Terrible things?
Often what you think is the worst possible thing, is in fact your saving grace.
This story is deeply personal and one I did not want to tell, until circumstances made it clear that the reason I am still here is because the story is meant to be told.
Here is how it goes.
What would you do if all your worst nightmares suddenly came true, in terrible and unending succession?
Would you burn in? Or would you lean in?
I have been a tech entrepreneur who started on a path that wasn’t mine that was triggered by the unexpected and traumatic death of my father. For 25 years, based on a false memory, I believed I caused his death. It was that belief that set me on a journey that was in the wrong direction.
After his death and the drama that came on its heels, I put on a costume and picking up a life’s script written for somebody else, because that’s what I thought I had to do. I managed successes along the way. The greatest came when the glimpse of who I had hidden underneath the costume I wore found its way through.
But, for twenty five or so years, I lived a lie and was generally pretty miserable. The thing more terrible than doing it was that I knew it and didn’t have the courage to change it, and so the storyline repeated itself year in and year out.
My last adventure ended in an unexpected disaster a few years back. I lost pretty much everything as things unravelled. My financial safety net, my dignity and self-worth. I descended into depression and severe anxiety. Chronic insomnia (sleeping 2 hours a night for over six months) and severe panic attacks at least twice a day.
I gained 60 pounds. I retreated from the outside world entirely, and my family as well. During this nine-month period I had to be taken to the ER twice for stress induced heart arrhythmia.
I was 55 and my life, by every measure I could see, was over. There was no way out. Everything was failing and falling apart. No one would return my calls, my reality gone. I felt adrift and accepted the encroaching and terrible darkness. Worse, I felt I had let my family down. I was…nothing. This was quite literally the beginning of the end. And, I had given up.
Then a friend and a cycling team mate (prior I had been a competitive cyclist) intervened. His wife’s first husband had committed suicide and our team’s motto is Mental Fitness. One day he came to tell me that “I wasn’t doing this. Not on his watch. Enough.” He forced me to take one step back from the edge. “Just don’t step off. Not today.”
Then somehow the unthinkable happened. I had gotten signed up for two ultra-endurance gravel bike races, generally reserved for elite riders. This was in November of 2022. I was a wreck. I’ve shown the photo to people and universally it triggers a grimace and groan. “Oh man. Yeah. That’s not good.”
This was something I could not do. No way. Thirty reasons why not. Bottom line, I still didn’t measure up.
The first race called The Rift, held in a remote south-central part of Iceland was in July. The second, Gravel Worlds, a 156-mile gauntlet was in August. I had no money, no hope, no health, no prospects and no desire. Almost.
I remember being asked if I thought my life had a purpose. I honestly didn’t know.
A few days later, while trying to keep my composure at a local coffee shop, I found myself on the phone with a former colleague asking for some help. I had helped him before on numerous occasions. Instead, he subtly reveled in my circumstance. A new mental low.
He offered nothing more than platitudes and a “Dude, I wish I could help you but sorry. I am too busy killing it and well, hey, you no longer have much to offer me.” I would later learn he was the equivalent to the majority of Instagram posts. Curated, self-indulgent and totally fabricated.
As I sat the phone down, the world spinning around me, a person walked by me who had obviously overheard the call. He put a napkin on my table with a few sentences scribbled in blue ink as he walked out the door.
I still have it. Here is what it said.
‘Hi. Google what Kintsugi means. Your energy isn’t all dark…yet. You are not done unless you choose to be, but you have to fix the broken pieces.’
I never spoke to that person. I am not even sure what he looked like. I was too far in my misery. That night I looked up Kintsugi and it was the first spark that changed my life, causing the darkness to retreat ever so slightly.
The next day I awoke thinking about the Japanese practice of repairing broken pottery with gold-infused joiner. The repaired imperfections, proud, clear and beautiful and the repaired cracks becoming even stronger than the original porcelain.
The next day in the 11th minute of the 11th hour, synchronicity walked into my life for the first time in a long time, which lead me away from the script that I had kept wanting to read from. The old one that was not mine. That was in November.
By July, miraculously I was back to where I had been a few years earlier,. Physically strong but mentally still fragile. This place, it turns out wasn’t the destination but rather a resting place. A place to simply pause for a moment.
It wasn’t where I was meant to be. It was also at this time that I learned that the false memory of me causing my father’s death was in fact that. A false memory. I had been carrying that cancer inside me for 25 years. Letting go of that was like dropping a heavy stone I had been carrying while swimming.
