B. Duran W., a first generation Latina, worked hard to defy the odds and lived independently as she attended college and achieved higher education degrees and raised her two daughters.

She experienced multiple traumas throughout her growing years due to poverty, racism, and abuse within a family of constant births, ten in total, and with an alcoholic father and an overburdened mother. Her panic attacks without explanation puzzled her and little did she know she was holding all that trauma in the back of her mind creating an unacknowledged mental health challenge to emerge at a later time. But on the positive side, B. worked with students, teachers, and parents and it all filled her with joy and purpose.
Though there were many siblings, B. took each one as unique and special to the point of creating a trajectory to find out how each one did in life. The results were dismal where statistically half the siblings had died, the rest either failed high school or received their GED, and only two had been successful in colleges.
While her first two marriages were failures, at the age of fifty, she married a good-natured man who had a background in farming and livestock. They took a risk and built a successful alpaca ranch business, but tragedy struck when cancer caused his early death and added further trauma for B.