my story

following the tragic death of my biological mother, i think my daddy just kind of buried himself with her . . .

i think i caught the brunt of his grief and anger many times, mostly with his harsh tone and menacing glare, sometimes with a belt, once with a wooden stake. the greatest amount of trauma comes from the things he said to me, the way he spoke to me, the way he looked at me, his impatience with me, and the silent treatment he gave to me.

one moment in particular haunted me for years. i remember looking at my daddy, his cold and emotionless expression, as he said to my youth leader, “i love her because i have to. she’s my daughter. but as a person, i don’t like her.”

ouch.

i exited childhood and entered into drug addiction where i did everything i could to numb, escape, and avoid. for over two decades . . .

. . . somewhere in the midst, i had my first child and because i couldn’t shake my addiction, i didn’t raise her. i missed out on what could have been one of the most joyous times in my life and i wreaked havoc on her life, causing for her what i would imagine to be an immense amount of trauma.

i met a guy in addiction and through the thick fog of my mental state and my broken spirit, i thought he was the one. we went pretty deep into drug use together and eventually went our separate ways to get help. shortly after rehab, we got married and had three beautiful children. he and i juggled addiction the entire time. twelve years. somehow, i pulled off a law degree. i wanted more for my life. i just could not shake the addiction. i never even attempted to heal the wounds, the root of the problem, the trauma. and looking back, the law school thing was my final attempt to make my daddy proud. it didn’t work. now i just have a quarter million dollars of student debt to show for it.

ex was never a provider nor was he serious about a fulfilling life and he had no desire to grow and evolve. somewhere deep down, i did. he was a man child. i remember screaming at him out of absolute frustration, “you cannot even fucking think for yourself!!!” oh, i was a toxic one. there is no doubt.

we had our last child in march 2021. emi was a sick baby. when she was just two months old, i told the other two that i would be back to get them in a few days. and i told my ex husband that i was fucking done. i left him for the last time. i ran across the front yard drunk, barefoot, and giving him the middle finger the entire way. i never looked back.

a friend scooped me up and i called my lifeline, the man who would save me. and then break me . . .

i ran straight into the arms of a rebound lover who found me broken and broke me into a million more pieces. he had been separated for several months at the time (or so he said). i had known him for years, although we had lost touch. the story of how we met in that disgusting dope house twenty years prior is a story for another day.

he helped me escape the hell that was my marriage. and he put me on my feet. i left my ex with absolutely nothing. no money. no car. nothing. today, i am very grateful to mr. rebound.

my ex faded from the children’s lives for drugs and a female. he has been absolutely no help or support. i held my daughter (middle child) through her panic attacks over her daddy abandoning her in the very beginning while trying to hold myself together. i was still struggling with addiction. i was very broken. and i had three children with me, one of which, the baby, was a very sick little girl. my heart shattered for my daughter. for all three of my children. they didn’t fucking deserve that from their daddy and i felt completely helpless.

as selfish as it sounds, i’m no longer bitter or resentful towards their father. for the children, yes. i will always be bitter towards him for hurting them the way he did. but for me . . . i’m very grateful for his and my time with them. it will never be enough.

mr. rebound completely supported me. i was running back and forth, taking emi baby to hospitals and medical appointments . . .

we believed her diagnosis to be cerebral palsy until she was a little over a year old. we found out she had one of the most severe variants of kif1a associated neurological disorder just a few months before she passed.

with all the appointments and care emi required along with mr. rebound wanting me to take the bar exam and work an unpaid legal internship, he paid for everything. he said more than once, “imagine what we could do together.” i see now that he viewed me as an opportunity for more money and more power. something to be bought. an investment.

he set me and the kiddos up in a hotel for a month. we eventually found a trailer and he paid for a house full of furniture and took care of the bills. all of the bills.

i drove one of his trucks for several months. eventually, my dad agreed to cosign on a vehicle with me if mr. rebound would shake hands on a gentleman’s promise that he would pay for it and not stick us with it. the hand shake took place and the car was financed.

nine months into our relationship, his lies and his deceit began to catch up with him . . .

mr. rebound (who was not at all separated) was caught by wife through hearsay in our small hometown. to this day, i have absolutely no idea as to how he pulled off what he did. he is a professional at juggling multiple females. i knew that going in and was delusional enough to believe that i could love him into changing. there was that one time he curled into the fetal position sobbing while i held him, saying that he had never been loved the way i loved him. looking back, that was a broken little boy who was never loved the way he needed to be.

