Interview Narrative
Nurturing. Hard-working. Wise. Only some of a few words to describe my mother, Kristen Schiebel. At 6 foot 1 inches she towers over you, but she acts as you are her equal. With her welcoming blue eyes and dirty blond hair, she is the first person you look to if you have a problem, no matter how petty or small it was. Always there to help or give advice. If I turn into half the woman my mother is I’ll consider myself lucky. I sat down with Kristen and she told me about what made her the person she is today. As a child she was raised in North Carolina, she was happy and carefree, as any child would be. She loved to roller skate, watch cartoons, and play games with her parents. In school she set expectations for herself,…show more content… She wanted to get good grades, participate in clubs, and get awards. All so she could get into the colleges of her choice. But, at the same time, she was only following the expected path. “You do well in high school, you go to college, you get a job, that was the path.” She had wanted to go into Foreign Service so she could follow her dreams of travelling, but decided it was not right for her. "One of the biggest things that affected me was when I got out of school I did not have a job." Growing up, and even now, Kristen's role models has been her mom and her two sisters. She said she had always found inspiration from the fact that, "Even though they started down a certain path, they didn't always end up where they started. "To her, they were great role models in terms of showing the possibilities of what you could do." Kristen's aunt Debbie who had received a woman of the year award gave her a piece of advice that would lead to change the way she thought about her path. She told Kristen to take the summer off and check out Yellowstone National Park because she did not have a job set up. She took her advice and went. She loved every second of it, from the geysers to the animals she had never been able to see before, except in pictures. For the first time in her life, Kristen was truly on her own. But she was not alone for long. During that three month summer she met her future husband. Kristen smiles as she recalls the memory, he asked her to stay longer and travel with him even though they had only knew each other for three months. “To literally go off and not even have an idea where we were going was scary.” She realized she did not have to set a time limit, it was okay if it was not just a summer. They ended up travelling all over America, the three months that she was going to take off turned into three