About

I did my best, it wasn’t much
I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch
I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you…

I’m peace meade brod.

I wrote here as Jael from 2011 to 2022.

Jael was borrowed from the Old Testament—the woman who drove a tent spike through a general’s temple when the moment required it. I needed that name to testify. To write about faith, family, and the exhaustion of performing a normalcy I didn’t understand I was performing—while keeping my children safe in a community where that visibility carried risk.

In 2017, I was diagnosed with autism.

The blog went quiet in 2022.

In November 2024, I had surgery. Five procedures. Six incisions. One day. Treated as routine outpatient care.

I woke in a ring of fire.

What followed was a violent emergence from anesthesia, a cascading postoperative crisis, and the slow recognition that naming myself autistic had not been enough to protect my body from a system that couldn’t read its warnings.

Standard of Care is the memoir I’m writing from that rupture.

Writing it required my own name.

What’s Here

Over a decade of posts—some raw, some searching, all honest.

The earlier writing (2011-2022) explores spiritual formation, marriage, parenting, and the slow work of trying to understand why ordinary life felt so hard. In my first post, “Broken Hallelujah,” I explain the name of this blog and that I am an insecure, packrat Seeker whose Hallelujah broke.

Going forward:

• Excerpts from Standard of Care
• Recovery writing
• What comes after rupture

The blog’s name stays broken hallelujah because that’s still true.

The song is still broken. The praise is still imperfect. I’m still standing before the Lord of Song with nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah.

I’m writing under my own name now.

Work

My writing has appeared in Psychology Today, Parenting Magazine, and Teaching K-8.

Before relocating to Boston, I founded and directed Sapling Grove Family Center—a trauma-informed early childhood program built in collaboration with clinicians and families.

I write about medical harm, neurodivergence, and what happens when systems fail to recognize the bodies they’re meant to protect.

Standard of Care is complete at the proposal stage. I’m seeking representation.

Contact: peace.brod@gmail.com

There’s a blaze of light in every word
It doesn’t matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah