If a person lives in darkness long enough, their vision can blur. We can learn wrong to mistake it for the light—thinking that’s all there is. Or at least grow far too comfortable thinking you don’t deserve the light.

Like many people, I’ve struggled with anxiety and depression my whole life. It was a dark cloud that hung over my every moment, but like many of us, I got really, really great at faking it. Which only makes everything worse. For years, I struggled in the same silent way so many do. Constant fear, relentless wave after wave of negative self-talk crashing down, one after another, always keeping me un-rooted in who I actually was. Perpetual terror that everything, at every moment, would collapse all at once and consume me. 

Then, a breakthrough came. Through a series of powerful experiences, I could at last admit to myself the truth of my depressive state.

The interesting thing, looking back, is how a combination of pride and misconceptions of strength and masculinity kept me from seeking help, a healthier lifestyle, and hope. 

I went to therapy—which was brilliant! But told no one. Through our discussions, I learned how severe the problem was, but also learned there was hope. Restoration was possible. I learned there was something in me worth saving. Thus began my journey towards healing. 

Growth is not a linear process, and I spent the next several years with significant trials, on and off medication, as I wrestled with what I thought being “okay” should look like. One night, I was exercising to take my mind off the spinning panic and I spun out. Hard! I collapsed, fell back, back against the wall and lost it. 

I’d read earlier that afternoon that some people find solace in writing a play-by-play of what they’re feeling when they’re in a spin. I grabbed my phone and let the words fly. 

Twenty minutes later, calm returned. It sort of worked, but I left it at that and returned to life. 

A few days later, it happened again, and again I grabbed my phone and wrote. 

This time, though, I actually re-read what I’d written and, to my shock, found quite a rhythm to it. Poetry. Very dark and dismal, but poetic.

It happened several more times over the next few weeks, but I’d started writing. 

After, I’d been reading a brilliant book on the plasticity of the brain and how we can train it to think in new ways. It highlighted the research that says what we focus on and speak and think and say will guide the long-term, more subconscious patterns we build. This terrified me a bit. How many years had I let negative thinking drive me?

I had an idea. 

Returning to my depressing poems, I added what I’d been teaching my students about in our poetry unit. Voltas and shifts. How a poem can change from one thing to another in a way a writer might infer toward meaning. 

Then I had several poems that started from my rooted anxious thoughts but turned, by the end, towards hope. 

It felt…good. 

The next time the spin came, I grabbed my phone and started writing. It was different this time, though. I wrote the shift right into it and something magical happened. 

The feelings? All the spinning negativity? It went away. It faded like mist after the sun had burned itself through a cover of cloud. 

It might have been one of the single most exciting and naturally intoxicating moments of my life. 

It changed everything and led to an explosion of creativity, the start of which is what you’re holding in your hands right now. 

I started practicing. Writing with different shapes and structures. I adopted the haiku for practical purposes. They’re short and you can insert a little turn/shift/volt right in the middle or the last line, and in a short amount of time, create a quick but powerful shift in your own mind!

To Chase the Sun was born. 

I published these poems in the order their written order, in the different states of mind I found myself in throughout the healing process: Chaos, Order, and Beyond. They represent my concrete search for hope and how my entire world changed once I found it. 

The chaos section of this collection represents the almost word-vomit as it engaged concretely with the feelings and the negativity. They are the poems that reconciled me to the fact that these problems existed. That I wasn’t well and wished to be. To me, they represent one side of the spectrum of healing. My mind, all over the place, desperately wanting to be well, but without the ability to take form or shape. I feel myself, in these poems, recognizing the change I wanted to make, but I wasn’t sure how yet.

My journey led me towards certain exercises where I could use words to shape my thoughts, to take back control, and to make order out of the chaos. Hence the next stage: Order.

As if often the human experience, we tend to rubber band from one thing to another, a few times even, before things feel steady and even out.

That’s where these poems came from.

Something about anxiety that many rarely understand (if you’ve never suffered from it chronically), is that rules get created. Rules that if we just live by them…then we think everything will be okay. It staves off certain feelings for a while, but it’s still not healthy. After too long, it becomes a prison.

There was a time, midway through writing the poems, which grew into this collection, when form followed function. I leaned into pre-prescribed poetic forms to place my generated thoughts. At the advice of a therapist and books I’d read on the brain and neuroplasticity, I began weaving a series of consistent thoughts into my mind and placing them metaphorically into these poetic frames.

It changed everything.

Within a few weeks, my moods lightened. My heart and mind and thoughts lifted, for longer periods of time, at least. My wife, family and friends saw noticeable changes in me.

Order existed. And safety. My mind had become a place I could let my guard down again, and I’d carved out a new access point to the more positive and optimistic pathway in my mind. But it felt stronger and deeper.

Over time, yes, I showed improvement; moved forward, yet I rubber-banded to the other side of the spectrum. Rigidity. Rules. Hyper-structure. To a chronically anxious person, this structure equates to security, but when it tips, it crumbles. Quickly. Unfortunately, it becomes a cage of its own.

