Running head: DEVELOPMENT AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Development Autobiography

Abiola Stella Oloyede

Georgia Southern University

Coun 7338: Life Span Counseling

06 April 2014
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I. Demographic Information

I was born on August 20, 1990, at 2:55pm in Ile-Ife, Nigeria. My parents were both

college-educated teachers with a three year-old son by the time I was born. My parents had been

married for three years by then. My mother was 29, and my father was 34 years old, still very

much so in love as they added me to their small family. My mother received her Bachelor of

Science in Chemistry, her Master’s in Education, and had just graduated from Obafemi School of

Nursing Program three months before I was born. My father received his Bachelor of Arts in

Religious Studies, and was teaching religion and history at a local high school.

They met twice. The first time was through my mother’s half-sister; she and my father

were very good friends growing up and would always come by my mother’s childhood house,

but my mother never paid him any attention. The second time was as my mother climbed the

stairs of the Education building to finish registering for classes at the University of Ife. My dad

scrambled to catch up to her and help her with her new books. My mother was not trying to pay

him any attention, but he was persistent.

Although my parents met in college, they came from polar-opposite backgrounds. My

father’s upbringing was tumultuous. Even though he came from the monogamous household of a

well-off photographer and store owner, and was the first born of six children, he did not grow up

in an emotionally stable environment. His father died when he was a young teenager, and his

mother hated him from his birth because he is dark skinned. Upon the death of his father, my

father tried to become the “Man of the House”, but lacking any favor and love from his mother,

he quickly fell to be the “Cinderella” of his family. His sisters and brothers were treated like the

royalty that their last name connoted, and he was left to fend for himself. Everyone in my family

says with confidence that marrying my mother was his saving grace, even him. She presented a

way out of his emotionally-damaging childhood.

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To this day, my father’s upbringing has been extremely telling on his personal life and

how he has treated the family that he and my mother created. To this day my father thanks my

mother for marrying him, but he is still trying to vie for his mother’s affection and approval. And

in the process, he has neglected his responsibilities as a husband and father of four. On the other

hand, my mother grew up in a wealthy, polygamous household. Her father was the chief advisor

to three Yoruba kings, husband to four women, and father of 25 children. My mother’s mother

was the first wife and bore the children that my grandfather loved the most, namely my mother.

So, my mother wanted for nothing. Beautiful, lighter skinned, slender yet curvaceous, curly-

haired, and mild-mannered, my mother lived a very sheltered, loving, privileged, and cultured

life.

There is so much to my racial and ethnic identity that no one can truly understand just by

looking at my face and/or my full name.Having immigrated to the United States with my mother

when I was only a year and a month old, I consider myself to be an Americanized Nigerian.

Berry (1997) suggests two questions to be asked to an immigrant living in a country different

from her birth country, “Is it considered to be of value to maintain one’s cultural heritage? Is it

considered of value to develop relationships with the larger society?” (p. 9). He further stated

that those two questions can be used as a means to understand how immigrants cope with

acculturation. If the individual in question can answer positively to both questions, then it can be

said that the immigrant is experiencing integration. Upon personal reflection on both questions, I

was able to answer positively to both.

I have lived in the United States and nowhere else for 22 of my 23 years alive, and have

developed a very unique understanding of my personal cultural identity. I am fully entrenched in

the American culture and society. However, there is no denying that I am still wholly Nigerian.
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Legally, I am a non-citizen, permanent resident of the United States of America. Still, I am

culturally both a Black-American and a Yoruba-Nigerian. Ethnically, I am Yoruba. Therefore,

though my racial identityis Black, I am not Black-American. It used to be taxing trying to

explain to people how I choose to identify myself as, but not anymore. My cultural and ethnic

developments have begun to intertwine with my understanding of who I am holistically, and they

are now fluid within their commonalities and individuality.

At the time my mother and I came to America, my brother was four. Fast-forward six

years later and my brother celebrated his ninth birthday with us in Georgia. My brother and

father had joined us in August 1996.In January 1999, we added my first little sister to our family.

Just when everyone (but I) thought my family was done growing, my youngest sister completed

our family at the end of 2002. My mom calls us her “two-generation kids”, because my brother

and I are three years apart and my sisters are three years apart, but there is an eight-year gap

between me and my sister right after me. My brother, Jide, is currently 26; I am 23; Joy is 15;

and Dupe is 11. We are truly a middle class family of six people. My mother is the breadwinner,

and my brother and I help with extracurricular and miscellaneous expenses for our sisters. My

father has not made any income to provide for my family since I was 12. Though my parents are

still married, he is now in Nigeria trying to operate his own business. He has been there for

almost four years, but we have never seen any of the profit garnered from that endeavor.

