My bio page. A place to answer the question, “Who am I?” My initial response is one many will find stereo-typically unfunny and yet totally relatable. I assure you though that my response is anything but trite. In fact, it is so deeply rooted within my heart and mind that I believe it lies within your heart and mind too.

“I’m finding out,” is my current and best answer. Back in 2016 when this blog was begun, I said, “I don’t know.” Since then, I have had a lot of time to think about it and to work on it. When I got home from prison, I began working with the therapist I had seen prior to incarceration. The “ah ha!” moment for me occurred when she told me I, “have the chance to be who I want to be,” due to the work I was doing after leaving prison. I now understand myself to be someone working on being not only who I want to be but who I believe I always have been.

Easier to answer are the questions like, “What am I?” and, “Where am I?” and, “How did I end up where I am?”

“What am I?” A husband, father, son, and brother. Some would call me intelligent, funny, caring, and friend. Others might say I am open minded, helpful, a leader, and kind. I am also an ex-convict and felon. Only God knows the real me: weak, sinner and lost. Yet God has gathered me in and placed me on a journey with an answer to, “Who will I be?” as its destination.

“Where am I?” Physically I am home but psychologically and spiritually I am still journeying. I once believed that being on a journey trying to understand who I am and working on who I want to be did not amount to a worthwhile pursuit. Today I know that getting to know myself is one of the best ways to spend my time. I am not talking about those 1960’s trips to “find myself.” I am talking about developing an intimate relationship with the “who” that I am. I would be remiss if I left out God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. Though I am open minded, I am first and foremost a Christian. I will not try to convert anyone, that is not the goal of this blog, but I will not step back from my faith either and I am not asking anyone else to do so either.

“How did I end up where I am?”  In short, I am where I am because I made some horrible decisions in life, paid the price for my actions, and have now come full circle and live a loving life with family and friends. No single event in my past landed me in prison where I wandered in the wilderness and waited in exile for rescue. And no single event in my life delivered me home.

Lives are a gathering of experiences and lessons that shape us, right?  Mine include the undeserved graces and blessings from God of a loving and supportive family, amazing grown children with good hearts, opportunities of education and career, and above all earthly kindnesses, the greatest of which come from a friend, partner, and wife of over 30 years that I am in no way deserving to call mine. Every life she encounters is the better for her touch. On the other hand, my life also includes addiction, abuse as a child and the resultant mental illness.

I feel certain people are wondering what crime it was I committed. I am always at a loss about where to start that story: at the beginning of my life working toward today or starting with the crime and working backward in time. Neither path really feels like it communicates the gravity of either end of my life. A wise man once said, “If you don’t know where to start, go back to the beginning,” so…

Beginning at age five, I began to suffer the pain of sexual abuse which lasted into my teens. (Hmm… I should add ‘survivor’ to my answers for “What am I?”) Consequently, I am covered by the scars of that abuse. Sadly, I also carry the ugliness of addiction. See, while being abused, pornography was used to train me in actions desirable to my primary abuser and others. The outcome of this was a loss of understanding around boundaries and a raging addiction to pornography for which I sacrificed everything sacred to me. The more difficult thing to accept is that I sacrificed so much of what others deserved and, in the end, hurt so many.

Unfortunately, I allowed my addiction, rooted in my childhood sexual abuse, to control me for over forty years.  As I allowed myself to sink deeper into my addiction, I chose to begin viewing child pornography because I needed that next level “high.” Think marijuana to heroin. Not surprisingly, this led to a sentence of six years in prison; the exile I referred to previously. Shocking and repulsive I know. I feel exactly as you do.

Many people have asked me why I pursued those materials after having been through all I had been. There is no easy answer to that question. I could write an entire book on that very question. If pressured for an answer though, I explain that going through what I did destroyed my sense of self, destroyed my sense of boundaries, destroyed my ability to see people as people and not as objects, and destroyed my desire to address the problems I had. Yet, I knew rationally that I did have problems. The issue is I allowed the irrational side of me – that side wanting the high of pornography – to drive my actions, ignore those I was hurting (both in and outside of those images) and convince myself I would never get caught. That is what addiction is all about. As I said, an entire book…

This is not to defend my actions, on the contrary, it is to say that I chose to avoid addressing my issues and in so doing, allowed myself to deeply hurt others and along the way, leave victims in my wake. I will forever feel remorse, regret, and sorrow. Of all people, I understand what those in the images suffer daily and it is beyond me how I could ever have put that upon them again. I am solely responsible for my actions. Please, before condemning me, walk a few steps on my journey and know I will never impact another human being in that way again. 

Finally, you might ask why I chose John Doe as my name. Going to prison made me aware of this truth:

Until you are stripped of everything, including your identity, or from God’s perspective, you surrender everything including your identity, you cannot fully realize what God’s rescue is really all about and finally answer the question, “Who am I?” for yourself. 

Until I arrive at God’s destination from my journey, I will remain John Doe.