In The Color of Water, author James McBride writes a tribute to the life of his mother, Ruth McBride. Ruth was born Rachel Shilsky, a Polish Jew who immigrated to America shortly after her birth. As an adult, she moved to New York, leaving her family and her faith behind. In New York, Ruth married a black pastor and founded the all-black New Brown Memorial Baptist Church in her Red Hook living room. Twice widowed and faced with the adversity of life and the racism of the time, Ruth's determination, dynamism and discipline allowed her to raise her twelve children. Everyone has a self-concept, “what we know and believe about ourselves” (Myers 2015, p. 19), these self-concepts create the most important part of ourselves, our self. Although many aspects of our personality create our self-image, we don't display all of them to everyone. The self you show to the world, the way we interact with others, the way others perceive us, is our social self. Our self-concept may be different from our social dependence. As a boy, James considered his mother strange, she never socialized with the neighbors and her past was a complete mystery. He felt she was completely unaware of what the world thought of her and the danger she faced from people who hated her just because she was white. One of the reasons for this was that their love was romantic. According to Sternberg's theory of love, love is made up of three elements: intimacy, passion, and commitment. Sternberg identifies different types of love, which can be described as different combinations of these three elements (Myers 2015). Romantic love is made up of a combination of the intimate and passionate components of love. Romantic lovers are physically attracted to each other and share an emotional connection but lack commitment. This lack of commitment becomes very evident when Ruth finds out that Peter is going to marry another daughter he had.