I believe that my personal background, and my success despite the adversity that I have faced is an essential part of who I am. The first of my struggles came from being born to two teenage parents without at least a high school education, and although my mother went on to get a GED and to college my father did not. Many people in my family had issues with substance abuse and addictions including my father. Although, I was raised by my mother and grandmother, my father’s actions and behaviors negatively impacted my life. My father was verbally and mentally abusive to the people around him, especially when he used alcohol. During this time, I became involved with karate which gave me self-confidence, built my mental and physical strength, and
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Around this time, I experienced the first of many deaths in my family, my Nana (my father’s mother) died tragically in a house fire. Even though, I took this very hard I coped, and continued to be successful in school. I entered School of The Arts in Rochester, NY in seventh grade as a music major but that is where my interest in photography began. I was introduced to photography by one of the art teachers, and I fell in love with the idea that I could use a camera to express my feelings via photographs. The ability to express myself without words is something that helped me cope with the hard times in my life, especially the many deaths in my family. In the following years five more family members died while I was in high school. My two great grandmothers passed away within weeks of each other, my Papa (cousin’s grandfather) passed a few months later, my father passed away in June of 2014, and my Papa (father’s father) died in August of 2015. My father’s death at the end of tenth grade was sudden but, not completely unexpected because of his history of alcohol abuse. Despite the many mixed emotions that I was going through, I still went to school the day after he passed away because I knew that studying, and preparing for my finals was important to being successful in my life. Even with everything that happened I still managed to do very well in all of my classes, finals and even in my
Around this time, I experienced the first of many deaths in my family, my Nana (my father’s mother) died tragically in a house fire. Even though, I took this very hard I coped, and continued to be successful in school. I entered School of The Arts in Rochester, NY in seventh grade as a music major but that is where my interest in photography began. I was introduced to photography by one of the art teachers, and I fell in love with the idea that I could use a camera to express my feelings via photographs. The ability to express myself without words is something that helped me cope with the hard times in my life, especially the many deaths in my family. In the following years five more family members died while I was in high school. My two great grandmothers passed away within weeks of each other, my Papa (cousin’s grandfather) passed a few months later, my father passed away in June of 2014, and my Papa (father’s father) died in August of 2015. My father’s death at the end of tenth grade was sudden but, not completely unexpected because of his history of alcohol abuse. Despite the many mixed emotions that I was going through, I still went to school the day after he passed away because I knew that studying, and preparing for my finals was important to being successful in my life. Even with everything that happened I still managed to do very well in all of my classes, finals and even in my