Former US first lady Elizabeth ‘Betty’ Ford, who died on July 8, age 93, turned her battles with addiction and breast cancer into triumph as she overcame them and helped others follow suit.

Speaking openly about her fight with breast cancer and her dependence on prescription drugs and alcohol, Mrs Ford removed much of the stigma attached to both devastating illnesses and aided others battling the same demons.

Nancy Reagan, a fellow former first lady, hailed Mrs Ford as an ‘inspiration’ through her work to educate women about breast cancer and her Betty Ford Centre.

The recovery hospital for alcohol and drug rehabilitation in Rancho Mirage, California, has treated tens of thousands of people since 1982.

Mrs Ford’s life as a politician’s wife appeared to take a toll, as her husband, Gerald R. Ford, went from congressman to vice president to US president. He died in December 2006.

“My dad was gone from home a lot,” Mrs Ford’s daughter Susan Ford Bales told Parade magazine in a 2005 interview. “Mother was almost like a single mum, raising kids, running a house – the perfect Barbie doll wife. Like many women, she felt totally overwhelmed, undervalued and unappreciated. I thought she was a superwoman, but every woman is fragile after a point.”

After Mrs Ford suffered what Mrs Bales referred to as her first nervous breakdown, doctors prescribed tranquilisers, sleeping pills and other medication.

“Doctors then were often more eager to give women pills than to isten to them,” Mrs Ford told Parade.

But once she became dependent on the drugs, her daughter became frightened.

“I was scared,” Mrs Bales recalled in the interview. “I wanted back the mother I admired and loved. I didn’t want to see her downtrodden, stumbling, making no sense, dying.”

Mrs Bales was instrumental in staging the intervention that eventually led her mother to recovery.

“After her treatment and recovery, mother was like a bud that had opened,” Mrs Bales told Parade. “The rose was very beautiful to see. Mother’s life was not about herself anymore. It was about helping the guy down the street.”

Inspired to promote awareness about breast cancer and women’s health after being diagnosed and treated for the deadly disease in 1974, Mrs Ford became co-chairman of the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation when it was founded in 1982.

Of her battle with cancer and her subsequent mastectomy, Mrs Ford said she felt that “maybe if I, as first lady, could talk about it candidly and without embarrassment, many other people would be able to, as well.”

Born Elizabeth Ann Bloomer on April 8, 1918 in Chicago, the youngest of three children grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan and studied dance at Bennington College in Vermont.

She divorced her first husband William Warren after five years, citing incompatibility, and began dating then-Navy lieutenant Gerald Ford a short time later. The couple married on October 15, 1948, just two weeks before Gerald Ford was elected to Congress. They lived in the Washington area for nearly three decades, as he climbed up the political ladder from the US Capitol to the White House.

Mr Ford, who entered the White House after the resignation of Richard Nixon following the Watergate scandal, died on December 26, 2006, also at the age of 93.

Fellow former first lady Nancy Reagan said of Betty Ford: “She has been an inspiration to so many through her efforts to educate women about breast cancer and her wonderful work at the Betty Ford Centre.

“She was Jerry Ford’s strength through some very difficult days in our country’s history, and I admired her courage in facing and sharing her personal struggles with all of us,” added the widow of former president Ronald Reagan.

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