Chapter 4: Family Support and Activities Outside of School

" For someone like me who has a learning disability, having a support system is critical; all my family members were an integral part of that."

-RPG

One thing that always helps anybody who goes through difficulties and struggles is having a solid support group that is there for you and wants to see you succeed and help you be the best version of yourself. A support group includes family, friends, coaches, colleagues, etc. However, the key is to trust and understand the people in your life who want to help you grow and prosper genuinely. In my case, my family in my early years was significant to me. I grew up with two great loving parents and an incredible sister named Hannah, who were all very supportive and would try any technique or idea to try and help me with my dyslexia so I could learn and be comfortable doing so. I will detail my parents and sister's backgrounds to give them their due diligence in how they have impacted my life.

Everyone on my father's side, who lives relatively close to us in the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia (DMV) area, was also very supportive. My father (Russell E. Goodacre) was born into a military family with seven kids. They were a very tight-knit group with solid family values my grandparents established. Their most significant values are being very caring, funny, and friendly. My father was the 3rd of seven kids and the oldest of the boys. He was born in Charleston, South Carolina. When my grandfather was in the Navy, he served on a tour of duty in the late 1950s. My grandparents would travel across the country a good bit during this time because of my grandfather's job with the Navy. He served as a Navy Officer in World War II and the Korean and Vietnam wars. Near the end of his Navy career, they settled in Springfield, Virginia, which is 10-15 minutes south of Washington, D.C. Nowadays, if you're from the DMV area, you would recognize Springfield, Virginia, as a massive traffic intersection on the D.C. beltway where it meets with I-95, I-395. The many local roads that intersect in that small area have been renovated many times with so many ramps and exits that it is known as the mixing bowl.

My grandmother was an Army Nurse and had a military background as well. Both my grandparents on my father's side had complete personalities of intelligent, disciplined, funny, accepting, and welcoming. Those traits were passed down to my dad and aunts, and uncles. My father was very active in sports in his youth and Boy Scouts. Scouting was a significant factor in their lives, my grandfather was their Scoutmaster for a long time, and all the boys in the family were involved in Boy Scouts. My father and one of my uncles earned the highest rank in Boy Scouts. Eagle Scout. To achieve the rank of Eagle Scout, you must go through a rank advancement process where you must complete various tasks for each rank. Most of the time in Boy Scouts, it takes about 4-6 years to go from a new scout to Eagle Scout. When a scout approaches the Eagle Scout rank, each scout must complete an Eagle Scout project that helps the community. My father's project was creating a new hiking trail in the woods at a local park near their home.

When my father was young, he wanted to be a catholic priest, his dream job. My father's side of the family was a strong practicing catholic family who went to church regularly and was actively involved in the church as altar boys when they were younger. My dad wanted to be a priest until he got into High School once he realized he didn't want to be a priest because he, at some point, wanted to have a family of his own. For those who might not understand or know about the catholic faith and what it takes to be a Catholic priest, if you want to be a priest who will serve the church for your entire life and in the process, you cannot marry or have kids. While it's unfortunate my dad didn't want to pursue his childhood dream, I'm incredibly thankful that he didn't follow it. Thanks, dad! My dad got his Associate's degree from Roanoke Business College. He then enrolled in the Navy and served many tours of duties in six years during the 1980s on Navy submarines as an electrician on the USS Stonewall Jackson.

My mother (Jean Fregeau Goodacre) was born in Pawtucket, Rhode Island as the baby of eight children. Her family wasn't as happy as my father's side was. My grandmother was a lovely lady on my mother's side who tried her best to run the family. They grew up poor, and my grandfather had problems and he did things that caused the family many hardships. My mom being the baby of eight, missed most of this. Her parents divorced when she was four, and through the turmoil in their family, my mom would be the only child out of eight to go on to college and graduate. Some of her siblings started college but never received a Bachelor's degree. One of her siblings did receive her Associate's degree, while most of the kids stopped after high school. One of her siblings had a learning disability that caused him to have struggles in school. This is where I believe my learning disability through genetics passed down.

My mom was active in sports, and scouting like my father was. My mom received the highest award in Girl Scouts, the Gold Award, similar to the Eagle Scout award in Boy Scouts. In middle school, she would break the Pawtucket City girl's record in the 100M dash for a few years. While attending school and being involved in Girl Scouts, she worked jobs since she was ten years old to help support herself and her family. During her time at the University of Rhode Island, my mom would work many different jobs to pay for tuition. She would commute from one end of the state to the other (Rhode Island is the smallest state in the U.S., and it takes about 45 minutes to do so on I-95 on a good day) for the final three years of college.

After receiving her Bachelor's degree, she worked for the Navy as a Maryland civilian worker, helping design the beginning models of potential Navy Submarines. My mom majored in math, a good area for her to work in. She would then get her Master's degree from George Mason University, studying Operations Research and Management Science. She then met my father when she was working a 2nd job at the time of my father's career after he left the Navy. They met there and got married not too long after. They met when my dad was completing a call at a place he worked at. He needed an additional tool to complete his work and called the office to have someone bring it to him. That person would be my mom, and she drove to that location and dropped it off, and that's where their relationship started for them.

My sister Hannah was born nearly four years after I was, and she's arguably the most naturally gifted person I've ever known. She can make everything she does look effortless. She excelled at nearly pretty much everything. When it came to school, she was brilliant and was a straight-A student through high school. Like my mother, I followed the family's footsteps and was involved in Girl Scouts. She also reached the Gold Award. When she was playing sports, she was incredible and a beast. She has played many sports but was terrific at soccer and volleyball. My sister played both sports in high school. In her first two years, she played varsity volleyball (she also played travel volleyball in middle and high school), then played varsity soccer as the goalie for her last two years. In her two years as the starting goalie for the Urbana Hawks, she would go on to be named an All-State goalie, hold a Frederick County, Maryland girls' soccer high school record for most consecutive minutes not allowing a goal of 740 minutes, and was the Frederick News Post Defensive Player of the year for girls' soccer. She helped lead the Lady Hawks to two Maryland State Championship game appearances and one State Championship.

She would go on to play volleyball on scholarship at DI Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, studying Economics and graduating in three years. That's very impressive for that school, considering how great of a school Lafayette College is academically, and she got an excellent education out of it. When we were both younger, I was very jealous of my sister. She knew this, which would not surprise her since she already knew. I was jealous of her for how easily she could do things and excel in many different areas. I felt like I needed to put so much time and energy into some things and sometimes not get the results I wanted to achieve. When I was younger, I felt I needed to compete with her because she was younger than me, and it felt like she was further along than I was academicly. I wanted to be the best at everything, especially in my family.

Once I reached the end of middle school, I stopped being jealous of what she could accomplish. I realized I didn't need to compare myself to what she was doing because we were human beings with different strengths and weaknesses. She was never jealous of what I would do because she could see I was trying and understood that it took me longer to pick up on some things and that I never gave up. She indirectly pushed me to improve by motivating me to be at her skill level and greatness in school and sports.

For someone like me who has a learning disability, having a support system is critical; all my family members were an integral part of that. They all supported me and put me in situations where I could be successful and comfortable with the environment. There were many things my parents tried to do that would help me. The first big thing that I can...