Dear Em,

You turn seven today. Seven! I can hardly believe it.

Each year, when I sit down to reflect and write you this letter, you surprise me by adding whole new layers to who you are.

This year, I am proud of how you’ve been learning to communicate with us. Even though you don’t speak with your voice, you’ve been showing us so much of your personality through your PODD book. You’ve surprised me with how quickly you’ve learned the system of words and symbols in the big flipbook. It’s been amazing seeing you get more adept at sharing what you’re thinking and feeling.

When we’re scanning your book together, we go word by word, watching closely as you tell us what you want to say. When it’s not the right one, you move your head “side, side, no.” If it’s the one you want, you move your head “up, down, yes.” Once you choose a word, we check to make sure it’s what you meant by asking, “Oops, mistake?” If you say no, we ask if you have “another word” to say. If that’s a yes, we start scanning again. And if it’s a no, we say, “That’s all you have to say about that.”

And Em, what you have to say is amazing.

Sure, a lot of the time you say, I want → video, which means you want to watch one of two different Raffi concerts from the 80s, or one of roughly six Sesame Street episodes you like. But there have been many funny and heartwarming moments with your communication, too.

One of my favorites was when Grandma Rita was reading a book to you, and you said: I like this → good job → another word → I want → music. In other words, you were saying, “Good job reading, Grandma, but I’m done with it and I want my music now.” That moment still makes me smile—not just because it was funny, but because it was so you. Clear. Honest. And Kind. You knew what you wanted to say, and you said it.

Of course, this year wasn’t all great. Just as the new year began, we were back in the hospital. You caught RSV, which turned into pneumonia, and you needed oxygen support to help your body recover. You and I spent New Year’s Eve riding down to San Francisco in an ambulance. Over the next few days, your mom and I traded off overnight shifts, holding your hand, keeping an eye on your blood oxygen levels, suctioning stuff out of your mouth and nose to help you breathe, doing our best to keep you comfortable and calm. It was tough in the hospital, and even when we got home. It felt like we lost most of January. But you made it through, like you always do, with strength most people can’t begin to muster.

Later this year, there will be some surgeries ahead. We’re still working out the details, but I want you to know that we’re cautiously optimistic. We’ve been talking with your amazing doctors, asking questions, and gathering information. While there are no guarantees, we’re hopeful that the procedures might reduce, or even take away, the dystonic twisting that must be so painful and frustrating for you. I can’t promise anything, but I can promise this: we’ll be by your side every step of the way.

You are so full of light, Em. So funny, so curious, so attuned to the world around you. Watching you grow, learn, and share more of yourself with us this year has been a gift. I’m excited to watch your vocabulary, opinions, questions, and feelings grow over the coming years.

And that’s all I have to say about that.

Love you,

Your proud dad

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Total prep time: 15-20 minutes.

The time has come for an update as it has been nearly two years since we last went over how to prepare medications for your now nearly seven-year-old daughter who has cerebral palsy.

You’re in luck! You no longer need to administer her meds through a feeding tube on her belly at midnight while she sleeps. No, she doesn’t eat by mouth yet. Yes, she still has the feeding tube. And the 24 inch extension tube still needs to be attached to the feeding tube while she sleeps. But now her nighttime meds have been moved up to 9 pm so you can get to bed earlier, although you will still stay up too late too often.

After giving her the three already-prepped syringes containing Glycopyrrolate (13 ml dose in 20 ml syringe, light purple cap), Clonazepam (0.75 mg dose in 3 ml syringe, dark purple cap), and Gabapentin (1 ml dose in 3 ml syringe, clear-ish cap), return to the medication filling station (i.e. your kitchen counter to the right of the sink).

You’ve recently listened to a podcast where the guest was talking about how you can use ordinary tasks in your life as opportunities to meditate and be more mindful. Filling your daughter’s meds is about as rote of an activity as you do each day, so you figure why not try it.

Note: all syringes have EnFit-style tips, which are threaded and therefore do not pose any risk of puncture. Please be mindful about replacing syringes too often in case there’s another inventory shortage from the vendor.

How to Prepare Clonidine

Ingredients:

• Two tablets of Clonidine

• One 3 ml syringe

• One orange cap

• Cup of tap water

• Paper towel

• Self-judgment

• Curiosity

Pull the rubber stopper from the 3 ml syringe and notice how oddly satisfying it can feel to push the stopper in and out, especially when the syringe is new.

Drop the two tablets into the opening. When the tablets are settled at the bottom, replace the rubber stopper and push it down until it touches them. Pull up roughly 2.5 ml of water and remove any air bubbles by holding the syringe tip upwards and flicking it like you see in the movies. The pills will quickly dissolve in the water.

Notice that you were zoning out and weren’t as mindful about what you were doing as you intended. Briefly judge yourself for already failing at this exercise. But also question what it means to be mindful while doing a task. Is it about really focusing on the task, or is it more about just noticing whatever arises, without judgment?

Attach the orange cap and wipe the syringe clean with the paper towel before placing it tip-down in the labeled section of the clear plastic organizer on the counter.

How to Prepare Glycopyrrolate

Ingredients:

• Bottle of Glycopyrrolate solution

• Small measuring cup

• Three 20 ml syringes

• Three light purple caps

• Paper towel

• Thoughts

• More self-judgment

Close your eyes and take a deep breath to settle yourself and restart the mindfulness exercise.

Notice that you’re holding tension in your neck and shoulders. Notice the frustration that comes up when you realize that your neck has been stiff for over a week and somehow isn’t fully healed yet. Resist the urge to blame it on getting older.

Snap back into the present as you pour out 18-20 ml of the Glycopyrrolate solution into the small measuring cup. Pull up 15 ml of solution into one of the 20 ml syringes. With the syringe tip upwards, pull back on the plunger to add air, flick any air bubbles out of the solution, then push the plunger up until all the air has been removed. Be careful not to push too hard and shoot the solution onto your kitchen ceiling. Squirt excess solution into the measuring cup until the total volume in the syringe equals 13 ml.

Screw on a light purple cap, wipe syringe clean, and place it tip-down in the back of labeled section.

Repeat the process for the next two syringes while you think about how despite the persistent crick in your neck, and the fact that you’re rapidly approaching 50 years old, you’re in the best shape of your life. Look down at your arms while you flex and feel proud of your commitment to regular exercise for a moment.

Realize that you’re following your thoughts again instead of being mindful about the ordinary task you’re performing. Shake your head and feel a tinge of self-judgment again. Take a quick deep breath.

Place one syringe in the middle section, or on top of your daughter’s med pouch if tomorrow is a school day, and the other in the front section.

How to Prepare Clonazepam

Ingredients:

• Three packets of 0.5 mg Clonazepam

• Four packets of 0.125 mg Clonazepam

• Three 3 ml syringes

• Three dark purple caps

• Cup of tap water

• Paper towel

• Thoughts

• Daughter

• Wife

• Hospitalist

Refocus on being mindful again because this one actually requires some concentration.

Due to a newly increased dosage and the annoying way the pharmacy had to package this med in order to get approval from your daughter’s health insurance, you now have to do a bit of math. Don’t worry, though, this will become routine in short order too.

As you remove the pills from the packets, place them into three piles as such:

1. 1 x 0.5 mg + 1 x 0.125 mg (for morning meds)

2. 1 x 0.5 mg + 1 x 0.125 mg (for afternoon meds)

3. 1 x 0.5 mg + 2 x 0.125 mg (for nighttime meds)

Pull the plunger out of one of the 3 ml syringes. Place the nighttime meds into the empty syringe. Insert the plunger into the syringe and push until it touches the pills. Pull up roughly 2 ml of tap water and remove air from the syringe. The pills will quickly dissolve in the water.

Screw on the dark purple cap, wipe off syringe with paper towel, and place it tip-down in the back of the labeled section.

Remember the story your wife, Allison, told you about when your daughter was getting discharged from the hospital earlier this year—how the hospitalist attempted to go over her medication list and said it was confusing and to, “just keep doing whatever it is you’re doing at home.” Notice the smile forming as you think about it but also feel some grief underneath the levity when you reflect on how you had to ride in an ambulance with your daughter on New Year’s Eve to transfer her to the hospital in San Francisco. Feel grateful that she’s healthy again after battling pneumonia she developed from RSV, which required frequent suctioning to remove secretions from her nose and throat, which required near constant care from you and Allison throughout most of January.

Think about how perfectly gross the word secretions sounds.

Notice that you’re doing the thoughts thing again. But also notice that you’re feeling into your emotions and body, which is something you’ve been getting more adept at doing ever since you’ve been practicing transformational-type work over the past couple of years.

Repeat the process for the afternoon meds (place in middle section or on top of your daughter’s med pouch), as well as for the morning meds (place in front section).

How to Prepare Omeprazole

Ingredients:

• One pre-cut half tablet of Omeprazole

• One 12 ml syringe

• One clear-ish cap

• Cup of tap water

• Pill crusher

• Paper towel

• Noticing

Continue thinking about the transformational-type work you’ve been doing and how you’re simply noticing more now, rather than judging and creating stories in your head about what you’re noticing.

Pull the plunger out of the 12 ml syringe and set it aside. Screw the clear-ish cap onto the empty syringe.

Unscrew the pill crusher and place the half tablet into the bottom portion. Screw the top portion down until the pill’s outer membrane breaks. Notice how oddly satisfying it feels and sounds.

Consider how seemingly simple, yet profound, it is to shift from judging/stories to just noticing.

Unscrew the pill crusher and set the top half aside.

Realize that noticing without judgment is the path to being nicer to yourself.

Pour 5-6 ml of tap water into the empty syringe. Add the crushed pull to the water in the syringe by slowly tapping it in until no crushed pill residue remains.

Briefly wince as you register how this means you’re on the path to more self-love and that sounds a bit too corny for you.

Insert the plunger into the open end of the syringe until there is slight pressure. Flip the syringe so the tip faces upwards and the water and crushed pill solution falls to the bottom. Remove the clear-ish cap and push the plunger to remove all the air from the syringe.

Pause and recognize that the term corny is a judgment.

Screw on the clear-ish cap, wipe off the syringe with the paper towel, and place it sideways in the very front section of the organizer.

Think about how this is all in your head and so what if it sounds corny to you. Nobody else needs to know. And you know what? Self-love actually sounds pretty damn nice compared to how awful and berating the voice in your head has been for most of your life.

How to Prepare Claritin

Ingredients:

• Bottle of liquid Claritin

• Small measuring cup

• One 12 ml syringe

• One light purple cap

• Paper towel

• Self-judgment

• Brain

• Mindfulness

• Self-love?

Recall that you just finished tapering your daughter off of Gabapentin, which is great because it means one less med. But also remember that you had to recently add Claritin when you figured out that she has seasonal allergies, so it doesn’t really feel like you’ve reduced her meds at all. And, not to mention, you’re also meeting with someone from the Cerebral Palsy Foundation next week about a potential clinical drug trial to help treat her dystonia.

Pour out 12-15 ml of the Claritin solution into the measuring cup. Pull up 10 ml into the 12 ml syringe.

Feel frustrated and sad about how many meds your daughter needs on a daily basis. Worry about her future and wonder if she’ll ever truly be comfortable in a body that doesn’t cooperate easily.

Add air to the syringe and turn it so the tip is upwards. Flick away any bubbles and push the plunger to remove all of the air.

Realize you’re thinking and not being present again and it’s causing anxiety. Clench your jaw and get frustrated about how you keep getting distracted. Call yourself an idiot out loud.

Briefly consider that maybe none of the transformational-type work you’ve done has really stuck and you’re always going to be an asshole to yourself.

Stop.

Close your eyes.

Notice your feet on the ground. Notice the weight of gravity pushing you into the floor. Notice the floor holding you up.

Notice how tight your jaw is. Soften it.

Notice how shallow your breath is. Breathe in deep through your nose and hold it at the top.

Remember that the point of mindfulness isn’t to have zero thoughts. Because if you didn’t have thoughts, you would be dead.

Exhale with a sigh out of your mouth as you remind yourself that mindfulness is about observing and being aware of what’s going on in and around you at any given moment. And, perhaps most importantly, it’s the practice of bringing yourself back to the present moment when your brain does what it’s designed to do—think.

Screw on the light purple cap, wipe the syringe with the paper towel, and place it sideways on the counter in front of the organizer.

Allow yourself to feel grateful for the self-love you’re cultivating.

Snicker at how corny that word sounds still.

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If you enjoyed this one, could you please let me know by giving the heart button below a tap? It also helps other people find my writing. Thanks!

Today’s essay is part of a quarterly series including , , , , , and me. In the past, we’ve written about trust, fatherhood, recovery, work, and home. This week, all of us explore the roots of our personal philosophies.

“Boundless love for myself and others.”

That’s what I wrote in my journal on the last day of the breathwork retreat1 my wife, Allison, and I attended last weekend.

If decade-ago Lyle read those words and witnessed what led up to them, he would’ve scoffed and dismissed it all as woo-woo nonsense. He certainly wouldn’t have believed that he wrote those words. This Lyle called himself a skeptic. This Lyle thought science and rational reasoning were the sole arbiters of capital T, truth. This Lyle thought he was open-minded but was often quick to judge.

Skepticism isn’t really a school of thought or philosophy. In many ways, it’s the opposite. It’s pro-science and anti-dogmatic. Show a skeptic compelling, peer-reviewed evidence and they’ll quickly change their mind. That’s the basic idea. Yet that level of certainty is difficult to find across much of what our rich, diverse world offers, especially concerning matters of the human experience. It caused me to default to disbelief and start with a guilty-until-proven-innocent stance.

I discovered skepticism through various sources. Writers such as Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and . Scientists such as Brian Cox, Richard Feynman, Phil Plait, Pamela Gay, and others. And even through entertainers such as Penn Jillette, Tim Minchin, and the show Mythbusters. These are all supremely talented and smart people. And I still agree with a lot of what they espouse.

When I attempted to start a company with some of my skeptic friends, I was introduced to the tech startup scene. While that company didn’t work out, I eventually found myself working as a growth marketer—a role tailor-made for someone drawn to the scientific method.

It was during this time that I came across the writer Ryan Holiday. In 2013, he published a short ebook called Growth Hacker Marketing, which I snagged in exchange for my email address. Then less than a year later, he started sending emails about a completely different topic: Stoicism.

I was immediately enamored by this 1,000+-year-old philosophy that taught me that you can’t control what happens, but you can control how you respond.

I listened to dozens of audiobooks and podcasts during my long daily commute from Sonoma to SoMa2, including Holiday’s first book on Stoicism called The Obstacle is the Way.

The book resonated.

A lot.

In the intervening years, I read Holiday’s follow-up books on Stoicism. I joined his Daily Stoic community. I read Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations. I jotted down quotes from Stoic philosophers and used them as bookmarks or computer backgrounds.

But the one quote that stuck with me the most is the one that inspired the title of Holiday’s first book on Stoicism:

“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.” — Marcus Aurelius

In short, the obstacle is the way.

I loved the idea of being prepared for something to go wrong in life. But I had no idea how much my preparedness would be tested four years later.

***

At just after 3 am on June 4th, 2018, my daughter Em was born. It took only three pushes for her to arrive, just 12 minutes after we parked outside the emergency room.

When the doctor pulled her up onto Allison’s belly, Em wasn’t crying. Her body was dull gray. And she wasn’t breathing. After what felt like an eternity, she was revived and stabilized and transported to a hospital better able to manage her critical needs.

Em had to be revived two more times in her first week. By the time we were able to bring her home a month later, she had a feeding tube, multiple medications, and an unclear future.

In the subsequent years, Em was diagnosed with severe cerebral palsy due to the lack of blood and oxygen to her brain during birth. Nowadays, she’s six years old and still gets all her food and fluids via a feeding tube, requires assistance to hold her head up, sit, roll, and walk, and is nonverbal.