II. Physical Development

I was born weighing seven pounds, eleven ounces at 50.3 centimeters. I was a very

healthy and normal newborn, and am told that my infantile months were smooth. Nevertheless, I

was advanced for my age: I sat up and crawled at four months; stood a week after crawling; and
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walked at seven months. My mother told me that I had good balance and rarely wobbled while

trying to stand and walk, and potty-trained myself at eighteen months. I could write my whole

name when I was two, and was legibly drawing shapes and numbers by three years old.

As a toddler I was average weight and height as those in my age range. I began to gain

weight when my brother and father came to the States.My body began to change before I hit

puberty; my hips started expanding, my "baby fat" started shedding, and my breasts began to

bud. My first menstrual cycle came when I was 11, and by the time I was 13, it was apparent that

I had gone through puberty. My voice became softer, my face was in a perpetual acne plague,

and my body was still trying to adjust and become more proportionate. I was 13 years old, 5'1'',

with a 42-inch hip span and a 34-inch waistline.

That provoked many of my (jealous) peers to taunt me about being promiscuous or a

"quiet, freaky geek". All of their jokes left me feeling insecure about my body, and though I was

one of the top students in my class, I felt inferior to most of my peers. I stopped growing in the

ninth grade, but I kept getting wider in my hips. So, my body looked like a freshman in college,

but my face still showed that I was very young. That seems to have followed me throughout my

life. My face seems to age a bit slower than my body. I've had people look at my body and say

that I am one age, and then stare into my face and tell me that I am three to five years younger

than that.

One thing that I have come to understand through aging is that perception is not reality; it

is bias. As I have been involved in many conflicts based on misperceptions, I have learned that

people gauge how they can (mis)treat others based on their age, sex, sexual orientation, race, and

any other bias that they perceive to be inferior or intimidating to them.

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III. Cognitive and Language Development

Language has always been important to me. My mother was always taking me to the

library to read to me. I was homeschooled from two until four years old, and she would teach me

math and reading. Before she knew it, I was reading the library books to her. When I was in the

first grade, we had to write about our weekend, and I used the word “compensate” in my work.

My teacher said, “Stella, I’m so impressed! Where did you learn this word from and how did you

know how to spell it?” My response to her was meek, but matter-of-fact, “my mommy said it to

me, and I sounded it out”. Since then, I proudly tell everyone that I owe my love for words to my

mother. Coming from a British-Nigerian household, proper, Queen’s English was always spoken

around me. I know that hearing two languages spoken around me gave me a cognitive advantage

over my mono-lingual peers as a child. However, my mother stopped speaking to me in Yoruba

when I started kindergarten, and I lost my ability to speak in my family’s native tongue. I can

still understand the language when I hear and comprehend it when I read it, but it is not the same.

Growing up I transitioned through different cognitive development theories as I

established my cognitively abilities. They are all fluid within my cognitive development, but

manifest themselves in different ways. I was a quiet and shy baby, but I began Piaget’s

Preoperational stage rather early; I said my first word at six months. I was speaking in full

sentences in both Yoruba and English at sixteen months, and I was reading Dr. Seuss books by

myself by three years old. In kindergarten, I received a literacy award that was signed by

President Bill Clinton, for having the highest literacy rate in the entire grade level. The first time

I was tested for a Gifted and Exceptional program was in the first grade. This is also when I

began writing short stories and chapter books. I was reading at a tenth grade level in the second

grade, and my cognitive growth has developed from there.

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When I was in the third grade my family moved from the diversity of White Suburbia to

the different shades of the sameness that is the Black community of the Southwest DeKalb

County area. I was scared, but happy; I thought I would finally be surrounded by more people

who “looked like me”. However, I was terribly wrong. Everything about me was just wrong to

these mean third graders at Fairington Elementary School. Of many perils that I endured the rest

of that school year, being bullied because I spoke proper English was the most painful. Still, I

excelled. I scored very high on the ITBS, was in the math, reading, and science bowl, and was at

the top of my class.

Right when I could not imagine going back to there for two more years of school, my

mother received a letter from the then governor of Georgia, Zell Miller. The letter informed my

mother that I was being placed in a theme/magnet school for the fourth grade, and then my life

changed. The school that the governor placed me in was, at the time, the most coveted school in

the city. Parents would camp outside the school during registration in hopes of being able to get

their child into the school. Scandals about parents bribing the Board of Education to win the

school’s entrance lottery were always on the news or in the newspapers, but I was chosen. To

this day, it irritates my best friend’s mother to hear that story, because the same year I was place,

she waited for six hours to be told that her daughter was rejected.

