I changed everything. Then I found the only test that mattered.
I'm not here as the parent who figured it out. I'm here as the one who had to be rebuilt first — and who keeps getting rebuilt, one kid and one hard conversation at a time.
04Fatherhood With No Runway
I didn't get eased into being a dad. My first son arrived in my life through a DNA test — no nine months of preparing, no dress rehearsal, no plan. One day I wasn't a father, and the next day I was, and I was nowhere near ready for it. Nobody hands you a parenting plan. They hand you a kid. That's where I learned that becoming someone different isn't a nice idea. Sometimes it's the deadline.
The Grind, And What It Cost At Home
I built a career in financial advising during years when the industry rewarded whoever could outlast the grind. I worked multiple jobs while my wife stayed home with our kids. I believed in the sacrifice — but I was spending myself on work and coming home empty. Then COVID hit and April 2020 became my breaking point. I tried to get sober alone, made two months, relapsed. Twice. In December 2020 I put the drink down for the last time, and the hardest call I ever made — asking for help — was the one that gave my kids a different father.
Rebuilt Body, Rebuilt Career, Wrong Scoreboard
What followed was a full reinvention. After college I was a powerlifter, and the weight I carried came from years under a barbell chasing size and strength — not from letting myself go. But you can't outwork a bad diet and a bad habit. When I put the drink down and turned my training toward a leaner life, I dropped 55 pounds and became an endurance athlete. My firm gave me a month and a new role, and I found the work I was made for — partnering with advisors and going deep on the technology side of the business. Real growth, all of it. And somewhere in the middle of it I realized I was keeping score on a board my kids can't even see.
Un-Raising Myself
Six kids in, I've stopped believing parenting is something you do to your children. It's something that happens in you on the way to raising them. Most parenting advice assumes the adult is the finished product handing down instruction. I'm the opposite case: still under construction, doing the work of naming what I inherited, keeping some of it, and rewriting the rest. That's the work I speak about — parents changing first. Because this is the most important relationship you'll ever have, and it doesn't stop at your kids. It runs into their kids, and theirs.
