Changing The Stars, a Memoir by Cody Renegar...

In his personal memoir, Cody shares many of his broken and shattered moments that led to his beautiful scars. It’s a story of how he helped break the cycle of abuse in his family tree. He refused to be a victim of his past and he overcame years of abuse and now lives a life of positivity. The years of violence he endured growing up he chose to look at and receive as beautiful gifts. He takes you back to when as a small child he was dragged around with his sisters and brothers by an alcoholic, abusive mother. They lived anywhere from old warehouses, to abandoned cabins on the sides of nameless country roads, to a cardboard slat under a bridge overpass, to a haunted run down house, to a honkytonk bar. 

His mother’s friend’s forced him to smoke a joint at 4 years old. He and his sisters were sexually abused by the mom’s friends as well. He and his siblings were finally taken away from their mom for due to: Physical, sexual, emotional abuse, malnutrition, neglect and more. Cody and his siblings finally escaped the hell of his mom’s upbringing only to be put in a brutal Foster home in Arkansas where they were again physically and sexually abused. When Cody went to school with the whole left side of his face bruised, an obvious handprint on there and his eye swollen shut, that was the final proof of the abuse. It would have been recognized earlier if not for the huge failure of the system.

When they were finally taken out of that home they had experienced every single abuse on Kadishuns list of abuse and three more abuses based on their experiences were added to the law. The only temporary relief Cody and his siblings ever got was at the Rainbow House with the Gateleys one of the few decent people they came into contact with in a sea of evil ones.

Their goal was to stay together but eventually they were split up. Cody was adopted by a prestigious family with the most dreamy and beautiful places he’d ever seen! The gleam of this shiny new home faded quickly and the dream became a nightmare. Cody’s adopted father had learned disciplinary, violent corporal punishment ways from his lieutenant colonel father and he did not break the cycle of abuse.  Cody’s adopted dad tied Cody’s hands over the saddle, pulled Cody’s shirt over his head and his pants to his ankles, and he whipped Cody relentlessly, He didn’t stop until Cody lay on the ground, blinded, naked and screaming, after being falsely accused of something truly horrible. At school that week was the Scoliosis test and when he lifted his shirt, half of it was stuck to his back from his still open wounds. 

Cody survived all this as a child and became a caring, successful hairstylist and artist, who became a crusader who fought for marriage rights in Arkansas as he raised a son as a single gay dad. The stories in the book show how Cody and his sister Sue are proof that one can overcome horrible situations in the past and live good productive lives.