The Millers took ten years from me.

I am using what I learned surviving them to give other women back their whole lives.

I think my grandmother would be proud.

I think that is what she meant the key to be for.

On a crisp autumn afternoon, I visited my grandmother’s grave, and laid a bouquet of white lilies against the stone, and read her final letter one more time. If you ever confuse sacrifice with love, remember that real love never asks you to erase yourself. “You were right, Grandma,” I whispered, and touched the carved granite.

For most of my life I had believed that being a strong woman meant enduring pain quietly, keeping the peace, sacrificing my own dreams for a family that treated me as collateral.