Huntley Fitzpatrick's My Life Next Door

While there are many strong relationships, there are also familial relationships as evidenced through Shelby and her mother, M’Lynn. Their relationship does a great job demonstrating the characteristic of responsibility in family relationships. M’Lynn constantly felt the need to protect Shelby. She also felt responsible for Shelby’s health and well being. Our text explains this same idea claiming, “Family members see themselves as having certain obligations and responsibilities to one another,” (DeVito, 2015). We found that Shelby and M’Lynn’s relationship is based off of this element of obligation and demonstrates how a family characteristic can dictate how members act. For example, because of Shelby’s diabetes, M’Lynn constantly watches after her. When Shelby’s blood sugar drops in the salon, her mother runs right over to her and feeds her juice demonstrating her duty to take care of her daughter. If she was not a family member of Shelby she may have just uncomfortably observed the whole incident like some of the other women. However, because they do have a familial bond, M’lynn knows more about Shelby and her condition than anyone else; she understands that she is the only one out of the women that knows how to take care of her daughter during a diabetic

My Life With the Walter Boys by Ali Novak is novel about a young girl named Jackie. Jackie’s family died in a car accident and her uncle can’t take care of her, so she moves to Colorado with a family friend. This family friend just so happens to raise one girl, who acts like a boy, and eleven other boys. She falls in love with Cole, one of the boys that lives there but tries her hardest not to show it.

This memoir focuses on the development and growing maturity of Jeannette Walls who is an intelligent, dynamic protagonist. The novel begins when she is only three years old and continues into her adulthood, providing insight into her mind. Jeannette shows the reader her opinions on her impoverished life style, which forces her to constantly move from one location to another and meet all the people who surround her. Throughout the novel her family consists of her Father and Mother, Rex and Rose Mary, sisters, Lori and Maureen, and brother Brian. Jeannette, a middle sibling, is closer to younger brother Brian than her older sister Lori: Brian shares Jeannette's love of the outdoors, while Lori is more a bookworm. As a child

The novel that I chose was Spoiled by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan. The main characters include Molly, Brooke, and Brick Berlin. This book is about a sixteen year old girl named Molly Dix, who, after the death of her mother, moves to Los Angeles, California to live with her biological father, Hollywood movie star, Brick Berlin and her half-sister Brooke. Molly isn’t used to living the life of a rich girl, so when she arrives, she is both excited and terrified; not only that, she’s meeting her dad for the very first time. Brooke welcomes Molly to high fashion and fame with an overwhelming dose of “sisterly love”. But in this town, no one is ever what they seem. I think that Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan built the story in a way that would

Sarah Davis is fourteen years old and she is in the 9th grade. She live with her mom Karen and two little sisters Alexis and Taylor in Montgomery, Alabama. Her father died when she was 8 years old so it was just her, her mom, and her sisters. One of her favorite thing to do with her family was bake. It was their family traditions to bake different sweets and watch movies on Friday nights. Sarah started to realize that her mother wasn’t around for their family tradition and she wanted to know what was going on.

Over the summer, I read the book Saint Anything by Sarah Dessen, who has written twelve New York Times bestsellers for teens. In the book, Sydney’s brother Peyton is put in prison for hitting and paralyzing a young boy while drunk driving. Because of this, Sydney decides to transfer from her private school to the town’s public school to avoid the attention. At her new school, no one knows that she is Peyton’s sister except her new friends, Layla and Mac. They bring her into their family and make her feel loved. Sydney becomes very close to them, but her mother, on the other hand, doesn’t particularly care for Sydney’s new ‘family’.

