10. the source 🌊
a manifesto of hope for the chronic self-saboteur
Dear Rob,
Four months ago, I set out to publish a manifesto about perfectionism. My goal was to write something bold, powerful, transformative. You can probably guess what happened next. All of my own perfectionistic patterns came out of the woodwork, derailing the process at every turn. The harder I tried to write something smart, something that would inspire others, the more the entire project felt fake, forced, fraudulent. In a fit of frustration, I tossed my overwrought first draft in the trash. I gave up.
Somewhere within me, a voice said softly, “Try writing yourself a letter. Tell yourself what you need to hear. Trust me.” The voice felt wise and warm. Even though its suggestion scared me, it felt like the most honest path forward. With nothing left to lose, I started writing the letter, every morning, by hand. The more I wrote, the more the voice returned with new suggestions, each one truer and more frightening than the last. I kept writing. Kept trusting. After a month of following these inner trails, I’ve arrived somewhere unexpectedly beautiful. A valley. A glacier. Two jagged peaks. A raging whitewater. A choice.
The last 18 months have been the most turbulent and painful of your life, Rob. You lost your business. You lost a job and community you cared about. You lost anything resembling financial stability. You lost your best friend. You lost your health, putting on nearly 60 pounds. And most painfully, you blew it with the love of your life. You met the woman you were supposed to marry, and after you tried and failed to get your shit together, multiple times, you lost her.
It's somewhat true to say the world has beaten you down this year. Life has thrown you some curveballs. But it's more true to say you've beaten yourself down. You’ve performed one magnificent act of self-sabotage after another. And now here you are, living in your mom's RV, your relationship with her in tatters, as you struggle each day to put the scattered pieces of your life together again. If this moment were a crime scene, it would have your fingerprints all over it.
This thing we call perfectionism has played a central role in your downfall. You’ve tied yourself in knots trying to manage how people perceive you, especially the women in your life. But that’s not the whole story. No, your patterns of self-sabotage run far deeper than your need to appear perfect. They stem from your addiction to control, and your incapacity to hold true to your humanity when confronted with your own powerlessness.
I have some wisdom I'd like to offer as you navigate beyond this dark wood. But I want you to know this is your wisdom, your story. It's been buried in you all along. My role is simply to help you remember what you've always known, at the source of it all, beneath the fears that led us here. You should also know this letter wouldn't exist without the wisdom below. In order to write this, I've weathered turbulent new storms, including a near-death experience and an eviction notice. Through it all, I’ve worked daily to stay grounded in everything you're about to read. It hasn’t been easy, and I haven't been perfect. Far from it. But I kept moving, kept trusting, and that's been enough to get this transmission to you.
So if you're reading this, Rob, please know that you've already succeeded. Whenever you lose faith in your ability to live wisely, sanely, joyously amidst turmoil and heartbreak, I want you to remember, remember, that you already have. Whenever you feel yourself backsliding into shame or escaping into grandiosity, I want you to remember that you've already proven that you can honor your humanity, even in the darkest of moments. This letter exists as a cathedral to your experience, your strength, your hope. You can always return to this place to remember the truth of who you are.
There's one last seed I'd like to plant before we embark on this journey together, a mantra I’ll be returning to again and again. You are not broken, and the world is thirsting for your gifts. I know you don't believe that statement right now, and that's okay. All I ask is that you keep your mind and heart open, and that you trust me, just as I trusted that inner voice, as we put one foot in front of the other, step by step, crossing the stream, as the valley opens wide before us.
II - Patagonia
Remember that school trip we took to Chile, junior year, and those 10 days spent hiking into the depths of Patagonia? For years, you’ve told people about the strange connection you felt to that place, and how you yearned to return. Let's revisit it together.
Remember how you crossed a stream, barely up to your shins, to enter that sprawling valley, green and lush. Remember the four days and nights you and your fellows followed the river flowing through that valley, imposing mountains and evergreen forest surrounding you on all sides. How you slept outside one night beneath a shimmering blanket of stars. Remember how you awoke early on the fifth morning, and hiked to your final destination, the source of the river, that grand old glacier, nestled between two striking, snow-capped peaks.