During this time when I was steeped in learning all about Stoicism, I remember telling Allison about the obstacle is the way. I shared the Marcus Aurelius quote and how Em’s challenging needs felt like the obstacle in our way. Using this newfound framework, I knew that, despite how difficult everything was, we’d look back and have a tough time imagining our lives any other way. Our lives would be forever changed as we veered onto a new path.

It felt strange to essentially refer to my daughter as an obstacle. Yet it made perfect sense in the context of Stoicism. Her birth, and resulting disability, was the biggest, most unexpected event of my life.

While I intuitively knew that her challenges would be the giant, unexpected obstacle in our way, I didn’t yet understand what the way—that new path around the obstacle—would lead us to. It felt as if we swerved around a large boulder and had to forge a new route in an unfamiliar direction toward an uncertain destination.

***

I’ve spent most of my adult life dreaming about the future or dwelling on the past.

Then the pandemic hit. And provided another giant dose of perspective. I had more time to reflect on what was important and how I wanted to show up for myself and my family. I realized that my creative muscles had atrophied and I wanted a way to express and share stories from my life. I discovered memoir writing through books like A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers, Love Warrior by Glennon Doyle, and others. I was blown away by their beautiful and raw prose, and how they were unafraid to be vulnerable and dig deep into their emotions.

I was inspired and took to the page to excavate my stories and the emotions that came up for me around them.

Writing has been a great way for me to process what has happened in my life and the largely positive feedback I’ve received has been validating.

I joined some writing communities to connect with other writers and improve my work. That’s how I ended up at Foster, the writing collective I’ve worked at for the past couple of years.

Through my work at Foster and our culture of exploring self and organizational development, I was introduced to new friends and colleagues who helped me feel comfortable trying and experiencing new things. Somatic coaching helped me get in touch with and truly feel my emotions. I harnessed my anger and screamed into a waterfall. I cried my grief and sadness out in a cold plunge. I tried sound baths. I did ecstatic dance. I participated in a family constellation with a shaman. Meditation, kundalini yoga, breathwork journeys, and lots more I’m not remembering.

All of these things introduced me to different ways of being. I liked some of them. Others not as much. But I could see the value in them and how impactful they could be.

They all did one thing incredibly well, though. They all brought me back to the present.

Nowadays, I’m regularly practicing being present. I refer to it as a practice because it’s impossible to constantly be present.

I mean, I couldn’t have written this piece without thinking about my past. In fact, this piece serves as a great example of my practice. It has been one of the toughest pieces I’ve ever written. I suppose I should’ve expected it since personal philosophy is an awfully big topic.

Just yesterday, this piece looked a lot different. It had roughly 500 words that are no longer in it and a long bullet-point list of thoughts that had popped into my head as I thought about the topic over the past few weeks.

I also didn’t have a lot of writing time yesterday. Em’s school had a gingerbread house party and I told her I would attend (Allison also made all the gingerbread and assembled the houses for it). Allison and I had a date night planned to see our friend TJ Carter sing and play guitar at a local bar in the evening.

I felt the tension between wanting to be present for my family and wanting to get this published by 8:08 am PT today, which I had publicly promised in my last post. I felt a pit in my stomach. When I closed my eyes and breathed into the discomfort, I felt frustrated, overwhelmed, anxious, and sad. I realized that my breath had been shallow, probably for the past few days as those emotions built up more and more.

Allison offered me an out. I could skip Em’s gingerbread party and spend those hours writing away in our quiet house. But when I sat with that for a moment, it didn’t feel alive. I wanted to keep my word with Em more than I wanted to keep my publishing promise. I wanted to be present with my family more than I wanted to uphold a self-imposed deadline. And I’m glad I did.

I recently came across this quote about being present from a golf coach named Fred Shoemaker:

“It’s always now.”

Its simplicity struck me. No matter what’s going on around me or what emotions are coming up for me, I can always come back to now.

I hesitate to call being present my personal philosophy. But it’s what feels most true right now. I still have those skeptic tendencies—I don’t dogmatically follow one school of thought or teacher. Allison described my philosophy as agnostic, meaning I’m open to trying almost anything to see if it works for me. That makes it hard to boil down into a single word or phrase.

There’s still no clear destination on this practicing-being-more-present path. I’m not searching for enlightenment. It’s more like the path is continually unfolding in front of me as I walk along it, and my work is to not get too far ahead of myself.

I’m grateful to be more embodied and open-hearted. I’m grateful for the obstacle that altered my path. Otherwise, I’d likely still be in my head, not in touch with my emotions, and probably pretty damn miserable, which is curious because if you told me back then what I’m dealing with now, I would’ve thought that it would be miserable. But it’s not. And I’m not.

While writing and researching for this piece, I came across a quote from one of the most prominent Stoic philosophers. A man who had a disability and spent most of his life as a slave. It’s a quote I had never seen before and it so perfectly encapsulates what I’ve been trying to write this whole essay that I’ll leave you with it here.

“Don’t explain your philosophy. Embody it.”— Epictetus

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2

SoMa stands for the South of Market area, which is a district in San Francisco that’s, you guessed it, south of Market Street.

---

Read the rest of our series on personal philosophy:

A letter to my son by

How I Became a Scholar - Pt. 2 by

Drapa’s Shirt by

My Personal Philosophy by

Arise Each Day by

---

Thank you so much for spending time with my words. It means the world to me. If you liked this piece, could you please let me know by giving the heart button below a tap?

But man, when I’m the one who hasn’t published something in a while, it’s soooo tempting to do it.

Anyway, hi. Good to see you all again.

Here are some updates about what’s going on for me and what to expect soon.

1.

I will be publishing a brand spanking new, full-on, totally original piece this Saturday, December 21st at exactly 8:08 am PT. It’s part of a quarterly series I write with my writerly brethren , , , , and . This time around, we’re each exploring our Personal Philosophies.

Latham kicked us off yesterday with this stunning letter to his son, whom he has been homeschooling—and writing about the ups and downs throughout.

Building the Plane

A letter to my son

Today’s essay is part of a new series including me, Joshua Doležal, Bowen Dwelle , Michael Mohr, Dee Rambeau , and Lyle McKeany . Past essays were at Get Real, Man, but this series is too much a part of this project to separate it. This week, all of us explore the roots of our personal philosophies…

Read more

a year ago · 11 likes · 5 comments · Latham Turner

2.

On Monday, January 13th, I’m hosting a live version of the writing circles I’ve been facilitating online for over a year now. If you’re in the Sonoma, California area—or somewhat nearby—come hang out with me at my Community Writing Circle at the Sonoma Community Center!

It’ll be a two-hour session where I will introduce you to some modalities I’ve learned as part of my work at the writing collective Foster. Practices such as mindful writing and somatic experiencing will help you drop into what feels most alive for you in the present moment and write from that place.

I’ll also be available for light coaching to help get you unstuck if needed. But otherwise, there are no prompts, guidance, or instructions. You are welcome to write, edit, or revise anything you like. All types of writers, both new and seasoned, are welcome, including those who are writing books, essays, articles, letters, blog posts, journal entries, software applications, you name it.

This is your invitation to come write and connect with others doing the same.

Join Me In Person!

3.

I can’t remember when I turned on the paid subscription option here on Substack. But since then, I’ve been floored anytime someone pays me money for this newsletter, especially with how sporadically I’ve been publishing lately (I’m still trying really hard not to apologize for it), and because you don’t get anything different or special if you do pay.

I did make one promise that I’ve been lagging on fulfilling for far too long, though. For each paid subscription, I donate either 10 or 15% (depending on the subscription level) to the Cerebral Palsy Foundation.

For those who are newer here, my daughter Emily has severe cerebral palsy. The CPF funds great research and initiatives around the world to help make life a little bit better for those with CP.

So yesterday, I donated exactly $265.60 to CPF. I kicked in a bit myself to cover their processing fees. Thank you to all my paid subscribers! If you’d like to join them, you can do so below:

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4.

Speaking of Emily.

First of all, we mostly call her Em.

Secondly, she is nonverbal. We’ve tried different communication tools without much success. But a few months back, she started using an incredible new system called PODD. It stands for a mouthful of a term: pragmatic organization dynamic display.

The concept is simple, but it can get complex quickly.

She has a book filled with a wide variety of different words and corresponding symbols that we use to try to understand what she wants. It’s broken down into various categories of high-level things she might want to say or ask. We scan through them and she moves her head either up and down for yes or side to side for no. Once she picks the category, then we scan again through the words within it to hopefully get to what she’s trying to express.

It was challenging at first since it’s even difficult for her to control her head enough to consistently say yes or no using it. But as she’s gotten better at it, it’s been surprising to get a glimpse into what’s going on in her world. Sure, she has become adept at navigating to “I want —> a video” so she can watch her favorite Raffi live concert. But she has surprised us many times too.

Shortly after she got home from school yesterday, she had a dry diaper so I put her on her potty chair. She almost immediately started whining a bunch, which usually means she has something to say. So I scanned her using her PODD book and she said, “I don’t like this —> boring —> another word —> I want —> music.” I couldn’t help but smile.

There’s a teenage boy in Em’s class who has been learning and using PODD for several years now. When he’s in his wheelchair, he can control a tablet device with similar categories and words by tapping sensors using the sides of his head—one sensor scrolls through his options and the other selects a card. He can write full-on emails, including one that he sent to his teacher to let her know that her lesson plan was boring!

This is by far and away the most promising and exciting thing we’ve seen for Em’s communication yet. I love that it will not only give her a voice but will ultimately give her more agency in her life. I can’t wait to get to know her more.

5.

I recently started a little side gig as a caddy at a brand-new golf course called Brambles. Long-time readers of this newsletter know that I’m an unapologetic golf nerd. This place ticks just about every box for me: an understated, engaging design with firm and fast grass that fits seamlessly into the natural landscape and isn’t surrounded by McMansions.

And it’s fun to work outside, meet new people, and hopefully help them play a little bit better than they would’ve on their own.

Here are some of the pics I’ve taken out on the course:

They also have a full-time rancher on staff who takes care of a flock of sheep who munch down some of the longer grass so the maintenance staff doesn’t need to use gas-powered mowers as much.

If you’re a golf sicko like me, you’ll enjoy this short video about the place:

Speaking of golf, I recently played at Chambers Bay near Seattle, the course that hosted the 2015 U.S. Open Championship. During my round, I experienced everything from bright sunshine to a torrent of rain coming down sideways. It was a blast. It also helped that I finished the round strong and shot even par on the back nine.

I was able to snag this epic-looking pic of the course at the end of the day:

On that same trip, my wife Allison and I spent a couple of relaxing days at a tiny Airbnb cabin on Fox Island, the one across the water on the right in the pic above. I tried to not be glued to my phone too much, but I was able to snap this pic from the cabin:

Yes, I have a thing for framing photos with a lot of the sky in them.

There’s a lot more I could write about other recent golf experiences I’ve had, but I’ll spare you (for now).

I think that’s mostly it. I’ll see you here again this coming Saturday!

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When my daughter Em was a little over a year old, my dad mentioned that we might eventually need one of those lift systems with a track on the ceiling in our Sonoma, California home. He started launching into how we might remodel our hall bathroom to accommodate the system and how, by relocating the neighboring laundry room, we could expand the size of the bathroom.

That’s when I cut him off.

“I don’t even want to go there yet,” I said.

I knew Em had cerebral palsy then. I just didn’t understand how severe it was yet.

I’m the one who brought up the idea of remodeling the bathroom, but I was thinking of something more typical. Like, y’know, new floors, vanity, fixtures, lights, mirror—that sort of thing. The thought of tearing down and moving walls to make it more accessible for my toddler daughter hadn’t crossed my mind yet. And I wasn’t ready to contemplate the possibility at the time.

****

I grew up in San Jose, California but the city doesn’t feel like home. I suppose you could call it my hometown since I lived there with my parents for the first 19 years of my life. And yet, I haven’t lived there in the intervening 27 years—or really ever had the desire to. It’s a large, sprawling city, ranked #13 in population in the U.S. with just under a million people. When people who are familiar with the city find out I grew up there, they always ask, “Oh yeah? What part of San Jose?” But it doesn’t have the character of San Francisco with its cool-sounding neighborhoods, so I say, “In the corner near Cupertino and Saratoga.” And they say, “Oh, cool.” Then we typically move on to some other more interesting topic.

When I think back to the home my family spent the most time in during my childhood, I think of the tri-level house in the back left of a cul-de-sac less than a mile from where I went to high school. I remember when my parents bought the house it had carpet that might’ve been popular in the 70s and there were pee stains on the walls from the previous owners’ blind dog. Nothing so bad that a good professional deep clean and some new carpet and paint couldn’t fix.

I don’t recall how many years we lived there, but it was long enough that I can still remember minute details—enough of them to have used the house as a memory palace before. Thinking about the place right now doesn’t make me homesick, though.

If I visit it again someday, I won’t feel nostalgic for the house itself. Memories about the house would probably amount to me saying things like, “Looks like they took down my Space Shuttle wallpaper mural,” or, “This is where the grandfather clock used to be,” or, “Here’s where we had that 55-gallon fish tank.”

The memories that would truly bring me back and make me feel more emotional are the ones tied to people and experiences.

I can still picture the scenes:

I’m in the family room where we’d watch TV at night. I can smell the buttery popcorn and hear my dad saying, “Well…,” and trailing off, which meant it was time for us to go to bed.

It’s October 1989 and I’m throwing pop-flies to myself with a baseball in the cul-de-sac when the Loma Prieta earthquake hits. I see our next-door neighbor’s faded yellow car shaking and hear the squeaking of its shocks. And I see my mom’s frightened face as I run back to the house to be with my family.

I’m on our front lawn where my high school friend Colin and I are mowing down a square patch of grass to practice our golf swings. I remember how much trouble I got in for doing that.

I’m looking at the backyard with the kidney-shaped pool where we had dozens of parties with friends and family. There’s the waterslide where my baseball buddies would dare each other to go down it backward. There’s the diving board where we found the egg that was missing from the Easter egg hunt behind one of its legs…a couple of months too late. There’s the basketball hoop where I became so adept at the corner jump shot that I could make it while staring my one-on-one opponent in the eyes. And there’s the bush where I saw my first opossum and ran into the house declaring that I just saw the biggest rat I’ve ever seen in my life.

Sure, it would be fun to go back there and check it out again sometime. But I don’t need to. These memories originated from that particular place, yet it isn’t what’s most important about them. All the memories I care about are in my head already. And I can visit them whenever I want.

****

The feeling of home is more about the people you share it with than the structure or the stuff you keep inside of it.

The walls of a house feel solid but they’re not really. A house is just a collection of things like wood, sheetrock, paint, tile, insulation, wires, pipes, and countless other materials all screwed and nailed and glued together in a particular way. The floor plan is contrived. The layout would’ve been completely different if some other architect had drawn up the plans instead. It can all be changed—for a price, of course. And, if you want to get really existential, it’s all temporary anyway since human civilization will cease to exist eventually. But I digress.

The people who make a place feel like home don’t have to live within your house. They can be your friends or family who live in the same town.

Part of why I don’t pine for San Jose at all is because there aren’t many people I’m still in touch with who live there. Although, coincidentally, a high school friend who apparently reads my writing and I haven’t been in contact with for decades reached out to me just yesterday (hi, Billy!). I’m pretty sure he doesn’t live there anymore either.

I’ve never felt more at home than I do now.

It’s not because I bought the house I live in (my wife Allison bought it before I met her). It’s not because we added solar, or remodeled our kitchen, or re-painted the exterior.

It’s because I’ve made new friends here. It’s because I share my house with the people I love most. It’s because I know I’m not moving anywhere else anytime soon.

