There are memories you tell people.
And there are memories you spend your whole life trying not to touch.
Eli is about the second kind.
He loved them. He feared them. He wanted their approval anyway.
That is the complicated thing about family. You can love someone and still be angry. Miss someone and still carry what they did to you. Forgive someone and still remember everything.
Eli is a raw memoir about family, shame, regret, love, and the distance between the person you were and the person you are trying to become.
There are no perfect victims here.
No perfect parents.
No perfect husbands, fathers, or sons.
Just people who loved each other imperfectly, hurt each other, carried things they never talked about, and kept going.
And one man finally willing to look at all of it.
Not to excuse it.
Not to make it beautiful.
Just to tell the truth as he remembers it.
You may open Eli wanting to know what happened to him.
But somewhere in these pages, you may find pieces of yourself.
A memory you have avoided.
A regret you still carry.
A life that did not turn out the way you imagined.
Because Eli is not a story about reaching the other side. It is about what happens when you are still somewhere in the middle.
Still carrying parts of the past. Still trying to understand them. Still learning how to be present in a life that kept moving while you were trying to catch up.
