It was a long, sometimes devastating, journey Maxine was forced to undertake through the depths of despair as a preschooler, and then on through a tumultuous adolescence during which she was ignored yet at the same time abused by a uncaring mother who daily left her with a malevolent grandmother who similarly mistreated her. Instructed by her divorced mother to no longer call her Mama, in an effort to enhance her own marketability as a perspective wife to some unsuspecting man. Fortunately, Maxine was endowed with the guiles and street smarts that allowed her to survive. The pain of her youth was converted, of necessity, into the toughness and unwillingness to accept what appeared to be inevitable. As the result of her own perseverance and courage she was accepted and graduated from Brooklyn College. Separating herself from her horrendous past, she resurrected her life by achieving success as a school teacher, a wife and, ultimately, a mother and grandmother. Along the way, she became proficient as a stock trader, thus providing herself and her family the additional financial and emotional security she was deprived of in her early years. Maxine reflects on her life as an independent success story.