Growing Up Twice: Shaping a Future by Reliving My Past

Winner of Best Gay Book, San Francisco Book Festival. Winner of General Non-Fiction, New York, Hollywood, and Beach Book Festivals. Readers' Favorite Inspirational Book Award winner, 2017 and 2018.

Aaron Kirk Douglas did not write this book because he got it right. He wrote it because he got it wrong, honestly, repeatedly, and on the record, and kept showing upanyway.

He signed up at the Portland Pride Festival to mentor a twelve-year-old boy in foster care. He broke the Big Brothers Big Sisters rules. He felt resentment he documented without apology. He micromanaged when he was supposed to listen. He stepped in financially when it was explicitly prohibited. And over the next decade, he built a family.

Rico's mother was undocumented. His father was unknown. He was conceived in rape. He had spent time in foster care and was heading toward gang involvement when Aaron arrived. Over six years, Aaron helped him graduate high school, stay out of gangs, and find his footing. In doing so, Aaron confronted every wound from his own childhood in Springfield, Oregon, growing up gay in a strict, religious home that never quite made room for who he was.

This is not a story about a hero. It is a story about two imperfect human beings who refused to give up on each other and discovered that saving someone else is inseparable from saving yourself.

Readers of The Glass Castle, Educated, The Kite Runner, and A Long Way Gone have called Growing Up Twice one of the most honest and emotionally resonant memoirs they have ever read. Available in paperback, Kindle, and audiobook, narrated by the author himself for an experience as intimate as a conversation.

If you have ever told yourself you need to be whole before you can help someone else become whole, this book was written for you.

Growing Up Twice is the first installment of a trilogy. The sequel, Pieces on the Floor, is forthcoming.