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Look For The Gift
Danny died. There’s more to it than a long, heart-wrenching 17-year battle with addiction and CPTSD. But for now, he’s gone in a shitty, fucked up way. I tend to take death easier, and lately, there’s been a lot of it in the recovery community. I was not even sad, and...
Rejection Hurts
Rejection and abandonment are my Achilles heel. For me, those are even worse than not feeling believed. Feeling irrelevant is the big one. The way I felt all those years ago. Some parts of the kid in me are still wounded and angry. He cries out, "THEY DID THOSE THINGS...
April 17th 11:55PM
Every year on April 17 at 11:55 PM, I light candles at the corner of Utah and University. (Except 04 when I was in Iraq. Big Forrest, rest in peace lit them for me that year). The first few times were horrific. Just going to that place sparked all the horror. I ran...
The Last Four Years
The last time I stepped out of that foster home, I was 16 years old. Two years later, I found a home in the barracks at the Navy’s Recruit Training Command, Great Lakes, Illinois. I put that uniform on, learned the language, and drank to forget. The human subconscious...
You Need to Move On
"You need to move on. Man up. Fake. Everyone is a victim of something. What were you wearing?" These are some of the comments on my social media pages dedicated to raising awareness about childhood sexual assault. "Stop crying already." Sprinkled among the mostly...
Don’t Tell Me to Forgive
“You need to learn how to forgive.” Those were some of the last words that my biological mother uttered to me before I exited our relationship. I had asked her not to bring up my older sibling. Just hearing his name was bad enough but hearing my bio mom disregard the...