Communication

Chapter 31 - Claiming my Truth

There comes a point when you stop trying to explain.

Not because the pain is gone.

Not because the injustice no longer matters.

But because you know who you are.

I am not what they said I was.

I don’t have to win back trust—because I never broke it.

I’ve lived my life by the highest morals:
With gentleness.
With integrity.
With compassion for those who suffer.
With respect for others’ boundaries, bodies, and beliefs.

Even when I was invisible, I lived with purpose.
Even when I was silenced, I held onto truth.

Even when I was shattered, I chose not to shatter others.

A therapist once wrote that I was a gentle person.
She didn’t say it to defend me.
She didn’t say it to counter a narrative.
She said it because it was the truth.

It still is.

I’ve spent years trying to survive.

But survival isn’t the end of the story.

Now, I want to live.

Not to prove anything—

But because I still have something to give.

There’s a voice in me, buried under layers of pain and shame, that’s slowly growing louder.

It says:

You are not your trauma.
You are not what they assumed.
You are not the roles others cast you in.

You are a good person with passion and love to give.

You are still here.
Still standing.
Still healing.

And that is more than enough.

Categories

PTSD - Post-traumatic stress disorder

Chapter 28: What Comes After Survival

Barriers That Don’t Die Easily

Even with my CPSS certification in hand and nearly two decades separating me from the injustice that wrecked my life, I couldn’t escape its shadow.

I wanted to work. Really work. Not just to survive, but to reclaim who I used to be—before the system stole my career, my name, and a part of my sense of self.

I knew applying for jobs in the mental health field meant facing questions, silence, and rejection. But I also had something new: a letter from the Orange County Rape Crisis Center.

Years earlier, during my marriage, something had started to shift. Memories I had buried—or couldn’t make sense of—surfaced through nightmares and intimacy triggers. I reached out to OCRCC, unsure if I even qualified for help. But they didn’t ask me to prove anything. They listened. They believed me. And most importantly, they put into words what no legal system ever had:

Sometimes, the person labeled “perpetrator” is the one who was harmed.

The letters they wrote—one for the Social Work Licensure Board, another for potential employers—became my lifelines. They couldn’t undo the conviction. But they gave me something the courts never did: recognition of truth.

First Steps, First Falls

By early 2022, I had my certification. It was time to return to the field.

I was hired part-time by Cottage Health Care Services in February—my first mental health job in years. It was rewarding, if modest. I worked closely with a few clients and saw the change I could make. Still, I needed more. Full-time work. Stability. Validation.

So when RHA offered me a full-time position as a CPSS in April—on my birthday, no less—I jumped.

Before quitting Cottage, I was cautious. My IPS worker and Vocational Rehab counselor reminded me: “Don’t give notice until you’re absolutely sure RHA knows about the background.”

I disclosed everything. The man who hired me believed in me. He said he’d fight for me. And when he gave me the green light, I believed I could finally move on.

I started at RHA in May.

After Memorial Day weekend, they told me not to meet with anyone. I was called into a private meeting.

“We don’t think this role is the right fit.”

No explanation. Just: turn in your badge.

Later, a coworker told me what I feared—someone had flagged my background. Eighteen years later, the lie was still closing doors.

Breaking Through the Wall

Then, in July, Freedom House Recovery Center hired me. I disclosed everything again. This time, the HR rep glanced at the OCRCC letter and said something I’ll never forget:

“Unless you’re a serial killer, you’re fine.”

She was joking—but not really. It was the first time someone in HR responded with humanity.

I started work in August 2022, assigned to the Mobile Crisis Unit. I would be meeting clients across several counties, often at their homes. Children, families, adults—anyone in crisis.

For the first time, I wasn’t haunted by the past.

No one at Freedom House treated me with suspicion based on the past criminal conviction. I didn’t have to explain or justify my existence. Clients didn’t know, and they were not going to know. I knew it was not relevant what lies Ana told long ago. My supervisor didn’t know. It didn’t matter.

What mattered was the work.

I was good at it.

Really good.

I saw it in how people opened up to me. I saw it in how I could read body language again. I wasn’t afraid anymore. I didn’t feel like an imposter. I wasn’t walking into rooms as a man carrying shame—I was a professional offering help.

A New Kind of Recognition

Sherisse, my supervisor, saw my potential. She knew I had a background in social work. When I asked her for a reference for my application to regain my social work licensure (as an LCSWA), she hesitated—not because she doubted my goodness, but because she hadn’t worked closely enough with me to confidently recommend me for clinical practice.

Still, she encouraged me. I had been working for over a year with her when an important conversation occured.

At one point, she even brought up RHA as a place I might apply again. I paused.

“I had worked there but do you know why they let me go?” I asked her.

She didn’t.

So I told her.

