Book Projects

I did a thing that I never thought I could do and wrote a book...well 2 books, but who's counting.

I didn't actually write it in my pjs at the beach as the stock photo below would imply, but that would have been lovely.

Read excerpts from each book below and follow me here and on social media for updates on publishing.

Yale: A Poor Kid's Backup Plan

The 8th grade girls had made it clear that I was not welcome on the benches with the other middle school kids. And middle schoolers were kept separate and apart from the elementary schoolers, so I didn’t even have my younger brother and sisters to talk to. I would spend my time alone plotting how Blaine and I would run away back to the Bay Area and Aunt Becky and mom would finally see how unhappy we were, and she would care, and life would change. But she didn’t and it didn’t, and I continued to use my isolation to plot until even that seemed futile, so I stopped and did nothing alone. I was lonely and sad, which were not new feelings to me, but for the first time in my life since I was raped I felt even less than that, I felt hollow.

That day that I was raped by my uncle, for those moments that he was using me I became a shell of a person, like a puppet that goes through the movements of life without there being any meaning, purpose, or emotion, just a figure in action, not even in reaction, because reaction requires thought and intent. I was a hollowed out nothing. As an adult when I finally disclosed my rape to Blaine I described it as existing as an empty toilet paper roll, useless, empty, waiting to be discarded. When I was 5 it was a fleeting feeling. I returned to myself and I interacted with the world again, not as the same child I had been, but not a puppet either.

But at 13 I couldn’t get out of the hollow feeling, I didn’t see a way back to the world from where I existed. Until a miracle happened.

While I sat on the playground alone for what felt like the 756th school day in a row, two intrepid boys made the long trek across the blacktop from the middle school benches to talk with me. They were a mismatched pair on the outside, like a salt and pepper shaker set that you’d get from a flea market, obviously not designed to go together but they worked. Max was tall and thin, with long athletic legs that he used to keep up with his older high school brother while they trained for the high school cross country team. His light brown hair swept down over his forehead and when he dropped his head to laugh it inadvertently covered his right eye. His uptight preppy middle school style of polo shirts, pressed shorts, and expensive running shoes belied his uncommonly happy go lucky openness.

If there is a polar opposite to preppy, Arlo was it. He wore black like it was his uniform, black jeans just tight enough and ripped enough that he looked edgy but wouldn’t get sent home to change. He pulled his Emo-before-Emo-was-a-thing look together with black t-shirts and high-top black Converse. He was almost as blonde as me, but had a skater haircut, shaved short on one side with his long blond top purposely covering his face until he cool guy flipped it off his face for dramatic effect, which he’d perfected. Arlo was more introverted and guarded than Max, but still less so than I, but they accepted me.

Max and Arlo became my friends and were so kind to me. We would sit together on top of the monkey bars or on the outskirts of the playground, anywhere that wasn’t the middle school benches and that was far enough away from the school that it allowed us to be the last ones to class and enjoy every minute together. We would talk about everything and nothing and sometimes not talk at all, just sit in solidarity. They became my happy spot and for an hour at school every day I didn’t feel hollow, I felt seen.

And then Max told me that he loved me and it changed everything.

As a mother now, I admire that boy for having and owning his big feelings, and then being brave enough to say them out loud. Even at the time, 13-year-old me knew that it was so honest and genuine and loving. But I was so broken that I didn’t know what to do with someone else’s big feelings about me. He was a good boy from a good home. He was kind and funny and smart and he loved me. Me, who was made up of dark, ugly, broken bits and how could anyone love that? But he did and he said it. And then he looked at me with expectation for a response.

But being the broken girl that I was, I rewarded his love and his bravery with pain. I hurt him. I said that I didn’t care. I said that I didn’t care that he loved me. And I said that I didn’t love him, and I didn’t care that he loved me.

But this was so very far from the truth. I cared a great deal that he loved me. But I knew that I was not worthy of being loved. I especially knew that I was not worthy of being loved by him because he was good and kind and brave and not broken into a million pieces like I was. He didn’t know how to love a broken person because how do you spread love over all the millions of little broken pieces of another person? It would be too much work to love me. I was simply broken and unlovable.

