For most years of my childhood the holiday season played out fairly consistently and comparably. The first decade or so of my life my father's parents lived up in Oklahoma. After my grandfather died when I was 5, we continued to visit my grandmother. We made the trip most Thanksgivings and gathered with other out-of-town cousins and relatives. Around middle school my grandmother moved down to Texas, 35 minutes away from our home, so we visited every single Sunday afternoon. Recounting this is even strange for me to look back on because it was all, truly, fairly "normal" - something most aspects and recollections of my life have never been.

As a young child I battled through intense insecurity issues, extreme anger outbursts and unfathomable emotional irregularities from years of physical and sexual a...

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