“I was assaulted in 2004 and yet I was the one arrested. I had been convicted of a violent felony.”

She looked stunned.

“You?” she said. “You couldn’t hurt anyone. I’d fight someone before you would.”

That moment—that validation—was something I had been chasing for almost two decades.

I said emphatically, “Thank you.” She was noticing what should have been obvious to everyone including the police back in 2004.

The Weight of Love and Lies

During this time, I tried dating again. I met someone—Codi Renee. She knew about my conviction and still chose to see me. That alone felt rare. I stayed longer than I should have, not because I was happy, but because I didn’t want to lose the one person who didn’t reject me outright.

But even that came with emotional complexity. I wasn’t comfortable. I wasn’t fully myself. And eventually, the relationship ended.

Codi Renee had lumped me in with others who had hurt her. It didn’t matter that I was different. It still hurt.

And yet, there was a moment during all of this—a moment I’ll never forget—when I realized that the people who truly knew me didn’t just believe me. They knew I was incapable of violence.

Sherisse saw it. My clients felt it. I knew it. If it were not for criminal record databases we would have to rely on our instincts just like my cat had.

Moving On

For a little while, I thought I had made it. I thought the past had loosened its grip. I was helping people. I was thriving. I had finally returned to the field that gave my life meaning.

But then came the cuts. Budget changes. Freedom House began dissolving the Mobile Crisis team.

They offered me another job—on the Detox Unit. I thought it was a generic Crisis Unit. If I had known what that job really was, I might have said no. It wasn’t just unfamiliar. It wasn’t therapeutic. It felt like a jail, not a place of healing.

But that’s a story for another chapter.

Categories

Chapter 27: Returning to the Work I Loved

Becoming a Certified Peer Support Specialist

I first heard the title “Certified Peer Support Specialist” during a WRAP (Wellness Recovery Action Plan) group at the UNC Center for Excellence in Community Mental Health. The facilitator—open, warm, and unapologetically honest—wasn't just someone with credentials. He was someone who had lived it. His mental health history wasn’t a liability; it was the reason he was there.

And suddenly, something occured to me. I could do this as well.

For years I’d been both the therapist and the patient. The person others leaned on, and the person left drowning. To be a Peer Support Specialist turning my pain into a purpose in life. I was still on SSDI but I saw that this was a false version of myself that I had embraced.

Still, the toxic shame lingered. One day in the hospital, I’d asked a nurse for some feedback—something positive to hold on to. Her response: “We’re not supposed to give compliments.” That moment stayed with me. In the world of clinical detachment, affirmation was rationed.

But Peer Support Specialists weren’t clinical. They were human. That mattered.

I arranged to meet with the WRAP group facilitator outside the group. We talked about what the role involved, how it helped people, and—most importantly—how I could become certified. It was a quiet, steady spark. Something I could hold onto.

The Truth About Me

Around the same time, something else began to stir inside me—something less expected, but no less real.

At CEF, I met someone who used they/them pronouns. Their presence challenged what I thought I knew about gender, about identity, about the invisible rules we all internalize.

I didn’t feel like a woman. But I had never felt like the kind of person the world expected either. Growing up, I had rejected aggression. I avoided confrontation. I didn’t play tackle football because it was so not me. I rejected the boxing matches with one of my friends bercause I was afraid of hurting him.

That softness had always felt… different than the way guys are socialized.

Now there was a name for it: gender non-conforming. Non-binary. Something in between. Something valid.

I began to share some of these thoughts with Becky, the student therapist I was seeing through HomeLink. She received it with warmth and curiosity—not analysis, not judgment. For the first time, I felt like I was allowed to question what gender meant for me, without fear that it would be used to make me a target of bullies.

I was also watching Law & Order: SVU as I mentioned earlier. The excuses that guys were using along with their lawyers were so disturbing. I don’t want to get explicit but the argument that maybe she wanted it or just seeing how hard it was to prove cases was shocking to me. Aspects of being a guy that were offensive to me were normalized. The pressure put on women to obey husbands and meet the needs of their husbands. It was all offensive to me. Yet, there was something more about myself that I was recognizing and I could find it everywhere.

The psychology writing of Carol Gilligan about how girls feel about winning versus how guys thought about that were different and I could remember having those thoughts that are more characteristic of girls. There are too many factors to list them all.

The irony wasn't lost on me—Ana had accused me of a violent crime that clashed with everything I knew about myself. Had I been female, would the system have seen me differently? Would I still carry the label of “violent felon” if I’d been allowed to show up as myself?

These questions weren’t just theoretical. They were survival. Yet, some part of me worried that someone might think that I was embracing my feminine nature, my feminine gender identity, as a ploy to win the sympathy of others.

Probably most profound is when Sarah spoke about how her father was nurturing and had certain characteristics that are more characteristic of women and she added “but I wouldn’t call him feminine.” I responded, “but that is not me. It would affirm something about me to think of me like one thought of women.

