My name is Laura and I am 36 years old, I am from Red Lake and I come from the Bear Clan. I started smoking cigarettes when I was 12 years old. Back then, I could even buy cigarettes for myself at certain stores and gas stations! I started smoking out of peer pressure, some girls that I was hanging around smoked and I wanted to be accepted by these girls and smoked my first cigarette when I was 11 years old but hadn’t really developed a habit of it at that point because I was only smoking when I was with these particular girls.

23 years and five kids later I was still smoking. I would quit during pregnancy of course, but go right back to smoking after I’d give birth. My oldest son Parrish would lecture my husband and I about the dangers of smoking, what it was doing to our bodies and how he didn’t want us to smoke anymore. He started really getting on our case when he was about 14 years old and he would really go into details about what cigarettes were doing to us and how if we quit,  with time our bodies could heal itself.  By the time he was turning 18 I was ready. I set a date to quit in mid-July but didn’t follow through with that date although I was prepared with my prescription of step three nicotine patches. At this point I decided that I had to really do something to hold myself accountable because I’m always teaching my children that they should keep their word and if they say they are going to do something then they need to follow through with that. It was really important to me that they all knew that I wouldn’t go back on my word and put off quitting again. That is when I decided that I would quit on Parrish’s birthday, September 3 2011, and I would do this as a gift to my son. I knew that in doing this on his birthday as a gift I was really putting myself to the test. If I cheated and smoked a cigarette or fell off the wagon so to speak, I would be taking the gift back that I had promised my son.

 Although some days in the beginning were very hard and I picked up a few pounds along the way, I am very proud to say that I am an ex-smoker! I feel so good now that it has been 13 months since I quit and I look forward to my future without cigarettes. As an ex-smoker, I know firsthand that the addiction makes the smoker a slave to the cigarette and everything a smoker does revolves around their addiction. With that being said, I am glad to say that I beat cigarettes-cigarettes didn’t beat me!