“Raised By The Desert”

For my Nani and Papa—Lee and Tom.
You didn’t have to raise me, but you did.
You didn’t ask to be my home, but you were.
Everything good in me began with you.
This is for you, with all my love.

Preface

Raised By the Desert isn’t just a title. It’s a truth I’ve lived.

I was raised in dry places. Not just by geography, but by circumstance—by silence, loss, resilience, and the quiet kind of love that doesn't always get noticed until you're older and start to understand what sacrifice really looks like.

This book is not about a perfect life, or perfect people. It’s about real people. It’s about the ones who stayed when others didn’t. The ones who did the hard things quietly, without applause. The ones who showed me what strength looked like long before I knew I’d need to find it in myself.

It’s also about the desert—not as a place of punishment, but as a place of preparation. A place that taught me to listen, to feel, to think, and to wait. To understand that even when nothing seems to grow, God is still working beneath the surface.

And it’s about grace. How it carried me, even when I didn’t know I was being carried. How it found me in therapy offices, long drives, lonely nights, and unexpected conversations. How it met me exactly where I was, without needing me to be anything more than honest.

This is the beginning of my story. A story I hope reminds you that no matter where or how you were raised—redemption is always possible, and roots can grow in the unlikeliest of soil.

—Isaak Rowe

Chapter 1: The Roots Beneath the Dust

Before I understood who I was, I knew who raised me.
My grandparents weren’t just guardians—they were roots planted in dry ground. Strong, steady, and deeply anchored, they became the base I would return to time and time again, even long after they were gone.

My grandpa, Tom, was the kind of man whose presence arrived before his voice ever did. He was tall, quiet, and composed—but carried a strength in his bones that made you want to sit up straight around him. He had a calm sort of authority, the kind you didn’t question. His intelligence ran deep, like a well that never dried out. I watched him fix broken things that others gave up on—generators, appliances, engines, anything. And maybe even people, too.

Before settling down in Nevada, he worked overseas in Thailand, a life chapter that seemed as adventurous as it was mysterious. And earlier in his life, he worked as a deep-sea diver—the kind of job that demanded courage, focus, and the ability to thrive under pressure, both literally and figuratively. Eventually, he found his way back to the land, to the remote corners of Nevada where he’d take up work in some of the smallest, dustiest towns you could imagine—Round Mountain, Manhattan, Silver Peak. Mining towns full of grit, solitude, and hard-earned dignity. Places where people worked with their hands and didn’t say much, but when they did, they meant it.

There was something rugged and noble about my grandpa, something larger-than-life. But he chose a life of quiet purpose. He chose my grandma. And though they didn’t plan for it, they chose me.

My grandma, Lee—my Nani—was a different kind of strong. Gentle, warm, and patient. She was the voice in the car during long drives through the desert. She was the lunch on the counter, the clean clothes in the drawer, the soft landing when everything else in the world felt too hard. When I was little, we would drive for hours through the emptiest stretches of Nevada. We’d pass nothing but sand, sky, and fences leaning like tired men. At first, I hated those drives. I didn’t understand how something could be so… empty. But she saw the beauty. And slowly, so did I.

We’d stop in tiny towns where the people ran on wells and old stories. Sometimes we’d go for a reason—sometimes just to see people, to check in. And every time, I learned something new. Not from any lesson she said out loud, but from the quiet example she lived. How to be kind to strangers. How to be curious, even in the middle of nowhere. How to find beauty where most people wouldn’t bother looking.

It was in those towns that I started wandering into the mountains, completely unaware of the danger, but too pulled by the thrill of freedom to care. I’d climb, run, get lost for a while—and it felt like the desert opened up just for me. I didn’t know it then, but those moments would teach me how to be alone without being afraid. How to get quiet enough to hear my own thoughts. How to see God in wide-open spaces and forgotten roads.

And there was that one time—God, I still feel it—when I unplugged the deep freezer by accident. My grandpa had just finished a successful hunt, and pounds of deer meat were stacked inside, meant to last us the season. Days later, the smell told the truth. The entire haul was spoiled. Gone.

