When you live through something like that, you are forced to make a decision you never asked to make. I could continue down the same road, or I could allow the tension created by everything I had endured to become the in-tension that awakened me.

For the first time in a long time, I got honest with myself. I changed my diet. I exercised every day. I lost the weight and, from the outside, I looked like I was getting my life back. But beneath the physical transformation, something was still broken. My body was recovering, but my mind had not healed from the heartbreak of losing my mother.

Even after all that progress, I still felt like 65% of a man.

I was functioning well enough to go to work, handle my responsibilities, pay the bills, and take care of the people who depended on me. From the outside, I looked fine. But somewhere beneath all that functioning was a man who still had not fully connected with his God-given identity and purpose.

After months of frustration and what I can only describe as functional depression, I began to write.

I wrote about everything.

My childhood. My relationships. My failures. My fears. My faith. My dreams. I asked questions I had avoided for years and challenged myself to look beyond the limitations that had quietly shaped the way I saw myself. Writing became a place where I could finally tell myself the truth.

Those writings eventually became Lifestwists: Navigation for Life’s Winding Roads, a cathartic journey that helped solidify my identity and gave me a road map for exploring the areas of my life I had never taken the time to navigate.