Content notice: domestic violence, graphic injury, substance use, death.

In Part Two, I pick up from the kitchen tables and courtrooms and take you to a small-town patio where a woman who looks exactly like my ex–mother-in-law’s best friend sits down, orders sauvignon blanc, and, hours later, recognizes me. What happens next is not a courtroom scene; it’s the real place “justice” lives: at a table where everyone has heard a version of the story.

I trace how coercive control, self-hatred, and alcohol led to a negligent choice that began at three miles per hour and ended a man’s life; how prison and family court rearranged my motherhood; and how an appellate remand arrived too late to fix the decade-long record. I talk about building an internal compass when apologies and court orders aren’t enough: naming shame without drowning in it, choosing repair over self-erasure, and telling the difference between accountability and punishment, order and safety, discomfort and danger.

This episode argues what our institutions rarely admit: harm isn’t created in a vacuum, and most people who pass through “the system” are injured by it and then told to figure out how to live anyway. I’m not asking for pity; I’m asking for precision: about what reduces harm, what makes it worse, and what real repair can look like in ordinary rooms with ordinary people who suddenly see a “felon,” a “killer,” and the server they tipped 20%, all in the same person.

(Names changed. Views are mine. Upcoming episodes will connect these themes to public cases discussed in the series, including Luigi Mangione.)

Content notice: domestic violence, graphic injury, substance use, negligent homicide, incarceration.

I was an up-and-coming nonprofit leader and academic researcher until domestic violence and a fatal mistake changed everything. I’m a survivor who also caused harm. This episode is my origin story: the night blood ran down my face on New Year’s Eve, the decision to leave, and the long, messy road that followed: protective orders that didn’t protect across state lines, coping with alcohol, a low-speed crash that became a negligent homicide, and a sentence that took 26 months of my freedom but couldn’t answer the larger question of accountability.

Across forty-five raw minutes, I walk you through:

• The moment I knew the relationship was over—and why (00:03).
• The injury that should have ended with care, not abandonment (06:00).
• Jurisdictional loopholes that kept harassment “legal” (18:00).
• How alcohol became my wrong tool for real pain (22:00).
• The Walmart parking lot accident, the victim’s death, and losing custody (28:00).
• Utah’s indeterminate sentencing, prison, and why I couldn’t testify against my abuser (34:00).
• Holding two truths at once: being a victim in one case and the person responsible in another (40:00).

This isn’t a list of excuses; it’s a record of truths. I name the harm I endured and the harm I caused, and I sit with what our system actually does, and doesn’t do, when safety, suffering, responsibility, and dignity collide. I share the private ways I tried to “repay” a life I can never restore (fasting, silence, the idea of organ donation), and I ask the question that frames this show: What now? If the government is done with me but the grief is not, what does real accountability look like, for me, for victims, and for a justice system that often confuses order with safety? What happens to someone like Luigi Mangione when the justice system sidelines his constitutional rights to pedestalize billionaires and shame those of us demanding equity, livable conditions, and dignity?

If you’ve lived violence, loved someone who has, work in courts, corrections, or advocacy, or you’re just trying to make sense of complicated truths, this episode is for you. It’s trauma-informed, survivor-centered, and relentlessly honest.

Part 2 picks up with a chance encounter that forces my past and present to meet at a patio table; where a small-town narrative collapses in real time.

Names/identifying details are changed or compressed. This episode reflects my personal recollections, opinions, and good-faith interpretations based on contemporaneous notes and public records.

Keywords: domestic violence, coercive control, protective orders, negligent homicide, DUI, incarceration, prison, parole, trauma-informed, survivor story, accountability, lived experience.