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In this stage your life kind of slows down and you begin to take pride in everything you have done and become satisfied with you own life and yourself. I sadly don't know anyone that I could interview for this stage, but I do know how my grandparents felt once they were in this stage. My grandpa was a retired preacher and his local church in Florida where he retired too became in desperate need of help. He had know how many people he had helped in his lifetime and took this opportunity to step up and do so again. He was very pleased with his new position that he took and did so free of charge. He was kind and giving and extremely happy with his life when he suddenly passed away in his sleep. Elderly people achieve acceptance "of own life, allowing acceptance of death." My grandpa had become very accepting of his near fate and was fully embraced with the thought of death when he did pass away.

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This stage is all about a need to give to others, striving to do well and staying productive. I have not made it to this stage, but my mom has. She tries to keep herself busy by all means possible and loves spending her time with her grandkids. She recently, after not working for 20 years, decided to get two jobs. I think she did this to keep her mind busy and to help her feel young. She also likes to help the younger kids that work with and the interactions she gets at work on a daily basis. A "mature adult is concerned with establishing and guiding the next generation," and I would say my mom is doing just that.

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This stage is a very difficult stage for me. I am currently in this stage and have had to develop my identity all over again after a very tough divorce with that boy I had met as a sophomore in high school. In order to build on this stage and be ready for commitment and love you have must have a strong sense of identity. After three kids with what I thought was the love of my life, I was cheated on and left with those three kids and no job. I had lost every sense of who I was anymore. I was lost and broken, and I had no clue how to pick myself up and move forward from this point. I was very lucky to have so many people in my corner. My parents and my sister help me pick myself up and then they each help me to build a new piece of myself. I am much strong and I am even mean when I have to be. For me this is huge I have always hated confrontation and tried to avoid it at all costs. When I was faced with my kids being mistreated I gained a whole new side to myself. I realized that I do have things that I am more than willing to fight for. In the past six years not only have I grown and found myself all over again so have my kids. We have all come out of this so much stronger and more of a family than ever before. A "person seeks to make commitments to others or may suffer from isolation." After everything I have been through I would not consider myself to be suffering from isolation. I need this time to myself and my children. I eventually would like to meet the right person for myself, but as of right now I am happy with where I am at.

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In this stage you move from a child to a teenager. This would have to be one of the most challenging times in life. As a girl I would eventually go through puberty and get my period. Once this happens you are now considered an adolescent and "must determine sense of self." I will always remember liking boys, but never "loving" a boy. I would even look at celebrity women and think she is really beautiful. I was beginning to question who I was when I was a sophomore in high school and still haven't really had a boyfriend. I had many friends that had come out as gay and I was beginning to wonder, am I? That was until I had a boy my sophomore year show interest in me. We talked a lot and I even started going to church with one of my friends because he went to her church. He eventually asked me out, and I felt all of the butterflies and excitement with being "in love" and having a boyfriend. I knew from that moment on exactly who I was. I was definitely interested in boys, but I could admire beauty in all forms. Admiring beauty even for women did not mean that I was gay, I was genuine and admired humans of all forms.

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In this stage a child has so many influencers in their lives. They begin to notice how everyone is different and start to compare themselves to others, whether it may be looks or smarts. When I was you I was a little more heavier than others. I wouldn't say I was obese by any means. I remember going on a family vacation with my grandparents, my mom and my sister. I was ordering breakfast from a Denny's we had stopped at when I noticed that by ordering a certain meal I could get a poster with Hilary Duff on it who was staring in a new movie I couldn't wait to see, A Cinderella Story. When the waitress asked what I wanted and told her that I wanted that meal, my grandma made a comment on "well that is a lot of food for you, no wonder you are heavy." I had never been told anything like that before in my life and it completely crushed me. The rest of the trip I would hardly eat and I sure would not eat in front of my grandma and this continued when I got back home from our vacation. I was nervous even to be starting at a bigger school after summer break and this did not help any. In this stage a "child must learn skills of the culture or face feelings of incompetence." After that summer I was feeling more incompetent than ever before.

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This stage would be the preschool years. A child in this stage learns how to interact socially with others their age. They learn to take initiative and that they can control their own outcomes. In this stage I learned very quickly that by being nice, behaving and listening to the adults in my life, that I could not only make my parent happy, but that I could make many adults in my life happy. I also learned that by doing these things you can make more friends. In preschool I got to be the teacher's helper because I was a trustworthy student. I will never forget how this made me feel. I would always want to come to school and be on my best behavior for this very reason. Preschool was most definitely a new activity in my life that also introduce me to many other new activities. I always took away the positives from my new experiences and this helped so much in making my self-image positive. In this stage a "child develops initiative when trying new activities," and I would say that I did just that.

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During this stage a child learns how to become independent and successful in life. I am very confident and independent as an adult. I think that a lot of that has to do with the fact that when I was in this stage I was also independent. My mom tells stories of how sassy I was, how independent I was and how I would even help with my sister who was only 15 months younger than me. She said that when my sister was born I told everyone that she was Jodi's baby. I think that because my mom did not tame my personality and let me be independent in this important stage in life is exactly why I am so strong willed and independent today. "12-18 months to 3 years children develop a balance of independence and self-sufficiency over shame and doubt." So instead of developing shame and doubt I developed a great amount of independence and self-sufficiency.

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I believe that the first stage is Erikson's theory is very important. This stage helps infants trust and depend on the adults taking care of them. If you think about it a baby is helpless therefore they are completely dependant on the adults around them to feed, bathe and change them. A story that my mom and dad have told me often is that when I was learning to eat solid foods I choked on mashed potatoes. My dad overreacted and started to hit me on the back to force what I was choking on out. I was terrified to eat mashed potatoes from then on. As I got older and could understand better, my parents told me why I didn't like mashed potatoes. I kinda laughed and realized that I don't ever remember trying them, just that I didn't like them. I tried them again and actually liked them. It was as if my brain had completely blocked mashed potatoes as an option for me. "In these early months babies, need to develop a balance between trust, which lets them form intimate relationships, and mistrust, which enables them to protect themselves." In my little mind I was never scared of my parents, but for some reason I had thought those mashed potatoes had hurt me, which allowed me to mistrust them, so that I could protect myself from ever being hurt by them again.