Remember how underwhelmed you felt upon your arrival here, how restless. It was literally just a giant chunk of ice? We hiked all this way for… this? Others in the group seemed to be having a nice time, but your attention was pulled towards those jagged peaks high above. You wanted so badly to climb them, to get an eagle-eyed view of this place, this valley. With an epic destination in sight, standing on this glacier felt like a consolation prize.
Remember how the guide called the group to gather around him at the spot where the glacier ended and the river began. The source of the sprawling web of life through that valley. He proceeded to give a speech—one that he'd clearly given many times—about the water flowing from this spot. He said this is the purest water on earth, frozen for thousands of years, untouched by the hands of man and machine. He then invited each of us to dip our bottles in and drink.
Remember how you hesitated. You’ve been told never to drink untreated water from the wilderness. All week you’ve been using iodine tablets to purify river water for drinking and cooking. You feel your anxiety and restlessness spike, and you look around to see your fellows feeling the same. The guide sees this too, and he laughs deeply and warmly, without any hint of condescension. "Don't worry you guys, it's safe," he says, as he dips his own bottle into the clear blue runoff and takes an enthusiastic swig. The group relaxes. So do you.
You grab your Nalgene and plunge it into the water. Upon taking the first sip, something shifts in you. Remember. You can feel this ice cold elixir moving down your whole body, bringing each tired cell back to life after the challenging morning hike. You drink more, practically chugging now. You've never tasted something so delicious, so pure. You feel restored, alive, present. As you fill your bottle for a second time, you notice that your restlessness is gone. You look around and you’re struck by how beautiful this glacier is, this moment, this group of fellows. You no longer feel the need to escape to higher ground, and you’re grateful to be here. The journey up the valley was worth it.
Deep in yourself, you sense this water wasn't merely glacial runoff, but the source of life itself. Remember. You smile, eat a chocolate chip cliff bar, and get ready to hike back to the previous night's camp site.
III - The Peaks
If self-sabotage were an Olympic sport, Rob, you and I would have a shelf overflowing with medals and trophies. How many times have we had the ball on the five yard line, having made significant progress towards what we desire, only to fumble, again and again, in the most predictable of ways. The binge eating and compulsive spending, the perfectionism and procrastination, the ways we habitually go into hiding. Against our better judgement, we dig holes for ourselves instead of moving forward, and leap in. Again and again. It's why you believe you're broken. You have ample historical evidence.
Remember that glacier, how restless you felt in its presence. Remember how you yearned for something grander, to escape this uncomfortable, mundane moment, to climb those peaks. Those summits were steep, icy, and clearly dangerous, yet they called to you, seductively validating the story lurking behind your restlessness. Staring up at those frosted fortresses, daydreaming about the view from above, you began to believe the only way to feel okay in life is to seek the highest ground, to take as much control as possible. You felt so small in that valley, so vulnerable, with its limited visibility. The unease in your chest grows stronger as you move closer to the glacier. Once there, in that frozen place, you feel possessed by an irrational and urgent need to flee.
Those two peaks are shame and grandiosity, and they beckon when you believe you're broken. When you abandon the glacier to climb the peak of shame, you assert control by confirming and reinforcing the story of your brokenness. You say “Yep, I'm broken all right. No doubt about it. Might as well double down. I don't have much power in this world, but I always have the power to degrade and destroy myself while having a bit of fun. Now I am going to assert that power, and prove my brokenness beyond a reasonable doubt.”
And boy, Rob, you and I sure have collected a number of effective tools for self-destruction over the years. The binge-eating, those inhuman portion sizes of fried food growing ever larger and more sickening by the year. The binge-spending, your bank accounts dwindling and credit cards swelling, much like your bloated belly. The days, weeks, months lost to binge-watching Netflix to feel “alive,” and binge-scrolling twitter to feel “connected,” all while knowing, deep down, that what you’re really doing is hiding from life. You don’t believe yourself worthy of genuine aliveness and connection, so instead you overwhelm your senses with cheap, mass-produced facsimiles, all to make your stay on shame mountain slightly more bearable.
