By Author J. H. Irwin
Author’s Note
“It would be easier to write my parents as one thing. To define them by the moments that hurt, or the moments that healed. But that would not be honest.
This chapter is not about defending them, and it is not about indicting them. It is about understanding the full weight of who they were, and how the contradictions within them shaped the person I became.
Because the truth is this: I am not the result of only what wounded me. I am also the result of what was given.”
Chapter Four: What They Gave Me
I have written about the harder parts of my childhood.
The instability. The confusion. The unfinished spaces, both in our home and in the way love was sometimes expressed. Those things mattered. They shaped me in ways I am still uncovering.
But they are not the whole story.
