What If Life How You Knew It Just Changed Overnight?

There was also a time when my younger sister came after me with a kitchen knife, which I figure evens the score for me attempting to asphyxiate her with a pillow when I was about five or six. With absolute astonishment, my parents, after 2 brief periods of separation and even acquiring divorce papers, re-discovered their love for one another and are now one of the happiest and most secure couples I know. Even my sister and myself get along great now, often confiding in each other with our personal issues.

Once my mom and my step dad got a divorce her, my brother, and I moved in to our old house until we could go back to Tennessee where we originally came from. Everything went downhill from there. The house had no water or electricity and she would leave me

Parents are very closely associated with their children, if they notice signs or behavioural symptoms of their child being harmed they should talk to the child

Although I had an older brother and sister, I felt alone a great deal of the time I was growing up. I never "acted out" my need for attention. I did not get bad grades in school. On the contrary, I was a quiet child who made the honor roll. I was always given my sisters hand-me-downs which I resented. My grandmother was very strict and often cold. There were never hugs or kisses and not once do I remember an I love you. My father still came to visit, but remarried when I was eight. His new wife was like something out of a horror novel. The mental torture that I endured was a million times worse than what Cinderella went through. My grandmother along with my brother and sister came up with a nickname for me. They called me dog and taunted me every time we passed the pet supplies in the grocery store. At the age of ten my beloved paternal grandmother Memo, the only light in my otherwise dark world, died in her sleep while I was in the next room. I sat and watched as the paramedics tried to revive her with no success. On the car ride back home, my stepmother screamed at my father to "shut me up and stop my crying," as if what I had just been through should not have affected me at all. She left my father a few years later. At fifteen I ran away from my grandmothers house and went to live with my dad. I was receiving survivors support which I never saw once I moved in with my father. Although I did not know it

Even after my niece left and was living on the streets, I watched my brother’s marriage become strained and knew

We never have. I became oblivious to my sister's problems, like Jeannette became with her father. I recently read a paper that my sister wrote. To say it made me upset was an understatement. I had no idea that she felt that way when my parents were fighting.

My life changed dramatically when my son was ten months old. My husband and I decided to tell my mother in law that she cannot be a part of our lives. We had every reason to tell her because my mother in law did not come to see our son and she favored her other two grandchildren. She made promises to us that she will come to our baby shower, his birth, and to come visit more often which never happened. We were tired of getting our hopes up. we did not want our son to go through the same heart ache. Two years went past and I received news that she was going to be in town for a family function. She said she wanted to see us. I could feel in my chest, my heart pumping. Deep down my husband and I both wanted to talk to her again. This was our chance. A week before the family reunion my husband and I were nervous and wondered if that was the right thing to do for our son. We went through the week thinking of the worst thing that can happen. Finally, the day before the reunion our nerves have settled and we started to think positive. I thought to myself it will be good because our son will have his grandma and he can build his own opinion of her.

I can remember her standing in front of the mirror looking at herself. How she thought she was beautiful, I don’t know. Because the image I saw was of a person who looked like a living corpse. She had to have weighed only 100 pounds, her hair so thin, the black bags under her eyes, and her overall grayish complexion made her look as if she were a dead. As she saw me staring at her in the corner of her eye, she slammed the door in my face. That was the big sister that I knew now. She was no longer the big sister that I could go to and get advice from or have a good laugh with. No, she was too busy with her own schedule and not to mention her terrible mood swings. My older sister

After the fighting life was back to normal, we did not talk about it nor seek counseling. This affected each of us differently: my older sister, Retha, had 2 children before completing high school; my brother, Christopher, also became a teen parent and later became addicted to drugs. I could not handle it and needed to get away. Today, experience has shown that counseling would have been beneficial for the entire family. It would have help dad to rebuild his dignity and self worth, and help mom to uplift her self-esteem and to let her know that it was not her fault.

I am Falisha May Graham, I was born April 28 1989 to Tammy Graham (Sims) and Roy Vernon Graham. I have an older sister Loretta Graham. Growing up was never easy for the two of us, you may be wondering why. Well it simply put as this my dad was mentally ill and had often left me and my older sister scared of him. We loved him but his mental illness brought out sides that drove my mind to block out leaving me with so few memories of my beloved dad. My mom would try to protect us by sending us to my grandmother’s house when he had his worst moments. So my grandmother helped raised us and became our shield whenever we needed it. Eventually the illness lead my mom to filling for two divorces, one they had gotten back together, but the other would

“Screaming, crying, perfect storm” as Taylor Swift once wrote, perfectly describes the state that my family has been for the past few years. As my mother was achieving her dream by moving to America, my dad was falling deeper and deeper into his mental complication and depression due to the sudden change of foreign culture exposure. Eventually, my parents decided to get the divorce my sister and I expected for quite some time. Considering our economic status, we could not afford the bill for two separate apartments; so heavy and unpleasant tensions between each other developed as my parents continued to live under the same roof. As time has passed, I have become more aware of the sacrifices my parents have made in order to raise my sister and

After reading this it reminded me of my mother and my two older sisters and me. We lived together, once my mother and father separated. We would bicker to

I lived in military housing a little distance from base with my father Richard, mother Susan, sister Jewelia, and brother Ryan. When Richard got deployed to Iraq and Kuwait, Jewelia, Ryan, and I were left in Fulda with Susan. Due to being young, knowledge of what was going on escaped me. My only thoughts were the absence of daddy and the world changing around me. Jewelia was three and doing what toddlers do, but Ryan was nine, going on ten, and starting to rebel. Ryan developed a behavioral problem, started showing signs of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, also known as ADHD, and depression. Ryan would terrorize the dogs, Jewelia, and me. During the time of Richard's deployment, Ryan would abuse Jewelia on a daily basis by slamming her fingers in the door or shoving her down. Susan would ask what happened, and Ryan would always blame me. Half the time Susan would believe Ryan, and the other times she wouldn’t. You could say that it was almost always a pull of the straw day, lucky one day but not so much the next. Ryan started stealing and sneaking out of the house. He even stole money out of Susan’s purse on Mother’s Day to buy her a Mother’s Day gift. Susan was so angry, but Ryan’s excuse was that “It was the thought that counts”, and he ate her chocolates. As we got older, Ryan worsened. He was in and out of juvenile detention for smoking weed, stealing, and destroying Richard and

I come from a four-person family. My mom and dad have always been in my life therefore they are the people who raised me. After seeing my parents have a successful marriage, it has influenced me to want the same thing in life and having my first marriage be my last. I have an older sister who is 23. While growing up, me and my sister had a very close relationship. As we grew up, we started to drift apart. I learned a lot from being the youngest child. While being 3 years younger than my sister Taylor, watching her grow up and deal with situations taught me many personal life lessons. Watching her grow up taught me the good and bad things in life and helped me follow the right path. While going through school, I already knew what to expect when it came to the class description and the teacher just by having my sister go through it just a couple years before me. Even though being the younger sister, my whole life is all I know, I couldn’t imagine

Looking backing on childhood filled with so many memories, I wish I could say they all had that warm and fuzzy feeling. Being one of seven siblings wasn’t easy, in fact each and every sibling had to make some type of sacrifice for our family. I have a sister, she is the second oldest, who is a diagnosed schizophrenic. Having a mentally ill sister who was never complaint with any type of treatment made childhood especially difficult and set up many opportunities for disappointment. Disappointment came in many forms throughout my childhood whether it was not being able to go somewhere, being forgot about, or the constant embarrassment and anger I had to deal with internally on a daily basis.