I expected him to explode. I braced for it. But the anger never came. Just a heavy pause. A quiet sigh. And then... we moved on. That was who he was. His disappointment didn’t need words, and his love didn’t need conditions. He didn’t make me feel small—he made me feel accountable. And still loved.

Those two—Tom and Lee—they were my compass before I even knew I was lost. They gave me structure in a world that constantly threatened to fall apart. And even though I grew up in a place most people would call desolate, I felt deeply rooted. I had something people in cities with flashing lights and big dreams often don’t have: real love and something to return to.

If my story is a tree, then they were the roots beneath it.
Deep, steady, unshaken by the storms.

They never asked to raise me. But they did.
And that—more than anything—saved my life.

Chapter 2: The Unseen Bruises

Not all pain leaves a mark.

Some of it hides beneath the surface—tucked away in quiet moments, held in clenched jaws and tight shoulders, or buried in the space between the smile you force and the silence that follows. I grew up with that kind of pain. The kind no one sees unless they’re really looking. And most people weren’t.

I had a roof over my head. Food on the table. Clothes on my back. To the outside world, I had everything I needed. And in many ways, I did—thanks to my grandma and grandpa, my Nani and Papa. They did the best they could with what they had, and they did a great job. They gave me stability when everything else around me felt unpredictable. Their love never wavered. It was steady and unconditional, even when I didn’t know how to receive it fully.

Still, there’s a strange kind of ache that settles in when your basic needs are met, but your emotional ones are left untouched. I wasn’t starving—but I was still empty. I wasn’t abandoned in the physical sense—but emotionally, I often felt like a ghost drifting through a house that wasn’t really mine.

Even with all the love my grandparents gave me, I still struggled with the lingering absence of others. I was still a kid trying to piece together why my life didn’t look like everyone else’s. Why my mom wasn’t around like other kids’ moms. Why the man who helped bring me into the world never stayed to see who I became in it. That kind of confusion turns inward after a while. You stop asking why they weren’t there, and you start asking what’s wrong with you.

It’s a quiet kind of damage.
No screaming. No breaking things. Just a slow, constant shrinking of your spirit.

I learned how to stay out of the way. How to be helpful, polite, and independent. I thought if I didn’t cause any trouble, maybe I’d finally feel secure. Maybe I’d stop being the kid no one really planned for.

I remember the way I used to stare at my reflection—not to admire it, but to try and find something real in it. Something worth keeping. I never liked what I saw. Not because of my face, but because I didn’t know who I was beyond all the effort it took to survive.

No one told me I was too young to be carrying so much.
No one noticed when I started withdrawing or overcompensating.
I got good at hiding things in plain sight. Pain, fear, confusion—I kept them wrapped up tight inside me like secrets no one had time to hear.

And the thing about emotional bruises is that when they go unnoticed, you start convincing yourself they don’t count. You downplay them. You invalidate yourself before anyone else can.

“Other people had it worse.”
“At least I wasn’t abused.”
“It’s not that big of a deal.”

But it was. It is.

Because being unseen hurts. Being emotionally disconnected hurts. Wondering if you were ever truly wanted—that leaves scars you don’t see until they show up years later in the way you love, the way you trust, and the way you try to prove your worth to people who were never meant to hold it.

I didn’t know then that I was carrying trauma.
I just thought I was difficult. Sensitive. Too much. Not enough.

That’s the trap of unseen bruises—they don’t show up until you finally slow down long enough to feel them. And when you do, they come back all at once. A flood of memories, moments, and realizations you didn’t ask for, but now can’t ignore.

It took years to understand that my childhood wasn’t broken in obvious ways—it was broken in quiet ones. In what was missing. In what I learned to go without. In the ways I became my own protector, my own motivator, my own emotional safety net.

But even in that brokenness, I held on.
And I think some part of me always knew: what goes unseen still matters. What doesn’t bleed can still hurt. And even bruises buried deep in the soul can heal—once you’re willing to stop hiding them.

Chapter 3: Mask In the Mirror

I became whoever the moment needed me to be.

If someone needed a joke, I was funny.
If they needed quiet strength, I gave silence and stillness.
If they needed someone dependable, I showed up early and stayed late.
And if they needed me to disappear—I knew how to fade just enough to make it easier on them.

