Fall With Grace

Stories of life – recovery, addiction, medicine, living, dying, and all the things in between.

recent posts

A bleeding heart dressed up in human skin, perseverance, and tears.

Category: Uncategorized

  • Growing Pains

    Warning, the following contains descriptions of intimate partner violence. Growth is a hard thing. It’s uncomfortable, sometimes it downright hurts. At least it does if you’re doing it right. The past year has been one of monumental growth for me. And it hurt tremendously. A year ago, I was angry. At work, small things would…

  • The Lie (part 2)

    I don’t know that I can convey strongly enough the power of two sentences to affect every aspect of my life, forever. “No one will ever love you if you’re fat. You’ll have to settle for the first man willing to kiss you.” My dad said it to me. I was eleven, about to turn…

  • The Lie (part I)

    Something that not many people know about me now is that I was a fat kid. Pictures suggest I started gaining weight around the time I was eight, shortly after my dad got out of prison, kidnapped my brothers and myself, and brought us to a domestic violence shelter, leaving my Mom. As I write…

  • It’s a Wonderful World…

    Ba-humbug. It’s that time of year again, Christmas. It’s a strange holiday. It’s stressful, it deepens loneliness, it brings about conflict among families, but it’s beautiful, it’s fun, and you get stuff. Growing up, Jesus and Church were involved, but not in a way my brain has ever been able to reconcile- how does Santa…

  • Reclaiming Emotion: Transforming Trauma into Strength

    I have a very fragmented memory when it comes to my childhood. I remember very specific scenes vividly, but if you asked me what happened before or after, I couldn’t tell you. If you asked me what my home was like, I couldn’t really tell you, I have only glimpses and partial answers. That’s how…

  • Sisu

    Sisu is a word I grew up with, deep in the Northwoods of Michigan. I grew up in the Upper Peninsula. Most people don’t know there even is an upper peninsula, it’s that isolated. The town’s heyday was back in the 1920s, when the land was still rich with iron ore and mines needed miners…