It's a good thing we never got into alcohol or heroin or whatever, because chances are we would have perished up there on the peak of shame. That's what happens to everybody who sets up camp there, eventually, regardless of which tools they use to destroy themselves. If you keep climbing it, you will die, for it is the most inhospitable place on earth. When you believe you're unworthy of life, and set out every day to prove it, it's only a matter of time before life takes you at your word.
Then there's the peak of grandiosity. When you choose to climb this peak, you believe the same story as before—that you are broken. This time, however, instead of seeking to validate the story through self-destruction, you now declare, “Sure, I might be broken, but I can fix myself! I have the power to make myself perfect. In fact, I must make myself perfect, because that's the only way I'll ever be worthy of this life. If I fail, it will only confirm that I am irreparable and irredeemable. So I have to give this everything I’ve got.“
How many times have we announced to ourselves and the world that we are finally going to get our shit together—with food, money, fitness, business, creativity, relationships—before embarking on some wildly over-engineered program of self-improvement, where you chase the explicit goal of being impeccable in every domain of life, all at once. When you climb the peak of grandiosity, you get to LARP as God for a little bit. And boy, you feel so fucking powerful up there, like you've finally figured it all out. But then one day, you lose your footing and the facade of perfection comes crumbling down. Life slaps you in your all-too-human face and reminds you that you are not God, and that no matter how hard you try, you never will be.
When this inevitable realization snaps the spell of delusional grandeur, you reliably retreat right back to the peak of shame and resume your self-destructive proclivities. You wallow in despair for awhile, applying the balm of brokenness to your whole being, before beginning the cycle anew. In a few weeks, or months, you hit a deeper rock bottom, and then decide, once and for all, that you are going to rescue yourself by attempting to be God again. “Last time was just a test run,” you say to yourself, unconvincingly. "But this time—this time—I’m going to do it right.” So you begin another tenuous trek up the opposing cliffside, before slipping upon a loose, icy rock and tumbling back down. Again and again. So it goes.
It's become a rather predictable cycle, Rob, riding this pendulum from shame to grandiosity, from one extreme to another, back and forth, back and forth. Truthfully, you and I have both become bored of it. The seductive allure of either climb has worn thin through the years. Besides, there’s something in us that wants to live, truly live, and we both know there’s no life to be had up on either peak. For we have ample historical evidence of this, too. Remember. Yet we keep finding ourselves there. We keep fleeing and hiding out of habit, all while hoping, praying, that we'll one day find a new path forward. Tick tock.
IV - The Valley
Six weeks ago, several days before scrapping the initial draft of the Perfectionism Manifesto™, my body staged a coup against the status quo. It’s 6am on a Saturday morning, and I’m making coffee in the RV when my chest begins to tighten. It starts around my heart, like a hand reaching up from the depths and giving a good squeeze. Just a nibble at first, enough to get my attention. But over the next half hour it slowly, violently clenches. The tension spreads from my heart to my entire chest, then my neck, back, and shoulders, ending in my jaw. It dawns on me this might be a heart attack, and that my life could end today, at thirty three. Tick tock.
I ask Perplexity what to do in such a situation. If I’m going to perish from this earth, I’m not going to spend my final moments scrolling through SEO spam hell. “Get your ass to the emergency room, bro,” the AI chatbot chides. “And whatever you do, do not operate heavy machinery in this state.” Ugh. Fine.
I skulk over to the main house and ask my mom to drive me to the ER, my chest tensing tighter still as I sit in her dining room, waiting to leave. After an EKG and X-rays and bloodwork and a bevy of biomedical tests, we await the prognosis. My mom hovers anxiously around the hospital bed, eyeing the monitor with my vitals. It feels as if she’s searching for physiological evidence of why her adult son has become so defective this year. Why is he so broken? She makes a comment about how surprisingly healthy I seem. The doctor arrives as an act of mercy. “Your heart is fine,” he says, “but we’d like you to stick around for another hour just to be sure.”
