The Rainbow Comes and Goes: A Mother and Son On Life, Love, and Loss by Anderson Cooper, Gloria Vanderbilt

circumstances. Wheredo that drive and determination come from? Are they something you are born with or do you develop them based on experience?
    Had you not faced the traumatic events of your childhood, would you have been so driven? Would you have accomplished all that you have? I ask this of myself as well.
    If my dad hadn’t died and Carter had not killed himself right before my senior year of college, if I hadn’t been left reeling by those losses, would I have taken the risks I did early on in my life and my career? I don’t think so.
    Both their deaths changed me in ways I am only now becoming aware of. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it was because I was grieving after Carter’s death, and worried about my own survival, that I felt compelled to go to places where there was suffering and loss, where the pain outside would match the pain I was feeling inside. I wasn’t sure I could survive, and I wanted to learn from others how they were surviving.
    I hadn’t applied for any jobs my senior year of college because I felt so confused after Carter’s death. Once school was finished, and I’d taken some time to travel, I asked a friend to make me a fake press pass so I could go to war zones with a camera to shoot stories, but I didn’t know that it would lead to a lifelong career. It was just something I felt I had to do.
    My drive certainly comes from the experiences I had early on, the fear, and all the other feelings that built up in me as a child. Because I had the same name as my mother, as an adult it became of utmost importance to me to work under the name I was born with. Although I have never told you or any one else, I did this because I believed that if I succeeded in writing, or acting, or painting, it would expiate in some mysterious and secret way the public vilification of my mother and free her to love me as I longed to be loved. Can you understand this? My wish, though fervent, was like water passing through a sieve, but it continued throughout my life, and in many ways still does.
    Something else that motivated me early on was an article I accidentally saw during the custody case, in a copy of the Daily News that had been left in the kitchen in Old Westbury. There was a photo of me heading into court under the headline “Poor Little Rich Girl.”
    It was the first time I saw that phrase. I was stunned, confused. Was that who I was? I didn’t feel “poor,” and I didn’t feel “rich.” I felt like a ten-year-old girl with hopes and dreams who couldn’t wait to grow up and find out what it would be like to be a person. I was being branded with word-playso catchy that it would stick. I was terrified it would be with me forever.
    I did not want to be the “Poor Little Rich Girl,” and it made me determined to make something of my life. I’ve never been able to admit how intensely it motivated me. I’m not even sure I should admit it now, but it no longer matters. I have achieved many of the things I wanted to in my life, and the sting is gone.
    I remember an interviewer on a local news show in Chicago once said to me, “Why do you work so hard? If I were Gloria Vanderbilt, I would be on a beach somewhere.”
    That always stuck in my mind. It says more about the interviewer than it does about me. It should be everyone’s right to nourish and develop the talents they have, and in so doing add their contribution to the world, however large or small. Why should someone born into a wealthy family be any different? None of us chooses the situation into which we are born. To think that if you are from a rich family you should not want to achieve something on your own is a foreign idea to me.
    As for you, Anderson, you have always had a fierce drive, a burning desire to make a name for yourself. For a long time I don’t think people even knew you were related to the Vanderbilt family.
    T hat was intentional on my part. I didn’t want to be burdened by other people’s judgments and