a Strip Away: Story of Boy

A Strip Away: A Story of a Boy is a raw, literary, fictionalized memoir about survival, abandonment, chosen family, queer identity, and the long road back to the child left behind.Told through the lens of "the boy," this deeply personal story follows one life across broken homes, missing parents, foster care, adoption, poverty, first love, military service, toxic relationships, and the painful process of becoming an adult without ever truly being taught how. From San Diego to Texas, Michigan, Canada, New York, the Navy, and finally back to family, the boy is stripped again and again of home, safety, names, and belonging.But this is not only a story about what was taken.It is a story about what stayed.With tenderness and honesty, H. Racine writes about the people who loved him and still failed him, the rooms that held him and hurt him, and the mistakes he made while trying to survive the life he had been given. Through grief, guilt, memory, and accountability, the man begins to understand that healing is not about becoming untouched by the past. It is about going back for the boy who survived it.Emotional, vulnerable, and unflinching, A Strip Away is for anyone who has ever felt unwanted, unseen, or unfinished, and for anyone still trying to believe that the child they once were was never the problem.This is not a story of perfect healing.It is the story of a boy who stayed.