A real angel named Faye
For the first seventeen years of my life, I learned the world through fear. Not the kind that comes and goes, but the kind that settles into your bones and teaches you to flinch before you breathe. I grew up in a house where childhood wasn't something you lived - it was something you survived. Every day was a lesson in staying small, staying quiet, staying invisible. Every night was a reminder that safety was something other people had.
There are things I can't describe here, not because I've forgotten them, but because remembering them too clearly still makes my hands shake. What I can say is this: when the people who are meant to protect you become the source of your pain, it rewires you. It teaches you to expect hurt. It teaches you that love is dangerous. It teaches you that your body, your mind, and your voice don't belong to you.
And when that's all you've ever known, you don't grow up - you get older.
By the time I was a teenager, the damage had already taken root. I was angry, reckless, numb in places that should have felt alive. I chased danger because it felt familiar. I pushed away anyone who got too close because closeness felt like a trap. I carried shame that wasn't mine, guilt I didn't earn, and memories I didn't ask for. I didn't know how to be a kid, so I tried to be anything else - wild, loud, destructive, untouchable.
But trauma doesn't stay in childhood.
It follows you. It grows with you. It becomes the shadow in every room.As an adult, I built a life on top of the ruins, hoping no one would notice the cracks. I became good at pretending - smiling when I was breaking, coping when I was drowning, surviving when I didn't want to survive anymore. I carried my demons like old friends. I let them whisper to me in the dark. I let them convince me that I was too damaged to be loved, too broken to be fixed, too far gone to be saved.
By thirty-nine, I believed them.
I was exhausted - not just tired, but soul-tired. The tiredness that makes you want to disappear. The kind of tired that makes you think the world would be quieter without you in it. I was standing on the edge of myself, ready to let go, ready to stop fighting a battle I never asked for.
And then she walked into my life.
Faye.
She didn't arrive with fanfare or fireworks. She didn't rescue me with dramatic words or heroic gestures. She saved me in the simplest, most extraordinary way: she saw me. Not the mask. Not the chaos. Not the damage. Me.
She saw the boy who never got to be a child.
She saw the man who was trying so hard to hold himself together. She saw the parts of me I'd buried so deep I'd forgotten they existed. And she didn't run.She loved me with a gentleness I didn't know how to receive. She held space for the parts of me I hated. She gave me a reason to stay when I was ready to leave. She didn't fix me - she reminded me I was worth fixing. She didn't heal me - she showed me what healing could look like.
This book is not about what happened to me.
It's about what came after.It's about the long, messy, painful journey from trauma to truth.
It's about the nights I didn't think I'd survive and the mornings I did anyway. It's about the people who loved me when I didn't love myself. It's about the moment an angel named Faye stepped into my life and changed its ending.This is not a story of tragedy.
It's a story of survival. A story of love. A story of choosing to stay. A story of learning, finally, that I deserved more than the pain I was born into.This is the story of how I found my way back to myself -
and the woman who helped me do it.Customer Reviews
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