Written By: S. Tuttle
Everybody has that moment – the one where life flips and nothing ever feels the same again. Mine hit in the third grade.
But really, everything started unraveling long before that.
We were once just a regular Pentecostal family. Two Sunday services. Long skirts. Shouting and tambourines. Granny would wash dishes listening to her Crabb Family cassette. It wasn’t perfect, but it was us. There was still some innocence, still some light.
Then my mom met him, (I won’t use his name, he doesn’t get that kind of power here.) But, he was the president of a biker gang, and that “regular family” started to fade fast. That relationship changed everything. He introduced mom to drugs, money, and power; and before long, it wasn’t just her. One by one, the rest of the family got pulled in. What started as fun and a means of survival turned into full-blown addiction. We went from church pews to clubhouses, from worship to weapons, from good ole Pentecostals to what some folks would call the Kentucky Cartel.
But, how did safe space Granny get involved? I’m glad you ask… Context is important – She didn’t initially start raising me alone; her husband, my papaw (Charlie) died in ’98 when I was just two; my granny tried to keep things together. He’d been a school bus driver by day and sold weed by night for extra cash. So when he passed she did what she knew to do; she started selling her prescriptions just to survive, but eventually, temptation hit. The leaders of the club saw potential in her, and the money became too easy to walk away from. It got darker from there. Now, I want to be clear to keep from portraying her in a bad light. She was one of the best women you’d ever meet, the kind that would give you the shirt off her back, in her mind she was doing this for me. She had a 5th grade education and no work experience – in her head, she justified this as the only option. But, temptation of the flesh will ruin you every time. She was tempted to go further and further until she was in too deep to turn around. I vividly remember many nights of hearing her cry out to God to get her out of the mess she’d got involved in. Sometimes good people make bad choices – it doesn’t make them bad.
Probably my first realization that something was wrong. I remember being five years old, laying on my stomach beside my sister Desaray in the hallway of our trailer while Granny stood at the front door, hiding a .357 behind her back because someone was knocking on the door looking for a fix in the middle of the night – she thought it might be trouble. I believe that’s my first core memory – or my first memory period. Unfortunately, that wasn’t a one-time thing… that was life. We lived with the constant fear that bullets might fly at any second, but for us, that kind of fear had become normal.
Then came third grade, the year that redefined everything.
The school year was normal, until it wasn’t. I stepped off the school bus one day like I had a hundred times before. But this time, my family was huddled on the porch. Everyone was there… except Granny. That’s when they told me: she’s been arrested. And because my family didn’t believe in sugarcoating anything, not even for a third grader; I got the whole story. A woman we only knew as “Red” wore a wire every time she had came by (audio and video don’t lie) – Red turned her in. She was charged with multiple counts for trafficking controlled substances. I’m talking about Granny, the sweet fifty-eight year old woman who had just purchased new pews for her church, was being hauled to lock up in cuffs.
I didn’t understand the weight of it all at the time, but I knew enough to feel it in my chest – honestly this is probably the day my life long battle with anxiety was born. I climbed into the back of my uncle’s car and watched the only home I’d ever known disappear through the back window; core memory number 2. That was the last time I ever stepped foot in the only place I’d known as “home.”
Eventually, Granny was sentenced to three years. She served six months in the state penitentiary. But in those six months, my world unraveled fast. I bounced through four different homes, across two different states.
First, I lived with an aunt and uncle. Their house was overcrowded, full of tension and fighting. Addiction had made its way to him and the situation was getting worse by the day. They eventually moved to Florida, and being in their custody – I went with them. But when we came back to Kentucky for a visit, I made the choice to stay with another uncle. Yes, I know how it sounds – I was child making decisions about their placement. At the time, I thought it was the right move – but it ended up being one of the worst.
This uncle had lost his wife a few years prior – he was in a new relationship, and on the surface, it looked stable. But deep down, he was battling serious demons. He was addicted to Xanax, he was violent, and emotionally unstable. Along with being an addict, he was also a predator – never to me, but it still makes me sick to think about. But even in that dark place, God slipped in a light. I got close to two girls there, his girlfriend’s daughters, they became like sisters to me. The three of us still do life together; we fight, laugh, and occasionally trauma bond. We don’t speak to him (or most of them) anymore, but those girls were a true gift. They were God’s grace in the middle of the mess.
Then came February 11, 2007. I remember the date because they wrote it on my C-Collar.
He (uncle) took me out for a late-night Walmart run and passed out at the wheel. We crashed into another car going 70 mph. Miraculously, I wasn’t injured but, because he was intoxicated CPS got involved immediately. Another core memory references on of those “girls” mentioned above. They had pulled up on the accident; while all the adults biggest concern was my uncle being arrested – I vividly remember her tears and concern for her “bub” she was eight – that’s stuck with me for years. But, as the story goes I was moved again, to home number three; this time to a distant cousin and her husband.
We were crammed into a one bedroom marriage dorm at Union College – but it was far from the college lifestyle you’d expect – that place was like boot camp. Her husband was cruel and strict, making me stand in weird military-like positions until my legs gave out if I was the least bit defiant. I was already broken. Already carrying more than most adults ever will at the ripe age of nine. Then it came out that he was not only abusive, but had multiple wives and crap hit the fan. My cousin packed our bags and called her mom. And just like that, I was on my way to home number four.
This was all over a six month period.
The fourth placement was the final placement until Granny came back. I was so relieved to see her. I needed something familiar, something that felt like home. But even though she was back, nothing was the same. I wasn’t the same. The damage had already been done. The safe place I’d clung to as a child didn’t exist anymore. I was different – hurt, guarded, worn thin. But so was everything else. The family was slipping even further into addiction, deeper into chaos, things didn’t go back to normal… they got worse. And part of me knew deep down – we weren’t coming back from this.
That was the beginning of the crushing. But even there – in the broken, scattered pieces – God was already moving. Planting people in my path. Protecting me when everything around me was falling apart. I didn’t see it then, but I do now. He was never absent. Never silent. That day in third grade didn’t end my story – it just started a different chapter.
He’s still writing; and so am I.
Thank you for following along in my journey – I can’t wait to share the next piece with YOU!
Crushed Not Cursed 