Recover, Recovering, Recovery: The Arduous Ascent into Wholeness

 There's something about the program of Alcoholics Anonymous that, as anyone who has experienced it knows, is somehow divinely inspired. 

I can't explain why exactly it is that working the 12 Steps not only enables someone who compulsively drinks to stop, but results in a complete intrapersonal transformation the writers of the Big Book, AA's basic text, refers to as a "psychic change."

I hopped into and out of the program in varying intervals since I was 18. A large part of the reason I'd historically never benefited was due to an inherent inability to consistently follow through with anything until I was 31 and entered the psych hospital (yet again) and they finally identified my frontal lobe damage and executive dysfunction and put me on lithium. Finally, for the first time in my life, I responded favorably to medication. 

The Lithium did something to screen out elements that prior to left me in a state of constant overstimulation which sent my moods bouncing from one uncontrollable extreme to another. It enabled me, over the course of the year that followed my picking up that white chip on January 10th, 2016 (what you do in your first meeting to signify that you've surrendered your drinking) to do something I'd never done before: get a sponsor (an experienced person in the program who serves as a guide) and work the Steps all the way through. 

There was just something about this that gave me the first sense of stability and equilibrium I'd ever experienced. 

If you consider the meaning of the word recovery, nothing about it denotes any kind of instantaneous happily ever after. In a coastal town that's been ravaged by a hurricane, the most important thing, of course, is to survive the storm. But afterwards? Inhabitants must contend with millions of dollars of damage that's been done, a monumental mess to clean up. 

So this metaphor was made manifest for me. And I began my arduous ascent into wholeness, a commitment to sifting through so much wreckage and rebuilding my life. 

2016: This was my first year of sobriety. I moved into a nicer apartment complex after living in a dumpy apartment in a bad corner of the city. I hired a lawyer and got every other weekend visits with my daughters. I worked all of my steps and struggled to maintain my commitment to the program when I lost one of my adjunct professor positions, and shortly thereafter, the other, when the school closed without warning. I found myself working at a daycare during the day and a grocery store at night and I was so exhausted. After being rejected by three imprints of PRH and HarperCollins Children and an unsuccessful rewrite, my agent dropped me. The amount of disappointment and setbacks were crushing. But I held on. 

2017: This was my second year of sobriety. I went to work as a leasing agent for my apartment complex. I had enough money, health insurance. The custody of my children was moved from every other weekend into a 50/50 arrangement. I moved from a two bedroom apartment into a spacious three bedroom. That fall, I was laid off from my job and no longer had enough money to meet my needs. This disappointment threatened to take me under. I decided to go back to school and finish my Master of Arts in Teaching to become a secondary English teacher. More disappointments, more setbacks, but I held on. 

2018: This was my third year of sobriety. I only had a semester of courses before I could do my student teaching. I relied on support from my parents and student loans to make it through. I spent that summer at my parents' in Tennessee scrubbing boats at a marina to make enough money to help cover my expenses. I drove three hours back and forth from my city to take the girls to stay with their biological father every two weeks. As my complex was beginning to be overrun with drugs and gun violence, I moved into a beautiful 1930's apartment in the nicest, safest part of my city. I completed my student teaching, finished my second Master's degree, and became a licensed English teacher. 

2019: This was my fourth year of sobriety. I got a teaching job at an alternative school and for the first time in my life, I was making more than $40K a year and had health insurance. My girls' father had relapsed back into drugs and alcohol and was making poor choices. The courts awarded me full custody of my daughters and left him with weekend visits. The job with the school fell apart when a student assaulted me and I had to leave. Suddenly, I had no income and no way to support myself. I threw myself back into substituting but at a fraction of what I was making. I felt so overwhelmed and hopeless at even more disappointments and setbacks, but I held on. That summer, my partner of four years and I married. That fall, my daughters and I moved into his home in his city and our new life began. I picked up a job shortly thereafter as a SPED teacher in a middle school that was right across the parking lot. 

2020: This was my fifth year of sobriety. When COVID hit and lockdown came, I was grateful to still be making my regular salary and be able to be at home with my daughters. We had endless days together, doing art, planting seeds, making up in so many ways for time we lost. I had the happy family in a beautiful home I'd always wanted. I was taken on that fall to teach 8th grade English. I began to experience troubling issues with bullying from my department chair and principal that weren't serving me. But I hung in. I pressed on. 

2021: This was my sixth year of sobriety. I transferred into a 6th grade teaching position, but the stress and strain of the postpandemic world of secondary teaching in addition to the bullying I was enduring finally broke me. I had to leave my position in October and came very close to having a breakdown. It was a nightmare, losing benefits and pay again. But for the first time in six years since my agent dropped me, I returned to writing. I reimagined and rewrote the first two books in my series. I was re-evaluated by a neuropsychiatrist who added Ritalin to my medicine regime. This opened up a whole new world for me, and my family. My daughters switched to virtual learning. My husband stopped substituting in the public school and began to substitute at home. As continued to be the theme of my recovering life, anything that seemed bad could be a catalyst for things higher and better than I could have ever imagined. I had to keep myself grounded in faith that there was a God as I understood Him who knew me, loved me, had plans for me greater than I could imagine, that I was on my way toward as long as I didn't drink and kept working the steps. I was able to get into an online teaching position. 

2022: This is my seventh year of sobriety. Everything about my life is more than everything I ever wanted. I have a happy marriage to the man who has been my best friend for seven years. I have full custody of my daughters. I have employment at home that gives me plenty of time to focus on writing. And I've made a comeback from the pain of the rejection I experienced during my first time attempting to publish that I would never have imagined myself capable. I'm now actively seeking a new agent for my book, and the amount of rejection that's hitting me over and over is just as disappointing and frustrating as all the other disappointments and frustrations that have come before. But just as each one of those were all leading me to something higher, something better, so I can confidently know that each rejection I face is doing the same. Every "no" is only pushing me that much closer to the only "yes" that's intended for me. 

