Undergraduate / "Let your life speak" - Tufts Supplement Essay about family, home, neighborhood, or community [8]

Prompt: There is a Quaker saying: "Let your life speak." Describe the environment in which you were raised - your family, home, neighborhood, or community - and how it influenced the person you are today. (200-250 words)

At the age of 12, the family I had grown up with was torn apart. Not by death or by injury or by consequence, but by divorce. While this is possibly the hardest thing I have had to endure, it taught me the value of perseverance.

As my parents explained to my siblings and I that they were getting divorced, we were stunned; unable to comprehend the magnitude of their words. Slowly we started to experience what the words "Your Dad and I are getting divorced" really meant. We wouldn't be able to see our Dad after work anymore. We would have to move once Mom sold the house. We would have to go back and forth between houses. We would have to witness more arguing than even before the divorce. These all became very real after a short while.

Eventually all of this worry and stress from the divorce manifested within me. I started to become very angry at the world, not willing to accept my situation. I became a hermit, locking myself in my room for hours in an effort to escape my fragmented family. This anger and pain lasted for a long time, but eventually I overcame it. Instead of dwelling on the past, I learned a very valuable life lesson: what is done is done, so move on. Overcoming the effects of divorce was emotionally exhausting, but through this experience I learned to lift my head up and push through the difficulty towards a brighter future.