The answer came as a balanced ebb and flow of the two, learning to navigate the tension of having wings and a solid root system. After rubber-banding back and forth between extremes, I started learning how to use authentic words and the scaffolding as the foundation for moving beyond.

Certain things clicked. I felt it in my mind, my being, my writing, my life. Everything. And everywhere.

I didn’t mean the struggle was gone or that shadows never crept. It meant, to me, that the more optimistic pathway had been dug, giving me the chance, moment by moment, to choose hope and light and life.

My hope—my end goal beyond using writing as a means to heal—is that this book can represent the possibilities that exist in each of us, of restoration, of healing, and of hope. 

I lived so much of my life in the darkness, I’d learned to believe it was all there was. Pain became an unfortunate comfort, only by consistency and association, but not by choice. If we choose, we can move out of whatever feelings we have, and/or circumstance, and we have the power to build whatever life we want. I believe that. 

Where are you at right now? Still in the darkness? In the pain? Or have you stumbled onto the path to healing? 

Just know how brilliant and powerful you are. Know what you’re capable of, and your choices will guide your steps to what you want. 

The world needs each of us to be the fullest versions of ourselves we can. It needs us to love and create and build to not just make ourselves whole, but our families and homes and communities along with us. 

Healing is a road that winds and bends, sometimes bumping through gravel for a bit or hitting a dead-end. But I’ve come to believe, if we persist, the road straightens out and grows more gradual, more even. I can become a ride we learn to enjoy. 

Growing up I was a notorious (and sometimes still refer to myself as a ‘recovering’) people-pleaser. I found I could keep the peace wherever I was if I did what everyone around me wanted. It kept things moving smoothly. Kept people happy. 

I was quiet and helpful and praised for such attributes, so there was no need to change. Although, I should note that my mother often said I should put my foot down more often or speak up. In hindsight, that would’ve been helpful as my people-pleasing, over-thinking, and worrying tendencies all converged and came to a head.

People wanted different things. I couldn’t actually provide for everyone’s needs. I learned to realize, a bit too late, that it was never my responsibility to do these things in the first place. 

As I got older, relationships and situations grew more complex. My anxious roots dug deeper.

Anxiety is a funny thing. If we don’t know what it is, why it’s there, or that it’s something we can train to serve its purpose in its place, it tends to steer the ship and fuel our decisions. 

I remember being unsure, with most things. And other people seemed so sure. If I was questioning, and they were so sure, they must be right. Right? 

When my own compass and inner voice felt fuzzy, I learned early to follow other people’s actions, voices, and–in the end, dangerously–their convictions. I think many of us do this. The reasons might vary. Maybe it’s to fit in. Maybe it’s to feel successful, or attain the success others have that might’ve eluded us. “If it worked for them, why not me?” Given the conversations I’ve had with people, I think it’s fairly common. 

While modeling my life off of what those around me were doing brought some positives, moreso it served to thicken the bars on my self-made prison. Eventually the iron and stone that made up my cage grew too thick and too heavy, and it crumbled with me in it. 

I refer to this as my first crash. Where the sinking and swirling feelings and anxiousness that stole away my sleep and led to a long bout of depression that grew so great I all but mentally collapsed and slipped into the darkest period of my life. 

—

After completing our teaching degrees, my wife and I accepted positions on the North Coast of Oregon and settled in Astoria. We both had full time jobs and a heart for volunteering. We wanted to put down roots, be a part of the community, and really make an impact in our new home. The place our children would spend their formative years. 

Throughout it all, the worry was there, but manageable. It actually seemed better than it had in years past. My heart felt full and things were moving the right direction. 

Over the next five years a lot of changes came. Good things, all of them, but a lot. 

Each year my workload increased. I began teaching AP English Lit., which was a blast but upped my weekly work hours to 60-80+. I had grading to do every Saturday and every Sunday, which cut away from the hours we spent volunteering. 

My responsibilities grew there too. I loved helping everyone, being there for them all, and the more I pressed in the more praise I got and the more responsibility I got. I ate it up. 

Don’t get me wrong, I believe in volunteer work. I absolutely do, but for a person with my unchecked tendencies, the situation grew fatal. 

There weren’t enough hours in the days or weeks to juggle it all. In hindsight the solution seems so simple, doesn’t it? Cut back. Slow down. Re-arrange one’s priorities, especially as my children were born. 

But…

The praise? The encouragement? The impact I was making? Each can become addictions in themselves, in a way, and the combination of them? I fed off it, grew fat on each word. I couldn’t stop. There was (and is) always more to do, so when asked, I usually answered with a hearty YES!

Looking back, the combination of worry, people-pleasing, and following the patterns laid out before me for how to live life led me to ignore the alarms; all the signs, my feelings, my mind using my body to scream and get my attention. The more things seemed to unravel, the more I pushed, dug deeper to get through. Those were the consistent lessons in life, after all. I stuffed down my inner voice and trudged on.