****

A couple of months ago, we had a neighbor who does architectural drawings over to see if he could come up with some ideas for remodeling our primary bathroom. It currently has a bit of a weird floor plan that has always felt like it could use the space better.

Allison was talking to him about some idea she had for it when she paused. She turned to me and said, “I didn’t talk to you about this beforehand, Lyle, but I’m wondering if we should also have him look into redoing the rest of this half of the house to make it more accessible.”

Em is six years old now and she’s getting heavier and taller. “They grow up too fast” is a cliché for a reason. The future my dad had seen so clearly five years prior has been coming more into focus for us for a while now. Part of me still wants to avoid it. I want Em to be the little girl I can pick up and carry anywhere. But when it comes to getting medical devices approved and paid for by insurance, it helps to get ahead of when we’ll really need them.

A few weeks later, he walked over to our house and rolled out one of those giant pieces of drafting paper. The floor plan was drastically different than what we came up with in our non-architect brains. Walls will be torn down and moved. The hallway will be widened. The entrance to the garage relocated.

We’ll start with just the primary bathroom first since it can be contained to just that area. But once we start moving bedroom walls, the rest has to be changed to make it all work.

No matter what the final product ends up looking like, it’ll be much different than what I would’ve envisioned before Em was born. We’ll make it look and feel like our own, but the main point is to make it more functional for her and us as her caretakers. The outside walls of the house won’t be moving, we’ll just be changing things on the inside.

But the one thing that won’t change is who lives here. And that’s what will make it feel like home.

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More from our series on home:

Setting down roots by

Home Is The Native Soil Of The Heart by

Nothing said “home” to me more than an empty house by

Home: A Place or a Feeling? by Michael Mohr ()

A Homecoming by

If you enjoyed my take on what home means to me, it would mean a lot to me if you would let me know by giving the heart button below a tap.

One is based on how much of our lives a year represents and how that value gets lower each year. When we’re a kid, each year represents a significant portion of our lives. But as an adult, a year becomes a smaller and smaller fraction of our overall lifetime, making it feel shorter.

Another is based on novelty. New experiences create more detailed memories, and since our childhood is filled with lots of first-time events, time feels fuller, and years feel longer. As we age and our routines become more repetitive, fewer new memories are created, leading to the feeling that time is passing more quickly.

Maybe they’re both contributing factors. I don’t know. What I do know is that as we age we forget how much can happen in a year. How much we can change in a year. How much we can improve in a year.

Here are some things I’ve learned about myself over the past year (or so).

1.

For much of my working life, especially over the last 15-ish years, I’ve thought of myself as entrepreneurial. I’ve since learned that I’m most definitely not.

Sure, I’ve been involved in early-stage startups. But I didn’t start any of them myself.

I did start lots of fledgling projects that were mostly ideas in my head that didn’t come to fruition in real life.

There are, embarrassingly, a lot of examples.

• A monthly subscription box for golfers called Gimme Club (I still like that name and own the domain) that really was only an Instagram account that never had a cardboard box in sight.

• A healthy snack brand called Actually Good For You (I like that name and own that domain too) where I never made any food at all and simply brainstormed ideas and took an online course about starting a food company.

• A music project under the moniker Audyle (that domain is actually still live here!) where I uploaded a grand total of one track to Soundcloud and have lots of unfinished tracks that I’ll still fiddle around with on my computer from time to time.

I’ll spare you the rest.

Over the past year (or so), I’ve learned that I’m a dreamer. Or a 9-wing-1 for any of you Enneagram fans out there.

If there were a Chief Brainstorming Officer role, I’d be a great fit.

It’s not like I’m incapable of getting any work done. It’s more that I’m not great at fully committing to whatever it is I’m excited about and really going for it if there aren’t any other people involved in the project.

I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time daydreaming about different careers and the different lives I could’ve lived if things had panned out differently. My old band not making it big, despite being signed to a major label and doing an album and video and all that, is a core wound, of sorts, for me. Perhaps some part of me is afraid of going all the way and facing failure again, even if it’s due to something entirely outside of my control—like 9/11 was for my band.

This type of daydreaming has been habitual for me. It’s like I’m simultaneously living in the past and future. But lately, I’ve been catching myself and bringing myself back to the present moment. And now I’m feeling more suspicious when I get excited about something.

2.

I’m at my best when playing a supportive role.

This is obviously tied to point number one above.

This also goes all the way back to when I played in my band. I was the bassist, which is typically more of a background instrument—one that most people don’t always notice, but they most certainly notice when it’s missing. The bassist, along with the drummer, helps hold down the rhythm section, which is the essential groove and foundation of the song. A great bassist plays deep in the pocket, mere milliseconds behind the drums, creating space within the sonic landscape to allow the other musicians to shine and share their gifts.

Yes, I played on stage, sometimes in front of thousands of people, but I wasn’t the frontman.

Similarly, in my later career, I’ve been most successful and felt most comfortable working within a team.

You might consider this writing project to be a counterexample for both of these points. After all, it is something I alone conceived of, launched, and have followed through on (relatively) consistently for years. But I look at it more as a creative outlet, rather than an entrepreneurial endeavor, although I do appreciate the patrons who have generously forked over some of their hard-earned cash to become a paid subscriber.

3.

I still consider myself a writer, even though I haven’t published here all that much recently, and my memoir book project has been stalled out for over a year.

Last November, I decided to stop publishing every week after doing it for over three years straight (I wrote about the decision here if you’re curious). I’ve only published 11 pieces since then, one of which was a repost. For those counting, that’s a pace of barely over one piece per month.

And yet, I write every single day.

I write for Foster where I work. I have a 1,581-day journaling streak that’s still going strong. I write random ideas and notes for posts regularly.

Outside of work, I’ve been spending more of my time and energy on family, friends, and, y’know, all the other things that adulting requires.

But I’m still a writer.

4.

I didn’t realize how much anxiety I was experiencing until I experienced the opposite within the past few months.

As I wrote in my last post, I was recently diagnosed with adult inattentive ADHD. At publishing time, I was only two days into starting on Adderral after first trying a different med that didn’t seem to do anything at all. And let me tell you, wow, it has made a massive difference in my day-to-day life. Nearly two months later, as I described in the post, it still feels “like the clouds billowing up in my brain for decades have lifted and I can think more clearly.”

What I didn’t expect was how much it would ease my anxiety.

The med isn’t solely responsible for the change, though. It’s also true that I’ve done a lot of self-development and relational work over the past year (or so). Being able to actually feel my emotions and somatic sensations made it possible to get to the point where I could know anything was amiss and not chalk it all up to poor sleep or lack of exercise or whatever.

For years, I’ve put too much pressure on myself and felt stuck and unsure about how to proceed, which pushed me to the verge of burnout too often and ultimately caused more issues. It eroded my confidence and caused me to frequently second guess myself.

I’ve been running on fumes and not enough sleep or exercise for far too long in my life. My pattern has been to dive headfirst into startups and projects, leaving other things like my health to be dealt with at some indeterminate point in the future (i.e. never). Work then becomes my main priority, and is closely tied to my identity, and I feel like I need to be “on” all the time.

The hilarious thing about this mindset is that I wasn’t always very effective at work. I’d spend a lot of time flitting from thing to thing, which felt like I was doing stuff, but ultimately I was avoiding making decisions and executing on them until they came to a head and needed to be done ASAP. On the surface, it might’ve looked like procrastination, and it was sometimes, but most of the time it was a coping mechanism around my anxiety.

My historically toxic orientation to work has softened considerably over the past year (or so). The self-development and relational work I’ve done has helped me reorient my priorities and gain more awareness of my tendencies. Working out regularly has helped me feel stronger and more energetic. And the med has helped give me the capacity to get out of my own way and tap into that awareness more readily.

I feel more confident, more reliable, more able to manage my time, more easeful, more happy, more connected, and more loved.

I feel more like myself.

5.

I have two new pet peeves1!

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Monday, June 24th, 2024

10:32 a.m. I’m helping to run a Foster writing workshop and we’re in a 20-minute free writing portion of the facilitation. I have a looming deadline this coming Saturday for this very piece you’re reading since it’s part of a quarterly series I publish along with , , , Michael Mohr of , and . You might remember our series on fatherhood, recovery, and work. This week, we’re all wrestling with what trust means to us.

I’m not trusting what wants to come through me in my writing. With a single-word prompt, there are countless directions I can take this piece. How can I be sure I’m picking the right one?

I’ve found that my writing flows more easily when I’m telling a specific story from my life and attempting to make it interesting for you to read. Hmm, although sometimes it’s a concept or structure that can get me going. Ohh, yeah, I read that great HOMEBOUND BOUND piece by yesterday where he did this cool timeline-type thing. Maybe I’ll try something like that!

12:35 p.m. I’m back at it. Instead of writing during the last two-ish hours, I:

• Finished up the Foster workshop where I listened to a super-powerful reading of a draft-in-process by that left me floored

• Went to the bathroom

• Read and archived some emails

• Replied to a WhatsApp DM

• Sent a reminder about tomorrow’s Foster workshop

• Ate lunch

• Chatted with my mom for a bit

Anyway, speaking of that piece from JG, I keep thinking about this Søren Kierkegaard quote he shared in it:

"Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom."

JG goes on to explain what it means to him:

You can understand this line, as I do, with no other context about the rest of his thought. All it says is, as we face more freedom—more choice, more to decide, more paths to take in our lives—we also have more opportunities for misstep, failure, and catastrophe. These can not only doom our efforts, but destroy our very lives. Financial failure, prison, ostracization.

That’s beautiful. Perfect. I’d only add indecision to the end of it. Maybe that doesn’t sound as big or life-ruining as financial failure, prison, or ostracization. But indecision erodes my intuition, which erodes my conviction, which makes me trust myself less and less over time. It feels like one of those math equations where you can graph the output over time and the curve asymptotically approaches zero (in this case, zero trust) without ever actually getting there. That feels pretty life-ruining to me!

There are simply too many jams1.

None of us are equipped from an evolutionary standpoint to handle the amount of inputs flying our way in a given day. You don’t need to go back that many generations to a world in which humans lived a much simpler and essential existence. We all come from a long line of people who were mostly just trying to figure out how to survive each day.

Even TV shows are more complicated than they used to be. We have to hold a ton of different storylines and characters with all their backstories in our heads to follow what the hell is going on at any given moment. Gone are the days of relatively simple 30-minute episodes that had a clear beginning and ending. Most shows these days are designed to get you to binge and watch the very next episode immediately afterward.

We’re free to indulge in all of it. But that also means we’re setting ourselves up for feeling all of the anxiety-inducing fallout from it.

9:47 p.m. I read everything above this to my wife, Allison, earlier and she said, “I’m curious how you bring it back to trust.” And here I was thinking I was still on the topic of trust. It appears I’ve gotten distracted.

One thing’s for certain: I can trust my mind to go off track.

I originally thought this line below would be the opening sentence for this piece:

The tough thing about getting diagnosed with something later in life is that it makes you question everything that came before it.

It’s apropos now since the diagnosis was adult inattentive ADHD and it has clearly been affecting my writing process lately. Not to mention how it has been affecting my life more generally.

On the one hand, it’s helpful to have a diagnosis and to be working with a psychiatrist to hopefully find something that can help me manage my symptoms. I only just started a med a few weeks ago and I’m not totally sure if it’s doing the trick. It’s early on and still a work in progress.

On the other hand, the diagnosis has contributed to me reflecting and ruminating on the past.

I’ve had some a-ha moments. Like how when I was a kid I had an aptitude for math and I liked how working on a math problem led to a specific answer, whereas my English classes left things more open to interpretation—and my interpretation was often deemed wrong by my teachers. And yet, I failed high school geometry and had to retake it.

I’ve been thinking about how if I had known about the diagnosis earlier, I might be happier and have found more success in life.

But then I think, Is the ADHD thing real, though? Or am I just a product of the crazy connected world we live in where I’m maintaining dozens of parasocial relationships, keeping tabs on too much, my inbox is overflowing with emails and newsletters, and meanwhile, I’m desperately trying to stay present with my family?

I discovered that migraines are tied to ADHD. I certainly get those. The unpredictability of them has been frustrating over the years. I’m mostly able to treat them with as-needed meds, but that sucks. I thought they were stress-related. Maybe they’re not, though. Maybe they’re part of this diagnosis.

Or, am I being an amateur WebMD sleuth connecting dots that shouldn’t be? Y’know, correlation, not causation.

********

Wednesday, June 26th, 2024

2:33 p.m. My schedule was nuts yesterday and I didn’t get any writing done, beyond a small bit I needed to do for work. I was supposed to write today during one of the Writing Circles I facilitate at Foster, which just ended three minutes ago, but instead I:

• Ate lunch

• Emailed a coaching client

• Bought a hat online (lol)

• Read and replied to some messages in Slack

• Read and archived some emails

Even after all of that, in the 10 minutes before the end of the session, I was still clinging to my original intention and thought I could crank out a small cadre of coherent clauses. Welp, that didn’t happen and I’m struggling to remember exactly what I bounced around doing on my computer during that time. That 10 minutes of my life has completely disappeared into the void, like sending a tweet on a brand new Twitter account.

********

Thursday, June 27th, 2024

9:10 a.m. Woke up with a pounding headache, but now it’s gone. I just started a new med today, so I’m feeling a mix of cautious optimism and trepidation. It feels strange to be taking a med since I always viewed myself as someone who’s well-adjusted and put together and not someone who needs anything like that to function properly. But, I’ve come to embrace that these things have helped millions of people and I’m not above that. I mean, the fact that they’ve helped millions of people is proof enough that they work on some level and I’m lucky to be alive at a time when I can potentially get some relief.

I think I’m feeling better today? I certainly have more energy right now. It’s day one, so we’re at the “N of 1” stage in the experiment, but it feels good to feel pretty good.

It’s tough to trust that my felt experience is real, though, because when I reflect on the past I wonder if I’d been running on faulty wiring all along. Would I trust a computer that’s riddled with bugs and viruses and desperately needs an upgrade? Probably not. Why trust myself then?

The idea of a possible ADHD diagnosis never occurred to me until I listened to a podcast episode Allison sent me back in April. We had been talking about how I frequently feel overwhelmed, behind on things, etc., so she thought of me when she heard it. It was an interview with Jaklin Levine-Pritzker, a woman who has ADHD and is an advocate and coach for others who have it too. She shared how she was diagnosed with ADHD later in life and recounted her day-to-day felt experience living with it. And A LOT of it resonated with my felt experience.

Oh shit, I’ve got to head out to a meeting across town. More on the podcast thing later today.

10:38 p.m. I originally thought I could get back to writing this piece earlier, but my day filled up with too many other priorities. I won’t bore you with a bullet-point list this time around. I will mention that procrastination and distraction—like, for example, buying a hat online instead of writing lol—weren’t involved, so that’s a win.

One of the things Jaklin mentioned on the podcast that struck me was how she has difficulty managing chunks of open time—specifically around knowing how long tasks will take and prioritizing them accordingly to fit into the open time. She described how she might have two hours free from calls or meetings in her workday and not know how best to fill the time with the things she needs to get done. She’ll spend the bulk of the time bouncing around nudging a handful of tasks along, but never quite finishing them. Then, invariably, she gets on a roll with one of them during the last 15 or so minutes of the two-hour time slot and she scrambles to get it done just before the time is up or she runs over and she’s late to her next thing.

I do that ALL THE DAMN TIME. Or, I should say, ALL THE DAMN TIME WHEN I HAVE A CHUNK OF TIME OPEN ON MY CALENDAR.

