I didn’t write this book to entertain. It actually started as a late night rant, that resembled a journal entry more than anything. Little did I realize that writing down all of the memories and feelings would become not only a type of therapy for me, but eventually be long enough to consider publishing. Nope. It was not crafted to climb bestseller lists or rack up likes on social media sites. It was written because the truth matters, and because silence has broken too many of us.

I spent years serving families in the aftermath of disaster, witnessing heartbreak most people can’t imagine. I carried those stories home. Carried them into my sleep, my marriage, and into my children’s lives. Until one day, when I realized what it was doing to them and something inside me broke.

When Will You Be Home? is for every responder who kept moving while falling apart, and every loved one who waited in the shadows. It’s not just my story. It’s all of ours.

Too many of us suffer in silence and are afraid to speak up. We are afraid of retaliation. Afraid of being labeled “weak” or “soft” for simply being human. This memoir is a declaration: We are not weak.

If this book makes you uncomfortable, good. It’s supposed to. If it gives you hope, then it’s doing what I intended. Change can begin when we stop pretending everything’s fine and start telling the truth.

This is my mission now. To speak out. To protect the next responder who’s one more deployment away from falling apart. To fight for the families, like mine, who sacrificed more than anyone knew.

This is the wall I punched through.
And I won’t stop until the cracks I exposed become the path for someone else to break free.