About the Book

I Chose to Be Here
Non-Fiction / Memoir

Raised inside a family con, I went from selling candy as a child to managing public crises as an adult—until I found myself looking over the edge of a bridge and had to decide whether to stay silent or save myself.

I was trained in the art of deception. My father was a con artist, and I adored him with the blind devotion of a child who didn’t know any better. By eleven, I was a seasoned swindler—helping him exploit the foster care system, sell candy outside grocery stores, pitch pyramid schemes, and move nearly thirty times, often while living in a 34-foot Bounder RV. Along with six other children, including my two brothers, we amassed more than $250,000—tax-free.

I CHOSE TO BE HERE is a braided memoir tracing a childhood shaped by fraud and enforced loyalty and an adult life built on achievement and silence. As I construct a version of success far removed from chaos, the instincts that once kept me safe—vigilance, containment, control—follow me into adulthood, where they quietly fail. I help others manage moments of scrutiny while evading my own, until motherhood becomes the fault line. Miscarriage, traumatic labor, and postpartum depression expose the limits of those instincts.

The reckoning arrives not in a dramatic act, but in a sentence I avoided my entire life: I need help.

At a time when conversations about mental health often center on crisis moments rather than their aftermath, this book offers an intimate, scene-driven exploration of what staying alive actually requires—long after the danger appears to have passed.

This is not a memoir of tidy redemption. I CHOSE TO BE HERE is for anyone who has looked over the edge and chosen to stay.