Let's see. Was PR mentally ill? Hmmm. She was from Nowhere, WV, had been in beauty pageants since age 13, valedictorian of her high school class, earned a degree in journalism, had been crowned Miss West Virginia and participated in the Miss America pageant which is televised world-wide and all before her 25th birthday which occurred about 6 weeks after she married a millionaire with an ex-wife and 3 kids but who was rising like a rocket in the new, exploding tech industry and on his way to wealth.
I think she was driven, but not mentally ill.
Anyone who achieves so much so early in life has learned to compartmentalize. I assure you, no one can allow distractions or criticism to rule their lives and succeedas she did.. Apparently PR was the one who lived the meme we all see on fb - let go of anything or anyone negative in your life. She was able to cut ties with anyone at any time. Okay, no one was going to stand in her way. Of course she was a narcissist. Most high achievers are.
I have to wonder how fast her head spun when she was uprooted from gorgeous, southern, sophisticated, cultured, lead-crystal Atlanta and plopped into the uber-liberal, hippy haven of Boulder where the men do not even wear ironed shirts, much less starched ones, the women wear men's cloths and no one wears make-up. Horrifying. But, ever the trooper that she was, she would 'deal' with it.
It was a lot like Scarlett O'Hara living in Frank Kennedy's saw mill.
And, like poor Scarlett, everything she did was a means to an end and the end was money and all the comes with being wealthy. I can't imagine why a southern beauty pageant winner would or should settle for anything other than the most glamorous life they could grab. Then, cancer. A bad one. And she had little kids and her crazy mother moved in with her to raise the kids and she lost all of her estrogen at about age 37.
Her glamorous life is in her past. Her life is now her husband's business and her kids' activities but the husband is never home and the kids are using their beds as toilets. Her big bash 40th birthday party was over and her husband gave her a bicycle for Christmas. (Imagine Rhett giving Scarlett a plow) This is the same woman who wanted to wear a mink coat to appear on CNN draped in diamonds.
She lived for 10 years being suspected of cracking her child's skull open over bed wetting, refused to cooperate with LE and lied about the events of the 25th and morning of the 26th until the day she died. Her mind was strong. No mental illness.