I'm not helpless, Paulina came to believe, and it was this belief that saved her. So it is for me. I'm not helpless. I don't ever give up. I haven't ever given up. And because of that, my daughters have their mother, and I have a life and a story that may be what someone out there, in time, is going to grasp onto to discover within themselves everything that I discovered...you're not helpless. You can survive. 

On Being "Not Helpless": The One Who Inspired Me to Save Myself

 So the decision I was about to make that fateful night? I didn't. 

I know how the popular rhetoric goes. All you need is yourself. You don't need a romantic partner. Be strong and independent. 

Perhaps this is true, or at least mostly true. But for me? In that moment? I had failed in every way that I possibly could in being strong and independent. I wasn't someone I could rely on. And as far as needing a romantic partner? Well...that wasn't exactly the point. 

What was the point, however, was that someone had managed to come into my life and for whatever reason, choose to stay. To this day, he would tell you...he saw the mess that I was, the state I was in. It was as unlovely as unlovely gets. But he also saw through that, somehow. He saw everything within me that was beautiful and capable and worthy, parts of myself I hadn't seen in so long I had deemed them imaginary, if I'd ever seen them at all. 

One of the most poignant parts in my first book is how Paulina finds a way to survive one of the darkest, scariest moments of her life. Her daddy was killed in a mining accident, and her mother has gone insane with grief, so much so that she neglects Paulina to the point that she is near to freezing and starving. Her only escape is in lucid dreams, where she discovers a friendly black bear (who is really the boy in disguise) who does two important things for her: he believes in her until she believes in herself. And he teaches her what becomes an affirmation that will steel her resolve through every challenge life brings her: 

You're not helpless. 

This relationship was very much created as a metaphor for the relationship I had with the person who'd come into my life around the time I came very close to doing something final and permanent. Just as Bear never rushes in to save Paulina, to come between her and any challenges, so my person never set out to save me from myself. Bear's love for Paulina became a catalyst for her own empowerment, as my person's love did for me. 

The right kind of love is one which inspires you to dig more deeply within yourself than you thought you ever could to find a greater reserve of strength than you ever knew you had. 

Even though I had no faith that things could ever get better, I knew I didn't want them to get worse. Even though I was certain that nothing I could ever do could make anything better, because he believed that I was worth one more try, I decided to believe in his belief in me. 

On January 10th, 2016, I went back to AA. And this proved to be the first step on a thousand mile journey. It has been six years, and I haven't touched a drink or taken a drug since. 

This was when I began my ascent into the life I have today, a life that's imperfect but also the sum total of everything my heart has ever desired...and yes, I did get my children back. 

Bear came into Paulina's life at precisely the right time in precisely the right way; without his belief in her until she believed in herself, she might have perished. And as I wrote this, I was in truth writing the story of how my person came into my life at the right time in precisely the right way; without his belief in me until I believed in myself, I might have perished, too. 

I'm not helpless, Paulina will continue to affirm and use as the foundation upon which she will base her entire life. So it was for me. 

And my person? He came into my life in the Fall of 2015. In the Summer of 2019, he became my husband. To this day, he continues to be to me what Bear was to Paulina: not my savior, but the catalyst to find within myself whatever it is that I need to become to savior of myself. 

Adulthood isn't Automatic: Neurodivergence at Quarter Life and Beyond (CW: suicide attempt)

 In the looking back over the earliest years of my emergent adulthood and onward, one thing was very constant: nothing that I did on the outside had any effect on my chaotic, fragmented insides. 

But I tried everything. Surely going to my dream college would fix me; it didn't. Then I thought I'd try grad school to see if it would help; nope. I jumped into a marriage in hopes that this--what had to be the greatest affirmation of adult stability short of having children--would make be all better; another try, another failure. 

I stayed sick. I stayed broken. I remained unresolved. 

The decade between 20 and 30 was a dissonant whirlwind. I attempted all of the above, to no avail. I tumbled down the proverbial rabbit hole of pharmaceutical drug addiction in such a way that was never an attempt to become the manifestation of a dark Appalachian stereotype, a hillbilly pill head, but the shoe certainly fit. I was a statistic waiting to happen. 

I ended up on the wrong side of my parents and being one phone call away from ending up on a Britney Spears-type of conservatorship, for mostly the same reasons. Matter of fact, I was having my own substance abuse fueled mental collapse at the same time that she was. Reading of this on my favorite celebrity gossip blogs was such a darkly comforting affirmation for my existence. I'm not alone, after all, a sadly hopeful little voice whispered within me.  

Honestly, the outward act of marriage, setting up house, and soon after, becoming pregnant with my first and then second child did cause the chaos within me to abate for a little while. 

A little while.

I had very strong maternal instincts, and I had daughters. There was something about the strength of the feminine energy within me that had always been feminine like nature as opposed to female like a girl that was at its peak manifestation. Being a mother to daughters was something I was as naturally good at as writing.

 I felt very much like a creature in the wild compelled with a knowledge that was in-born when it came to my girls. And how powerful it was to have girls. Friends of mine teased, the force-of-nature femininity in you would never allow for anything male to grow in your womb. I thought of it in terms of Clan of the Cave Bear. My totem is gonna whoop any man's totem's ass because, yeah. I'm that cyclonic. 

God, I want to be able to tell you, even at this point, that I had found my happily ever after, for I was, with my tiny daughters, happier and more full of purpose than I had ever been at any point in my life prior. 

But the day came when I yet again fell to pieces...there was another mental breakdown, another relapse onto drugs and alcohol. 

The breakdowns have somewhat of a pattern: 

Hospitalizations / relapses: 15, 21, 31, (almost) 39.

This one happened around my 31st birthday. I just came apart. My moods began to swing so wildly that I couldn't get back to any kind of equilibrium. I spiraled. I reached out for anything to self-medicate. The drugs made it worse. Things were already going bad in my marriage (we were not right for one another) and so it all just finally imploded.

 I landed back in the hospital. 

My ex husband knew me back during the last relapse and witnessed how bad things got with me when I had a psychotic break and picked drugs and alcohol back up. He hired a lawyer, went straight to court, and hit it head on.

And just like that, I lost custody of my precious daughters, ages 1 and 3. 

