through this tough period of time has made me far more resilient in the face of hardships.
We have all grown up hearing our parent's advice "Do as I say, not as I do". When your parents give this advice you do not always listen at first, but later on in life you may catch yourself using it. I believe it is very important value, respect and listen to what your parent's say; their experience with life is their major tool in shaping their children into adults.
Mattie was a smart “A” student from Brooklyn, New York. Her only brother and twin brother Matthew is an artist that likes to draw and paint. She lives with her mom and brother, she used to live with her dad but he is deceased. One day, on his way from work some drunk drives hit his car and killed him. That day changed their lives forever. When her father left them, he took a part of everybody with him. Mattie and Mathew were only eleven years old when a lost their father, what a horrible loss, and at such a time that you understand how those things work, and you have feelings, one of the many prime times in your life that you need a father. As a result of this great loss, their family became dysfunctional, nobody cleans the house, her mother is never there because she leaves to work early, and comes home really late, and the kids have to make their own dinner. When her father left the family couldn’t take it, they just fell apart, now her mother is always angry and never smiles. It is unusual to me how all this corruption can be caused by 1 man alone, I mean ...
Over recent years, the view of family has shifted drastically. The pendulum has swung from a time when the mark of adulthood was having a spouse and family, to what is now a dreaded life-changer, bound to a spouse or to children. The mostly harmful choice of divorce is now commonplace among parents today; it is accepted with little acknowledgment of the detrimental effects that it has on both the parents and their children. In Barbara Dafoe Whitehead’s essay, “Where Have All the Parents Gone?” she explains that “More than drugs, it was divorce that lay at the heart of middle-class parental failure. It wasn’t the crackhouse but the courthouse that was the scene of their collapse” (283). She also writes about how parents take part in gruesome custody battles, kidnap their own children and use them as weapons against each other. The other option they see themselves as having, is simply walking away from their responsibilities. The sorrowful impact of divorce on the family is observed in the outcome of emotional disorders, strenuous untrusting relationships and premature responsibility loads.
One late summer night when AAM was ten years old, she was cuddled up with her younger brother and sister in piles of sleeping bags on the floor. The pain of the last few months had graciously excused itself that night while hope, instead, was finally welcomed in. She remembers the night feeling carefree; especially once her parents came into join them. However, the happiness quickly vanished and heart-crushing fear began to set in as her parents said, “We have something to tell you.” Her heart began to beat unsteadily with each breath catching in her throat. She looked around to find her little brother and sister pale and lifeless. Her dad looked distant while her mom was epically failing at hiding her tears. All too soon the four most horrid words AAM would ever hear were said. “We are getting divorced,” her parents stated. At that moment, the entire world crashed down around her; leaving her helpless and alone. All she remembers today is her mom’s piercing cries in her parents’ old bedroom, and the terror-stricken fear of not knowing what will happen tomorrow.
Going back forty-five years is not an easy task to complete because I can’t remember some of the finer details of my childhood. I know I was born on a hot August afternoon in Birth Year at Place Of Birth in City ands State. My mother was just twenty-two at the time and was already the mother of two, I was her third child. My father was twenty-one and already a workaholic, I know because my mother would constantly remind me not to be like that. My mother and father were good parents and they tried to give us the best upbringing they could. My father was the kind of person that believed he should provide and protect his family, and he did a very good job of doing that.
My parents were in a heated debate over financial issues, an alien topic to my eleven year old intellect. As the discussion grew in excitability and anger, the room sucked into a suffocating density. At this moment I immediately knew where this was leading and rushed my younger brother upstairs out of harm’s way. There was never a physical harm to protect him from, but it was as though I did this to spare his innocent mind from developing into one like mine; doubtful and angry. Why can’t my parents just get along? Why are they even fighting? Why does my life have to be this way? Why me? Why are they so careless of our feelings? What did we do to deserve this lifestyle? Why us? I spent too much time questioning, and pitying myself over the fact that my parents didn’t love me enough to stay happy with each other. Amongst my questioning always came out the little blip that disrupted my parents arguing, “Are you guys getting a divorce?” I’m not quite sure where I first heard the word, but it became my magic word that took all...
My motivation to research, discover, and stimulate social change is rooted in my childhood experiences. As a young child I grew up in a household filled with domestic violence, which ultimately ended with the suicide of my father. I subsequently came to know a variation of the typical American nuclear family: a single parent household. As I began to study family dynamics further, I was able to see my life experiences in a broader context. In hindsight, I now realize the impact and weight my own mother had on my personal development. It was through her strength, determination, and optimism that I was able to find the spark within myself to set goals and dreams for my future. She encouraged me never to accept anything at face value, including the way our society attempts to define my womanhood. As a result of this, I now question American culture’s classification of a ‘successful’ family and the factors that determine a ‘stable’ family.
As I heard the screeching sounds of the gates of my compound, I dashed out in excitement knowing that my mom had returned from what seemed to be a long day of work. Upon reaching her, the gloomy look on her face did not sit well with as me as my mother is the most cheerful person I know. In my curiosity, I asked her what the problem was. As tears rolled down her cheeks, she told me that she had to close down her store because the business had failed and she had been suffering large amounts of financial losses. This memory, I recall so vividly, as this news initiated a series of changes in my life. Within the next week, I was told that we were relocating and that I had to enroll in a new school. At the age of 8, I was oblivious to why my family had to make so many financial cuts because of the loss of one business. Filled with anger and disappointment, I realized that what was once my reality had become my dream.
It was on a Friday morning at 4:30 A.M. that happiness and joy filled the hearts of both my parents. I was born on November 29, 1996 at Broward General Hospital in Fort Lauderdale Florida. My parents had five children, and among the five children that they had, I was the third (or middle) child from them. It started off as two boys, then I came along as the first girl, after it was another boy, then finally, another baby girl; so total was three boys and two girls. The way that my parents lived and treated each other was the same as if any other married couple that loved each other so much. They’ve gone through a lot to get to where they are now today, but they made it and along the way had us five children. They have been really strong with each other which made them only have the five of us and no other step children. My mom is a great cook and enjoy cooking for us; this is probably where my passion for culinary comes from. My dad is an amazing tailor, he is very good at making our clothes, and my passion for fashion probably came from him. My dad is also a teacher, one of the best math teacher I know, he is passionate about his job and his family is the center of his universe. I cannot finish this chapter without mentioning my grandmother, I was lucky enough to have ever met. I had spent part of my life time with her, like the rest of the family she is sweet, my grandmother Abelus,