I’ve tried to-do lists, reminders, and various productivity tools, all to basically no avail. Sure, I have days that are better than others, where I’m able to prioritize things and get through them steadily, sometimes even with time to spare. But most of the time I find myself flitting from task to task to distraction to task to distraction, and then hurriedly getting something across the finish line right before a deadline or before I need to hop on a Zoom call or whatever. I mean, you just read that I did it when I was writing earlier today! This does not breed trust in one’s self!!

For my entire adult life, I’ve chalked my propensity for poor time management up to procrastination. I thought it was a character flaw of mine, and I’ve often been really hard on myself for it—y’know, negative self-talk, a frustrated, “C’mon Lyle,” some choice expletives, and the like. I never once thought it could be due to ADHD. The “H” in that acronym has always brought to mind the one kid in my kindergarten class who didn’t pay attention and ate paste. Not me. I’m a chill guy, for the most part, and have never thought of myself as the hyperactive type.

Despite my tendency to procrastinate, I’ve gotten (mostly) good at not being late for things because I spend a lot of my energy trying to not let other people down. It’s distinct from people pleasing. It’s more that I want to be viewed as reliable and dependable. Meanwhile, I frequently feel like I’ve let myself down, so it’s no wonder that I don’t always trust myself.

Speaking of letting myself down, I’ve recently been trying to head to bed by 11 p.m. at the latest, but this section took more time than I thought it would—surprise, surprise—and it’s 11:38 p.m. now. Thanks, ADHD! Ugh.

********

Friday, June 28th, 2024

12:38 a.m. I’m having trouble winding down still and I just thought of another thing I learned about ADHD because I realized it happened last night. Folks who have ADHD also tend to lose track of time and can get into a hyper-focused mode when they’re doing something they’re interested in. I’ve been very into writing this piece this week. I was thinking about it while driving around town yesterday, considering where I might take it next, but also not wanting to plan it out too much because I wanted to trust what emerged in the moment.

I’m trying to trust the process, as it were, and let my creativity flow freely.

(I’m not sure I trust that this piece will read as a reflection on the trust prompt and might come across more like me grappling with ADHD, but I’m in too deep now, so I’m pressing on!)

It’s not all doom and gloom. There are some ways in which I trust myself. I’ll get to those later today because it’s after 1 a.m. and now I REALLY need to get some sleep.

5:13 p.m. I’m standing in line at CVS Pharmacy waiting to pick up a prescription for my daughter. There’s a woman ahead of me at the counter picking up her prescription and it’s taking awhile.

Lately I’ve been trying to resist the dopamine machine that’s in my pocket (i.e. my phone) in these types of situations and observe whatever’s going on around me instead.

She’s wearing a sundress yet she’s extremely pale and I wonder if in her case it should just be called a dress since she clearly doesn’t get much sun. I immediately feel guilty for having this thought. She seems like a nice enough person and I’m sure there’s a perfectly fine reason why her skin doesn’t seem like it gets enough melanin.

I look down below the countertop and scan the magazine covers. Huh, Drew Barrymore has a magazine now? I had no idea she was that popular. There are health-related titles: Men’s Health, Woman’s Health, and the like.

And then I see it.

What You Need To Know About ADHD

Wait, is ADHD a trend now? Am I falling for a memetic trap?

No, it doesn’t feel that way. It’s not like some fad diet or those big dumb cups that will be replaced by something else in a year.

This is a real thing that has had a material effect on my life. I shouldn’t feel ashamed about needing to treat it.

9:10 p.m. N has reached two now! That’s two promising, hopeful, joyful, glorious days in a row. Okay, glorious is overly dramatic. The point is that I felt more like myself today than I have since, well, yesterday. But before that, it had been quite a while.

It has felt like the clouds billowing up in my brain for decades have lifted and I can think more clearly2.

It’s like I took my brain to the Apple Genius Bar and the Genius3 ran some diagnostic tests on it and then they took it to the back room where they did who knows what and then after 20 minutes or so they brought it back and it was working not like new but definitely way better than it was when I brought it in and then I breathe a sigh of relief that I don’t need to spend thousands of dollars on a new one, although man, they do look pretty slick and shiny and new so I’m tempted but then I’d have to spend hours doing the whole syncing thing so I just thank the Genius and walk back to my car and listen to a podcast during my drive home.

And yet.

I wonder if this relief is temporary. I’m curious if my body will get accustomed to the med and it’ll eventually have diminishing returns.

But.

Not too long ago, those two sentences would’ve started with “I worry” and “I’m scared that.”

I feel more patient and ready to face whatever comes next. I feel more hopeful.

My body feels more trustworthy.

And I trust that my future will be brighter.

More from the Trust Series:

Do you trust me? by

Out Of The Therapy Labyrinth by

Wayfinding and social adventure in Sardinia by

Trust (Part of a Series) by Michael Mohr of

Trust the process by

If you liked this piece, you know what to do4.

Some context for newer subscribers. Em has severe cerebral palsy (CP), a muscle movement disorder. CP manifests along a broad spectrum of disability. In her case, it means she cannot walk, talk, crawl, or eat by mouth.

I hope you enjoy reading it.

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Dear Em,

Today is your sixth birthday.

You’ve had one of the biggest years of your life so far.

You’re almost done with your first year at BOOST, your awesome school that you’ll be attending for many years (don’t worry, you’ll be back for the Summer session soon). We bought a new fancy wheelchair accessible van you love riding in, which has a sweet ramp with cool LED lights lining the edges of it. You played in your first Miracle League baseball game. And you had bilateral hip surgery at the end of April.

The picture of you above might be the one I remember the most from this year. You had just spent about seven hours in surgery, yet you still smiled when Mama took your picture.

Of course, that picture only captured a moment in time. There were many other painful and trying moments during that hospital stay and later on at home.

You’ve gotten to know pain unlike any I’ve ever experienced.

I’ve been in awe of your strength and toughness since the day you were born. But even more so from this surgery that has left you with some metal hardware in your hips.

Mom and I try our best to explain what’s happening to you when it comes to medical situations, or really most of anything we’re doing. Remember the other day when that lady at the grocery store told me that I was really good with you? That’s because I was telling you all about the different foods we were buying and what part of the store where we would find them.

It’s tough to know how much you understand since you can’t form words and respond or ask questions. With medical stuff, I imagine it has to be confusing for you on some level too. I want you to know that we’re making these decisions, along with the help of your amazing medical team, to help you and make your life more comfortable in the long run. And we don’t make the decisions lightly.

I wish I could say this was the last procedure you’ll ever need, but I can’t, because it’s probably not—the doctor did say that those metal brackets will likely need to be removed in a year.

No matter what, I promise that mom and I will always advocate for you and ensure we’re only doing what’s necessary and helpful for you.

*

The other day, I was practicing golf at the driving range and there was a little boy probably around your age a few stalls to my left with his dad. He was asking question after question after question. I glanced over and caught the dad’s eye at one point, and he gave me a look that could only be interpreted as exasperation from having to answer his son’s questions over and over and over again.

I gave him a polite smile of acknowledgment, but it wasn’t genuine because I couldn’t really relate to him. All I could think about was how grateful he should be that his son could express himself in that way.

I know I’ve written about how you’re nonverbal many times before. I want you to know that it comes from a place of caring and love, not from a place of shame.

Your speech therapist at school recently shared a video of you attempting to say “more” and it made me feel choked up as I watched it. I felt so proud of you and grateful for your school and how they push you to improve a little bit each day.

You clearly have something to say. It’s okay if it takes you longer to learn how to do so. It’s okay if you get frustrated by the process. It’s okay that communication will look different for you than it does for most people.

The important thing is that you keep trying to get better. I know you will.

Maybe in the future, you’ll say, “Dad, will you please stop publishing these birthday letters?” I will stop right then and there, no questions asked.

But I’ll have lots of other questions for you. And I can’t wait to hear your answers.

*

Just as in all the previous years I’ve written this letter, I can peak over my laptop screen and see you peacefully sleeping on the video monitor.

This year, I’m worried that our three rambunctious foster kittens—Mozart, Beethoven, and Bach—will wake you up as they play fight with each other, so I keep glancing at the screen to see if you’re moving.

In an hour or so, I’ll grab fewer meds than I did this time last year, and give them to you through your feeding tube while you sleep. It’s something you can count on me doing for you no matter what.

I’m grateful that you’re such an incredible kid. You have every right and reason to be angry and sad about the cards life has dealt you, yet you’re happy and mellow most of the time.

You’re inspiring and I’m really proud of you.

Happy birthday, Em.

Love you,

Your dad

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Your readers haven’t heard much from you in a while, how have things been lately?

They’re trending in the right direction. The past month or so was tough, though. 

My almost six-year-old daughter Em had bilateral hip replacement surgery a little over a month ago. The balls in the joints of both of her hips had steadily been coming out of their sockets—her left side a little more than her right—due to her cerebral palsy and how she’s unable to stand like a neurotypical kid. We’ve known she would need to get the surgery for a few years, so it wasn’t a surprise or anything.

Leading up to the surgery, I wasn’t all that worried that something might go wrong during it. I was more anxious about what her recovery might look like afterward. 

This worry was compounded by what happened leading up to the surgery. She had casts on both her legs. Not because she broke something. They were on to temporarily get her feet into a better position since she tends to point her toes too much, making it difficult for her to wear foot braces and practice standing in her stander device. 

For a couple of weeks, she would wake up a bunch of times each night screaming. She would usually go back to sleep fairly quickly, so we thought maybe she was having bad dreams. But when the doctor eventually cut the casts off, I felt my heart drop when I saw some parts of her feet had been rubbed raw. 

Those screams were her trying to tell us that she was hurting. 

Shit, hang on a sec.

No worries.

Okay, I’m back

What happened?

She just screamed out as I was writing that sentence about her screaming.

Wow, really?

Yeah, she’s been doing it again lately. 

We don’t think she’s in pain now, although she does have this foam wedge thing that sits between her legs and is strapped onto them to keep them at a certain angle during her recovery. It’s soft, but I can’t imagine being in a fixed position all night long is all that comfortable. 

I don’t know. It’s hard for us to know exactly how she’s feeling since she’s non-verbal.

How do you decipher what’s going on in her world if she’s unable to tell you?

Well, in a way, we sort of guess. 

She can’t form words, but she can make noises. And she can certainly get loud. We can usually tell the difference between her “I don’t like this song” and her “I’m tired” cries. She also has both happy and unhappy screams. 

Her smile can tell us a lot. Same thing when she doesn’t smile. We sometimes ask her to pick between two options. A smile means yes and she usually doesn’t respond if it’s a no.

Her eyes can show her emotions too. They get big and open wide when she’s excited and engaged. And they get droopy when she’s tired. That’s pretty standard stuff for humans. Our eyes can reveal a lot of non-verbal information.

She’s also continuing to work on using some communication apps on her school iPad. The apps are pretty rudimentary for her right now, but we’re hoping she can eventually use them to communicate more complex thoughts.

It’s all a work in progress. And progress is going to be slow.

Interestingly, your creative work and professional work at Foster have words and language at their heart, yet Em can’t express herself in that way. There’s a perverse irony to that, isn’t there?

Thinking about this is one of the most surefire ways to make me cry.

I could see how someone else might look at it like it’s the universe’s way of punishing me for something else I did. I don’t really buy into that, though. I’m a good person that, sure, has occasionally been inconsiderate or aloof or perhaps even an asshole to someone else, but by and large I’m a good person who doesn’t deserve to be punished for anything.

It’s not as simple as the universe saying, “Look, you did some not-great stuff and you’re gonna have to pay somehow. So since you seem to like words and find them pretty darn important, we’re gonna take them away from your daughter. Consider the balance of the universe (i.e. us) restored now. Good luck!”

This isn’t really about me and my experience. Sure, it’s challenging for me. But ultimately more challenging for Em. Because as she gets older, she’ll want to express herself in ever more complex and nuanced ways.

All that being said, yes, it’s hard. 

That’s why the tears start welling up when I sit with it and allow myself to feel it. In some ways, it would be easier if I could explain it away as retribution meted out by the universe and live my life forever feeling guilty and ashamed about whatever I did to bring this upon my family. Yet I can’t, and that would be an awful way to live. And instead, it just feels random and unlucky.

Is this part of why you haven’t published that much lately?

I’ve been writing a fair amount for work, including an edition of our Substack publication called Fosterverse Weekly. Here’s a recent one about our next Cohort that starts on Monday, which you should apply for (the deadline is today!) if you’re a writer who’s looking to write alongside other creative people and go deeper into your writing practice.

CoAuthored

You can’t build without a proper foundation

Hey Writers, I have a confession to make: I’m a huge golf nerd. I could spend hours upon hours trying to get my swing just right. Yet no matter what I’m working on, the basic fundamentals are grip and setup. Those are the core elements that make up the foundation of the golf swing…

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2 years ago · 15 likes · Lyle McKeany

But it’s been hard for me to write anything longer form for myself lately.

I get started. Jot down a few sentences. Sometimes I keep them. Most of the time I delete them and start over, or, more than likely, I get distracted by something else entirely. This post has taken me the better part of three weeks to write. 

For a while, I thought this was run-of-the-mill resistance, meaning there was some type of fear holding me back from creating. I think there’s more to it, though.

What do you mean there’s more to it?

This is a roundabout way of explaining, but here goes.

I finished listening to the book Faith, Hope, and Carnage by Nick Cave a couple of weeks ago. I became kind of obsessed with it—jotting down quotes and going out of my way to mention parts of the book to friends. By the way, the format of the book inspired this post since it’s written as a conversation between Nick and his friend Sean O’Hagan.

Towards the end, Nick talks about the effect grief has had on him since his son died suddenly in an accident. He described how his mind felt cloudy and he had trouble focusing on anything for an extended period. A few months after his son’s passing, he was being filmed for a documentary and he found himself wanting to be directed by the filmmaker, like, “Stand here. Say this,” which is antithetical to the entire point of a documentary film.

His feelings resonated with me and my recent experience around Em’s surgery. I found myself wanting to support and follow someone else’s lead, rather than take ownership and have a point of view of my own—both at work and home. It’s like being in survival mode. I just do the essential things to get through the day, but I don’t have any energy left to think too deeply about much of anything, even when I specifically carve out time to do so.

This is something people don’t talk about having a kid with a disability: you often don’t have the time or capacity to really feel things because you’re in survival mode almost constantly.

In the weeks leading up to Em’s surgery, my days were filled with her tube feeding meals, meds schedule, doctor appointments, driving to said appointments, and then maybe getting some work done.

I felt seen while listening to the book. And I felt less broken.

I can see why. It seems like a lot of what you’ve brought up can be tied back to grief, doesn’t it?

Yep, totally.

My initial thought was that my lack of focus was anxiety around Em’s surgery, and that was certainly there too, but this tendency started sooner and I think it’s more related to grief. 

Grief around Em’s disability. 

Grief around the loss of the life I could’ve had if her birth had gone differently. 

Grief around how it has sometimes strained my relationship with my wife, Allison. 

Grief around how I make my living and art through words and Em doesn’t have any yet. 

Wasn’t there a great gut-punch quote about grief in the Nick Cave book?

Oh yeah, it was a doozy. Let me find it real quick.

Here you go:

“There is a great deficit in the language around grief. It’s not something we are practised at as a society, because it is too hard to talk about and, more importantly, it’s too hard to listen to. So many grieving people just remain silent, trapped in their own secret thoughts, trapped in their own minds, with their only form of company being the dead themselves.”

Oof, yeah, that’s a good one.

We should probably wrap this up, huh? I feel like we’ve sufficiently updated folks for now. I mean, there’s some other stuff going on but I don’t feel ready to get into it quite yet.

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing.

Yeah, I knew you were.

Oh, right, of course you did.

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Today is Mother’s Day—your 15th with Sara and your 5th with our daughter Em.

