Laura

So I am the youngest of five children.

And my three sisters are a lot older.

They're half sisters, a lot older than me.

And then my brother and I are very close in age.

We're only two years apart.

And he's my full brother.

Growing up, I was very shy.

I was the kind of person who only spoke to my mom and my brother.

And if I had to speak to my dad, I would speak to him.

But I was always very shy around him, too.

So really, it was just my mom and my brother.

And my sisters did not live with us in my memory.

I don't remember them ever living with us.

I know when I was born, like they were around.

But one thing growing up that I always remembered and I always felt pressure on was the fact that my sisters and my mom were all teen moms.

so i love i love my sisters to death i think that they are the strongest women and my mother the strongest woman i've ever met but i always felt like you can't end up that way you can't be the person who also gets pregnant when you're a teenager and not finish school or go an alternate path and then have to finish school later or try extra hard like

I feel like my parents did everything to set my brother up and the two of us up for success, for us to have a privileged life in order to avoid that.

So my job growing up was to do well in school, get into a good college, make a good career and like be the perfect kid.

And I feel like a lot of that is internalized.

It's not necessarily my mom wasn't bringing down my neck, making sure that I never got teen pregnant.