Justin Bieber's Mom, Author Pattie Mallette, Says Her Famous Son Is Behind Her

"Around the house we always had music," Justin Bieber's mother, author Pattie Mallette told us in a back room at Books and Books in Coral Gables. She'd just arrived from the Women of Faith event in Fort Lauderdale. "I would sing and play the guitar and have people over. And he would join up and bring the djembe and start playing along with us."

Mallette, who sang in the choir, danced, and acted growing up, says her and her superstar son share the arts in common. But most recently, she's entered the spotlight as an author of a mémoire Nowhere But Up: The Story of Justin Bieber's Mom. A single mom who'd had a rough childhood, she says she works to, "inspire people to get through their own journey."

Mallette admitted, "I think a lot of people don't know that I lived in a pregnancy home the whole time I had Justin."

"That was really challenging living there with a bunch of hormonal pregnant teenagers. When I got out, I was on social assistance, I worked two or three jobs to try and put food on the table. Stood in food bank lines." Bieber would, she says, call her a strict parent. "I was definitely at times overprotective because I'd been through so much in my life, and I really didn't want him to have to go through anything that I had to."

Her parents weren't at all strict with her. Mallette says, "I think you can either go two ways. You can either do the exact same thing as your parents did or you can go the complete opposite. I mean there is a middle ground. But I think that I really wanted to be protective. In some ways, I feel I was overprotective. He's turned out great so far," she laughs.

The author also didn't grown up religiously, but after a suicide attempt at 17, in a dark moment, she cried out for help. "I had an encounter I could never deny. Since then, I've been trying to seek and see what that's been all about," she reveals. "My faith has been an integral part of my story of who I am. I talk about it a bit in my book. It's been a messy faith, not so neat and tidy in a bow."