At this point, I was treading water. But I didn’t feel I had survived all of that to just tread water. There had to be some purpose to recovering besides just going back to doing what I had been doing before.
Funny, I found myself ruminating over the survival of all of that calamity and their being purpose in it. Well there was. Just not what I expected.
On May 30th of this year, as some of you who read this SubStack know, I was hit from behind on a training ride in a hit and run out on quiet country road. I was solo. I had slowed to about 15 and whatever hit me the doctors estimated was traveling somewhere between 60 and 70.
I was hit so hard my vitals stopped during the time I lay unconscious. When I came to, I knew something was seriously, seriously wrong and that if I didn’t stand up, I would likely die. Little did I know at that time that I already had.
My wife had gotten the alert of a crash and had followed the information my GARMIN device had sent her. She took me to the ER. I went through triage and the ER orthopedic told us I was “way outside of their paygrade” and would be lifelined to the Level One Trauma Center ICU. Eleven broken bones, broken back, a broken neck and a TBI (traumatic brain injury).
After my first recovery from calamity, I began journaling as therapy. The week before the accident, our back yard was over taken by Blue Jays. For days, they were everywhere amongst the dense trees.
On the morning of May 28th, I had left my journal sitting outside. Heading out with a coffee in the early am, I found it on the table with three Blue Jay feathers sitting on top.
I was so perplexed but overwhelmed with a feeling of something much more than I could put any sense to that I taped them in my journal and wrote of that experience in my journal that day.
Turns out indigenous cultures believe a concentration of Blue Jays are there to deliver a message, usually tied to something that is purposeful and in line with what nature desires to come to pass (or which is part of the natural order of things).
That next night, on the 29th, I had a visitor in a dream. He suggested that I had a difficult choice to make and could change the storyline of my life, if I chose. But. I had to choose. He gave me a crow’s feather and a blue jay feather in my dream. I was also given a ritual that it turns out is quite ancient, but I had never heard of to help shed the negative emotions I had held onto in the form of self-perception and trauma for decades. This energy solidifies over time and weighs us down. With too much weight, we sink.
The next day, May 30th I was to leave for a major race but decided to go on one last easy ride. You know how that turned out.
I had an ICU nurse help me hand write this from the trauma center, which I rewrote shortly after and posted to SubStack. Shortly after, the NDE began to come back to me. I posted that here.
Here is where it all comes together. Both my neurologists and orthopedics said I was lucky to survive and should should not expect a full recovery, or at least anytime in the near future. But, after 78 days, I had somehow, fully recovered.
And what’s more, since this incident, the darkness of anxiety and panic attacks as well as, the caustic lure of self-doubt, self-sabotage and much of the other toxicity I carried for so long has left me.
Since this miraculous series of events, I’ve had the opportunity to talk to groups and to individuals who on a few occasions have found themselves on the same edge of the cliff in quiet desperation and the response has been profound for me and for them.
During this time, I also met a new friend who also had a similar accident and story. I laughed out loud, appreciating the subtle humor of the universe when I later learned he hosts a podcast called ‘The Kintsugi Podcast’. The reality we see is nowhere what is. As such, we shouldn’t be shocked by synchronicities. And, we should not look past them as we often do.
We often read from a script given to us. It isn’t ours and it doesn’t fit. We know deep down this is the case but are scared to do anything about it. Doing what isn’t meant to be or what isn’t right puts things out of balance. The more ‘wrong’ it is, the more ‘out of balance’ it becomes.
I’ve written on my series of improbable events because I believe that the story and the lessons from it, are in some part, why I am still here.
If you find yourself in what you think is an impossible place and you don’t know what to do, loosen your grip and let the old reality go. Feel free to toss the script you’ve been reading from and adopt a better one. Throw away the character’s costume you’ve been wearing.
You will find peace and growth in embracing a Kitnsugi-based life. Here are the basic tenants as I understand them:
Recognize and embrace your imperfections. Kintsugi can transform them into strengths.
Practice resilience through gratitude.
Maintain authenticity at all costs.
Embrace patience. You will miss what’s truly yours through impatience.
I hope what’s here resonates and is helpful to you (yes you) in some way. Take from it what you want and need. Feel free to leave what isn’t for you.
Very inspiring Steve. As someone who continues to try to hang on and 'make' things happen in the direction that I think they should, you offer an attractive alternative. Let go and follow. Thanks.