Family Of Origin Assignment : Wendy Coughlin

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Family of Origin Assignment

The One Who Birthed Me
Wendy Coughlin attended a small farm school about forty-five minutes south east of Columbus called Logan Elm High School. While going to school and working on the farm she also worked as a waitress at Famous Recipe Chicken. Following graduation, she attended Ohio University as undecided for her major. She felt clueless about what she wanted to do for her career. At age nineteen she dropped out of college and married her high school sweetheart as she felt she was wasting her time and money at college when she didn’t know what she truly wanted to do. Shortly after, Wendy found a factory job at Wynn’s molded plastics working in quality control where she inspected products before they left the factory. She needed this income to support her and her husband who were just starting out. Wendy’s marriage to her high school sweet heart came to an end and shortly after she found a new job working for Federal Department Stores as a cash office supervisor where she handled incoming cash and credit cards. This job was less physically taxing and the pay was better.
Wendy remarried to my brother’s father Todd Jackson, and some time after they had my brother. With these two big changes, a new husband and a child, came yet another change for my mother. She again changed careers and began a new job at ADD INC, a print media company, as an account executive. Her job was to help businesses design and implement their advertising campaign using print media publication. This job allowed a more flexible work schedule that enabled her to raise my brother with less strain. During her time at ADD INC her marriage with Todd ended and she remarried to my father after discovering she was pregnant with me. ...

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...e would occasionally go to a restaurant called Tink’s. My father happened to be a bartender at Tink’s during that time, he noticed her as a regular and one day worked up the nerve to ask her out. After they dated for a while they discovered that my mother was pregnant with me and my father immediately proposed. They eloped to Las Vegas to get married, it was a small ceremony with just family. When my mother looks back on it she feels like my father gave up his young adulthood and freedom to become a father not only of his first child but of another man’s. My mother, while she’ll never admit it, had to give up her ability to choose. She knew she couldn’t raise me and my brother on her salary alone and knew marrying my father would be a good way to ensure that there were at least two incomes to support these two children she now had the responsibility to take care of.

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