She has provided emergency services at mega concerts featuring headliners like Justin Timberlake and The Killers. She worked as an EMT for the San Diego Padres Media Department during the pandemic. She responded to all types of 911 calls as a young cadet with the San Diego Fire Department. 

Mariah Dawn has cared for hundreds of people in distress. But no one helped her. Well, friends and family tried, but she wasn’t receptive. So no one heard her cries for help other than her abusive husband. She hid all of it, tucked it away, focused instead on getting through the day and moving forward. Until she couldn’t. Until she almost died. In that moment, she says, it was finally clear to her that she had to get out. So that’s what she did. He let her go. She couldn’t believe that, but she never looked back.

The trauma hasn’t left her. It probably never will. But life is easier now, and when she discusses these good days, these new chapters as a single mom raising two children in San Diego, she traces it all back to her decision not just to leave, but to sit down and write about all of it. One day, unable to catch her breath because of PTSD, she sat down, opened a Word document, and started writing. Almost immediately she felt better. The writing was a release. It was cathartic. She could feel the stress fade as she typed. So, she kept at it, eventually telling a friend at church she thought she had written a book. Would he take a look? 

That 164-page Word document is now “Dragon In You, A Memoir” written by Mariah Dawn. Her book was published in October, which is National Domestic Violence Awareness Month, and the 3-year mark of her husband’s death. 

Mariah says she wrote the book to help herself, to help others, and to use the dragon in her (she says there’s a dragon in all of us) for good. She also believes her late husband gave her permission to publish.

“He didn’t want to be that person,” Mariah says of Michael Parke, a Navy Corpsman with the Marines who also served as a Chemical Officer with the Army, where he did a tour in Kuwait and Iraq.

He took his own life not long after his wife and two children left him in June 2020. “By putting myself on trial, I explain all of the co-dependence, the fear, the ego that I had, and by using our story, together we can create beauty out of something that was all devastation,” Mariah says.

You can buy Mariah’s new book on her website and use the code DearSD at checkout to receive a 10 percent discount. Her book also is available on Amazon minus the discount.

Tune in to this episode of Dear San Diego to learn more about Mariah and her new book.

More than 1 in 3 women (36%) and 1 in 4 men (29%) in the U.S. have experienced rape, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime, according to the National Domestic Violence Hotline. If you or someone you know needs help, please visit www.thehotline.org from a safe computer or call 1-800-799-SAFE (7233).

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