The Journey Begins
I“The Journeyman”: A Memoir of Stories, Songs, and Survival
By Timothy Bernard Cooney
There comes a time in a person’s life when the road behind demands to be honored—and the road ahead depends on it. That’s why I wrote The Journeyman. Not to romanticize the pain or polish the past, but to tell the truth about it. This book is the result of a long, winding journey through five generations of chaos, resilience, and unexpected redemption. It's a story about survival—not just mine, but my family’s, and maybe yours too.
Like Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run, Mary Karr’s The Liars’ Club, or Tara Westover’s Educated, The Journeymanuses memory as a compass to navigate identity, trauma, and the search for home. But what makes this book unique is its form: it’s not just a memoir—it’s a multimedia archive. Alongside the text are songs I wrote in the darkest and brightest hours, paintings that emerged from intuitive visions, and photographs that document a lifetime of seeing the world through an artist’s lens. This is a memoir told through brushstroke, melody, and memory.
The themes at the heart of The Journeyman are deeply personal, yet universal:
Love and abandonment
Addiction and codependence
Spiritual longing and creative salvation
Generational wounds—and the will to break the cycle
I grew up in a broken household. I spent decades trying to hold others together while quietly falling apart. I wore the mask of a stockbroker for thirty years while a painter, poet, and father cried out beneath it. Writing this book was my reckoning and my release. I wrote it because I needed to make sense of what I lived through. I wrote it because I believe that telling the truth—especially the hard truth—can heal.
The Journeyman isn’t just about the past. It’s about what’s possible when we stop running and start creating. It’s about the grandchildren we write letters to through the silence. It’s about letting go of a son to save a grandson. And it’s about the idea that art doesn’t just reflect life—it can transform it.
In future posts, I’ll be sharing excerpts from the memoir, unreleased songs from the soundtrack, and stories behind the paintings and photographs that accompany the book. This space is more than a blog—it’s a living extension of The Journeyman project. If you’re someone who’s ever turned to music, memory, or creativity to survive, I hope you’ll stick around. There’s more to come.
Welcome to the journey.