You tell your mom she can go home and get some breakfast. When she leaves, you notice a bit of the turbulence in your chest leaves with her. You spend 90 minutes scrolling twitter before the doctor returns and, once again, gives you a clean bill of health. You ask him what the hell you just experienced, and he shrugs. Cool. You choose to walk home. After a string of unseasonably hot days, winter has arrived in Tucson, and you delight in the cool October air, the sun on your face. You’re grateful to be alive.
Upon returning to the RV, you make another cup of coffee. Your mother walks in, carrying with her the same heavy-handed energy of concern. Why is he so broken? You feel your chest clamping down again, and blunder out something inarticulate about how her presence is stressing you out, and you can’t have her around right now. She’s clearly hurt, but she leaves you alone. You two hardly speak for the next six weeks. But a badly drawn boundary can still be an effective one. In the weeks ahead, you realize what’s happened here. Your immune system has rejected the story of brokenness, and created an opening for something new to take root.
Between the peaks of shame and grandiosity lies the valley of humanity. Through the valley flows a river, nourishing all life there. Trace the river to its source and you will arrive at that great glacial mass—a lifetime of wounds layered atop each other and frozen in place. This, more than anything, is what binds humanity together. From the moment we're born, we each begin accruing wounds, which will shape us in ways we’ll never fully understand. Some wounds are tiny, leaving but a pockmark in the glacial landscape, while others are seismic, creating a crevasse that will swallow anyone who steps there. No human, no matter how sheltered or steadfastly safe, makes it out unscathed.
Somewhere along the way, Rob, we learned we were broken, and that love is conditional. We learned that our brokenness is no one's fault but our own. We learned that the only way back into the grace of belonging is through the assertion of control–over ourselves, and over how we’re perceived. We even learned that powerlessness itself is a source of shame. In school we were praised for our sharp writing and insight, those delicious little morsels of validation becoming a source of fuel for the life ahead. We honed our craft of coping with these wounds through the application of intellect, building the edifice of our life on a shaky foundation of sounding smart on the internet. We even learned the trick of speaking about our wounds from a safe distance, our perceived “vulnerability” sparking more fires of validation. Hell, we’re in danger of doing the same thing right now, in this very essay. Oh the lengths we’ll go, you and I, to never have to feel, truly feel, the pain locked away in that glacial mass.
Can you be with your wounds, Rob? Can you give them the gift of your presence, without compulsively fleeing or fixing? Can you stay in the valley? Take a deep breath.
This morning, as I chip away on the first draft of this letter, I'm not feeling great. My throat is scratchy. I didn't sleep well, on account of our cat being an asshole. There's a dull ache in my temple that won't subside. I don't feel as if I have any wisdom for you today. I feel small, inadequate, helpless. If I can’t write something smart, what’s the point? Sitting here on this faux leather couch in my mom’s RV, the peaks of brokenness beckon. The inner critic says I should just give up, maybe go get some McDonald’s, while the voice of grandiosity urges me to go read three books about Jungian individuation and personal mythology before returning to the page.
I sense these voices in my body, how uneasy they are with the imperfection of the present moment, and my powerlessness to fix it. But I resist their provocations. I take a deep breath, sinking further into the couch, into myself, into the heartrending piano of Max Richter's score from The Leftovers. I feel my feet on the ground, the sun on my face. Putting pen to page again, I write the next imperfect sentence. Then the next. I take a sip, and feel okay, if only for a brief moment. I realize this draft is a chaotic swirl of ideas, unpublishable in its current form. But the goal isn’t to get it right on the first try. The goal is to keep moving forward, keep trusting, sentence by imperfect sentence. For this is my initiation into valley life, and the only way I can fail is to choose hiding over progress.
Two weeks later, I’m back in the dojo of the valley as I edit this messy, sprawling draft. Each subsequent section I revise feels more unwieldy and overwhelming than the last, and I frequently consider chucking it all in the trash. But in rare moments, I marvel at the startling clarity and poetic precision of the words on the page. Remember. It renews my trust that there’s something transcendent here. So I take my chisel and chip away the cruft with care and patience, and I see more of its final form, slowly revealing itself. Sun on my face, feet on the ground, deep breath, revising one sentence at a time.
