Raw.Real.Recovered.

I don’t remember much from my childhood. Some details I know from family stories or other sources, but the parts I do remember? They aren’t exactly the kind you cherish.

So, let me start by telling you a little about my mom.

She was the youngest of six kids, raised by a single mother who had been married four times—each husband an alcoholic. Stability wasn’t exactly in the cards for her. On top of that, she had a brutal relationship with the sibling closest to her in age—her sister.

My mom would tell me stories about how her sister was left to watch her when my grandmother worked, and let’s just say, “caretaker” wasn’t a role she took seriously. Once, she set my mom on top of the refrigerator and left there for four hours. Another time, she covered her in butter and left her in the sun ( third-degree burns )like some kind of twisted science experiment. These are the kinds of memories that stuck.

Needless to say, my mom grew up fast. Too fast. She saw more trauma than any child should. By 13, she was pregnant. The father wasn’t in the picture, but she married my dad shortly after. At just six months into the pregnancy (she witnessed her grandfather blow his brains out), she gave birth to her first child—a tiny, fragile baby boy who survived only three days.

The heartbreak didn’t end there. She went on to have five more children, losing another to SIDS at eight months old. By 19, she was divorced and an alcoholic. Life never really gave her a break.

She remarried, had one more child—my youngest brother—then got divorced again. This time, though, alcohol wasn’t her only vice. Crack cocaine entered the picture, and as you can probably guess, things spiraled from there.

This is where my story begins. And trust me, it only gets messier from here.