In correlation, worry’s grip on me sunk a little deeper each day, too. I clearly lacked the skills to fight back. In hindsight, learning to listen to my own voice over others–that built-in alarm system– would have been a good start.

But every time I’d think about it, slowing down, finding a better balance, another voice from the undercurrent would whisper, you’re needed. No one else can fill the gap, and look how loved you are for doing it…

I was standing on dangerous ground. Then the first panic attack struck. 

Unable to fall asleep, I shot up in bed in the middle of the night, shrieking, terrifying my then-pregnant wife.  Confused, she stayed up all night with me trying to calm me down. Nothing worked. 

Everything sort of unraveled from there. Those who’ve experienced it know that panic roots deep and comes on fast. Worry’s presence lingered in the background every moment of the day like a heavy fog, waiting to pounce, always settling in ready to drop its weight on me just before bed. 

Within weeks the panic struck nightly. My sleep eroded. My loving wife was exacerbated as neither of us knew what to do and it took its toll on her as well. 

But I told no one. That’s true Shame for you, right? No one else talked about this. Everyone else living this same life seemed fine. What was wrong with me? Was I broken? Less-than? Inferior? 

Those months were some of the worst in my life. 

I hid it from everyone I could–which really is like cocking a pistol and readying it to fire. 

The mask I’d built throughout my life grew thicker, and wider, covering as much of myself as I could. 

From time to time, I’d reach out. People I thought I trusted, but it was clear the subject of mental health was taboo. Especially for men. Especially for men with responsibility. There was no space for weakness. 

Nobody seemed to understand. More importantly, as I learned, I didn’t understand. I lacked the words entirely to convey my situation. Those words wouldn’t come for years. But looking back, even if I’d had them, I’d learned at the time not to share. 

So much of this, and/or issues like this, seemed to stem from expectations. Perceived or intended or not, they exist, and so many people I know struggle with them. 

In the end, it was my children and my wife who affected change in me more than anything or anyone else. 

I wanted to be who and what they needed me to be, but I’d given into a lie that this was me. A dangerous, even treacherous lie. 

Months went by. I started seeing a therapist. Only my wife knew. Looking back, I’d give anything to rip away the shame I felt for even that. I should’ve started years before that. Decades even. 

Therapy worked wonders, and to this day I encourage all people to go. 

It was there that medication was brought up. As you can imagine I was very resistant at first. Hyper-masculinity reared its head again.Wasn’t it weak if I couldn’t do it on my own? Sadly, my perceived expectations spoke for and through and without even thinking I found myself shaking my head no. 

Later my wife and I discussed it, and in the end I figured: What did I have to lose? So I started, and the most miraculous thing happened! Two days went by—it usually takes that long to level out if it’s going to work—and I remember waking up from a full night’s sleep feeling clear. The weight was gone. I could think. The world ceased from spinning. I went out and hugged my wife and kids and I felt…fine! The fog had cleared! The pain and weight and shame? Gone! It was the single greatest breakthrough of my life to that point!

And we celebrated! I could live my day-to-day life again. I could hold weight and responsibility! I didn’t feel like I was going to crumble at every turn!

So, I did exactly what I thought I was supposed to do. Over the coming weeks I told people how much better I was feeling—though not why—and I picked up life exactly where I left off. I was convinced everything was fine. I had my pills and they would allow me to live like everyone else, at last!

I had no idea that I’d merely put on a band-aid. An important one, at that, but so much work still needed to be done. The next few years would show me that. 

Really, I had no idea I’d just succeeded in setting up the next big crash.

There I was, my head clear, my hopes high. For the first time in as long as I could remember, I was standing there able to withstand the weight of life. It was incredible. 

And it lasted about a month. 

Not the stability or the clarity. Or even the assumed health. That all lasted until the crash, and lasted pretty well, actually. 

What eroded was the restraint I’d built to stave away the busy habits and the need to be involved with everything. To overextend myself. 

\Even before going on the meds, the few months where I abstained from everything I was involved with before were guilt-ridden because I felt like I was failing people and myself. Especially given the shame that came with the feeling I was falling short of what I thought I should’ve been capable of, and what others around me were accomplishing. 

My steady mind and newfound energy led back to taking on as much as I could. Maybe to prove to myself it was possible. Maybe just because I saw the need and knew I could fill it. Either way, no matter what I added, it never seemed to create instability as before. My family was well. Work was going well. Everything, really, was going better than it ever had before. 

Within months, I found myself more overextended than I ever had in all my life, but everything seemed in working order. 

A year went by, and I felt tired, but nothing more. 

Things were swimming along. 

At that point, my wife and I began feeling the urge to move. We had opportunities to teach at a mental health facility, a topic as you can imagine had grown very important to us. As well, we’d be closer to both of our families, parents, siblings, and many old friends. 

I should note that the tumultuous 2016 presidential campaigns were in full swing, and the entire landscape of the country was changing. People’s character left and right shifted. We were all reacting, myself included. All of us, in every community, began carrying the extra burden of frustration that came with that. 

