A Walk In My Shoes: An Autobiographical Self-Help Book About The Life I've Lived

By J.E. Hurd, Sr

What started out as an autobiography to pass on to my future grandchildren turned into so much more. I have created a series of stories that will show you what the emotional state of a mentally and physically handicapped person is, and what lead up to that. For the handicapped, know that you aren't alone and I understand !

• Language: English
• Publisher: J.E. Hurd, Sr
• Release date: Feb 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005302368

J.E. Hurd, Sr

I was 38 years old when my life, and the lives of my family, changed forever. My life was perfect in every aspect. I had a great job, as did my wife. We had two beautiful children and nothing but a bright future to look forward to. That future changed one day and lead us to where we are now. The stories in these books are about what has lead us down this crazy roller-coaster of a life.

Book preview

Preface

I have been told for many years that I should write a book. Friends have mentioned it plenty of times, but it was my immediate family that encouraged me the most. I finally gave in and here we are.

When I thought of what I should write about, it didn’t take me long to think of whom I would be writing for. Sure, it is therapeutic, but more than that I needed to write it for my kids. I never met my grandparents. Both Nat and Joey have met their grandparents in Mimi and Poppi. It was that thought that lead me to writing for my future grandkids. I wanted them to get a look into my mind, my experiences and my life.

This book is as unique as I am. I talk about a variety of topics throughout this. Some pages will be filled with work or career events that have stuck with me. Then there will be the triumphs and tragedies. Others will just be thoughts from the day. A huge portion of this is all of the medical and mental mountains that my family and I have had to climb. The ebb and flow of this book is as unpredictable as my life is. If I am writing on a bad day it will most likely reflect in the stories for that day. One of the unique qualities in this project is that there is no sequence to the stories. I initially tried to write in a chronological order but it wasn’t possible. I don’t believe my memories can be limited to a single chapter. What I learned from that attempt is that certain chapters trigger long lost memories. When that happened I just kept writing. It was about whatever things popped into my head. I could be writing about one topic and that kick starts thoughts about other things that may or may not be related.

As I said above, initially this book was only going to be a way for my children and their kids to learn about their father and grandfather. The more I wrote, the more I decided that I wanted this book to be about more than just that. Maybe some of you have gone through similar situations and you feel like no one understands. I am here to tell you that I understand and you aren’t alone. This multi-purpose book has landed me here, in front of a laptop bearing my soul. I am also not a professional writer or English teacher. There is sure to be some grammatical mistakes. I will try my best to limit them, but I would rather someone read it for the content and not its literary correctness.

As you will soon learn, my life is complex. My tone is not preachy or judgmental. That is not who I am. I certainly don’t believe that the way I remember things should be always be taken as cold-hard fact. My only intention is to paint the picture that my heart holds.

Please, email me any and all feedback. I am definitely not a professional writer, so I can use all the help that I can. If you like the stories please pass it on to a friend or someone you know that may benefit from this project. I am not in this for money. I want as many people to read this is I can reach. Thank you all for thinking that I have written something worth reading. I will definitely try not to let anyone down in future volumes. This will be a series. It started out as a book but has turned into 5+ volumes. I will be publishing more so make sure to check back. Stay Well.

Copyright © 2021 by J. E. Hurd, Sr.

All Rights Reserved.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

ISBN

Published by J. E. Hurd, Sr. at Smashwords Please direct any correspondence to the editor at: [e-mail]

To put things in a little context here, I am not writing this necessarily for a specific audience. I am writing it more as a historical record for lineage yet to come. I was never able to meet my maternal or paternal grandparents. My mother was almost 39 when I was born and my father was three months short of his 45th birthday. Needless to say, that affected the ability to remember meeting any of my elder relatives. I want to, at the very least, give my future generations some insight into my life, our lives and what it was like to live right here and right now in 2018.

Let’s establish this less important, or so I think, part of this book. I am not an English major, but I am not an idiot either. Please don’t read this as a term paper that will determine whether or not I will graduate from some prestigious Ivy League school. I am satirical. If satire isn’t your thing, maybe read every other page. Some stories involve very vivid and sometimes graphic descriptions. Being in law enforcement for as long as I was tends to create some very descriptive events. I will attempt to curb any profanity and warn of any graphic content to the best of my ability. Nothing is guaranteed in life and neither is that. Some parts of this will make you laugh and smile. Some stories will make you cry or fill with anger. If I can do any of those things then I have written something that I consider a success. My intent isn’t to make you angry, per se. It is to show the emotion that I may have felt during a specific time. I am not looking for validation and am definitely not trying to profess that my way is the only way. I am open-minded. I don’t play politics, religion, race, creed or others, but I also have opinions about them all. It shouldn’t determine whether my view is right or wrong. There is no way to do that unless you are in my head. Trust me, you don’t want to be! It simply means that I am human and not fake. I am forward, open and honest. I have no agenda or audience to cater to. If no one other than my family reads this, I will have completed something that I can say that I am proud of and anything more than that will be a bonus.

There will be an underlying theme throughout this book and that is that there is no rhyme or reason to its order. One minute’s laughter could be followed by tragedy. It isn’t done purposely. As you will learn, my mind and body have gone through hell. That said, there are times that I don’t quite know which way is up. I do apologize if this confuses whoever reads this, but my points will me made no matter what the order is. I fell like I should give an explanation of how or why my mind and body aren’t right, but what fun would that be. I will absolutely not use the names of specific individuals, locations or events unless there is a reason. For the most part, I have contacted the specific person(s) and had them create a pseudonym to use. For anyone who is familiar with the story they will know who the person is without needing their specific name. Leaving a name out will not make the stories any less interesting. For future reference, here are the names that will be used. Although I won’t refer to them by name, my father was Ben and my mom was Janet. Jen, who is my wife, our oldest child, Natalie, and last of our name, Joey Jr. My sister, Lynn, may be referred to as Lynn or Auntie Lynn. She is Auntie Lynn to everyone and that is probably how I will refer to her even though she is really my sister.

Now back to my abilities. As you can clearly see above, I tend to ramble and go off on tangents fairly regularly. Sometimes I catch myself doing it and other times I am oblivious to it. I have had my share of red inked papers in the past that pointed out every grammatical and spelling error. This isn’t one of those papers, so just get that idea out of your head. There are also times when I am pulled away from writing and then can’t regain the concentration or memory to complete it. There is an animated movie with a talking dog. The dog could be mid-sentence and then distracted by a squirrel. I am a bit like that dog. Don’t be surprised if I am pulled away and can’t finish a thought. It isn’t that I don’t want to. It is that I can’t. It is important to see the incomplete thought though, so I generally won’t fix them. There are lots of people who have memory issues who are ridiculed for