Patty Duke

I knew from a very young age that there was something very wrong with me.

I was a truly loving mom, but I didn't have the tools to do the job.

I have a picture of myself in my mind as I walk around every day, until I look in the mirror-and then I'm stunned.

Just as young people absorb all kinds of messages from the media, young girls learn what it means to be a woman by watching the older women in their lives.

In early 1993, when I was 12, I was separated from my family as the Sierra Leone civil war, which began two years earlier, came into my life.

I was good at being a doctor; my patients liked me. At times people trust you with things they wouldn't tell their spouses. It was a real privilege.