Gentle Content Note: This post includes reflections on childhood discipline, physical punishment, and the emotional impact of being silenced. If those topics are tender for you, please care for yourself as you read. Skip, pause, or come back later if needed. My intention in sharing is not to relive the pain, but to name it—so that joy, truth, and healing can have more room to rise.

Naming the past is how I make room for joy.

It doesn’t always feel brave. Sometimes it feels like betrayal. Sometimes it costs me something I deeply value—ease in a relationship, the illusion of peace, the approval of someone I love.

When I wrote Magic in the Mess, I wasn’t trying to burn bridges. I was trying to build one. Between who I had to be to survive and who I was finally ready to become.

And still—it was hard for my dad to read.
Still, we are navigating the fallout of truths that don’t sit neatly in anyone’s lap.

So why? Why say the hard things out loud? Why risk the fracture?

Because yesterday, I had a conversation with a young woman in Europe who read my book and saw herself in it.

She was caught in a life that didn’t fit—cramped by labels, expectations, and a religion that made her feel like too much and not enough, all at once. And through my story, she recognized her own.

She cried. She laughed. She told me about the girlfriend she loves, and the courage it took to come out to her mom. And how they now have a church they can all attend together—a place that welcomes every part of her.

And I thought: This is the holy ground. This is the reason.

Telling the truth isn’t just a personal act.
It’s a collective offering.
A flare shot into the dark, saying: You’re not the only one.

When we speak the unspeakable, we create space for healing—not just for ourselves, but for everyone who thought they were alone in the ache.

There’s a story I didn’t plan to tell. Not publicly. Not in print.
But as I was writing Magic in the Mess, it kept rising up—the kind of memory that demands to be spoken, not for shock, but for release.

I wrote about something that lived in silence for decades.
A form of discipline we never questioned as kids.
We were spanked. With a paddle. On our bare butts.

It was “normal,” we were told.
Acceptable parenting.
But no one ever talked about how exposed we were. How humiliated.
How that kind of discipline didn’t just sting—it broke something.

We were taught not to cry.
To be tough.
But we did cry. All of us.
Even my older brother, the strongest-willed of us, broke under the weight of it.
And so did I.

The pain wasn’t only physical.
It carved a lesson into my nervous system:
Step out of line, and you will suffer.
Be quiet. Stay good. Don’t question. Don’t cry.

For years—no, decades—that stayed alive in me.
Even after the paddling stopped, the shame remained.
It shaped the rules I followed, the risks I didn’t take, the truths I swallowed.

It’s why it took me over 40 years to come out.
To see myself.
To know myself.
To let myself be.

And maybe you didn’t grow up with a wooden paddle.
Maybe your version of this is different.
A church that told you who you had to be.
A parent’s love with unspoken conditions.
A secret you carry like a stone in your chest.

I get it.

And I’m not telling this story to blame or relive the past—I’m telling it because silence didn’t protect me. It imprisoned me.

When I finally faced the fear—when I wrote it down, when I said it out loud—
something shifted.

And every time I speak a hard truth, it unlocks something for someone else too.

This is what healing looks like:

Sitting in the mess of a conversation with my dad that doesn’t resolve neatly.
Knowing it might not.
Loving him anyway.
Loving myself more.

Hearing a girl across the ocean say, “Because of your story, I could tell mine.”

Watching the world get just a little bit softer, a little bit wider, a little bit more true.

This is why I tell the hard stories.
Because when we heal, we don’t just break cycles—we start new ones.
Ones rooted in wholeness. In enoughness. In truth.
In the kind of love that doesn’t require shrinking.

This is how we create peace.
Not by pretending everything is fine,
but by becoming people who are no longer at war with ourselves.

That’s heaven on earth.
That’s the return home.
That’s the alpha and the omega.

Reader Reflection – Want to go deeper with me?

If you’re moved by this post, here are a few gentle invitations:

• What hard story in your life is asking to be told, even if just to yourself?

• Is there a moment from your past that deserves naming, not because it defines you, but because it’s part of your becoming?

• What joy might be waiting behind a door labeled “truth”?

And if someone else’s story helped you feel less alone—tell them. It matters more than you know.