Read by Erin Cole

As the face of her eponymous couture bridal business, Erin Cole radiates refined elegance. But the designer's glamorous lifestyle and sweeping success belie a childhood marked by profound dysfunction. Raised on a steady diet of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and death, no one would have expected Cole to go on to become a force in the fashion world. As a child, she often had no access to food; other times she was force-fed until she vomited. At home and at school, she was beaten, bullied and belittled. Her alcoholic parents alternately abused and ignored her. By the age of sixteen, she was living on her own

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