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“You don’t need to come. I’m not dying.”
My mom had surgery last week, and that’s what she said when she heard I was flying across the country to help my dad, and to spend time with her, after her surgery.
I think her response is part consideration for my busy life–not wanting to be a burden to her not-close-to-retirement son with a bustling family, and part defiance that the surgery posed any kind of risk for her. I get it.
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I did the math in my head. If the sales revenue generated on the opening day of our fourth location remained even sort-of consistent, we would be good–finally over the hump to financial security. We started with one whole grain bread bakery in 2004, and four years later, we had added three locations, and I thought we had reached our goal. I remember where I was standing, on the stairs leading to our kitchen, when I was overcome by relief. A goal attained. At last. At long last.
But it didn’t last. I grew to resent those opening day looky-loos for getting my hopes up. Our fourth location settled into a revenue performance much like that of our other three bakeries. We would survive. But we were not going to thrive. So I looked for a new path to achieve our goal of financial security. I adjusted the product lines, trimmed down our workforce, promoted seasonal specials, changed our operating hours, partnered with other organizations, donated tons of bread in the community. I even ate nothing but whole grain bread for a whole month, and lost weight, to debunk the gluten-free frenzy. And I did it all in pursuit of a goal.
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“You said we would only be there for a little while. A couple of beers, you said. The kids and I left you there at almost midnight. When you stumbled in at 2am, fell up the back stairs, and started calling my name, I was afraid you were going to wake the kids. I didn’t want them to see you like that. I didn’t want them to see me as angry as I was.” My wife brought up that memory more than once.
I used to ask her why she couldn’t get out of the past. “You are stuck, Sheri. That was years ago. I’ve been sober for a long time. Why can’t you be proud of the man I’ve become?”
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(Click here to read part one.)
Old academic papers on the impact of alcoholism on kids are plentiful. The studies from the end of last century usually suggest that the family stay together. That’s one of the things I despise about behavioral health research. Humans are complex and coercible, and an experienced academic can usually design a study to get the results that validate his assertions. People haven’t changed much since the start of this new millennium, but the advice sure has. It is widely believed among family psychologists that what children need is one stable parent, to provide emotional support, physical safety, and healthy adult modeling. Staying in a toxic marriage for the sake of the kids is finally being openly criticised for being as ludicrous as it sounds.
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I wish I could deliver a message to my younger self. Many messages, really, to many earlier versions of me. Like that the penis my college friends drew on my forehead with permanent marker when I passed out would not, in fact, impact the rest of my life. Or that leaving my sales-manager job at a steel company that was for sale upgrading to a steel company that later declared bankruptcy was not, actually, the stupidest move ever. Or even more recently, that the knee injury I suffered playing soccer last summer was not the end, and that I was not yet relegated to the chair workouts Instagram feels are age appropriate.
Those tips would have been useful. But in mid-March 2026, I am thinking about the advice I would give a late 20-teens version of me about Saint Patrick’s Day.
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Is having enough about getting more or needing less?
I was at a casual lunch meeting with six people and two eight-slice pizzas. I ate one slice of pepperoni and one slice of margherita. I was still hungry, and the pizza was really delicious, but you could not have force-fed me a third slice.
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It has been going on since the beginning of humanity. Why am I surprised?
I have been undergoing a psychological transformation for the past couple of weeks. I have always heard that the horrors of war are too much for the human brain to process, and that PTSD and the elevated addiction and suicide rates of veterans are the predictable results. The contents of the Epstein files released on January 30th are too horrific, too shocking, for my human brain. I am not an empath. I work in the field of emotional abuse. I have aced grad school classes in sexual assault that required a lot of case-study critical analysis.
And yet, I was not remotely prepared for this.
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I touched her shoulder and her back a lot. My connection to her, and our comfort with each other, was evident to anyone who cared to pay attention to us in the crowded bar. Her husband definitely noticed. We had recently traveled together, she and I, and her husband’s mind was swirling with anger, jealousy, and questions.
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My wife, Sheri, and I just spent a long weekend with three couples. It was interesting to hear that we had all shared the same clear and decisive experience, without which, none of our marriages would have survived.
All four of us men were drinkers. All four of us men begged our wives to let us back in emotionally, and to comfort us as we tried to get sober. All four of our wives, after multiple attempts to be our soft pillows–to cushion the impact of early sobriety, finally stood by a hard boundary.
All four of our wives said enough was enough, and forced all four of us men to do it on our own.