I was denied even supervised visits. I can't describe the degree to which I felt like my soul had absolutely been ripped from my body. Those girls were the sum total of any and everything that had ever been good about me. 

But it happened. I'd never hit rock bottom this hard before. And it was goddamn hard to pick myself up. 

So I did the only things I could do: relocate back to the city where I'd lived right after undergrad. Regress backward in my internal age about ten years. go back to graduate school. Finish one Master's degree and start another. Write three novels by hand at first and then type them up. Get an agent. Get a job as a college professor. 

And drink. God, did I ever sit in my apartment and just drink myself into an absolute stupor. 

It was really dangerous, in the looking back, how big of a difference there was between what I presented on the outside for everyone to see during that time versus what was really going on inside of me. To the world, I was a brilliant, quirky, energetic albeit eccentric professor who was the absolute favorite of all my students, the one they wanted to go with them on road trips and come over and get high with them and sometimes, to date them (I did none of the above; I always had ethics, regardless of how wayward I was in other areas). Everyone was so impressed that I'd written books, found an agent and, holy shit, had secured an audience with major publishing imprints. I was interesting, I was successful, I was cool, I was so, so cool....

Meanwhile, on the inside, I had begun to obsessively contemplate in a very real way whether or not I might ought to go ahead and end things altogether. I'd tried at least three times to go back and get my girls returned to me, but family courts hate drug addicts and drunks in equal measure as they hate crazy people and I had all of the above going on. No, no, no, they kept telling me. 

Almost three years had passed. My daughters were growing up. My ex wouldn't even let me see them, and there was nothing I could do about it. Losing my girls and being unable to have them returned to me was very close to being something that was a very real end for me. I sat in that apartment drinking more and more every night, looking back over my life. No matter how hard I had tried to rise--and I'd tried, God knows I had--I always fell back down, and there was nothing I could do about it. Mental health professionals certainly couldn't help me. Something was fucking wrong with me that couldn't be fixed. Everyone who'd ever loved me paid the price as the result. And now, this curse had passed down to my little girls. 

It began to make a whole lot more sense to me to end things. Once I did this, sure, everyone would hurt, but wouldn't it be better for them to suffer one last. large hurt from me as opposed to contend with me hurting them over and over for as long as I was alive?

Once this idea had entered my mind, it was like a seed was planted that began with each passing day to put down roots, to push its head above the ground. It was frightening how plausible it seemed. And then this sense of fright gave way to a numb calmness, like I knew what it was I had to do, I needed only to decide how I would do it.

 And the "how" came to me with such smoothness and ease it was almost frightening. I went to the pharmacy and acquired an entire three months' supply of lithium. I recalled the literal pinky promise I made to my psychiatrist before I left the hospital the last time that I wouldn't use it to kill myself. Well...I reckon I was about to make a liar of myself. 

The Friday evening I'd chosen rolled around. I'd already made all the arrangements I needed, I'd written all of the notes necessary, to whom it may concern. All that was left was to move forward. 

*

Seven years have passed since that night. And I'm still here, still living, aren't I?

What happened? Well...You know how they say it's always darkest before the dawn? 

Hmm. I'm not sure that's true. Matter of fact, I'd say it usually isn't. But for me, right then, it was. 

I will always remember this time time as the moment that things finally began to change. 

What it Takes for Me to Function: A Recipe

600 mg of Lithium

100 mg of Seroquel

45 mg of Ritalin

Bimonthly therapy sessions

Constant working of CBT & DBT skills to endure daily life

Trimonthly check-ins with a psychiatrist

Bloodwork to see to what degree my meds are harming my kidneys and/or thyroid

Consideration long-term whether to choose functioning body parts or mental stability

Permanent abstinence from drugs or alcohol

Weekly attendance at AA meetings

Consistent working of the 12 Steps with a Sponsor

A daily walk with God whether I want one or not

Morning and evening prayer and meditation exercises to stay plugged in

Pour all ingredients into a tiny mason jar. Shake until combined. Store in a cool, dry place with not too much sunlight for 24 hours. Retrieve and repeat every morning for the next 40 years or until life has ceased. Failure to do so will result in destruction of personal relationships, termination of employment, relapse, confinement to a psychiatric hospital (again), possibly loss of custody of daughters. 

Neurotypicals could never understand just how much work is required for my kind to simply wake up and face life. 

In Literary Purgatory: the Pains of Querying

 I don't know that I have a whole lot to say about this, other than the fact that I just want to say, I'm hurting right now. This process is painful, painful, painful. 

I had an agent before. She got me into three PRH imprints, and even HCC. The concept was ready, the manuscript wasn't. I reworked it. Now I'm back out there. 

And nothing. 

I'm hurting because I wish I wasn't so attached to this book, but I am. I wish I didn't care, but I do. 

I just have this feeling of dismal foreboding that a novel that straddles several genres--Appalachian as well as being Historical as well as being Fantasy--is going to need an agent that's a unicorn, who somehow loves all of that. 

I'm hurting and confused because I got so far that last time, and feeling lost, in a way, in what I should expect this time. 

I just don't know. 

What an opportunity for spiritual discipline, however, I will say. That whole axiom about that which doesn't kill makes you stronger is too much of a simplification. Difficult times have always given me two options: sink or swim. Sink down into self-loathing and helplessness, or swim up in affirmation of being not helpless, grow more mature in areas of patience, acceptance, living in the moment, trusting God. 

If little Paulina in my story can swim in the way she did, be as not helpless as she became, then so can I. My protagonist is my inner strength. I have to make more of a conscious effort nowadays to remember to let her take the wheel. 

I affirm that this difficult moment of uncertainty and waiting will be an opportunity for me to grow. I will count it all joy...well, maybe not, but...I'll keep trying to try. 

A Beaten Retreat: Leaving the Therapeutic Boarding School

 How did I get out, you may ask? I went in six months before I turned 18 and I was still there three months before I would have turned 20. 

There was no such thing as an actual program duration. Parents were told 12-18 months, but so many students had been there 4 or 5 years, with no end in sight.

 The owners enlisted the help of other students to manipulate and convince parents to leave their child in the school, pleading that they would literally die if they left. This worked on a great many families.  

