Here we go...

God has put it on my heart to share the story of my life. For my family, for my legacy.


I was born in Southern California to loving parents and many other loving relatives. The 2nd in my generation after my cousin on my mom's side and the 1st on my dad's side. Both sets of grandparents lived within 5 minutes of each other in Orange County. Even was blessed to be able to know my Great Grandfather on my dad's side. Our family was really close, both sides of the family always gathering together for holidays and events especially when my little brother showed up as well. This drew our family even closer. For over a decade our family weathered the storms of live, from my dad surviving a brain aneurism, my mom surviving someone hitting her car at full speed when he ran a stop sign, my mom made it through hurricane in Kauai, HI while they were filming Jurassic Park at the same time there, our family didn't loose anyone or anything during the Northridge Earthquake, same with the L.A. Riots(I didn't even know they were going on 45 minutes up the road), wild fires that threatened our home and caused us to evacuate at least once. All these events went on during this time and even more I'm sure my parents could enlighten me on and my family stuck it out.


When my dad got laid off it was the start of the worst storm that our family would ever go through. We had to move only 2 hours away, but we'd been driving 2 hours to visit family my whole life, so I didn't see it as leaving all my friends and family behind as we'd still be close. All the normal stress of moving occurred, meeting new neighbors, struggles at a new school, meeting new friends whilst keeping in contact with the old ones. I believe we were within 6 months of settling in when my Grandpa got sick with cancer and he passed away just as quickly as it was very aggressive Pancreatic Cancer. This rocked our entire family. It wasn't long after that my dad got fired. I don't believe it was these events alone that led to my mom divorcing my dad, but they had left their mark emotionally on her. I went through my own emotional shutdown throughout all of these events even blaming myself for my parents divorce to being overcome with grief for my grandpa. I did not know how to deal with these emotions as I was getting ready to be a teenager and trying to deal with that transition all at the same time added to everything else. I don't remember if it was ever really explained to me or not, but I know for a very long time I did not understand what happened. We ended up moving back to our old hometown where all our friends were. These next couple years looking back really gave me a perspective of how protected/loved I had been the first portion of my life. Once my mom left my dad and we were essentially on our own with her working full time and struggling to make ends meet we didn't have that protection from the world we had before any longer. I tried to step up and protect my brother around the neighborhood, but only ended up loosing fights with kids even younger than me. I learned then that instead of fighting I could run away and just not deal with the fighting. This has essentially defined how I have handled most stressful situations in my life. Thank God Jesus was there pursuing me even then.