That’s how we’ve arrived here, Rob, at this cathedral to your spirit. Through trust and continued movement. Stone by sculpted stone. Tomorrow I’m sure I'll wake up and once again feel the impulse to flee this mess, this whole shameful season of life. But just as I’m learning to trust my inner voice, so too am I learning to trust future Rob. He will surely be tempted by those peaks, just as I have been. But I trust he will catch himself in a moment of clarity, and choose to stay present to his humanity for just one more minute, one more hour, one more day. I trust he can do it, because I am doing it right now. Take a deep breath.
I wish I could tell you, Rob, that the path of staying in the valley was easy and painless. But that hasn't been my experience. Dwelling in this place feels like a series of small deaths. For to be human is to be wounded, and to be wounded is to reside in a state of ambient grief for the parts of ourselves, so pure and full of hope, that were once betrayed and now lay frozen beneath the surface. There’s no avoiding pain or discomfort in this life. Any path you choose—whether peaks or valleys—will come with its own flavor of anguish. But you get to choose. Maybe it’s the only real choice we have. All I can offer is a reflection from my experience this year. When I choose the heartbreak of being human, life moves forward in tiny, imperfect ways, whereas when I choose the agony of avoidance, I get the brief thrill of control, all while life stalls and eventually calcifies.
In the years ahead, there are three things my heart desires above all else. To be a writer, a husband, and a father. In none of these domains is perfection possible, and in all of them, the only surefire way to fail is to believe that I'm broken and act accordingly. The day of the heart attack scare, my body closed the door on the latter option. Three days later, that inner voice invited me to start writing this letter. I see now that a power greater than myself has been guiding me down into the valley, up the river, and to the source. When I was afraid to stare my wounds in the face, it said “trust me, you’ll be okay.” And when I was afraid to drink, it said, “don’t worry, it’s safe.” The more present I become to my humanity and its limitations, the more grateful I feel to be here, in the mess, instead of up on those peaks. Tomorrow I’ll have to make the choice to stay grounded again. But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. One day at a time.
The inner voice, however, has been suggesting something new of late. It says we can’t stay here on this glacier forever, communing with our wounds. Soon we must make the return journey home, back to the land of the living. It won’t be easy, the voice warns. Grab your raincoat.
V - The Return
As you hike back from the glacier, remember how the clouds start crowding out the sunny blue skies. A light drizzle begins as you arrive back at camp, then later that night, a downpour. You awake to the sound of pitter patter atop your tent, alerting you to the dreary day of hiking ahead. You don’t realize it yet, but these rains will not subside for the duration of your departure from the valley.
Remember how you trudged across that terrain whose ground had once been so firm, so supportive. But now each step requires three times the effort. Your foot sinks into the soft squishy grasslands, and you heave it forward with a muddy plopping sound. Left foot, right foot, left. One sludgy step at a time. Plip plop. Remember sitting around the fire at night, shivering, attempting to dry your socks and boots, only for them to be soaked through again five minutes into your hike the next morning. Remember how despondent you felt, how irritable, like this misery would never end.
Remember how you escaped into your head on those sullen slogs. How you directed your attention away from the landscape, away from your fellows, and gave it fully to your imagination. Remember how set you were on applying to the University of Denver's music conservatory. How you dreamed of a double major in jazz composition and music production. Oh how you delighted in this vision of becoming a guitar god with studio skills to match. Double trouble. Sure, jazz was still a foreign language to you, and you couldn’t read musical notation. Nor did you possess concrete plans to learn either. But those details didn’t matter as you conjured images of yourself shredding sophisticated bebop lines on an exquisite semi-hollow guitar you wished you could afford. You envisaged yourself behind a vast studio mixer, headphones around your neck, displaying the same technical prowess you’d seen from producers in documentaries about your favorite bands. Jazz virtuoso and studio wizard. A vision for the ages. This path is possible, even practical, if you apply yourself in the years ahead. But for today, its primary purpose is to help you escape.