Mine? Not so much. They were a harder sell. Honestly, their issue was the fact that I was aging so rapidly. I was nearly 20, and "if I waited much longer to get out and go away to college, it was going to start to look bad." 

Thank God they felt that way, because that school was hellbent on not letting me out. Ever.

When my parents had contacted them to express their intent to take me out, the owners went into their typical overdrive mode that they went into whenever a student was about to leave. 

First, they began to target me for abuse. At that point, I was disassociated most of the time. I rarely spoke. I scarcely knew I was anywhere. But they began to nitpick at me for anything I did wrong. Even things I wasn't doing. I had begun to attend distance learning community college classes after I finished high school, and I was doing well, carrying an A-B average. This was my ticket out of there, transferring into a four-year college. I kept my head down and focused on my school. 

The day came when I was supposed to go take my final exams. They came in and announced that I wouldn't be allowed, so that I would purposely fail and thereby, I wouldn't be able to transfer to college. They had someone take a paper I had written and mark all over it, making it look like I'd made an F. This was evidence, they gloated, that I was stupid. They began to break me down, tear away from me two things I knew to be true about myself: I was intelligent, and I was a good writer. 

They began to belittle me, torment me every day saying I was stupid, I was too dumb to go to college. I needed to stay there and run their kitchen, because that was all I would ever be capable of doing. They insisted that I was ugly, hideous, and fat, on top of it. They told me that I was a terrible writer. They told me I had no friends. Everything they could to to shred me to pieces was directed at me in a concentrated attack. They told me I was a white trash hillbilly who was going to end up in a trailer park in Appalachia getting beaten up by a piece of shit man. Hillbilly white trash, they called me, over and over. I was an ugly loser, a joke, no one liked me, they insisted, 

Soon, they found a reason to put me in the worst punishment there was: jumpsuit. Yes, they'd make you wear an orange prison jumpsuit, sleep on the floor without a pillow or blanket, and you'd have to "earn back" basic toiletries such as soap and a toothbrush. I'd literally done nothing wrong. Then they had groups of girls waking me up in the middle of the night, threating to assault me / cut me if I didn't tell my parents I needed to stay. And on top of that, the way they mentally broke me down convincing me I was going to die if I left that place. 

All of these actions and words sunk beneath my skin more and more each day until I began to believe them. 

I kept thorough records of all of this going on, in notebooks I had hidden, so I could expose this place once I got out. But the day came when they suddenly put me on a "writing ban" when they discovered these notebooks and had them all destroyed.

This was the same day my parents arrived to take me home. 

And yes, that not being allowed to take my finals did a great deal of damage. Those professors at that community college put in a zero for them, causing me to fail every course I had taken. All my hard work was burnt to the ground. It was very difficult for me to have to explain this whole story, as to what exactly it was that I'd been through, at every college where I applied. 

But I was able to get into the college of my dreams. This is a happy ending as far as this goes. 

However...coming out of this hell and then four months later being packed up and sent away to college wasn't a recipe for success. This is an understatement, to say the least.

Wherever you go, there you are. So it was for me. My struggles came away with me to university, too, and there was a whole lot more suffering and confusion in store for me. 

#BreakingCodeSilence: Horrors Inflicted at my Therapeutic Boarding School (TW: Abuse; Torture)

WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT AHEAD. THE TW IN THE TITLE WAS NOT A JOKE. BUT THIS IS A TRUTH THAT MUST BE TOLD. #BREAKINGCODESILENCE ________________________________________________________________________________

I wish to write one last post about my time at the therapeutic boarding school just to sum up this experience as something I've discussed and hopefully won't need to discuss again. The only exception being, of course, would be if at some point in the future, if you are among my readership and have a similar experience you need to share, then I would be glad to exchange experiences. When self-disclosure serves a purpose, I'm always willing. And at this moment, there is a purpose to serve, so I will share...but that purpose is, at the moment, an open-and-closed sort. 

So yes. The punishments...more adequately described as, the abuse. And in some cases, torture.

I will never understand what it is that causes certain human beings to be wired in such a way that they appear to thrive over the domination and humiliation of those weaker than them. This was the definitive summary of the two women who ran that hellish place. 

Their cruelty was bizarre. I didn't have it as bad as a lot of others. But perhaps one of the strangest, worst things they did to me (aside from the spider incident) was to treat my anorexia by forcing me not only to eat a full plate of food every meal (piled ridiculously high) but to eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich afterwards. And I'm not talking about a regular PB&J. The peanut butter and the jelly were each three inches thick. It was obscene. They would require me to stuff myself to the point that my stomach was distended and if I took another bite, I would throw up. Then they would hover over me, taunting me, daring me to throw up, accusing me of making myself try to do this on purpose. 

As a result of this torture, I quickly put on twenty pounds. Then they proceeded to make me stand up in Life Skills while they laughed at me and told me I was fat. 

This was pale in comparison to what other students suffered. 

--One girl was accused of flirting with boys. One night, they made her stand outside and had everyone spit in a cup and then made her drink it. 

--This same girl had long, beautiful hair. They made her stand up in Life Skills class while they took scissors and hacked every bit of her hair off, down to her scalp.

--One boy in particular was accused of looking at girls. He spent nine straight months sitting in a chair facing the corner from the time he woke up until the time he went to bed. Otherwise, they made him mow the lawn over and over. They eventually made him wear this homemade helmet that caused him to only be able to stare at the ground. He wasn't allowed anything to eat other than tuna fish or oatmeal for every meal for a period of around nine months. One day, he was suddenly gone, and we never knew what happened to him. 

--Another popular punishment was being forced to dig a six foot by six foot hole in the garden, digging a literal grave. Sometimes students would be put outside to dig from waking until sleeping, sometimes deprived of sleep to work under bright spotlights all night long, for days, sometimes weeks. 

--Another boy was accused of looking at girls. He was taken outside and made to kneel with his wrists and his ankles bound while a group of girls were instructed to circle him and kick him, stomp him, beat him while he could do nothing to resist and was unable to get away. Very much like that scene in the Handmaids Tale. The look of confusion and desperation on his face as he was assaulted until he was battered and bloody still haunts me. They let the girls proceed until he was so injured he required treatment at a hospital. 

