No Joke Teen Truth # 159: Throughout your childhood, sit down with your parents and learn something new about them. Find out how they lived when they were children. Find out what events shaped their lives. And find out what it is that makes them great people.

I think every child should have a personal history talk with each of his/her parents. It is infinitely beneficial to know where your parents came from, what kind of situation, what challenges they faced, and what inspired them to do the things they did in life. My mother and I have had these kinds of conversations many, many times over the years. These heartfelt and revealing conversations between parent and child could possibly turn out to be the most character-developing events in any child’s life.

...as a child, it wasn’t clear to me, that out of six children, my mother was the only one to choose a certain path in life. The path she chose, ultimately, would influence my entire life, and stand as the foundation of my confidence and strength in everything I’ll ever do. My mother was the only child in her family to pursue a college education. She left her small country hometown, Clewiston “Harlem” Florida, to pursue a life and a world she could only imagine. From completing her Bachelors degree, while pregnant with me, at Florida Memorial College to her Masters degree at Chicago State University, to studying for her Doctorate degree at the University of Toledo, all as a single black female, through the racially tumultuous times of the 1960’s and 1970’s. She did it, and she did it in a glorious and powerful fashion that only Evelyn Wright could. When I hear the stories of sacrifice and accomplishment, of hardship and triumph, and of failure and redemption, I know why I was born, and I know why I must honor her life with mine. These are the stories children must hear. Throughout their childhood, children should hear the personal history of their parents, and they must know why their lives should honor the lives of their mothers and fathers.