Before You Judge
the Woman,meet the little girlwho had to become her.

Before you walk through these books with me, I want you to know something: I am not telling you my story from a place of perfection. I am not standing on the other side of my life pretending I have healed every wound, answered every question, or made peace with every person who has hurt me — or every person I may have hurt along the way. My name is Cynthia D. Jones, but inside these pages, you will come to know me as Diane. Before I became a mother, before I became an author, before I understood words like trauma, generational wounds, estrangement, or accountability, I was simply a little girl trying to survive what was happening around me. I learned how to endure long before I learned how to heal. I learned how to keep moving when nobody came to rescue me. Those survival skills carried me out of childhood, but they did not stay in childhood. They grew up with me.

Then I became a mother. I loved my children fiercely. I sacrificed. I fought. I protected. I provided. And for many years, I believed that because I had given my children more than I had been given, I had somehow outrun my own trauma. I hadn’t. There are things I can see today that I could not see while I was living them. There are wounds my children experienced that I cannot dismiss simply because hurting them was never my intention. What if I really did the best I knew how to do — and some of my best still hurt the people I loved? I could spend the rest of my life defending myself, or I could become brave enough to examine myself. I chose the mirror. Not because everything was my fault. It wasn’t. But because I cannot ask other people to face their truth while refusing to face mine.

That is why I wrote From the Edge of the Ledge. These books are not my attempt to convince you that I was a good mother, a bad mother, an innocent mother, or a guilty one. I refuse to reduce an entire human life to one label. I want you to meet the child before you judge the woman. I want you to understand what happened to me, what I carried into motherhood, what my children experienced through the version of me they received, what happened when relationships began to fracture, and what remained when some of the people I loved no longer wanted me in their lives. I am willing to talk about the parts that hurt me, but I am also willing to talk about the parts where I caused hurt. Everybody’s pain gets a seat at this table — including mine.

So when you read these books, I don’t want you standing outside my life looking in. I want you to walk with me. Maybe somewhere in my story you will recognize your mother. Maybe you will recognize your child. Maybe you will recognize the person you used to be. And maybe, when you least expect it, you will recognize yourself. I went to the edge of the ledge. I know what it feels like to stand there carrying years of things nobody else can see. But I didn’t jump. I turned around. And now I am walking back through the places that shaped me — not because I want to live there again, but because I finally want to understand how I got there. If you are willing to do the same, come walk with me.