Memoir · In progress

How He Raised Me

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My whole story — from a scared little girl to the woman writing this book.

It shares its name with my blog because it's the same story, finally told whole. But the blog begins in the middle. This book begins at the beginning.

I was three years old the first time someone hurt me. The years that followed took nearly everything: abuse, trafficking, a broken foster care system. I was broken into pieces early — and most of this story is about how those pieces were put back together.

Then came Jacob — the man God placed in my life to be my rock and constant. We married and dreamed of a family, knowing how hard that dream would have to fight: I had been told my body had been through too much to ever carry a child, and for a season, every hope ended in heartbreak.

The healing became a voice. With Voices for Change, I've spoken on panels about trafficking and reforming the foster care system — and carried my story all the way to Washington, D.C., to talk to Congress about changing the system that failed me. I've shared my testimony with young girls to help them find the courage to speak, and stood up at a Hope Local event to advocate for adoption — for kids still waiting on a family.

Our first daughter was born in February 2019 — our miracle, against every odd. Two months later, I was diagnosed with stage 3 metastatic melanoma. That's the season my blog carries in real time: the fear, the prayers, and a tumor that shrank until even the doctors struggled to explain it. I have been cancer free since August 2019.

Healing changed the direction of my life. I went back to school, earned my degree in nutrition, and became a holistic nutrition consultant — today I walk alongside others on their own path to health through Nourishing Pathways.

And somewhere along the way, the girl who survived all of this became a writer. The blog came first — words finding their way out in the hardest season. Now I'm writing two books at once: this memoir, and We Were Never Lost, the first novel of a psychological thriller trilogy. It turns out the stories I lived and the stories I imagine come from the same place.

And the family I was told I could never have? Two miracle daughters — and a third we're praying into our family through adoption. That's the kind of story this is.

It's a book about being broken and put back together into something more beautiful — and about the One doing the mending.