--One day, they came in without warning with dump trucks and cleaned out every single personal belonging we had, every article of clothing, book, photograph, and threw everything into giant dumpsters. They went to Walmart and bought (in their words) "the most intentionally ugly clothing" they could find because (in their words) we were "a bunch of spoiled rich kids who needed to be put in their place." 

--In addition to this, they began to ominously gloat that we should expect "any day now" for them to come in with razors and shave everyone's heads so that we would no longer have any personal identity or ego. Then they would go around and pick out who they thought would be the ugliest with a shaved head. 

--They brought in a drill sergeant and started making students do "calisthenics"  up and down this big, sloping hill. They intentionally forced people to do this until they threw up. The infractions that earned this punishment were baffling... a student forgot to do a homework assignment, for instance. Or, sometimes, they'd make you do it even if you'd done nothing just so you could "see what it was like." I was in this category. The throwing up element soon gained popularity with them. Offenders were forced to eat an entire plate of food, then an entire plate of seconds, so that they would throw up during this ordeal. Then they made students roll through vomit. One night, I remember a boy having to be carried in by several adults. He was catatonic, appeared to be in shock. They were shining a flashlight into his eyes and his pupils weren't dilating. They had to call 911 and screamed at us that if anyone said anything about this to anyone, we didn't even want to know what they'd do to us. 

--And then... the jail tours. The women had two police officers who were in kahoots with them. One of them came in and told us, we were under their control. If we crossed them, if we told anything on them, they would take us to the jail and splice together video to make it look like we did something bad. And who was going to believe our word over theirs? The other officer....well, I'll get to him in a minute. But students would be picked up, "arrested" by one of these officers, and taken into a jail and left overnight, sometimes for several days, without supervision. One girl came back with her arm in a sling, and they screamed at us not to ask what happened, for if we did, we'd get taken to jail and left there, too. 

And so, about that other officer? This happened.

After this event, the school was finally sold and then shutdown. 

I Married a Baptist Nudist: Our Wedding (and Life) as Adam and Eve

 As oxymoronic as my title may seem, it is a thing. Our thing, as it were. 

The man who became my second husband was someone seemingly as antithetical to me as another could get. On the surface, he was a conservative Christian from a city in our state that was built by one of the more charismatic figures of the religious right. He had been, at one time, a Baptist pastor. Meanwhile, there I was...a queer, neurodivergent, recovering alcoholic UU Christeopagan, emphasis on the pagan. How did we even end up going on our first date? 

 But once we met, we just clicked. We had a kind of existential, intellectual chemistry that went deeper than labels that defined him, that defined me. We certainly didn't agree on everything, but somehow, that served to enhance the relationship that we cultivated. We were the proverbial yin and yang. I really dug it. There was just something about him, about us, that just fit. How? Well...

Several months after we had been dating, he disclosed to me something that he didn't share with many people, considering the attitudes and posturing of all those in his circle: he was a Christian Nudist. 

Ah-ha, so there it was. As there were parts of my innermost self that were traditional in ways that merged with his inherent traditionalism and thereby fused us together, so it was that there was a part of his innermost self that was just as nontraditional as I was wired. 

I had never considered nudism before, but I was thrilled to give it a try. And this was probably also the moment when I kind of just knew I wanted to marry him. Who else on earth was going to have this amazing balance of being traditional and nontraditional in the same yet wildly different way as me? 

It took us a while to finally make our way to a wonderful little nudist nook in our state. And when I say it took us awhile, I mean, the first day I experienced nudism was the day that we were married at the nudist resort by the Christian nudist pastor who had established a church there. 

We shed our clothing and walked hand in hand into the chapel, where the pastor, also in a state of nature, presided over our wedding. We exchanged the vows we had written ourselves, and we were pronounced man and wife, just like Adam and Eve. 

There's no place in the world to us like our nudist resort. As often as we can, we pack up and set out on that four hour drive to our little Eden. I'm shedding my clothing even before we're all the way through the gate. The place is full of old hippies and it's hard to meet a stranger. We hope one of these days to retire there. 

And the nudist pastor and his wife are among our dearest friends now. My husband is in line to take over pastoring of the church one day when we're able to devote more time there. 

It just goes to show, very few things in this world fit into neat little boxes. My sweet husband and I sure don't. And we're happy to be who and what we are. 

Locked in a Garden of Spiders: Punishment at the Therapeutic Boarding School

 Writing about my time at the therapeutic boarding school is something I've really never been able to do. The memories of this experience are all packed tightly away in a locked chest somewhere deep within me. My recollection of them is tantamount of trying to recall a vivid dream I may have had decades ago--shadows, illusions of shadows, flickering images, nothing coherent. 

I'll do my best to try to describe what I can. The school (if you can call it that) was located on a communal-type property about thirty miles outside Houston, Texas. There was a double-wide for the girls, a double-wide for the boys, a large community center, and what was once a ranch-style home that had been converted into a schoolhouse. There were maybe 40 girls, 40 boys, all packed in tightly. 

The rules were bizarre. We weren't allowed to read any magazines or newspapers or anything that informed us of what was occurring in the outside world. We weren't allowed to listen to any music other than oldies or contemporary christian. We weren't allowed to engage in conversations with fewer than three people involved. We weren't allowed to talk about anything having to do with our lives before coming there. Moreover, we weren't allowed to say anything that was "negative" at all. We were required to be smiling, positive, happy at all times. 

Failure to meet any of these requirements was met with severe and unimaginable punishments.

Each day, the two owners of the school--two women who were large, loud, and abrasive--came to the property, called us all into the living room of the schoolhouse for something called "Life Skills." Anyone who'd been reported for violation of any rules was  made to stand on their feet, and have these two women scream and shout and swear at them, oftentimes engaging peers to do the same, until they were just broken. 

Have you heard of Synanon? It was that, through and through. 

And then, yes, the punishments. 

