What you are about to read is not a tale of perfection. It is not a story written from a mountaintop looking back with all the answers.
Instead, it is the honest account of a man who has walked through heartache, loss, addiction, love, mistakes, redemption, and the long difficult process of becoming who he was meant to be.
I met Clint when we were just kids-two teenagers standing at the edge of adulthood with no real understanding of how much life could change in such a short time. I was fifteen. He was sixteen.
I watched him struggle.
I watched him hurt.
I watched him wrestle with pain that were bigger than words.
There were good times, joy, laughter, and love. But there were nights the world felt impossible. Nights filled with fear, anger, and questions neither of us was old enough to answer.
There were conversations that lasted until sunrise. When just making it to the next day felt like a victory. Moments where the future felt uncertain.
What you will read in these pages is the story of those years and the years that followed. Not from someone looking in, but from the person who lived them.
It is about a young man who walked through unimaginable grief, search for belonging in all the wrong places, fought battles within and around him. And somehow found his way forward.
I am honored to have known Clint through part of his journey and honored to introduce you to his story.
As you turn these pages, I hope you will see more than the choas. I hope you see the young man, the son, the brother, the friend, the husband, the father, and the granddad. I hope you see that they mattered, that he matters. I hope you also see the courage it took to tell it.
Welcome to Clint’s story.
— Tammy