Strong ,but unique creations

Every nationality has had it's share of strong women. Immigrants who traveled across the ocean and further on to start over in a new land. It was women who kept the families together, who worked at what ever they had to do to support their families. Many of them working in the garment industry or as servants,not only supporting families here but maybe sending money to families across the ocean as well.
Some packed their families up and moved west in covered wagons to farm new lands. Is there any wonder that strong women are the norm rather then the exception in romance fiction these days. We can look back and see generations of strong women to base our characters on. Not just in the past, but here and now as well.
I was blessed to have strong women all through my life who set examples for me. My mother raised 6 children. the youngest born three years before her death. Not bad considering she had been told she would never have children. My grandmother ran a houseful of men, until my aunt was born she was the only female in the house with her husband, four sons and a brother in law who came to live with them when his own wife kicked him out. Both these women taught me the gift of family. While telling me stories of family I never knew existed,they taught me the art of story telling.  I know I put a part of them in every mother or grandmother I create in my books.
A single mother of two who showed me how women can survive, even when they think they can't. The woman who defied her parents and not only graduated from high school but went on to attend college and gain not one but three degrees.
A woman who traveled from Russia to join her brother in the US and is stranded in England for six years due to a mistake made by the immigration doctor. All of their strength and their courage go into each of my female characters. Along with other characteristics which make them each strong, but still uniquely their own women.