International Princess Project

Breaking the Cycle

Back in 1933, Alice O’Toole Gangstee was a farm wife to a World War 1 veteran and mother of two young daughters, Bernette and Delores. In a matter of seven days, her husband Erick took ill with flu-like symptoms and died. Doctors said a delayed asphyxiation resulted from the gasses he inhaled during the war. It probably didn’t matter much to Alice how he died – just that she was young and alone, left to raise two girls in the midst of a Depression, in the middle of a Dust Bowl.


Alice O’Toole Gangstee at age 19 in 1926

Erick’s photo has hung in my childhood home in Minnesota for as long as I can remember, in a domed, oval frame. His handsome, black-and-white face stares out from underneath a soldier cap.

Erick’s death left my grandmother, Delores, to grow up during the Depression without a father. In that time and culture, loneliness was not her mother’s only grief – she faced limited opportunities and the risk of poverty. Even when she beat the odds and got a job as a waitress in a local diner, her absence put her daughters at risk at a time when day care centers and after-school programs didn’t exist.


Delores and Bernette in 1930


Delores and Bernette in 1945

Grandma Dee once told me that when she was a young teenager home alone, a workman who was working on their home made advances toward her, and she had to force him to leave. I don’t know how she did, but I’m glad she did. America has never lacked sexual predators, just like any other area of the world.

A woman who has been sexually abused faces a cycle that often captures her daughters, her granddaughters, and her great-granddaughters. The psychological pain deeply impacts her core beliefs about herself. She believes that she is an object to be used. The dehumanization often goes so deep that even when given an opportunity for a dignified life, she does not take it. She does not believe she is worthy of it. Her beliefs about herself affect the beliefs her children have about themselves.

We’ve heard the horrific stories of children who are forced to lie under their mothers’ beds because there is no one to take care of them while their mothers are working the line. Not every child’s story is this shocking, but even one child with this story is one-too-many. It is very common for the cycle to sweep up these children as well, and it affects generation after generation after generation – until one woman has the strength, opportunity, and support to break it.



The faces of IPP are faces of women who have stood up to overcome. We see their photos and workmanship through PUNJAMMIES™, but we often don’t see the children who stand with them – the children who are often their inspiration for seeking out a better life. These mothers have given their children a chance to go to school, a chance to eat healthy meals, a chance to imagine and play.

In my own family, Alice’s strength and the support of her family allowed both her girls to finish school and then carry a nation as working girls through World War II. My grandmother had the option of marrying for love instead of need, and she had three good children, the oldest of which is my mother, Celeste.

The first pair of PUNJAMMIES™ I ever bought were a gift for my mother. She and the matriarchs in my family built a positive cycle that I pray I will be able to pass on to my children someday. A lot of love has trickled down through the generations of my family, and I wonder, why me? Why was my life different when so many others’ lives are filled with abandonment and pain? Problems are easier to face when a support system stands behind you, ready to catch you when you fall.


Mom and me in 2006

Alice has been gone for many years now, and Grandma Dee is living out the last few years of a good life in a nursing home back home. Mom takes care of her daily with calls and visits, making sure she knows how much she is loved. Her care for Grandma is much like the love and care she gave me as a little girl. These three women are far away, and though I won’t see them on Mother’s Day, I carry them with me in my heart.

I don’t know who I would be without them. I don’t want to know.

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