What it means to rebuild your life when stability was never the starting point
"I'll be fine."
It’s what we learn to say when support is scarce, and abandonment is familiar. It is a phrase that starts as a survival mechanism, a shield against the realization that very little support was provided from the beginning of the journey. For a long time, I wore that self-sufficiency like armor, performing "fine" while navigating a deep, unspoken loneliness. But over time, my work and art have shifted away from that performance. I've begun exploring what it actually means to carry these themes: loneliness, abandonment, and the complex challenge of providing deep support and guidance for others while still searching for my own support.
I’ve come to understand that healing is never "done." It is not a clean destination with a final, victorious finish line. Instead, it is a continuous practice: a "dance" of intimacy, communication, and emotional realism. Translating that delicate dance into language is hard work for most people, but to me, it feels intuitive. It is the work I do.
This is a brief history of not landing softly. I share these details in hopes that those of you who identify with my experiences can find community, know that it isn’t your fault, look for a path forward, and simply not feel alone.
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I was born in 1984 in New England to young parents in their twenties. They divorced when I was four, and that set the tone for most things that immediately followed. I was often told, "You’re just like your [other parent]," and it was never meant kindly.
Perhaps this was the first time I felt I was rebuilding my life.
I became the messenger in their conflict. They didn’t communicate with each other, so everything ran through me. I learned early that I could either try to manipulate situations to survive or take on responsibilities that weren’t mine when the adults failed to handle them. I was constantly adjusting, constantly managing reactions. I didn’t develop a stable sense of self; I learned to mold to what the adults needed.
My memories of my father are varied and inconsistent. He was given primary custody, so in theory, I spent most of my time with him. But the reality was that I was alone a lot. I was a latchkey kid from first grade onward, sometimes mistaking the house door for being locked when, in fact, I was just too small to push it open. Eventually, I learned to slip into the house through the cellar bulkhead door because it was easier to open.
Waiting for me on most days were little square notes from my father letting me know what I should do or what food was there for me. They were very affectionate and loving notes. Yet, all the while, I was verbally, and sometimes in the notes themselves, reminded never to tell anyone I was alone, including my mother. One weekend, all the notes went missing. No one remembered throwing them away. My father guessed my mother might have snuck into the kitchen while picking me up for a visit, spotted them, and swiped them for leverage in their next court battle. I never found out if that was true.
When I was with him, my father could be so many different people depending on his mood. In general, he expected me to mold to him. If he was feeling goofy and I didn’t respond positively to a joke, he called me a “stick in the mud” and said I was just like my mother. Sometimes, this could happen if I simply didn’t hear him. I was a child; I wasn’t always paying attention to him. This was the simplest of role reversals for us, where he was expecting my attention and validation. When he didn’t get what he wanted, he made fun of me. I was constantly confused and hurt. I often didn’t understand the context of being criticised, and it was also a regular dig at my mother, reminding me he hated her and would hate me if I was anything like her.
My father was a chronic drunk driver, a fact cleverly hidden from me until I was 18. His drinking didn't typically cause other problems from my perspective; he was never violent to me. But he drove. His accidents were sold to me and any other gullible person as "daddy gets sleepy when he drives," and it worked for a long time, mostly because I witnessed it many times and he was constantly exhausted in the car with me. I had many backup plans in my head about what to do if he lost control of the car. Which switches meant what? How would I gain control of the wheel? Would it scare him awake, and would it cause a bigger accident? I wasn’t sure. In hindsight, I don't know if all those sleepy episodes were fueled by alcohol or not. It’s also hard to bring myself to say he did anything wrong, regardless of evidence of what I saw.
When he finally got hurt in a bad crash, the summer I graduated high school, I felt frozen. I had been scared of this. Since he needed to go to the hospital this time, the police were involved, and his license was taken away. Yet even then, I never connected his drinking to the other fractured pieces of our life: how often I was left alone, how little money we had, the endless cycle of girlfriends, or the promises made and rarely kept. Around the same time, his sibling totaled a car and received a DUI. I couldn't see any of this objectively; I just thought it was normal family issues. That's why we have to have D.A.R.E., right?
