How do people who do everything right end up on the losing side of life?

PREFACE

There is a place in the upper Midwest that hardly anyone is aware of, but many would recognize. It sits on a quiet peninsula shaped by the St. Louis River. A rural family farm, generations deep. Peaceful and full of life. At least, it used to be.

This land has produced iconic music, raised hundreds of people, and hosted thousands more who would come to hear a man named Casey Aro play his banjo and tell his stories.

Casey was the son of the late Bobby Aro. Once known as the “King of the Great Northwoods”, he was a Finnish-American folk artist and entertainer who sold over a million records and was welcomed into people’s homes every day on the radio.

Casey followed in his father's footsteps, performing with him and his band, the Ranch-Aros, traveling the Midwest on a Bluebird Special. When his father could no longer perform, Casey carried on, playing for benefits, fund raisers, nursing homes, community centers, and county fairs. Performing wasn’t just what he did or was an economic necessity, it was who he was, literally.

Lynnie, the daughter of a local pastor who fostered 102 children, brought that same generosity into their marriage. Together they fostered another 66 children in their times of need. One of them happened to turn out to be my mother.

She would find herself there along with an older sister after losing both parents to different illnesses in the span of a single year at the age of six.

I am not their grandson by blood. I became their grandson because of who they are, what they have done, and what they've represented to me. From that example, my mother internalized that when someone has been there for you, you show up for them.

Four years ago, at age 37, with no house, no retirement, and no family of my own, I moved into their garage. Not because I had nowhere else to go. I am here because this is where someone needed to be, and I had the least to sacrifice.

This place has been a flurry of activity for as long as I can remember.

There were always children running around. People coming and going. Horses, chickens, farmwork, and music. Every day was filled with countless obligations that never went unattended.

Today, things are mainly silent. Casey can no longer see. He cannot move well. He played banjo until the day he physically couldn't anymore.

Lynnie, a decade older, moves with her own difficulties. She is in need of back surgery.

Following a stroke, when someone suggested they hold a benefit for him, Casey replied: “We play benefits. We do not have them.”

These are people who have spent their entire lifetimes as pillars of a tight-knit community with an open door for anyone in need. They have never smoked. Never drank. They attended church twice a week, ran bible camps, and were involved in local schools. They are the ideal model our society aspired for us to be.

By every measure our culture has ever handed us, their lives should look very different than the reality they currently face.

They cannot afford the medical care they need. The land inherited from Casey's father is at risk. And they struggle simply to keep the lights on.

These are not people who made careless decisions. They worked. They gave. They showed up when many others would not. They truly lived the story America once told about itself.

As I have found myself here now, time has given me a place to start really questioning what was going on.

How did this happen?

While simultaneously struggling with my own life's trajectory, I began to compare two starkly contrasting lifestyles.

In doing so, I easily noted we are opposites on almost every level. I have started from scratch more than once. I smoke and I struggle to comprehend their conviction with religion.

Yet, here we are. We have found ourselves in a situation we never imagined we would be.

So, I changed my focus then from how different our lives were to what was similar about them.

What I realized is no mystery. It is a recurring pattern and it wasn't only us. It is documented. Decades of decisions made by particular people, recorded in legislation, court rulings, and memoranda that were never meant to be seen.

These are things I have noted in my own life for years. Most often I had no category to attribute these discrepancies to except as my own personal failures.

Then I realized that much of what my grandparents, my parents, and I have experienced cannot be explained by mere repeated personal failure.

It has been said, often heard as a cliche, that some books write themselves. In this case I mean that literally. The circumstances and experiences of an individual can, on occasion,converge, if the right conditions are met and a window of opportunity presents itself. I did not think of becoming an author or a writer. This was not my mindset going into what this has become.

In truth, I wanted to figure out how my own life had managed to end up so far from where I began. I was very much focused entirely on myself and what I had done. Blaming myself and wondering how I could have been so stupid. I did not write this because I wanted to. I wrote it because I had to.

This book is the revelation of a systemic process that funnels generational inheritance through filters that make it, in all likelihood, impossible to pass down. It is a process that can take anyone, from anywhere, put them in the same place, and none of them know how they got there, but they all blame themselves.

When the accumulation of information began pointing outward, my first thought was that anyone who sees this is going to tell me I am wrong and am only looking for excuses. So, instead of asking if I could be right, I went searching for the proof.

It took me a long time to see these things for what they were.

Soon, you will see them too

​If this resonates with you, I’ve handwritten a full 55,000-word breakdown of this modern delusionment. The link to read the manuscript and support my full-time caregiving journey for Lynnie is pinned directly on my Reddit profile.