“My mom and our hostess were visiting and weren’t paying attention as I fiddled my earrings off, one by one. Tommy grabbed my hands into his across the table, lifted my arms, and gave me a big hug. As I pulled away, I saw him adjusting them in his mouth.”…
“I didn’t value their severity until her car pulled up to the gargantuan stone walls and expanded rolls of barbed wire. Again, I was confounded into silence. The long walk to the first of many doors I was about to go through felt like I was burrowing deeper and deeper,…
“In the midst of my crumbling, unstable household I was introduced to my biological dad, which created a tiny spark of hope for normalcy. Exposing my abuse opened up a variety of wounds that were not healing right in the first place.”
