A story of resilience rising from the riverside - explore one man's journey through the shadows of abuse into the light of peace and purpose
About the Author
I, Randall Bucek, invite you into the shadows of my childhood with this heartbreaking memoir. My brave vulnerability exposes wounds so many have suffered silently. I give voice to our deepest pains – and our deepest strengths.
Down by the Riverside is my journey of resilience, redemption, and the human capacity to heal. My story is a light cutting through the darkness that binds too many. My willingness to share intimate trauma reveals the power of hope.
My compassion and courage inspire us to confront life’s difficulties with empathy and wisdom. My reflections emerge from a place of hard-won peace. Down by the Riverside resonates with all who have transformed their own pain into purpose.
A story of resilience rising from the riverside – explore one man’s journey through the shadows of abuse into the light of peace and purpose.
For People
Abuse /Trauma Survivors
Mental Health Advocates
Understanding Addiction
Introspective Readers
Learning Family Dynamics
Spiritual Seekers
About the Book
The 9/11 World Trade Center tragedy forced me to think about life and that which is truly important, Soon afterward, I left the corporate world and the Chicago suburbs to return to the place of my youth – – the very place to which I swore I’d never again return.
I came back to Phillips, a small town nestled in the Wisconsin north woods. Surrounded by the national forest, Phillips is a town comprised of friendly people supported by a hardboard factory and a logging industry.
Mother was alive when I arrived in 2001. The following summer, I took her golfing on the 4th of July, Independence Day was also Mother’s birthday. Golfing with her was the most enjoyable time we ever spent together, She referred to me as “the white Tiger Woods.”
Several years later, my mother passed away. She died from alcohol poisoning. For she died as she had lived.
The words written within are as painful to recall as they were to live. Childhood is precious, a time of innocence. That’s what I’m told anyway. I wouldn’t know from personal experience.
Email to My Sister
Dear Deb,
Today you made a comment which I have given an abundance of thought to. You said that you tried to tell me what I needed to do and that I refused to listen. That does go two ways. I told you and Lori what I needed to do, and you both failed to listen as well. My entire life I was told what I could not accomplish instead of that which is possible. When a person share their dreams with the people that supposedly love them, and those dreams are repeatedly crushed, they stop sharing those dreams. They do not, however, stop pursuing them. I believed in myself when nobody did.
I always knew I could touch the very essence of a person’s soul through mere words I have written. For whatever reason, you and Lori refused to believe it. You never listened to me in the past and I believe it is time that you start to. You owe it to yourself to read my books. You will then learn that you never knew Randy at all. When I shared my dreams with Lori, she shook her head in disgust just as Mother did. Those dreams have now become reality.
While I have always been considered a disappointment, an embarrassment even, to my family, I have received hundreds of emails from complete strangers that tell me I am amazing and beautiful even. I never wrote for the money generated. I wrote because I knew my words would touch the very soul of the reader. And that is priceless. I have always known what I wanted from this life, and I can only pray that you now understand what I have been trying to tell you.
I don’t know if Lori will ever read them. For if she does, she will learn that every comment she made, every painful joke made at my expense, everything she thought and believed about me was wrong. I am not certain that she can accept that.
I will share a secret with you. Thanks to my near-fatal accident, I know exactly what Jesus looks like. It is slightly different than he is portrayed.
With all my love, the brother you thought you knew.
Randy