Remember how, after three days of unrelentingly wet walks, you and your fellows arrive back at the stream. The one you’d initially crossed to enter the valley. What had once been a playful shin-deep romp is now a raging whitewater, waist or even chest deep in places. The sight of that ferocious threshold, standing so firm between you and the life ahead, snaps you awake. There’s no sleepwalking or daydreaming through this. Remember how the guide informs you that you’ll have to hold your backpack overhead as you cross, lest its buoyancy aid the rapids in sweeping you off your feet. You’re instructed to cross the river three at a time, with the strongest person upstream to break the current for those behind. It’s too dangerous to go alone, the guide says.
You cross the stream with two other boys, both named Will. A foot taller than either, you're the natural choice to lead. You want to lead. With your backpack and head held high, you wade in, water up to your knees, waist, chest. Remember how powerful you felt, that current working ceaselessly to knock you off center, while you stand resolute. Your biceps burn from holding thirty pounds awkwardly above, but your attention flows downward as you make one carefully considered, firmly placed footstep after another. Remember the visceral sense of aliveness as the three of you, lives bound together, the weight and responsibility of each step multiplied threefold, make the perilous passage back into the land of the living. The wild smiles on your faces as the water starts to recede. Remember. The sense of camaraderie, of accomplishment, as you and The Wills drop your packs on the other side and hug one another. Remember. You cheer on your fellows, trio by trio, as they cross the same threshold. That evening, as you all arrive back at basecamp—soaking, exhausted, laughing, happy—the rains stop. The stars come out again. Your socks dry completely around the fire that night.
Rob, you’re a gifted guy. Maybe that’s a weird thing to say in a letter to yourself that you’re publishing on the internet, but it’s true. Your ability to inquire inward, and articulate what you experience there, is a gift. So too are your vivid imagination, your ability to tell stories, and your heartfelt desire to make life better for all around you. When you get out of your head, and stop trying to manage or control the world beyond you, even your presence is a gift. When you’re at your best, not mired in a web of self-sabotage, these gifts flow naturally, like a river. Journeying to the source, drinking deeply, and returning to the world with dispatches from frontlines of your lived experience. That’s how you lead, how you inspire. Not by writing Flashy Manifestos™ with a bunch of smart-sounding jargon, but by going first, wading into uncertain waters, and softening the current for those who follow in your footsteps.
Like all gifts, however, yours come with a shadow side—those predictable patterns where they become self-defeating and inert. Like when you remove yourself from life to gaze inward, stuck in an endless solipsistic swirl. It’s a generational echo of how your mother eyed your vital signs in the emergency room, an anxious search for clues that might give you some semblance of control. Why is he so broken? You’re like an athlete who has a bad game, then gets way too obsessed with studying film, locking himself away in the dark, when he’d be better served by forgiving himself and getting back on the field. Likewise, when life gets hard, and the waters turbulent, you have the tendency to retreat into recesses of your mind, using the vividness of your imagination not as a source of fuel, but as form of cheap escapism. Whenever you do this, you become a ghost to the people around you, just as you were to your fellows on that soggy return journey, and just as you are to your mom right now. The brighter the light, the darker the shadow.
You never did become a jazz virtuoso, nor a studio wizard. That vision of the future forever remained a daydream, requiring more legwork, more tedium, than you were willing to endure. After two months of learning to read music and studying jazz theory, you got bored. It wasn’t sexy. It wasn’t fun. So you scrapped the plan to study music and pivoted to film. Nothing wrong with that, by the way. It was one of many stepping stones that brought us here. But it’s a pattern worth noting nonetheless.
