I was born in central Wisconsin and we moved to Arkansas pretty soon after.
I lived there until my fifth birthday or just about a month before when my
dad died.
After that, we moved back to Wisconsin to be closer to my mom's family.
That was a smaller town of about 50,000 people.
It's fairly conservative and Christian.
Interesting fact, at one point the WSJ called Wausau,
the town that I grew up in, America's most middle class city.
Although my mom was unemployed
and we depended upon the government for income.
So our experience
was definitely more closer to the poverty end than the middle class end.
Far as like culture,
you know, despite my mom and I both watching my dad die,
we didn't have therapy. That wasn't something to discuss.
Whenever people are telling me about, like their grandparents or,
you know, sibling or uncles or something fighting in the war,
whether it's like the Korean War or the Vietnam War, the one in the nineties,
like Desert Storm, anything like that, there was like, we don't talk about it.
It always makes me think of the experience with my family, with my father.
So I, I don't really understand the reason.
My family's always gone to great lengths
to avoid talking about the experience of my dad's death.