By the summer of 2016, we’d moved, and despite the surrounding political turmoil, I found myself looser again. Freer than before. Looking back, I had free mental space; not taken up or overextended as it had always been before. Life was family time and work and nothing more. It was bliss, really. 

But it didn’t take long before people began reaching out to fill that time, and I let them. 

One thing radically changed in this season of my life, though. 

Work. 

Working at a mental health facility introduced me to so many new ideas. 

It was here I started realizing that, yes, I’d started medication, but I’d left it there. I’d taken no steps toward actually healing the wounds. I hadn’t changed my habits. I hadn’t actually dealt with anything. 

This came as an exciting surprise, though, because it gave me a mission. It told me things could get even better. It brought those deep-seated frustrations and rumblings to the surface and made me realize I could… put them to bed…for good. 

I read EVERYTHING I could. 

Mindfulness. Neuroplasticity. Trauma responses. Case studies on healing. Differing therapeutic practices. I loved it. It was incredible!

I understood I hadn’t really started the healing process yet; and began thinking of my medication as a bandaid. Something to free myself of.

This became the singular goal. 

My wife introduced me to a book on boundaries. Wow! What a revelation, and it turned out I had none. I started putting them up, recognizing how uncomfortable they made others. My understanding of self was being redefined. I found the tangible lines where I ended and others began. I felt the breathing room. I felt hope. I felt a steadiness that might still exist once I tried tapering off the meds.  

Months passed, and I’d done so much research. I felt ready. Ready to live the rest of my best life, free of it all. The weight, the shame, the pain I no longer felt when medicated. But to live without the meds and the pain? Such a sweet thought. 

I would go off the meds and hold to my newfound boundaries, my new habits. I would never overextend myself again, and everything would work. I was so confident. 

So I pulled the trigger. 

On the morning I had planned, I stopped taking them and prepared for the onslaught I knew would come. But I’d developed some skills to fight back, I’d thought. I had an arsenal I lacked before. Knowledge. Experience. And hope. 

I think excitement kept me afloat for the first few days. My mind and body shook. My scattered thoughts were difficult to tend to, but I reeled them in. I held to my breathing and thought exercises and waited for them to settle. 

They didn’t. 

In fact, they only grew worse. 

By the end of the first week, I’d begun retreating more and more, like before. 

Sleep eroded again.

By the middle of the second week, old habits returned. I had to take more time away. I grew irritable quickly and could barely handle the smallest responsibilities. 

I unraveled. 

Shame poured on again, fueling a flame I’d hoped had all but burned out. 

By that second weekend, I crashed. 

I broke down in tears with my wife once the boys were asleep, choking through an endless and dizzying slew of manic apologies. There’s no genuine memory of the words themselves, but I will never forget the scene and the abject terror coursing through me. 

Thus began one of the darkest periods of my life. 

I began taking the meds again, right away, but the wounds—all of them—were open; torn afresh and searing in the open air.

It didn’t strike me until I was finally in recovery (months and months later) how much of a band-aid the previous year had been (I’d only thought I’d already healed).

Anger like I’d never felt before flooded through me.

Fear. 

Terror. 

Shame. 

Failure. 

Each brought their own weight with them, heaping the full brunt of it onto my shoulders, and I retreated from everything. If I didn’t, I feared what I would do. I wanted to burn everything down but had the fortunate foresight to still recognize that wouldn’t help anything. 

After I went back on the meds my sleep pattern returned, though restless.

For months I lay (figuratively), swirling around in my sinking thoughts. It took some time to reason out that I’d experienced hope and peace before. Maybe it was possible to experience it again. 

I didn’t want to do anything, but feeling like I was letting my wife and children down was too much. 

I went back to therapy. That was a start. 

The anger bred distrust, though, in anything that came before. 

I struggled through work; life, really. 

This was actually when I wrote the initial draft of The Doom that Came to Astoria (a version that will never see the light of day). Each scene, because of where I was, dripped with bitter rage. To release that would’ve only destroyed more. The reconciliation that came (at least within myself) never would’ve flowed out of that draft. It was the selfish work of a person who believed everything was the fault of other people and who took no responsibility for their part in it. 

The crash was hard, but looking back, so important. 

Climbing out of that hole taught me more about myself, about what it meant to thrive than I ever thought possible. It brought about actual change, lasting habitual shifts that really ran counter to most circles I ran in before. 

That was interesting. 

Over the next several months, I worked through many things. Therapy worked wonders (try it if you haven’t!). I could re-engage in family life, but my anger had pushed many people away. Friends, extended family, and others. Despite my hope not to destroy anything, I’d still set many fires. 

The priority, I told myself, was to get back to a functioning place. Rebuild me first, then focus on the other aspects of life. 

Eventually, it meshed and. came together. 

The true healing started. The journey I thought I’d started over a decade before, but realized in this process I’d just taken a multitude of other things and plugged the hole and carried on, never really dealing with anything. 

