I entered adulthood wholly uneducated and unprepared for life. I was homeschooled until I was 19. When I tried attending a local university while living with my parents, I had no time to study. I also had no respect for academia. In my mind, my own ignorant Christian beliefs were…Continue Reading
Category: Recovery
Groomed
You take my handAnd you say you’ve changedBut boy you know your begging don’t fool meBecause to you it’s just a game(You know it’s just too little too late) I was youngAnd in loveI gave you everythingBut it wasn’t enoughAnd now you wanna communicate(You know it’s just too little too…Continue Reading
Heartlessness and Hate, Part 2
In Christian homeschool speech and debate, we were told that we were learning logic and critical thinking. What we learned was a kind of feigned intellectualism, one that behaves under the pretense that the most reasonable reaction to anything is no reaction at all. Almost without fail, the winning competitors…Continue Reading
False Fame
The one episode of reality TV that featured my family was a much smaller thing than we thought. Shared delusions are central to relationships with abusers, and the chance to soak up the spotlight was no exception for my parents. The show itself was embarrassingly bad – the production quality…Continue Reading
My Homeschool Transcript
I was taught primarily for religious and political purposes, not to prepare me for independence in adulthood. My high school transcript, and the fact that I wrote it myself, demonstrates how little I was taught. For me, being homeschooled meant that my access to information was severely limited by what…Continue Reading
A Year Spent Surviving
I’m going to keep this short because 2020 has been so chaotic and exhausting, it’s taken me several hours to come up with those two words to describe it. First, of course, I want to thank everyone for everything you did to help us get through last year. I left…Continue Reading
Future Focus
From what I have read about trauma recovery, the process can take a lifetime. The damage done over decades cannot be overwritten in a few years. I’m looking to the future with cautious hope. While a new year may not be a magical reset, I am reflecting on my priorities.…Continue Reading
What I Do and Don’t Know
The older I get, the more I realize how inadequate my education was. My writing, my strongest skill, is littered with grammatical errors. I am passionate about the injustices I’ve discovered in the years since I’ve started educating myself, instead of relying on my parents to inform me about the…Continue Reading
The Barriers to Stable Housing
I want to preface this post by saying thank you. You are giving us a chance at a place to live, and you all have been giving as much as you possibly can to help. That is tremendous. 29 people have contributed $3,720 to our moving fundraiser. That’s on average…Continue Reading
Creative Flow (Futility Revisited)
I’ve just written over 800 words of stream-of-consciousness prose, and it will never see the light of day, thank you very much. Many people are concerned about me right now but this is about the same as it’s always been. By that I mean I’ve always dealt with depression. I…Continue Reading