In the iconic movie Braveheart, William Wallace utters the following statement, They may take our lives,

but theyll never take our freedom. To me this quote epitomizes my life experiences. I have had many excruciating things happen which have defined who I am. I am a thriving survivor of my life experience. I relate to the people in the movie who fought against significant challenges so that who they were could be unblemished by others. My name is Melanie Argyle nee Smith; yes I had to marry an American to get a Scottish last name, weird I know. I am thirty five years old. I was born in the summer of 1977 in a quiet town called Dumfries, in southwest Scotland. I have three siblings. Two are older brothers that are ten and eight years older than me. The other is my beautiful older sister who is seven years older than me. I am the baby, and have loved every minute of it. I lived in Scotland until I was twenty years old. At twenty I moved to Utah to marry my sweetheart; I have been in Utah ever since. I attended two different elementary schools (called primary schools in Scotland) and one high school. Middle Schools /Junior High Schools are not utilized in Scotland. I loved growing up in Scotland. The culture is so different from what I experience in America. This course opened my eyes to a greater perspective of how culture plays an important part into your life span story. My family was considered average. By that I mean not poor, not rich. Both of my parents left school between the ages of fifteen and sixteen. At the time, this was considered a normal thing to do. The ability to work is crucial to the success of your family. As a child, I lived in what is called a council house. This is government owned housing. When I was ten, my parents were finally able to afford a private house. There are a few defining events in my life. Some caused significant changes to physical development, while others impacted my emotional and cognitive development. The positive experiences came from my family upbringing, the negative ones from other sources. I have a supportive nuclear family which provided moral and religious guidance for me. My father was the primary breadwinner. He worked very hard to provide for us. My mom stayed home during the day and worked

part time at night. I was encouraged to learn and socialize. In short, my family was wonderful. During this time period of my early childhood, my mother provided a scaffolding for me as I began to learn new things. I had a normal physical and cognitive early childhood. I was also able to attend a child-centered program a couple days each week. When compared to the text I would be considered normal. This included having imaginary play companions. Growing up, I was a tom-boy. I loved playing soccer, playing with the boys, skateboarding, BMX bike riding, and running around the scheme (a Scottish word for a neighborhood) playing kick the can and other childhood games, sometimes until late at night. The people who lived in your scheme were almost an extension of your family. I was very normal in terms of my middle childhood experiences of play and physical activity. I was always playing games, exercising, swimming and so forth. The part of my middle childhood which was at odds with the text was my desire to play with peers of the opposite sex. During this time, the majority of my friends were boys. The approach to education in Scotland is very different than the States. I grew up with very low expectations placed on me by my teachers. One place where I was affected by education was during my middle childhood. At age 10, I moved schools. This was not a typical move, either. I went from a school where the students were all in government housing to a school which was brand new and all the students came from families with a greater level of affluence. The first thing I noticed was that I was very behind in my math skills. The students in the new school would recite daily the multiplication tables, but in my former school I hadnt even learned these. Another place I was at a disadvantage was in my speech. My former school was not concerned with slang and colloquial speech. My new teachers often corrected me for using the kind of speech I had learned in my former school. The low expectations stem from the fact that many students leave school at age 16, the age where this is first possible and schooling is still considered complete. One reason that teens leave school is that there are

no extracurricular activities available to keep teens engaged in their learning process. Unfortunately, stopping school at age sixteen leaves individuals with a limited set of options in regards to employment. You will either work in a factory or a small shop selling various wares. This mentality is fostered by both parental expectation and experience. Many parents, like mine, also left school at fifteen or sixteen to start working. Because my parents left school early, their ability to help me in my school work was less than it could have been. It is hard to help your child in school when you didnt learn the subject yourself. Instead of book smarts, Scottish people work to have common sense and to be street-wise to survive in the world. One downside of this in my own life is that because I didnt have a computer in my home, I struggle to use one today. The religious climate in Scotland is wide and varied. Many churches have been in place for hundreds of years. I was raised as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a church that does not have the same length of history in the country. My parents were avid followers of our church and served as stellar examples to me. Our church building was about five miles from my home and was the only building for a 30 mile radius. Our regional church building (called a stake center, something akin to a diocese level building) was three hours away by car. There were many times that I was the only person my age who was a member of my church in my school. I didnt have the religious support that I could have. Scotland provides a very different cultural experience than America. It was common for children as young as 9 to be smoking. There seemed to be a race to drink alcohol, with this starting usually around age 12. Pubs are on every street corner. Teenage pregnancy was a very common occurrence; girls age 15 or younger might be mothers. Sexual activity is rampant in both boys and girls. This often leads to abuse of drugs in the mid to late teen years. Aside from all this, most people lead relatively

