2-1 Discussion Early Childhood Experiences and Neural Plasticity
I do not have one complete memory of a significant personal early childhood experience, but
multiple experiences that I feel just built on top of the previous ones. My father committed suicide a few
days before my second birthday. Although I was too young to remember the incident or even him, I do
remember have memories from when I was about five years old when I asked my mom what a dad was
and was curious as to why I did not have one but all my friends at school did. When I asked my mom
this, she explained to me what a father was, and she just told me mine passed away. I asked her how he
had died, and she just told me he was shot but would not discuss it any further. I know that I was too
young for my mom to explain to me in detail what happened, but I felt at that moment that I was not
allowed to bring it up. I had so many questions, feelings, and emotions that I did not understand but felt
as if I had to just shove it down deep inside since I was not allowed to talk to her about it. At that point,
in my young little brain, I tried to make it make sense to myself. I took the information that he had been
shot and created this whole image in my head of him “going hunting and someone thought he was a
bear and shot him because he did not have one of those orange vest ‘thingies’.” I also remember how
excited I was a couple of years later when my mom got engaged. Her fiancé told me he would adopt me,
and I was going to have a dad! But then my baby sister was born less than a year later (no adoption yet),
and he turned on me because I was not his child. I was never physically abused per say but was
emotionally. I felt so rejected by my stepfather. I became a very anxious child and began to mold what
my sense of self-worth was. I couldn’t be worth that much if he didn’t want to adopt me anymore and
hated me for not being his child. I remember anxiously biting my nails and the skin around my nails so
much that my fingers would bleed when he was at home. They eventually got divorced and being away
from him helped. When I turned 18, my mom finally told me what happened to my father, informing me
