As one grows up, we learn lessons that are critical for our development, and we all stumble and face situations that change our perspectives of our lives and ourselves. There comes a moment when we either pass into adulthood or struggle for a very long time, trying to cope. The moment is called the coming of age moment, which usually arises in our teenage years and many of us are able to reach the moment of adulthood around 18-20 years of age. However, Grealy and Mcgraw are both authors who have struggled through their lives, and they delve deep within themselves and have learned many lessons at a very young age, as well as both of them loving the writing type of self-biography. The argument that arises is that Grealy, and McGraw reached their moment of Bildungsroman at a younger or normal age because of their diseases and difficult start to life, which helped them grow mature more quickly because they were not able to do many events that others their age were able to do (date, or go to parties, etc). Although the reality and truth of it, is that McGraw and Grealy both reached their Bildungsroman when they were much older because of their diseases. Their diseases inhibited them from really reaching maturity because they were trying to overcome the hardship of everyday tasks that their disease made difficult for them. McGraw and Grealy both reached maturity and their coming of age moment later in their lives, and it is evident in their short stories and actions throughout their lives. The struggle of coming of age later is that they were in the mentality of a child for a longer period of time, which damaged their social status as well as their mental status was altered. Grealy’s oral cancer that altered her face, and that she battled with her entire life. As a child she tried to hide the sight of her jaw. Then as she became older she cut her hair short “so that there was no mistaking her as pretty” or as she wrote “I decided to cut my hair to avoid any misconception that anyone, however briefly, might have about my being attractive”(Grealy 216).The fact that she did not want to be mistaken for a “pretty girl” is very disturbing because at her age she should have been able to come to terms with the fact her face was not like everyone else’s. However, she was still holding on to that childhood dream that she could reach that perfect normal face, she just wanted to look like everyone else. The transition that Grealy went through was when she finally had her childhood dream came true. Grealy had a surgery over in Scottland by a relatively new doctor with a radical idea. She suffered many painful instances such as having tissue expander put in place. Her mental status also suffered a lot with spending many hours of isolation during this process. When the reveal actually happened, she could not recognize herself. As she said “I somehow just couldn’t make what I saw in the mirror correspond to the person I thought I was. It wasn’t only that I continued to feel ugly; I simply could not conceive of the image as belonging to me” (Grealy 218).The reaction that Grealy went through is very severe, she did not even want to see her own face, it’s a type of dysmorphic disorder, and she was in the transition between her childhood state of mind and her future more adult like state of mind. That is why she would not look in the mirr