After learning of this opportunity to interview an elderly adult, they have likely faced many experiences throughout their lives that have impacted their life. I already had a candidate in mind, Carolina Rodriguez Arcos, who is the mother of my girlfriend and this was the perfect opportunity to learn more about her family roots. It made for an easier interview because I was able to establish more intimate connections by interviewing the mother of a person who I care about and became close to. After hearing about Carolina’s life experiences, I came to learn that life is a beautiful thing but not a bed of roses. Although it has a fair of ups and downs and many aspects of successes and blessings. I have come to learn that the way one views life determines how happy one will be. Carolina views life as a challenge and a path toward innovation and discovery.
Life Review
Carolina Rodriguez Arcos is a fifty-seven-year-old Mexican, immigrant female living with her two children of three in McAllen, Texas. Born in Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas, Mexico., she is the fourth sibling of eight. Carolina comes from a small ranch right outside of Ciudad Victoria called “Los Arcos” named after her paternal family. Her family was not financially stable. There would be days that they will miss breakfast or dinner.
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During her childhood years, her parents would be tough on her. Since she was the oldest female in the family, her parents expected her to clean the house, help in the kitchen, and also take care of her youngest siblings. Carolina loved school. Her parents could not afford it, not only because they were not financially stable, but because they had eight kids in total and it was expensive to educate their children. She only had the opportunity to go to ‘primaria’, which is Elementary in the United States, because that was all her parents could afford. As Carolina was getting older, she was hating the way her family and herself were living. Always missing a meal or not having enough money to buy new shoes or a new shirt. As soon as she turned fourteen years old, she decided to look for a job to better her family financially and also better herself. Her parents did not support her in the decision that she made, but she still did it anyway. She started working as a teller at a bank for ten years. Her experience working as a teller at a young age was awful for her, “The managers from the bank always tried to harass me only because I was the youngest employee.”, Carolina said. She started as an accountant and as time passed she became the general manager of the bank.
Carolina became pregnant at twenty-four, her oldest daughter. She lost her job due to pregnancy and after she had her child she found a job at a funeral home as a cleaning service. Within time of working there, she got promoted as a mortician but before becoming one she had to go to school. She says “I will never forget when my boss asked me if I liked what I was seeing.”, “I was standing right outside of the mortician's room and I was looking at the mortician preparing the body. My manager came from behind and asked me a question that changed my life.” Her manager motivated her to go back to school to become the mortician that was needed. She kept working at the funeral home as a cleaning service while pursuing her education as a mortician. As soon as she graduated from school as a mortician, she became the mortician for her boss. Within years passed by, the funeral director passed away and gave his position to Carolina. She said it was and has been one of the best jobs she has had because it helped her become successful and the person that she is. Today, Carolina says “If I could be a mortician, I would do it in a heartbeat.” Due to her immigration and document status, it is what is keeping her from not becoming one again. She had her second child at thirty-two years old, her son, working as a mortician and this time she didn’t lose her job because she was the boss. At this point in her life, everything was going so well for her and her family as well. She never stopped providing the needs and wants for them. She moved to Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico., to open a second funeral home which was really successful for her because she was getting offers to work in the United States and that helped her with her visa.
When she was thirty-seven years old, she became pregnant with her third child, my girlfriend. The father of the child was not supportive of the pregnancy and asked for an abortion to be done, but Carolina did not allow that. She stood her ground and told herself that she was going to have that child no matter the circumstances. The father of the child is a resident of the United States. Carolina decided to birth her third in the United States so she could have financial help from her father. She had to live in the United States for her whole pregnancy but she couldn’t because of work and her two children, they didn’t have visas. She had to sell ownership of her funeral homes due to the fact that she was pregnant and was going to take a big decision that was going to change her life completely. Carolina’s mother told her that she could take care of the two children while she was gone for the pregnancy and Carolina accepted. She had her third child on November 28th and as soon as her child was born, without waiting for her child’s documents, she left the country back to Mexico to her other two children. Three years after her child was born, she started working at Soriana, a store like Walmart. She provided for her family along with her father and mother. Carolina’s third child needed to start going to school but she wasn’t accepted because she didn’t have any type of nationality documents. That was when Carolina took a huge decision in her life that she did not hesitate on taking. She came back to the United States, this time she swam the river and she sacrificed her life for her daughters to obtain her citizenship which it took her two years to obtain it. She was living with a cousin and started working as a housekeeper and babysitter. A couple of years later, she brought her two other children to the U.S. and she got her own apartment for her family. Carolina says that she will never regret taking the decisions that she took because she did them to better herself and see her family happy.
