So much of my life feels like scattered fragments—moments and memories that never quite form a whole. It’s a painful kind of disconnection, one that can feel not only overwhelming but deeply unjust. My mother was taken from me, and I’ve had to live with the haunting question of whether my father was the one who tore her away. When she was gone, it felt like my heart forgot how to beat.

I waited—frozen—for my lungs to remember how to breathe. I was paralyzed, trapped in what felt like an unending nightmare.

I divide my life into three chapters to make sense of it all.

The First Chapter is my life as a little girl and the young woman […]

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 […]