***DEFINING MY IDENTITY***

Cindy Jones

As a child we were very poor, I come from a single mother who worked two and three waitress jobs to support me and my three siblings (I am the oldest). My mom worked all day every day and yet we never had enough of anything…

We lived in the outskirts of Los Angeles in communities of mixed nationalities but, I never

really noticed any differences in us, because we were all the same…

POOR…POOR…POOR….My mom lost her only sibling/brother in 1968 in the Viet Nam War… I never knew my father and my step father was only around long enough to put three babies in my moms belly, then hit the road… So…There were no aunts, uncles, cousins or grandparents, in our lives just us…

***WHERE I COME FROM*** SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS

*** LIFE*** HOW I GREW UP

We lived in shabby apartments and moved around a lot because my mom didn’t always make enough money to pay the rent…

The neighborhoods that we lived in were all the same, working single moms, tons of kids with no adult supervision, except for a few grandparents who were retired and living with their kids, because they did not make enough to live alone...

We played in the streets, came and went as we pleased, ate whatever my mom scrounged up and that was life… Nobody to tell us to do homework, clean up our messes, or go to bed….

***MY SCHOOLING***OR LACK OF

I went to so many schools as a kid I do not even remember them all. I do remember going to six different school when I was in the third grade…

I did not learn to read or write until the 4th grade!!!! Luckily in fourth grade I got a teacher who really cared….He opened up the world for me…Before Mr. Palicios…

***I WAS ILLITERARE***I quit High School in 10th grade and got married (just like my mom did)….But I made a VOW… Not only to my husband BUT, to myself…I would break the cycle of my families situation, and that is what me and my husband Geezer (Vincent), set out to do…

***MY GREATEST TALENTS***BEING ME

In pursuing my professional aspirations, I found out that my greatest talent was fitting in…Blending in…Being able to make friends with any and everyone I meet…

I am artistic by nature and I love to write….I write Poetry, Short Stories and research papers for fun (no joke)….Somebody has to do it, Why not

me?But…My talent for working with children and being a mom are the most fulfilling… I love children and worked with the Girl Scouts for 22 years, those are some of my fondest memories…

***FROM POVERTY TO PLENTY***

After getting married, I got a job as a waitress and worked really hard… I found a mentor one day while shopping in a craft store…

My Mentor taught me how to display merchandise and how to run a retail store….

I left waitressing to take a job as a retail cashier and was soon promoted to an assistant manager…Within a year I became a store manager where my monthly salary was more than what my mother had made in a year when I was growing up.

I had the husband, house, and job….Now it was time for the babies…I had three beautiful children, who were and are the pride and joys of my life (at least most of the time)… Now at the age of 55, I also have 3 adopted special needs children, that bring joy to my life in ways unimaginable…

All of my kids went to the same schools from K-5, 6-8 and 9-12…There was/is no moving around for us… I would NEVER let that happen to my kids…

…That life was gone forever…

While our kids were going to school, my husband and I went back to school and earned our GED’s…How could we expect them to graduate if we had not???

**SOMETHING WAS MISSING*** ACTUALLY…LOTS OF THINGS WERE MISSING

***SOMETHING WAS MISSING***PART TWO

At the age of 48 I retired, I had had enough…Retail Management is tough…Both mentally and physically…I needed to leave…

I wanted to go back to school and work towards becoming a teacher…

I went online, talked to several schools and chose Ashford University and got my BA in Social Science with and education concentration. I completed my last class in the fall of 2014…

That Brings us to now….This is my second class towards my Masters Degree and I am really excited to get started…