Rock Bottom Was Only The Lobby

Category: Uncategorized

  • The Whiskey In The Closet

    The Whiskey In The Closet

    On late nights, Johnny Carson, beer-soaked napkins, and the most honest person I ever knew.

     I was, without question, a grandma’s girl. While other kids my age were asserting their independence and pretending not to need their families, I was perfectly content sharing a bed with Estella Pearl Bradley until I was twelve years old. No shame. Zero regrets. The woman had Nick-at-Nite and she rubbed my knees when my growing pains got bad. You don’t walk away from that.

    But let me be clear about something: she was not like other grandmas. Not even a little. It was completely normal to come home from school and find her taking a break from yard work, cold beer in one hand, pickled pig’s foot in the other, very short shorts, high-heeled sandals. She was not a cookie grandma. She was Pearl. And Pearl had a vocabulary that would make a sailor pause. “Harder than a preacher’s dick.” “Wouldn’t that just frost your balls.” “Your ass is grass.” These were just things she said. Casually. In the living room.

    She also drove me to swimming lessons every single week. My teacher was Carmelita Hughes, a woman who conducted lessons in the pools of old oil baron mansions across Tulsa and who did not entertain the concept of opting out. One afternoon we were supposed to jump off the diving board. I decided that was not going to happen, walked out to grandma’s car, and explained my very reasonable position. 

    She did not see it that way. She told me my ass was, in fact, jumping off that diving board today. And if she had to go get Miss Carmelita to push me, she would do exactly that. I knew when to admit defeat. Grandma was not going to be my ally here.

    I jumped. I was proud of myself. So was she. On the way back to school she handed me a snack and a thermos of Kool-Aid, and when we pulled into the parking lot she reached into the glove box, pulled out a napkin, soaked it with her Busch beer, and wiped my face before sending me back inside. I probably smelled like a panhandler at an off-ramp. I was five years old. It remains one of my favorite memories.

    The evenings had a rhythm. Dinner dishes done, grandma would pick up her glass of ice water, very innocent, very hydrated, and slip into her bedroom closet. This is where she kept the half gallon of LTD whiskey. She’d emerge with a generously poured glass that now resembled sweet tea, settle into her chair, and click on the evening news. Two people in the entire family would stick around past that point: my Uncle Johnny, and me.

    “By the time Johnny Carson came on, grandma was generally hammered — and absolutely wonderful.”

    What I loved most was when the TV became background noise and she started talking. Drinking grandma was honest grandma. No filters, no careful edits. Just truth. I watched a tear roll down her cheek as she described going hungry in the 1930s, and how flour companies started printing pretty patterns on their sacks so mothers could sew them into dresses for their children. I was a kid. I knew I was hearing something real.

    At some point I’d eye her glass and ask for a sip. She always said the same thing: “Yeah, but you won’t like it.” I thought she was being modest, I loved iced tea, and this looked exactly like iced tea. The burn that hit the back of my throat corrected that assumption immediately. Grandma let out a little chuckle. Didn’t try to hide it. Fair enough.

    One thing you did not say around grandma: “I’m bored.” That was not a safe thing to say. Before you knew it you’d be armed with a butter knife, a rag, and Murphy’s Oil Soap, standing in front of louvered doors. To this day, if I bought a house with louvered doors, I would use them as firewood.

    My grandma also had your back in the ways that mattered most. When my cousin Susan came out, after leaving her husband, an army base in North Carolina, and a life that didn’t fit, she came home and told the truth about herself. My Uncle Johnny called grandma to raise hell. Grandma went off.

    “John D!” — his middle name was Darcy, so that’s what she called him when she meant business, “if you didn’t know that girl was gay when she was three years old, you haven’t been paying attention. It took everything she had to leave and come home and tell you the truth. Now you will do nothing but support her. Got it?”

    For context: Susan had always been the husband when we played house. She was a ninja, Freddy Krueger, or a vampire every Halloween. Dressed up for Easter, she looked like she was in drag. Grandma had been paying attention her whole life. She loved her the whole time and was ready when it counted.

    One of her best friends was a gay man named Fritz, a former gourmet chef and, as she eventually told me, a very successful drag queen who made, in her words, a beautiful woman. I didn’t see it. I thought he looked like a toad. But he came to stay during the holidays, helped in the kitchen, and I resented him deeply, not for any of that, but because he slept in grandma’s bed and I did not appreciate the competition or what he could be doing to her in there unsupervised! When I admitted this to her, she laughed, explained that Fritz was gay, and assured me that if he were to touch her silky drawers, it would only be to find out where he could buy some. That settled it. I grew to love Fritz.

