There are some chapters you write with your hands, and others you write with your whole body.
This section of my book I just came through was one of those.
I knew it would be hard. I knew revisiting that part of my life would stir up pain, memories, fear, and grief. But I don’t think I fully understood the intensity of what I was walking back into until I was already there — deep in the writing, deep in the editing, deep in the remembering.
Looking back now, I realize something I didn’t fully understand at the time: the section I just finished writing held the last time I was assaulted by my stepfather.
The last time.
At the time, I didn’t know it was the last. I didn’t know I was standing at the edge of something ending.
I didn’t know that a road in West Hoosick — The Dirt of Harken Hollow Rd. meeting Wilson Hill — would become one of the most pivotal places in my life. I didn’t know that an old 4Runner waiting in the dark, low headlights on, at the edge of The Denue Farm would become more than a ride. It would become a line between the life I was running from and the life I was still trying to reach.
I still had a long road ahead of me. I still had to survive. I still had to find my way out, find my voice, find myself again.
And even after I made it to Morgan’s, even after I landed at Kim’s house, I didn’t understand yet that another kind of rescue was beginning there. Not loud. Not perfect. Not simple. But real.
That part of the story changed everything.
At the time, I thought I was just running.
Looking back now, I know I was leaving.
But putting that moment on paper over the past few weeks changed something in me.
It was brutal. There were nightmares. Sleepless nights. Anxiety. Moments where I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Moments where the weight of the memory pressed so hard against my chest that I had to stop and remind myself: I am here now. I made it out. I am not there anymore.
To say this part of the writing journey was hard would be an understatement.
It took everything.
Writing a book like this is not just storytelling. It is excavation. It is walking back through fire with a pen in your hand. It is facing the parts of your life that once silenced you and choosing, word by word, to speak anyway.
And now that this section is written, I feel something I didn’t expect.
Relief.
Not because the pain never happened. Not because the memories are easy. But because that last time is no longer trapped inside of me in the same way. It has been named. It has been placed on the page. It has been pulled out of the dark.
For so long, that part of my story carried a weight I didn’t even realize I was still holding.
Now, somehow, it feels lighter.
I am proud of the work I have done — not just the writing, editing, publisher conversations, PR, and all the moving pieces that come with bringing a book into the world — but the deeper work. The unseen work. The work of surviving the memories long enough to tell the truth about them.
This journey has stretched me, shaken me, and brought me to my knees at times.
But it has also reminded me of something powerful:
I am still here.
And now, my story is not just something that happened to me.
It is something I am reclaiming.