Again, things steadied and seemed to go well. 

The anxiousness had subsided. Sleep had returned. Home life was going well, and the path and skills I needed to learn cleared more every day. 

I would stay on the meds for as long as I needed until the situation seemed right. The skills I’d been learning, mental exercises, and wounds which had healed showed me anything was still possible. 

The rest of the year progressed, a gradual upward climb creeping at the start, but it picked up speed. For the second time, I found myself well, mostly.

Still, with the foundations rattled, there lingered in me the angst that had bubbled up and overflowed during the crash. From time to time rushes of anger and confusion would overtake me, or simply that forlorn sense that it wasn’t over yet. 

I’d gained ammunition to use against it. Tactics. Help. It wasn’t hopeless anymore, just far from over. 

It was clear after the rebuild from this crash that my journey was truly just beginning. 

Soon after, my wife and I were both offered jobs to teach abroad in Amsterdam. We couldn’t turn that down! 

It all felt connected, somehow. That whatever happened there, it would be big, and an integral part of my journey of healing and growth. 

It truly was. 

Life had such a fresh flow over there. Everything seemed possible! I attempted another med-wash, under strict doctor supervision. It went south… again. I crashed… again, but something incredible happened after that last crash. Something I can’t wait to share. Certain things aligned. The tools I’d gained. The situation. I was ready to fully engage in the process for the first time, and my writing journey was born! Something I’ll be forever grateful for. 

But that all comes in the next post. 

Thanks for reading. 

Remember, you’re brilliant and all things are possible. And nothing, no one, is beyond healing. We can rebuild anything if we choose. 

New environments often offer fertile ground for deeper insights and understanding of situations, both past and present. My move to Amsterdam proved this true, at least for me. I saw my past with so much more clarity - both the distant and more recent memories. Everything just made more sense. 

I continued to read and research everything I could on the subjects of the mind and of healing, and living in a place that valued a slower pace, a quality over the quantity of life, along with other natural adjustments the move provided, I tried going off the medication again, with doctor supervision. I hoped in this new environment, with these newfound skills, I’d find the means to live free of my medication, to live what I naively assumed at the time would be a more authentic experience. Something I see differently now. 

Getting right to it, I crashed again, and hard. 

I lasted longer than last time before going back onto the same dosage of medication, but still I slipped, losing myself, again, to the same self-defeating mental prison I’d found myself before. 

The slow decline from disheartened to despair set in. Yet, this time, something was different. Several somethings that made all the difference. Foremost being, I had already found hope again after losing it. I knew it could be done. 

This, along with a few other key ingredients, allowed me to find my way back much quicker this time and proved to unlock a dormant creativity that fueled the most incredible period of healing in my life. 

What follows is what I consider the most instrumental and key ingredients to how I healed and, at last, found the peace I’d been searching for my whole life. A peace that always felt so unattainable. Even after last time. 

The first, as mentioned above, was context. Context is so important. It frames our every experience, our thoughts, and it influences everything we do, far more than we realize. Overtime, context, if not changed, solidifies who we are, what we believe, and if unchallenged, keeps us from changing. There is a certain safety in that, but it can also hinder us. It can stop us from becoming who we are. Like high school students going off to college and away from the peers who’ve helped define them for the last 18 years, they’re allowed to become something new. How many of us found ourselves then? Does this need not continue?

For instance, in my old context, I’d learned brokenness, to believe myself incomplete and destined to feel less-than forever, less than and without. Wherever it came from, the ache within me was immovable, and my crash from the med-wash was nothing more than proof of that. 

Living abroad provided an invaluable opportunity. When I shattered, yet again, there were no standing expectations of what my healing journey should look like, spoken or not. It was incredible! There were no constraints to hold me back from following those voices in me, the quiet ones whispering which direction I should go. In hindsight, I learned that ignoring those voices in favor of those around me, peers and culture, my context, that had fueled my anxieties the whole time. I was free to be me, to grow, and to flourish, learning to trust my intuition. I got to invent, or reinvent myself, as needs arose, and it allowed me to get where I wanted to go a lot quicker. 

Another big difference was having the right information. I wrongly believed that I was stuck feeling/thinking a certain way, a way which was unhealthy for my well-being, and a way I believed would never really change. 

I’ve never been happier to be wrong. 

I started meeting with a psychologist, and learned a whole slew of new mental exercises and thinking techniques. It introduced me to entire new avenues of books and literature about the mind, healing, things that proved to dismantle my old ways of thinking from the roots and allowed me to rebuild an even stronger foundation yet. 

I learned new drills and skills about dealing with anxiety moment by moment, as well as daily exercises to cultivate more constructive long-term patterns of thinking. 

It was in this season my new belief solidified, belief in myself, in wholeness, in healing, not just that I would make but I was making it.

Along with that, I realized my openness and willingness to lean into healing had a direct impact on the healing itself. 

