I've always put my family first and that's just th...

I've been going through photos of my mother, looking back on her life and trying to put it into context. Very few people age gracefully enough to be photographed through their aging.

My mother and stepfather were married 43 years, so I have watched a long marriage. I feel like I had a very good role model for that. And, you know, it's just a number.

I think happiness comes from self-acceptance. We all try different things, and we find some comfortable sense of who we are. We look at our parents and learn and grow and move on. We change.

As you age naturally, your family shows more and more on your face. If you deny that, you deny your heritage.

I was born in ancient times, at the end of the world, in a patriarchal Catholic and conservative family. No wonder that by age five I was a raging feminist - although the term had not reached Chile yet, so nobody knew what the heck was wrong with me.

My inspiration was my mom. She's a great cook, and she still cooks, and we still banter back and forth about cooking. Growing up in a mostly Portuguese community, food was important and the family table was extremely important. At a very young age I understood that.

In every age there has been a stream of popular opinion that has carried all before it, and given a family character, as it were, to the century.