All of Lee Hawkins’ dreams were coming true when the nightmares started.

He was achieving many of the professional goals he had set for himself. He was an award-winning journalist with a coveted reporting job at The Wall Street Journal.

But despite all his success, "My spirit revolted," he said.

That revolt, now 20 years ago, turned out to be post-traumatic stress disorder from years of severe physical punishment suffered at the hands of his parents. In processing that trauma, Hawkins told his parents that if they wanted to maintain a relationship with him, they had to talk to a therapist with him and confront what had happened.

When they agreed to a meeting, he was terrified that his experiences would be minimized -- or worse, denied.

In a searing new memoir, “I Am Nobody’s Slave: How Uncovering My Family’s History Set Me Free,” Hawkins details the trauma he endured throughout his childhood and adolescence with excruciating honesty. Dealing with his childhood pain eventually led him to explore his family’s ancestral history in America -- deeply marked by the violence of enslavement, Jim Crow segregation and systemic racism.

While he reveals his own compelling journey, he also makes a provocative argument: The belt used by some Black parents to beat their children into obedience is an extension of the enslaver’s whip used to beat their enslaved ancestors. He makes a direct connection between the generational trauma of slavery and racial violence and the violence replicated within some Black families.

His mission is to get people to think about raising their children differently, and to help adults who grew up with normalized corporal punishment understand their experiences differently.

He knows he is an anomaly within his community for questioning his parents’ methods.

“That I’m having trouble with the fact that I was beaten as a child is a radical concept in America,” he said. For hundreds of years, white supremacists believed the only way to control Black bodies was through inflicting violence on them. Generations of white people mercilessly beat freed and enslaved Black people. It eventually trickled down to a normalization of corporal punishment and the belief that Black children “are not smart enough to be talked to” to have their behavior corrected, he said.

Hawkins argues that Black parents who whip or hit their children are acting on the ingrained beliefs of white supremacy and racist stereotypes.

Many of his contemporaries who were consistently beaten as children struggle to identify that treatment as abuse, he says. One big hurdle is having to classify one's parents' actions as abusive, especially when those actions are an accepted part of one's culture. It took years for Hawkins to understand that both things could be true -- that he loves his parents and that their actions were profoundly damaging.

“The hardest part of writing this book was capturing the balance,” he said. “I want readers to understand the love I had for my parents and the love my father felt for me -- despite the violence.”

Hawkins knew he wanted to maintain a relationship with his parents -- one based on mutual respect. Years of researching his family history, and also talking to a therapist, gave him a better understanding of his parents’ actions and a path to healing from the damage.

It also ignited a desire for him to change a culture in which corporal punishment is seen as an act of love rather than an act of violence.

“I am speaking out against something that really isn’t a big deal to a lot of people in this country,” he said. He explains the impact that adverse childhood experiences have on a person's health and lifespan, including increasing the risks of cancer, heart disease and diabetes.

“At the time, I did not believe what was happening was severe. I was one of many who was getting beaten,” he said. The journey to understanding his family, investigating their histories and healing himself led to this raw, vulnerable and important work. It offers a roadmap for those who grew up in similar conditions to have difficult conversations -- beginning with themselves.

“It may be the first time many people sit down and look at what we do to our children,” he said.

I wanted to ask my mom some difficult questions the last time I visited, but I hesitated -- worried about her possible answers.

We were already dealing with my father’s weeks-long stay at an inpatient rehabilitation facility due to his Parkinson’s. She has been his primary caretaker for the past five years. We had never discussed, with all my siblings in the same room, end-of-life questions involving his medical care or their future living arrangements.

They seemed to be getting by with help from a paid caregiver, who came daily, and support from my siblings, who live locally.

None of us want to imagine the scenario in which my father cannot be cared for in their home. But his condition now at 82 seems more precarious than it ever has before. For those with significant health conditions, being able to afford continuous, around-the-clock care at home seems possible only for the wealthiest individuals.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services estimates that nearly 70% of Americans aged 65 and older will require some form of long-term care during their lifetime. This could mean home health care, assisted living or nursing home care. The cost of any of these can be exorbitant for those who pay out-of-pocket. It’s been shocking to learn how few resources are available to middle class people, even those who have worked hard their entire lives, if they become sick or disabled when they are older.

One of my siblings is a physician and another is a judge, so they are the logical people to ask about medical and legal decisions. Still, we wanted to try to get everyone on the same page on questions that could arise later: Should a parent get a feeding tube if they can no longer swallow? Should they be put on a ventilator if the need arises? For how long and under what conditions? Has the parent expressed their own views on these issues?

I had read everything I could find online about treatment options and outcomes for elderly patients with advanced Parkinson’s. None of that knowledge prepared me for the emotional impact of having to discuss these scenarios with my mom and siblings.