    My grandma put a full face of makeup on every single day. So do I, even when I don’t leave the house. She wore a ring on every finger. So do I. I didn’t inherit these things consciously. I just became her, in the ways that count.

    What I didn’t understand until much later was what she had survived to become who she was. Her husband’s suicide. Her boyfriend’s suicide. Losing everything, and then picking up the broken pieces and making something beautiful she could be proud of. I never understood her contentment with being single, her self-sufficiency, her refusal to be defeated by the world. I do now. The same things that happened to her happened to me. And I found myself on the other side of it the same way she did, choosing beauty over bitterness. Loving hard. Rebuilding.

    She prepared me for life. She gave me skills, practical, emotional, spiritual, many of my closest friends simply don’t have, because I was raised by her hands. She didn’t want me soft. She wanted me skilled, independent, and strong. That is exactly what I am.

    She died in our pink house in Broken Arrow, surrounded by the people she loved, one week after my son was born. My ex-husband Steven raced us to the house so we could say goodbye. My son had come a month early, like he knew. The day before I went into labor, my mom was crying in the kitchen telling me grandma was holding on to meet him. I told her she couldn’t put that on me. I had no control over that. I went into labor that night.

    I named him Bradley. After her. Estella Pearl Bradley. There are things I want to stop with me, patterns, inherited pain, generational nonsense. But his name is not one of them. His name stands for a woman who gave me stability in crazy times, taught me how to take care of myself and my family, and loved me with everything she had.

    I still feel it, universes away.

    This past weekend I stayed with my mom’s best friend Rhonda, they had been friends since they were eight. She talked about my grandma and said she was the only person who ever made her feel truly welcome. Like she belonged there from day one. My best friend Jessica, who I’ve known for thirty years, says the same thing. Grandma loved her too, folded her in, bought her favorite snacks, made room. That was just who she was.

    When I was little I wanted a cookie grandma. Not the kind who cleans your face with beer. But now? I wouldn’t trade her for anything in this world. She was exactly what I needed, even when I didn’t know it yet.

    Five minutes before she took her last breath, I leaned close and told her: 

    “I am so proud of you. And so proud to be from you.”

                    Estella Pearl Bradley

    Cold beer. High heels. Rings on every finger. A heart with room enough for everyone.

    Happy Mother’s Day, Grandma. I love you wherever you are. 

  • Get Out of the Lobby: Why I Finally Stopped Letting Other People Rent Space in My Head

    Get Out of the Lobby: Why I Finally Stopped Letting Other People Rent Space in My Head

    Okay, let’s address the elephant in the room. I know my recent posts have been a deep dive into the “horror show”, especially that recent look into the generational trauma and the absolute, inherited madness that was running through my family tree way before I was ever born. I know I’ve been wading through some dark, inherited sludge lately.

    But I want to be crystal clear: this isn’t a tragedy. I’m not writing this to keep us stuck in the basement of our own histories. I’m writing this because the end of this story? It’s actually a really, really happy ending. I want you to stick around because, while I’ve had to walk through fire to get here, I’ve finally reached the part of the movie where the protagonist actually wins.

    You know that specific, arrogant little moment where you think, “Yes, finally! I have arrived! I have cracked the code of the universe! I am an enlightened being!”? And then, five minutes later, you find yourself staring at a wall wondering why you bought that weird blue cheese at the grocery store?

    Yeah. That’s my life. I live for those “aha” moments. But I’ve realized that right when I think I have it all figured out, the universe leans in and reminds me that I absolutely do not. And for the first time ever? I’m okay with that. I’ve learned a lot, and the tuition for this education was exorbitant. I paid the price. I’m talking full-market-value for my wisdom.

    The “Dumpster Fire” Era

    From 2015 to 2023, my life was essentially a low-budget horror film that had been doused in gasoline. After my husband Keith died, I found myself trapped in an abusive relationship, spiraling into a haze of drugs, just waiting for the curtain to close. And then, the universe pushed me further than I thought possible: I watched that partner take his own life right in front of me.

    That was the peak of the chaos. I felt like I was just waiting to die because everything else in my world had gone to absolute shit.

    The “Aha” Moment (That Didn’t Fix Everything)

    I didn’t always know what boundaries were. In fact, before I met Keith and his mother, Barbara, I thought a “boundary” was just a suggestion you ignored to keep people happy.

    I’ll never forget the day I got my first real taste of the truth. We were sitting there filling out disability paperwork for me, this huge, heavy, life-changing stuff, and my mom called. She demanded I stop everything to run her errands. I got off the phone and told Barbara and Keith I had to leave to do it. They just looked at me like I had three heads. “What the fuck are you talking about? We’re doing this for you right now, and this is important.”

