Personal Statement: Growing Up In A Single Parent Home

Personal Statement Assignment Growing up in a single parent home isn’t exactly what you would call easy. It was difficult, but it shaped me into the person I am today, a hardworking independent student with big dreams. My mom went through a lot to raise me and my older sister the “right” way. Her strong influence made her my top role model, the one person I aspire to be like in the future. My father was gone most of my life. From the stories that I’ve heard, he’s not a nice person. My mom never goes much into any topic concerning my father, for the fear that it could damage any possible future relationship between me and him, although I never really felt any connection. When I was six, he was put in jail for armed robbery. I still remember the weekly 15 minute phone calls that would just end if we didn’t say goodbye in time, no extensions. That was before I knew all the things he did.
When my father was there, my mom stayed strong through all the abuse.
He abused drugs and alcohol, left regularly, and took my mother’s money, then came back begging my mother for forgiveness, saying that he will change. He wrecked our car, took me and my sister to bad places, and pretended to forget the bad things has done because he was under the influence. My mom, who believed we needed a father figure, constantly let him back in, struggling so we could live the “perfect life,” that she wished for us.
There was a lot building up to when she actually left him. The day he pulled the keys out of a moving car on the highway with us in it was my mom’s tipping point. She went to court and gained custody of us. When he went to jail my mom decided we needed to start a new life so she took us with her across the country from New Jersey to California. This decision was the best decision my mother had ever made and I praise her every day for her courage to start a completely new
life. My mom works as a nurse, which is my dream job. She works so hard to earn enough to keep a roof over me, my sister and my elderly grandmother. She makes enough money so that we can live a comfortable life. My aunt, uncle and a relative all live with us so that we can afford the house we live in. Seeing my mom, working, still happy, still driving me and my sister around even after she just worked the night-shift, reminds me all the time that a “complete family” doesn't necessarily have to mean a family with a mom and dad. The life I live now is a good one, it is complete and it's perfect to me. My mom is so supportive of me and my sister. Throughout middle school my father would visit us once a year for a week. I would always go, I felt bad for him, he would put on a sad act about how he is a good person and how he's changed and that we need a father in our lives to be happy. My sister, like me, was never comfortable around him, but she was better at voicing her beliefs, by the third time he visited she refused to see him. He was like a stranger to us, a man we barely remembered forcing his love onto us, forcing us to show love back. My mom, supported her through it all, it was about the same time that she started going through depression, and i remember my mom was with her though it all, taking her to therapy, their relationship got closer.
However one year ago, when he was let off parole, he decided from connecticut where his parole made him live to be with us in California. He did this not knowing that we didn't want to be with him. First thing my sister did was file a restraining order against him, she knew if she didn't he would force his way to her. During this time they were in court, the court ruled that i had to go to regular visits with him and if i don't i would have to go to regular therapy meetings with him. My mom, knowing I don’t want to be with him either, is currently going in court to try and stop this from happening.
My mom is my role model. I look up to her so much and want to thank her for all the days i have lived. All the days where she took us out even though she worked three night shifts in a row, or when she takes us on trips for me and my sisters birthdays, the days she suffered with my dad, the days she currently has to deal with him trying to fight him in court. My mom is the reason I work so hard, the reason I know I can be independent, because of how well she does it all herself.