I’m Calling It Trust
The Excuses We Make to Avoid Being Vulnerable
“Vulnerability minus boundaries is not vulnerability.” ~Brené Brown
It’s ten at night, and I’m sprawled on the couch at the end of a long day, messaging an old friend from grad school. My wife is already in the slow process of heading to bed, the kids are asleep, and the house is quiet enough for a conversation to feel easy.
This isn’t something that happens often, but it isn’t unusual either.
The beginning is fun, like it always is. What’s going on with my family, how work is treating me, how life is in general. Then the same from her …
How My Life Got Better When I Stopped Trying to Be Normal
For most of my life, I had a second full-time job. Nobody hired me for it. Nobody paid me. But it ate more hours than anything else I did. The job was pretending to be normal.
I am autistic. Growing up, I didn’t always have that word for it, but I knew one thing for sure: I was different, and different was not safe.
Kids let me know early. I got teased and picked on, and more than once someone looked at me like I was a science experiment and asked if I was from another planet.
So I did …
When You Think You Know Yourself, but You’re Wrong
I know myself pretty well by now.
I’ve had seven decades to work on the case, and I’m not exactly known for leaving a question alone.
I know what matters to me. What gives me energy. What drains it. What I want more of. And what I have absolutely no intention of putting up with again.
At seventy, I’ve accumulated a fair amount of information.
Preferences. Patterns. Opinions. A fairly detailed operating manual.
After more than two decades as an executive coach, I’m also pretty good at helping other people figure these things out.
I could probably create a beautifully …
What One Great Loss Is Teaching Me About How to Live
“When it’s over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.” ~Mary Oliver
I’ve spent much of my life living in fear of countless imagined tragedies—especially the untimely death of those I love.
Growing up, within the span of a few years, three children I was very close to lost one of their parents. The emotional devastation that followed taught me that people can disappear in an instant, shattering a world that had once felt happy and safe. My newfound awareness of the fragility …
The Day I Heard My Own Voice Coming Out of My Child’s Mouth
“Children are not things to be molded, but people to be unfolded.” ~Jess Lair
Growing up, I was often drawn to classmates who were soft-spoken and gentle. I admired how calm they seemed, because inside me was the opposite. I had a temper that flared at the smallest things.
I always gravitated toward people and situations that gave me a sense of peace, the very thing I didn’t have at home. As a child, I couldn’t understand why I craved that peace so badly. It took me becoming a parent to finally understand why.
My childhood home wasn’t peaceful. There
When Life Reminds You That Nothing Is Guaranteed
“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.” ~Albert Camus
A little over a year ago, I went to a bookstore on a cold night to meet a friend at the café. It’s taken me this long to finally write about it.
We had one of those conversations you need when you’re trying to make sense of things during the busy rush of life. The kind of conversation that makes you feel like you’re in the right place at the right time and you’re making progress.
I left the bookstore feeling like …
