UNKNOWN

I first thought about suicide when I was twelve. Thirty years later, I finally got help.

For thirty years, I carried something I couldn't say out loud. From the ages of twelve to forty-two, I felt like I didn't deserve to be in this world, through ordinary days, through a life that looked fine from the outside. Then, in January of 2023, I finally walked into therapy.

Ten weeks and four hundred hours later, something broke open. Writing spilled out of me, first a screenplay called Reunion, then more than I could have imagined. This book is the story of that turn ... the moment the same mind that spent a lifetime planning an exit started creating instead.

Healing is not a clinical guide or a list of steps. It's an honest, unfiltered look inside the mind of someone who spent a lifetime wanting to leave, and slowly, surprisingly, found a path to a life worth staying for. It follows that journey all the way to the unexpected place it led, a blank page, and the first screenplay I ever wrote. It's short enough to read in an afternoon, and the people who've read it tend to finish it in one sitting.

This book is for you if:

• You've carried thoughts you've never told anyone, and you want to know you're not the only one.
• You love someone who is struggling, and you wish you could understand what they're feeling.
• You've lost someone, and you're still searching for what you couldn't see.
• You believe creativity can be a way back to yourself and want to see how one person found their voice on the other side of the hardest years.
• You just need to be reminded that healing is possible and that it doesn't have to look perfect to be real.

I'm not a doctor. I'm a storyteller from Maplewood, New Jersey, walking through the city with a leather backpack, a duffle bag, and a travel guitar. This is simply my healing journey and the story of how, at forty-two, I finally started telling stories.

Healing isn't a straight line. But it is possible. Let me show you what it looked like for me.