It was hard enough to contemplate these questions in the hypothetical; how much more difficult would it be when confronted with an emergency? What will happen if we can’t come to a consensus?

Like many older adults, my parents have always said they want to remain in their own home, living independently for as long as possible. I’m sure I will want the same thing when I reach that stage of life. So, how do we know when that’s no longer safe or viable? What if your parent disagrees with your assessment?

I don’t know if my father will be able to come home after he moves from the rehab center to a skilled nursing facility. He’s making slow and steady progress, but it takes so much longer to regain strength and basic life skills at this age when you have a neurodegenerative disorder. So much is unpredictable and up in the air with regard to his future care. Statistics suggest that about 60% of skilled nursing facility patients are eventually able to return home. I desperately am hoping he’s in that category.

I couldn’t bring myself to ask my parents where they would want to live if they could no longer take care of themselves. What if we can’t make their wishes happen?

Instead, I asked my mom: What more can I do for you? What do you need from me? How can I better support you?

Showing up to visit as often as I can and helping in limited ways doesn’t feel like enough. My mom said she appreciated my visits. We all celebrated my dad’s birthday together last weekend, and he was thrilled to have all his children around him. She said she would think about what else she needed. She asked me to keep praying for her and my dad.

I assured her that I’ve been praying constantly.

Will the real Anita Hagerman please stand up?

Hagerman, the orchestra director at John Burroughs School in St. Louis, occasionally freelances as a musician. Last month, she played the bass at a concert at East Central College in Union, Missouri. A few weeks later, she found pictures of that event on Facebook.

She was scanning through the photos when she noticed the group’s bass player. She didn’t remember any other bass players at the show. She zoomed in on the picture. The woman was wearing the same shirt Hagerman had worn. The bass looked like her own instrument. Her wedding ring was on the musician’s hand.

It was her body, but not her face.

“What happened here?” she commented on the photo.

“I had no idea if this was another human’s face or a completely AI-generated face,” she later told me.

Jon Bauer, an amateur photographer who shot the concert, also happens to be the president of the college. He takes photos of events on campus and uses Lightroom to adjust lighting or color. He was shocked when he saw Hagerman’s comment.

“I didn’t do anything to manipulate her image,” he said. He said he felt terrible about it and had no idea how her face had morphed into someone else’s. He immediately took the altered photo down, found the original and replaced it. He had used an AI eraser to remove a line in the background of the photo. He wonders if other elements in the photo were affected by that tool.

He said he has no idea how to swap or change a person’s face in a photo.

“I couldn’t have done it if I had tried,” he said. “I’m not that technologically advanced.”

The issue was quickly resolved, but it raises larger questions about the unsuspecting ways AI has encroached on our lives. The experience highlights how fragile our sense of reality is right now. Several times, I’ve seen people post stories on social media with the caveat “not sure if this is true or not.”

A family member shared in a group chat a convincing video of Oprah Winfrey’s voice weighing in on the suffering of the Palestinians. It was an AI-generated deepfake. More than half of the press releases and email pitches I receive read as if they were written by ChatGPT.

I attended an education conference a few years ago in which teachers talked about using AI to create assessments and to grade them, while students use AI to complete many assignments.

I wondered: Isn’t it just the AI getting smarter in those classrooms?

Authors recently learned that millions of pirated books and scientific papers have been used by Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, to train its generative AI model. The Atlantic reported that Meta accessed these works through LibGen -- Library Genesis -- to train its AI system, Llama, without permission from the creators of the works. Multiple authors have brought a lawsuit against Meta over the unauthorized use of their work.

Millions of others willingly handed over images of their faces as part of trends, such as posting AI-generated Barbie boxes or action figures of themselves. How many of these users knew that their images would be stored, used to train future models or possibly sold to third parties? Could their facial data also be used to create deepfakes, identity theft scams or impersonations in fake content?

TechCrunch reported that people have used ChatGPT’s new image generator to create realistic, yet fake, restaurant receipts. A former Washington Post reporter shared that she found stories she had never written with her byline attached after WaPo announced a partnership with OpenAI.

In addition to the legal, creative and intellectual property issues created by burgeoning AI use, the environmental impact of the power needed to train AI models is extraordinary. AI models require a staggering amount of electricity. They also need vast amounts of water to cool their hardware. Professor Gina Neff of Queen Mary University of London told the BBC that the data centers used to power ChatGPT consume more electricity in a year than 117 countries.

The proliferation of AI has provoked multiple existential questions for humans.

“Are we all stock photos now?” Hagerman asked. She used to teach English and says the experience of discovering a fake version of yourself online is the very postmodern existence that all of literature has prepared us for.

“It’s this othering of what it means to be human,” she said.