Knowing I could find that hope again meant that I would find it, and find it I did. 

After the first med-wash crash, I look back and see, with stark clarity, the timidity of my approach to healing. Not really sure it would work. As my father famously recited to me growing up, something I’ve probably quoted to my own students and children millions of times, You get out of something what you put into it. If I didn’t (or couldn’t because of lack of belief) put myself wholly into healing, how could I expect myself to heal wholly? I didn’t, and as a result, it didn’t happen. 

This time, though, I was all in. I leaped, both feet off the ground. I plunged into the process, as deep as I could. Hungry, I read everything I could. I regimented my exercising, mental and physical. I changed eating habits, social habits, personal habits. If it was going to allow for better mental stability, it changed. This was a very temperamental process, but the rhythm came, and soon, much sooner than expected, I found myself back in that same hopeful spot as before, and then I saw myself move past it! Beyond anything I’d ever known before. 

For those who struggle with anxiety and/or depression, or whatever other mental hurdle one might find themselves burdened with, trust can be an issue. Trust in others, trust in ourselves, or simply trust that things can change, let alone will change. If it’s become a chronic experience, it’s usually because of prolonged exposure to the situation, therefore, experience would say it won’t change. 

Trust can become one of the biggest hurdles of all, but if we can cultivate it and learn to be open to certain opportunities, change and growth and healing, unlike anything we’ve ever experienced before becomes possible. 

One thing, tantamount to my healing, that I think had an enormous influence on my own levels of trust, was support. As people, we all need support. In times of struggle, it’s not our default to pursue, but we need that support all the more. We need understanding; that it’s okay to be struggling, and that it’s okay to take the time and space necessary to heal. 

Of all the things I’ve come to believe, nothing rings louder than this: healing cannot take place in isolation. 

We need people. Others. If we can be open to them, we can be open to ourselves. 

We need to let people in. But… not all people; as I came to realize. People who’ve earned our trust reinforce healthy behaviors and ways of thinking. People who lift and encourage and magnify our growth and won’t become anchors or barriers to the process. 

For far too much of my life, I allowed in those who fueled my negatively formed disposition. I left myself open to all people’s voices, feedback, and advice, as I thought was prudent; but I lost my voice and my own convictions in the clutter that built around me. 

One thing changed massively during this period of healing. My immediate circle of those I trusted grew much smaller. The people and voices I listened to went through much stricter filters of credibility. These boundaries brought peace. They allowed a sanctuary to form, a cocoon almost, where I could use their encouragement and grow, at last, into myself. 

My wife, my boys, members of my family and various friends, new and old, became my roots and anchors until I’d grown strong enough to plant my own. 

Having these people I knew I could trust was crucial to learning that I could, once again, step forward and know the ice would hold my weight, that I wouldn’t fall straight through, and that the world could become a safe place again. That I could thrive. 

It did, and I did. 

A wild experience! And the peace that I experience now is unlike anything I’d ever known. 

Covid disrupted it, absolutely, as it disrupted all our lives, but it’s back as I’m sure it will come and go dozens and dozens more times down the road. Such is life. 

These days, I look back on it all and gratefulness overwhelms me. For the lows and the highs. For the entire journey. For what I learned and how much I grew. For the peace I feel inside. Hard fought and won, something, if I’m honest, that for most of my life I didn’t think was possible. 

How about you? How would you rate your peace? Your pain? Are you where you want to be? Are there aspects of it within your control to change? How would you rate your belief in your ability to grow and change? 

Are there aspects of your context holding you back? 

Are there ingrained beliefs preventing you from moving forward?

How open are you to the prospect of healing, growth, and change?

Lastly, who’s your tribe? Who do you let in? People who hurt or hinder progress? 

I think it’s my years teaching, years spent encouraging and watching young people grow and flower and bloom that have led me to a realization my journey has merely solidified: humans are incredible. We are brilliant creatures, capable of so much. Held back, only, by a lack of self-belief. Pure potential. 

Healing has unlocked passions in me I hadn’t realized ran so deep. 

My encouragement? Whatever it is obstructing you, keeping you from the progress you want: Face it. Find your people and create the space to lean into it, wrestle and dig. You will persevere. Hope and heal, and above all, be you. The world will be better for it. 

Happy New Year! As I write this, 2022 is coming to a close and 2023 rests just beyond the horizon, its potential and hope almost within reach. Nothing but a blank canvas, ripe with all that we can cultivate and accomplish! I hope 2022 ended well for you, and that you closed out the year celebrating with family and friends, revelling in the connections that make life meaningful. 

That, at least, is the reminder life had in store for me this year, despite the plans I’d hoped to juggle with it. Life does that, though, doesn’t it? It can take the roads we hope to pave, decimate them, and, when we let it, construct something we wouldn’t even have dreamed of building. 

I haven’t talked about it much, but something happened to me this fall, mid-October to be more precise, that sort of up-ended what I had planned for the end of 2022. Bell’s Palsy. Have you heard of it? I hadn’t, but we’ve become very well acquainted with these last two months. 

