The person who inspires me is my mother. My mom teaches me how to be a strong and independent woman every day, and she has a saying: “If you want something done, do it yourself.” 

My mom is the strongest woman I know, but it is because she had to be. She grew up in a poor family. I have heard so many stories about how she was constantly bullied for being a poor kid. One way she would show she wasn’t just a poor kid was by playing almost every sport she could master: track, volleyball, cross country, etc. 

“I had a normal childhood. I was poor but it was normal. I had a home just like everyone else, and siblings.” She said calmly. 

She could have gotten a scholarship to college if she would have stayed in school, but life has a way of making things complicated. When my mom was seventeen, she dropped out of school to take care of her mother until my grandma’s death when my mom was twenty four. 

“When I was a junior in high school, my mom got sick. Everyone else was grown except me and Jessie, my little brother. There was nobody else to take care of her, nobody wanted to take care of her, so I dropped out of school and took care of her until she died when I was twenty four.”  She reminisced. 

She has been very independent since she was eight years old. She has been taking care of everyone since then. One thing about my mom is she will never complain or wish she was someone else. She takes pride in being herself and how she was raised, but she always wanted a different life from how she was brought up.

“I took care of everybody and I helped my mom, and then it just continued on through my whole life… taking care of everybody.” 

 She worked two or three jobs constantly to make money to support herself, as well as “mad money”.

“I had my very first job at fourteen, scraping paint off walls. At sixteen, I worked for feral building materials. When I was eighteen, I worked at MCI. I’ve had lots of jobs.”

That is one of the many things that attracted her to my dad. He also worked for his living and was a hard worker.

“He wasn’t trying to be something he wasn’t, he was just worried about making a living and that’s what we both did.” 

I feel like I relate to my mom in so many ways. I want to support myself and be able to do the things I want to do. She has always told my sister and I that she wants us to survive in this world with the independence and life skills she tried to give us. Our family constantly tells us that I act just like her. I take that compliment with such confidence because my mom is my hero and being like her is a blessing in my book.