A Very Long Story About Karma That Will Probably Make Me Cry

Growing up, Ren Ster’s untreated, undiagnosed Bipolar brother was marginalized in schools. Educators tore a rift in her family blaming everything on a developing child who eventually became a heroin addict. As a mother, stepmother, volunteer, and school employee in Silicon Valley, she observed how little attitudes towards special needs students have evolved since the 1970’s. Fearing her stepson’s outcomes without intervention, she threatened the child’s grandmother, a Regional Social Services Director for a Midwestern division of the Salvation Army, with blackmail after educators, therapists, and her husband’s ex-wife pushed her into a psychotic break. She believed the Universe wanted her to solve the child’s problems by any means necessary using an award-winning children’s book as a technical manual.

Through anecdotes and episodes, A Very Long Story chronicles the dysfunctional adult behavior that ripped Ren Ster’s childhood and adult families apart and inspired her to run away from it all to join the Burning Man circus.