My First Memory is Silent

Last night, I finally finished editing STILL FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM. There are small steps left to complete before the book releases in March 2026—but the big stuff is done. The thing is, finishing a novel is easy to minimize, even if you're the one who wrote it.

I saw a meme once that challenged people to describe their jobs or hobbies as crimes, and I laughed as I added my answer in the comments: "I force people to pay me to lie to them." In some ways, that's totally accurate. I write fiction novels populated with made-up characters living imaginary lives in carefully crafted settings. And yes, people pay for them. But in other ways, the comment itself is the lie.

Because for me, as the author behind the scenes, every character and plot-line and setting are sculpted in inescapable truth. Writing a book is more than just making up a story. It's the co-mingling of real-life trauma and healing in progress, not only for me but for the readers I hope to reach. It's resilience and hope, packaged together as proof that there's light after darkness.

I used to think the idea of hope after trauma was idealistic, and that healing through art was almost idiotic. When childhood trauma teaches you that monsters are real, surviving and creating don't exactly feel like they'd go well together—the cost of creativity seems too high, writing through adversity looks too hard, and stories that heal are relegated to Disney-level fantasies. Nothing more than cartoons and fairy tales. Daydreams for children.

I actually didn't realize how wrong I was until someone asked me if I found healing in my own writing, the way I hope my readers will. But that's exactly what I've done, literally turning pain into beauty. Writing through grief, fear, rejection, insecurity, all in the name of art as healing. Every book I write, every time I muster new determination to publish, is a wound turned into light—and not just for my readers.

At the end of writing a novel, the air changes and suddenly everything is different. The last sentence ends, the story is over—and while the world moves on unknowing, the writer pauses. Alone with the cursor on the page. Realizing that life has shifted, and something that did not exist before has come into being.

Sometimes this recognition is simple and quiet, but there are times when it washes in like ocean tides, each new wave crashing higher and reaching further than the last. Joy builds like rushing water, salty with the taste of incredulous tears. And the rhythmic pull of disbelief catches confidence in its grasp, dragging toward the undertow of imposter syndrome.

"How could I have done this? I'm only...me." And the waves crash in again, bubbling with pride, adjusting landscapes by grains of sand—just as novels are written one word at a time.

For me, editing is part of writing, and the novel is not truly written until it's polished. Holes closed, errors repaired, imaginary people ruthlessly sculpted into mothers, brothers, sisters, friends. Some books take months to complete; others take years. This one took over a decade.

Because my first memory is silent.

I can't remember the version of me who existed before trauma. The first conscious memory I have is a two-clip silent film of a little girl. She's three or four years old, and in the first clip, I watch her walk into the frame. Slow and steady, with curious blue eyes and reddish-brown hair, her nightgown nothing more than an oversized hand-me-down t-shirt. She freezes at the end of the hallway, blue eyes tracing the wreckage.

And suddenly I am looking through her eyes...because she is me.

The living room I'd played in the day before was destroyed. The place where I learned to laugh sparkled with broken glass; glittering shards of shattered crystal figurines winked in early morning light, and it might have been beautiful. Except that it wasn't. The cushions on the wood-framed furniture I'd climbed on, cuddled on, napped on—each one sliced brutally open, spilling stuffing like blood from a wound.

There are no voices. No footsteps. No sounds. Just the light, twinkling in a broken home.

I don't remember fear or crying. Just the confusion and curiosity of a child observing the aftermath of disaster. And for a long time, I thought healing meant erasing that moment. Forgetting, or maybe outgrowing, the story those images told. Now, I know that healing does not remove the wound. Like light on shattered glass, it reflects. It refracts, shifting perceptions.

I used to write with constant company. The steady weight of a dog at my feet. Sometimes he'd curl up beside me, drop his big, heavy head in my lap, and sigh peacefully, lulled into sleep by the tapping of computer keys. Sometimes, because he trusted me so completely, he'd sprawl out and surrender himself to dreams. He snored often, unapologetic and utterly relaxed. And he barked in his sleep.

My first memory was silent, but those years of writing were not. Those years were filled with warmth and life and the steady brown eyes of my most trusted secret-keeper.

This is the first novel I've written without a snoring, sighing, sometimes-barking soundtrack. The first story I've finished without ever reaching absentmindedly to ease his dreams or scratch behind his ears.

And yet...it is written. So nearly complete.

STILL FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM has earned its title. I wrote it through loss and grief, and a hundred doctor's appointments as my youngest daughter juggled a cancer scare. I wove words through the tension of balancing isolation and fear, shaping bits of my real-life world into a story painted in shades of truth. I typed slowly through illness and exhaustion, climbing mountains of words pock-marked with setbacks and delays and moments when it would have been so easy to just...stop.

Last night I watched the cursor blink at the end of the last sentence and I wanted to shout it to the world. To squeal like a child on Christmas morning. But I didn't, because some joys bloom best in the quiet, where victory is treasured alone before it is shared.

Because light is not just the absence of darkness. It is the metamorphosis of survival.

As a little girl, I stood on the outskirts of a room glittering with brokenness, and I could do nothing. I could not mend the holes, erase the mistakes, or inject hope into the pain of loss. But I am not a little girl anymore. And with these mountains of words there is something I can do to heal wounds and shift perspectives. I can take a scene so common it's hardly fiction no matter how it's labeled, and I can paint sunlight that illuminates sparkling devastation.

I can steady the echo of grief with courageous determination. I can blend the confusion of a child with the clarity of an adult, shaping the realization that beauty and hope are not naive—slowly molding pages into permission to leave the dark behind, without pretending it was never there.

Because that was always the point. A wound turned into light does not deny the wound, it merely acknowledges the truth. It remembers the silence even when it cannot remember the scream. My life will always be colored by those early years, sparking truth from a place that wrote childhood dissociation into my story.

My first memory is silent. But this book is not.

The girl is gone. And now, the woman speaks.

*****

People who don't understand what it took to write this novel often ask why the Freedom Series highlights darkness, why the trauma stays on the page. Why I won't soften the edges.

I tell them trust and safety are built on honesty, not denial. I witnessed my mother's survival. I saw the depth of her suffering, and the help she needed but never got. I lived in the echoes. And I learned that silence changes nothing.

If even one reader finds hope in what I've written—or proof that silence does not get the final word—then every single solitary second spent sculpting this story was worth it.

STILL FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM will release in March 2026. Because survivors do not lose their ability to rise. They do not lose their ability to create. They do not lose their ability to speak. Our darkness does not erase our capacity for light or our right to shine. And our wounds do not write the end of our story, as long as we...

I write a lot. And between this blog, social media, and my novels, I can seem hard to keep up with. But here's the good news: you don't have to keep up with anything, because I 've got a weekly newsletter written specifically for you. It's one Monday-morning recap that links everything I'm up to, all in one place—your inbox.