Lately I’ve been catching myself daydreaming here in this RV. I’m imagining my new business taking off, with founders and startups hiring me left and right to write unreasonably spicy manifestos for them. And how delicious it would be if this business grew beyond me, beyond my lone-wolf paradigm, into a boutique agency of sorts, where I work alongside a handful of talented homies and we serve the largest, most ambitious startups in the world. Like before, this path is possible, even practical, if I apply myself in the years ahead. Step by step. Stone by sculpted stone. I can also use this vision to escape this season of life, this moment where everything has gone wrong. With rains pouring and resentments building, I can escape into fantasy, or I can stare reality in the face, then take one sludgy, imperfect step after another. The choice is mine. Take a deep breath.
On July 1st, 2024, I drive to an Episcopalian church on the east side of Tucson. I sit out in the parking lot for a solid dozen minutes, second-guessing myself, until I work up the gumption to walk into the annex building behind the chapel. In the center of the room are eight chairs, upholstered in rough red fabric, placed in a circle. This is my first ever meeting of Overeater’s Anonymous. The same inner voice that guided me towards writing this letter also led me here. Remember. I’m greeted warmly by a trio of elderly women, along with a middle-aged dude who will later become my sponsor. Earlier that week I’d gone off the rails with food, taken a brief trip up shame mountain, and found myself back in a familiar position. As I stare up at grandiosity, I know it is time for something new. Tick tock.
In that first meeting, and the many I attend in the months ahead, I’m struck by the candor of the shares. Here are people from backgrounds that could not be more different from mine, yet they can perfectly describe the topographical drama of my own inner landscape. These people know intimately the peaks of shame and grandiosity, the seductions of self-destruction and godliness. They detail their daily struggles, recount their rockiest rock bottoms, celebrate their small wins and steadiness amidst life’s choppy seas. Like me, these rooms contain ample historical evidence of brokenness. Yet there’s so much hope here. A joyful persistence pervades the atmosphere. And above all, there’s fellowship in these rooms. This is a place where our wounds, those frozen layers of pain, finally see the light of day, and where we experience genuine acceptance not in spite of our imperfections, but because of them.
At the end of the first meeting, we hold hands and recite the OA Promise: “I put my hand in yours, and together we can do what we could never do alone,” followed by an endearingly cheesy, “Keep coming back. It works if you work it, and you’re worth it!” There are hugs, large and warm, much as I embraced The Wills after crossing that raging whitewater. There’s no sleepwalking or daydreaming through this, Rob. It’s been raining hard for weeks, months, years. The most important task before you now is to return to the land of the living, and you can’t go it alone.
VI - Renewal
You are not broken, and the world is thirsting for your gifts.
Two days before Thanksgiving, as I’m writing the first draft of this essay, my mother marches into the RV unannounced. Outside of a few formalities, we’ve barely spoken in the month and a half since the heart attack scare. She hands me two pieces of paper, folded and creased, says "you’ve left me no choice," then walks away. It’s a letter. I read the first page, and it’s filled with one example after another of how broken I am, how I’ve destroyed my life by being financially irresponsible, and why I should be ashamed of both past and present Rob. Why is he so broken? Why won’t he let me fix him? It goes on to say, on the second page, that this living situation is no longer tenable. The letter ends with a formal eviction notice. I want you gone, she says.
As you read this letter, you feel your body bracing for the tsunami of shame that’s surely headed your way. You've spent years internalizing negative stories about yourself, accepting any and all evidence of your own brokenness, no matter how circumstantial or flimsy. And now you have it in writing—signed, sealed, delivered—from the very person whose love and approval you've always strived so diligently to be worthy of. Surely this wave will overtake you, and in the coming hours, days, weeks, you'll have to numb yourself into oblivion just to feel a spark of control. You have ample historical evidence. Take a deep breath.
To your surprise, the towering wave of shame never materializes. You feel steady, centered, and unambiguously okay. The seas are calm as you reflect on the many transgressions outlined in her letter. You acknowledge the blunders you’ve made and accept their consequences, while seeing clearly, for the first time, that your mistakes do not define you. You look back on the 46 days between the heart attack scare and this eviction notice, and you feel a sense of genuine self-respect. Though your mother assumes you’ve been holed up in her RV destroying yourself, you see that it’s been the exact opposite. You’ve been choosing, day by day, step by step, to dwell in the valley and build a life there.
