Sharing personal child work hoping it helps others

Clint Uriah Lawrence Letter to my younger self (9 years old) To the boy sitting on those stairs in the summer of ’96: Come here. Drop your head on my shoulder, let me pull you into a tight hug, and just hold on for a minute. Let yourself cry as much as you need to. I know what just happened. You’re sitting there in Uncle Eric’s house, thousands of miles away from home, completely frozen. Uncle Chris’s voice is still ringing in your ears through the receiver. You laughed, you thought he was joking at first, and I need you to know that’s okay. It wasn't because it was funny—it was your young mind trying to shield your heart from a blow too heavy to absorb. Then you collapsed, and you ran back up those stairs to the game room because you were desperate to retreat into a world that still made sense, even for just a few seconds. And nobody came up those stairs to sit with you or hold you while you cried, they didn’t know what to do, they thought they was doing the right thing by giving me space, I wish I could go back in time and raise you from there. You were left completely alone with the news that Maw Maw was gone. Losing her was your first true heartbreak. Up until that day, with Mom incarcerated, Maw Maw was the only anchor you had. She was the one who sang goofy “apple in my eye” songs while she cooked in the kitchen. She was the one you held when she cried over Mom and your brother, telling her it would all be okay. Even when she asked why you couldn’t talk "normal" and you cracked that joke about talking like white people to hide how it hurt, she was your stability. Looking back now at 40, I see how Psalm 34:18 was true even on those lonely stairs, because the Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. You were completely crushed. Around this time, you also started connecting the dots about those needles tucked away in Maw Maw’s closet, realizing they were for your mom’s heroin use. Maw Maw was the buffer shielding you from that reality. When she died, your anchor was ripped away, and your sense of community vanished with her. I need to warn you about what comes next. The road ahead is going to be dark, confusing, and lonely, but I need you to hear me: God is with us through every single second of it, and you are going to get through it. Even before Minnesota, back when Mom was hustling transporting Dilaudid, we had no business soaking in that music. Mom shouldn’t have been playing Too $hort's Get In Where You Fit In album with you in the car. She shouldn't have been teaching you to degrade women through those speakers. She didn't mean to do it—she was caught up in her own world and her own survival—and I forgive her for it completely, but I have to acknowledge it now. It left a mark. I am still so proud of you for recognizing the negative side of the drug-selling culture so early. You saw how people glorified selling and using drugs, and you rejected that lifestyle entirely. But I wish I could warn you about the trap we missed: pimp culture. We saw through the drugs, but we still glorified pimping. We never actually pimped, but we came up with that mindset—"be a gentleman to a lady, a player to a bitch, and a pimp to a hoe." I wish I could grab you right now and tell you: Don't do that. Don't let that music or that culture shape how you view women. It distorts our sense of love, distorts connection, and confuses your heart before you even have a chance to learn what real, healthy love looks like. From where I stand now, I see how we fell into the exact pattern Romans 12:2 warns against, and how badly we needed to be transformed by the renewing of our mind. We didn't know it yet, but we needed to guard our hearts like Proverbs 4:23 says, because everything we do flows from it. Watch out for how you try to cope with the loneliness when you get uprooted to Minnesota. There, when you put up that poster of Tyra Banks and stumble across your uncle’s dirty magazines, your young mind is going to turn to that imagery to hide from the isolation. Combined with what that music taught us, it starts a habit of looking at women through objectification rather than real connection. You don't need to objectify people to feel safe, and you deserved true, grounded love instead of turning to a screen or a page. You deserved to have your young mind fixed on whatever is pure, lovely, and admirable, the way Philippians 4:8 prescribes. In Minnesota, living with relatives who feel like strangers, even though Uncle Eric has done the hard work to stay clean, you are going to feel your cousin James’s resentment for taking up space. You’re going to swallow a quiet, terrible lie that you are a burden. And just when you do the hard work of blending in and adapting to Minnesota, the rug is going to get pulled out again. At 13, right as 1999 turns into 2000, you’re going to be uprooted back to New Orleans East. Your own mother is going to feel like a stranger to you. You’ll be shuffled back and forth—Mom’s house on the weekends, Paw Paw’s house during the week—feeling like extra cargo with nowhere solid to land. Watching Mom fail to get her life together because of her addiction, every time you see her nodding out with a cigarette in her hand will break your heart, but remember that God hasn't abandoned you in that house. I can tell you now what you couldn't see then: Psalm 27:10 was holding you up the whole time, because even when a father or mother leaves you, the Lord will receive you. I have to warn you about the most startling night of your life: standing in that room crying with the .22 pistol. You are going to feel completely exhausted from feeling like a burden to everyone around you. But when that Tupac lyric about holding a weapon and seeing his mother's eyes flashes through your head, hold onto it. Remember that under all her demons, Mom loves you, and putting a bullet in your head would’ve pushed her over the edge. Put the gun down. Choose to stay. I am reaching back right now to hug you in that dark room and tell you: You were never a burden. You were just a child carrying adult weight, and God is carrying you through that night. He is