Surviving: Life with a Maternal Bully

Any child will know when she's loved unconditionally.  And every child should be entitled to a nurturing environment and love-but this is not what always happens. In 1943, Anna Townsend, at the age of six weeks, is adopted by a couple who is unable to have children of their own. With her pretty red curls, the little infant has no way of knowing she's been adopted for the wrong reasons: Vera wants the status that "being a mother" will bring her among family, neighbors, and friends.
Her husband, Alf, is enchanted with the pretty little child. However, his fatherly affection will prove the undoing of their father/daughter relationship because Vera is unwilling to share love or attention with the little girl they have named Glenda. Follow Glenda Taylor's account of struggle for survival in a story of societal expectations that is also a case study in parenting. After enduring nineteen years of bullying, she leaves home to begin a new life.
Building on skills from school, she hones her secretarial talents working for a major tobacco company in England.  Her resiliency blossoms, and she accepts a position abroad for two years before immigrating to the United States, where she works for a prestigious legal firm in San Francisco. In her mid-forties, she finds her niche as a compliance officer in northern Arizona, investigating civil rights complaints in employment and public accommodation and establishing a mediation program.
In 1994, she relocates to southern Arizona and finishes her career working in human resources. She currently lives in Tucson, Arizona. Her life story-at times poignant, sometimes uplifting examples of the human spirit and others heartbreaking accounts of pain and loss-are woven into a compelling story of triumph and survival.