There is a strange kind of pain that comes from watching people define you forever by the worst years of your life while completely ignoring the years you spent trying to heal afterward.
Over the last year, especially with the escalation surrounding Kayleena’s family, I have found myself processing something I never expected to process publicly. Not just accusations or assumptions, but the strange experience of watching people reduce an entire human life down to its worst chapters while ignoring years of growth, counseling, accountability, healing, and change.
And honestly, part of what has forced me to step back and think deeply is not simply that people may have opinions about my past. I understand that. What has affected me more is the level of effort being invested into building a public narrative around it through reaching into former relationships, contacting people connected to my past, and gathering stories, screenshots, impressions, warnings, and secondhand narratives.
At some point, it stops looking like concern and starts looking like an intense need to publicly define another human being by the worst moments of their life while ignoring years of healing, growth, accountability, and change.
And those are not the same thing.
Why We Started Writing Publicly
So while others gather their so called evidence, assumptions, and narratives about me, I have decided to start sharing more of my actual story too. Not to endlessly defend myself or win public opinion, but because healing sometimes requires honesty.
This is not an attempt to justify my failures. It is an attempt to speak more openly about them within the larger story of healing, accountability, recovery, and growth. Maybe part of my own healing process is finally speaking openly about parts of my life I carried quietly for years. For a long time I was far more comfortable talking about healing in theory than openly talking about the parts of myself that needed healing too.
I also want to acknowledge Kayleena here. She walked through parts of writing this with me. Some of these conversations were difficult, emotional, reflective, and deeply honest. But she encouraged honesty over image management, and I am grateful for her voice, strength, perspective, patience, and support throughout this process.
For the most part, I have not publicly talked much about my own story. This blog has largely focused on Kayleena’s healing, her experiences, her voice, and her process of rebuilding peace after years of emotional strain and conflict. My role has mostly been supportive, reflective, protective, and at times deeply personal as I processed parts of this alongside her.
Finding a Voice After Silence
Part of what pushed this blog into the public space was watching Kayleena’s story increasingly being discussed, interpreted, assumed, and framed by other people while she herself remained largely silent. Rumors spread, narratives formed, assumptions were made, and conclusions were reached about her life, her relationship, her safety, her faith, her judgment, and her decisions. And from our perspective, much of it felt deeply incomplete, distorted, unfair, or openly untrue.
At some point, she realized that if people were already going to tell her story publicly, then she also deserved the right to speak for herself. Not through whispers, triangulation, or secondhand narratives, but in her own words.
And honestly, the blog became part of how she found her voice again. It became a place to process, untangle confusion, and speak honestly about fear, control, faith, healing, boundaries, grief, and growth.
And if I am being honest, it also became an outlet for me at times too. Some of this writing came from calm reflection. Some came from exhaustion, anger, hurt, grief, frustration, confusion, and trying to process attacks and accusations in real time. But through all of it, part of my goal was also to support her, protect her, grow alongside her, and continue confronting my own failures honestly instead of hiding from them.
Real People Started Connecting
And somewhere along the way, something unexpected happened.
Real people started connecting with the blog.
Part of why Kayleena wanted to begin writing publicly in the first place was because she knew she could not possibly be the only person experiencing dynamics like this. She knew other people were quietly living inside controlling relationships, unhealthy family systems, spiritual pressure, emotional confusion, fear, shame, and silence too.
And as people slowly began reaching out and sharing their own stories, it only confirmed what she had suspected from the beginning.
We were never the only ones.
These patterns existed in other families, relationships, churches, and communities too.
Honestly, one of the most touching parts of this entire experience has been hearing people say the blog helped them feel like they finally had a voice too. People reached out saying they felt seen, understood, validated, and less alone after reading things they had struggled to explain even to themselves for years.
That meant more to us than we can probably fully explain.
Some readers were still inside those environments. Others had already escaped them. Some were simply trying to understand what they had lived through and why it affected them so deeply.
People navigating controlling relationships, untangling toxic family systems, recovering from spiritual manipulation, and struggling with boundaries, shame, fear, anxiety, people pleasing, addiction, grief, confusion, and emotional exhaustion all began connecting with the writing.
And somewhere along the way, what started as emotional processing slowly became something more meaningful. A place where broken people could feel less alone. A place where healing conversations could happen openly. A place where difficult experiences people normally hide in silence could finally be talked about honestly.
