Being part Italian comes with a few stereotypical ideas including: you most likely talk with your hands, are very affectionate, and animated. These stereotypes are true and very apparent in my style of intimacy and emotional expression. I have grown up in a very loving, nurturing and affectionate environment where hearing the words “I love you,” are the norm. In my family we hug and kiss each other on the cheeks both when greeting and/or saying good-bye to each other. My Nonna is also known to pinch those same cheeks or at times give an affectionate pinch on the rumpus. I thought all families were similar in how they expressed their love and affection for each other until I started hanging out with friends at their homes and boy was I …show more content…
Neuhaus (2017) states, “our stories/narrative helps us to organize our experiences so they make sense.” For this paper the self-narrative is used to explain our story of how we interact with our romantic or close interpersonal relationships. The ability to do this is not something I have always had but rather something I have learned over time with the help of therapist and determination to learn to become a better communicator and more differentiated self. Being a middle child I found myself in the role of the “pleaser,” the child who was easy-going, did not cause any conflict, was quiet and shy and did not demand much attention from parents but would receive some attention by doing something that pleased my parents. This role continued through high school and into my marriage where I thought it was my fault if my husband was upset or mad about something. I also married young having never gotten the chance to go on to college nor learn to differentiate as an adult. I went from one close knit family into another without learning to be on my own or to rely on myself. This caused a little bit of emotional fusion in my relationship with my husband because I needed him to replace the role that my parents filled in our relationship. After counseling I learned that I did not need to take on my husband’s negative attitudes as my own and it was okay for me to be happy when he was upset or angry. A technique taught to me by one of the counselors included hula-hoops. I and the counselor would stand inside our own hula-hoop to better illustrate that the space we inhabited as a metaphor for our personal space, life and emotions. When my counselor invaded my personal space with his hula-hoop I learned that this was my personal space therefore I had control and the power to dictate whether or not another person was allowed to do so. With that in mind it was also within my power to decide if I
For many, their formative years have a large influence on who they become as adults. This can happen in many different ways including new experiences, discovering a new sport or hobby, and uncovering what they are passionate about. For me, this was falling in love with a new language from a very young age and becoming very interested in the culture that was associated with it.
At the end of my Junior year, I watched all of my older friends work on scholarships and prepare for graduation. Everyone seemed to know what they wanted to go to school for, and what they wanted to do after they graduated. While watching them, I began to reflect on the past school year, thinking back to the first week of school sitting in the locker room talking to to my friends about how we are ready to be seniors and figure out what we want to do with our lives. But, listening to all the seniors talking about their majors and schools, I began to feel nauseous. I had no clue what I wanted to do after high school. Was I supposed to have that figured out already? I then began to have questions thrown at me left and right throughout the summer.
event. The fact of the matter was, the men that knew about the site had been killed earlier on by the Mexicans. No one knew about it until, than one US Army Colonel Clayton arrived and asked them why they didn’t use any of the gear in the bunker. Of course, the Marines response to that question was, ‘What bunker?’
I am forty four years old with three children and a wonderful husband. I grew up in Oklahoma and later moved to Kansas, and then Arizona where I finished my degree is Political Science at Arizona State University. My career goals were to attend law school after undergrad, so that I could be an advocate for children that were suffering serious injustices back then, and sadly they still seem to be suffering those injustices today.
"Most everyone has a daily regimen that they follow like gospel. In mathematics, this would be considered commutative property:
Its been a year since I began walking these new halls with lockers on both sides of me. Although the faces that pass me look unfamiliar, i began to recognize
I believe that opportunities that are not taken only open up more opportunities in the future.
On September eighteenth, two thousand one I was born four minutes after five o'clock to my parents Monica and Craig Tonn. I was given the name Valerie because my mom's mom was a babysitter to a girl named Valerie and she had liked the name. I was given the middle name Erica after my dad's middle name Eric. I am two minutes apart from my twin Ashley, and my older sister Melissa is currently in eleventh grade. We currently own two spoiled dogs and one backyard lizard.
At the age of twenty nine, I faced an inevitable, drastic, and ultimately life changing decision. My options were limited, with no stress-free path to select. One path led down a very dark road, one that would have led to an abrupt end to my own life. The other route led to personal happiness, however, met with great sacrifice. Being that I felt strongly against the first option, I chose the second path. A reset button was pressed.
A gentleman in his mid sixties was lying on the operating table. "You can rest outside if you want", said the cardiac surgeon while looking into my eyes. Preoccupied with the patient's picture before anesthesia, I struggled to swallow my worries and fulfill my promise to him to stay close throughout the operation. It was not much time until the potassium mixture was infused and the heart was sucked out of spirit. Over the next two hours, my mind and body were stretched to their limits. Despite being captivated by the precision with which the staff manipulated the grafts with the coronary arteries, I wasn't able to break the countless thoughts and apprehensions that riddled my head. As the blood was re-pumped into the heart, the flat line on
If you've ever moved you may have felt the way I have. Now this whole moving "thing" didn't seem to bad to me in the beginning, probably due to the fact that I was only 8 years old. Though I didn't exactly know that we were moving out of the county and away from my friends, that was the surprise to me. That reason specifically hit me the hardest. Either way it could have gone worse, but it went pretty well after awhile of settling in, fixing ,and changing my life style.
I am writing this letter as an apology for my misunderstanding and ignorance towards your parental judgment in the past. Throughout my younger years, I assumed the worst of your intentions and buried each instruction with frustration and negligence. With the daily directive to practice piano, you pushed me into the most dreadful moment of my life. As such, I figured the worst and assumed that you were forcing me to commit with no respect towards my feelings. However, I have learned these years that your judgment was simply misguided, not malicious. I believe that, as a mother, your decisions were difficult to make and that, regardless of what I felt, you chose the best for me. I assumed you hated me. I now know you made the choices to the best of your abilities. You wanted me to continue piano because it is a
From the moment I could, I read. Of course, during kindergarten I started by only understanding Spanish, so reading took a little longer for me to comprehend. But over time, I did learn to speak and read through the English language and for a long time, reading was my escape. Being able to invite myself into the author’s world of emotions, thoughts, and ideas was the ideal situation. From wanting to leave my world and delve into another, I became passionate about, nay, obsessed with reading.
The moment I laid eyes on that place, I knew that would regret ever coming here in the first place. It was a hot June in the summer of 2015, and even hotter in the southern state of Alabama. I had arrived at Marion Military Institute, my home for the next dreaded two weeks which seemed to be hurling at me faster than ever before. I was still a kid then. And I know what you must be thinking, “How can someone turn from a kid to an adult in just two weeks?” Well, that answer takes a lot more than just words on a paper to explain to someone. You would have to experience it, the heat, the screaming Marine Core drill instructor, the temptation to give up, all of it.
Travelling throughout the dirt roads in the green state of Michoacan, Juan Cabezas Jr. expected a pleasant afternoon. He is a carpenter who travels from village to village often taking roads isolated throughout the countryside, but on this sunny day with spotted clouds in the sky he expected what any other human being would expect, a calm day, he was wrong. As he drove along the road, he thought he was alone, but he soon began to see a convoy of large Ford pickup trucks. The convoy then began to snake in front of his car eventually bringing him to a hault. Men in ski masks armed with what seemed like American made rifles, handguns, even grenade launchers. A man soon approached my cousin Juan telling him to keep his head down because these men