My Mother

This post is a little personal for me but I have been thinking about it a lot since I began this class. My mother was born in 1961 with cerebral palsy (CP). (The CP only affected her psychically not mentally).  My mother had four siblings, an alcoholic mother and an abusive father. My mom was always left out of sibling activities due to her disability. Her father thought that she would never marry let alone have children. However my mom was the first of her father's five children to get married and have a child. She graduated with her masters degree from St John's University in New York in Speech Language Pathology and now she works with children with much more severe disabilities than her.

My mother has always been my role model but this class has made me really think of what gave her the motivation to do all she has done. When I was in high school I went to the Atlantic City Boardwalk with my friend and a man about my mothers age asked me for some money. He was homeless and was missing an arm. I offered to buy him a slice of pizza and he continued to tell me about his life and as far as I could tell he had no mental impairments. So I wondered to myself about my mother and this man both has physical disabilities but my mother had made the most of her life and pushed past her psychical impairment while this man just took the easy route living on the boardwalk and begging people for money.

What motivations did my mom have that he did not? Most people would think it was the family they each came from. However my mom's family was very dysfunctional as I stated before. So I have been thinking about it for a while and the only thing I came up with is that my mom is very religious. She is a christian and she always says that she could not do it without God. I do not have any references for this post because my reference is from my personal life. Religion was not in any of the lectures for this class but I do think that religion helps motivate people. It gives a person something to believe in bigger than themselves and that gives them a little bit of a push to help them do their best in life.