You can't cling to the side your whole life, that one lesson every parent needs to teach a child is "If you don't want to sink, you better figure out how to swim

 . October 2009. Walls' family life was rootless with the family shuttling from Phoenix Arizona California (including a brief stay in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco) Battle Mountain Nevada and Welch West Virginia with periods of homelessness.

com — and author of The Glass Castle a memoir of the nomadic family life of her childhood which stayed on the New York Times Best Seller list for 100 weeks.