Something deep in me simply didn't want to hold my father accountable for behavior my conscious mind knew was unsafe. I treated him very softly. With my mother, however, I practically told her she was unsafe, resulting in multiple periods of estrangement. I even told her to her face that being like my father was better than being like her. My mother rarely claimed to be an amazing mother, but she did wait until the legal age to leave me alone with my half-sister as soon as possible during the summer to avoid paying for summer camp. I had already considered her unsafe for a long time, but I kept extending opportunities for her to earn my trust.
When I turned 13, I agreed to sit with my sister five days a week for the entire summer. I thought I had negotiated a fair payment rate that saved her money compared to camp while allowing me to earn my first real savings. She agreed, then backed out, laughing at me for thinking the arrangement was serious. I felt betrayed, embarrassed, stupid, and so used.
Every day of my existence felt like traveling between one parent who resented that I existed, and another who was trying to squeeze me for all I was worth. They would swap those roles whenever it suited them. I was constantly running out of energy. And my only escape from them was school, where I was expected to mask, act happy, and pretend that everything at home was perfectly fine and not completely insane, with bullying, math, and homework sprinkled in for good measure.
But my skill in becoming what was needed didn’t translate well to school or social situations. I hated the rigid structure of unspoken social rules and the military-like obedience expected of us. I asked questions, which was rarely rewarded. This is where some of my health issues began to emerge, unrecognized. My weak joints, chronic headaches, and frequent bruising were dismissed as attention-seeking, not trying hard enough, or assumed to be menstruation problems. Despite having my tonsils removed, my persistent ear, nose, and throat inflammation was written off as allergies. I was often told to just keep going.
By 10, I had become obsessed with old Hollywood and theater. By 12, I was emcee'ing school events. By 13, I found a sense of belonging on stage. Performance became my outlet.
But the purity of that outlet didn't last. During my second year of middle school, I experienced an intense, confusing romantic attachment that I now recognize as limerence. These unfinished emotions would follow me for decades. Around the same time, my father was planning to relocate me two states away from my friends, school, and mother. He made me promise not to tell her. I carried that secret alone for nearly a year. This was when my chronic headaches began. They were quickly dismissed as menstrual symptoms and forgotten.
We moved after my mother discovered the plan just months before the relocation, right in the middle of my father’s second divorce. It was just the two of us, living in a one-room apartment in the back of an abandoned farmhouse in the remote White Mountains. Money was tight, and I was isolated, anxious, and carrying the weight of the world.
At the end of my freshman year, after being left entirely alone for a week while my father worked out of state, I assaulted a boy who had been bullying me. He was hospitalized. At 14, I was arrested and placed on juvenile probation for a year. It was a massive turning point legally, socially, and emotionally. I began failing classes, despite having nothing but time on my hands, yet no one asked about my home life. I realized if I wanted things to change, I had to do it myself.
At 16, I tried living with my mother again. It lasted less than two months. After a trivial argument about me being in the shower too long, I walked out with a garbage bag of clothes. I went to my childhood family home, now occupied by other relatives, and asked to stay. My mother changed the locks on her home. She had my number, but she never called. I lied to my former school district about my living situation so the would re-admit me for my junior year, a lie my father supported so I could live separately from him. I didn't feel wanted anywhere.
During that time, I started drinking.
I missed over 60 days of my junior year and was briefly hospitalized for mental health reasons. I tried to check myself into a hospital, but as a minor, I couldn't do it without parental consent. I had to briefly reconcile with my mother just to be admitted. At the end of that year, my family told me to leave my living situation and go back to the farmhouse with my father, completely blind to what the living conditions there actually were.
At 17, I stayed with a friend’s family in their attic until I overheard her speaking about me in a way that made it clear I wasn’t welcome. After that, I rotated between sleeping in my car and a moldy Holiday Inn hotel room where I worked. I was exhausted, barely functioning, and hallucinating from lack of sleep.
Eventually, my former stepfather’s parents took me in. They didn't have to, but they did, giving me a safe place to land when no one else would. Years later, doctors explained that I had essentially been a runaway who successfully avoided the system. I had never had a word to describe those teenage years until then.
With my step-grandparents' support, I graduated in 2002 with a 1.9 GPA. My school treated me as a problem to manage rather than a student to support, even contacting DCYF with inaccurate information, which I deflected only because I was already highly conditioned to manage adults and control narratives. My school advisor told me I would never amount to anything without a four-year degree, then dismissed me when she realized I had no funding and wasn't accepted anywhere anyway.