I re-watched the video we forgot we filmed with the Ceres Project1 last night. After I got over how different I looked, both younger and also about 20 pounds heavier, I remembered how strong you were, despite how difficult our life had been up until then. I looked it up in our calendar and it was filmed on June 13th, 2019, just nine days after Em’s first birthday. The day she was born was the hardest day of both of our lives. Em wasn’t breathing at birth and our life dramatically changed as we began to learn just how severe her cerebral palsy disability was.

I remember filming it and feeling like we had come so far and that, perhaps, the worst was behind us. And yet, at that moment, we still had no idea what was in store for us in the coming years.

There was the pandemic, of course. But that was nothing compared to another challenge that hit you personally later on. One that I won’t go into detail about publicly, but I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. I’m still in awe of the work you did to stare it in the face, despite everything in your body screaming at you to do otherwise, and you eventually overcame it.

Upon reflection, it seems like that experience was the catalyst for you to lean into being your authentic self. I’ve watched you become a woman who’s not afraid to say yes to what you want, and, more importantly, no to whatever you don’t. This is something I strive to do better myself and I’m lucky to be able to learn from you.

Your compassion and thoughtfulness for others is incredible, especially towards those in the thick of it like we were back when we badly needed those meal deliveries from Ceres. I’m blown away by how you always show up for others enthusiastically and with a full heart while we still have so much going on at home—like being awake to comfort Em from 12:30 - 3 am the other morning, for example. Not to mention all the important work you do with patients and the several concurrent work projects you’re heading up.

Yet no matter what, you always put our family first.

When you’ve been helping Em while she’s struggling or in pain after her recent surgery, I’ve often thought about the first week of Em’s life, when she was in the NICU, and she turned to your voice after one of the times she coded. I’ll never forget the beauty of that moment within the midst of the chaos around us during that intense time.

I’ve also seen you show up and be a champion for Sara, while also allowing her to be herself and grow into the person she wants to become.

I’m amazed that while all this is going on you’re still able to make time for yourself.

That’s what today is for—yourself. It’s a day for you to swim at the pool, to read your latest book, to visit with your daughters, to cook for fun, to have no agenda, and to rest. You’re off for today.

I hereby change the name of today’s holiday at our house.

Happy Mother’s Day of Rest, babe.

Love you,

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One of my wife’s favorite stories to tell about our first date is how boring she felt after hearing about my life. From touring in a major label signed band to playing professional poker, and a plethora of odd jobs in sales, insurance underwriting, and the golf industry in between, mine has not been a straight, nor typical, path.

While most people listen to my unique background with awe, I can’t help but think about how many things haven’t worked out for me over the years. I’ve lost track of how often I’ve started over. Of how many times I’ve gotten excited about the next big thing, only to have it fall short again. 

This pattern of yearning for outsized success developed early on. 

My band Pressure 4-5 signed a deal with DreamWorks Records in late 2000. This was the first time I tasted what outsized success might look like.

We decided to sign with a major record label rather than an indie label because we felt it gave us the best chance to make it big. The major labels and publishing companies had the money, connections, and marketing firepower to turn average Joes like us into household names. We saw our friends in the band Papa Roach do it when their single Last Resort took off. Why not us? So we signed a contract with DreamWorks, the same label they were on, and a publishing contract with EMI, giving up more rights to our music than we probably should have and ceding our future as recording artists to our record label's whims.

Everything was humming along as it was supposed to—we were on tour, our single was released to radio, we were doing magazine interviews, and we saw our video on MTV2 late one night at a motel on the road. And then, 9/11 happened. The world stopped and nobody gave a crap about a new upstart band.

We toured on and off for over a year. We filmed a show in Denver for an MTV special with our friends in Alien Ant Farm. We released another single for our song Melt Me Down, albeit with far fewer marketing dollars behind it. 

But nothing worked.

We drove from what we didn’t know would be our last tour stop in Lousiville to our home in Santa Barbara, and went back to the drawing board to write some new songs. We recorded them in our practice studio and sent them to our A&R guy at DreamWorks. He encouraged us to keep writing more music, which meant he didn’t hear what he deemed a single-worthy, radio-friendly song, which meant we weren’t going to get our next advance for our second album anytime soon.

I was running out of my allotment from the first advance, so I got a job at a local golf course. My band kept writing more songs, but eventually, I left to join my brother’s band, and later on, they called it a day and never recorded another album. I tried to get my new band hooked up with a manager and other industry contacts, but the music business was changing rapidly. Napster and other file-sharing tools were freaking out the record labels. Heavier music was fading from the mainstream. 

I felt burned out and left my dream of making it big as a musician behind.

But my pattern of searching for outsized success continued.

A friend taught my brother and me how to play poker. We’d play home games with friends, I dabbled in online poker, and I worked up the courage to play in the poker room at a nearby casino. Then a guy named Chris Moneymaker won the Main Event at the World Series of Poker (WSOP) in 2003 for $2 million. Later that same year, another friend hooked me up with an invite to be a proposition (prop) player on a new poker website called JetSet Poker where they would pay me an hourly rate to keep cash games going so they could collect their cut of each pot.

I’d pull all-nighters at the casino, show up for my opening shift at the golf course, and try to keep myself awake until my shift ended and I could go home to sleep. One time I even played an online tournament on the same computer we used as the golf course cash register and I ended up winning a trip for two to a series of poker tournaments in Curaçao. I ended up making thousands of dollars on that vacation.

It became clear that I was making more money playing poker on the side than I was at my day job, so I quit and spent more time playing cards. I made most of my money playing cash games and steadily grinding out a decent hourly rate as a prop player. But I dreamed of going deep in a big tournament for a big score.

In 2006 I qualified for what was then the largest WSOP Main Event field in history, a $10,000 buy-in tournament with 8,773 players and a $12 million first-place prize, until last year’s Main Event field eclipsed it with 10,043 players and $12.1 million up top. It felt like it was my time. I was confident and my game felt solid. But on day 3, after roughly 27 hours of play, I was busted out of the tournament a couple of hours short of the initial money payouts by Michael Binger, the guy who would go on to place 3rd and win over $4 million.

I kept playing and was profitable, yet I never cracked through to a sizable tournament win. The long hours sitting at the table began to wear me out. This thing that was once a fun hobby was now something I was spending nearly all my time doing. If I wasn’t clocking in online, I was headed to the local casino or driving to play in Vegas. My mood was dictated by how well I was doing at the tables. My relationship with the value of a dollar became unhealthy.

Yet again, I felt burned out and left the dream of making it big as a pro poker player behind.

On the cusp of turning 30, I decided it was time to find a “real” job. I became an entry-level underwriter at State Farm, and, when they decided to close that regional office, I moved to a sales position at a company specializing in niche scientific equipment, where I was working when I first met my wife nearly 11 years ago.

But the starting over was just beginning. 

I still remember the impetus for getting into tech startups. I was listening to a podcast interview with the founder of Uber and he said they were growing 25% month-over-month. A week or so later, I ran the sales numbers for the team I managed at the scientific equipment company and we had only grown 2% over the entire year. Sure, there were many valid reasons for the paltry number, most out of my team’s control, but the difference in the two numbers was stark. I wanted to build something that could grow more quickly and hitch a ride on that rocket ship. 

There’s this concept in the startup world called failing fast. You try something out, and the sooner you figure out it’s not working, the better. Because then you can adjust and pivot to something else, or scrap the idea entirely. For many years, I’ve been drawn to that way of working. It fits nicely with my tendency to be interested in many different things, and how I rarely feel strong enough conviction to fully commit to only one thing for an extended period. 

During my time in early-stage startups, I thought I’d eventually hit on something that worked and could help scale it up into a life-changing outcome for all involved. And yet, I’m left with a resumé full of company names hardly anybody but my close friends, family, and former coworkers recognize.

My story with work was scripted by this point—find my next passion, immerse myself in it, and when it invariably failed or when I felt the inertia of my passion subside, rinse and repeat.

A monthly golf subscription box idea. The next health food bar. Cracking into the crypto space. 

Most recently, I had dreams of becoming a well-known author. It was part of the catalyst for starting this very publication. For over three years, I felt a sense of urgency to keep writing and publishing and building my audience, all in service of some seemingly distant goal of writing a bestselling book. 

But the constant hustling also burned me out, so I stopped publishing weekly. 

My work has historically been deeply tied to my identity. Like many American men, I saw success in my work as a measure of my self-worth, and the fact that I kept falling short left me feeling insecure and unsure.

I’ve grown tired of chasing the big win. Sure, it would be nice to see another digit tacked onto the total in my bank account. But I know on an intellectual level that it wouldn’t solve all my problems or necessarily make me any happier.

My wife and I have been smart with saving our money, and we’re lucky enough to receive some help from the state for our nearly six-year-old daughter due to her cerebral palsy (although we’d forgo that money in a heartbeat if there were a cure for it), which affords us some options with our work. We own a house with a reasonable mortgage in the suburban city of Sonoma, a town that people travel from all over the world to visit, and we don’t plan on moving anytime soon.

So what am I chasing a big win for? Who am I chasing it for?

Maybe my desire for outsized success has diminished because I’m getting older. Or maybe it was inevitable after the perspective-changing, traumatic birth of my daughter.

Recently, I’ve settled into a more steady way of being, where my work at Foster (check out our new website!) is just one of many things I do. I value having a flexible schedule and not needing to commute two-plus hours each day so I can be there for my family. My passions and hobbies don’t have to bring in any income at all. Ever. I can write because it’s fun to push myself creatively. I can play golf because it’s a challenge to improve my game and it’s nice to hang with friends outside in the sun. I can dedicate time to work on myself and learn how to enjoy the life I already have.

Those daydreams of the big win still show up sometimes. But they don’t feel as urgent anymore. Maybe it’s because I’ve won big in life already.

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Check out the rest of the work series:

Get Real, Man

It’s only after we’ve quit everything that we’re free to do anything.

Today’s essay is part of a series on work that includes me, Joshua Doležal, Bowen Dwelle, Michael Mohr, Dee Rambeau, and Lyle McKeany. You may remember past series about fatherhood and recovery. This week, all of us will wrestle with what work means to us. I can’t recommend these guys’ writings highly enough, so give them a read and let us know what you…

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2 years ago · 42 likes · 37 comments · Latham Turner

The Recovering Academic

What Work Is

Today’s essay is part of a series on work that includes me, Latham Turner, Bowen Dwelle, Michael Mohr ofSincere American Writing, Dee Rambeau, and Lyle McKeany. You may remember our past series about fatherhood and recovery. This week, all of us will wrestle with what work means to us. These collaborative series are a highlight of my life on Substack, and I hope you’ll keep tuning in this…

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2 years ago · 39 likes · 34 comments · Joshua Doležal

An Ordinary Disaster

Earning my bread

This is part of the third writing series by a group of men writing on Substack that includes myself,Michael Mohr, Joshua Doležal,Lyle McKeany, Latham Turner, and Dee Rambeau. This series is about work and money. I was around nine years old when I began to wake at five AM, and roll out of bed and down the front stairs to wait in the fog for the soun…

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2 years ago · 16 likes · 8 comments · Bowen Dwelle

Michael Mohr's Sincere American Writing

The Curse and Necessity of Money

Michael Mohr's Sincere American Writing is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Today’s essay is part of a new series that includes Sincere American Writing, Latham Turner…

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2 years ago · 37 likes · 22 comments · Sincere American Writing

Of a Sober Mind

The Pretender

Dear friends and readers—this essay is one of six written by a smart group of men—authors and writers—with whom I have the pleasure of gathering with regularly to discuss life and writing. Each quarter we engage in this exercise of writing on a common topic during the same week. We started last September with…

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2 years ago · 20 likes · 11 comments · Dee Rambeau

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Below is my version, which I’ve updated and improved a bit.

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March 11th, 2020 was my third wedding anniversary and the last day I commuted to the office.

I had been making it a point to walk during my workday to get off my ass and burn some calories. I recruited my colleague Gabe for a walk to get lunch that day. He was an ultramarathoner in his mid-twenties with curly, unruly brown hair. He biked to work each day wearing one of those funny biker hats with the short bill and his right pant leg rolled up so it didn’t get stuck in his bike chain. We grabbed lunch together most weekdays. And more often than not we would go to Mollie Stone’s—an overpriced supermarket less than a mile from the office.

On the walk, we talked about the coronavirus. It was on cable news to an extent, in between the latest Trump craziness, sans the ubiquitous COVID case numbers and death toll count that later permeated the side of the screen. But I had known it was a festering issue for weeks. Back then, my Twitter feed was tuned to the world of startups and venture capitalists—people who likened themselves to futurists and experts on exponential growth. That is to say, pandemic whistleblowers shouting warnings within their digital echo chambers.

I was getting increasingly worried about it because my daughter Em has a history of respiratory issues. When she was born, she wasn’t breathing and we spent a month in the neonatal intensive care unit. The lack of blood and oxygen damaged her brain, causing her cerebral palsy—a life-long muscle movement disorder. One of the many movements she struggles with—that most people don’t have to think about—is swallowing. When she had the flu several months earlier, it was so bad that, for three nights in a row, my wife Allison and I had to trade off holding Em upright so she could sleep without feeling like she was drowning in her excess saliva.

“It feels like the virus is all around us,” Gabe said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I don’t know. It just feels like it’s everywhere.”

His words hung in silence for a few moments as I tried to interpret what he meant. Then it struck me. That’s the thing about a virus—you can’t see it. It’s this imperceptible and opportunistic foe that doesn’t need to mount some sort of sneak attack like a ninja under cover of darkness to infect us. It just latches onto some poor sap, multiplies like crazy, splits up into groups, and some of the viral offspring attack the immune system while the others camp out in some mucus waiting to hitch a ride on a projectile cough or sneeze to infect their next hapless victim.

But we didn’t know that last part then. No, we were more anxious about an unsanitized doorknob than the cheery, chatty, coughing, checkout clerk less than six feet away from us without a mask on. Plus, I lived in Sonoma and, at the time, I worked in Sausalito—two idyllic smallish towns in northern California—where there hadn’t been any deaths yet and the total case numbers were less than fifty.

We went into the market and no one was wearing a mask. There was the typical lunchtime rush at the deli counter with people talking and laughing and going about their days without a second thought—before any of us had ever heard of social distancing. Toilet paper was probably even in stock. I really should’ve bought some.

Gabe’s words kept rattling around in my head that evening. The virus really could be anywhere, I thought. I debated whether I should go to work the next day. We only need an internet connection to get our work done. It shouldn’t be a big deal to work from home until this blows over, right? I know it’s not really my call, but we’re a small team and they know about Em’s issues. They’ll get it. Right?

So at 7:59 am the next morning, March 12th, I sent an email to the team expressing my concerns about the virus and Em. Our CEO agreed it would be best to play it safe and work remotely for at least a few weeks. Maybe it was the Tom Hanks announcement the prior evening that made it feel more real for him. Little did he know we wouldn’t see each other in person again for months.

* * *

It’s getting harder and harder to remember what a normal day feels like since Em’s birth. Life with a toddler who has severe cerebral palsy and is 100% tube-fed makes for days that feel like they’re on repeat.

Her meals are on a schedule.

Her meds are on a schedule.

Her sleep is (mostly) on a schedule.

It’s hard to even have a normal conversation with people when I share a story about how tough it is with her.

Some people respond with that tilted-head-squinty-eyes-and-forced-frown look and say, "That must be so hard." If it comes from an honest place and doesn’t sound condescending, it’s the least annoying.

