Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of addiction, child abuse, physical abuse, pregnancy loss and termination, and mental illness.

As Cher grew older, she was more aware of her family’s impoverished circumstances and suffered more social embarrassment about her cheap clothes. Whenever she complained to her mother, Georgia would remind Cher that her own childhood had been much worse, making Cher feel that her mother always won the “misery Olympics” (73). Cher recalls times when they could barely afford food. While Lynda had remarried to a kind man called Charlie, she was stingy about helping her daughter out financially or offering her food. Once Cher turned 11, her mother made her babysit her sister, Gee. Cher enjoyed the sense of control she felt in running the household in her mother’s absence, and she felt proud to help her mother by keeping things in order. Cher reflects on how she struggled academically at school, realizing in hindsight that she had undiagnosed dyslexia. While her teachers considered her bright but lazy, Cher remembers trying hard but not understanding.