Brandon spent his childhood as a ward of the state, living in and out of foster care. The abuses, poverty and lack of support he experienced as a child molded and motivated him to do more and be more than he was shown. His story is one of survival, resilience, redemption, and hope. Brandon is a first generation high school and college graduate. He’s an award winning journalist, working in and out of the radio industry for nearly two decades. Currently he’s a statewide morning radio host in Nebraska covering the foster care system, education and politics.

Title: Abandon Brandon: A Memoir

Author: Brandon McDermott

Pages: 182

My review

Abandon Brandon is a brutally honest painstaking account of survival. Every living moment is a fight. A never-ending fight for the right to live. Each page is flooded with pain. This pain will overflow and it will drag our heart into its pool. The suffocation created from this pain, helplessness, and anger will break our hearts from the inside.

You can feel the roughness of this story from the first line on the first page itself. This story offers no comfort. It is not about motivation or hopes either. I felt only one thing; some people possess greater power to take all suffering. Yet they will not bow down to their circumstances. There will be some light left for them. They have the strength to hold on to that small light, with only one mission-survival.

It is not easy to survive physical and sexual abuse. It will break your health and mind, leaving long-lasting scars that will never fade. Witnessing abuse and being a victim of abuse later are two different experiences. But both of them will torment you throughout the later years of life.
Reading Brandon’s experience is not easy. He has narrated this first-person account with the utmost clarity. His unadulterated voice is too hard to digest. At some points, I was broken down into tears. I couldn’t read anymore. It was that much emotion. I couldn’t understand how he got the strength to overcome these terrible experiences even from a tender age.

We can’t choose the people we are born with. But we can choose the people we live with. We have the liberty to accept our situation or fight with them. In the end, what matters are our choices and our strength to hold on to them for good.  Loved this story and this message. This is one of the most underrated stories I ever read.