You’ve been attending a 12-step meeting every single day. You’ve prayed, meditated, and talked to your sponsor daily. Instead of isolating yourself and hiding, you’ve been choosing connection and exposing your wounds to the light. You’ve been taking a walk every day, without headphones, to be present to yourself and the world around you. You’ve played a whole lot of pickleball. You’ve been working for a startup that hired you to write its whitepaper. Your finances are headed in the right direction, and both your physical and emotional health are sound. All the while you’ve been writing again, daily, after a year of creative stagnation. You’ve been trusting the inner voice, and penning a letter far more truthful than any Perfectionism Manifesto you could have conceived. One imperfect sentence at a time, you’ve been writing a new story of your life into being.
You are not broken, and the world is thirsting for your gifts.
On Thanksgiving Day, 2024, you complete the first handwritten draft of this letter. It feels oddly fitting that it should happen on this day. You send your mom a text saying that you’re grateful for all she’s given you, that you’ll be out of the RV by her deadline, and that you love her. She doesn’t respond, but that’s okay. Thanksgiving also happens to be day 60 of abstinence for you. 60 days without a single trip up shame mountain. You hold the shiny blue chip in your hands, and reflect on how grateful you are for this path of recovery, these fellows, and for every step and misstep that led to these 18 months of confusion and heartbreak. You’re genuinely grateful to be here, now, on this faux leather couch, sun on your face, pen in hand. A hummingbird flutters outside the window. You smile, and drink deeply from your bright blue Nalgene.
Rob, I won’t pretend to be some spiritually enlightened guru type over here. I’m still a fucking mess, and these last two months of valley dwelling have been a rainy slog. In years past, I would have suppressed or sidestepped the challenging emotions that accompany seasons like this. But now I have no choice but to feel everything, to face it head on. There’s anxiety, grief, anger, sadness, and heartbreak. In quantities I’ve never experienced before. Some days, it overwhelms me, and I’m lucky if I take a single step forward. On those days, I count it as a victory if I make it to bed without indulging in a bit of recreational self-destruction. But it’s getting easier to withstand these emotional torrents, and to stay grounded. It helps when I take a deep breath and remind myself that I don’t have to be perfect. I just have to take it one day at a time, and keep putting one foot in front of the other. Step by step, slowly.
I’ve been thinking a lot about water these last few weeks. The way it moves through the world—soft, pliable, yielding. Water never seeks approval or control, instead gracefully making its way around whatever stands firm in its path. Yet water is powerful beyond measure. Through its relentless flow, aided by time, it can turn mountains to sand. Water always flows from the heights of the heavens to the lowest depths of despair, nourishing all life it meets along the way. That is its nature, and perhaps mine, too. In my lowest season of life, the water has somehow, miraculously found its way to me. And now it feels like the most natural thing for me to flow around all obstacles, so that I may reach you with the same gift.
I have every reason to feel broken as I write this letter. But I don't. Mostly what I feel is a sense of serenity and acceptance. I am here, now. I am okay. Because I keep making the choice to be human. No matter what's happening in your life, Rob—no matter the turmoil, the confusion, the despair, and no matter the extent of your self-sabotage—I want you to remember that you are never more than one deep breath away from the truth. The water is safe to drink. Trust me.
In recovery meetings, we don’t share advice. Instead, we share our experience, our strength, our hope. I’ve tried my very best to do that here. The journey ahead will challenge you, Rob. But if you follow the river to its source, stay present and patient with your wounds, and keep making room in your heart for fellowship, then I have zero doubt you will be the writer, husband, father, and leader you were always meant to be.
Take a deep breath, and remember. Remember. You are not broken, and the world is thirsting for your gifts.
Rob Hardy
Thanksgiving Day, 2024
Tucson, AZ
Daaaaamn. My heart feels so raw and blown open.
I sense so much courage in this, so much hard-won self-love. A forgiving of self-love that will last you 70 lifetimes. I would be curious what that plastic blue chip looks like on the spiritual plane.