If you were punished, you had to wear a red shirt to denote your punishment. This meant that any free time other than school or homework was spent cleaning or doing manual labor. This was never set for an intended period of time, only until the women decided you'd learned your lesson. It could be days, it could be weeks. 

Sometimes, this involved working out in a huge garden, as was the case when I'd gotten my first red shirt. 

I went into this experience rather optimistically. I loved nature, growing things, being outdoors, why, this was scarcely a punishment at all! What a lovely way to while away a warm Saturday afternoon, weeding out a garden bed and preparing it for Spring planting. 

I remember being serene for the first time in the months that I'd been there, closing my eyes and letting the humid breeze blow over me, stomping into the space in my green Doc Martins, reaching down to pull up my first weed, and then, as I was looking down...

I saw something move. 

I have always been terrified of spiders. This is my greatest fear, above all others. And right as I pulled up that weed, the biggest spider I have ever seen in my life went skittering over my boot. 

I screamed. I burst into tears. I felt like my heart was going to explode. I tried to run away, but I was caught by several adults who began to yell and shout at me and accuse me of trying to escape. I tried my best to explain to them through my sobs how I'd just seen a spider and how frightened of them I was, for them to please let me out. 

They laughed at me...the most scornful, mocking laughter I've ever heard. 

She's faking it, one of the kids chimed in. She just doesn't want to do any work. 

Yeah, another agreed. Lying little bitch. 

You get back out there and you pull those weeds and you don't stop, one of the adults growled at me, or we're going to catch those spiders and hold you down and put them on  you. 

I had no choice. I knew they meant it. So I went back out there. Gingerly, forebodingly, I pulled those weeds. And with every single one, spiders bigger and bigger scrambled and skittered and ran. 

And I screamed, I sobbed, to the point that I ended up losing control of my bladder. The adults, the other children, continued to laugh and make fun of me. 

This was the first time I went catatonic, experienced dissociation. Every time I've ever shared this, I've slipped back into this state. Even now, as I am finishing this writing, I feel my whole body going numb, my eyes glazing over, staring off into space like my spirit is kind of leaving my body. 

This is a sign I need to stop now, and put this memory back into that deeply locked box. 

Purity Culture, Lost Virginity, and Me: A Non-Indictment

 I don't know if I hate purity culture. I do know there is a lot to hate about it. But yet...I'm kind of somewhere in the middle on this. 

As teenagers grow into their own awareness of sexuality, I believe this is something that is intensely personal and unique to each individual. What is most important of all is that one comes to a sound understanding of what sex means to them. I feel like there are two extremes at work in society, one in which sexuality of any presentation is shamed, suppressed, pushed down as deeply as possible in some absurd hope that it will just go away. Don't do it until you're married, anxious adults angrily snap in the direction of growing teens, just don't. Period, the end. This isn't healthy. However, I don't know if I believe that attitudes that are to the opposite extreme are healthy either, ones in which sexual experiences are dismissed as no big deal, something akin to a recreational activity. 

The emergence of conceiving of oneself as a sexual being oftentimes does begin to occur in one's adolescence. It is a natural consequence of all of the hormones beginning to turn child bodies into adult ones. And the terms and conditions of what this will come to mean for each person isn't something that can be dictated by external parties. I think there are few things adults are more terrified by than the emergent sexuality of adolescents. And surely, there is much to be feared. Unwanted pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases, how to understand and exercise consent properly...inexperience in this area would surely yield a greater vulnerability for all of these things. 

A person's sexual orientation and their gender identity and expression are elements that are intensely personal. They cannot and should not be dictated by an external source. The sexual expression of young people becoming adults falls into this category, as well. 

I believe that adolescents need guidance in this area more so than they need condemnation or permission. Guidance is a stance of scaffolded support in which young people are better able to thoughtfully consider who they are becoming, how they want to express what this is, and ultimately, who they are in the contexts of themselves as sexual beings. 

When I was a young teenager, I had no guidance. And as a result, I made choices that weren't right for me because I had no compass to even know what "right" even was. And the fact that I was in the throes of untreated frontal lobe damage manifesting heavily in a lack of impulse control and a higher propensity to act out sexually didn't help. 

If I would have had any scaffolded support as I figured this emerging part of myself out, I would have known that I was the type of person who should have waited until marriage. 

Again: not everyone is the same. I will never be up on a soap box insisting that because this is so for me, it is so for everyone. But this was authentically who I was. For me, sex was something very deep and profound. For me, engaging in a sexual act with someone made me feel bound to them as if we were married, as if we had become one flesh. This was just how I was wired. This was what was true for me. I am the type of person who would have been better off only having one sexual partner in my whole life, due to the way that my spirit bound itself to whomever it was that I'd made love. 

I was young, indeed. I was 14. I got my first real boyfriend, who was 16. And for the first time ever,  I fell in love. And in that moment, beginning to explore my sexuality a little with him made sense. However, when the time came that he wanted to go all the way, I hesitated. In that moment, I knew and I professed, I am supposed to wait until marriage. 

Instead of respecting this stance, the boy chose to manipulate me: you know I'm going to marry you one day, he promised. It may seem silly, but I was neurodivergent, took everything everyone said at face value, and had little ability to understand when someone was taking advantage of me versus when they were being genuine. 

I yielded. I lost my virginity. 

And there aren't words to describe my devastation when, shortly thereafter, he broke up with me. I had developed certain spiritual beliefs that were important to me; even then, I was identifying as Christeopagan--I was in a covenant with God as a vessel of the Mother goddess, like a circle whole and complete. I was only supposed to give my virginity to the person who would be my partner for life, who would then become part of that circle with me. Even the name from which Bliss was derived meant "Consecrated to God." And since I'd given my virginity to someone who'd promised to marry me but decided to leave me instead, then all I could picture was the fact that the circle now had a huge chunk ripped out. 

It had all gone wrong, so very wrong. 

When my mother inadvertently found out I'd had sex with him, she was infuriated. She told me I was now damaged goods, and no man would ever love me again. That wasn't good news, didn't help my state of mind. I was already struggling with a deep violation of my own authentic truth; having broken glass ground into the wound was the last thing I needed. There were no other older women in my life who were any more supportive. All of them reiterated much of the same: you've done the undoable. You're tarnished, ruined, unclean now. 

