This Is Me, Unfiltered
My name is Dylan Verdun Sullivan.
I was born in the Gold Coast Hospital in 1983.
The beginning of my story is not something I remember—but it is something that has shaped everything that followed.
I am the youngest of three brothers.
There is something about being the youngest that places you in a certain position in life. You watch. You observe. You grow up trying to find your place in a world that already feels established before you even arrive.
But my beginning wasn’t simple.
I was born with bilateral club feet.
I was also born with cranial atresia.
Even writing those words now, there is a weight to them—not just medically, but personally. Because those conditions were not just something I “had.” They became part of the way I experienced the world from the very beginning.
Hospitals were not unfamiliar places to me.
Doctors. Procedures. Operations.
These weren’t rare events.
They were part of my early life.
Before I even had the ability to understand what was happening, my life had already been marked by intervention, by fragility, by a kind of physical reality that set me apart.
And yet, somehow, I was still here.
Still breathing.
Still moving forward into a life that I had no idea would carry so much complexity.
I was raised by a strong-willed mother.
And that’s not something I say lightly.
Strength, when you see it up close, is not always loud.
It doesn’t always look perfect.
But it endures.
It holds things together when they could easily fall apart.
And in many ways, that strength became one of the foundational forces in my life.
Because growing up, things were not always stable.
There were layers to my upbringing.
Challenges that shaped the environment around me.
Realities that, at times, felt confusing, heavy, and difficult to process as a child.
But even within that, there was something holding everything together.
Something that refused to let everything collapse completely.
My father was a loving father in my early years.
But everything changed after he suffered a catastrophic head injury in a tavern in Queensland.
From that moment, something shifted.
And like many things in my life, it added another layer—another complexity—to a story that was already being shaped by challenge and unpredictability.
When I look back on those early years, I don’t just see events.
I see formation.
I see the beginnings of patterns.
I see the early shaping of identity—how I viewed myself, how I responded to the world, how I learned to navigate pain, difference, and uncertainty.
Because when your life begins with physical challenges, it doesn’t just affect your body.
It affects how you see yourself.
It affects how you believe others see you.
It shapes your awareness.
And often, it introduces questions early on that most people don’t have to ask until much later.
There is something about growing up feeling different that stays with you.
Not always in obvious ways.
Sometimes it’s subtle.
Sometimes it sits beneath the surface.
But it’s there.
In how you think.
In how you respond.
In how you carry yourself.
And over time, that becomes part of your internal world.
As my life unfolded, those early patterns didn’t disappear.
They deepened.
I struggled with addiction and mental health issues for much of my life.
There were seasons where I felt like I was fighting battles internally that no one could fully see.
Anxiety that hummed beneath the surface like a constant current.
Depression that lingered like a long winter that refused to break.
Thoughts that circled endlessly, like echoes in a room with no door.
And alongside that, addiction crept in quietly—
not as a storm at first,
but as a whisper.
A relief.
A false refuge that slowly began to build walls around me.
I have tasted years of tears from depression—
not moments that pass,
but seasons that settle.
I have walked through corridors of darkness
where the air felt heavy
and hope felt distant.
I have stood in places within my own mind
where silence was louder than noise,
and the weight of simply existing felt unbearable.
I have been to the deepest depths of addiction’s embrace—
where comfort turns into chains,
and escape becomes a prison.
I have felt the soul-crushing weight of a family member’s suicide—
a grief that does not arrive loudly,
but settles deep,
reshaping everything it touches.
I have watched a loving relationship turn to ashes in my hands—
something once alive,
once warm,
reduced to memory and silence.
And those moments…
they don’t just pass.
They leave their imprint.
They shape the way you see the world,
the way you trust,
the way you carry both love and loss.
When I was eighteen, my life came face to face with death in a way that would change everything.
I contracted meningococcal disease.
I spent eleven days in a coma at the Gold Coast Hospital.
Suspended somewhere between breath and absence.
Between what was…
and what could have ended.
And in that place—
something happened.
Something I cannot reduce to explanation.
I was radically saved by Jesus Christ.
Not as an idea.
Not as a gradual shift.
But as an encounter.
That moment became a dividing line in my life.
Not the end of struggle—
but the beginning of something entirely new.
This is the tension I live in.
A life marked by:
suffering
addiction
loss
trauma
And yet also:
grace
salvation
transformation
purpose
And yet, in the midst of all of this, there is beauty.
There is life.
There are anchors that remind me that not everything has been loss.
I have two beautiful rescue cats, Ember and Ninja—
small, quiet companions that somehow carry a strange kind of peace into ordinary moments.
I have a beautiful fiancée, Bianca—
a living reminder that love can be restored,
that grace can take form in another person,
that not everything ends in ashes.
These are not small things.
They are sacred in their own way.
Out of everything I have walked through, something unexpected began to take shape.
I built an independent publishing house called Refined by Fire Press.
A place where stories are not just written—
but refined,
restored,
and carried with intention.
To have that sit alongside my own journey is something I still struggle to fully comprehend.
I have published two books:
And my Christian devotional, Refined by Fire: Finding God in the Furnace of Trauma.
These are not just projects.
They are fragments of my life—
gathered,
processed,
and laid out with honesty.
And even now, new things are forming.
I have a soon-to-be launched barbecue rub and spices business called Porky’s Paradise—
something grounded, creative, and real.
Something that brings people together around food, memory, and shared moments.
I am studying at Kings Bible College—
learning, stretching, and allowing my mind and heart to be shaped in deeper ways.
And I am stepping into a new role at the Gold Coast University Hospital—
a place that once represented survival for me,
now becoming a place of purpose.
This is where my story begins.
Not polished.
Not simplified.
But real.
A beginning marked by fire,
by formation,
by things that could have broken me—
but instead began shaping something deeper.
This is not the full story.
But it is the start.
And if I’m going to be honest—
if I’m going to be unfiltered—
then this is where I begin.
My heartbeat now is simple.
To see people transformed by the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Because I know what it is to live in darkness.
And I know what it is to encounter light.
And everything I write,
everything I build,
everything I pursue…
flows from that place.
And the truth is—
this is only just the beginning.
About the Author
Dylan Verdun Sullivan is the founder of Refined by Fire Press and an Australian author indexed in the National Library. As a Level 7 Local Guide with over 1.2M views on Google Maps, he documents the intersection of faith, recovery, and the "light in the mundane."
- Read the Memoir: Kissed by Death on Amazon
- Explore the Journey: Follow Dylan on Google Maps
- Connect on Instagram: @porkysparadise
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