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Born into It and Removed from It

Breathe. You can overcome the cards that you've been dealt.

Breathe. Just because some people let you down doesn't mean that all is lost. There are people who will be with you the entire way to love and support you.

Breathe. I know the weight of your situation might be unbearable without knowing the outcome of what is to be. That's okay; so much good is coming your way if you don't give up.

Breathe. Keep moving forward.

From the very beginning of my life, my mountains to climb were steep. As I was forming in the womb, I had already ingested drugs and alcohol, one of the many “crack babies,” as they were known in the media at the time. I was born into a vast nameless social epidemic that was and continues to sweep the nation. Addiction and trauma don't affect just the people who suffer directly, but also the myriad of individuals and professionals who deal with the repercussions.

I was just moments old when I was rushed into detox from the addictive substances that I never chose to ingest. Days into my journey on this earth, I survived a double hernia operation. So not only was I born in the Rockies with literal mountains before me, but I also faced metaphorical mountains, large and looming from the outset.

Before we start walking in the weeds of my rough beginnings, let's begin with an actual mountain memory from my childhood, one that would come several years after those harrowing first years, one that is alight in happiness and fondness. I was perhaps seven or eight when Glenn, the man I would later come to call my dad, decided to take me and my sister for a hike up Old Baldy mountain outside of a cattle country hamlet known as Twin Bridges, Montana. It was close to 10,000 feet high, in my young mind high enough to touch the sun. That day was filled with fun, excitement, and a palette of new scents and sights: the color of the trees and hidden mountain vistas, the smell of newly emerging foliage and blooms. But even here, as in so much of my life, hid unseen, lurking dangers.

We laughed our way to perhaps halfway up the trail when we were surprised by an unexpected encounter. A grizzly revealed himself from behind a nondescript tree. He was at once terrifying and thrilling to see, and promptly dealt with by Glenn, who had faced such dangers before. He knew what to do to get us through and allow us to keep moving up the path. While we were paralyzed with fear, uncertain and overwhelmed, he assuredly turned, faced the looming grizzly, and made a New Year's celebration's worth of noise to scare it away.

What followed that brush with unexpected danger (and Glenn's courageous, protective, fatherly actions) was the reward of more joyful memories, more experiences to share. We kept moving forward, up the mountain. After the terror of the grizzly came a fragrant and gorgeous field of wildflowers and then a first for me: the exhilaration of reaching the summit of a mountain. From the summit, the view was majestic. I felt expansive and connected. The mountain no longer seemed impossible. The dangerous grizzlies, while still real and present, were not guaranteed to cause destruction, but were rather just part of this world around me. I could see them in the scale of what they were—big in the moment, but small in comparison to the larger journey, just one moment on the path.

At the top of Old Baldy, we found a pile of rocks where we could sit and rest. We were delighted to discover a forgotten glass jar that had taken up residence between several haphazard rocks. We freed the trapped jar, then wrote our names on scraps of paper and placed them within the jar before hiding it again under the rocks. Still the same jar, but now inscribed with our unique mark. It may still be there as a memento of our time at the mountaintop, or our names may have faded away, but we were there. We made it, and then we continued on.

Now, back to the metaphorical mountains of my early years. Being the only boy and having four older sisters, I would later discover that I was born into one of the worst reported cases of child abuse and neglect that the state of Montana had seen in the early 1990s. Beyond the trauma of that abuse, entering the world under the influence of drugs and alcohol would have a lingering presence that would affect every aspect of my experience for the rest of my life.

My earliest memory of my birth mother, Berna, is cloudy, much like the rings of smoke that perpetually surrounded her. I can remember being mesmerized by an orange glow that would rhythmically increase in intensity and brightness, then subside over and over again. She would breathe in and the tip of the stick in her mouth would grow brighter. She would breathe out and the intensity would retreat. On, off. On, off. She lay in bed and smoke swirled upward. Her cigarettes are my earliest recollection, along with an internal sense of curiosity and haze.

Gillette, Wyoming. March 3, 1991. As usual in the '90s, the month of March was a typically brisk, almost burning type of winter cold. There was snow on the ground and the city of Gillette remained in its quiet hustle. Snow is present for most of the year in that part of the Rocky Mountains. I wonder, on the day I was born, how my biological mother, Berna, might have felt about having yet another child, her fifth. While most of my early memories are of her neglect, there were instances where she showed she cared, in her very Berna way.

There is a snowy day I have been told of, where she put me in the front basket of a snowmobile and drove me through the hills. My sisters and I were playing outside and I fell headfirst off a railing into a snowbank. My sister April yelled for Berna, who came running and found a comical sight, nothing but legs sticking out of the drift and flailing about wildly. She wasted no time pulling me out of the snowbank. We all laughed together.

The mothering instincts were there in some basic form, and so I allow her some grace. Had her own upbringing been different, perhaps she could have been a great caregiver and an invested parent. But that is not her, nor how my story goes. It is not even worth wishing for because it isn't the past that exists.

We bounced around a lot in that first year of my life, likely due in part to Berna's flakiness, but perhaps also to what I imagine was a possible sense of desperation. Though that area of the country was experiencing a drought at the time, I suspect Berna was drowning in a flood of forgotten towns and places, a rotating door of male figures, a variety of jobs, and a healthy dose of freeloading.

We landed in Sheridan, Montana, a quiet town of about 1,000 people. It is nestled in the majestic Rocky Mountains of southwest Montana in a gorgeous spot called Ruby Valley. The view holds its worth, its ruby treasure, which was not glittering red, but rather golden from the endless grass and hay that were present most of the year. Even though the earth was dry and dusty, the people who surrounded me were wet with liquor and the sweat of sexual encounters.

The Ruby Valley was overflowing with endless boredom and a stunning view of vast farmlands of wheat, corn, potatoes, and livestock. The treasure of the view contrasted with the ever-present smell of manure and, for my mother, infinite traps of drugs and alcohol.

Our small house was at the very entrance of the town, just off a main road. Despite the peeling paint, in my child's mind the house was massive and glorious. There was a decent-sized yard with trees and bushes, even a creek running alongside the property. The unkempt weeds and shrubs were part of the fun. I am told we played in the creek, unsupervised, quite a lot. Unlike the children of today's hawk-eyed parents, my sisters and I were not so much trusted as left to our own dealings, with an expectation that we wouldn't drown.

The house was dark, with dark wood paneling and furniture, and curtains that were always sealed closed. I suspect the curtain fabric had started off white but had turned a dull urine-yellow from the endless cigarette smoke. The cancerous haze was so thick that even the paint on the walls had started to absorb the putrid tint.

The entryway led into the living room, which had a furnace for heat. All of the furniture was ancient hand-me-down pieces, a mishmash of brown upholstery and forgettable prints. The kitchen was tucked in a small room toward the front of the house off the living room. The cabinets were usually empty and the refrigerator usually had something rotten in it. Most of the time, a foul smell would emanate from it, reminding us not to expect nourishment. On occasion, we had plain turkey sandwiches; other times we had nothing. Some days, my four sisters and I would share a single uncooked ramen packet.

Our home was filthy and disorganized, with garbage and clothes thrown in such a way that a tornado might have improved things. We did not have a pet, but the neighbors' dogs would welcome themselves in to poop, which would fossilize over time.

It is not my intention to describe Berna as a villain or a monster. She was a human, like each and every one of us. Had she been born into different circumstances or made different choices, life could have been different for all of us.

Berna was a physically beautiful woman with a tremendous smile and huge personality. She was personable, quick to make friends and easy to get along with when her mental health was good. She was talented and artistic. Had she not turned to drugs as a coping mechanism—a...