That does not mean we have written everything perfectly, and it does not mean emotion has never shaped our writing. But it does mean this space became larger than simply venting frustration.
It became part of healing.
Not just for us, but for many other people quietly carrying similar pain.
My Past Is Real
But I also have a history. A painful one at times. A complicated one.
I understand why people can form opinions about me. I am older. I have been divorced twice. I have children who are now estranged from me. I have made mistakes in my life and in relationships. I struggled with anger in parts of my past. I drank too much for years. I battled pornography during unhealthy seasons of my life. I carried wounds, shame, emotional exhaustion, and coping mechanisms I did not know how to process correctly. And for a long time I lived in survival mode instead of healing.
None of that is hidden.
In fact, most people who actually know me already know these things. Many walked through those years with me. Some confronted me during them. Some watched me struggle through them. Others watched me slowly heal through them.
I know I have let a lot of people down over the years. Some of those failures still grieve me. Some relationships still hurt. Some consequences do not disappear simply because you grow.
That reality is not lost on me.
Surviving Dysfunction Changes People
My first marriage ended after my wife was unfaithful while I was serving my country in the United States Navy.
My second marriage struggled almost from the very beginning. If I am being honest, one of my greatest mistakes was staying too long trying to save something that had become deeply unhealthy. For years I tried to hold everything together through counseling, individual work, marriage counseling, emotional endurance, and sheer determination to keep my family intact. I kept believing that if I just tried harder, stayed calmer, sacrificed more, absorbed more pain quietly, or carried more weight emotionally, somehow things would stabilize.
There were also seasons in my life where our home became deeply unhealthy in ways I rarely talked about publicly. There was emotional volatility, verbal conflict, deep dysfunction, and at times physical aggression directed toward me as well.
And if I am being fully honest, I was not innocent in all of it either.
I was never physically abusive, but there were seasons where I became verbally harsh, emotionally reactive, angry, withdrawn, unhealthy, and damaging in other ways. Survival mode, unresolved pain, exhaustion, resentment, shame, fear, hopelessness, and dysfunction affected both of us differently.
That does not excuse my failures.
I own them.
But it also means the story is more complicated than simply assigning one villain and one victim.
Learning Accountability and Recovery
For years I minimized what was happening, justified what was happening, or convinced myself I simply needed to be stronger, calmer, more patient, or more spiritually mature. I stayed far longer than I should have because I genuinely wanted my family to survive.
But surviving dysfunction for years changes people. It affects emotional regulation, coping mechanisms, mental health, identity, and how a person carries stress, fear, hopelessness, shame, and anger.
Part of healing for me was learning how to stop surviving dysfunction and start becoming accountable for the man I was becoming inside it.
Only I can control my reactions and how I respond to the world around me.
And I take full accountability for that.
Regardless of the pain, dysfunction, conflict, or survival mode I was living inside, I am still responsible for the ways I responded, the ways I hurt people emotionally, and the unhealthy ways I coped during those years. I cannot blame other people for my reactions, my anger, or the unhealthy ways I handled pain, stress, shame, conflict, or emotional exhaustion.
Those choices were still mine.
And part of real healing is being honest enough to admit that without excuses.
I still have amends to make. I still have areas where I need to grow. I still have things I continue working through today. That is part of why my time in Celebrate Recovery matters so much to me.
Healing Is a Process
No matter what some people say or think, accountability and making amends are not a one time statement or an overnight transformation. Healing, recovery, and rebuilding trust are all processes that take time.
Some damage takes years to fully understand. Some patterns take years to unlearn. Some amends require consistency and changed behavior over time before words alone mean much. And if I am being fully honest, some amends are still only being processed internally and have not even fully begun yet.
Sometimes people think accountability means instantly having every answer, every apology perfectly formed, every relationship repaired, and every wound resolved overnight.
Real healing usually does not work that way.
Sometimes before a person can make meaningful amends outwardly, they first have to become honest enough inwardly to fully understand the damage they caused, the patterns they lived in, and the ways they need to change moving forward.
That process can be painful, humbling, slow, and deeply uncomfortable.
But slow growth does not automatically mean fake growth. That does not mean accountability is absent. Sometimes it means a person is doing the slower, harder work of actually changing instead of simply performing shame publicly for immediate approval.
And I believe there is a very real difference between those two things.