Personal Narrative: A Change In My Life By Jeannette Walls

Improved Essays
I believe that every event in your life happens for a reason. Whether the outcome of the event is good or bad it teaches us a lesson. Jeannette Walls, one of my many favorite authors, states, "Sometimes something catastrophic can occur in a split second that changes a person's life forever; other times one minor incident can lead to another and then another and another, eventually setting off just as big a change in a body's life.” Like author Walls says, there can be one major incident or one minor, but both can impact one’s life drastically. My event was major and it was what marked my transition from childhood to adulthood.

It was a brisk winter day and I had turned fourteen not only a month ago. It was just like any other ‘normal’ day. I had gone to school and went home on the bus, waiting patiently for my eleven year old twin sisters to get home. My mom had a regular checkup at
…show more content…
I questioned everything especially my faith. How could my mom, my best friend, be diagnosed with breast cancer when all she has even done is love and care for others? Constant ideas and concerns about my mom and her health ran through my head all day, keeping me up at night with a mind full of thoughts. My biggest fear was that one day I would come home from school and she wouldn’t be there. My perspective on life was changed. I no longer was an innocent child who was sheltered from the bad in life. I learned to appreciate everything especially the small things in life, like getting home from school to find my mom waiting for me, or even being able to get a laugh out of my mom. I knew that I was expected to do a lot more. I slowly started to learn how to help, not only my mom, but also the whole family. I would help my sisters with their homework even if that meant I was up all night doing my own. I came home after school everyday to care for my mom so my dad could have a short break. At a young age I learned how to put others needs before my

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    The problems of adapting to new languages, modes of thought, customs and beliefs inspires people to communicate their experiences and struggles. The writers’ eagerness to recollect their pre-affiliations, or at least a memory where they came from also influenced what how they wrote. From Indian captivity narratives such as, A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson by Mary Rowlandson, slave narratives such as, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano by Olaudah Equiano and a very short autobiography A Short Narrative of My Life by Samson Occom, these three readings helped shaped a better view of the culture of early America. Captivity tales were common with readers in the late 17th and early 18th centuries.…

    • 333 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Once you’re born you only get one life, not everyone lives long enough to experience different things. Growing up I was told I wasn’t going to finish school, being told I won’t get nowhere in life without an education is heartbreaking. I was tired of the negativity so I came across this program called “Fresh Start” ran by Penn foster. I bet you’re wondering how I got into the program and what I’ve been through to get where I am now once you continue reading you’ll find out why. Everything happen back on 2009 October 26 to be exact.…

    • 855 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Race is, according to Merriam-webster.com (2015), “any one of the groups that human beings can be divided into based on shared distinctive physical traits”. One’s race is something that is usually noticed right away. Oftentimes, race has traits that are visibly distinguishable. These distinguishable traits include skin color, which is the most visible distinguished trait regarding race, hair texture, and other facial features. When individuals come from interracial marriages, which is a child born from parents of different races, these physical traits can become blurred (Healey & O’Brien, 2015, p. 16-18).…

    • 1624 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Thankfully, I am in control of my own emotions. With that said, if I choose to be happy, I must learn to take certain risks in life. Unfortunately, numerous life changing decisions are difficult to assemble. However, the process of deciding my future brings me one step closer to discovering myself. For example, say my best friend…

    • 222 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Spring of 2013 was the year were my life changed for the best. That year was when I visited the motherland of my parents. The trip to Mexico wasn't just a week vacation it was more of an eye opener and a learning experience. It the first time I left the country and went out to explore on my own. The little vacation was mainly to meet family members that I had never met and to see where my parents grew up.…

    • 559 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    I was born and raised in Brownsville, Texas; my environment shaped me to become someone responsible, an over achiever, and a determined young man. The people who had the biggest impact on me is the woman who gave me life, my father, and my community. My mother was already there for me even before I stared walking, she was there to comfort me when I fell on my knees. She was my first teacher, the one who taught me morals and set up my standards; whenever we had a family party and all of our thirty members were together, she will make me introduce and address myself to every single one and if ever forgot to say hi to someone she will just give me a look to make realize my mistake, and I will immediately go on to that person and say sorry for…

    • 831 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    It was some November day, and the whole gymnasium was silent. I look around and can count 19 girls surrounding me. The only thing you could hear was the heavy breathing of 20 girls after the last basketball tryout. It was almost as if the air was a prized possession and everyone was trying to steal it from each other. The air was filled with sweat and anticipation.…

    • 319 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    There are approximately 397,000 children in foster care in the United States of America currently and I used to be one of them. However, foster had not even been near the forefront of my mind that summer. The summer before I started my first year of high school, I had plenty of anxiety about the tall tale I invented in my own mind that stood before me. Stories about how hard high school were numerous and often regaled on the crowded bus ride home by high schoolers who seemed to have the knowledge of every wise teacher in history combined. which that scared me to death; I had always held my position as a good student who followed the rules of my middle school.…

    • 1444 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Everyone knows the YMCA song, but everyone doesn’t have the same connection to it that I do. This building never contained one life changing event for me, but it has been a pivotal place in my life. A place I’ve referred to as home many times, the YMCA has shaped who I am as a man. This pivotal spot is where I suffered my first traumatic injury, changing how I do things for the rest of my life; but also was the place I went to when coping with family incidents. This institution, in particular the basketball gym, helped me find myself, changing my life forever.…

    • 1014 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    It’s very strange how one experience or choice you make in your life can change the rest of your life that follows that event, would you then in turn change these decisions you made. Such as your what if your mom conceived you not on the knowing basis. What if everyone was telling her not to because she was to be a single mom and that’s not a world a child should be born into, but then what if she challenged this belief that she grew up with. This then in turn affected all her choices later in life, but then vice versa what if she didn't challenge this belief and stuck with what she knew. This may be of the more extreme choices in life that some people must make but we all have that certain time in our life that comes where we must break away and make…

    • 951 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    When I was a child,I had a friend called Dave. Dave and I went to middle school together and we were best friends. I recall spending days with him without feeling bored or dissatisfied. He was a great student and I had always idealized him In addition to that ,he was a remarkable athlete and his life revolved around sports and education.…

    • 497 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    I believe that many things happen in our lives so we can become the people we are today and i believe that all these things happened to me for a reason and i can say they have made me a much stronger person. I was at the beginning of my second semester and my life was in a serious downward spiral. In the month of March, I…

    • 996 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    From these experiences, I learned that life is too short to not enjoy every moment of it, and to seize every opportunity you have, as you do not know when it will be the last. These events alone impacted my life in such a profound way and granted me a new perspective, along with appreciation for life. From these events I came to the realization that everything truly does happen for a reason. This is because just like every other thing I draw out as a key component in the making of who I came to be, my life and the person I am would absolutely not be the same without…

    • 1364 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    “A handful of moments I wished I could change, but I was carried away,” are the lyrics that remind a lot about myself. Growing up, and even about two years ago, I was insanely shy and did not talk much around people, friends, or family. The way I talked to people was in a timid, soft spoken way, which looking back, was awfully embarrassing. My friends and family would laugh at me because I could not talk well, and when I did talk, they acted as if I were a baby who just said its first words. With all of that nonsense going on, their idiotic response kind of made me not want to say anything anymore.…

    • 1846 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    An experience that changed my life was on May 19th, 2014, my brother’s death. It changed my life in a positive and negative way. You would think that death would devastate someone for the rest of their life, but my brother’s death actually changed my life. I’m not saying that his death didn’t have a negative effect on me, but it had more of a positive effect on me than anything. His death made me an introvert, think for myself, and see things differently.…

    • 608 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays