Introduction: Finding Franklin & Fitz

In my lowest moments — when I felt like I had lost everything: money, connection, access, stability — I had nowhere left to go but inward. I didn’t choose to retreat; the world made the choice for me. What came next surprised me.

I found Franklin. I found Fitz. I found the whole team God created inside of me.

In the darkness, strength I thought was gone showed up again. The little boy who still believed — Fitz — and the man who learned to survive — Franklin — met in the same place. The spirit that trauma and time tried to bury kept breathing.

The Winter Shadow: When the Days Grow Short

There is a quiet attack that comes with the shortening days. Each year, as sunlight thins, a heaviness settles. For a long time I didn’t have a name for it. I only felt the drop, the slow drainage of color and energy.

Later I learned the word: Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). The body reacts to less light; the mind follows. When the world goes dim, the inner weather can go dark too.

That season layered on top of old wounds and new pressures. Understanding it didn’t make it easier — but it helped me stop calling myself weak. I wasn’t weak: I was overwhelmed, and part of my body was responding to the world the way it was built to respond.

The Six Million Dollar Man — The Body That Broke

Growing up, I loved The Six Million Dollar Man. Steve Austin got rebuilt better, faster, stronger. As a kid, it was a toy and a fantasy. As an adult, it became a map.

My physical health made me weak and sick enough to see how it affected me — not only physically but mentally and spiritually.

I survived strokes, tumors, a hernia, ulcers, thyroid problems, and a prostate removal. My body kept breaking, and each time I learned something new about how small the divide is between physical health and everything else: memory, mood, faith, hope.

Like Steve Austin’s rebuild, mine was messy and incomplete. I wasn’t replaced with a better model overnight. I had repairs, setbacks, and adjustments. But there was a through-line: even when the body failed, something inside kept working to hold the rest together.

The Boy Named Fitz

For years I carried two names inside me: Franklin and Fitz (Fitzgerald).

Fitz was the boy who got talked about — labeled, judged, misunderstood. He made mistakes that grew into stories other people told about me. So I hid him. I protected him by pushing him away, tucking him inside where the world couldn't reach him.

Franklin put on the armor: protector, provider, doer, the man who kept the lights on when everything else was falling apart. Franklin carried the weight so Fitz wouldn’t be seen as weak again.

That worked for a long time. But carrying two halves of a life separately is heavy. You hold one up and the other starts to rot in the dark. Eventually, the parts wanted to meet.

When Fitz Returned

When my life collapsed — emotionally, spiritually, financially — I started disappearing. I even blocked my own business calls without really realizing I’d done it. I withdrew from people who wanted to help and from the services that might have kept me afloat.

In that inward move something unexpected happened: Fitz came out. Franklin loosened his grip. The boy and the man met. That collision wasn't tidy. It was a raw, small miracle.

Standing in that ruin I saw the whole me — the dreams of the boy, the duty of the man, the faith that had been chipped but never shattered. In the darkest season I found a light inside me that had been waiting for a chance to breathe.

From Family Man to Single Father: A Hard Road

My breakdown wasn't one moment. It was an accumulation of years: marriages that ended, bonds that frayed, relationships that taught me hard lessons.

I was married nearly 15 years. My wife — from France — left twice to tend to her aging family. The second time she never returned and our marriage ended across an ocean.

There was a relationship that produced my son — a connection more physical than emotional — and later the mother of my daughters. I hoped for solidity. I wanted a real family. But the relationship was heavy and sometimes toxic. I took responsibility for my choices and for the ways those relationships shaped me.

They were chapters in my becoming, not excuses. They taught me how fragile plans can be and how necessary it is to keep showing up — even when showing up looks different than you expected.

My Mom, COVID, and Caregiving

When COVID hit, everything collapsed at once. My mom's health failed and she moved from Prichard, Alabama to Georgia to live with my sister near the Mall of Georgia — an apartment with flat floors so she wouldn't have to climb stairs.

She did okay for about six months, then she went downhill fast. At the same time, I was declining: hospital visits, depression, homelessness — not living on the street, but in hotel rooms — and trying to survive my own storms.

When she was placed in hospice for the first time, she called for me. She asked for me. I went because she was my mom. I sat with her for hours when nobody else was there. When she got well enough to leave hospice, I kept showing up.

Every Sunday after church I drove straight to her. Some days I was so tired I'd fall asleep in the chair beside her. I didn't want her to be alone. I wanted her to know: Your son didn't disappear.

Strokes, Heart Defects, and a Family Pattern

I survived two strokes — one in 2018 and another in 2019. Both were caused by a hole in my heart. My mom had the same defect. My older brother had the same defect. It was a generational wound written into our bodies.

They couldn't operate on my mom because she was already too weak. That reality broke something in me. It was a helplessness that turned into devotion: if I could be there, I would be there.

Hotel Rooms, Homelessness, and Holding On

During COVID I wasn't sleeping on the street, but I was living in hotel rooms — trying to stay safe, trying to be near my mom, trying to keep going between doctor's appointments and insecure income. Health, finances, mind — all of it was unstable.

But I held on. There were days when simply breathing felt like resistance. There were nights I let myself sleep in a chair beside my mom because I couldn't let her be alone. That choice cost me sleep, comfort, and sometimes pride — but it never cost me what mattered most.

My Daughters, Their Loss, and the Call Back

While I was barely holding myself together, my daughters lost their grandmother. I had to step into that grief with them while also navigating my own medical recovery and depression.

The 2023 Christmas season felt like collapse — aging parents, children's grief, my own recovery, financial pressure, loneliness, and what I now recognize was probably the middle of a mental breakdown.

Then, this July, my mom passed. The pain of knowing I would never see her again was sharp, but another truth arrived with it: there was nothing holding me in Georgia anymore. The reason I stayed — to be nearby and help my mom — was gone. The path cleared.

It was time to go back to Alabama, to be with my daughters, to rebuild with them. My calling toward my children changed from hope to plan to action. Approaching 60, something in my spirit awakened: God was asking me to show up for them in a new, fuller way.

Hope and Life Church

In 2012 my daughters' mother introduced me to Hope and Life Church. She told me not to leave. I kept that promise. Even when I had to withdraw while life dissolved around me, I eventually returned and have been involved for the last two years, serving humbly.

Long before most of this collapsed I made a promise to God when my oldest son was born: if He gave me a child, I would bring souls to Him. I promised to bring at least two. Life gave me three children and a harder route than I expected. Still, that promise shaped me. Hope and Life has been a place to practice faith during rebuilding — a community, a purpose, and a place where I could continue to show up for others while I learned to show up for myself.

A Story With Purpose (Conclusion)

This is my November truth: this is my mental health story, the reunion of Franklin and Fitz, the testimony of a man God refused to let fall.

My body broke, and that breaking taught me about my heart and mind. My mother’s illness and death taught me about devotion and timing. My daughters taught me about responsibility and repair. My church taught me about promises and service. Together they are not a tidy set of lessons — they are a life.

I am still becoming. I didn’t hurt myself. I didn’t hurt anyone else. I didn’t lose my mind. I survived. Now I am rebuilding: better, stronger, truer to the whole person inside.