Why did Sarah Palin step down? Theories abound. But some of the people closest to the Alaska governor say she wanted to regain control of a political script that slipped out of her hands the moment she burst onto the national stage. She also wanted to shield herself and her family from the attacks that seem to have been aimed permanently at them in the 311 days since Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., announced her as his running mate, according to some former campaign aides and other advisers who speak regularly with Palin or her husband, Todd. The Sarah Palin who stood outside her Wasilla, Alaska, lakefront home Friday to surrender her term with 18 months remaining appeared vulnerable and anything but the pugnacious hockey mom and combative candidate who Americans came to either adore or admonish. The woman who said she would never blink suddenly tired of what she deemed the 'superficial, wasteful political blood sport.' So she quit. Yet Palin's vulnerability masks her firepower, ambition and strong will, advisers said. Not one to fit comfortably into convention -- and not comfortable being a victim, either -- Palin spoke Friday as if she was rolling the dice and betting on herself. She presented herself as a game-changer stepping onto a stage of her own making. What that stage may be remains the big question looming over national politics this weekend, and advisers said she is truly undecided about running for president in 2012, or ever. But for the first time she recently solicited money for her political action committee. And Saturday she strongly suggested that she intends to remain a player in national politics. 'I've never thought I needed a title before one's name to forge progress in America,' Palin wrote in a message to supporters on her Facebook page. 'I am now looking ahead and how we can advance this country together with our values of less government intervention, greater energy independence, stronger national security, and much-needed fiscal restraint. I hope you will join me. Now is the time to rebuild and help our nation achieve greatness!' What is certain, however, is that Palin has tired of being governor -- of working with a legislature increasingly intent on blocking her agenda, of commuting 4 1/2 hours from Wasilla to the state Capitol in Juneau, of watching her family be tabloid fodder. This spring, as Palin was weighing whether to run for re-election in 2010, she turned to John Coale, a prominent Washington lawyer. He had helped her establish a political action committee and has become her political consigliore of sorts. 'She asked me, `Well, what do you think all this is? Why are all these people attacking me?' ' Coale said. 'I said to her, `Look, that's what happens. They did it to Hillary (Rodham Clinton) and Hillary just pushed through it. It's not going to really stop. ... You just have to ignore it and move on.' ' But, Coale added, 'she couldn't ignore the hits on the kids. She said, `It brought out the Mamma Grizzly in me.' She acted like a mother grizzly bear when her cubs were being attacked.' A Leap From Obscurity Palin's rise has been well chronicled. She was a first-term governor whose previous political experience was as mayor of a city of 9,700 when she received the call on her cellphone from McCain. Her leap from obscurity to the GOP's national ticket sent shockwaves across the country and dramatically changed her life. She was suddenly thrust into the volatile world of national politics, eliciting as much animosity as praise. She made her debut before 30,000 screaming supporters at the Republican National Convention, announced her teenage daughter's pregnancy, stumbled through an interview with Katie Couric and saw her caricature go viral through Tina Fey's parodies. 'I just don't think that most people on planet Earth experience that, and I don't think that anybody can really even try to imagine that,' said Joe Balash, one of Palin's top gubernatorial aides. He added: 'I've never seen her start to buckle or fold. She's always had a pretty amazing resiliency, and her ability to juggle all that she has and does is something pretty rare and pretty special.' With the campaign behind her, Palin flew to Washington in January to build the foundation for a career independent of McCain's, and to try to restore a reputation that was damaged by her own missteps and when McCain aides criticized her. Fred Malek, McCain's national finance chairman and a Palin booster, threw a party at his McLean home. There she hobnobbed with the likes of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., former secretary of state Madeleine Albright and former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. The next night, Palin was Malek's guest at the Alfalfa Club dinner, an annual gathering of the Beltway elite, where Malek said she was 'a star. ... She was very popular, a lot of people wanted to meet her, she was gracious and came away feeling really good for all the right reasons.' Palin returned to Alaska encouraged, Malek and other advisers said, but her popularity back home was falling. She soon became viewed as not interested in her state's issues, and critics blamed her for focusing too much on her national reputation, Alaska political leaders said. About 15 ethics complaints were filed against her or her office, costing the state nearly $300,000 and her family about $500,000 in legal expenses. Some allies in Juneau turned against her. 'The way she decided to exit from state politics was surprising, but everybody knew she had essentially checked out a year ago,' said Les Gara, a Democratic state representative who partnered with Palin on issues of tax reform and energy before the campaign but is now a political opponent. 'Everything became about her instead of state issues. She had a choice between personal fame and state policy, and it became personal fame 24 hours a day since she got bit by the national bug.' Uneasy in the Spotlight By June, when Palin returned to Washington, she seemed less upbeat, Malek said. He had organized a foreign policy briefing on North Korea for her and met with her and Todd Palin in his downtown office. 'I came away feeling that the job, along with all the other tugs and pulls, were taking a toll on their family life,' Malek said. Drama has followed nearly all of Palin's moves. She couldn't visit a turkey farm in Wasilla to grant the traditional Thanksgiving pardon without the event becoming an Internet video sensation. (Behind her stood a farm worker slaughtering other turkeys and feeding the birds into a grinder.) Members of her staff went back and forth about whether she would attend a big Republican fundraiser in Washington this spring. (She attended but did not speak.) Meanwhile, her teenage daughter, Bristol, and Bristol's ex-boyfriend, Levi Johnston, took their romantic squabbles to television talk shows and feuded over abstinence and the care of their infant son. Even talk show host David Letterman weighed in, joking that one of her daughters had gotten 'knocked up' by baseball star Alex Rodriguez in New York. Letterman's joke, which Palin roundly criticized, and the negative attention it heaped on the family helped persuade her to step down. 'This is a very middle-class family, a big extended family -- lots of kids everywhere, grandparents, aunts, uncles all over the house at all times,' Coale said. 'All of a sudden, they've taken all this incoming (fire) that I don't know that anyone's ever had.' Former Massachusetts governor Jane Swift, a Republican who, like Palin, gave birth in office, is friendly with the Alaska governor. Swift said that 'the hardest thing to deal with is when people are attacking your family and you can't protect them from the harsh glare of the media.' Swift added: 'I don't think if you asked 1,000 mothers, you'd find one who would want to trade places with her.' Another reason Palin decided to leave office is her income potential, advisers said. As governor, she earns $125,000, and Todd Palin, an oil production operator and commercial fisherman, took home about $86,000 (not counting $5,600 for winning the Iron Dog snowmobile race), according to her latest financial disclosure. Palin told the Anchorage Daily News that her legal debt was at least $500,000 and that she was thinking of creating a defense fund to pay the bills. 'Obviously, we cannot afford to personally pay these bills,' she said. The governor agreed to a book contract, the terms of which have been kept secret, and when she leaves office could begin amassing a small fortune on the speaking circuit. One adviser said she could net at least $60,000 a speech. Most of all, people close to Palin said, the governor feels relieved that her title will soon be gone -- and with it, she hopes, the scrutiny. 'They're not watching much of the news, but what they have seen makes them think this is the right decision,' said Jason Recher, a former McCain campaign adviser who remains close to Palin and was in touch with the family yesterday. 'All the punditry and Beltway binoculars just makes their point.' Staff writers Carrie Johnson and James V. Grimaldi in Washington and Kimberly Kindy in Wasilla contributed to this report. 