“You’re stuck in the past!”
That’s what I heard more than once while writing this book. Some say focusing on the past is a trap—that it’s unproductive, self-indulgent, even unhealthy. That healing means moving forward and never speaking of it again.
But here’s what I’ve learned:
You can’t move on from what you don’t understand.
And you can’t understand what you refuse to look at.
This book isn’t about blame or nostalgia. It doesn’t ask for pity or redemption. It doesn’t try to change what happened. It’s about naming the shadows that silently shaped my life so they could finally loosen their grip. It’s about sitting with the full truth without needing to flinch or fight.
Some people ask, “Why would someone in his fifties dig up decades-old wounds and turn them into a book?”
My answer is simple: because silence doesn’t heal. And time alone doesn’t clarify. Reflection does.
I didn’t write this memoir to feel better. I wrote it to understand. And in that understanding, something quieter than healing appeared: a clearer path to self-compassion and self-acceptance. Not everything is tied up neatly. But in these pages, you’ll find shame unwrapped, survival unpacked, and moments of clarity in places I never expected.
I’m not writing from a wound—I’m writing from a scar I finally stopped hiding.
When the pain begins before you can even speak, when the first truth you absorb is that love might not stay, it doesn’t vanish with time. It embeds itself in your nervous system. In your choices. In your silence. In the way you become who you think others will accept, just to avoid being left behind.
This is not a story told to dwell in the past. It’s told because the fear of rejection has been with me since before I even knew the word for it. Because shame isn’t just something we carry—it’s something we build walls around. Every success, every smile, every strategic silence was shaped by a deeper question I was too afraid to ask: Would I still be loved if I stopped performing?
I wrote this to stop negotiating for my right to belong.
And maybe, if any of this echoes in you, to help you stop too.
