415 Kristof Morrow - Tourette Syndrome: Slapping, Punching and Clawing Yourself To Success

Kristof Morrow - Navy veteran, Journalist, and Author - Living and writing with a disability
I’m a veteran, author, and journalist that’s sold more than 1200 copies of my debut book, “The Second Sun,” after going viral on TikTok in June.
Growing up, I was the third born but the first to graduate high school. I was viciously abused by my parents. They both have suffered from some form of addiction.
I taught myself to write while serving in the US Navy as a Corpsman right after high school, and after leaving, I learned a University education wasn't for me, despite winning the highest award for short fiction and poetry at two different colleges in their annual creative writing contests.
While living in Louisiana, I was hired by a film director to help complete his script and got to work on a film set.
I became an EMT around the age of 23, then a 911 dispatcher at 26 before earning, by audition, a job at a newspaper. At this point, I was 27 years old and won awards from two Texas Press Associations for feature writing and photography. Amidst this time and in earlier years, I would exchange letters with Pulitzer Prize winning writer Robert Olen Butler.
My diagnosis of Tourette Syndrome led me literally to slapping, punching and clawing myself to success.