humble lives and understand that everyone is in it together as it were. People are happy to help you out. Friendships are genuine. One of the most defining experiences of my life in Scotland came at the tender age of 13. I experienced menarche at about this time in my life, later than my friends. Sex education was not taught in either my home or my school. What I did learn, I learned from what I saw on television or from friends. When I was thirteen, I was raped by my sixteen year-old old boyfriend. At this young age, I did not have the ability to properly cope with such a traumatic event. Unfortunately, I was in and out of this relationship for the next six years. During this time, I was frequently subjected to additional sexual, emotional and physical abuse. Being ill-equipped to handle such a traumatic set of events resulted in my trying to commit suicide on at least two occasions. I also suffered from bulimia nervosa. During my challenges with Bulimia, my eating habits were not healthy. I didnt worry about eating healthy since I didnt really keep the food down. This lack of nutrition affected both my physical and mental growth. At school, my grades suffered significantly. It was hard to even concentrate when I was worried what might happen to me when I got home from school. During this time I tried drinking and smoking. I also started hanging out with friends who were experimenting with drugs, though I hadnt gone so far as to try them myself. I began listening to rave music and going to clubs. I was desperate for anything which would let me escape my hellish reality. During this time, I told several people but no one stepped in to help me. My experience disconnects with the text which indicates that girls who mature early often have older boyfriends and are more likely to enter into abusive relationships. I matured later but still found myself in an abusive relationship. My experience was fueled more by a cultural expectation than by my own development. Additionally, the text indicates that abusive consequences extend far beyond the actual event. I saw this to be true in my own life where I devalued myself constantly. Also, I struggled to develop healthy romances and friendships after the incident, specifically because as the text notes, my abuser kept me away from others and did not allow me to socialize. All of these

experiences made it impossible for me to experience the normal egocentricism during adolescence since I was in a survival mode. I also experienced many struggles with my personal identity. Because I was worrying about surviving, I wasnt able to learn who I was. When I was seventeen, I suffered another traumatic experience. To this day, I am still not exactly sure how it happened. I woke up one morning and found that I was paralyzed. I lost the ability to take care of myself in any way. Simple things like walking, changing clothes, bathing, feeding myself were not possible. In addition, I found that my speech began to slur and I had difficulty communicating my thoughts since I couldnt think clearly. At the time, I was diagnosed with a condition called Myalgia Encephalomyelitis or M.E. This is a condition that dominated my life for the next eighteen years. At age twenty, I first came to America. I did this to marry my sweetheart. Ill be honest, the night I was to leave Scotland, and I didnt want to go. Thankfully my mother lovingly told me that I was getting on the plane. Moving to the U.S. brought with it a new set of challenges. This included learning how to adapt to a new culture, how to be a wife, and how to be a part of a new family dynamic and how to work full time. During all of this, I was dealing with the challenges of post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety disorders. I found myself working to establish my ethnic identity by keeping my Scottish background and working to integrate it into my new American culture. Since being in America, I have been able to experience a great many successes that I think would not have been available to me had I stayed in Scotland. During my time here, I have been able to bring three wonderful children into the world. Being able to raise them in an environment where there are so many opportunities for them to grow and be successful has been wonderful. For me personally, I was able to attend a trade school where I graduated as both a Master Esthetician and Electrologist. In addition to both of these professional licenses, I received the qualification to enable me to teach both of

those trades. I then took my skills and transitioned the company I worked for into their new state-ofthe-art facility and successfully launched a new esthetics program. In the spring of 2012, my mother passed away. This left a unique void in my life that was difficult for me to handle. I have a good friend who is a hypnotherapist. He offered me the opportunity to spend some time with him working through my feelings and sadness. During this time I discovered a lot of things about myself; I was also able to process the trauma of my youth in such a way that it was no longer a source of pain, but a source of strength. Finally at age thirty five, I know who I am. I also see that I have a successful marriage, wonderful children, close friendships and my health has improved to a level I have not known for nearly 20 years. I also realize that I am intelligent. I am also, finally comfortable with my faith. This new level of confidence in myself gave me a strong desire to attend school and follow my dreams. I find it very interesting that my very first class in school is the study of human lifespan and all the stages of development individuals can experience. I have been able to develop some insight into just how my cultural experiences and related expectations shaped who I am. The class has built on the things I learned during hypnotherapy and has helped me to continue to achieve closure relative to my experiences. This class, coupled with what I have learned in hypnotherapy has served to provide direction regarding where I want to go in my career. When I started this class, I wanted to be a Kindergarten teacher. Now, I want to use the experiences of my own life to help troubled teens, young mothers who are victims of abuse and others who are struggling under these kinds of challenges. Having a better understand of the life span and the challenges inherent in each stage of development has shown me a path to help others regain the freedom I have in my own life.