Journal Entry #1 Only Daughter

In what sense do the number and gender(s) of your siblings "explaining everything" about who you are today.
     I only have one sister and her name is Stephanie Espinosa. She is only a year younger than me, and we are different from each other. Since we are both girls and only our mother raised us on her own, we have a good amount of restrictions. My mother had to do everything for us such as: buy us clothes, buy food, buy school supplies and uniforms, pay the rent on her own, and do it all with minimum wage paycheck. We struggled alot more than other kids, and had to live with what we could afford. Seeing her struggle and still staying strong in our eyes made me change how I see life. She had to protect us alot from others, because she warned us to be cautious and smart in making decision on our own.
     Letting us know how life can be hard and observing from a perspective that the income of ones wealth is a big effect on how your life will be. When I was younger I admit in having tantrums just because I never got everything I wanted. It wasn't because she didn't want to buy us a simple barbie, it was for we could not always afford it. A point in life when I started to grow more and understand, I saw that money is not given out for free. The nights that she wasn't there, where the nights we missed her the most. No mother to sleep next to us and protect us, and no mother to spend the afternoons out of school with.
     I am who I am, because I was raised in an environment where we had to work for what we needed and struggle most of the times during hardship. I value what I receive and what i can get. People call me to friendly and caring. Only because I'm the kind of person that will be there for them and care and do anything I can possibly do to help.  Also, because of my childhood being different girls looked down on me and sometimes took advantage of me. I grew strong and let no one put me down, as well as to work hard in school to follow what I want to be in my future. If we work hard now, our future will be not as hard as she had to work with raising two daughters on her own. We will raise our own family different without struggle, is what my mother strongly believes in.