IOLY STORYKOWING™

I was shaped in a language older than words—the unspoken secrets carried by children of domestic abuse. In that tenuous existence, I learned to listen past sound, to the breath between sentences, to sense the tremors behind the tears, to bear witness to the weight that the abused carry and cannot name.

Long before I should have been assigned such tasks, I sat with my mother in locked small rooms, keeping vigil—a listener, a bridge, an unknowing quiet anchor. At age eight, I could not pronounce the work; I simply completed it. Through harmonizing our souls, I too rose—but I rose through brokenness. Mother found rest in my presence and did not know why. I simply knew, with childlike understanding, that she needed me and entrusted me to bear witness to her scars.

From the soft urgency of my childlike heart, I built emotional scaffolding to keep my mother from falling. I did not understand that the ground beneath my rising was unsafe—fragmented. That scaffolding would later stagnate my sense of self in devastating, life-altering ways. Why? Because my glow became a source of light my mother could not find in her own reflection.

I cherish the line I come from. It is a line of brilliance, endurance, and imperfect love. I was given strength in the tongue of another era, and taught tenderness in the only dialect available. What was missing in words, I learned to translate in my heart.

IOLY StoryKnowing™ now steps forward—not invented, but remembered, as a way of tending to narrative the way we tend to flame: cupping the fragile, fanning the strong, turning inner harm into light.

Telling this story is more than a release.

It is medicine.

It is where reflection becomes the last phase of transformation.

It is how healing becomes heritage.

This is how I must stop the inner breaking, how I lift myself without shaming those whom I pray are resting in peace, how I honor the past while rising within the steady mindset that continues to shape my future.

To see my story.
To tell my story.
To share my story—not as confession, but as consecration.

This is The Rising.
And as I rise, I leave a light on for those who are ready to follow in my footsteps and acknowledge their non-sugarcoated truth.