The Baby in the Playpen: A Memoir of Self-Hate, Survival, and 1.35 Million Meals

All author proceeds go to the Sacramento Food Bank. The author is dying and has also left his entire $450,000 estate to buy 1.35 million meals. He was left alone in a playpen on a failing chicken farm. Seventy years later, his life is feeding half a million people.“You don’t matter.” That’s what the voices said for fifty years. This book is the story of how they were proven wrong.At seventy-six, writing from a care facility in Sacramento, a man looks back at a life that should have broken him — and tells the truth about all of it.The childhood neglect that taught him to hate himself. The Air Force years. The search-and-rescue flights, the skydives, the cave dives in total darkness. The businesses built across continents. And running underneath it all, hidden from everyone: a wound that opened in a playpen and refused to close for five decades.Then, at an age when most people stop changing, he did the bravest thing of his life. He decided.Inside this memoir you’ll find:A raw, unflinching account of surviving childhood abuse and neglect — and the fifty-year shadow it castA life of almost unbelievable adventure: military service, aviation, deep caves, and second chancesThe quiet heroism of decades of service — disabled Boy Scouts, prison lifers, free computer labs for kids who had nothingThe turning point: how one man dismantled a lifetime of shame and finally learned to love the person in the mirrorA final act of generosity that will outlive himEvery copy of this book feeds people. All proceeds go directly to the Sacramento Food Bank — in perpetuity. The author’s estate is already funding hundreds of thousands of meals. With this book, it becomes more than half a million.For readers of The Glass Castle, Educated, and A Child Called “It” — this is a story about the chain of pain, and the link where it broke.You are not wrong. You are learning and growing. Start now. Read more