Let me continue by clarifying I had every intention of spending the end of 2022, the holidays, etc., with friends and family. But I had other plans too, which in hindsight would have overshadowed those moments–unfortunately–and dominated my decision-making and my priorities. I’m glad life happened. The last few weeks would’ve been nothing without the connections I was lucky to experience. 

Now, for those of you following along with my writing journey, you know the last year has been busy. Good, fun, productive, but very, very busy. In six months, I put out three books, with a fourth on the way and two more not far behind. The ambition of this stemmed from an unfortunate publishing experience where my debut novel had been maligned by my publisher, causing me to reassess and figure out a different way to get the work out. Hence Switchboard Publishing was born! Very exciting. 

All the time it took to get the initial version of The Doom that Came to Astoria out, I kept writing. In the time it took to get The Doom that Came to Astoria and To Chase the Sun back out, I kept writing. And I just wanted to get the work out there! 

COVID had done a number on the life we built in Amsterdam. Missing family and friends we hadn’t been able to see or connect with, we returned home. A good decision, and important at that, but filled with logistical stressors and obstacles. All the while, I felt intent on keeping my publishing schedule (a little crazy in hindsight; I know). 

We moved home! We got Switchboard Publishing set up! We got The Doom that Came to Astoria back out! We got To Chase the Sun out! We got Among the Wildflowers and Mordor, California prepped to come out (Mordor is out now)! Then, in October we got The Dreams in the Pearl House out (Doom’s sequel)! I was just getting ready to do some promotional stuff for it, signings, podcasts, interviews, etc. I was getting ready for the push that would’ve taken me into the New Year where I would’ve then turned my attention to the release of Among the Wildflowers (coming Spring) and it happened. 

Bell’s Palsy struck… derailing everything. 

It was the best thing that could’ve happened. 

But I didn’t realize that at first (and honestly still have to remind myself of this). 

Bell’s Palsy, for those who don’t know, is short term facial paralysis. Usually, it only affects one side (my right side) and takes somewhere between two to six months, sometimes a year, to fade. 

It rocked me. 

One morning I woke up with an earache. The next day, it spread to the side, then to the top of my head. The day after, I couldn’t close my right eye. 

I went straight to urgent care where they rushed me to the ER and had to get an MRI to make sure it wasn’t a stroke or aneurysm. 

Terrified doesn’t really cover it. 

Hours later, news came. It was only Bell’s Palsy. By that time, the right half of my face started sagging and was unresponsive. Surreal and strange, but grateful knowing that it would eventually heal and return to normal. 

Then I went home, and for a good chunk of time, sort of stopped… everything. For the first time in as long as I can remember, I slowed down. Too slow sometimes; I got a little stir crazy and worried about all the plans I had to cancel, bookish and otherwise. 

I canceled a couple of podcast interviews, a signing, and everything I planned to do to push The Dreams in the Pearl House upon its publication. All of it had to go by the wayside in order to take the time and space to heal. 

A difficult realization to come to, unfortunately, but it’s proven so important! Especially given the mental battle that’s followed. Not being able to live your life the way you want, day to day, has a way of undermining one’s autonomy–which is where a lot of my past anxiety and depression stemmed from. That’s another battle for another blog post!

Point is, something happened that was completely out of my control, and up-ended my control. Placing me on a track I otherwise wouldn’t have found myself on. 

I had to put my plans on the side, but in doing so found myself beyond blessed at what remained. What had been there the whole time, and what I would’ve missed out on. Not entirely, but I wouldn’t have experienced it to the extent I did. 

Family. Connection and roots! A purpose deeper than any ambition or dream can fill.

As I end 2022, I’ve had to make major adjustments to my writing plans. But… will the books still come out? Yes! Will I still be able to promote them? Yes! When I’ve recovered. Will I still write and grow and create? Yes! Will everything be okay? YES!

Heading into 2023, I’m grateful! Filled with thankfulness, not for what I found, but for what I already had. I’m thrilled that life threw this strange inconvenience my way, cutting my plans off, so I could have this chance to stop, to slow down, and reevaluate what’s important and how to balance my time. 

We moved back to be closer to family and friends. For connection. I’m excited to go into the next year leaning into that and remember that everything else will come together as it should. 

What clarity has 2022 brought you? What are you thankful for? And what are you hoping to cultivate in 2023? 

Here’s to what’s in store!

Humans are incredibly adaptable. Aren’t we? Our knee-jerk reaction isn’t always to lean into change, but we can adjust to the most radical situations in life as we need.

Whether we navigate that with grace is another story, though. I know I’ve had my share of experiences along the entire spectrum. 

Awareness has become a singularly important term when I consider this. 

Looking back, I lived unaware for so long. Unaware of contexts that framed my experiences. Unaware of my own conditioned responses to these experiences, or the consequences they’d bring about. I was unaware that so many of my reactions were anything but personality traits. In hindsight, they were mechanisms built over long periods of strain, born out of need, developed to survive. Endure. And endure they did. 