    I was defensive. “But it’s my mother! I can’t tell her no!”

    I was wrong, and they were right. No was an option. But here is the raw truth: knowing that and doing that are two very different things. I didn’t become a boundary ninja overnight. Far from it. I stayed in that abusive relationship way too long. I let myself get taken advantage of; I was robbed; I had so much taken from me while I was still trying to figure out how to stand up for myself. I was out there in the trenches, just trying to survive without a roadmap. It wasn’t until after that final tragedy that the real, permanent shift finally took hold.

    The Rescue Mission & The Retraining

    Around the end of 2020, I started my real-life rescue mission. I saved my mother from my sister, who, let’s be real, is a certified nightmare. I did it because I needed a purpose, and I was ready to be a daughter again.

    But bringing Mom into my life required the ultimate boundary test. It took some serious retraining. I told her, “I will take care of you until the day you die, and I’m happy to do it. But it’s going to be with respect, love, and strict boundaries.”

    And do you know what? She listened. We healed 40 years of hurt and pain. I saw my mom, who had been depressed for as long as I could remember, actually become happy. It was my first real crack at holding a boundary, and I realized: boundaries aren’t there to push people away; they’re there to create a safe enough space for love to actually grow.

    The Great Pivot

    Then 2023 hit like a wrecking ball. I lost my dad, then my mom. I began noticing more and more how some of my friendships were one-sided. Then they imploded and I cut off contact. It wasn’t just friends I had to cut off anymore, I had to perform surgery on my own family tree. I cut off the toxic members, stopped letting them have a seat at my table, and stood in the wreckage of my old life, completely alone.

    But this time, instead of avoiding pain I did something revolutionary: I leaned in.

    The “Don’t Touch My Shit” Era

    Once I stopped letting the wrong people have a seat at my table, I became a person I didn’t even recognize.

    I was single for a while, and let me tell you: it was fucking fantastic. I discovered the absolute, intoxicating joy of sovereignty. I could do whatever I wanted. No one touched my shit, no one moved my shit, no one took my shit. I was in heaven.

    I realized everything I’d ever begged a partner, friend, or family member to give me, validation, help, fulfillment, I could just give to myself. The moment I stopped getting angry that they weren’t providing it and just started providing it for myself, the whole world opened up.

    The Real Payoff

    And here is the beautiful part of the plot twist: When you finally do the work, set the boundaries, and cultivate that self-love, dating hits different.

    I’ve spent a lifetime in weird, dysfunctional dynamics where one or both of us was fundamentally broken. But this is the first time I’ve ever been in a healthy exchange with another healthy adult. There is so much power in the “I don’t need you; I choose you” energy. I don’t need someone to save me, to complete me, or to fix me. I am already whole. Choosing to be with someone from that place of strength? It’s amazing. It is a completely different world.

    Ascending the Hotel

    I look at myself now, and I see that little girl who got her dreams crushed all those years ago. I scoop her up. I tell her, “It’s okay. I got you. I’ve always had you, and I always will.”

    I have my own back. I pick myself up off the floor, and I climb another level of this hotel.

    If you’re feeling lost, know this: you are not stuck in the lobby. The lobby is for waiting. The lobby is for people who think they need a receptionist to tell them where to go.

    I’m writing this because I don’t want you to have to wander in the dark as long as I did. I had to learn this in the trenches, the hard way. But I’m here to tell you that there is a way up. Find the stairs. I’m currently on the top floor, and honestly? The view is spectacular.

  • The “Family Curse” is Just Untreated Trauma: It Ends With Me

    The “Family Curse” is Just Untreated Trauma: It Ends With Me

    We call it a “Family Curse.” It’s a convenient phrase, isn’t it? It implies that the tragedy stalking our bloodline is mystical, unlucky, or somehow out of our hands.

    I’m done with that. I am done laughing it off to keep the peace. I am done pretending that what happens to us is a matter of fate.

    The “curse” isn’t some abstract, supernatural hex. It is a cycle of silence, denial, and untreated trauma that has been passed down, unexamined, for generations. And every time we stay silent, every time we “protect” the family name or the perpetrator, we are just handing that curse to our children.

    I realized this when I looked at the patterns. My grandmother’s husband killed himself. The man she was with after did the same. My husband killed himself. The man I was with after did the same.

