About My Mother

To Sybil Ray Tennyson Stevens, my birth mother, who endured a life full of physical and sexual assaults, mental illness, and homelessness.

You live with more pain than most can see, battling the weight of mental illness in a world that rarely makes space for your healing.

You did not raise me, but your decision to leave was an act of survival — a choice shaped by trauma, fear, and strength.

This book is about my search for the man who hurt you, the father I never truly knew, and in that search, I began to understand you more clearly: your silences, your distance, your sorrow.

Though our relationship was shaped more by absence than presence, your story lives at the very heart of this one.

I carry it with tenderness, complexity, and care.

This is for you, not as a celebration or reconciliation, but as a recognition of your humanity.