Looking back now, I realize I wasn’t being fake. I was being afraid.
Afraid of being too much.
Afraid of being not enough.
Afraid that if I let people see the full truth of who I was—messy, emotional, confused—they’d leave. Just like so many before them had.

So I wore masks. Not literal ones, but emotional armor—shaped by every unspoken hurt and every moment I didn’t know how to explain what was happening inside me.

It’s strange how convincing a mask can become when you’ve worn it long enough. I smiled a lot. People said I had a good attitude. I worked hard. I made others laugh. I carried conversations. I even got told I was “inspiring” once—at a time when I could barely drag myself out of bed.

But no one saw the panic attacks behind closed doors.
No one saw the spirals at night, the way my thoughts turned on me like wild animals.
No one saw the anger, the shame, the confusion I carried like a second skin.

I started to believe that maybe I didn’t even know who I really was anymore.

When I looked in the mirror, it was like staring into a fog. I could see pieces—someone talented, someone kind, someone capable—but it was all blurred under layers of performance. I didn’t know how to just be. I only knew how to be useful.

But in the middle of all that confusion, there was one person who always saw me—the real me, even when I couldn’t see him myself.

My grandma. My Nani.

Every single morning, like clockwork, she would sip her coffee while slowly moving her fingers across her rosary beads, praying for each member of our family—by name. It wasn’t for show. It was her quiet offering, her sacred rhythm. That’s who she was: a woman of deep conviction, soft hands, and fierce heart. She said “I love you more” so often it became less of a phrase and more of a promise. One I still feel in the moments I need it most.

She was sweet—but don’t mistake that for passive. Nani knew what she wanted, and she knew how to make you understand if you weren’t listening. She didn’t raise her voice often, but when she did, you felt it. Not because of anger, but because of truth. She had a way of commanding a room with grace and grounding it with love.

She was talented—more than people realized. She could play the piano beautifully, effortlessly, like her emotions flowed through the keys. She loved music that made you feel something. Come Unto Me by The Mavericks was one of her favorites. So was Stay by Rihanna. Somehow, both made sense—because she was both. Bold and tender. Traditional and modern. Sacred and real.

The desert was her sanctuary. Raised in Tucson, later moving to Hawthorne and then to Yerington, she made the dry land bloom—literally. She created her own oasis with trees, flowers, and a perfectly kept lawn. Even when money was tight, she’d make sure things were beautiful. Even when life was hard, she’d make sure I was fed. Home-cooked meals were her love language. And they always came with presence—not just food on a plate, but comfort you could feel in your chest.

After my Papa passed, something in her changed. She didn’t fall apart, at least not in front of me. Instead, she leaned into peace. She tried to find herself again in quiet ways. She began seeking peace for herself while still holding space for mine. I didn’t realize back then how much she must’ve been struggling. But she never once made me feel like my emotions were too much or less important than her own.

We went to a grief counselor together. We tried to make sense of the pain, to process what felt too big for words. She kept me grounded, even while she was grieving herself. I know now that her strength wasn’t in being unaffected—it was in being there. Present. Willing. Honest.

Some afternoons, I’d catch her just standing by the storm door, staring out at the desert. Not saying a word. Just letting the light touch her face. I think she was talking to God. Or to herself. Or maybe to Papa. I never asked. I just knew it was sacred.

She loved her solitude, her little rituals. A glass of wine. A sweet conversation with a friend—or just by herself. Sometimes, she’d be on her phone, playing Candy Crush like a teenager, content in her own company. She decorated the house with warmth and intention—new colors on the walls, fresh flowers on the table. Somehow, it always felt like love lived there. Because she did.

She didn’t ask me to take off my mask. She just loved me until I didn’t need it anymore.

That’s what saved me.

Chapter 4: Dry Bones

You don’t always need years with someone to feel their impact.
Sometimes, a handful of memories—half-faded, half-sacred—are enough to shape you for a lifetime.

I was only nine when my grandpa, my Papa, passed away.
And yet, he remains one of the most powerful figures in my story. Not because of big speeches or dramatic moments, but because of who he was: steady, sharp, and stoic. He was the backbone of our home, the quiet hum that kept things running, the one person I looked at and thought, That’s what a real man looks like.

