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I wanted to be an independent woman, a woman who could pay for her bills, a woman who could run her own life - and I became that woman.

My mother was determined to make us independent. When I was four years old, she stopped the car a few miles from our house and made me find my own way home across the fields. I got hopelessly lost.

I remember being in Japan when Destiny's Child put out 'Independent Women,' and women there were saying how proud they were to have their own jobs, their own independent thinking, their own goals. It made me feel so good, and I realized that one of my responsibilities was to inspire women in a deeper way.

When I was in my 20s, I wanted to be tough. I discovered that I didn't want to be the woman I was raised to be - a good, traditional wife. When I went out in the world to find a husband, I found that husbands weren't ready to accept the kind of woman I was going to be.

I really wanted to work and become independent.

I wanted to find a way of life that allowed me great freedom, not to be stuck. I went to a very traditional school, which prepared people for the army or for banking or for industry, and I wanted to be outside of that.

The word, and the concept of feminism, was a gift because it gave me a sense of identity and a way of defining how I wished to live my life.

I'm a child of the Women's Movement. I always believed that I could do anything. That women didn't have to be limited in any way.

My mother was a working woman, and I was alone a lot. So I wanted to be a stay-at-home mom.

When I was very young, I wanted to be a girl. I was jealous that girls got to be princesses and wear skirts. It tormented me. When I was 6, I even heard that you could change your sex, and I was very intrigued until the moment I realized that if I changed into a girl, I would be an ugly girl, and this is the last thing I wanted to be.