I asked her if she ever gets tired of working so hard and she said “Yes, every day I wake up I tell myself I don’t want to work anymore, but every day I see myself in the mirror I realize that I’m still young enough to bust my butt and I take myself to work.”. Carolina says that in order to become successful one has to work hard to reach their accomplishments even if one has to make hard decisions in order to get where one wants. Life may throw you bad experiences but one learns from them. “Being undocumented in this country is hard because there is basically nothing here for you. No job, no money, nothing at all. Citizens in this country have it all and it is sad that some of them don’t work hard towards what they want. Most undocumented wish to have documents to provide better for their family but one has to accept and do what they have to do to bring the bread home.” Carolina says. A fond memory she has was having to cross the border. It wasn’t her best experience but it was a choice she had to make in order to progress and not see her children suffer in Mexico. What inspires me about this woman is that even though she went through several unpleasant experiences she did not give up and nothing stopped her from achieving her goals.
Compare and Contrast
The theory of life review was developed on the basis of Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development. The benefit of a life review helps the elderly to look past their experiences and highlight their accomplishments. It is through a life review that helps older adults to complete all stages of Erikson’s psychological development. The purpose of a life review is to highlight some points in the life of an elderly adult, such as family development or personal life, and compare them to end-of-life decisions. A life review often becomes the best strategy for the elderly to achieve the desired ego integrity which means to reconcile with the reality of life in older age. Although not all elderly people are happy with their past experiences or the outcomes, chances are that they will spend their last years more depressed than in peace and emotionally stable. To reach the stage of identity achievement, people undergo a period of intense decision-making. After much effort, they develop a personalized set of values and make their career decisions.
The usefulness of the life review report for Carolina can hardly be overstated. The woman has managed to open up about her life experiences and remember good and bad things that happened throughout her life. Carolina says that her participation in the report has helped her empower her to look back into the past and make predictions for her future. The part of the report devoted to childhood was the most difficult one. Carolina shared how she lived her childhood, helping her parents and working at a young age. Despite the experiences she had to go through and make decisions to accomplish her goals, she will never regret going through with everything that she did and she says she will do it again once more.
Conclusion
Life is the sum of all your experiences that shape you into the individual you are going to be in old age. Carolina’s experiences have led her to a much more peaceful being. She says that “As you age the experiences of life will teach you useful lessons.” Coming from poverty and being financially stable, achieving goals later in life and child-rearing have taught her patience. Coping skills prepares the individual for the perils of old age. I believe this aspect best represents Erikson’s integrity aspect of the theory of ego integrity vs. despair. Her perceptions of family stemmed from her earlier experiences. She learned to care for others at an earlier age when the family took responsibility for raising her and her seven siblings. When she became a mother she was let down but that didn’t stop her from succeeding, she accepted it and put her effort to uphold her family. Today, she is still working. Not where she wants to work but she believes she is still young to not work anymore, although her children are the head of the household. This displays that her experiences are deeply rooted in her belief system.
As a result of my conversation with my mother-in-law, Carolina, I learned life is about what you make it. Individuals make a variety of choices that are going to affect later life experiences. Learning to cope with life grievances helps individuals achieve self-actualization. Maturation occurs only with time. As you get older, life experience gives an individual the wisdom to understand life for all that it is worth.
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