    Moms Parents Estella Pearl 1928-2003 & Russell J.R. 1921-1967 (Died by suicide)

    But the rot goes even deeper than that. It starts with the absolute violation of the most sacred space: the home. My mother eventually confided in me, a heavy truth that changed the entire landscape of my understanding of our family. She told me that she and her sister were sexually assaulted by their own brothers when they were children. My aunt lost her virginity to their oldest brother, a cycle of abuse that repeated over and over, trapped in that house until they could finally escape.

    Grandma (moms’ mom & brothers)
    Aunt and uncles

    They were children. And because of the silence, that trauma wasn’t just left in the past; it was baked into the foundation of our family’s reality.

    When my cousin Crystal from my Dad’s side of the family, who was living out of state, finally found the courage to tell us she had been molested by our grandfather, I was 10 years old. I will never forget the horror of listening to her pour it all out. But what bothered me even more than the act itself was the reaction: my grandmother (Dad’s mom) didn’t believe her. That is a betrayal that cuts deeper than words. And he was never held accountable. That is absolute bullshit.

    Me in my grandfathers lap. Just knowing we were unaware of the danger of this yet… makes me sick.

    That betrayal was just the beginning. That cousin, Crystal, the one who had the courage to speak up at 12 years old, she carried that trauma her entire life. She was nearly 40 when she died by suicide. And the cruelty of it is almost too much to write: she died in my grandparents’ house. The same house where she was victimized.

    The cycle didn’t stop with her, either. Her brother, Corey, took his own life a few years before she did. Her daughter took her own life at just 14 years old, less than 2 years after her mom died.

    Corey & Crystal

    Do you see the pattern now? Do you see how this isn’t just a “curse”? It is a bloodline being systematically destroyed by secrets that were never allowed to see the light of day.

    They say 1 in 4 girls are molested by a family member. That number is staggering, and it is a reality that is making us sick as a collective.

    I was 11. It was at a surrogate aunt’s parents’ house during her daughter’s birthday. I had won a pair of pretty earrings in a game, lost one on the porch, and was so anxious about it that I couldn’t sleep. I went into the living room, and the aunt’s stepfather was there. He had me sit in his lap. He started touching me. I told him to stop, and thankfully, he did. I ran back to the bedroom and I didn’t get back up.

    I didn’t tell anyone. I held that secret until I was 16. I was at the pink house in Broken Arrow. My little sister came to my room crying. Tensions were already high because another cousin had just been victimized by a neighbor, a predator who was eventually arrested for molesting multiple kids and producing child pornography.

    My sister told me she had been molested by the son of a babysitter she had years prior. I told her the only thing that made sense: You have to tell Mom. When she hesitated, I promised her: I will tell Mom what happened to me, too, if you agree to tell her what happened to you.

    We made that pact. We told. My mom fought so hard to find those men, the stepfather who had nearly beaten his wife to death, and the babysitter’s son. But these were the days before Google, before the age of information. We couldn’t find them. We couldn’t get justice.

    The point of sharing this, of exposing the darkest, most horrific corners of my life, is not to rehash the pain for the sake of it. It is to expose the problem. This is happening everywhere, every day. And it is making us, as families and as a collective, incredibly sick.

    Stop protecting the abusers. It is not helping anyone.

    I am writing this because I have children. I have the future. And the idea of them walking this path, of them inheriting this “curse,” makes me want to throw up. So I am blowing the lid off this shit. I am facing the rot so that I can clear the foundation.

    If you are reading this and you are carrying a secret, or if you are protecting a secret, please: Do something. Don’t let your family end up like mine. The curse stops here. It has to.

  • Pipe Bombs, Tail-less Hamsters, & No Leg Steve: Mom Bartending Through Hell

    Pipe Bombs, Tail-less Hamsters, & No Leg Steve: Mom Bartending Through Hell

    (Photo credit: Me & my cousin Shonna on a float trip down Illinois River)

    Spring was a blur after my stepdad Richard died in what I can only describe as the world’s most inconvenient garage explosion. One minute we’re a normal(ish) family, the next there’s a hole in the deep freezer patched with duct tape like some redneck war wound. I avoided that garage like I owed it money. The air felt heavy, cursed, haunted by whatever the fuck Richard had been up to. Running in for frozen meat or ketchup? I sprinted like the devil himself was chasing me with a lit fuse. Silly? Maybe. But trauma makes you superstitious.

    The FBI hung around for months afterward, asking questions we couldn’t answer and parking unmarked cars nearby to watch who came and went. Eventually they ghosted, leaving the pipe bomb mystery as our family’s favorite unsolved true-crime podcast episode that actually happened in our garage.

