Autobiographical Sketch

Autobiographical Sketch
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
The “Me”
My Name is Luther Wood; I am 34 years old, and I am African American with a wife and teenage daughter. I have been married for 15 years, and I work in the human services field. My mom was a single parent, and I have four siblings: two sisters and two brothers. I am the oldest. To me, life has been a rollercoaster full of experiences: the good ones and the bad ones. My life revolves around three phases, including before teenage, teenage years, and after teenage. Short as it may seem, this life has exposed me to experiences that modeled the person I have become.
Family and Childhood
My mother and siblings define much of the person I became in my childhood. I am the oldest of all my siblings. Life was fairly interesting in my early development years. I had a father, a mother, and younger siblings. At the age of 9, the most traumatic thing in my life happened. My father was killed on his way home from work by unknown thugs. That traumatic event triggered a change in my life. My mother was not employed at the time. Hence, we sought a new place to live, and my mother had to seek minimum wage jobs to feed the family. I grew much closer to my family. I loved my mother amidst the struggle that I underwent.
My family members have a lot of stories to tell about me. I have twin sisters who follow me on the birth order then my brother. My twin sisters see me as a parent more than a brother. They refer to me as the father they missed. That is because we spent much of our childhood together. Because of little income, my mother spent much of her time looking for jobs and food for her family. On most occasions, I was left behind, alongside a maid, to look after my younger sisters. The maid and I were close enough and I looked after my siblings as she cleaned or warmed our food. I was a disciplinarian, and my sisters confessed that they could not make a mistake without informing the maid or our mother when she came back from work. I am not close to the youngest of our siblings, Ted. Ted gets away with everything. He is largely an avoidant attachment child. That is because Ted, even in his toddler ages, cared so little when my mother left for work. Even in her return, Ted continued with her duties.
My mother gives the best description of my childhood. Being the firstborn, I spent much of my time with my mother. Spending time with her as a young child was possible considering that she had a paying job, and there was not much desire to look for minimum wage jobs all the time. I grew fond of my mother and cared so much about her absentia. As Bowlby states in his attachment theory, children come to the world forming attachments that they believe would help them survive (Kail & Cavanaugh, 2019). My mother protected me and offered all the love that I needed. She, however, was not a lawnmower. My mother was a helicopter parent. She insisted on disciplining me whenever I made a mistake. She also ensured that I attended my school and did my assignments on time. As per her assertions, I was a playful child, and only strict parenting would render me doing anything worthwhile.
Teenage
My teenage years were accompanied by some of the greatest social developments that I have experienced in my entire life. I am a believer in Erikson’s psychological development theory. Erikson believed that human personality evolved through different stages of development. One’s teenage years constitute a stage where an individual understands much of their personality (Staudinger & Lindenberger, 2012). The teenage years are marked by a conflict between identity and role confusion. From childhood, my mother always encouraged me to be who I wanted to be. She told me to pursue what I thought was right for me and never list...