Elizabeth Edwards' Dramatic Journey

Jan. 22, 2010— -- In the wake of former presidential hopeful John Edwards' long-delayed admission that he fathered the child of a campaign aide in 2007, Edwards' wife Elizabeth told The Associated Press she was "relieved" and hoped it would end the seemingly endless media scrutiny of her family.

While it's likely not the end of the story for either Edwards, the admission is certainly a landmark in Elizabeth Edward's true-life melodrama.

And she's a heroine who has become increasingly hard to define. She's gone from victim to saint to an angry, sometimes biting wife.

"I was still angry and hurt and had a lot of self doubt about who I was, what I meant to him," Edwards told Oprah Winfrey in May after her husband admitted he had had an affair with 45-year-old campaign videographer Rielle Hunter.

It has been a long journey from the adored everywoman-next-door who captivated Washington upon her arrival when John Edwards joined the U.S. Senate in 1998.

The close couple was bound by tragedy in 1996 when their teenage son Wade died in a car crash.

"I described it as sort of a BC-AD moment," Edwards said of the crash. "Everything exists before that time and after that time."

But buoyed by their daughter, and two more children late in life, the couple charmed many Americans when John Edwards ran as John Kerry's vice presidential candidate in the 2004 election.

Then, just after the 2004 campaign loss, the family received more devastating news. Elizabeth Edwards was diagnosed with breast cancer. She beat it initially but a few years later, the cancer returned. Still, the couple made the dramatic decision to stay in the 2008 presidential campaign in which John Edwards was a democratic candidate.

"I'm immensely proud of John's campaign," Elizabeth Edwards told reporters at the time.

But behind the scenes, Elizabeth Edwards was dealing with the slow revelation of an ugly truth.

"What John had said is this woman had spotted him and said to him 'you are so hot'," Elizabeth Edwards told Oprah later. "I can't deliver it. I don't' know how to deliver a line like that."