right there in the pitch black with you, fulfilling Psalm 139:11-12, because even the darkness is not dark to Him. He is keeping you alive because He has a purpose for you—the promise of Jeremiah 29:11 to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future. When you hit 17 and go to Youth Challenge Program boot camp to earn your GED, something quiet and profound is going to happen. Mom is going to write you a letter every single day, and at the bottom of every single letter, she is going to write Joshua 1:9—reminding you to be strong and courageous, to not be afraid, because the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. I’m finally realizing now, at 40, what she was really doing. That was her way of acknowledging the deep struggle she saw in us—the detachment, the walls we built, and the hard time we had connecting to people. She couldn't give us the physical stability or structure we needed as a kid, but through those daily letters, she was trying to anchor us in something that couldn't be uprooted. She was trying to embed into your spirit that even when human connection feels scary, broken, or impossible, you are never abandoned. God is standing right there beside you in every empty room. Carrying all of this is going to make adulthood complicated. Because your roots get ripped up every time you plant them, you’re going to build heavy armor. You’ll develop detachment issues and keep people at arm's length so no one can abandon you again. When you see people our age with lifelong childhood friends, you’re going to feel a sharp sting of envy—but that envy is just the lingering grief for the safe, stable childhood you were denied. Oh, I wish I could tell you listen to paw paw and stop slouching when you sit! I’m telling you, bro, we are definitely paying for that back posture at 40! Hear these warnings, but hold onto this truth: We grow into a hard-working man, and you make it through every single bit of it. At 40, I am finally standing on solid ground. I am addressing all this unresolved trauma that you had to pack away just to survive. I am calling out the unhealthy coping mechanisms and putting them down one by one, finally stepping into Isaiah 43:18-19 where the Lord says, "Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing!" You don't have to carry the weight of being a burden anymore, and you don't have to protect yourself alone. We are finally laying down the armor, putting down the control, and surrendering it all by casting all our anxiety on Him, because He cares for us (1 Peter 5:7). His grace is sufficient for us, and His power is made perfect in our weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9). God’s got us from here. I’m giving it all to Him. Yes, absolutely. Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) can play a massive, hidden part in everything you have described in this letter. When people think of OCD, they often think of neatness or handwashing, but clinically, at its core, OCD is an anxiety disorder driven by a need for absolute certainty, safety, and control. When a child experiences severe trauma and systemic instability—roots constantly being ripped up, losing a primary anchor like Maw Maw, and facing survival-level stress—the brain can latch onto OCD mechanisms as a psychological survival strategy. Here is exactly how OCD can intersect with the trauma and themes in Clint's letter: 1. Hyper-Responsibility and the "Burden" Myth A very common subtype of OCD is Hyper-Responsibility OCD, where a person feels an inflated, agonizing sense of responsibility for the safety, happiness, and well-being of everyone around them. * The Connection: As a child carrying adult weight (wiping Maw Maw's tears, worrying about Mom's addiction), Clint's brain learned early that he was responsible for things he could not control. When things went wrong, OCD twisted that into a terrible lie: "You are a burden. It is your fault." 2. Radical Detachment as a Compulsion to Prevent Harm OCD operates on a loop: an obsession (an intrusive, terrifying thought) leads to a compulsion (a behavior done to alleviate the anxiety of that thought). * The Connection: The fear of abandonment and the pain of being uprooted are the core traumas. The brain develops an obsession: "Everyone I love will leave or be ripped away." To cope, the mind builds heavy armor and forces radical detachment. In this context, emotional detachment acts like a protective compulsion—keeping people at arm's length is an automated way the brain tries to gain certainty that it will never be blindsided by that catastrophic heartbreak again. 3. Hyper-Fixation and Using Imagery to Hide The letter notes that under the stress of isolation in Minnesota, Clint's mind turned heavily to media, magazines, and objectification to hide from the loneliness. * The Connection: OCD brains have highly active "sticky" circuits. When experiencing deep trauma or isolation, the brain can easily latch onto repetitive loops—whether it’s hyper-fixating on specific imagery, music, or fantasies—as an intense mental compulsion to block out the overwhelming pain of reality. 4. The Need for Absolute Control and Armor At 40, Clint writes about finally "putting down the control and surrendering it all." * The Connection: Trauma shatters a child’s sense of safety. OCD steps in to try and build an artificial sense of safety by demanding total control over one's environment, emotions, and vulnerability. The "armor" is the physical and mental manifestation of trying to control the uncontrollable so that you are never hurt again. The Healing Intersection Addressing unresolved trauma at 40 often means unmasking these exact survival mechanisms. Recognizing that a heavy armor or a need for rigid control might actually be a trauma-induced OCD response is incredibly freeing. It means those behaviors weren't a reflection of Clint's character—they were a brilliant, exhausted child's brain trying to build a fortress in a storm. Laying down the armor and surrendering it to God is the ultimate step in breaking that rigid loop. Also want to bring these things to light to a community so they aren’t a secret that holds power over me