A gunshot shattered the stillness of the warm South African night. This time it was for real, and it would change my life forever. I was unwanted even before I was born. Maybe that was what made me strong enough to endure my mother’s lack of love and affection, my stepfather’s abuse, and my late husband’s mental cruelty.
I entered the world in the midst of the Blitz of London during World War II. By sixteen I was whisked off to South Africa during the tumultuous years of apartheid where I met and married a man who was unable to love or be loved. Like many women before me, I went from one abusive situation into another.