He didn’t boast. He didn’t seek praise. He just did the work.

Even as a kid, I could feel it—that calm certainty in him. He didn’t argue with my grandma. He didn’t raise his voice to be heard. He didn’t need to. He led by doing. And he did everything.

It felt like there was nothing he couldn’t fix. Nothing he couldn’t build or break down or understand. People say I have an engineering mind, and maybe that’s no accident. Maybe a piece of him lives in the way I see the world—how I dissect problems, how I crave structure, how I want to know how things work and why. I like to think he’d see my mind and smile. I like to think he’d be proud.

I remember one day when he returned from a hunt—bloody camo, cool eyes, hands already at work. He laid out the deer and started breaking it down with the precision of a surgeon. That kind of thing should have made a kid like me squeamish. But not me. I was fascinated. He handed me a Ziploc bag with the brain in it. I held it like it was treasure. Played with it like it was Play-Doh.

Yeah, I know—gross. But I didn’t care. I wasn’t grossed out.
I was in awe of him.

He battled leukemia—not once, but twice. And still, he remained the strongest man I knew. I didn’t see weakness in him. Even when he was sick, even when he was tired, he came home with his arms wide open. And I’d run into them like nothing else mattered.

He was gone a lot for work—off in mining towns most people haven’t heard of, let alone find on a map. Places like Manhattan, Silver Peak, Round Mountain. Visiting him there was like walking through a ghost town… but it was beautiful to me. Exploring those empty streets, wandering alone into the nearby hills—I didn’t know it then, but I was starting to fall in love with the desert. With silence. With solitude. I was starting to understand why he chose that life. And maybe, why part of me would choose it too.

His death didn’t hit me all at once. I was too young to understand what permanence meant. But something in me shifted. Something went still. I felt it in the house—in the way my grandma looked out the window longer. In the way our lives suddenly seemed a little quieter, a little heavier.

Losing him created a space I didn’t know how to fill.
So I tried to become what I thought he’d want me to be.

Disciplined. Focused. Capable. Strong.
The kind of man who didn’t need to be told what to do—he just knew.
The kind of man who fixed things. Who showed up. Who didn’t run.

Maybe that’s why I value older relationships. Why I’m drawn to maturity. Why I crave grounding in others. I lost the first man I ever looked up to before I even knew how much I’d need him later.

If I could talk to him now, I wouldn’t waste time.
I’d give him the biggest hug and say:
Thank you. You did everything you needed to do—even if you wanted to stay longer.

And I’d tell him I’ve been trying—every single day—not just to remember him…
but to become the kind of man he was.

Chapter 5: Storms I Survived in Silence

There were days when it felt like the storm was all inside me.

No thunder in the sky, no lightning cracking the air—just a heaviness that settled behind my eyes, in my chest, in the pit of my stomach. I could smile through it. Hold conversations through it. Show up to work or school through it. And no one ever suspected a thing.

That’s the danger of knowing how to function while suffering—you become really good at hiding.

On the outside, I seemed fine. Capable. Sociable. Even funny.
But on the inside, I was in survival mode.
And survival mode doesn’t leave much room for peace.

Grief has a strange way of echoing. My Papa was gone, and my Nani—strong as she was—was hurting too. I didn’t know how to help her, and I didn’t know how to help myself. So I just… existed. Carried on. Numb, but present. Quiet, but cooperative.

At the time, I didn’t have the vocabulary for what I was feeling. I didn’t know what PTSD was. I didn’t know what Bipolar II meant. I didn’t understand why I could feel nothing for days, and then everything all at once. I just thought I was broken. Or too much. Or a burden.

There were nights I didn’t want to wake up. Not because I hated life, but because I didn’t know how to live it anymore.
It felt like I was constantly climbing out of a pit with no bottom.
No matter how much progress I made, I was always afraid I’d slip right back down.

And yet… I kept going.
Not because I was strong. But because part of me still hoped something would change.

There were tiny things that helped. A soft moment with my Nani. A song that said what I couldn’t. A walk in silence. A good dream. A familiar scent. Little reminders that I was still here—that I was still me, even if I couldn’t feel it fully yet.

