Returning this week from San Antonio, after meeting with my sister Carol, I felt the closing of a chapter – one that has been playing out for far longer than I first realized. Back in January 2023, while in counseling, I made a promise to meet with each of my siblings and finally lay bare the truths I’ve carried all these years. Coming full circle, I understand that this journey wasn’t just about Carol, Cynthia, Charlotte, or Kurtis. It was about healing—my healing – a process I began through the remembering, the reconstructing, and the writing of Shadows of Sobriety.
To my siblings – Carol, Cynthia, Charlotte, and Kurtis – we were all cast in the same tragic play, each of us stepping onto the stage at different times, acting out roles we didn’t choose, performing under the weight of a script we never wrote. We each faced the same storms, though we experienced them in different acts, in different scenes. The secrets we kept from the world, the burdens we carried, were part of that performance – a performance we perfected, but at the cost of never truly being brothers and sisters.
Writing Shadows of Sobriety was my way of stepping out of the role, of putting down the mask, and seeing things for what they truly were. It forced me to confront the truth—not just about our shared past, but about the ways in which we were all navigating the same wreckage, isolated in our own survival. No one else will ever know the weight of the sorrow, the struggle, or the sacrifices we made behind the curtain. But the writing – this long, painful process of remembering and reconstructing – has allowed me to begin the healing, not just for myself but for the legacy we all share.
Now, I see clearly that we were never truly family in the way that word should mean. We were actors, bound not by love, but by survival – performing our parts, scene after scene. Shadows of Sobriety was my way of stepping out of the shadows, pulling back the curtain, and finding a new path forward.
It’s taken a lifetime to get here, but I believe that the act of telling this story, of owning it, has not only been my way of healing – it’s an invitation for all of us to finally step off that stage and find the peace we’ve been searching for.
