My name is Tanya R and this is my story.
             I was a single parent, struggling to cope with the reoccurring problems of a traumatic past and a difficult present life. My only daughter, Amy, was a psychologically damaged 8 year old, self- sentenced to a silent and solitary world after witnessing the death of her rock- star dad, Will.
             As most newly single parents are, I was haunted by the death of my husband, and therefore fiercely protective of our child. I had a proud, stubborn and independent personality, and resented any authority. Understandably by looking at my life, my attitudes towards death, and therefore grief, were similar. Add to this mixture my status as a single mother, and, well- you can get quite an interesting-yet also explosive temperament for just one person to have.
             Although, my little daughter is now well on the road from recovery, it's still hard not to think about that tragic chain of events that put us in that unbearable situation in the first place. The longer I keep trying, the easier it gets to explain. 4 years after watching her famous rock- star father die onstage from a freak electrocution accident, Amy stared a lot. She had been rendered deaf and dumb- well, at least on the surface. Every kind of 'ologist' I could think of, pronounced my gorgeous girl physically fit and her disabilities psychologically induced. In other words, exactly what I had been telling them I already knew all along. The problem was, know one knew what the key was that would trigger a recovery. The officials of the local school board insisted that Amy be enrolled in a school for the deaf.
             Of course, I refused and home- schooled her instead. I stubbornly believed it was just a matter of time before Amy could be coaxed back into the world of sound. However in the meantime I was dodging the child- welfare agency, who wanted to take Amy away. We fled our lonely outback home after one- too- many visits from thei...