But I went to community college and reconnected with theater. For the first time, I believed I could build something solid.
That belief took me to Los Angeles.
I moved there through a corporate university program that was later found guilty of misrepresentation. Campuses closed mid-enrollment, but I stayed and finished, earning my BFA in December 2007. That same month, to survive the onset of the '08 recession, I started stripping in Culver City.
It was practical, it paid, and it bought me independence and safety when the economy was collapsing. In 2009, after being pushed out of a club because an owner didn't care for my body type, my insecurities led me into private sex work. I specialized in Craigslist fetish work, choosing to keep 100% of my earnings rather than splitting them with a club.
The work felt desperate, risky, and unstable.
Around that time, a daytime talk show approached me, claiming they wanted to help. They didn't. I thought we were discussing the economics of overeducated 20-somethings in a recession. Instead, they produced a hit piece demonizing Craigslist, using me as a "normal enough" example to scare people. I was discarded immediately after filming, unpaid, and handed superficial "resources". My family saw the episode, blamed me, and felt deep shame.
At the same time, a dispute with an aggressive maintenance manager at my apartment complex escalated. Under intense pressure, my overwhelmed system snapped, and I reacted with rage, an echo of the incident at 14. I was arrested and spent 48 hours in jail, later completing court-ordered anger management.
That combination of legal trouble, public exposure, and absolute instability pushed me to leave the West Coast. I returned to New England, attempted another failed reconciliation with my mother, and entered a seven-year estrangement.
On paper, my life improved. I worked in customer service, then finance, eventually managing a $1 million scholarship fund at an Ivy League institution. But underneath, my mental health was fracturing. I had pushed the trauma down too deep. I had a panic attack at work and quit out of fear. I took a publishing role that lacked structure, panicked again, and left within weeks, convinced I would be exposed.
I leaned further into audio work.
I had been doing audio since 2013, and by 2017, I transitioned into commercial voice work. I built a solid portfolio and worked consistently. I also became deeply involved in live performance events and married my partner.
But underneath our new life, both of us were struggling with alcohol dependency. After our wedding, my drinking escalated, and I was diagnosed with PTSD. I began using an opioid blocker and trying to get sober, being open about it with our performance company.
The initial support didn't last. The environment became highly critical, inconsistent, and ultimately exploitative. I was working full-time hours commission-only, while being encouraged to collect unemployment. When I walked away, smear campaigns circled within the creative community, anonymous hate messages came through my inbox, and more relationships collapsed. The more I spoke, the more “friends” I lost.
I kept running into the same pattern: unstable environments, abuse of power, and substance issues. I had to ask:
Am I the problem?
I started EMDR therapy during COVID, which helped me step back and see these loops clearly. I realized I needed space from my father. I began to feel how deeply his behavior hurt me. I felt so alone. His driving had terrified me. I had believed many times I might die while in the car with him. I felt no control, truly, nor did I feel that he had any regard for my safety, whether I was with him or away from him. What began as a request for space became permanent distance. I have slowly accepted that he simply didn't like me very much. I don’t think I’ve ever been his priority, only a bargaining chip or a tool when he needed something.
As I found clarity, my husband declined. His drinking escalated, our home became disorienting, and I couldn't tell what was true anymore. There were many years of back and forth. He minimized his behavior because he was unable to face why he was doing it. He was misleading and minimizing to his therapy team, as well. There was so much shame within him, though it’s difficult for me to say where it came from. He had been estranged from his father since his 20s. I never met him. His father, at a minimum, has schizophrenia and PTSD. My husband was terrified he might like his father. No matter how much we surrounded him with support or resources, he was unable to tell us what was really happening inside of him.
My husband began getting DUIs. I reduced us to one car. I told him I loved him so much, but I cannot enable a drunk driver. The cycles of binge drinking followed by sudden abstinence were disorienting. His health was abhorrent. I knew he was going through withdrawals and suffering through them, but he wouldn’t tell me anything, so I felt like I couldn’t provide him with what he needed. I felt terrified to leave the house.
In spring of 2023, he entered rehab. Upon returning home, he relapsed. I asked him if he would ever stop lying to me. He said no. In December 2023, we sold our home.
I left to rebuild again.