Remembering Christine

Around this time, I had conversations with Sarah about another public moment that still lingered—Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony against Brett Kavanaugh.

We both believed her.

I told Sarah that my sister, Carrie, had once asked why I didn’t relate to Brett’s experience of being falsely accused. The implication shook me. Did she believe that being falsely accused meant you should automatically assume all other accusations are false too? I had treated many survivors like Dr. Christine. To me, it was not political at all. The kind of Supreme Court judge that we were going to get from a Republican presidency was known.

Sarah was stunned by the comparison that my sister made to Brett.

The contrast between Brett and me was vast. He was belligerent, defensive, entitled—given every opportunity to prove his innocence and never once taking it. I had been silenced, cast aside, humiliated. And yet I would have done anything for the chance to prove my innocence. I would have leapt for joy at the opportunity to have an actual investigation into what happened to me. The FBI could question anyone who ever knew me.

Brett was angry that he might not get a promotion. I was trying to survive. That difference mattered. The way Brett had acted would never be allowed by any lawyer. His anger at anyone asking the question would have made him appear violent to a jury. In an actual investigation if it turned up anything, the last thing a defense lawyer would want would be a client to get so beligerent and angry at anyone who was asking questions.

Letting Go of My Family

As I was building a new identity, I realized I had to break from the old ones.

I recalled how Andrea—my longtime trauma therapist—had tried to bridge a conversation between me and my sister Carrie. I had asked her to explain my financial limitations, and to ask if Carrie would help with the copay that I owed for therapy sessions.

Carrie’s response?

“Why can’t he just get a job?”

There it was. The same invalidation I had been living with for years. No recognition of my trauma. No understanding of what I’d endured. Just blame. Just shame.

Becky once told me that repressing pain was like trying to hold a beach ball underwater. Sooner or later, it bursts through the surface.

For me, the metaphor was perfect. I could see myself walking along a beach with beach balls bursting over the waves and into the air. There were so many things that I had pushed down over the years. Now I was starting to love myself and I couldn’t do that and keep in touch with my mother or Carrie.

I wrote Carrie an email, one last olive branch. She responded with a cold lecture about all the bad choices I’d made. How I’d failed to honor my parents’ sacrifices by not working as an engineer. There was no mention of my survival. No mention of my pain. Most painful of all was that her response overlooked an entire decade of success in my life.

So, I drew the final line. No more contact. No more looking to a dry well and hoping for water. I deserved more. After all I had endured, I couldn’t bring myself to both love myself and think of my mother and sister as part of my family. Elee had wanted me to pretend to be nice and keep in contact so that I would get an inheritence. I couldn’t do that.

I was done chasing crumbs of compassion from people who had none to give. I had told her explicitly and without ambiguity not to contact me at all, in any form.

The only exception was when I learned that my mother died. They had spent so much time acting like I was part of the family. I had carried the same name as Kathy’s husband, my father. So, that was the least I deserved - about $11,000 but enough to get a car. This would be required to work as a Certified Peer Support Specialist. I could also drive myself to places I had wanted to visit for so long. Now, after two decades, I had a car again.

Becoming Certified

I reconnected fiercely with the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation Services, driven by a new goal that gave me hope - to become a Certified Peer Support Specialist.

Their hesitation was palpable, their uncertainty about my criminal record casting a shadow over the process. But as we delved deeper, a revelation emerged: I wasn’t isolated in this struggle. Many CPSS professionals bore the weight of criminal pasts. Those with genuine, raw life experience were often the most adept at offering help.

They agreed, albeit cautiously, to fund my training and continued to back me with employment support through my unwavering IPS (Individual Placement Services) counselor.

During the grueling certification journey, I encountered others whose narratives both electrified and unsettled my spirit. One man had spent half his existence behind bars for murder. Others had battled the demons of addiction. This as common for those who become CPSS professionals.

One guy shared a chilling tale of surviving Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, poisoned by a caretaker’s twisted pursuit of sympathy. It made my skin crawl, but I understood deeply. My own family had poisoned me too—not with chemicals, but with the corrosive toxins of silence, shame, and neglect. They hammered into me the belief that I was sick, a problem, unworthy, mentally unstable, a failure. They wielded "tough love" like a weapon, used cruelly in the aftermath of losing my greatest love, my career, being preyed upon by a psychopath named John F., and then being harmed by Ana, another predator. These were not mere bad decisions or circumstances I could control.

I turned to the man who had endured Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy and asked if drawing parallels to my own poisoning—verbal, emotional, psychological—would offend him. He welcomed the comparison.

For me, the abuse was an emotional and psychological onslaught. And still, it had nearly annihilated me.

But I remained.

Still clawing my way back.

Still transforming.