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I have worked very hard on being aware of my childhood but moving forward and not letting it bring me down emotionally. That is a hard thing - especially when you have children of your own and you remember what happened to you at that age.

Growing up, I was in and out of trouble in group homes and other institutions, and when I was 14, I was locked up in a psychiatric hospital for a number of months for behavioral problems.

You start getting hit with some very interesting situations in life - you as a parent - when they approach that teenage area, which is frightening because you still have memories of that age and the things you were doing at that age... Please don't do what I did.

I don't remember my childhood very well for one reason or another, possibly childhood trauma or possibly just a very bad memory. My early life has sort of been erased from my memory banks.

I had a heartbreaking experience when I was 9. I always wanted to be a guard. The most wonderful girl in the world was a guard. When I got polio and then went back to school, they made me a guard. A teacher took away my guard button.

My entire youth was spent with an incredibly ill parent... I don't think you can grow up that way and not be marked by that experience.

When I was 14, my dad came home one day and told us he had cancer. It was looking pretty bad. And I remember him saying how afraid he was that he hadn't gotten to do the things he wanted to do during his life. He had surgery and survived. And he's still alive today, thank God. But it made a big impact on me.

When I was a kid, I had two nightmares: one was nuclear war, and the other was that my parents would get a divorce; and when I was twenty, they split up, and I just felt like I needed to confront all those things that scared me as a kid - entering young adulthood and trying to have relationships.

Shortly after I turned 13, Child Welfare took me into care. I was sent to a residential centre where girls with behavioural problems were 'evaluated'. My time there comes back to me now only in flashes of smells, images and sounds.