I’m the guest this week on the new episode of The Depression Files Podcast, out today on iTunes, Podbean, and at www.TheDepressionFiles.com 🎧

“With mental and behavioral health, I’m trying to break down those barriers and make it normal — and I figure it can also be fun and happy, right? Like…why stop at normal? Maybe we can all actually celebrate the joy of recovery, the joy of resilience, the joy of music, and the fact that our humanity is actually made up of all of these parts. There’s something to be celebrated in that.”

Lots of TV talking heads screaming about how shocked they are that the adults in HBO’s “Leaving Neverland” documentary all seem to have just gone along with Michael Jackson’s predation; but sexual predators are experts at grooming entire families, and it happens slowly, over time.

This was certainly the case with what happened during my own youth. These people can sense when space exists between a child and their parents, perhaps created from previous abuse, neglect, some other type of trauma, or a need that isn’t being met at home, and they shapeshift to fill that empty space, meeting the need — not just for the victim in their sights, but for all of the grown-ups around that child. It’s easy to judge looking in from the outside, but make no mistake: These parents and families are victims of the monster, too.

When I was 16 I had a much older teacher start showing me special attention and eventually openly seduce me during a summer art program for teens that I was attending at the Pacific Northwest College of Art, and literally nobody gave a shit. Grown-ups offered me rides to and from this man’s house, where he regularly fed me and my underage friends drugs and alcohol, and had sex with me. None of this happened in the shadows. I was openly sleeping over at this teacher’s house, in his bed, showering in his master bathroom. Nothing was a secret; not to his friends, roommates, family, and coworkers — and not to mine. Read the rest of this entry »

30 years ago I was hurt by a family friend in the house pictured here, just beyond that upstairs window, over the course of two years. When I left York, Nebraska in 1994 I swore that I would never return…and I have kept that promise to myself and others in the years since.

My sweet mom and dad were passing through that part of the country today and agreed to take some pictures of places where I felt that I had lost myself and send them to me.

So here is this shitty house with its stupid upstairs window, in all its small nothingness. It’s not big and scary like I have grown it in my mind all these years; It’s just a house like any other house in a town like any other town. This place has no power anymore, and neither does the man who hurt me there.