I was born in Baltimore in 1973 and raised near Andrews Air Force Base. I grew up believing my father had died. My childhood was small and unstable—just my mother, my grandmother (my “Grammy”), my step-grandfather, and later, when I was 13, a baby half-sister. I attended six elementary schools, one middle school, and two high schools before dropping out after 9th grade.
My Grammy, a professional blues musician, had been my lifelong, day-to-day caregiver. She adored me, but she had been abusive to my mother. When she died suddenly of cirrhosis of the liver in 1988, our lives collapsed. My step-grandfather blamed me for her death and kicked us out; my mother fell apart. At 15, I ended up homeless, drinking, and eventually attempting suicide.
In the hospital after that first suicide attempt at 15, I learned the truth about my father. By 18, after tracking him down through old letters, I found him alive in an Ohio prison and met him for the first time. Our relationship was intense, complicated, and profoundly shaped my early adulthood. I drifted between unstable jobs, unhealthy relationships, and dangerous situations, always longing for acceptance and connection.
My first marriage, full of alcohol and pain, ended after almost 8 years of trauma and infertility, and I attempted suicide again. In the hospital, I met my second husband, a man with two young children. I became their full-time mother and loved them deeply. But after he returned from Afghanistan with a traumatic brain injury and combat fatigue, our family fell apart. By 2013, our 11-year marriage was over, and in losing him, I also lost the children who had become my entire world.
In 2016, after 20 years of complications from a significant suicide attempt in 1996, I had my right leg amputated below the knee. I entered that surgery alone and spent the first seven months of recovery in total isolation. Yoga, meditation, and radical self-reliance became my lifelines. I learned how to live again—literally and spiritually. During this time, I reached out to my estranged mother. I called her after my amputation to say, “I need my mother.” She replied, “No, you don’t,” and hung up. She was right—I needed myself.
I rebuilt my life from the ashes up. I leaned into healing, and slowly re-emerged as someone whole, even with an incomplete body. In 2017, I moved to Maine, where I now live independently with my emotional-support dog, Honey Bea. I found stability for the first time in my life, and I’m finally ready to find connection and thrive.
My life has been shaped by war, prison, addiction, abandonment, loss, grief, and survival. But amputation—and the spiritual journey that followed—freed me from the cycles I was born into. I killed the version of myself forged in trauma and became someone new. Now I hope to help others understand that the real question isn’t “What’s wrong with you?”—it’s “What happened to you?”
I’m writing my memoir, Severed: My Journey to Connect, and hope to publish it in the next few years.
Your message has been sent
Living Alone With Limb Loss 
Show some LOVE