You’d think parents would be the most understanding. Yet they often make it about themselves and compare what I say to things their kids do like, "Oh yeah, little Sally had trouble sleeping at that age too." Oh, really? Did you have to give little Sally four different meds in the middle of the night through a feeding tube so she can sleep until at least a somewhat reasonable time in the morning—and by a somewhat reasonable time, you mean 5:00 am—and you hope she doesn't wake up while you're giving her the meds because that means she’ll be awake for at least an hour because her body won’t stop moving even though she’s clearly still tired, which is why you have to give her the meds in the middle of the night in the first place?

The absolute worst response is, "I'm sure she'll figure it out eventually." That one is especially infuriating. I want to say, "You obviously know nothing about cerebral palsy" and then lecture them about what it is and how she's going to have it her whole life, and how our life is really fucking hard sometimes. But I know that's not helpful and people are just uncomfortable talking about tough things, especially if we're not particularly close.

What I really want to hear is, “That really fucking sucks, man. I’m so sorry you’re having to deal with this shit.” Thank you, you’re right, it does suck.

When Em was six months old, a pediatric doctor who specializes in movement disorders like cerebral palsy told us, “We’ve found if a kid can sit up on their own with no support by the time they’re two years old, they have a good chance of being able to walk eventually.”

Back then I thought, Are you kidding?! She goes to physical therapy twice a week and occupational therapy once a week. Of course she’ll be able to do that.

Fast forward to when the pandemic was getting real in March 2020, her second birthday was only three months away and she wasn’t even close to holding her own head up consistently, let alone sitting up on her own.

When we had all this weighing down on us every day, it was hard to get excited about celebrating days like our anniversary. It felt frivolous. Our energy and time were sapped between juggling Em’s constant need for care, our work schedules, and at least giving some amount of attention to my stepdaughter Sara. So we didn’t do anything special for our anniversary. Maybe we should have. A bit of normalcy within our chaotic life would’ve been nice before the world shut down.

What is normal, anyway?

Normal (adj.): conforming to a standard; usual, typical, or expected

Our life since Em’s birth has been more like the opposite—unusual, atypical, and unexpected. But not in the oh-my-god-your-life-is-so-exciting-I-would-trade-mine-for-yours-in-a-heartbeat type of way. Instead, it was a new normal. Days filled with things no parent ever imagines having to do like attaching a tube to Em’s belly so she can burp or strapping her into a stander device so her leg muscles don’t atrophy from non-use. When we went into quarantine, Allison and I shrugged at each other and thought, welp, just add it to the pile of crap we have to deal with every day already. It meant I wouldn’t need to commute anymore and Sara’s school would need to figure out how to do her classes remotely. That’s about it. Otherwise, our days weren’t all that different. We had already been stuck in a daily Groundhog’s Day loop.

* * *

My last normal day was not March 11, 2020. It was June 3rd, 2018—the day before Em was born. Allison, Sara, and I had gone to my parents’ home for dinner that evening. My Dad and I barbequed steak and chicken. My Mom made potatoes. Allison made a salad. We sat around the dinner table and talked while we ate. We just talked, without interruption.

We talked without having to get up to push Em’s meal into her tube.

We talked without having to get up to help Em move her body out of a contorted position.

We talked without having to get up to turn Em back onto her side so she doesn’t feel like she’s choking on her own saliva.

I don’t remember much of what we talked about. But that’s kind of the point, isn’t it?

A normal day isn’t seared with vivid memories.

It might sound hyperbolic, but for us, the stresses induced by Em’s needs and challenges far outweighed the stresses of a global pandemic. It was more of an annoying detail than anything else. The pesky pandemic. We already had difficulties traveling well before you needed a negative Covid test to do so—like the time her feeding tube came out of her belly in the Las Vegas airport and we had to ride in an ambulance to the ER and extend our trip by a day.

Em has reoriented and upended any visions we had of a normal life. Before she was born, I would daydream of different moments as she grew up. I could see her taking her first steps. I could picture her chasing her big sister around the house. I could imagine her saying her first word. But all that changed in an instant when she was born.

I don’t want to live a life without Em in it. But it sure would be nice to have a normal day again.

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2024 Update:

It was fascinating to go back through this piece and realize how much Em has grown and changed. She goes to an awesome school called BOOST now. She doesn’t deal with the saliva issues anymore, unless she gets sick. Yet she has also had a handful of seizures in the past year, and she hasn’t been able to go in her stander for months because her feet are in a position that makes it difficult for her orthotic shoes to stay on properly. This week, she’s starting in on a treatment plan to help her foot and ankle mobility. And then next month she has hip surgery.

I wouldn’t say our life has become easier. The routine is just different now. The struggles have evolved. And yet, I’m still blown away by Em’s resilience.

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Everyone I talked to said it wouldn’t be a big deal. Even the doctor said as much. “You’ll be in and out in like 15-20 minutes,” he said. He clearly didn’t know who he was dealing with. To be fair, he was partially correct: the vasectomy itself only took about 15 minutes. But I was in the room for over an hour.

Before the procedure, I felt relaxed. The time had finally come, and I was ready to get it over with.

“You can be on your phone and watch something during it if you want to,” the nurse said.

Pleasantly surprised and thankful for the digital distraction, I grabbed my iPhone and texted my wife who was hanging out in the waiting room.

Lyle (me/husband/patient): Hi, the nurse said I can be on my phone during the procedure lol

Allison (wife): That is so funny! What is happening now?

L: She just shaved my testicles Lolol

A: I’m sure that was awkward

L: It wasn’t too bad. She was fast at it!

A: lol, her secret skill

The nurse left the room, and with a thin cloth draped over my groin, I waited for the doctor to come in. Allison took the opportunity to use the restroom. A few minutes later, the doctor arrived and got straight to work.

A: I’m back

L: I’m getting numbed up now. Thankfully not as bad as I thought it would be to get poked down there

A: Is it getting numb quickly?

L: Yeah he said it only takes a minute. He’s doing something else down there already

A: I should have asked if I could watch!

L: lol

I actually did laugh out loud and told the doctor about our exchange, to which he replied, “She can come in if she doesn’t get queasy.”

L: He just said you can come in if you want to

A: Yes!

And so a minute later Allison came in and stood by my side while the doctor continued to root around in my junk.

She’s not a stranger to watching surgeries. On her mom’s side, she has a brother who is 20 years younger than her, and just over 20 years ago, she drove home from college to watch his birth via C-section.

As the doctor was working, he shared what he was doing and Allison asked questions, while I tried to relax and not flinch too much if he hit a spot that wasn’t completely numb. Watching how fascinated she was with the process helped keep my mind off of it.

*

Allison and I originally wanted to have two kids (in addition to my stepdaughter). Then Em came along in June 2018 and the lack of blood and oxygen to her brain during birth caused her cerebral palsy disability. We spent a month in the hospital with her, during which I never slept in our bed at home. And then an intense first year or so filled with a feeding tube surgery, a couple of emergency room visits when said tube came out, a bunch of doctor’s appointments, and countless therapy sessions, all while we attempted to keep showing up for our jobs.

Em is five-and-a-half years old now. She still requires 24/7 supervision and needs assistance doing just about everything—except for breathing, which, honestly, feels like a miracle considering she struggled early on to keep her blood oxygen levels up and she coded twice during her first week of life. That being said, Em is an amazing kid. She’s generally calm, unless she’s excited about something (currently, she’s most excited about a video of a Raffi concert from 1989), which causes her to scream with pure joy and her limbs to flail wildly. She’s happy most of the time. She’s resilient. And she’s cute as hell.

I admire parents who decide to have another child after the previous one develops a disability. We know one couple who have done it. We are not that type of couple.

Having another child would be incredibly stressful, especially leading up to the birth. Before Em was born, there were no warning signs that anything was wrong until she was delivered in the hospital, grey-colored and unbreathing, needing to be resuscitated. In our minds, it was too traumatic of an experience to tempt fate a second time. Plus, these days we quite literally have our hands full with her, and she’s not getting any smaller.

We did leave the door open to changing our minds. But, in actuality, our decision was made years ago. I was getting a vasectomy at some point.

I had been anxious about the procedure in the weeks leading up to it. My rumination wasn’t about not being able to have kids anymore—I had already come to terms with that (or so I thought). Instead, I wondered if the procedure would be uncomfortable since it didn’t require anesthesia. I wondered if it would affect my libido afterward. But more than anything else, I wondered if I would pass out.

*

I was fine when the doctor showed Allison and me the little bits he cut out. I was fine while he cauterized something down there and I saw smoke rising from my crotch. I was fine for several minutes after the procedure too.

Yet shortly after I arose to put my jeans on, I started to feel lightheaded. With my lengthy history of passing out easily, I’ve become very attuned to the feeling and quickly laid back down on the table. I recovered almost immediately and shook my head and I laughed it off. 

The nurse said, “We’ll take it easy and slowly raise you up this time.”

Hanging out with Allison in a doctor’s office wasn’t how I envisioned spending my afternoon. I was annoyed and wanted to go home and take it easy. Maybe watch a movie or something similarly mindless.

Every five or ten minutes, the nurse would come back in and ask how I was feeling. “I’m fine,” I’d say. And she would incrementally raise the back of the table until, finally, I was sitting upright.

I felt normal. I felt ready to get out of there.

Until suddenly, I didn’t.

I felt the queasiness come on strong and vaguely remember telling Allison I wasn’t feeling well. The next thing I knew, I was lying down on the table, which had been lowered down again, drenched in a cold sweat. I later learned that Allison had kept me from tipping over onto the tile floor and hopped to the other side of the table to stomp on the foot pedal that lowered the table.

When I reawoke, I heard Allison’s voice saying, “You’re okay. I’m right here.” And I instantly started sobbing. The emotional release felt like a combination of the scariness of having a chunk of my life erased from my consciousness (albeit a very brief chunk) and the gravity of the procedure I had just gone through all at once. I had been trying to be stoic and keep my shit together leading up to passing out, but my body conspired against me and my tears flowed.

When the doctor heard what happened, he offered to get me something to eat and drink. He returned with a handful of butter cookies, likely left over from one of those gift tins, and a can of Diet Pepsi. As I attempted to eat the cookies without raining crumbs all over the place, I kept apologizing to Allison. She kept assuring me that it was okay. And I kept thinking about how grateful I was that she was there by my side.

It’s embarrassing to be so susceptible to fainting. When I tell people I pass out easily, it’s usually couched within a funny story (or three). Other times, it’s a more serious story. No matter the events surrounding the episodes, though, they’re unsettling as they’re happening. Or, I should say, immediately after they happen, since I’m unconscious throughout them.

Yet this time felt different. More emotional. More intense. It’s one thing to occasionally feel like I might pass out while doing a tough HIIT workout. In those instances, I can simply lie down and let my heart rate come down a bit before jumping back in. But it’s another thing to have it come on so suddenly when I was feeling okay physically and thought I was feeling okay emotionally. 

Days later, as I was in the shower, the emotional weight of the procedure hit me again. I thought about how I can’t have kids anymore. The finality of the procedure brought back the dreams and expectations I had when Allison was pregnant with Em. I dreamed of teaching her to play golf. I expected to see her first steps. But the instant she was born, those dreams and expectations changed forever. 

I remember early on after Em was born, thinking that eventually, over time, I would reflect on life since her birth and be unable to imagine it any differently. Uh, yeah, I’m still not quite there yet. Maybe I won’t ever be. Time heals all wounds. Sure. But you still remember how you got them.

I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I wish things turned out differently for Em and my family. Of course, I wish she were able to eat and walk and talk, with a younger sibling learning how to walk now too—mostly for her sake, not mine. And yet, I can’t change what happened. I have to accept it and be ready for the grief to hit at random, unexpected times. Like it always does.

I wrote this piece during the latest Foster cohort. Thank you to those of you in the community who heard me read snippets of it, or read an early draft, and provided feedback. It is a much better piece because of you.

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Dear Shame,

First of all, I want to say that I hear you and see you—sometimes more often than I’d like to. It’s not that you’re unimportant or unworthy of my attention. It’s just that you kind of hijack everything. When you show up, my body seems to shrink, and my mind races. You paralyze me. I’m not saying I want you to go away. You’re part of me. You’ve shaped me, for better and worse. What I’m asking for instead is space. Space for my other parts.

In the breathwork session with JJ the other day, he encouraged me to name you Shame Buddha. You’re one of a multitude of Buddhas inside me—some of which have been suppressed for far too long. I want to get to know them more. To be reintroduced to them again. To spend time with them.

I want to spend time with…

Joyful Buddha

Loving Buddha

Compassionate Buddha

Grateful Buddha

Strong Buddha

Optimistic Buddha

Hopeful Buddha

Confident Buddha

I know there will be times when you need attention and you’ll cry out for help. I promise that I will see you and understand you. But I will also kindly ask you to calm down and take a deep breath, and maybe even sleep it off. Because you’ve become too strong of a force in my life and you don’t define who I am.

I love you,

Lyle

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I had awoken around 11:30 pm with a stuffed-up right nostril, tried to rub my nose, and sort of stretch out my nostril (?) to loosen it up. The next thing I knew, I was rushing to the bathroom to contain the blood pouring out.

Earlier, I had passed out in bed around 8:30 pm—that wasn’t my plan for New Year’s Eve, I swear—because my back had been bothering me all day. It’s not only that my back hurt, it’s that I was annoyed that it was still acting up despite all the working out I’ve done over the past four months. Strengthening my back and core to relieve the annoying, persistent, tenacious pain I’ve dealt with for years (decades?) was part of my motivation for starting to work out in the first place. Yet, no relief was in sight.

As I was groggily wadding up tissues and plugging my nose to try to contain the blood, my mind wandered to New Year’s resolutions. This, even though I dislike the idea of resolutions in the first place.

I reflected on how the most common resolutions are to lose weight and get fit, yet I felt proud of how far I’ve come in the last four months on that front, despite the minimal effect it has had on my back issue.

Getting myself into a regular workout routine wasn’t the result of a lofty fitness goal. Instead, it was due to a confluence of events—a comment from a friend, years of prodding by my wife, seeing my age never go down—that led me to—finally—realize that I needed to prioritize my physical health.

Back in August, I gave my first F45 class a try. F45 stands for “Functional 45” because you do functional high-intensity interval training for 45 minutes in each class. I liked how each class wasn’t too long, I was accountable for showing up at a specific time, and the stations were already set up with all the various workout equipment needed. I could get in and get my workout done fast. And everything was timed down to the second, so I couldn’t waste time dilly-dallying between sets. I was quickly hooked.

Then, only a few weeks later, I blindly agreed to complete a DEXA scan with my wife, without knowing much about it beforehand. A DEXA scan, for those unfamiliar, shows you how much body fat and muscle mass you have. The test results confirmed—as I’ve joked around for most of my adult life—that I was a skinny fat guy.

Now I’m happy to report that after just over four months of hitting the gym, combined with cutting my sugar intake and focusing on consuming enough protein, my latest scan showed that while my weight has remained steady, I’ve lost eight pounds of body fat and gained eight pounds of muscle. Seeing the numbers was validating. I still have a little ways to go to get them within the healthy range, but, clearly, my hard work is paying off.

At 46 years old, I feel stronger than I ever have before.

I’m confident that if I had made “Get My Ass in Shape” my New Year’s resolution, I wouldn’t have been nearly as successful. And I know this because it happened with something else over the past year.

As many of you know, I’ve been working on a memoir book project since before I even launched this Substack over three years ago. Almost exactly a year ago, amid the New Year’s resolution season, I fell for the allure of setting a big stretch goal (that in my mind I justified as somehow different than a resolution?) and felt the urge to recommit to the book. I sat down and wrote a post about beginning to work on it again. I even made a plan with some smaller, seemingly more attainable goals included in it too.

And then, I basically did none of them.

