1, 2, 3, 4, ABC: The Trauma in Me (And the Tree Still Fell)

Yeah. It does. And the magnitude of that fall—the weight, the impact, the structural damage left behind—doesn't vanish just because someone tried to delete the files, wipe the listings, or pretend the house was never condemned by the fire chief himself.

I’ve been doing a lot of looking back lately. Digging through the glitch, the static, the playback of a life that got turned upside down. When you go through something heavy—when you're dealing with calculated deception, bad-faith actions, and people trying to separate you from your service dog and your safety—your body tries to shut it down. Numbness creeps in. The speech gets caught. The stutter or the lisp comes back from the days when you were just a kid sitting on the floor in a circle.

I remember reading The Giving Tree in first grade with Ms. Gothard. Back then, it was just a story. But reading it as an adult? Oh man, I was pissed off. What the fuck? Do I love this book or do I hate it? It’s confusing. Just like The Lorax or The Rainbow Fish—you watch or read them thinking they're just for kids, and then you step back as an adult and realize everyone is sobbing because it hits too close to home. It’s for people, paws, and anyone trying to figure out how to keep a purpose when the world feels heavy.

That’s why I’ve had these children's book and coloring book ideas locked in my Google Drive, waiting for the right moment. Not just for kids, but for everyone who needs to be heard and believed. Because at the end of the day, as Taylor Swift says, you don’t have to forgive to move on, and you sure as hell don’t need everybody else to believe in your vision as long as you believe in yourself.

Look at the stats: 568 posts. Almost a million views on the blog. Google looks at that and says, "We expect more of you." And you know what? Understandably.

We’re keeping going. We’re doing this. One foot in front of the other, raw and unedited, keeping it real because the story is too important to stay quiet.