delegates to the 1908 meeting of the International Council of Women. In a 1983 interview with the
Washington Post Steinem described her father as "a truly American character . . . always going to make a movie, or cut a record, or start a new hotel, or come up with a new orange drink." Accompanying her father while he bought and sold antiques, Steinem spent much of her childhood crossing the country in a house trailer until 1946, when her parents separated. Gloria and her mother eventually moved back to Toledo. Ruth Steinem suffered from recurrent anxiety and chronic depression, which often made her unable to work, leaving Gloria as her caretaker. In her essay "Ruth's Song" (1983), Steinem wrote that her mother was "someone to be worried about and cared for; an invalid who lay in bed with eyes closed and lips moving in occasional response to voices only she could hear; a woman to whom I brought an endless stream of toast and coffee, bologna sandwiches and dime pies, in a child's version of what meals should be." Caring for her mother brought Steinem to an early understanding of the way the mental-health-care system misdiagnosed women or caused them to become addicted to tranquilizers and other drugs.
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