Calm Within The Storm

Human life is light and fleeting. But memory crosses timelines, generations, and even lingers in our DNA. Through humanity lies a quiet form of immortality, and that is the foundation of my book.

Tara in “Immortality’s End” never physically dies in her 750 years of existence. How does one continue through trauma and loss when there is no death in sight? How can Tara continue building relationships, ending with death or leaving loved ones? How can anyone thrive through 750 years of pain?

For Tara, she was not surviving; she was simply living.

As a child, Tara’s life as a slave felt normal. She worked for the Duncans, labored in the fields, helped her mother clean, returned to her shack at night, and repeated it all the next day. Her mother and Nana never spoke of hardship or allowed themselves to complain. They simply lived by laughing, joking, singing, and sharing love within a constant state of uncertainty and danger.

Tara’s normalized life is where the trauma lives. Tara learned to move through the chaos, which felt normal, by retreating into her dreams. Throughout the book, we discover that some of those dreams become premonitions, though most are visions of another life.

In the book, Tara dreams of traveling beyond her reality and exploring the world. She desires freedom, freedom to live the life of her own choosing.

I’m writing this blog in real time and realize one truth: I built into my book the exact coping mechanisms I used to survive my own trauma. My original intention in writing Immortality’s End was to escape my childhood and to outrun death. I loved the idea of creating a world different from my own. But I wasn’t completely successful in leaving my reality behind.

My childhood was hard, and I had to find ways to survive it.

Tara, in my story, is a literal slave, which is a reflection of how I felt growing up. Being raised by a drug-addicted, narcissistic mother placed me in a state of servitude to manipulation, instability, and crime. There was not a single day in my childhood when I felt safe. Not one.

Police encounters, violence, exposure to predators, and dangerous situations that no child should face.

So, I left a reality that felt too heavy. I escaped into books, music, and science fiction. I learned to laugh, joke, and sing through pain; I survived by distance, from people and myself.

Then, I wrote Tara.

So, how does someone survive consistent pain?

In Tara’s case, she turns toward love as a form of survival. Even in the worst moments, she continues to seek it, to give, and to hold onto love.

My response was the opposite.

I shut my emotions down completely and locked them away. I came to believe that feelings were a weakness, so I went numb. Numbness kept me alive. If I couldn’t feel anything, I couldn’t be hurt again.

In many ways, I wrote Tara’s coping mechanisms as a wish for myself.

Tara’s experience of rape parallels my own. In her story, the only way forward is through, and she chooses love to endure and survive.

I chose to forget. I buried the memories of being raped and molested repeatedly so deeply that my mind refused to access them until I was twenty years old.

Tara’s losing her father’s family becomes another layer of trauma. It brings forward abandonment wounds that echo throughout her journey and even across time in the book.

My mother recently passed away, but that was not the beginning of my abandonment issues. Growing up in a home without consistent love or safety is its own form of abandonment. My father’s absence during my childhood added another layer of pain. Being emotionally neglected and unwanted by both parents created a void I had to learn how to face and eventually fill on my own.

Tara, in her own way, is forced to do the same.

Tara continues to love and eventually builds a chosen family with her immortal friends, Kevin and Evan. When she is forced to “die” and leave them behind, it breaks her heart. Walking away from a family she created feels unbearable and deeply unfair.

In my own life, I’ve experienced many losses that also felt unjust. My divorce felt like a death, one I never wanted to face.

Toward the end of Tara’s story, her pain and trauma resurface. After losing Kevin, she is exhausted from all her pain and chooses violence instead. I wrote this section as a cautionary truth: when pain is left unprocessed, trauma is often passed on to others.

I knew facing old wounds would heal me, and I never wanted to become someone who inflicted pain because of my own. I wanted to step out of survival mode and continue finding joy in living. I recognize that I could have chosen darkness in many moments of my life, and I would have been justified in doing so.

Thankfully, Tara awakens during the apocalypse, which is the reason for her narration and reflection.

Returning to the first question: how does someone continue through trauma and loss with no end? Writing this blog has made the answer clear. Tara survives and thrives through love, the love she has for others, and the love she slowly develops for herself. She becomes stronger not despite love, but because of love. I couldn’t write her any other way.

For me, survival looked different. I coped through repression, denial, and forgetting. I escaped into books, the arts, education, and music. I learned that hard work creates stability, and I adopted a soldier-like mindset of pushing through. In many ways, that approach carried me through life.

Today, I am learning to thrive through gratitude, joy, and becoming emotionally intelligent in navigating problems and relationships. I’ve found love in my chosen family of close friends. Through therapy and shadow work, I’ve begun dismantling many of the beliefs shaped by my upbringing and by my own survival patterns.

I still have work to do.

For Tara, love was the answer. I am slowly catching up to that truth in my life. Stay tuned.