Living Up Under The Roc

What happens when the place that raised you is also the place you have to learn how to survive?

Simone Alexander grew up in Rochester, New York, surrounded by family, church, music, laughter, rules, and dreams much bigger than her hometown.

But growing up under the ROC wasn’t simple.

Behind the childhood memories were family wounds, secrets, complicated relationships, financial struggles, first love, disappointment, and the constant feeling that Simone was somehow too much.

From the little girl performing with a hairbrush in her living room to the fifteen-year-old standing barefoot outside her own home, Simone’s story becomes one of survival—and eventually, becoming.

Living Up Under The ROC is an intimate, funny, painful, and deeply human coming-of-age story about family, faith, identity, resilience, and learning that the experiences that shaped you don’t have to be the experiences that define you.

Survival made her. Faith kept her. Purpose found her.