Hello

My Story

I am a small business owner in Fair Oaks, CA and an alumni of UC Davis who majored in Analytic Philosophy and minored in American History.  I am Principle at PACE Family Services, Inc. since 2010 and managing officer of SANGRA LLC since 2017.  I previously worked for the Sacramento County Department of Health and Humans Services from 1998 to 2005; then, a brief period in the Sacramento County Department of Human Assistance 2005-2007 approximately.  If not for my childhood, marital, and prior career experience, I would not be where I am today. I will share a bit of my life story.

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My story begins before i was born. My mother was reared in a very conservative Christian home who at an early age was sexually abused by her father, then at 14 years of age while at a party was drugged, raped, and impregnated by my biological father who at the time was a truant 17 year old who smoked and sold pot and drink alcohol.  His street name was Sugar Man.  From the standpoint of a conservative holiness Christian Pentecostal family in the 1960's, my grandmother's Christian life was a sham. My mother's pregnancy an embarrassment was hidden.  My father's involvement. disgraceful and never made known. My birth, carefully concealed and not celebrated.  . No one outside of my grandmother, my mother, and her siblings new about the sexual abuse from their father my grandfather nor my mother's teen pregnancy by my father. Throughout the pregnancy, my mother was shamed, berated, and humiliated. The birth was not announced and according to family history, my mother, her siblings, and my grandmother departed from the hospital and at some point, during the cab ride home, a large Safeway grocery bag was opened and I was put inside. That is how i was carried into the family home. To the neighbors that, it appeared that they had returned from grocery shopping.

 

The incest, rape, and pregnancy (by my biological father) were hushed and secreted. It was never openly talked about and to my knowledge neither my mother nor aunts received counseling.  No one outside of this small circle other than my unofficial foster parents new i existed.  Not long after birth, I was fostered away to close family friends to be reared.  The first three years of my life were spent sleeping in a makeshift bassinet made from a pulled out dresser drawer in my foster sisters room who in a way had become my mother.   While this may seem like a pitiful beginning, i remember being doted on and tenderly nurtured by the most loving people for 3 years. The first 3 years of my life were peaceful, joyous, wonderful!  I was their little prince and my kingdom was their house.  My first 3 years of memories were of being celebrated, loved, and lavished with attention by my unofficial foster parents and foster sister. They lived only a few blocks away from my mother.  Not long after my 3rd birthday, I was informed that my biological mother was coming to claim me.  In-between the time of her announced return and my departure, upon reflection, i recall a gloom resting on everyone.  With adult eyes, remember it being a sad time even though at that age i didn't understand what was happening.  I have vague memories of discussions about not turning me over and them asking me do I want to go.  From the moment my mother retrieved me, my life became a spiraling nightmare of verbal, emotional, and physical abuse at her hands.

 

I watched one man after another entering and exiting my mothers life as if she were a carousel. Ruckus 1st of the month parties when the welfare check arrived in the mail were frequent.. Illegal drug use. Alcohol use and drunkenness.  Missed days of school.  Smoke filled crack houses.  Brief periods of employment.  Long periods of unemployment. Lots of new live-in uncles.  Loud sex. Frequent drop offs at grandma's house where the verbal and physical abuse from her left visible and invisible marks. This went on for 13 years!  I was 15 years old when i ran away from home.  From the moment I was taken from my foster parents, my education in specific type of man began.  Of the many things i recall, it is these men coming and going and the way they treated my mother. They were intentional and predatory.  These men would enter my mother's life, make promises lies, demean her, and tell her anything she wanted to hear.  At that time, there were no resources for her to turn to nor any real efforts to address what we now call domestic violence or violence between intimate partners.

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Today, I counsel and coach women and men who are adults of childhood trauma. Who, having been reared by a mother or father taken advantage of by an abusive partner or whose parent themselves behaved violently are unable to connect with people or set healthy boundaries.  Experiencing abuse throughout childhood exposed to emotional neglect, mental abuse, and intimate partner violence, these adults are now susceptible to intimate partner violence, narcissistic, and co-dependent personality types.