The strength of my writing style has always been that I’ve never been afraid to be honest. When I wrote things I didn’t have secrets, until four years ago.

Four years ago I learned several life lessons all at once, some of them stuck with me right away, some of them took a little more time to set in. But either way, those life lessons shattered my worldview and set my life on a trajectory to understanding that nothing is black and white.

I still don’t fully understand it, but at least now I can see it.

So why open up about all of this now? Our world is polarizing, and the reality is that in so many ways we are deconstructing, as a society, as families, as individuals, we are learning that so many things we always thought were black and white, really aren’t that simple…

And so the reason why is to be real. In a world that has a tendency to shun vulnerability, I want you to see that through vulnerability comes strength. We are all human, and beneath the façade of social media or whatever picture perfect snap shot you have of someone’s life is a story that is probably more complicated than is not.

Four years ago I was married, embracing the news that I would soon be a father and thinking that I was on my way to the pinnacle of expectations for how I was raised. In a matter of moments however, I watched everything around me fall apart, and when I emerged from the smoky wreckage all that remained of myself was a shell of who I once was.

I was divorced, not a father, questioning everything I had ever believed in, and accepting that I got married because I was too much of a coward to not get married. This cowardice didn’t just apply to getting married though, so many things in life I never challenged, questioned or even explored because there was comfort in ignorance and naivety. How does that apply here? Well, the reality is that it’s a lot easier to live in a world that is black and white. A reality with clearly defined rules, with straight forward yes’s and no’s, one with no middle ground or no maybe – that reality is simple.

There was a lot of pain in those lessons. A lot of pain that sometimes still hits me like a locomotive out of nowhere, but there was even more pain because for the first time in my life I was too lost and ashamed to write about it, and that’s when I knew I was in trouble.

So not understanding the difference between deconstruction and destruction I set off on a course of self-destruction. I didn’t know what else to do, so I destroyed myself from the inside out, committing spiritual and emotional suicide at the same time. The result of that destruction almost cost me my life.

Over the last year I’ve been more intentional about understanding how to deconstruct how I was raised, conditioned and programed. Instead of blowing up the whole institution, I began to take it apart, piece by piece, brick by brick. I focused on looking at things with an open mind, instead of trying to berate my opinion into things.

I’m still learning what that looks like. And it isn’t something that has been easy, but it has taught me to be open minded. It has shown me that in this life, there are a lot more maybe’s or in-between’s then there are black and white answers. It’s taught me that you can have conversations about things without betraying what you believe. That you can explore things unknown without sacrificing who you really are.

Most importantly what it’s taught me is that we are all human, and that we are always learning, growing and evolving.