Had I not gone to E.L. Bouie Theme School, I believe my educational life would be

extremely different. It was there that I realized I was not being challenged in any of my other

elementary schools. I was challenged by my teachers and even more by my similarly high-

achieving classmates. I was eligible to test into the gifted program, called Discovery, in the

fourth grade. I failed it the first time, and it shocked everyone involved, including me. The

program’s teacher, Ms. Harben, was so amazed that I did not pass it that she made me take it
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again because she knew I was smart enough to be in the program. Again, I failed and that was the

first time I truly started questioning my intelligence, and started thinking that I was

stupid.Clearly, I was still in Piaget’s Concrete Operation stage (Broderick & Blewitt, 2010, pg.

178-179). Nevertheless, Ms. Harben still allowed me to participate in the program and taught me

how to pass the test, putting Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development into action (Broderick

& Blewitt, 2010, pg. 102-105). Finally, I passed on the third attempt and began the active

pursuits toward academic excellence. Now I am definitely in the Formal Operations stage,

having accomplished many things creatively, academically, and emotionally.

IV. Social/Personality Development

As I stated before, I was a shy and quiet baby and toddler, and that is still a very natural

aspect of my personality, but I have developed my social competency from what I have learned

about myself and my life through the people I interact with. Sometime while I was in high

school, I dubbed myself an “extroverted introvert”. I love keeping to myself, being introspective,

and I look to myself to provide entertainment and energy. However, I know how to keep a

crowd’s attention, make people laugh, lead people, and be social. The thing is this: going out of

my way to talk to others is not the most organic part of who I am; I have never liked greeting

people or approaching people first in conversation. I used to cling to my mother when I was

younger, and I still have a tendency to stick with whoever I came to an event with. I have come

to realize that this is usually when I am somewhere I do not willingly want to be, surrounded by

multiple people I do not know. Conversely, I can go to concerts by myself; be locked in my room

for an extended period of time without speaking to anyone; go out for a night on the town by

myself, etc. with ease. I am rarely bothered about not having much company, but that is because
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whenever I am around people, I am usually the one who is looked at to outpour energy—and that

is exhausting.

That is how I interact with my world, but I do not think that is fully my personality. I

have found that I am the most comfortable and naturally myself around my family and a handful

of friends. When I am with my family, I am very expressive, rational, sarcastic, and cohesive.

When I am with my friends I am the same way, but a little more blunt and comical. When I am

with people who I do not know well enough, I am quiet, funny, and conscious of what I say.

Within every realm of my personality and interaction with others lies my ability to control the

energy of other people. My personality seems to be able to affect other people’s moods more

than it should, in my opinion.

Being my mother’s daughter and living with only her maternal influence for the first six

years of my life has shaped me to be generous, compassionate, bold, wise, and selfless. Our

relationship is strong and intimate because of how much she nurtured me as an infant and young

toddler. I developed trust as an infant because my mother facilitated safety within me. Even

concerning situations I was unaware of the decision’s impact at the time, my mother never left

me out of consideration. For instance, my mother felt she had everything she ever wanted out of

life by the time she had me: a promising career, a husband, a three year-old son, a newborn

daughter, and a decent extended family. Moving to the United States was nowhere on her radar.

So when her oldest sister asked my mother to come live with her and her four young children in

Georgia, my mother initially declined. She had just given birth to me three months prior and had

no intention of leaving her newborn in another country, let alone in another continent. So after

much fighting, praying, and begging from my mother’s sister, my mother backed her into a

corner with one life-changing statement, “I am not leaving without Biola.”

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Had she not said that, I know that my life would have been undoubtedly different. I

believe her encouragement is one of the reasons why I was as cognitively advanced at such a

young age. She never stopped me from speaking up in front of older people; she always allowed

me to be my full self as a toddler; and when no one else was there, my mother was always my

loudest cheerleader, biggest supporter, and softest comforter. This helped me resolve into an

autonomous person who had no issue showing initiative at school or at home.

I was introduced to my father at a very integral phase of my development for Erikson’s

psychosocial stages. I met my father a week before I turned six years old, and I was very excited.

The day I met him, he slapped me for calling my parents “guys”. That is how I was introduced to

my father, and that is when I began developing an inferior complex with those around me. He

would call me fat whenever he could, even though I did not start becoming heavier until he

came. If I got a math problem wrong while doing my homework, he would call me stupid or

punish me. He belittled me for being seven and not knowing the difference between my left and

right shoes, and he constantly criticized my mother in front of me over the fact that I did not

speak or understand Yoruba anymore.