Okay, that’s a bit harsh. I did get some editing feedback from a generous writer friend on the first section, which I still think is quite good, and I wrote a few more scenes and chapters. But by the end of February, some life things came up, and I ran out of steam on it and didn’t touch my manuscript again until November. Every time I thought about it, the project felt heavy. The goal was too big and amorphous. Instead of writing a book, it felt more like Writing an Important Book that Defines Me as a Father, Husband, and Writer. In other words, not exactly the best recipe for letting my creativity flow unabated.

If I had set a similarly large fitness goal and immediately started working out five times per week, like I do now, I wouldn’t have kept it up. I would’ve been so sore I could barely walk. I might’ve even injured myself. And—I can’t believe I’m about to write this—it wouldn’t have been as fun for me as it is now. But since I eased into it and started more sustainably with a couple of workouts per week, I was able to build upon that to where I am today.

Some of you might argue that I did the thing where I broke up my big goal into smaller goals with working out too. I supposed I did. But it didn’t feel like I did. When I think of working out now, I don’t think of having to hit five workouts each week, and if I don’t, I’m a failure. I think of it more like I’m just a guy who works out regularly now.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve seen many writing friends and coworkers sharing their word of the year. My word for 2024 is consistency. It’s not too dissimilar from my mantra for 2023: the extraordinary emerges out of the ordinary. The idea is that if I keep consistently showing up to the things that are important to me, then transformation will undoubtedly occur. I have all the ingredients in me already.

If I want to be a guy who writes books (or even one single book), I need to find a way to make doing the work more sustainable. Maybe I can start by not calling it work. And if I don’t feel called to write a book right now, or ever, that’s okay too.

If I want to be a kind guy instead of a nice guy, I need to continually make the choice to be more assertive and stick up for myself.

And yet, no matter what I do, I’ll still be the guy who tends to get a bloody nose in the cold, dry air of winter.

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Thank you to my writing circle groups at Foster who listened to me read small snippets of a draft of this piece.

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I’ve always thought the worst thing someone could say about me when I’m not around is, “You know, the thing about Lyle is, he means well.” It’s so pathetic sounding, like I’m trying to be cool or thoughtful or whatever but I’m not quite pulling it off. I’d rather someone hate me. Because at least they’d have a strong opinion.

Actually, that’s not true, I’m terrified that anyone might hate me. The truth is that I want everyone to like me.

And for the most part, people do like me. I’m a pretty chill guy. I rarely raise my voice or speak out of turn. I’m not the type of guy who rocks the boat on purpose. If I ever do rock the boat, I feel awful or get defensive about it because I didn’t intend to.

On the surface, being a nice guy seems like a good way to approach life. But it’s deceptive. And often the opposite of nice—both to myself and those I care about.

The problem is that I didn’t know any of this until recently. I was on a discovery call with a therapist I was considering working with. She charged way too much, but she did recommend that I read the book No More Mr Nice Guy by Dr. Robert Glover. I immediately borrowed the audiobook from the library and finished it in three days.

I wouldn’t say the book is a literary marvel or particularly well-written. It’s blunt and to the point, like it was written by a gruff New Yorker who doesn’t mince words. And while some of those words didn’t resonate, many hit me hard. Here’s a sampling:

Nice Guys seek approval from others.

Uh, yep, that tracks.

Nice Guys avoid conflict.

Yeah, nailed it again.

Nice Guys believe they must hide their perceived flaws and mistakes.

I absolutely hate making mistakes and hate them even more when they affect others.

Nice Guys seek the “right” way to do things.

Did I mention I hate making mistakes? If I just do things right in the first place, then nothing should ever go wrong, right?

Nice Guys repress their feelings.

This has been a huge realization for me over the past year. I often find it difficult to simply say “I feel x” instead of “I feel like x.” In other words, I tend to analyze rather than feel. Working with a somatic coach to tap into my body and emotions more has helped me tremendously on this front.

Nice Guys often try to be different from their fathers.

Oof, that one stung when I heard it. I’ve written about my Dad a fair amount, especially since he passed away nearly three years ago. Most of it is generally positive because he was a good man that many people loved. Yet he could sometimes be a lot for me. He always said what was on his mind—whether or not you wanted to hear it—and I didn’t like how he acted towards my mom at times. So what did I end up doing? The opposite. I’m more apt to see the merits of both sides of a situation or issue and I go out of my way to respect and listen to the women in my life.

Nice Guys are often more comfortable relating to women than men.

This one is obviously related to the previous one. If I didn’t relate to my dad, and even rejected some of his behaviors, then perhaps it’s unsurprising that I wouldn’t seek out many male friends. It’s not that I’ve never had male friends, but I’ve certainly let those relationships atrophy more than others in my life. I do have to pat myself on the back here, though, since I’ve made an effort to reconnect with some of my male friends and have even made new male friends before I ever came across this book.

Nice Guys have difficulty making their needs a priority.

Being a chill, go-with-the-flow type of guy means I end up doing things that wouldn’t be my first choice. That’s okay sometimes since we all need to compromise occasionally in our relationships, but I’ve made an almost unconscious habit of doing this way too often.

Nice Guys often make their partner their emotional center.

This one is closely related to the previous one too. Part of the reason I’m a go-with-the-flow type of guy, I’ve realized, is that I often default to going along with whatever my wife Allison wants because it’s easier. If I were to assert my needs, that might risk a confrontation, which would be uncomfortable, so instead, I choose not to do it.

As I listened to the book, I felt disheartened to learn how deep Nice Guyness goes. I felt seen. But that also meant I felt seen—faults and all. Mostly faults. And that felt like shame. I went inward and quiet, my mind racing, thinking about how long I’d embodied these tendencies.

Nice Guyness is sneaky because it appears in small, seemingly trivial situations all the time. Here’s a recent example:

We often spend time at Allison’s parent’s cabin in Mi Wuk Village, a small town in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. In fact, we just got back from there yesterday. At some point, she and my stepdaughter Sara formed a tradition of stopping at Taco Bell on the way home (as a dietitian, Allison might be mortified that I’m sharing this). Here’s the thing, though: I don’t particularly like Taco Bell. I mean, it’s fine. I’d much rather go somewhere like Chipotle, though. Yet, despite my dislike of Taco Bell, the most I would do is maybe give them a hard time about it and mention it’s not my favorite. But otherwise, I’d just go along with it and begrudgingly eat my lackluster tacos.

Addressing my Nice Guyness doesn’t mean becoming an asshole. It means being decisive and assertive. If I couldn’t stand up for how I felt about Taco Bell, then imagine how difficult larger issues could be for me.

There’s a difference between being nice and being kind. It’s kind to let people know where you truly stand. It’s kind to yourself to know where you truly stand and stick up for yourself. Truth is of the utmost importance.

Before we went on a cabin trip last month, I took more ownership of my feelings and desires. Allison knew about the Taco Bell thing already, so I tried out being more up-front and truthful with some other things. She commonly makes taco salad at the cabin and I let her know that I prefer my ground turkey to be warm in it. I swear my Nice Guyness isn’t only related to food! I also told her how I wanted to hike around Pinecrest Lake on a specific day and time since it was the least stressful time for me to be off the grid from work.

Sticking up for myself felt empowering. And, by the way, Allison loved it.

More recently, I shared how I wanted to try a new morning routine where we do a somatic check-in and a ten-minute meditation together. We’ve done it most mornings and have found it to be a great way to start our days with time set aside to feel connected.

It’s not like my inner Nice Guy has completely disappeared. I’ve fallen into my old shadowy pattern at times and have gone deep into shame again.

Before this most recent cabin trip, I nearly canceled all my work meetings while we were in the midst of an important proposal process because Allison had an expectation that we’d both be totally unplugged for the week. I had mentioned the trip to my coworkers but didn’t bring up the possibility of being completely offline. I didn’t want to derail the proposal plan, so I just didn’t mention it. This was a situation where my Nice Guyness showed up in both my relationship and my work. And as a result, it left Allison feeling like I was putting my work before her. In this case, she helped me recognize my inner Nice Guy. We were able to work through it together and had a great week together (and I felt good about how I showed up for work).

Part of recovery is naming whatever the thing is that you’re recovering from. It’s one of the reasons why it’s common for people at AA meetings to say, “My name is so-and-so, and I’m an alcoholic.” They’re routinely reminded of the very thing they’re working on recovering from. When Allison and I were on a hike the other day, I prefaced something I said with, “This is probably coming from my inner Nice Guy.” And that alone helped me see him more clearly and it softened the conversation that transpired afterwards.

Recovery can be slow and painful at times. My inner Nice Guy has been ingrained in me for decades and he comes back all too frequently. He will always be with me. But each time he shows up, I go a little less deeply into shame. It feels like an unfolding where my awareness of him increases a little bit with each unfold. He’s my shadow slowly having the light shone on him.

He means well. But he hasn’t been serving me well.

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Read the full Recovery series

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Get Real, Man

The Tao of No-One

Today’s essay is part of a series on recovery that includes me, Joshua Doležal, Bowen Dwelle, Michael Mohr, Dee Rambeau, and Lyle McKeany. Each of us will wrestle with what recovery means to us and how our life experiences shape that definition.Before we both forget, go ahead and join the community at Get Real, Man. We’re all working on recovering together…

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2 years ago · 53 likes · 43 comments · Latham Turner

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The Recovering Academic

A Sadness That Holds Hope for Joy

Today’s essay is part of a new series on recovery that includes me, Latham Turner, Bowen Dwelle, Michael Mohr, Dee Rambeau, and Lyle McKeany. Each of us will wrestle this week with what recovery means to us and how our life experiences shape that definition…

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2 years ago · 53 likes · 44 comments · Joshua Doležal

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An Ordinary Disaster

Learning to ride

This is part of the second writing series by a group of men writing on Substack that includes myself,Michael Mohr, Joshua Doležal,Lyle McKeany, Latham Turner, and Dee Rambeau. In this series, each of us will wrestle with what “recovery” means to us and how our life experiences shape that definition…

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2 years ago · 12 likes · 11 comments · Bowen Dwelle

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Michael Mohr's Sincere American Writing

Addiction and Recovery

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2 years ago · 36 likes · 23 comments · Michael Mohr

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Of a Sober Mind

Trudging the Road of Happy Destiny

Hello friends. Today’s essay is part of a new series on recovery that includes Latham Turner Bowen Dwelle , Joshua Doležal, Michael Mohr and Lyle McKeany. Each of us will wrestle this week with what recovery means to us and how our life experiences shape that definition…

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2 years ago · 18 likes · 24 comments · Dee Rambeau

If you enjoyed this piece (and this series), could you please let me (us) know by giving the heart button below a tap?

Here’s a piece I wrote throughout the past 24+ hours. I hope you enjoy it!

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4:43 am:

I’ve been trying to get back to sleep for over an hour and I’m giving up.

I’m a side sleeper, and I have this thing where whichever nostril is lower tends to get clogged with snot. Because of that, I will flip over to my other side to sort of let it drain out. But then it eventually fills up the other side. This goes on and on throughout the night, leaving me feeling groggy the next day. And lately, the next day and the next day since this has been going on for a few in a row now.

For a while, I was using mouth tape, which helped the issue most nights. I learned about it through my friend Jonny Miller in his Nervous System Mastery course. With my nose’s propensity to clog, I thought it was a crazy idea to keep my lips closed all night. But forcing myself to only breathe through my nose helped clear me up, and I slept better. It had the nice side-effect of reducing my snoring, which my wife appreciated.

My recent problem started because I’ve been traveling. I forgot to pack the tape somewhere along the way and subsequently fell out of the habit. Now I’m paying the price.

How the hell did I ever sleep well before I taped my mouth shut each night? Maybe I didn’t?

My relationship to sleep has been fraught for basically my entire adult life. I’ve identified as a night owl for decades. I didn’t live by the “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” maxim, but I did think being unconscious for 1/3 of the day felt like a waste of time.

Most of the words I’ve written over the years have been jotted down on my laptop late at night. I used to feel shameful about it. I thought I was doing something wrong. The internet is filled with advice about the perfect morning routine and how it’s the best time to be creative. But then a therapist asked me if I actually thought that was true and I realized that no, creativity doesn’t care where the sun is—or isn’t—in the sky. And so I embraced my late-night tendencies.

I can trace my staying up late back to college. I went to UC Santa Barbara, and within a year or so, I was in a band that would eventually sign a major label record deal. Playing shows at clubs and on the deck of my house in Isla Vista, or staying up all night trying to figure out how to build our website, all led to my waking hours shifting later and later, throwing my circadian rhythm totally out of whack. I was staying awake fueled by caffeine—from soda, not coffee because coffee tastes like dirt water, but that’s a topic for another piece—and artificial lights from the stage or my computer.

Hmm, I think it’s time to actually get out of bed and face the day now. Ugh. I’ll be back later.

1:18 pm:

I tried to take a nap about an hour ago. It was going fine, but then about 15 minutes into it, my phone rang. It was a periodontist I was referred to after doing my ten-year x-rays at the dentist last month where they found this weird dent thing (?) on the top part of one of my teeth underneath my gums. It sounds bad, but my dentist said I could probably ignore it until it hurts or breaks (yikes!) and then get an implant. Anyway, I answered the call in my just-woke-up-from-a-nap stupor and somehow managed to tell them I’m not interested and now I’m wondering if they think that I thought they were a telemarketer trying to sell me something. Eh, whatever. I’m off the hook until my tooth falls off, which will almost certainly happen when I’m trying to sleep.

Where was I?

Oh, right.

When I was in the band, I developed the unhealthy habit of staying up too late. Our shows would often end well past midnight. And when we were on tour in a van, I’d usually drive after the show to our next tour stop where we’d get a hotel—or, let’s be honest, a motel—and I’d crash until a couple of hours before showtime. It was half my lifetime ago, when I was a young buck in my mid-twenties, and it didn’t phase me much.

Fast-forward a few years, I had moved on from the music industry and was playing poker for a living. As you could guess, this career choice didn’t help matters. Sure, there are often poker games going on in the mornings, but they’re usually filled with well-rested older clientele who are a bit more conservative—not politically, necessarily, although sometimes that too—and therefore less inclined to recklessly gamble away their hard-earned money. Back then, I’d often show up at the casino over the hill from Santa Barbara at 9 or 10 pm and play throughout the night. In other words, I was awake and sharp while others were trying not to pass out—either from fatigue or having too much to drink. It gave me a lucrative edge over my competition.

My penchant for late nights continued on, even when I turned 30 and “grew up and got a real job” as an insurance underwriter at State Farm. My ex-wife had worked for a State Farm agent for many years in Santa Barbara. We decided to move up to Santa Rosa to be closer to our families where she worked for a different agent and he hooked me up with a referral to the company’s regional operations center just south of us in Rohnert Park.

If I recall correctly, my workday started at 7:30 in the morning. (Side note: Does sleep deprivation affect memory? Probably!!). A year or so into the job, I took classes at Sonoma State a couple of miles down the road since the company offered tuition reimbursement, but I still had to put in my full-time hours at the office. That meant I’d either take early 7 am classes and make up the time at the end of the day, or I’d take these once-per-week marathon 7-10 pm classes they offered.

I remember sitting in one of those night classes on the first day of the semester in my work slacks and dress shoes. I made small talk with the woman sitting next to me and she proceeded to tell me how tired she was because she had her sorority rush and it was “soooooo stressful” and they were up “suuuuuper late” the night before. I wanted to snap back with something like, “Excuse me? Do you think I dress like this for fun? I just worked eight hours, you entitled little brat!” But instead, I just nodded and said something like, “Yeah, that sounds rough.”

Alright, it’s 1:13 pm and my Foster authoring circle session is about to end. Let’s continue this later on (but hopefully not too late).

8:54 pm:

I’m feeling tired. This is a good sign since I’ve been trying to get to bed around 10 pm lately—a huge improvement from my typical 1 am—or sometimes even later—in the not-so-distant past. We’ve successfully reduced my daughter’s medication needs and moved her nighttime meds up to 8 pm, eliminating the need to sneak into her room and push them through her feeding tube at midnight now.

