The veteran and author opens up about the parts of his life he spent years keeping quiet, and what it finally took to face them.
SHELTON, Conn. — For a long time, F.J. Young Jr. knew
how to keep going. What he didn’t know was how to stop.
He worked. He served his country. He built a career, became
a husband and father, and kept moving whenever life gave him another reason to
fall apart. To anyone looking from the outside, that could easily look like
strength.
But there was a lot they couldn’t see.
In his memoir, Surviving the Storm: A Journey
Through Darkness, F.J. Young finally talks about it.
His story starts in Oklahoma City, where he grew up as the
youngest of eleven children. Money was scarce, home life was unstable, and
survival was something the family understood early. A tornado nearly killed
Young when he was still an infant. There was hunger, foster care, abuse, and
devastating loss. Some experiences frightened him. Others taught him to stay
quiet.
That silence followed him into adulthood.
After high school, Young joined the U.S. Navy. Military life
gave him structure and a sense of purpose he had been missing, but it also
added new trauma to what he was already carrying. He served during the Gulf War
and, as he had done since childhood, found ways to function without really
dealing with what was happening inside him.
Eventually, functioning wasn’t enough.
Drinking and drugs became ways to numb what he could not
talk about. Even as Young married, raised a family, and established himself
professionally, the past remained close. His life would later be shaken by
serious health problems, legal consequences and incarceration.
Young does not write about any of this to ask readers to
excuse him.
That may be the most uncomfortable, and most important part
of Surviving the Storm. He acknowledges what happened to him
while also looking at what he did afterward. Trauma shaped him, but other
people were still hurt by his decisions. Both truths belong in the story.
Young served as a Machinist Mate in the U.S. Navy from 1988
to 1997 and later in Air Force Reserve Security Forces from 1999 to 2005. He
subsequently earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration while
working as a Vice President of Facilities & Operations.
Surviving the Storm is ultimately less about
everything Young endured than about what happened when he could no longer keep
outrunning it.
For readers who have spent years hiding pain, shame, regret,
or trauma behind a life that appears perfectly functional, Young’s story
carries a simple reminder: silence can help someone survive for a while. It
cannot do the work of healing.
Sometimes that begins only when the story is finally told.