Like all girls, when I was growing up, I always worried about this bit of me being too fat or that bit. But I look back at pictures of me when I was young, and I was thin and gorgeous.

I did grieve a bit when I wasn't having the chemo anymore. I was used to sitting in the little chair and then the nurse would come and do it. It was like that was your job for that long and it was reassuring.

My job gives me the attention I'd otherwise crave.

Well, I'm lucky because, you see, I'll probably bounce back from this role.

My father was the church organist; the village curate was my mother's brother, a former monk from the order of Pijar, a very well-educated and ascetic man who loved nothing but solitude.

I miss my mother very much, and I feel closest to her when I have dinner in the oven and the children are nearby playing and I'm reading a book or doing some little project.

That attitude that I wouldn't succeed didn't come from my family; it came from school and then the township we lived in. I wasn't going to settle for that, and my mother warned us not to settle for less, to make the most of our lives.

My friends and family know I love playing baseball - Little League through college. And every year in the annual Congressional Baseball Game for charity played at Nationals Stadium.