From the Ashes I Arose
I was raised in a suburb just north of Detroit, MI. Three days after I graduated high school, I bought a one-way ticket to Boulder, CO. This would be the start of eight years of traveling to all 50 of the United States and more than 40 countries overseas. For the most part, I would never stay in one place longer than 3 months. It was an amazing, enlightening & frightening journey. I cleaned chicken coups in the desert of New Mexico, and drove shuttle buses in Israel. I bartended in the Czech Republic, lived in a cave along Samarian Gorge on the Greek island of Crete, was strangled unconscious in Tunis, Africa & barely made it back to Firenze, Italia, where I lived with a senora who had a winding staircase built by Michelangelo. After a couple of bomb scares in Tel Aviv & Jerusalem, I decided to come back to America to build some roots & financial stability.
Debating between Santa Barbara & Santa Cruz, I chose Santa Barbara because of the Mediterranean climate and only 3-5 miles between the ocean and the mountains. In Santa Barbara is where my entrepreneurial spirit took off. Starting with a window cleaning company and then real estate sales, property management and financing. From there, I built a financial services company, got married and started a digital marketing agency.
With a baby on the way, his mother and I decided to get married. As new parents, life changed drastically. Focused on our baby and this new way of living, mother was dealing with hormone swings. Eventually, we paid a visit to the doctor to find out that she was 20 weeks pregnant. Within 11 months of one another, we were married with 2 children. We ended up having 3 more children with a grand total of 5 children within 6 years of age from one another.
A Traumatic Moment I Will Never Forget
At 2 years old, following my son's MMR vaccine, the lights went out on my boy. His regression included all of his words, eye contact and any interest in the things he liked previously. This was very challenging as my son needed one on one for everything he did. Prior to figuring out that he needed a onesie at all times, he would stick his hands in his pants and eat his own feces and wipe it all over his room. Nothing turns a day sideways, like opening your child's door to see shit everywhere.
This put a huge strain on our marriage. I was trying to build a digital marketing agency while the sale of our financial services company allowed us to buy a fixer upper in Santa Barbara. Mom was at home with a seemingly impossible task.
Sometimes the things we can't change end up changing us - Unknown
When our fifth baby started missing milestones, mom snapped and started drinking heavily and using meth. I tried to keep everything afloat for a few months before I joined her on a destructive path in a very dark world. What had taken us 10 years to build was gone within 6 months, including all five of our children. Child Welfare Services came in and took the children. 4 of the children went to live with their grandparents and our son, who is very low functioning, was placed in a home in another town. Over the next 2 years, both mom and I would make frequent visits to jails, institutions & multiple near-death experiences.
, pursuing a divorce, my now ex and her family would file for false restraining orders and use 3 attorneys to get the house, income, cars and all of our monthly income. While in jail on false charges (although I wasn't living right, which showed enough signs to make their false allegations look credible), my ex and her family would close all of the bank accounts and remove all of the money. Upon getting out of jail, I was now homeless with no access to any money. On the streets I became a junkie and was brought back to life on 4 different occasions after my heart had stopped.
"We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope.” – Martin Luther King
The pain of this lifestyle and losing everything was debilitating. Nothing was worse than losing my kids and thinking of all the trauma I had inflicted on them at such a young age. My wife and her family would eventually close the CWS case, returning the kids home to be with their mom.
Over the next 6 months, I would live on the streets, at the casino or in drug houses. I would hear about gang bangers and meth dealers who were facing 10 years in prison for beating up their wives and young twin boys at my home and around my kids. In an effort to protect them, I would go up to the house to confront everyone to get away from my kids. My kid's mom would call the police and I would get dragged off to jail for a violation of a restraining order.
One day, I received a call from my kid's mom. She said she was in handcuffs and that I needed to come get the kids. She had just been raided by the swat team. There were 3 arrests while mom's charges were felony child endangerment, felony sales of meth & prostitution. Upon arriving at the scene, I saw my kids, who were terrified as a dozen police officers tore about the house. As I was arranging plans for the kids and I, the detective came by and said that the kids were not allowed to go with me because they were protected under the moms protective order. This brought CWS back into the case.
I was still married at that point, but being self-represented in court while going against 3 highly paid attorneys was beyond challenging. Not to mention, I had a restraining order, multiple violations along with drug charges against me. My wife was taken to jail and bailed out quickly by her father. She was forced to go to a residential treatment facility.
Miracles are Available to Everyone
I lost contact with my wife during treatment because they have what's called a "black out" period where they are not allowed to communicate with people outside. To my amazement, I started receiving letters from my wife, who was obviously clean and being honest. She wrote letters apologizing to me. She wrote letters to the district attorney and her attorneys stating that the restraining order was made up of lies she told while under the influence of alcohol and meth. She wrote letters to her parents telling them that the home was owned by the two of us and to stop trying to steal it from me. She said she was seeing life in a different way and wanted to work on our marriage.
The restraining order and most of the charges I received were dropped due to the letters the courts received. Since I violated the restraining order that was issued by the judge, I still had to do 52 weeks of anger management and a 4 month drug program which I completed.
My wife and I only made it a month or two when her billionaire grandma died. Caring for 5 kids within 6 years of age and 2 with special needs while being newly sober was tough. I believe that when her grandma died, she realized we were struggling and that she would be getting a big inheritance, so if she was going to leave the marriage, now would be the time.
My kid's mom went to her dad, made up more stories about my being some kind of monster and in came the police, attorneys and, with in a short time, I was back on the streets and broke. My wife started using it again and the gang bangers and meth dealers were back.
The greatest glory in living lies not in never failing, but in rising every time we fail.– Nelson Mandela
At that point, I was living in my car with my boy, who is non-verbal with severe autism and intellectual disability. My wife said she couldn't handle him. One day, I received a call from Child Welfare Services. To my surprise, they had been watching Lucy and the kids. The kids were at school and they informed me that the kids would not be allowed to go home with their mom after school. They asked me if I had a place for the kids. I replied "yes." They said to meet at the kids' school at the end of the day and that they would follow us back to my place so they could inspect the environment.
I was shocked. I was excited. I didn't have a place to take the kids to! Fortunately, I had started living right and was going to meetings. I was clean and sober, but I was homeless. I called a friend from church who I hadn't spoken to in a while. I shared the story and he said he would call me back. In 10 minutes, he called back and said to go meet his wife in a town close by Santa Barbara. When I arrived, I saw his wife and she was holding some keys in her hand. I got out of the car and she asked me to follow her into a condo they owned. We opened the door and the place was clean and empty with the exception of a coffee table. She proceeded to tell me that their tenant suddenly moved out a few weeks ago and they didn't have a new renter. I informed her that I didn't have any money. She told me no money was necessary. The Divine Spirit was clearly guiding me.
I met them at the kids' school, met child welfare services and when the kids came out they were excited and surprised to see me. When I told them they would be going home with me, their faces filled with fear. We all loaded up in the car where they would see their brother whom they hadn't seen in a while. We drove to a town called Carpinteria, just outside of Santa Barbara. As all of us, including CWS, got out of our cars, I informed them that I had just moved in and that the furniture wasn't in yet. I didn't tell them I had no furniture. They approved the place and my kids gathered some blankets and pads so we could sleep on the floor that night.
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