Queen’s husband eventually returned home from prison and I became the sixth of their seven children. My memories of early life were deeply colored by my mother’s sadness, tears, confusion, insecurities and paranoia. The outward manifestations of my mother’s symptoms – speaking to unseen voices, garbled speech, and rocking in place were terrifying to my younger brother and myself. There were several times as a child my mother would be gone for weeks on end. Later, I would find out she had been hospitalized because of her manic episodes.

As a child, I felt I had to protect my mother. I knew she was very sick, I just didn’t understand her illness. I never wanted to go to school, because I didn’t want to leave her. What if something worse happened to her when I was gone?

I remember one morning my mom walked me to school while in obvious distress. I didn’t feel she would be safe walking back home in our rough neighborhood because she was not focused or aware of her surroundings. After she dropped me off at the front door of my school, I ducked out the back door and followed her home to protect her. I stopped going to school, only showing up for tests. I did not know it then but this is often one of the warning signs of children with a mentally ill parent. The child begins signaling their distress by missing school, acting out and becoming aggressive. Unfortunately, nobody was reading my signals.