The Ice Cream Lady

As a child, I couldn’t grasp the complexities of trauma or why it settled in my young heart like a heavy fog. I just knew I felt out of place, carrying a sadness that words couldn’t capture. The adults around me, though filled with love, were navigating their own struggles, leaving me to wrestle with emotions I couldn’t name. It wasn’t until years later that I began to see the puzzle of our family more clearly—the way each of us carried pieces of resilience and unspoken pain. Through it all, Mama Jean’s typewriter became my silent confidant, the one place I could pour out my tangled thoughts and begin to make sense of my world.