She Walked Through Fire and Called It Freedom
I grew up in a home full of domestic violence, chaos, and police stations. My siblings and I spent our years learning to navigate constant upheaval and violence, both around and upon us. We moved sixteen or so times across three states and two countries before I left home at sixteen to live on the streets.
When I was just beginning sixth grade, (at my seventh school) my mother decided to pull my siblings and I out of school to “homeschool” us, in order to avoid further interference from mandatory reporters (teachers).
The subsequent homeschooling years I spent raising my mother’s babies (I was the oldest of seven), reading library books, resisting my family’s slide toward fundamentalist Christianity, and working odd jobs to bring in income for food.
Fleeing physical and emotional abuse, at sixteen, I left, choosing the risk of living on the streets instead. Which was a blessedly short time before better options presented themselves, and I moved forward and away.
The following young adult years found me working my way across the country and internationally, in a series of adventures and calamities that helped me begin to heal and find myself. I trained Iditarod sled dogs in Montana, worked construction in Texas alongside Latino immigrants, worked for the Forest Service in Idaho, fought a wildfire, fell off a mountain, logged wood in Scottish peat bogs, and farmed oysters in the Hebrides.
I recently released a book about all of the above years. If anyone is interested in the whole messy, beautiful story, that follows my path from broken to healing. It’s called Like A Redwood Seed—Stronger Than The Flames.