ROBERT A. DAVENPORT grew up as the youngest of 12 kids on a small 5 acre farm in Hanover, VA raising chickens, ducks, goats, pigs, cows, and horses, while maintaining our own vegetable garden, and constantly cutting firewood to keep warm during the winter months. Needless to say growing for me up was extremely hard work until I left home at the age of 22.
I remember my life being filled with constant struggles and very little idle time. There was always something else that needed to be done, and whatever little time I had left over was spent working for neighboring farmers to make enough money to buy my own school clothes from the age of 12 onward.
Being the youngest of 12 kids I was always picked on, made fun of, and harassed by my older siblings. Little did they realize how much they were helping to shape me in to becoming a better person later in my life. To my siblings, their daily torture to me was just business as usual until they each got old enough to either run away from home or become brave enough to venture out on their own. To me it was my wake up call to figure out a better path in life and as a result I became determined to learn from all of their mistakes and make a better life for myself.
Physically I could not compete with my older siblings, so I had to learn to be quick with my thoughts in order to out think them and learn to use a lot of psychology to get through each day without getting beat up or made fun of as much as I got older. As a result, I became a master at reading body language, understanding what people were really saying by the way they used certain words and learned to identify and avoid danger whenever possible.
It is through these hard life lessons that I endured over the years that have allowed me to fine tune and hone my relationship skills that I share with you throughout this book. I pray that you take them very seriously and that you never have to go through the experiences I went through to learn them. Thank you and may God bless you with loving and lasting relationships.
