I was very much a part of the civil rights era, so, of course, my fantasy was to marry some outstanding black gentleman, a leader - someone like Martin Luther King who was doing something for black people.

I felt Helen Willis was in tune with the situation of a black woman married to a white man, and she had no problem being black.

The truth is that at age 19, I was a teenage mother living alone with my daughter in a trailer and struggling to keep us afloat on my way to a divorce. And I knew then that I was going to have to work my way up and out of that life if I was going to give my daughter a better life and a better future, and that's what I've done.

This baby comes out of you and there's no handbook. They hand you this child and say, 'Don't kill it. Feed it, clothe it and shelter it.' I never knew what that kind of love was. I remember looking at my daughter for the first time and wondering if that's the way my father looked at me.

I stay in tune with my family and God.

Any beast can cry over the misfortunes of its own child. It takes a mensch to weep for others' children.