My father was an alcoholic that quit his job and cheated on my mother and then married another woman rather than be there with my mother at the hospital when I was born. She raised me along with my grandparents babysitting me until I was old enough to stay home alone while she worked at the same university I am now getting my Chemistry degree. When I was 14 she finally decided to go after my father for child support. His response to that was to tell me that he was dying of cancer so that we wouldn't push the issue. He was never sick, he just did it because he didn't want to provide any support toward my upbringing whatsoever. He signed away custody of my half-sister who ended up being raised by my father's parents because her mother and her mother's boyfriend were no better than he is. My oldest half-brother who was named after him spent 9 years with him until that fell apart too. As far as I know, he's the only one that was raised for any significant amount of time by my father, has his own kids and is/was? a drug addict. Aside from that, I never really knew my siblings or my father's entire side of the family. Hell, I wasn't even mentioned as one of my grandparents' grandchildren after they died and neither was my younger half-brother whose mother was also not married to him when we were born. His family is very catholic and more or less pretended we didn't exist apparently.

So what did that do? Imagine half your family gone and being used to that for almost 30 years as if it was normal. Imagine knowing what I do about my father. I think the biggest thing I got out of it is that family isn't who is related to you but who cares for you. It's also made me really intolerant of people that downplay what women are capable of because my mother managed to be both my parents, hold down a job and help pay for me to go to college all while being single for almost 30 years. She did that alone and because of that, she's probably the one person that I admire above all others. She was the one that sparked my curiosity which lead to me becoming a scientist which is a huge part of who I am.