My mother is one of the toughest and most resilient people I’ve ever known, and is an example of the subject matter that she writes about in her books. Having been raised in a polygamist environment, education was a low priority. At age 15, she was married off to a man who already had one wife. A few months later, he added a third wife. After several years of living as a sister wife and having her third baby at age eighteen, she finally fled at age twenty. She raised her children alone on a waitress’s income, often working graveyard shifts so she could be with them in the evenings.
Hers was not an easy life, but she found the strength to rise above the future that had been laid out for her. Through hard work and resourcefulness, she created a far better life for us than she had been given. We learned by example. She made sure we had accountability, that we conducted ourselves with integrity and treated others with respect. By following those principles, we’ve attained happiness achieved by few. My hope is that women and men around the world will benefit from her wealth of experience and knowledge, as I did.