This had the effect on me that you can probably imagine. I really internalized these beliefs. And, as such, since I was already ruined, what did it matter who I slept with? I started going out and almost indiscriminately doing it with everyone. It was still the wrong thing for me to do, being who I was. And each and every casual encounter I engaged in was, for me, in my context, tantamount to an act of self-harm. 

It wouldn't be until my early 30's during the process of working part of the 5th Step in Alcoholics Anonymous, in which you are tasked to make an inventory of your sexual conduct and use it to construct a "safe and sound" new sex ideal, that it all came into context for me. It took me that long to figure out what was right for me, and use that knowledge as a foundation to work from in my future sexual relationships. 

All of this being said, it would be very convenient to blaze up a scathing indictment of purity culture at this moment. But it isn't purity culture itself that I feel is to blame. I think the real blame falls on the posturing of adults toward maturing adolescents who are coming into their own, sexually.

Case in point: I am a mother. I have two daughters, 9 and 11, and my 11 year old is beginning to go through puberty. It's surreal for me to consider how she will be 12 this year, only two years younger than the age at which I made the decision to become sexually active. 

As a parent, I have and I will continue to raise her based on the spiritual beliefs that we embrace as a family, and within this context, what sexual intimacy is supposed to mean. I have shared with her, and I will continue to share, what my perspective on sexuality was; how my lack of understanding of it contributed to me making choices that weren't in the interest of what was highest and best for me; and how, as a result, I suffered a lot more than was necessary had I been self-aware enough to make choices that were best for me. 

But as my daughter begins to cross over into adolescence, a time even basic child development explains is a time in which children begin to break away from identifying directly with their parents and shift into identifying with their peer group, this is when I will begin as a mother to start taking small steps back. 

I will provide her with guidance and support and scaffolding through this time, but at the end of the day, whatever my daughter decides is authentic to herself belongs to her. In a few years, if she comes to me and confides that she no longer wants to be my daughter but rather, my son, I will support her in this. If she decides that she chooses to have sexual relationships with those other than cisgender men, I will support her in this. If she decides that she wants to remain cisgender, take a purity pledge, and vow to wait until marriage, I will support her in this. 

And if the day comes in which she makes a choice that ends up being a mistake, in the same way that I did, I will be there to help her heal back into whatever wholeness means to her. 

In truth, I think that in general, it is ideal for anyone to at least try to make it until their early twenties before they begin to really explore this aspect of themselves. I say this because the time between when puberty begins and you're all packed up and ready to go away to college is a time in which your focus should be on figuring out everything you can about who you are, what you believe. Maybe it can happen and be no big deal. But what if, like me, you discover that it is a big deal and you just don't know it until it's already too late? It's not a risk worth taking. 

I think it is also ideal for young people to have an open mind, listen to what all the different perspectives have to say. Find out what resonates. Maybe purity culture is something that is a perfect fit. Maybe it isn't. Maybe your sexual expression is something that doesn't yield an intense bond; maybe it will prove to be something that you can engage in with impunity. If that is so, then be safe. Consider what it is you've been raised to believe. Search your soul and really figure out what parts resonate and what parts don't. Take your time. 

I still remember the late spring afternoon one of my 8th grade students bounced up to me at lunchtime, leaned forward, and in a hushed voice said, "Moms! I had sex!" She said it like she was very proud of herself, and at the same time, very uncertain. She trusted me enough to know I wouldn't judge her, but at the same time, she seemed to be testing the waters to see if she'd receive condemnation or approval. 

I remember just taking that in for a moment, because it certainly isn't something I hear all that often from 8th graders, and I said, "Oh! You did? Are you feeling like that was an okay choice?" 

She wavered a little, shrugged, grinned. "Yeah." 

And I just nodded and said, "Okay. I'm glad to hear that. I hope you continue to feel that way. But if that feeling changes, that's okay, too. You need to make the best choices for yourself, and more importantly, make sure you've figured out what those are." And I told her I was glad she felt comfortable enough to share that with me, and if at any point she needed guidance and support, I was there. 

All in all, I believe that we as grown ups need to strike a balance where adolescents in our lives are concerned. Guide, lead, and teach while also honoring their budding autonomy that's coming out for a reason: this is the beginning of their evolution into adults, and they need to be encouraged more and more in independent thought during this time while also being heavily scaffolded and supported. 

Growing up Neurodivergent in Rural Appalachia: A Bad Beginning

 There was a prevalent belief when it came to the long-term effects of childhood head injuries that was established in the 1930s and persisted well into the mid-1990s: the inherent neuroplasticity of children's brains would naturally overcompensate any damage sustained.

 Today, of course, this has been disproven. When you see children out riding bicycles or skating, you will see helmets on their heads in a way that you simply didn't in the 1980s. 

This is because it took the scientific community quite a while to figure out the reality that came to define my life from the time I was five years old:  A 2016 study released by the University of Oxford revealed how brain injuries sustained in childhood "are associated with an increased risk of subsequent mental illness, poor school attainment and premature death."

But when I entered puberty and proceeded to positively implode, no one knew this. They all just thought I had gone crazy, become overtaken by a demon, or had just woken up one morning shortly after I turned 13 and decided to be impossibly, unimaginably bad. 

The tantrums and hypersensitivities I experienced after the injury in my youth became intense mood swings and violent outbursts when I became a teen. If something pleased me, I would whirl into euphoria. If some sensory stimulation triggered me, I would come apart in rage. At this time, I also developed a deep need for structure and routine and if this was upset, I would go from placid to screaming, swearing, breaking things.

I had no control over any of these states. Furthermore, all at once, I suddenly wasn't even anyone that I even recognized anymore. I lost the very little desire I'd ever possessed to interact socially. I couldn't bear to look people in the eye. And the boisterous crowdedness of high school overwhelmed me to the point that I completely shut down, unable to perform academically. Grades in middle school that were A's and B's plummeted to D's and F's. 

