Even broken ground remembers how to grow
Fault Line:
Still Standing
The Path Forward
I wrote Fault Line: Still Standing to tell the truth about where I came from—and the life I chose to build beyond it.
The memoir traces a childhood marked by abuse, abandonment, and addiction, and the long process of confronting those experiences as an adult.
But this story isn’t about survival.
It’s about integration. It’s about facing the past honestly and refusing to be defined by it.
In the end, Fault Line is a kind of proof of life—the record of what it means to stand up after the fracture and build something of your own.
Social Media
Snapshots of media and conversations around Fault Line: Still Standing
Chapter Samples
Chapter 1: Fault Line
Chapter 10: I Promise I'll Never Do It Again
Chapter 20: The End is Near
We woke up that late spring morning on J Street, like any other morning I could remember. Late spring in Pensacola felt like late summer anywhere else. We didn’t have air conditioning, and my dad is growing some homemade weed in the backyard. It was pure dirt weed, but it got him stoned enough. He was asleep in the other bedroom, recovering from a hangover from the night before.
She asks me, “What would it be like if we didn’t go to school today?” I get excited! No school? She’s never been the fun one. Six-year-old me is naturally curious and excited, about to dance right out of my pants in my splendor.
As the feeling of freedom from school is about to set in, I see his Nova parked on the corner at the gas station. The parking lot is triangle-shaped. He’s parked at one of the points facing north. The engine is on and revving. Something isn’t right. I feel panicked and scared for some reason. I feel it right in my belly. I feel everything in my belly.
That whole day, with all its heat and humiliation, felt like Florida itself. Choking on humidity, burning under the sun, trapped between flat cow fields, and the urge to disappear. I remember thinking that if I could find a live oak, I might hang myself from it just to strangle this disease out of me.
I confessed to her that it was an accident, and I didn’t mean to do it, and how sorry I was. Had she known he got me drunk and raped me, and the ensuing relationship was nothing more than teenage lust and the confusion of a still child, maybe her reaction would have been different. Her perceived failure as a mother of this incident, and the shame she felt about me, were burdens too heavy for her to see clearly through. We drive home in more silence down the Florida turnpike as the sun sets on the horizon, both in physical and literal terms.
The hospital is quiet—a quiet you try not to disturb. Too much noise or too quick a movement feels like it might draw death closer. Most people here aren’t ready for that knock. I don’t know if she was. The place holds its breath except for the soft beep of the heart machine, beeping in rhythm with Rhonda’s faint heartbeat. It beeps without stopping, without thought, without question. It simply does what it was built to do, watching over the lives and surgeries around it. A silent, blinking witness to sorrow. Much like what I am there to do. Watching. Enduring. Carrying what no one else wants to carry.
The dim light changes only when the late-afternoon storm clouds drift across the sun. It’s late July at West Florida Hospital, and she lies in the bed, barely eighty pounds, breathing in labored, uneven pulls that make me wonder how she’s endured so much already and how much more she can take. Her lips are chapped, dry, and cracked like a place that once held moisture but hasn’t in years. She’s thirsty but can’t drink or eat anything. She never will again.
Connect
Fault Line: Still Standing is a memoir about confronting the past and choosing to keep going. If you’re a reader, journalist, or book club organizer interested in the story or the ideas behind it, I welcome the connection.
faultlinememoir@gmail.com
Los Angeles, CA