Valérie grew up in Montréal with her mother and left home at sixteen. Before starting a family and eventually moving to the suburbs, she was part of the punk rock scene—a world that shaped her spirit, her independence, and perhaps her refusal to quietly accept the way things are. For twenty years, she worked in the social work field, giving herself to a system that was too often underfunded and unable to provide people with the services they desperately needed. After years of witnessing struggle, injustice, fear, and heartbreak, she eventually became emotionally exhausted. So she quit. And ...