He was never very slow to anger; always finding something miniscule to be upset about.

He was not a good teacher, and always resorted to beating me and my brother whenever we did

something he did not like, even if we did not know it was “wrong”. My father is the reason why

a shy, quiet, but fun-loving girl now has a short temper, low tolerance for people who , little

patience for ignorant people, abandonment issues, and the inability to fully trust romantic

relationships. Till this day, although I have accomplished many things in my life, I still grapple

with feelings of inferiority and self-doubt.

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As a teenager, my understanding of my identity began when I was thirteen being bullied

by my best friends. It was also at the peak of my father’s emotional abuse toward me, so I began

to socially retreat and writing dark poetry. I pondered how remorseful they would feel if I were

to have died, and then death began to introduce itself to me. My grandmother died and then four

months later, my godfather died. The balance between life and death brought a different

perspective to my situation, and I started struggling for my voice to be heard, fighting for self-

confidence, and battling with those who tried to emotionally oppress me. I feel as though I won,

because I came out of that dark time with an emotional dexterity that has helped me greatly from

then on. I know how to control my actions, no matter what my emotions are. My confidence

exudes from me in all aspects of my life, even when I experience self-doubt. People tell me how

much they admire me and my personality, and the same people who hurt me told me they were

always jealous of me. I do not take pride in anything more than my desire to persevere and the

fact that I did just that.

Now, I am in Erikson’s intimacy vs. isolation stage. I know what love is because of my

spiritual relationship with God and my physical relationships with my family, friends, and those

whom I mentor. I understand that love is complex and does not always make sense to the

prideful. My relationship with God has given me the deepest understanding about unconditional

love and intimacy that I will never be able to exhaust the topic. I have had my heart swell with

love, or maybe just infatuation, and I have had it shattered to pieces. I know what heartache is,

but I have not let that discourage me for what God holds for my future relationships. Though I

have never been in a serious, in-person relationship— long-distance relationships with insecure

boys is all I know— love still makes so much sense to me. I give love without reservation to

those around me and those in need, and I receive love from those who are genuine. I have a very
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discerning spirit concerning who I should give my heart to or not, and that is a major reason why

I have not been in a committed relationship in two years. I have standards, I know what I

deserve, and I will not settle.

V. Moral/Ethic Development

My traditional Nigerian upbringing has greatly shaped my life and my view of this world

and the next. Some of my earliest memories are of my mother teaching me many things and

telling me stories about my tribe’s traditional religion. The Nigerian culture is deeply rooted in

the spiritual realm, especially in the Yoruba tribe. You are to respect your elders; men are to be

served; women are to be submissive; you worship God or whatever traditional gods you believe

in; and you do not negatively interfere with the Spiritual Realm. She brought religion and the

need for an intimate relationship with God into my life; I have been a Christian my entire life. I

learned the difference between society’s view of what is right and wrong from going to church.

We had a routine in our house: church every Sunday; Bible Study every Wednesday and Friday;

prayer meetings and night vigils every Saturday; and morning devotionals every weekend, and in

the summer it was every day.

Even with such a religious background and spiritual culture, I have made finding and

understanding my spirituality and morality a personal task. I believe that God is real and that He

is Ever-Present and active in all aspects of my life. I believe that He is the Creator of all things,

including good and evil, and is the Master of the universe. I accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and

Savior. Therefore, I believe that the Bible is Divinely-inspired by God and is the true and living

Word of Him. I believe that there is life after death, Heaven and Hell, and we each will end up in

one or the other spiritual place. I believe that everyone has been put on this earth to fulfill a
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Divine purpose, and have been given a multitude of unique spiritual gifts by God, our Creator.

However, in order for one to fulfill her purpose, she must position herself to where she can

search and find it by utilizing her spiritual gifts. I believe that the answer to every moral decision

is rooted in love. If love is not the root of the action, behavior, and intention, it is wrong. I am

aware that this may dichotomize what is considered moral, but morality has never been loosely

interpreted.

Piaget’s Moral Stages and Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development roughly outline my

moral development (Broderick & Blewitt, 2010, pg. 225). When I was a child, I was petrified of

getting in trouble at school or at home because I knew that my father would be ready to punish

me. I lived in that fear for so long, I would shame myself out of doing certain things, and if I did

it anyway, I would find any means to justify my actions. When I reevaluated my moral

development I realized that I did not progress through every stage in order. By Piaget’s standards

my fear of punishment fits into his heteronomous period, which coincides with Kohlberg’s first

stage. This stage in my life is very vivid in my memory because it still affects my decision-

making as an adult. However, I cannot recall truly grasping the concept of Kohlbger’s second

stage (and Piaget’s third) until my late teenage years. While I did tried to cultivate good

interpersonal relationships in middle and high school, being bullied thwarted a lot of my moral

development. I was more concerned with hating my father and my bullies, and ruminating over

why everything seemed to be wrong with me, that I in-turn began picking on others and did not

care about many people. So, I did not actualize stages four and five until my collegiate years.

