Tera's Tale: Rebel on the River

Through her fiercely independent, yet childlike eyes, Tera allows us to enter the recesses of her guarded world. Her Aussie sister, Beth, walks with us, compassionately guiding and explaining.

Tera's life? A world of secrets. A place of shame. A lifetime of expanding mental illness. Tera moves from collector to hoarder, progressively tipped by the compulsion into a perilous world of rats and disease.

As Tera repeatedly expressed through words, actions and even rage, she did not live like other people. And yet, living an ordinary life of home and family was her greatest desire.

It would never be.