The story that spoke to me the most was “Don’t Eat Cat”. I identified with Owen, in that I know what it feels like for a loved one to wrong you and leave your life due to their wrong doings. On the surface it was the loved one who was at fault, while it was he and I who were wronged. Yet deep down we both knew that there was more we could’ve done. We knew that though they were wrong, we weren’t right. I felt like this story was Owen finally feeling the panic of knowing he would never see Marci again, and that it’s his fault. He came to that epiphany only after discovering his time was running short due to cancer. I feel like until that point though he grieved her, he never really let himself fully realize that she was gone forever. He recognized

In this novel Awake and Dreaming by Kit Pearson It talks about a little nine-year-old girl Theo, and her mother Rae who are living together and are a very poor and un-wealthy family. Theo is not your typical child during her spare time, she likes to be alone and curl up to a good book if not she is always daydreaming about unrealistic things. Even if Theo tried making friends they wouldn’t last long since she always moved schools and switched apartments. Her mother was a smoker and waisted all their money on clothing and expensive accessories. There was nothing about Theo’s life that was normal no loving parents to come to after school, no clean clothes, and no toys so she made up her own fantasy. The perfect functioning family she had 2 loving

school and not create any problems. Mother becomes highly upset when Jimmy causes incidents in classes. Mother is overwhelmed, working long stressful hours to maintain the home/living.

In the novel Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech, Salamanca Tree Hiddle or Sal, a 13-year-old girl from Bybanks, Kentucky (and the main character) has to deal with her mother leaving. Sal and her grandparents take a road trip retracing her mother’s path to Lewiston, Idaho, where she’s “resting peacefully”. (5)” Sal goes on a road trip to bring her mother back home on her birthday (in 7 days). While on the road trip, Sal tells the story of her and Phoebe, a girl with a wild imagination from Sal’s new neighborhood she and her dad moved to after her mother left.

Her mother is only letting her walk down the street and not letting her explore or have fun. Her grandmother is not letting her have fun with the new boyfriend that she has met when she knows it was her dream since she woke up, to have friends. One cannot stop another from dating, it is apart of life. This is another example of why one should not let everything one did be for their

I thought if I could touch this place or feel it, this brokenness inside me might start healing. out here its like i'm someone else, I thought that maybe I could find myself if I could just come in I swear i'll leave. won't take nothing but a memory from the that built me. Some of you might know what song this is the chorus of. This paper is about how my life relates to Miranda Lambert's song The House That Built Me.

Let Your Life Speak Josiah Matthews SRM 240 Professor Bobbitt March 3, 2024. Parker J. Palmer's "Let Your Life Speak" serves as a guiding light in the quest for authenticity and purpose. Through Palmer's insightful story, readers are invited to join in on a deeply personal journey of self-discovery. As we read through the pages of this transformative text, we are encouraged to listen to our inner selves and embrace the inherent truths that lie within. In this reflective exploration, I aim to dive deep into the themes of authenticity and living an undivided life, drawing inspiration from Palmer's views and story and relating them to my own journey.

Your family always makes you change your inclination and it could be an innovation of things. “On TV mother and child embrace and smile into each other’s faces. Sometimes the mother and father weep, the child wraps them in her arms and leans across the table to tell how she would not have made it without their help” (Walker 19). Family will help you persevere through your toughest time no matter who is in your family. “Dee is lighter than Maggie, with nicer hair and a fuller figure” (Walker 20). This is explaining how she was teasing her sister, but this should make her do the same. This should influence her to do better than her, although it is very deterrent that she thought about her daughter’s like that. Therefore, your family is important because we never want to embarrass them by doing something wrong to what we thought was right.

This fictional novel Lock and Key by Sara Dessen is about a seventeen year old girl Ruby Copper who is a troubled kid who wants to be independent and doesn’t accept help easily living in Wildflower Ridge in a present time period. Her mother left her daughter Ruby when she was getting closer to becoming eighteen. Ruby’s mother disappears with no warning just like her father abandoned her and her sister Cora when Ruby was five and Cora was fifteen. Ruby is living in the yellow house alone without her mother and she observes life as an adult and gets a foretaste of what would come when she reaches eighteen and becomes an adult. Unfortunately, Ruby’s landlord observed the house and notice Ruby has been living alone with no adult and has no heat