Why I do this work.
I spent the first half of my career doing what high-achieving men do — building, accumulating, performing. I was good at it. And then, in a remarkably compressed period of time, almost everything I had built came apart. Not all at once. One chapter at a time.
A layoff taught me that my identity was far more fragile than I realized. A divorce taught me that the structures we build our lives around can dissolve — and that we survive it, even when we're certain we won't. Losing Kim to ALS at 51 taught me something I couldn't have learned any other way: that the quality of a life is not measured in its duration, but in how fully it's lived.
I went back to school. I earned a PhD focused on mid-career transitions. I became a Professional Certified Coach through the International Coaching Federation. I built a practice working with exactly the men I had been — highly capable, high-achieving, quietly falling apart on the inside.
This is not a story about triumph. It's a story about what happens when you stop performing and start living. That's the work. That's what I do with my clients. And that's what I believe is possible for every man willing to do it honestly.
