I am the one wearing the cowboy boots.
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The Beginning
At eight years old, I fled with what could be gathered in moments.
There was no time to prepare and no space to choose. What mattered was what could be reached, lifted, and taken. A black trash bag—meant for disposal—became the only container, stretched thin by urgency and weight.
Nothing about that moment felt temporary. I moved forward before there was time to wonder. What was left behind was not sorted or named. It was simply gone.
Everything that followed grew from that first leaving.
What followed
What followed was not a clear path, but a series of crossings.
At each place I arrived, expectations were already in place—rules learned after they were enforced, boundaries discovered only through experience. Faces changed. Circumstances shifted. Nothing remained long enough to settle.
Belonging became conditional. Stability lasted only until the next change. The question of where I fit did not disappear; it returned whenever something familiar slipped away again.
What Carried Me
Some things endured—not as protection or reassurance, but as capacity.
Over time, survival stopped feeling like reaction and began to feel deliberate. I learned when to hold on, when to release, and how to continue without knowing what waited ahead.
What formed was not confidence, but continuation.
What the Story Does
This story does not rush past what happened. It stays with moments long enough for their impact to register, allowing experience to stand before meaning is imposed.
Loss appears not as a single event, but as something that settles gradually—into memory, habit, and expectation. Time does not resolve these moments; it reveals how they shape direction through choices made without certainty.
What emerges is not closure, but continuity.
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What the Book Holds
Within these pages is a childhood shaped by repeated upheaval and the work required to endure it.
This memoir traces a life shaped by foster care and Ameslan identity, and the long effort of building forward while confronting what remained unresolved.
It follows the weight of what could be carried—and the cost of carrying it—alongside the effort to remain intact when belonging was uncertain.
This is not a story of triumph. It is a record of staying present long enough for something steadier to take shape.
The Invitation
This story is not offered as an explanation. It is offered as an opening.
You do not need to share the same history to recognize what it carries. Many lives are shaped by circumstances that arrive without consent, by expectations learned early, by the long work of becoming within conditions not chosen.
If any part of this feels familiar, you are already closer to the story than you may realize.
Stay connected as the memoir moves toward publication.
The One Carrying the Story
This memoir did not end with childhood.
What came later has been lived, remembered, and shaped into this book—years marked by learning, adjustment, and the sustained effort to build something that could last.
The questions that began early remained.
Learn more about the story’s origin →
