Romi Avidor Week 15 Does a person’s background define them?

The easy answer to this question is no. No one’s background or where they come from define them. It can most definitely influence them in certain ways, but it does not define who you are as a person. For example, there are cases where one’s mom or dad is a drug addict, an alcoholist, or a person who even committed a crime, and just because someone’s parents did this, the child is not defined by it. They can learn to be better than their parents where in some cases they do, or in some cases they do not. They can easily get influenced by this because they have grown up around it, but I do not believe that it defines the child. In this specific example,people think that the child is going to be a bad person as well or a person that will do drugs and get messed up in things when he or she is older, but just because of their families background it does not mean that they would do something like that as well. Of course it is important for someone to grow up in the right environment where they see the right choices being made, but not everyone is fortunate enough for that. Lately, I have been rewatching a tv show that I love called, The Fosters. This show is very important to watch. Although it is not based on a true story, it is based on events that can happen in real life. The show is based off of a girl named Callie. She and her brother, Jude, have been placed in several different foster homes. Their mom passed away from a car accident when they were very young and the father was put in jail because he was drunk when driving the car. In the foster homes, they were both abused multiple times by different people. Callie went to juvie because she stood up to her foster parents about hitting and abusing her brother. By going to juvie, it put a name on her forehead, “the girl that went to juvie”, even though she wasn’t in juvie because she committed a serious crime. When she came out of juvie they had to find her a new foster home, so they placed her with the Foster family. Ever since she was placed with them, in a good healthy environment she completely changed. Just because of her background and her going to juvie it did not mean she was a bad person. It was just that she needed the right people to guide her in the right ways. Although this takes a while for them to accomplish, she turns out to be different then how she was when they first took her in. The Fosters theme song says, “it is not where you come from, it’s where you belong”, and I completely agree with that statement. You can make whatever you want out of yourself. These are two different examples of how your past, your background, your parents, or anything else can not define you. People grow and learn to be better. In other cases they grow and they say they do not want to be like their parents because they feel it is important to be different or to make a difference. That is why I believe only you can define yourself, it is who you are and who you want to be that defines you. This is the storyline and more information about the tv show. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fosters_(American_TV_series)