I curled in on myself in the hallways, walking with my head down. I cringed down into my desk in classrooms, staring at the floor. And when I got home, I'd turn all the lights out in my room and crawl into bed, crying for hours in darkness, terrified at how I felt so out of control and having no ability to understand why. I began to struggle with suicidal ideations and soon after, to self-harm, because being alive was entirely too confusing for me to contend with.

Again, I want you to consider, if you can even imagine a world such as the one in which I grew up at all, a world so thankfully different today: I was in one of the most remote, isolated places in the country, before the internet would provide connection to the world outside of the hills that hemmed me in.

 The impact of my damaged brain wasn't even something any doctor would take into consideration to conceive of what was happening to me. Mental illness was a shameful secret no one openly discussed. There were no IEP's; special education services were for the severely developmentally disabled alone.

Not only did I not understand myself, there was no one around me who could understand me. I was lost in a dark abyss into which I was plummeting deeper every day without any idea why it was I'd fallen in and no way to know how to get out. 

Things were bad. And they were only going to get worse. 

"Why Didn't You Let Go of the Leash?": My Early Childhood TBI

In 1986, I was five years old, and one afternoon I put a leash on our family dog and went out for a walk. I had no idea that this would be a decision that would change my life forever. 

Our dog was little more than a puppy, an energetic Cocker Spaniel, and I can still recall the way he strained and tugged on the leash, all but dragging me behind him. 

He had soon rushed up to the edge of a six foot retaining wall and before I knew it, he was leaping off. 

 I didn't let go of the leash. I don't know why I didn't let go of the leash. But I was plummeting down after him. And before I even knew what had happened, I had fallen face-first onto concrete, striking my head. 

I remember a bright flash. And then, darkness. 

I regained consciousness sometime later vaguely aware that I was on my mother's bed. As my vision slowly returned, I could make out her form over in the corner of the room, on the telephone. She was screaming hysterically to someone on the other end. All at once, my head was flooded with intense pain. I began to cry. And then, I began to feel very, very sleepy. 

I recall my mother turning around and desperately shouting at me not to fall asleep, if I fell asleep I might never wake up. 

But I couldn't help it. My eyelids were so heavy. Soon, they closed, and the darkness returned.

It's odd to describe, but I have no recollection of the weeks following the accident. There was the second time I lost consciousness, and then, all at once, I remember realizing that I was in the car with my nanny. She was thrilled that I seemed to be "waking up", as she put it, a confusing amount of praise was heaped on me for "waking up." 

I was told I'd be going back to kindergarten soon, how everyone had missed me, they'd all written me cards. Everyone was so cheerful as they assured me the bruises around my eyes were almost gone away, that my pupils were starting to be the same size again. 

It was fine, everything was fine, I was fine, it had happened and my family was very eager to put the whole thing behind them. As a mother now, I can empathize. I can't imagine the amount of guilt my mother must have felt for having this happen on her watch. Any time I mentioned it in the years that followed, she became nervous, upset, and demanded, over and over, "Why didn't you let go of the leash? You should have just let go of the leash!" 

I wish I could say that this was the end of the story. Unfortunately, it was only the beginning. 

In the months and years that followed the accident, my entire personality changed. Once a bubbly, agreeable little girl, I became a moody, angry little tyrant. Outwardly, I screamed and tantrumed, I acted out violently toward others, I was okay one moment and in the next, falling to pieces.

 But inwardly, I felt like I was walking around without skin. I was constantly, unendingly overstimulated. I couldn't handle bright sunlight, heat, chlorinated water, florescent lighting...I was terrified of the sound of a vacuum or a hair dryer. People just bothered me. I wanted to be alone with my books. If forced to be around others against my wishes, I would absolutely meltdown. And if something unexpectedly frightened me, I would black out and come to later curled up in a corner with adults hovering over me, shaking me, shouting my name. 

Everyone began to call me willful, spoiled, defiant, a brat. It would be two decades before the truth was finally realized: I had a broken brain. 

Where I Come From

 

I've started this blog out of presumed necessity. Prospective agents will likely be looking to see it. And, once my books are published, others may be looking to see it, as well. Now is when I should begin to prepare for what the end result will be: the publication of my books, and an audience of readers who will want to hear from me. I'm operating at present on the principle of "Act As If." So it is that I'll continue to create content here, knowing that at some point, someone will indeed read it. 

I want to start off sharing a little about why it is that this series exists, in the prose I used to communicate with prospective agents:

This is a piece of historical Appalachian literature that avoids romanticizing the old South; in truth, there is little that should be romanticized and much that should be looked at for exactly what it was: an exclusionist culture that punished anyone who didn't fit into white heteronormativity. The Melungeon people, Appalachia’s mixed racial group who suffered a near century of racial persecution and exclusion, are given a distinct voice. I demonstrate the reality of bigotry and racism rampant in the region in the late 1930’s, which was still alive and well in the late 1990s when I was growing up there.

Hell was Southwest Virginia. I was neurodivergent, after an early childhood TBI damaged my frontal lobe and left me with an organic personality disorder that rendered me powerless to regulate myself socially and emotionally and presented like bipolar, autism, ADHD, OCD, and a number of other diagnoses. I didn’t respond to any medication until my mid-twenties when my brain finished developing.  I was on the LGBTQA+ spectrum, and came out as gender nonconforming and pansexual in my early teens. I identified as a Unitarian Universalist christeopagan, someone who decided to create her own religious identity. This was at a time before the internet in one of the most isolated, backward places in the country, in a world where if you weren’t white, conservative, christian, cisgender, straight and neurotypical, then you were an enemy to be vanquished.  I can’t begin to describe the bullying, bigotry, and hatred that came to define my teenage years, contributing to my succumbing to drug addiction and alcoholism later in life, from which I have now been in recovery for six years. But I survived. And this series of books is a metaphor for that survival. 

This is a summary of the foundation upon which the series is built. I will expand on certain elements of my experience in more detail in future posts, for, paradoxically, my intentional choice to be unknown allows a greater ability for me to allow myself to be known. My hope is that in disclosing what my experience has been like, what happened, and what my experience is like today, that others may borrow strength and be better able to bloom where they are planted.