So much of my beginning was shaped by my grandfather’s quiet strength.

It feels right, at least to me, that I’m beginning to write this story now, as I wait for more information from the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department and sit with the simple fact that I am still here. There’s a pull to remember my life, and all the people who shaped it.

I want to reflect on our shared time: growing up, stumbling forward, and doing my best with what I knew.

I want to make space for the grief I carried—often silently—after losing the greatest love of my life when I was just nine years old.

I want to hold every detail from a life interrupted, a life some tried to […]

These events are not imagined; they come from the pages of my real life.

I’ve chosen to share it now because I’ve lived through so much—endured, lost, and learned.

None of it holds meaning if it can’t, in some way, help others.

The truths I’ve carried for so long can no longer stay buried; the weight has grown too heavy for one heart to hold alone.

My words may not always be polished, and I may stumble to express my feelings fully. However, what I offer here is honest, unfiltered, and deeply human. I am simply a woman with a story that demands to be told. And in releasing […]

On the night of October 14, 1962, at 10:40 PM PST, my mother, Frances Marion Cascinai, age 37, was found dead in our family home at 1034 Pumnalo Street in San Bernardino, California. Her death certificate lists the cause as a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest and heart, labeled a suicide.

There’s no mention of the weapon itself or any additional injuries. I was just nine years old at the time. My younger brother George was six.

I begin this blog post—and the ones that will follow about my mother with a simple truth: these words are tough to put down.

Even now, as I write, I stand at the edge of this journey, only just beginning to uncover what has long […]