shortly after his wife found out, he changed his phone number and disappeared from our lives . . .

he left me with no way to support myself and my children. i was also stuck with a brand new car and the payment that went along with it. and, he shattered my heart into pieces. i had created a version of him that never existed and i had fallen in love with that creation. i had created him to be someone who loved me and cared for me and wanted to spend the rest of his life with me. i believed all of the bullshit, the “i believe god brought us together” and “there’s the barn i’m going to build into a home for us after we get married” and the “i believe i will be a better step-daddy to your children than i was a father to my own because of my age.”

i was scared. terrified. and desperate. so i started a brand called a million dreams for emi and complete strangers carried us through. a million dreams for emi has now been transformed into a fund where one dollar per book sold and donations will go to helping kiddos’ within the KAND community dreams come true!

emi passed in my arms a few months after rebound abandoned us. i was extremely fucked up before emi entered my life. between mr. rebound and losing her, i almost finished myself off. i decided to join her. in the moment i made the decision, the grief and the anger and the absolute misery dissolved into peace. complete peace. i was lying in the bed at my in laws’ house and my car was parked where it couldn’t be seen. i had to find a hose that would fit and i would soon be free of the hell. i started to climb out of bed to head to town for a hose.

and then i heard this little whisper . . .

“josh and beyla. josh and beyla. josh and beyla.”

Fuck.

Fuck.

FUCK.

i couldn’t. i couldn’t do that to my other two children. their daddy abandoned them. they watched their little sister die. who the hell was i to just completely finish them off? i had to get up and try. i had to stand back up. i had to show my babies what fighting for my life looked like. i had to save myself.

the next year and a half were very questionable. i finally entered therapy (with two therapists). i began a self-healing journey. i welcomed spiritual practices into my life. and i started reparenting my inner child . . .

there was an incredible rainbow story surrounding emi’s death. i wrote a children’s book based on the story and created an llc, a publishing company, to give my book more credit. i hired an illustrator and $3,000 in, was devastated to find that he was using ai. i cut my losses and shelved my book. i started all this very prematurely, shortly after she passed and several months before i started healing.

froggles was birthed on the way back from jacksonville one day. this was before i shelved emi’s rainbow. i turned to my son and told him that if we were going to write, we better come up with another book. and within minutes, i had my little monster. my son named him froggles. froggles is my little inner monster who was broken and went on a search to find happiness. he met a little girl who helped him along the way. a little girl named emi. sales from my poetry book i like her will push froggles to printing.

shortly into my healing, while going through emdr therapy for daddy issues, i started writing. my dad was not emotionally available to me nor did we ever have any level of communication deeper than surface level. i had carried a lot of trauma from childhood with me over the years and healing from it was brutal. the words began to just pour out of me and i eventually decided to create a poetry series as a means to communicate to those people who and those things that stifled my voice, disregarded my truth, and robbed me of my authenticity.

the debut poetry collection, i like her, of my poetry book series, fucked up little cocktail, sat completed for months because i was scared. i was frozen in fear. fear of failure due to the belief that i wasn’t worthy, that my voice wasn’t important enough to be heard, and that my truth didn’t matter. and so, i continued down my healing path and decided to wait until i felt confident before releasing my book.

a guided meditation was my pivotal moment . . .

my trauma therapist took me on a guided meditation during which i went back to my youth leader’s office where my daddy said that he loved me because he had to and that he didn’t like me. i walked past him and knelt down before little me. i introduced myself to her, telling her that i was her all grown up and that i was there to save her and that i would love and protect her. i told her she would never again have to feel the way she did in that moment and i scooped her up and we floated over all the years, the drug addiction, the toxic family, the disgusting men, losing emi . . .

we floated until we reached the present. those few minutes with my therapist lead me to save me. and during that meditation, i went from loathing that little girl to falling so deeply in love with her. my self-hatred and negative thoughts vanished and were replaced with compassion, pep talks in the mirror, and hugs that only i can give to me.

i finally realized, very recently, that i would have to prove to myself that i can . . .

i would have to push through the fear and show my human that she is worthy and that her voice and her truth do matter. i had let myself down way too many times to just jump right in and trust myself.

and that is exactly what i’m doing now . . .

i am proving to my human that she is a total fucking baddie and that SHE CAN!!!