When I woke up on Thanksgiving Day in 1994, I knew it wasn't going to be only a holiday of gratitude and celebration. It would also be a pivotal day for me. I hadn't had a cigarette for three weeks—and now I was going to face certain family members who smoked.
I was in my late teens when my older sister, Debbie, started to smoke. Sometimes I would hang out with her and her friends. They would always give me a bad time and say I was a "goody–two–shoes," meaning they thought I was too nice and never did anything wrong. I decided to prove them wrong, so I started to smoke.
When I turned nineteen, I started a job at Sea–Tac International Airport in Seattle as a hostess/cashier in a high–end dining room where my coworkers and I would often take smoke breaks.