    Plot twist (you’re welcome, I won’t make you wait 20 years like I did): While staying at a surrogate “uncle’s” house visiting, (actually an old client from my mom’s secret double-life days) I casually mentioned what a fucking weirdo Richard was. Then I dropped the gem: “And who keeps pipe bombs when the whole family is home?!” Uncle calmly informed me that Richard had been selling explosives to the Mexican Mafia. Oh, and my dads brother once middle-manned a deal for a live claymore mine. A claymore. For the Mafia. In suburban Oklahoma. My jaw is still on the floor somewhere in 2002.

    Important note: The people who knew those details are all dead now. If they weren’t, I wouldn’t be telling you shit. I’m no snitch.

    Suddenly a lot of things clicked. Like how we always had money even though Richard wasn’t a doctor yet. And why Mom came flying down the stairs after the blast, told me to grab my sister Rachel and the neighbor girls, and run next door, because she knew exactly what that sound meant. She wasn’t going back to sex work (Richard wouldn’t allow it), so apparently blowing shit up for cartels was the family business plan. Cool. Normal.

    A couple months later, around May, we got a frantic late-night call from my Uncle Johnny (Moms brother). Aunt Susan needed the hospital, something was very wrong, and he’d been drinking so he couldn’t drive. (Why no ambulance? Still a mystery. Oklahoma logic.) Mom & a friend hauled ass in her Isuzu Trooper from Broken Arrow to Bixby, they carried my gray-looking aunt into the car, and drove like bats out of hell to Saint Francis. Miraculously, no red lights the entire way. She made it, slipped into a coma, and we were left wondering what fresh hell this was.

    I was 13. My cousins came to live with us while Aunt Susan was out cold. By then Richard had been dead about six weeks. Mom was still mostly in bed, Grandma was working in-home health and gone for days, and suddenly my mom had five girls under one roof. Enter my dad, the bartender/manager at The Bottom Line in Broken Arrow, who showed up one evening, marched upstairs, and told Mom to get her ass out of bed, shower, put on something cute, and meet him at the bar.

    She laughed. He wasn’t joking.

    “You’re gonna learn to bartend,” he said. “You need a real job. You can’t go back to the industry now, the girls are getting older and starting to notice.”

    Mom, being the fast-learning people-magnet she was, dove in. She was gorgeous, hilarious, and could make the phone book sound like a stand-up routine. People loved her. Before long she was working nights at The Bottom Line, and later at C.J. Moloney’s, selling personality and shots instead of her body, and actually making it work.

    That summer turned weirdly awesome. Mom would take all five of us to Albertsons and we had two buggies again, one for her, one for us kids, and basically say “get whatever you want.” Just like the old days. Grandma hooked us up with pool membership (including the cousins). We lived on MTV, BET, junk food, and chlorine. It was the best summer ever, which is insane considering the spring had featured a mafia-adjacent explosion and a coma. But when you’re all drowning in the same shit storm together, you somehow float.

    During that same coma summer, Mom started dating Jimmy. He had two little hellions under seven that I got stuck babysitting way too often. Those kids were absolute freaks, they once cut the tails off Rachel’s hamsters. Like, snip-snip, no tails, just because they could. Ewww. Little psychopaths in training. Weirdly, I’d still pick babysitting them over dealing with Rachel any day. I no longer have a relationship with my sister, and stay tuned, you’ll get that story one day.

    I actually liked Jimmy. He had full custody, a good job, his own house with a pool (which I loved), and he was good to my mom. He just didn’t like Rachel (the one Richard had spoiled like a princess). Fair, she’s… a lot. Still is. Jimmy also drank too much. They lasted about a year and a half, including a memorable Ohio Christmas trip. I was genuinely sad when it ended.

    Then came the parade of not-so-serious guys, including one who tried to impress Mom by buying me an expensive watch and this giant hot air balloon/gift basket for my 16th birthday. Dude, gift the woman you’re sleeping with, not her teenager. Weird.

    Freshman year brought Steve. Steve was 25 (only nine years older than me, ew), had no legs (train accident as a teen), and got around fine on prosthetics. He also sat around doing nothing while Mom supported him, then tried to play stepdad and boss me around. He even coached my little sister’s basketball team. A guy with no legs. Coaching basketball. I affectionately called him No-Leg Steve. (Yeah, I was a bitter little shit. Still kinda am.)

    They dated about a year and a half. Shortly after the breakup, when I was 17, Mom went missing for five days. No one had seen her. Work hadn’t heard from her. I was losing my mind but knew better than to call the cops, our family doesn’t do that. Right as I was about to break the rule, she called. Steve had kidnapped her, held her hostage in a hotel, and repeatedly raped her in a fit of rage and desperation.