Phoenix Parenting: Raising Strong Children Out of the Ashes of Broken Men

Our back door is a double French door, which was one of the selling points of this house for me. It lets in so much natural light, and I can see the green trees and the kids playing in the backyard while I’m sitting in the dining room or living room. In the Spring and Fall we can also open them up and it makes the house feel so much bigger. I love the French doors. But that’s because until I married a violent alcoholic, I didn’t think of them as a weak spot in the house. He did.

Tarik had gone around to the back of the house and grabbed a piece of firewood from the stack that we kept by the back door in the Fall and Winter. With his first slam of the log on the door, he was so drunk he missed the glass, I picked up the phone and told him I was calling the police as I dialed. As it rang through to Alpharetta PD, he hit the glass. This time and cracked it. He hit it again and a log shaped hole appeared as Walid started crying in our bedroom upstairs. I was on the phone with Alpharetta PD reporting this as I ran upstairs to get our crying baby. I had just scooped Walid off the bed when Tarik appeared in the bedroom behind me. He’d shattered the entire glass panel on the door and unlocked the door to gain access to the house and to me. The police were on their way as Tarik pushed and pulled me around our bedroom with the baby in my arms trying to get me to hang up the phone. When I told him that they were on their way he shoved me one more time and cursed me as he ran out of the house and away from the mess he’d made of our dining room and our lives.

The police officer that showed up that night remembered me from when he worked security at an event at my son’s school the weekend before. He had seen me as PTA mom in charge, running event booths, coordinating volunteers, cashing out vendors, running off to find a quiet place to nurse, while toting an infant and toddler and handing off money to a busy middle schooler to participate in carnival games. He had seen me at the peak of my public persona, Supermom Woman In Charge. Now here I stood, 300 plus pounds of me, in a nursing nightgown, surrounded by shattered glass and splintered wood, in pain from the morning’s surgery, and worried about my children. My husband, upon hearing me on the phone with the local police department ran off into the night...little did I know this wouldn’t be the last time I’d see that.

The police officers who answered the call were kind and did all the police officer-y stuff. They checked the house, made sure the kids and I and the very intimidating looking dog were okay, then put out another call to find my runaway husband. Then the one who recognized me from the school started asking me questions. He was kind, but the questions were brutal.

Has he done this before? Yes.

Was it reported? No.

Has he broken anything else in the house? Yes.

Was it reported? No.

Has he physically or sexually assaulted you before? Yes.

Was it reported? No.

Has he been arrested before? Yes.

Was it from something you reported? No.

And with each question he asked, and I answered, I could see in his eyes that he knew I was one of Those Kind of People. I write that with capital letters because it’s not just a category, it’s a title, a proper title. It’s the title given to people that are unfathomably different from you. They are so far and away different from you that there is no way that you could ever be them or be anything like them. They are so far and away different from you that you can barely see them from up there where you are standing. They are so far and away different from you that your normal sane world and the world of Those Kind of People only intersect for the briefest of interactions. As one of Those Kind of People you are kept at arm’s length, you know in case some of you might rub off onto them. But there’s not just an arm’s length between you, there’s a chasm that is made up of fear and disgust and judgement and more fear. And you don’t know that we recognize the look in your eyes as soon as you have mentally processed us as one of Those Kind of People, but we do because that realization is as familiar to us as our own names.

I had an advanced degree from Yale, an undergrad degree from The George Washington University, a great job with the federal government, I owned my own home and had 3 beautiful children. But none of that mattered in THIS moment.

In the space of a few questions and a look on a police officer’s face I was transported back to being that white trash country kid, with hair that smelled like powdered laundry soap and sulfur water, that had too many bruises, and not enough nutrition, that practiced her math skills with food stamp checks and could whip up a mean fried hot dog and ramen dinner for a house full of little kids. This long and hard-won path that I had worked so hard to pave for myself led me right back to being one of Those Kind of People and it was humiliating.

That 1am interview in my living room was a defining moment for me though and humiliated as I was, I knew that I wanted to never feel again the way I felt when that police office looked at me. I knew I needed to change my life for my kids to not have to grow up the way I had. I wish that I could say that the next day I set in motion the changes that I needed to make my kids’ lives better and healthier, but domestic abuse is never that easy, especially when there are children involved. It took another 10 months for me to finally call it quits on my marriage.