Surviving Me

What if the person you spent your whole life trying to survive was yourself?

In Surviving Me: From Childhood Trauma to Transplant Triumph, Duke tells the unfiltered story of a life shaped by childhood trauma, survival instincts, ambition, addiction, relationships, fatherhood, success, failure-and the consequences of spending years fighting battles he never fully understood.

For much of his life, Duke knew how to survive.

He knew how to perform. How to work. How to entertain. How to keep moving. How to bury pain beneath humor, confidence, chaos, and the next distraction.

Until his body could no longer keep up.

What followed was not simply a medical crisis. It was a reckoning.

Facing liver failure and ultimately a life-saving transplant, Duke was forced to confront more than his mortality. He had to confront the choices, wounds, patterns, and people that had brought him to that moment-and the uncomfortable realization that surviving physically would mean very little if he returned to living the same way.

Surviving Me is not a story about having all the answers.

It is about finally becoming willing to ask the right questions.

Raw, funny, painful, and deeply human, this memoir follows one man's journey from childhood trauma to the edge of death and into an unexpected second chance at life. Along the way, it explores family, friendship, forgiveness, accountability, fatherhood, love, and what happens when the identity that once protected you becomes the very thing you have to outgrow.

Because in the end, Duke did not save himself.

He finally stopped fighting the people trying to save him.