    I wanted to call the police. We didn’t.

    Recently I saw No-Leg Steve’s obituary. Everyone described this beloved, wonderful man who died of cancer. Not the arrogant, bossy rapist I remembered. Karma’s a bitch, I guess. He deserved it.

    The biggest lesson from those middle-school-to-early-high-school years wasn’t the explosions, the mafia side hustle, the coma, the hamster mutilation, or the kidnapping. It was watching my mom’s insane resilience. She fell apart after Richard died, bed-bound, depressed, barely functioning. Then my dad dragged her up, taught her to bartend, and she ran with it. She provided. She bought name-brand consignment clothes, let us have grocery cart freedom, and she was always there for us, even if it wasn’t always the healthiest way. The Xanax and Arby’s came when we were dealing with stressful or upsetting situations like a breakup or fight with a friend. Again, not healthy but she was doing her best. She did it all with a smile, cracking jokes, and loving us unconditionally.

    It’s okay to fall apart. It’s okay to break down. But my mom showed me what surviving, and then thriving, actually looks like. She did the damn thing, every time.

    Thanks for coming to my Oklahoma trauma dump. Pass the Arby’s.

  • The Lion King Tie and the Pipe Bomb: A 6th Grade Memoir

    The Lion King Tie and the Pipe Bomb: A 6th Grade Memoir

    I was in the sixth grade when my mother decided to go for the hat trick and get married for the third time. To be honest, I was pissed. I’d only met Richard a handful of times. One of those times was a high-stakes cultural exchange to see The Lion King in theaters, so we weren’t exactly soulmates. Richard was finishing medical school and planned to be an OB/GYN, which, given what I found out later, is a terrifying career choice for a man with a “meat hook” hobby.

    The first time he stayed over, I threw a literal tantrum about him sleeping in my mom’s room. I’m not sure why I cared, maybe it was the exhaustion of my mother’s dating history keeping my life in a state of permanent “Loading…” status. I told them I wouldn’t tolerate them sleeping together unless they were married. I thought I was being a strategic mastermind; instead, I accidentally fast-tracked the nuptials.

    They eloped in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. They didn’t even tell us. I caught Richard sneaking upstairs for bed and, right as I prepared my best 13-year-old verbal hand grenade, he smirked and said, “We can… because we’re married!”

    It gets worse. I found out the witnesses were Mom’s friend Gabriella, a feisty, older German sex worker, and her brother, Alfred. So, the local sex work industry was in the loop, but the kids were on a “need to know” basis? Also, Eureka Springs? I loved pink doilies and Victorian houses! I would have been the perfect chaperone, but no, I was replaced by a German lady with a thick accent.

    As I got to know Richard, the vibe went from “annoying stepdad” to “clinical micromanager.” He was obsessed with my grades and, weirder yet, my skeletal structure. He actually measured my bones to see if I was “meant” to be skinny like the rest of the women in my family. The verdict? I was “medium-boned.” It felt like he was checking my factory specs to see how much body fat I was legally allowed to carry. He told me to watch my diet, despite the fact that I was in dance three days a week and taking gym. Apparently, unless I was actively vibrating from physical exertion, I wasn’t doing enough.

    Then there was the favoritism. Richard treated my younger sister, Rachel, like a Disney Princess. Rachel was a difficult child who blossomed into an even more difficult adult, but to Richard, she was a literal saint. It was enough to make me puke.

    One day, fueled by spite and boredom, I went snooping. I found meat hooks. Not like, “I’m starting a butcher shop” hooks, but “I have a dark secret” hooks. I also found photos of my mother tied up in doorways with expertly looped ropes, surrounded by more hooks, wearing a big, stupid, “I’m in love” grin. My beautiful, dumb mother. It was gross. It was “I need to go live with my Dad for a month” gross.

    I eventually moved back home because I missed my own bed. By Spring Break 1995, they had been married six months. March 25th was a Saturday. We were hosting a dinner party for Richard’s medical school friends. My mom was upstairs “getting ready” (which usually took three business days), my sister was playing with neighbors, and Richard was in the garage.

    I was in the backyard on the swing, criss-cross-apple-sauce, blasting Green Day and Nirvana on my Walkman, trying to transcend my existence. Suddenly, over Billie Joe Armstrong’s voice, I heard the loudest BOOM of my life. I didn’t just hear it; I felt it in my marrow. I assumed a house across the street had simply decided to stop existing.

    I ran inside. My mom came flying down the stairs, screaming for me to grab my sister and the neighbor kids and get out. As we ran across the yard, I thought I saw Richard walking toward us. I felt a brief moment of relief, Oh, he’s fine. Then he vanished. It was a ghost, or a trick of the light, or my brain refusing to accept the physics of a pipe bomb.