Focusing on my sleep is the next logical step in my journey to level up my overall health and transform from a skinny fat guy to a slender tone guy. I’ve been consistently working out since mid-August. I’m a read-the-nutrition-label guy now and I’ve improved my diet considerably. As a result, I’m feeling and looking much stronger than I ever have before.

Another reason for the sleep adjustment is to open up more spaciousness in my mornings. Before, I’d typically have to set an alarm and I’d be scrambling to get ready in time to be on with my daughter so my wife could leave the house to exercise. Meanwhile, she had been awake for hours already. With more time on my hands in the mornings, I’ll be able to do things like set aside time to meditate, be present with my family, and not just slap a hat on my head every day because I don’t have time to shower.

Part of me worries that I have it easy right now because of the recent time change and the sun setting around 5 pm. Will I still be able to get to bed at 10 pm when it gets dark at almost 9 pm in the summer? We’ll see! For now, I’m just hoping tonight goes well.

5:58 am:

Feeling much better this morning!

The me of last year would find that sentence to be absolute crazy talk this early in the morning. He’d be sound asleep for another hour, at least—and more on weekends to catch up on sleep.

But I’m New and Improved Lyle now. The Lyle who makes positive changes and sticks with them. The Lyle who has more energy and strength and lots more healthy years to live.

No matter how well these lifestyle improvements go, I promise you one thing: I won’t ever write a post about my perfect morning routine.

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Heads up: I’m planning on posting a piece on Saturday, December 16th as part of a series on the theme of “Recovery” from a group of men who all write on Substack. You may recall my piece from our previous series on “Fatherhood” in September. Be on the lookout for pieces from , , , , , and yours truly (in that order) starting on Monday, December 11th.

If you enjoyed this piece, could you please let me know by giving the heart button a tap? It’ll help me sleep better (maybe).

After much hemming and a whole lot of hawing, I’ve decided to move from publishing this newsletter every Saturday at 8:08 am PT to whatever day I have something finished at 8:08 am PT. On the surface, this might not seem like a big deal. But to anyone who’s spent just over three years creating something week in and week out, you likely understand how tough this decision was. Let me explain.

When I started this thing, committing to a weekly cadence was important for me. It was a forcing function for getting my butt in my seat and my fingers on my keyboard each week. I had written online in the past, but very sporadically. I knew if I wanted to write to more than just my close family and friends, I’d have to crank out a lot of writing. No problem; I had lots of stories to tell and I was itching to level up as a writer.

My audience grew steadily, with some nice fortuitous bumps when I’d get mentioned in another post here and there. Substack’s recommendation feature helped. But I believe showing up with a (mostly) well-written piece consistently each week was the largest contributor to my audience growth.

As of this writing, there are 2,511 of you here. That’s a lot of people. Sure, I can point to other Substack writers who have been writing for about the same amount of time and have nearly double the amount of subscribers as me. But whatevs. It feels like there are enough of you to not feel the need to hop on the content treadmill each week.

Over the past few months, I’ve felt the urge to slow that treadmill down. I don’t want to stop it completely. Instead, I want to give myself some more time and space to write pieces where I can go deeper and level up my craft (and maybe get a bit of editing help before hitting the publish button).

As much as I wish I were one of those writers who could crank out thousands of words per day, I’m just not that guy. I once met a Substack writer who had posts scheduled like three months out and I almost did a spit-take onto my laptop. How is that even possible?!?!

I’m the type of writer who scrambles each week to finish up a piece late the night before my publishing day and then wakes up in the morning and makes some edits on his iPhone before it goes live.

And yet. Therein lies my worry about making the switch to forgo publishing at a specific day and time each week. Does that mean I won’t publish anything for months on end? It’s totally possible! I just don’t know. And while that’s a little scary to admit, what I do know is that I will be hosting at least two weekly writing sessions as part of my work with Foster, so it’s not like I won’t be writing at all. I swear I have many drafts already in progress. I’m not a deadbeat writer! (This is mostly included for the two people who generously paid for a subscription in the past couple of weeks. Thank you!!!)

I also have some other larger writing projects that have been stagnant for too long. I’ve found it difficult to keep them moving along when what I’m going to write for my weekly newsletter is usually taking up too much of my creative brain space. Not to mention all the other important priorities I have in my life like family, work, exercise, etc.

I know I didn’t have to write up this whole explanation about the switch—I could’ve made the change and, as I’ve learned, most of you probably wouldn’t have noticed anyway. But I wanted to let you know, and I can do whatever I want, so I did.

See you at 8:08 am PT on some day in the future!

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In the meantime, I’m looking for some more advice column questions since it’s been too long since I’ve tackled one. You can ask me an anonymous question using this form or email me at lyle@substack.com.

If you like this post, even though I’ll be abandoning you for an indefinite period of time, could you please let me know by giving the heart button below a tap?

Enjoy!

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I don’t know if I can pull this off. This might be the biggest audience I’ve ever written for. Will my words resonate with you at all? Or will I just sound like a weirdo? And why are my palms so sweaty right now? It’s not like you’re sitting here watching me type into my laptop at my dining room table. Now that would be weird (and a little crowded).

Every week, for more than two years now, I’ve been sharing memoir-style stories that are extremely specific to my life—stories about my dad passing away, raising a daughter who has cerebral palsy, and questioning if I’m an artist. You’d think that consistently sharing the details of these types of experiences would give me some level of confidence to write with authority on the subject of vulnerability. But no, as almost anyone—who’s not a narcissist—who has put their ideas out into the world can attest, it doesn’t really work like that.

There’s still this lingering doubt—you might call it imposter syndrome—in the back of my mind. A voice that says, Who do you think you are? You’re not some expert on human psychology or whatever the hell this essay is supposed to be about. People are going to laugh at how incompetent you are. You should close your laptop and go watch Netflix instead.

Yet I keep writing. Because I know that if I share my story, especially the nitty-gritty details and emotions, you’ll see yourself in my words. In fact, you probably already have.

*

It was September 2020 and I had just launched my newsletter. I was feeling that mix of trepidation and excitement that new creators are familiar with. Shortly after the launch, I picked up a copy of the memoir Love Warrior by Glennon Doyle. My wife recommended it because she had read some of my early drafts and my writing style reminded her of Doyle’s. Side note: I didn’t realize how much of a compliment that was until I began reading Doyle’s work and now it lives as a testimonial on my about page.

By page ten, I was hooked. Doyle’s prose wasn’t filled with flowery language or self-aggrandizement. Instead, it was arresting and brutally honest. But the thing is, she and I have little in common. Of course, there’s the obvious: she’s a woman and I’m a man. Beyond that, she wrote about her struggles with alcohol and drug abuse, getting pregnant and therefore needing to get sober, and dealing with a cheating spouse—none of which I have any experience with. And yet, the book resonated with me as a human being trying to figure out how to exist in this complex and often unfair world.

I didn’t judge her for the choices she made. Instead, I saw an imperfect person trying to make sense of her choices and work to improve herself. She made me feel the pain and loss she felt in her low moments. And then she would hit me with a quotable line or paragraph—one that could be impactful on its own merits but carried even more weight when it was shared within the context of her story.

“Grief is love's souvenir. It's our proof that we once loved. Grief is the receipt we wave in the air that says to the world: Look! Love was once mine. I love well. Here is my proof that I paid the price.”

The source of my grief was different—seeing my daughter born not breathing, her needing to be resuscitated and intubated to survive. And that was just the beginning. Doyle’s words rang universally true for me, despite our dissimilar circumstances. And she inspired me to continue sharing my story. 

*

Morgan Housel is the bestselling author of The Psychology of Money. The book is filled with essays about how people relate to money in often surprising and counterintuitive ways, buttressed by his decades as an investor at Collab Fund.

But I’m going to talk about something else he wrote—something much more personal and vulnerable.

In “The Three Sides of Risk”, he tells the tragic story of when two of his best friends died in an avalanche while skiing at the way-too-young age of 17. Earlier in the day, Housel and his two friends had skied down the same out-of-bounds side of the mountain where the avalanche occurred. But he decided to sit out the second fateful run. It was a decision he didn’t put much thought into—he just didn’t feel like skiing again—but it had a profound impact on his life. Not just the fact that he’s, you know, still alive 20+ years later. He believes it had an effect on his investment strategy, as well, causing him to be more cautious and conservative, often opting for the more tried and true investment choices rather than the flashy, higher-risk/reward ones.

“My risk tolerance plunged after Brendan and Bryan died. I broke my back skiing (no nerve damage) a few months later, which crushed it even more. I haven’t skied much since. Maybe ten times in the last 15 years. If I’m honest, it scares me.

I’ve been risk-averse in other areas of life ever since, too. I drive the speed limit. I obey the seatbelt sign on airplanes. I invest in index funds.”

The investing portion of the post isn’t all that long; it’s almost an afterthought. Housel’s investing maxims on risk are fine on their own and no doubt helpful for a particular set of readers. Yet his heartbreaking story makes them much more impactful than they would be on their own. 

I’ve shared Housel’s post with many writers at Foster. As a core team member, I’ve seen dozens of writers who start off wanting to share their insights on business, tech, and other topics that don’t necessarily feel emotional. But as they quickly find out, including examples from their lived experience is the key to taking their writing to another level. And doing so also has the nice side-effect of drawing in more followers, subscribers, and customers, because they’ll relate to the universal human emotions we all know and feel. The examples don’t need to be nearly as intense or dramatic as Housel’s, but the more specific and relevant they are, the more they’ll attract the right people.

*

The founders of Every, Nathan Baschez and Dan Shipper, have openly shared how they routinely go to couples therapy together. No, not as a romantic couple, but as co-founders. 

In an article written about them, Shipper explained why they go to a therapist as opposed to an executive coach:

“If you feel like what you really need is the tactical business stuff, get a coach. But our experience is that 80 to 90% of the stuff is actually emotional and about interpersonal relationships and yourself.”

I remember hearing about it and thinking it was a novel way to address the issues that invariably come up when you work closely with another person, especially when you’re attempting to build something from nothing. As someone with many years at early-stage startups under my belt, including co-founding one, their story caused me to reflect on my own experiences. 

Importantly, I never once thought less of them. If anything, I wanted to root for them even more than if they had only shared things like their impressive subscriber growth, month-over-month revenue, etcetera. Instead, they bravely shared their struggles, and that made them more relatable as fellow humans.

*

Sharing more vulnerably can be risky business, though. It’s not always possible to share all the intimate details of your experiences—sometimes there are bosses or spouses involved, or legal grey areas and the like. Even when you set aside those types of concerns, many people have a deep-seated fear of sharing their personal lives. That fear is wrapped up in all sorts of different emotions, including shame, embarrassment, guilt, imposter syndrome, or even worrying about being perceived as too braggadocious. And those are just about the stories themselves. There’s also the concern that sharing a personal story will fall flat and won’t resonate with the audience, leaving you to pick up the psychological wreckage.

This certainly isn’t an invitation to simply copy and paste your diary onto the internet. That’s not the point. The idea is to bring your audience—be they readers, viewers, or even customers—into your world and show them who you are, why your point of view matters, and, ultimately, why they should trust you. 

Most online content is ephemeral. Unlike the vapid tweet threads or TikTok videos that we scan and quickly forget, stories laced with deep emotions are the ones that stick with us and prompt us to share them with others. The goal should be to make something that nestles in and creates a permanent home in someone else’s brain.

There’s an art to sharing personal stories. It can be difficult, emotional work. And it takes time and reps to get better at it. One of my favorite things about Foster is how we support writers through this journey. We do so via our compassionate professional editors and our cohort-based seasons where we lead writers deep into their individual truths and writing practice. I’ve seen this vulnerable work transform people, sometimes even bringing them to tears. They emerge from this exploration having shared more of themselves. And they feel the catharsis of putting it out in the world and the love they receive back when it inevitably connects more profoundly with their readers. It’s powerful stuff.

From my experience as a writer, editor, and coach, I’ve learned that there’s a difference between the stories we tell others and the stories we tell ourselves. When those stories collide into one and we bravely tell the singular truth that others would keep to themselves, that’s when our most relatable stories are created, forming our deepest connections with others. Because they’ve felt the same way before.

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If you liked this piece, could you make my day and let me know by giving the heart button below a tap?

Anyway, yeah, so there’s been a lot of emotional labor going on this week for me. And since emotional labor is the kind of labor that I sadly don’t get paid for, but instead, costs me a bunch of energy, I’m left feeling spent. (Not sure if that explanation worked, but let’s go with it.)

I don’t even have the energy to rework an older post of mine either, although I have an early one from the archives that I’m almost certainly going to revamp soon. I also don’t want to leave you high and dry and risk not hearing from any of you again (I kid, I kid, maybe?).

So I thought, Why not link to a few recent pieces of writing from other writers that I’ve enjoyed?

1.

This first one from who writes was published earlier today, which will be yesterday when this post goes live.

He writes about a feeling I’m familiar with—being in a funk. It’s a hard feeling to describe when you’re in it. The post was inspired by a conversation that came up in Kevin’s community for his paid subscribers, which he shared within the post and includes a comment from yours truly (all of our names were removed, but it’ll be obvious which one is me for multiple reasons).

Read Pulling Yourself Out of a Funk

2.

Some of you might already be familiar with who writes since he’s also the mastermind/boss/herder-of-cats behind the Social Club, which I’ve written pieces for a few times in the past, including the short story I reposted here last week.

Thomas is an excellent essayist and went proper viral last week with this post about how he believes, “that this whole smartphone scrolling, content consuming, ubiquitous posting, Extremely Online thing is going to go the way of the Fedora, or the Marlboro smoked at cruising altitude in economy class.”

There are many more great lines like that contained within.

Read The End of the Extremely Online Era

3.

has been living in Cairo and has written eloquently about her experiences in for a while now. In this post, she shows what it feels like to be leaving a place that’s not her original home, but a place that feels like some different semblance of home, and the conflicting feelings around all that, especially since there’s an actual conflict occurring close by.

Read Goodbye to All That: On Loving and Leaving Cairo

4.

I originally read this one from my friend who writes when it was only available to paid subscribers and I thought I was all cool and special, but then he was like “psyche! now everyone can read it lololol.” And then it also went proper viral and now I’m also envious of that.

But you know what? It’s such a great piece, I don’t even care.

It’s funny (no surprise there, coming from Al), poignant, heartbreaking, vulnerable, and introspective. Most of all, I love that it was probably one of the more difficult pieces for him to share because, if I had to guess, it felt too risky. (I mean I could probably text him and confirm that but it’s late and I don’t want to bother him right now since he wakes up at like way-too-early-o’-clock). It’s about how he was addicted to marijuana, which is being legalized left and right and is generally considered non-addictive, and that could open him up to some super serious scrutiny. But he put it out there anyway. And now it’s probably his most-read piece to date.

Read Beautiful Disasters

5.

I’m familiar with chasing the alluring dreams of new projects. And I’m also familiar with how sometimes those dreams evolve and no longer feel alive for me. My friend who writes captures this cycle much more cogently than I could. If you’ve ever wondered if a dream was ever truly yours to begin with, give this piece a read.

Read The Lifecycle of a Dream

6.

I loved this fable that we published on the Foster Substack from community member and friend who writes .

As I wrote in a comment, it is “a beautiful, creative, heartfelt, and emotional piece from an amazing writer and person.”

Read The Lion, the Girl, and the White Butterflies

That’s all I have for you today. I hope you’re able to relax and spend some time with these talented writers this weekend.

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If you liked this post or any of the pieces I shared this week, could you let me, and those writers, know by giving the heart button below a tap?