I did something recently that scared the hell out of me. I deleted over 300 people from this email list. Not by accident. A deliberate, eyes-open, deep-breath-first decision. I went from 706+ subscribers to around 402. In minutes. And the second I did it, I felt something I haven't felt in a while. I exhaled. Like, actually exhaled. The kind of breath that comes from somewhere below your chest when you finally stop holding on to something that wasn't working. Here's the thing I want you to...
1 day ago • 2 min read
Nobody warns you about this part of healing... You start doing the work of healing. You start coming back to yourself and you expect the people around you to celebrate that. Sometimes they do not. Sometimes they pull away. Sometimes you pull away. Sometimes a friendship you thought would last forever just ends. And you are left standing there wondering what you did wrong. You did not do anything wrong. Growth costs you people. Not because you became someone unrecognizable. But because the...
2 days ago • 1 min read
When you look in the mirror, what do you see? Not your face, your hair or your body. YOU. What do you actually say to yourself in that moment? Because if you are anything like I was, it is not kind. It is critical, harsh, distant like you are looking at a stranger you do not even like. I used to avoid mirrors completely. Or I would look and immediately look away because I did not want to feel that. But I started doing something different. Every morning I look at myself and I give myself a...
4 days ago • 1 min read
Yesterday I told you it was a heavy day. Today, I get to tell you the other side of that. My wife and I have been going to this kickboxing gym for just 30 minutes, in and out and we kept having these normal conversations with the owner. Life, work, random stuff. Somehow, my story came up. What I have been through, the work I have done, losing my brother, carrying that for 24 years and how that grip is not the same anymore. Then she mentioned her daughter and that she had been looking for...
6 days ago • 1 min read
Today was a little heavy. I got a call about my brother over the weekend, one of my two brothers who are mentally handicapped and there is a situation that has been escalating for a few months now. He cannot make rational decisions the way you or I can. He does not understand consequences and I have been feeling like I am the only one fighting for him, trying to parent my brothers and parent my parents at the same time about why this matters and why we need to have his back. So I called my...
6 days ago • 2 min read
Hope y'all had a good one. We slept in, grabbed coffee, looked at a couple houses, got some Vietnamese food, came home and just lived a slow day. Nothing crazy. Just present. And I want to play a quick game with you today. Write this down: "How can I ever get over this?" Say it out loud. Now pause. What do you feel? Where do you feel it in your body... chest, stomach, throat? And if you had to rate it on a scale of 1 to 10, what number is it? Now change one word. "How can I get over this?"...
7 days ago • 1 min read
For 24 years I carried survivor's guilt. Not just the feeling. The story around it. The beliefs that got built on top of what actually happened. Because here is what most people do not realize: It is never just the event. It is what you decided the event meant. About you. About life. About what you deserved. And those decisions turn into language. Words you repeat so many times they stop feeling like a story and start feeling like the truth. So I did something. I wrote out what actually...
8 days ago • 1 min read
I had lunch with a friend yesterday. We were just talking life, where we came from, the people around us growing up. And something hit us both at the same time. If we never left, we would still be living that life. Same patterns, same environment, same struggles. Survival mode. Depressed. Anxious. Miserable. No real dreams, no vision, no hope for something different. Just existing. And then we both realized something else: we were the first ones to break out. Not because we had a perfect...
9 days ago • 1 min read
I went to lunch with a friend today. Just catching up, talking about the weekend. The girls are doing book club on Saturday, so me and the guys were supposed to hang out. Have a little grill out, chill and just chat it up. And a year ago I would have said yes without thinking. Even if I was exhausted and I had nothing left to give. But today I told them I am not coming. Not because I do not care. Not because I do not want to be there. Because I am tired... mentally, physically, emotionally...
10 days ago • 1 min read