Now, in my early twenties, I have arrived at the sixth stage and look at life and ethics from a

social activist lens.

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In retrospect, I went through Gilligan’s Stages of Ethic of Care (1977) rather organically

(pg. 481-517). My ethical development began as a fear tactic toward my father. I was on level

one of Gilligan’s stages in my childhood. My solitary thought was survival whenever I was in

trouble with him, so I would lie to him to avoid his anger and punishment. I lied to invalidate the

bruises or welts. I lied because I had developed a maladaptive sense of what to good and bad was

from my father. As I grew older, I made the first transition in Gilligan’s theory when I realized

my two benefits from lying: no one questioned my lies as much as they did my truths, and lying

allowed me to evade many negative consequences. If my lie got someone else in trouble, so be it

as long as it was not me. It was not until I truly began pressing into my relationship with God

that I evolved to Gilligan’s second stage, and knew that lying was an outdated and unethical

coping mechanism. This started to be revealed to me by people confronting me on lies I told and

how they did not make chronological sense or have any type of logic. This was not often, but it

would still be embarrassing.

I entered Gilligan’s second transition and started noticing how detrimental people

doubting my credibility were becoming to some my social interactions. I used to pride my great

ability to lie on my creative writing skills, and my friends would ask me to help them come up

with great lies. But after a while, it just became annoying and I would self-shame whenever I

lied, because many of my lies were unnecessary. As I grow and enter into adulthood and

Gilligan’s third stage, I am teaching myself that silence is safer than lying just to speak. Now, I

endeavor to speak only when it edifies God and the present situation. I look to ensure that my

words and actions are genuine, uplifting, and advocate for those who cannot speak for

themselves. As I enter the counseling field, my desire is to become altruistic in my daily actions

and interactions, focusing on the greater good of my life, my clients, and the world around me.
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When I was younger, I used to believe that morality and ethics were synonymous and that

what was moral was ethical and vice versa. As an adult, I now understand that it not (always)

true. I still believe that morality is rooted in love, but now I stand by the fact that ethics is rooted

in what is just. Every moral situation presents the question of what is right or wrong, whereas

every moral situation presents the question of what is impartial and what is inequitable. Every

ethical dilemma, in my opinion, boils down to the decision of how to liberate or villainize the

oppressed. Everything in life is situational, but when ethics is involved there should be a

universal covering on how to protect those who are being treated unethically.

VI. Summary

My upbringing has molded me into a very unique individual, of whom I am proud to be. I

owe much of my cognitive development to my mother’s encouragement and teachings. Had she

not started reading to me and nurturing me from a very young age, my love for words, books,

and knowledge would probably not exist. I am my mother’s “carbon copy” down to our physical

build. I have been told this my entire life, and because of the way she has always loved me, I

have always accepted that compliment with pride. My personality has been molded by the

emotional and verbal abuse I endured from my father and friends. By having to experience and

overcome their abuse, I was able to cultivate a stronger, more authentic self-concept and

appreciation of who I am. My understanding of morality and ethics has their foundation in how

they both treated me while raising me. I learned how to love from my mother, and what injustice

is from my father.

Being Nigerian has shaped who I am in such a tremendous way. It has affected the way I

interact and understand my world. My values and certain societal expectations stem from what

my culture’s traditions teach. Even my perception of life and social interactions is affected by my
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Nigerian culture. My personality resists meeting and greeting older or new people, but my

culture demands the respect of such people with the acknowledgment of their presence. The

spiritual relationship with God is rooted in my culture’s emphasis on spiritual understanding and

my mother’s spiritual guidance. Since I am not a citizen, I even have a legal connection to my

country of birth. Knowing that one statement changed the course of my life, but never broke my

link to my mother’s land speaks volumes to my overall development. I left Nigeria, but Nigeria

never left me. In fact, She came with me in my hips, my zeal for education, my parents, my value

system, and my love for God.

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References

Berry, J (1997). Immigration acculturation and adaptation. Applied Psychology: An International

Review, 46, 5-68.

Broderick, P.C. & Blewitt, P (2010). The Life Span: Human development for helping

professionals. New Jersey: Pearson.

Gilligan, C (1977). In a different voice: Women’s conceptions of self and of morality. Harvard

Educational Review, 47, 481-517.