May 5th, 2088.

Madelyn Koontz

Life Review Journal Entry:

Throughout my life time I have experienced many different developmental events

that have led me to be where/who I am today. Looking back and reflecting on my 89

years of life, I am grateful and appreciative of the developmental dilemmas I had to

experience in order to become the version of myself I was meant to be. If given the

chance to go back and change any of the events that affected my story line, I would

respectively decline the offer. Now I am very old and my memory is not as crisp as it

used to be but from what I can recall there were three defining developmental events in

my life that transformed me into the person I am right now. Those three separate

developmental events occurred during my childhood, one during my adolescent years

and one during my adulthood. The first encounter that shaped was in my early

childhood years when I had very authoritarian parents. My parents were high in demand

but low in responsiveness, they were extremely strict on me from a very young age but

did not express affection or communicate any congratulations to me. This made me

scared of them, I was always obedient due to this but I was not very happy, this later

resulted in me rebelling as soon as I was out of their control. My second life altering

encounter was when I began to develop an identity, where I questioned who I was,

where I was, what the meaning of life was, what did I want, where was I going, and

what’s important to me. I had a very “Moratorium” experience as a adolescent, I had a

temporary pause in identity development that allowed me to explore the alternatives that

were available. I had every intent of going to school to become a nurse but as I realize

this may not be the correct path for me I took a year off and moved to North Carolina
with my aunt and uncle and there I discovered, that in fact, nursing was not the path I

was destined for and switched to social work. The final developmental event was in my

early adulthood, I was seen as a risk-taker or what is referred to as “edgework.” After I

graduated college with my bachelors in social work I decided to take a year off to

explore the world I was around 23 years old and just wanted to live my life to the fullest.

This, out of all of my experiences, is the one I would do 1 billion times over again, it

pushed me to the limits and really shaped who I would become and how I would help

people in my field of social work, I traveled to various countries and met many amounts

of people and really broaden my horizons. I will forever be grateful for the life I have

lived and wouldn’t have done it any other way. Till the next lifetime.