    Thick black smoke began billowing from the garage. We huddled at the neighbor’s house, watching the street fill with fire trucks and ambulances. After what felt like several lifetimes, Mom walked in with a cop.

    “Girls,” she said quietly. “There was an accident. Richard is dead.”

    My sister basically levitated off Mom’s lap in a fit of inconsolable grief. I just sat there, buffering.

    The aftermath was a fever dream. Because Richard was a “wealthy” med student, the FBI and the bomb squad descended on our pink house in Broken Arrow. They found another pipe bomb in the house and a storage unit filled with explosive ingredients and automatic weapons. My stepdad wasn’t just a bone-measuring weirdo; he was a domestic insurgent in training.

    Then came the “charity” of Richard’s biological father, Millard. He showed up in a private jet with a wife who looked like the Wicked Stepmother from Cinderella. He told my mom he’d pay for the funeral, but since they were only married six months, he was cutting us off forever immediately after. Total dick move.

    Mom took him for every cent she could. She picked the most expensive casket, the fanciest double headstone, and even made him prepay to have her name engraved on it for the future. It was her final “screw you” to his estate. (Side note: In 2012, the IRS called my sister looking for Millard for tax evasion. I hope he’s wearing a jump suit that matches his cold, dead heart.)

    At the funeral, I got my first and only limo ride. When they opened the casket, I didn’t recognize him. His head was too large; it looked like he was wearing a Richard-themed mask. Mom whispered, “That’s not him, it’s just his shell.” He was wearing the Lion King tie we gave him for Christmas. I wanted to snatch it back, why waste a perfectly good Simba tie on a guy who blew himself up in our garage?

    The house was a wreck. Pro tip: The police don’t clean up “biological matter.” My Aunt Susan and my mom spent an entire day scrubbing what was left of Richard off the garage walls because we couldn’t afford a biohazard team.

    The first day back to school, some “fuck-face” kid on the bus asked if my dad was trying to kill us with bombs under our beds. I lost it. My mom, meanwhile, had retreated to her bed, smoking a truly heroic amount of weed. Sometimes she’d try to pass the joint to me, and I’d just stare at her until she remembered I was still in middle school.

    I just wanted someone to tell me we were going to be okay. But in our house, “okay” was a relative term, and things were about to get a whole lot crazier.

  • The Daughter of Her Survival: Why I’ll Never Be Ashamed Of My Mother

    The Daughter of Her Survival: Why I’ll Never Be Ashamed Of My Mother

    When I decided to write my first post, I knew it would do more than just tell a story. I knew it would peel back the manicured lawns and the “beige” curtains of our life in Broken Arrow to reveal a truth that some might find uncomfortable. I knew there would be whispers, judgments, and perhaps even some “concern” from those who knew us then.

    To the family, the friends, and the onlookers: I want to be incredibly clear about where I stand.

    Growing up, I didn’t see a “scandal.” I saw a woman who had been discarded by a system she served loyally. I saw the “I’ll be there in twenty minutes” phone calls from a father who didn’t show up.

    My mother didn’t have the luxury of making “perfect” choices; she had the necessity of making “survival” choices.

    She was the PTA member, the doting homeroom mom, and the woman who never missed a school function. She played the part of the “normal” suburban mother so well that no one ever had to wonder how the groceries got in the cart or how the bills got paid. She built a fortress for us out of the only materials she had left, and she did it right under the noses of a world that would have let us starve if she had played by their rules.

    If you find yourself wanting to judge her for what she did, I ask you to first look at what she provided. She traded her own reputation for our stability. She traded the “rules” for our safety. She took the weight of a secret so heavy it could have crushed anyone else, and she carried it with a smile so we could have the “blissful beige” of the American dream.

    I am not ashamed of my mother. I am deeply, fiercely proud of her.

    She is the reason I know what resilience looks like. She is the reason I understand that love isn’t just a feeling, it’s a sacrifice. If you can’t respect the hustle, the grit, and the impossible strength it took for a single mother to keep her head above water in the suburbs, then you didn’t really know her at all.

    This isn’t a post about “getting caught.” This is a tribute to a woman who did what she had to do to keep her family whole. I am my mother’s daughter, and I couldn’t be prouder to come from her.

