COMING 2025

Finding Our Way Home

BROKEN FAMILY: Finding Our Way Home

Query

My memoir presents a true, timely and novel representation of the impacts of terrifying mental, physical and emotional abuse perpetrated by powerful men. My own story of neglect and exploitation by men exposes a wider crisis where accountability has failed and vulnerable children have been victims. This book emerges now to expose harms, honor survivors and demand accountability. 

My book begins with my mother sitting on the edge of the bed, the one with the purple bedspread, reading our favorite story, Are You My Mother? She finished the book, set it down, and without another word, walked out of the house, and disappeared for nine years. We were three kids under three and I was the middle child.

Shortly after my mother’s disappearance, I was separated from my siblings and left in the terrifying care of a sexually abusive uncle who lived in Montana. This nightmare was punctuated by the erratic appearances of my father as he reinvented himself, taking my siblings and me on a chaotic ride through a series of emotionally-unavailable "mothers," and illegal careers, only to return me to my abusive uncle when his life took a turn in another direction. My father started dealing drugs with strangers who came and went, and wanting to raise our consciousness, he started smoking pot with us when I was six years old. 

After what dad called his Awakening, we were confronted with other trials, from unsafe environments to peeping toms and naked-hippie gatherings. We were kept out of public schools which he believed to be "Shame Institutes." By the time I was 10, my siblings and I were supporting his cottage industry by tying macrame hangers and helping make sand candles. Always trying new food fads, we were put on mugwort tea and brown rice diets to rid our body of worms. Luckily for us, there was a Winchell’s donut house just up the alley, where we befriended the workers and ate free donuts by the dozen. I robbed that donut house before I left home that spring.

At 13, navigating a maze of confusion, distrust and fear, I devised a plan to run away and escape my fathers house, leaving my siblings, my only anchors, behind. I found myself ensnared in survival-based sexual relationships with men more than twice my age, desperate to find security in a world that felt relentlessly hostile. With only five years of education between elementary and middle school, I faced improbable odds. 

Along the way, figures like Uncle Ernie, Little Earl, Misty, Stomper, Scat, Cedric and Leroy Jones, became both mentors and predators. Often homeless, sleeping in laundry rooms, church pews and bathroom stalls, I was drawn into escort services, con games, robberies and witnessed acts of violence. 

Through the treacherous landscape of my teens, I encountered a presence; startling, intimate and sacred, that proved to be a compass eventually steering me away from the streets. And at nineteen, a transformative encounter with my father within a Native American sweat lodge became a moment for healing, changing the trajectory of my life. 

Broken Family invites readers into a shared chamber of humanity and stands as a celebration of survival. It casts a light on intergenerational trauma, the hidden struggles of children from fractured families and what I understand as our collective memory’s wider wound. My book brings into focus the transformative power of compassion and courage and it explores themes similar to the works of Educated, by Tara Westover, The Glass Castle, by Jeanette Walls, and What My Bones Know, by Stephanie Loo. 

My 387 page memoir chronicles my journey from age two to nineteen and my hope is that it contributes meaningfully to the literary landscape by helping readers to understand the epidemic of predatory child abuse, and intergenerational trauma. For those readers who are victims themselves, my hope is that my story can inspire others towards healing and resilience. 

The sequel to Broken Family is well underway. 

I am enthusiastic about the opportunity to work with a literary agent and publisher who shares my passion for storytelling; a skill I learned in my family of origin.

It is a serious thing just to be alive on this fresh morning in this broken world

-Mary Oliver



  Prologue

1975

     I was already awake when the alarm clock under my pillow went off at 5:00 a.m. I quickly dressed, carefully walked up the stairs from the basement, and slipped out the back door. I didn’t want to wake my dad and siblings who were sleeping inside. Crickets were chirping as I left the house and the early morning sky was still filled with stars. I noticed that the birds hadn’t started singing yet. 

     I took a deep breath and paused to look around; I think I was waiting for some sort of blessing or good luck omen. My heart hurt at the thought of leaving Tonya and Mark behind, because Dad had finally settled us all into a house together. 

     But I knew I had to go. Standing in the dark, the familiar knot of distrust tightened in my stomach as I thought about my moms disappearance and the multitude of times my father abandoned me.  His departures etched deep scars in my heart, leaving me in the grip of my abusive uncle and separated from my siblings.

     I didn’t realize then that my decision to escape from home would set in motion a chain of events that would pull me further into a violent, unforgiving world. I understood however, that I had to summon enough courage to embark on this uncertain path, towards what felt like freedom.

      Barefoot, I was wearing my favorite blue sweat jacket and carried my Converse sneakers in one hand and my heavy backpack in another. Crouching and peering ahead, I stepped toward the alley where my boyfriend waited. I could see Willie’s silhouette standing outside his ‘72 dusty blue Toyota Corolla with the hatchback open. The moon cast a long shadow behind him down the dark alley. 

     Willie was 19, tall, with a big afro, and his skin was silky smooth. I remembered the day we had met in Winchells donuts, several months earlier. That was right before I robbed the place. 

     I had taken the garage key from my dad’s keychain earlier that evening and left it in the lock. I turned the handle of the old metal door to the yellow brick garage that faced the alley, and slowly lifted it. My heart pounded as we loaded the back of Willie’s car with my boxes, and I imagined my dad catching me as I tried to escape. Would he attempt to hold me back, or would he shrug and say, he didn’t know what my karma was, trusting I must find my own way?

We quickly finished loading, and Willie got into the car, silently closing his door. Leaning over, he pushed open the passenger door and urgently whispered, “Get in, Baby. We’re going home.” 

     I was just 13.

 ~Xiuhtezcatl Martinez
My mothers story is nothing short of a miraculous demonstration of humanity's ability to heal, and transcend trauma to be a vessel for unconditional love. 

Equally exhilarating, heartbreaking and inspiring, this recounting of her journey sheds light on the turbulent adventures she endured to arrive at her life mission of helping build a better world for the youth and future generations. 

As great art often does, the darkness confronted and healing undergone through the writing of a book so personal reminds me of how closely the internal mirrors the external; how the individual mirrors the collective. 

After a lifetime of service to youth worldwide through her groundbreaking work as the founder of Earth Guardians, this book unveils a profound story of love, loss, broken families, and healing. 

Despite growing up never knowing a home or a loving mother, she not only provided for her 6 children, but also for thousands of young people across the globe whose voices and communities were nourished by the vision that my mother has been a vessel for,  for over 30 years. 

Courageous, captivating and necessary, the ripples of this journey now told will undoubtedly affirm and uplift many as we all navigate through the obstacles of this complicated and messy world, in search of our light.