An Incident That Haunts My Life
The Seven People Who Shaped My Life
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The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project is a university-chartered research center associated with the Department of History of The George Washington University
by Eleanor Roosevelt Look 15 (June 19,1951): 54-56, 58. What you are in life results in great part from the influence exerted on you over the years by just a few people. There have been seven people in my life whose influence on me did much to change my inner development as a person. The first were my mother and father. I suppose it is natural for any person to feel that the most vivid personalities in early youth were those of his parents. This was certainly so in my case. My mother always remained somewhat awe_inspiring. She was the most dignified and beautiful person. But she had such high standards of morals that it encouraged me to wrongdoing; I felt it was utterly impossible for me ever to live up to her! My father, on the other hand, was always a very close and warm personality. I think I knew that his standards were nowhere nearly as difficult to achieve and that he would look upon my shortcomings with a much more forgiving eye. He provided me with some badly needed reassurance, for in my earliest days I knew that I could never hope to achieve my mother 's beauty and I fell short in so many ways of what was expected of me. I needed my father 's warmth and devotion more perhaps than the average child, who would have taken love for
granted and not worried about it. My mother died when I was six. After my father 's death when I was eight years old, I did not have that sense of adequacy and of being cherished which he gave me until I met Mlle. Marie Souvestre when I was 15. The headmistress of the school I went to
Hom e About Eleanor Roosevelt About The Project Online Docum ents & Videos Publications ER, JFK, & the 1960 Election: A Mini-Edition The My Day Projects Teaching Eleanor Roosevelt Teaching Hum an Rights Support The Project Contact The Project Search
Go
The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project is a university-chartered research center associated with the Department of History of The George Washington University
by Eleanor Roosevelt Look 15 (June 19,1951): 54-56, 58. What you are in life results in great part from the influence exerted on you over the years by just a few people. There have been seven people in my life whose influence on me did much to change my inner development as a person. The first were my mother and father. I suppose it is natural for any person to feel that the most vivid personalities in early youth were those of his parents. This was certainly so in my case. My mother always remained somewhat awe_inspiring. She was the most dignified and beautiful person. But she had such high standards of morals that it encouraged me to wrongdoing; I felt it was utterly impossible for me ever to live up to her! My father, on the other hand, was always a very close and warm personality. I think I knew that his standards were nowhere nearly as difficult to achieve and that he would look upon my shortcomings with a much more forgiving eye. He provided me with some badly needed reassurance, for in my earliest days I knew that I could never hope to achieve my mother 's beauty and I fell short in so many ways of what was expected of me. I needed my father 's warmth and devotion more perhaps than the average child, who would have taken love for
granted and not worried about it. My mother died when I was six. After my father 's death when I was eight years old, I did not have that sense of adequacy and of being cherished which he gave me until I met Mlle. Marie Souvestre when I was 15. The headmistress of the school I went to