Episode 2, Part 1: Not Excuses, Truths: Domestic Violence, Negligent Homicide & Accountability

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.