July 25, 1944 remains etched in my memory, a day when my life changed forever. After my brother’s death, our home collapsed into a grotto of sorrow. Alone at the top of the steps, I developed a sudden, uncontrollable urge to help my parents overcome their devastating grief. I would make myself happy by making them happy by doing my best in everything just as my brother had done. I became the person I am as we began the terrible thing that was continuing life without someone we had counted on to hold so many things together.

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Eat First, Cry Later is recounted from my own perspective, as a woman, daughter, sister, mother, grandmother, friend, community member, and leader.

Everything I did, whether I wanted to or not, I did as a woman. I came of age at a time when barriers were breaking down. Gender, race, sexuality: all of these changed profoundly in my local community while I was running a business with my husband, raising our daughters, and then pulling my life back together as a single mother after my husband died. I became a feminist as the movement gained momentum in the 1970s, and my own daughters and granddaughters inspire me to continue breaking barriers and making a difference for other women.

It is in that spirit that I bring Eat First, Cry Later into the world in my eighty-fifth year of life.