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After my father died when I was seven and my mother entered into an abusive relationship, I shuffled between houses - staying with friends, families from church, and relying on the kindness of teachers and people throughout my community to help me grow up essentially without parents.

My mother helped me to be who I am: to have strength and not to let people run all over me and yet to be humble; to realise that all of this that I have today could be gone.

As a single mother of four, my mother taught me that you always want to show up strong for the moments that really matter with family, friends, and community. I now recognize how her strength helped shape the person I am today and the mother that I have become.

My mother was a single working mother; she started having children very young. There was a tension inside her about who she wanted to be and what she wanted to do and how she couldn't achieve the things she wanted to.

My parents - my mother, particularly - were very focused on our succeeding. I loved my parents, and was very grateful to them for everything, and I didn't want to disappoint them.

Ours was a loving, nurturing household, but, at the same time, my parents' goal was to make all their children self-sufficient.

Seeing my mother become very strong and very independent had a huge impact on me.

I see my upbringing as a great success story. By disciplining me, my parents inculcated self-discipline. And by restricting my choices as a child, they gave me so many choices in my life as an adult. Because of what they did then, I get to do the work I love now.

Growing up with three older brothers and being the youngest and the only girl, my mom always made me tough. She's taught me over the years how to be a strong, independent woman, how to carry yourself in a positive way and anything that my brothers can do, I can do.

I was hoping I could become a success to give my mother and my father a better way of living.