But the truth is, I was falling apart. Quietly. In the privacy of my own mind.
And no one knew.

That’s the thing about mental illness. It doesn’t always scream. Sometimes it whispers.
You’re not good enough.
You’re never going to get better.
Everyone would be better off without you.

And when you're alone with those whispers long enough, they start to sound like facts.

I had moments—dark ones—where I wondered if I was destined to feel this way forever. Moments where I didn’t reach out, didn’t cry for help, didn’t even let myself feel it. I just… shut down. That was my safety mechanism. Total emotional lockdown.

I became a master at holding things in.
At making pain digestible. Palatable. Easy for others to be around.
Even if it was eating me alive.

But deep down, I still had one thing left: the will to try.
Even if I didn’t feel like living, I kept trying to.
And that’s something I’ve learned to honor—not shame.

There’s a sacred kind of courage in waking up during your darkest chapter and deciding to write one more page.

I didn’t know it yet, but the storm wouldn’t last forever.
And the silence I thought would bury me would eventually become the space where healing began.

Chapter 6: When It Rains

You learn to live with drought after a while.

When your emotions feel dry for long enough—when joy is rare, connection feels forced, and your inner world resembles the dust-covered towns you grew up driving through—it becomes easy to believe that’s just how life is. That the numbness is normal. That peace is for other people.

But then it rains.

And not always in some grand, cinematic way. Sometimes the first drops come quietly—a kind word from a friend, a therapist who finally understands you, a moment of stillness that doesn’t feel empty anymore.

For me, the first rain didn’t look like healing.
It looked like loss.

This chapter of my life began after my grandma—my Nani—passed away.
The woman who raised me. The one who prayed for me every morning with her rosary wrapped around her fingers. The one who held our world together with gentleness and fierce love. When she died, I didn’t just lose a person—I lost my compass. My constant. My anchor.

Grief hit differently this time. I wasn’t a child anymore. I understood what permanence meant now. I understood the weight of not being able to call her, hear her voice, or sit in the kitchen while she poured coffee and reminded me that I was loved—without ever saying the words.

Her absence cracked something open in me. At first, it felt like everything was falling apart again. But somehow, through the pain, something else began to break through.

It looked like therapy.

It looked like sitting in an office across from someone who didn’t flinch when I told the truth. Someone who didn’t look at me like I was broken—just human. Someone who helped me put names to what I was feeling: PTSD. Bipolar II. ADD. Words that felt heavy at first, but also like a map. A way out of the maze I’d been walking in alone.

It looked like medication—not magic, but a lifeline. Something to take the edge off the storm inside me just enough so I could breathe. So I could start to see a version of myself that wasn’t defined by chaos or emotional extremes.

And it looked like love—real love.

The kind of love that doesn’t run when things get hard. The kind that sees your shadows and still chooses you. The kind of love I found in a partner who didn’t try to fix me, but sat beside me when I couldn’t speak. Who saw my “too much” as something sacred. Who reminded me that I was lovable even when I didn’t feel whole.

And slowly, I started remembering the things my grandma taught me—not through lectures, but through the way she lived. How to be still. How to create beauty in dry places. How to make a home inside yourself, even when the world outside feels unkind.

And then, it really did rain.

I remember one afternoon in the desert—driving alone, music low, windows cracked—and the sky opened. Just a little. Just enough. The rain didn’t last long, but it was enough to wet the earth, to coat the dust, to change the smell of the whole world. I pulled over and stepped outside. Let the drops hit my face. I didn’t cry. I didn’t smile. I just stood there, still. Present. Awake.

And it hit me:

I was still here.

Still alive. Still trying. Still capable of feeling.

Maybe the storm inside me hadn’t passed yet. But for the first time in a long time, I realized it wouldn’t destroy me. It couldn’t—not anymore. Not now that I had help. Not now that I had language. Not now that I’d started saying the things I used to only think about in the dark.

The desert taught me how to survive. But the rain—
The rain reminded me I was allowed to live.

And in some way, I think she sent it.
A final gift from the woman who taught me to believe that peace could exist—even in the driest places.