My Reflection And Analysis

Knowing who you are is very important. It is the foundation to your life. I think everyone should be knowledgeable of their heritage, culture, ethnicity and background information pertaining to their family. Everyone’s story is unique and it is what helps set them apart in the big world we live in. There are many events and people that have contributed to where I am today. My story is unique, complicated and has many twists to it; however I think I have managed to do quite well considering my backstory. The first memory based on ethnicity is one that my mother told me. She told me that when I was a baby Hispanic people would come up to me and start speaking to me in Spanish because I looked like a Hispanic baby. This is interesting to me because my ethnicity is not a 100% known. My mother is of German and Irish descent. My father, who I have only met once in my lifetime, is, as far as I know, Spaniard and Blackfoot Indian. As a baby I had curly dark brown hair, big brown eyes and had a darker complexion than my Caucasian mother. First, I feel that I must share what my “family” consisted of when I was a child. I did not have a typical all American family when I was growing up. My family consisted of two moms and a “brother” that would sometimes live with us until I was about eight years old. Honestly, I had no clue that my family was different; I loved my mom and her friend and her son Jimmy. Jimmy was about 10 years older than me and he only stayed with us when he was having financial difficulties. Most of the time I was an only child and enjoyed being by myself or with my grandparents and great-grandparents that lived down the road. It wasn’t until I was in middle school that I became curious about where my father was. I had never seen him and sometimes when I would go to lunch and see other student’s parents walking down the hall, I would wonder and hope that maybe it was my father coming to have lunch with me. I will be honest it was painful at times, and the more curios I became the more painful my journey became, not only for me, but for my mother. My father liked to drink and had been in trouble with the law several times which had landed him in the county jail on multiple occasions. We had tried to set up a meeting with him in the mall and waited several hours only to find out he had been arrested on DWI charges. Finally I got to see my father, in all places, the county jail, during visiting hours. My mother had not seen him for about ten years and didn’t even recognize him. Needless to say the visit was akward, he made some promises that when he got out of jail he’d come see me and try to catch up on things he had missed out on. I never saw him again. A …show more content…
She has never talked cruelly of him, only giving me facts, both good and bad, and letting me decide for myself my opinions about him. I believe she chose to have little contact with him because she was trying to protect me from him. She didn’t want me to get hurt physically or emotionally. I am a firm believer that good things have the opportunity to come out of bad situations, if we choose to take the right path.
Part II: The Reflection My family history is unique in many different ways. In reflection, there are many emotions that were once again stirred up in me because of this assignment. Also, in writing this story it has once again renewed my love for my family that I now have. Some emotions that were stirred up, are those of confusion, and a sense of emptiness. I have secretly always yearned for the little hole in my heart to be closed up with a relationship with my father or his family. When I found my father’s sister I was so excited, only to be let down again when she wasn’t as enthused as I was to find her. Then once learning that she and others had known about me, confused and angered me because if they knew about me, why did they not try to contact me