Introductions

Hannah Sterkel, 17

Hello! My name is Hannah. I am seventeen years old and I live in St. Louis. My pronouns are she and her. I have a dog named Luna. I have been reading a lot recently and I love to travel so I have been doing virtual tours of cities around the world. 

This general introduction gives you all the easy to digest information about me. You really don’t know that much about me from that. The most important parts of my identity were created in the times of my life that are not easy to digest. 

My parents are divorced because my mom struggled with alcoholism throughout my early childhood. This created an intense love of honesty because my mother could not be honest when she was drinking. I watched it break apart my family when I was only seven years old. I learned that it is much better to ask for help than lie. You could not know how much I value honesty without knowing that imperfect detail of my life. 

I am a very optimistic person even when I have no reason to be. This is because no one believed that my mother could recover except for me because I was too young to not believe in her. Perhaps I would not be so optimistic if she had not recovered but she has been sober for nine years now. I have gotten hurt by being so optimistic before and yet I cannot shake the belief that everything will be okay. 

I try to be kind, no matter what. I firmly believe that everyone deserves kindness even when they have done something wrong. No one in my family knew how to handle my parents’ divorce. Some of my extended family thought that the best way to support my dad was to hate my mom and vice versa. This only created a greater feeling of loneliness for me and my sister. The people that were kind and compassionate towards both of my parents are the people who helped us through it the most. 

There are plenty of other stories I could tell but this example shows why first impressions are never enough to judge someone on. People do not introduce themselves by saying, “Hello, would you like to hear about when my world fell apart and how I put it back together?” Those moments are when core values and beliefs develop. Those moments are how I know how to conduct myself from day to day. 

Those moments are how I know who I am.