White Elephants - a memoir

Elephant in the middle of the living room. That is one way of explaining how a family walks around the invisible presence of huge problems. Hindsight is what brings the elephant into focus. Somehow, Chynna T. Laird began to see at age five the bulky creature crowding her family. And from that time as the child, Tammy, she took on a sense of responsibility to her mother far beyond expectation for her age. Her mother was different than other mothers. Family life in their household was not pretty. No one seemed to notice. No one did anything about it, and Tammy wanted someone to do just that. As an adult, Tammy took on her first name, Chynna, and took up the challenge to find out what might have helped her mother fight her battle of self-destruction. She couldn't help her mother, but she would consider it worth everything if her family's story helped another.