I’ve come to accept that family life could, with very little editing, become either a reality show or a doctoral thesis.
We live inside what I lovingly call the Bermuda Triangle of Relationships.
Not the oceanic kind…ours is far more mysterious… and somehow more exhausting.
It’s a triangle made of people I love.
People I once loved.
People who love each other now.
People who used to love me.
People who live within a mile… yet somehow feel like they’re floating off the coast of Mars.
For years, I managed this Triangle the only way I knew how: outrun it.
Work longer.
Move faster.
Blink past emotions.
File everything under deal with later... which, it turns out, is not a real filing system.
Then life hit pause.
Suddenly. Sharply. Undeniably.
And for the first time in decades… I wasn’t sprinting.
I was home.
Still.
Quiet.
Alone with two dogs… and the elephants I had avoided for years.
Turns out, elephants multiply when ignored.
Mine could start a parade.
And here’s the uncomfortable truth:
When the noise drops… the truth gets loud.
Family estrangement is a grief with no funeral.
A heartbreak that keeps renewing itself.
A wound that heals unevenly…and never fully closes.
And here’s the part I resisted the longest... Responsibility is rarely one-sided.
For most of my life, I told a very clean story…my version.
The one where I was right.
Misunderstood.
Noble.
And quietly wounded by everyone else’s decisions.
A great story.
Five stars.
No notes.
Except… silence is a mirror.
And when I finally stopped running, I had to look.
Not to shame myself.
Not to rewrite history.
Just to tell the truth.
I wasn’t the villain.
But I wasn’t innocent either.
Some of the hardest choices were about boundaries, necessary ones. Painful ones.
I still stand by them.
But I can also see now how I showed up around them.
My reactions.
My protection.
My silence.
How even the right decisions can still cast a long shadow.
Owning that doesn’t excuse anyone else.
It doesn’t make me responsible for everything.
And it definitely doesn’t end with a cheerful “water under the bridge” group text.
It just means I stopped treating estrangement like weather…and started recognizing it as something I also stood inside.
Whether anyone else reflects on their part is not mine to manage.
And for the first time… I don’t need it to be.
So now, in this quieter season, I’m doing something I avoided for years:
I’m facing the elephants.
No reconciliation scripts.
No emotional gymnastics.
No forced healing montages.
Just this...
Love can break.
People drift.
Two truths can exist at the same time.
Someone can hurt you…
and be hurting themselves.
And sometimes the bravest thing you can do is stop deciding who was right— and start deciding who you want to become.
I can’t control who stays.
I can’t control who leaves.
I can’t control the version of me that lives in someone else’s memory.
But I can control this...
Who I become next.
Who I am in my home.
Who I am to Erin.
Who I am to my girls.
Who I am when no one is watching.
Who I am when the Triangle starts to spin.
Who I am when the mirror is right in front of me.
The quieter my life gets,
the less I want to win…
and the more I want to heal.
Even if that healing looks different for everyone.
Maybe the goal was never to fix the Triangle.
Maybe the goal was to become someone who no longer gets lost inside it.
Someone who can stand still…and still find his way home.
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