  • The Secret In The Suburbs : My Mother’s Double Life

    The Secret In The Suburbs : My Mother’s Double Life

    The Mirage of Normalcy

    Growing up is a universal struggle, but for most, there’s a roadmap. You have parents who, in an ideal world, act as the bumpers on a bowling lane, keeping you from sliding into the gutter. For a while, that was my life. My mom was the efficient office manager for Greenwood; my dad was a grease-stained mechanic who could fix anything with an engine; and my grandma was the backbone of the house, juggling shifts as a bartender and an at-home health aide.

    Those days were draped in the blissful beige of the American dream. We were “normal.” But normalcy is a fragile thing, and in our house, it didn’t just crack, it shattered.

    The Slow Unraveling

    It started with the paychecks. My dad’s money began disappearing into a haze of drug use. Then, the betrayal at my mother’s office hit like a physical blow. Her boss, a man she had served loyally, asked her to train his niece. My mom, ever the professional, poured her knowledge into the girl, only to be handed a pink slip the moment the training was complete. He didn’t just fire her; he replaced her with nepotism and a cold shoulder.

    Pretty soon, payday became a ghost story. My dad wouldn’t come home. I was eight years old, and while I couldn’t articulate “financial ruin,” I could feel the electricity of anxiety in the walls. I knew my dad was a shadow, and I knew my mother’s silence was heavy with a mix of fury and soul-crushing sadness.

    The final straw for my mother came while making the bed. My parents had a water bed and while tucking the blankets in between the frame and mattress on my dad’s side, she pricked her finger on a used syringe. Even after the divorce, the chaos had a rhythm. They stayed friends, which meant I saw my dad whenever he was “up.” The rule was written in stone: If Daddy is using, he visits us at home. If he’s clean, we get the weekend at his place. I lived for those weekends, even as I learned to swallow the bitter pill of disappointment. The no-shows, the “I’ll be there in twenty minutes” calls that turned into three-week disappearances, that became my baseline.

    The Lady at the Table

    Survival took my mom to the Cajun Boiling Pot. It was a local seafood joint where the air smelled like Old Bay and desperation. Nightly tips weren’t just extra money; they were the difference between keeping the house in Broken Arrow or losing everything.

    Then came Chris.

    She was a customer who didn’t quite fit the scenery. She spent the entire night staring at my mother, making cryptic, lingering comments about her beauty. My mom was beautiful, striking, actually, but Chris looked at her like an investment. When she finally paid her bill and walked out, she left a business card face down on the table.

    “If you want to make some ‘REAL’ money, give me a call.”

    The Transformation

    At first, the change was a whisper. The atmospheric pressure in our house dropped. My mom stopped pacing. My grandma, usually sharp-tongued and stressed, began to soften. Then, the whisper turned into a roar of new things.

    We went to Scaggs for groceries, a trip that used to be a calculated battle of coupons. Now, my mom handed me my own cart. “Put whatever you want in it,” she said. I remember the weight of that permission, the sheer luxury of not having to check the price of a box of cereal.

    For herself, the transformation was cinematic. The tired waitress was replaced by a woman draped in Dillard’s finest. She smelled like Estée Lauder Private Collection and expensive hairspray. There were real-hair wigs, designer heels, and a new “job” selling Visa and Mastercard services. But the biggest sign was the new phone line installed in her bedroom.

    “Don’t EVER answer or use this phone,” she commanded.

    I would sit in the hallway, heart hammering, trying to catch snippets of her voice through the wood of the door. Who was she talking to? Why did the phone ring at such odd hours?

    The Parade of Men

    Then came the boyfriends, a revolving door of security.

    • Ben was the wealthiest, driving a car that looked like it belonged in a magazine. He moved in, got rid of all of our worn out furniture and decor and filled our house with luxury. They got married right there in our living room. Six weeks later, he was gone. Oh, and so was his stuff.

    • Ed the Optometrist was the “handyman” who fell off a ladder while painting our house, breaking his arm in a clumsy attempt at domesticity.

    • Bobby was the romantic, leaving behind stacks of mixtapes. My mom never touched them, but I devoured them. To this day, the sounds of Salt-N-Pepa, Mariah Carey, and Marky Mark are the soundtrack to my confusion.

    I started to see the pattern. My mother wasn’t looking for love; she was building a fortress. She had tried college, she had tried the 9-to-5, she had tried to play by the rules, and the rules had left her broke and abandoned.

    So, my mother, the PTA member, the doting homeroom mom, the woman who never missed a school function, became a high-dollar sex worker. She started in a “cathouse” run by Chris and eventually started her own “outcall” business out of our home, right under the noses of the quiet, manicured streets of Broken Arrow.

    On the outside, we were the perfect suburban family of girls. On the inside, we were living a lie that was about to catch up with us. Little did I know, the “good life” was about to cost us more than we ever imagined.