It’s just not always pretty. Is it?

Anxiety is not a bad thing. It’s actually a byproduct of a bodily system to get us moving and out of dangerous situations. It’s trying to help us. 

It’s when we don’t listen to the warnings—or are in those situations for prolonged periods of time—things turn sideways. 

The reality is we all cope. We all have mechanisms we’ve picked up along the way to deal with things however we can. 

The questions are: what are our mechanisms? What were the situations in which we developed them to survive? And were we aware? Of the situations or the mechanisms being built?

   For years, I believed untrue things about myself. 

   I believed I was broken. 

   I believed I was a nervous, anxious person, who tended toward feeling like a wreck much of the time. I believed I was simply weaker than everyone else around me. More fragile and that I couldn’t handle things the way everyone else did. The way normal people did. 

   Looking back, I so clearly see all the ways I coped or didn’t cope with situations and where it all led. To the anxious pits of sleepless depression. 

   But as I’ve experienced, we don’t have to stay there. We can become aware and affect our situations. Push back and make room for ourselves and our own needs. 

   I’ve used a range of coping strategies in my life to navigate these anxious feelings. I realized that the strategies themselves are neither good nor bad. It just depends on how we use them.

I spent much of my early life–until my late twenties—trying to not make waves. I was a people-pleaser who didn’t want to disturb, therefore I often sat in situations–no matter how detrimental to myself–until the alarm systems were screaming so loud I would just eject and run away to find peace and calm again. This was my default coping-mechanism. It’s difficult to not look back on this in shame, seeing the damage I did to myself and others, the relationships lost, and the habit of turning tail that formed. 

The next common mechanism, and possibly the easiest to slip into because of its social acceptability, was alcohol. Twice in my life, I slipped into the ease of using alcohol to shift and numb how overwhelmed I felt. When your mind and body are a constant flow of anxious thoughts and feelings, any break is welcome. And alcohol provides that break with dangerous ease. The notorious underbelly being that I always woke up feeling worse than I did before, fueling the circle of wanting more that spirals so many people out of the lives they want. I count myself lucky to have gotten out of its grip twice. 

In college I experienced a beautiful spiritual season following a rock-bottom how-did-my-life-get-here experience where I stepped away from the bustle, slowed my pace, and encountered God in a beautiful, healing, soul-filling way. It was in this that I first lost the need to numb with alcohol. When this spiritual experience morphed into a people-pleasing, religious experience where performance and experiential highs filled me, this coping mechanism turned detrimental.

Following this, I fell into shopping. Buying things. In hindsight, I think shopping is the next most dangerous mechanism next to drugs or alcohol because of how fast—and easy—the gratification comes.

Swipe a card, and it’s there. 

Click. Place Order, and it’s there. 

Within seconds, you experience release.

Just like with alcohol or heightened experiences, the overwhelming feelings dissipate–for a brief time–and life feels manageable. 

Later I dove into exercise and eating well. While these are both great and highly recommended things, they quickly became less about being healthy and more about feeding an obsession about control and external validation. Even this activity, like each mechanism before, seemed to take the wheel with such ease, directing me instead of me directing it–for a time, anyway. Anything we lean on or used to address the symptoms of greater problems will always leave us vulnerable to those greater problems. 

So are coping mechanisms bad? 

It probably depends on what it is, how and why we use it. 

Is there anything wrong with having a glass of wine at dinner? Or going to a church service, synagogue, or mosque, connecting with something beyond yourself? Going to the gym or eating a salad with ingredients from your garden? 

These all seem like pretty great things to me.

But at different times in my life, each became compulsions—reactions beyond my intention—that led me instead of the other way around. 

Confronting the core wounds the coping mechanisms stemmed from to deal with the symptoms futilely.

For years I dug in, found, and knew the why and the how of where my own pains and overwhelmed feelings came from, but I never knew what to do with them, or that I could do something with them. That I had the power to quell them, to create the quiet peace I’d sought, and to let go finally.

Humans are brilliant beings! Capable of far more than the average person deems, who’ve built habits over time as ways to get through difficult situations. 

But again, if we build them, we can un-build, break them down, and we can build something more constructive instead. Something more conducive to a life we want. 

The revelation for me was that I wasn’t stuck. I wasn’t stuck in the root pain or the subsequent mechanisms/reactions that followed. I don’t think any of us are stuck. We might find ourselves in difficult situations, but if we’re willing we can lean in and confront our past and presents, our pain, our fears, we can rewrite our trajectories and build the lives we want. 

We can grow awareness of our root pains, and aware of how we’re already dealing with them, or trying to, asking ourselves if that’s helping or hindering.  

One of the greatest moments of my life is when I realized I could decide that for myself and make choices to steer life the way I wanted it to go. 

And the best part, this isn’t even close to the end of the journey. It’s a turning point, and I can’t wait to see where it leads. 

Or where I lead it.