Elizabeth Edwards, the wife of Sen. John Edwards who ran for president as John Kerry’s running mate, has passed away. The woman who became more apparent to the public because of her husband’s political candidacy, has died at the age of 61.

Edwards was able to write two best-selling books over the past few years and fought a battle against cancer. Edwards also saw how her family crumbled when her husband was found out to have an affair with another woman and gave her a child.

Her public light was highlighted with a lot of political activities for her husband, which included luncheon meetings, campaign rallies and fundraisers. In addition, she also opened to the public her condition with cancer and her struggles to fight it. She also truthfully shared the story of her late teenage son through her writings. She held conferences to announce her diagnosis of cancer and after her husband admitted that he had an affair, she went to a talk show and talked about how she hoped to help others by letting them talk of their pains.

She said, "One of the reasons that I sort of tried to share that with people is I wanted maybe to open the eyes of people who haven't been through the experience and maybe feel tempted to say, 'This is what you're doing to the person you love, this is the private hell you’re going to send them into if they do discover the ways in which you have betrayed them.”

Her openness won her many supporters and detractors at the same time that she even became more popular than her husband. Before she became a public figure, Edwards was a humble lawyer, homemaker and mother for fifty years. Many women can identify with her life, said Ed Turlington, John Edwards’ campaign chairman. Turlington said that though she comes from a family of military personnel, Edwards has a caring family and is a loving daughter to her elderly parents.

Edwards had plenty of activities by the time John Edwards ran for president for the second time. He had already written great books and held many lectures that were always jam-packed with listeners. She also helped her husband with his platform and influenced him on issues like the Iraq War and universal health care. Most people would see her as a person with strong will and some campaign staffers’ claim seeing her as overbearing. She was, however, unapologetic.

One of her famous lines is as follows:

“Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it's less good than the one you had before. You can fight it, you can do nothing but scream about what you've lost, or you can accept that and try to put together something that's good.”