I moved to Tennessee to stay with a relative, but the environment was unsafe and unstable, with more drinking, more moving goalposts, and more unspoken expectations. I didn’t ask for anything but a safe place to sleep and kindness while I stayed. I offered money to offset the cost of my stay, which was refused. My services of pet/child/home care were readily used, but I was very clearly told they weren’t needed. Within 90 days, I left and cut off that side of the family. In retaliation, they tried to doxx me, creating fake social media accounts to post rebuttals to the writing I had been publishing under my protective pseudonym. They even filed a fraudulent order of protection against me, which was quickly dismissed for lack of evidence.
For the next year, I cycled through temporary housing, draining the savings I had worked so hard to protect. In 2025, I tried a caretaking-for-housing arrangement in Missouri that collapsed due to coercion and dishonesty, requiring police presence for me to safely leave. To add insult to injury, the fraudulent moving company I hired extorted me and stole or damaged $20,000 worth of my belongings. I am still pursuing legal action. This is a new version of rebuilding my life I haven’t experienced before.
As I was moving forward to rebuild yet again, life shifted in a way I never anticipated. My husband, from whom I had separated, passed away in April, 2026.
Grief is complicated under the best of circumstances. Grieving someone you loved deeply, while also grieving the life you hoped to have together and acknowledging the realities that ended the marriage, is something else entirely. I knew this was a possibility. It was something that scared me every day. But never expected it this soon. I never expected it to happen now. I never expected him to refuse medical care at the end. I felt so angry. I felt so helpless. There are no words for losses like that. There is only learning to carry both love and truth at the same time.
Endings do not arrive in the ways we imagine. Often, there is no final conversation, no future reconciliation, no opportunity to rewrite the story. There is only acceptance, grief, and the decision to continue living. I was angry things continued on without him. I saw time march on. I didn’t realize how frustrated that would make me, to see the cruelty of time.
I returned to our home state to clean out his apartment, the remaining belongings that we had accumulated together, and hold his services. It may have been the most difficult thing I had ever done. Certain key people showed up, and the rest I had to do by myself. I wish I could have helped him. I wish I could have known more of what he needed, but I don’t think he knew himself.
There is a pattern I can’t ignore. Almost every unstable environment I have navigated has involved substance abuse and exploitation. Had proper social tools or safety systems been in place, my story might look very different.
As of 2026, I live in the coastal South. I am rebuilding my life again, and this time, I intend to do it with profound clarity.
Much of that clarity has come from making the time and space for understanding my physical body. For decades, the symptoms that began in my childhood (the weak joints, the frequent bruising, the chronic ENT inflammation, the severe headaches) were dismissed. In my late 30s, as perimenopause and menopause began, the chronic pain and instability progressed rapidly. When COVID came, I was forced to slow down and confront the pain I had been ignoring. For that, I am grateful. As the world has picked up again, I am forcing myself to stay focused on my needs. It’s difficult and feels out of place, but it’s necessary for my survival.
While I don't have all the answers yet, tests are pointing toward some sort of autoimmune and connective tissue problems that went unrecognized for years. The US medical system is not working in my favor. However, I’m hoping to work in my own favor.
Understanding this physical reality has changed how I view my entire history. I am not "broken" or "lazy"; I have been surviving in a body that lacks structural stability, mirroring the lack of structural stability in the families and systems that were supposed to protect me.
What You Will Find Here
My work, my art, and this blog are born from these intersections.
I write social commentary because I see where I could have ended up. As a former child often tasked with raising herself, I analyze how systems and families fail people. As a director, consultant, and intimacy specialist, I spend my life guiding others through the delicate "dance" of consent, power dynamics, and emotional realism. I have a deep, intuitive understanding of human intimacy and how to translate it into language, a skill I offer to others even as I continue to navigate my own chronic illness, find my own support, and accept that healing is a continuous, lifelong practice.
Here, you will find:
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Social commentary shaped by lived experience.
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Observations about systems that fail us.
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Reflections on trauma, identity, and behavioral patterns.
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Thoughts on money, power, sex, and art.
I write under a pseudonym for my own protection, but the truth of these essays is entirely raw. If you like deep dives into how thoughts shape behavior, economic realities, and the complicated process of stripping away the performance of "being fine," then you are welcome here.
I’m glad you’re here.
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