How a Hug Changed My Reality

An excerpt from Almost - A Memoir of Love, Loss, and the Women Who Changed Me

This Father’s Day, I’m sharing an excerpt from my memoir, Almost, about a moment I didn’t see coming, but one that changed me forever.

I wasn’t a biological dad yet. I was just trying to hold together a relationship and a fragile sense of self. But then, a little boy, my first wife’s son, reached for my arm one day in the car. What happened next broke me open in the best possible way.

Love will do that. Especially the kind you don’t think you deserve.

Without further introduction, here is an excerpt from Almost - A Memoir of Love, Loss, and the Women Who Changed Me

“Before I go any further, I need to make something clear. This wasn’t some idyllic existence. It wasn’t Leave It to Beaver. It wasn’t me stepping into a ready-made family, learning how to be whole overnight. I was far from together, as you, dear reader, already know. And Laura wasn’t perfect either. She had her own wounds, her own demons.

Maybe you’re thinking, well, everyone does. And you wouldn’t be wrong. But ours weren’t just the usual growing pains. We had something darker growing between us.

From the very beginning, drugs were part of the landscape. On our second date, we smoked weed together. It seemed harmless at the time, but it didn’t stop there. It seemed harmless because I looked at Laura’s life, and she was together. She had things handled. She had nice things, a great kid, a great job. So drugs didn’t seem to be a problem for her; they wouldn’t be a problem for me… right?

Well, there is a lot to unpack there. Because we were drinking, a lot. That was an everyday thing. Weed was also an everyday thing. There was cocaine. Meth. Speed. Laura had connections for everything; anything you wanted. Of course, most of that started off as a weekend thing, a "party time" ritual, but drugs don’t keep themselves in neat little boxes. They chip away at the corners of your existence. They spread, like cancer. They eat at the edges of everything good. They strain your body, your mind, and eventually, your heart.

At first, it felt manageable. Recreational. Controlled. But that’s the lie drugs always sell you. And I bought it.

Of all the poisons we played with, one got its hooks into me deeper than the rest: speed. It didn’t just lift me. It hollowed me out. And before long, it began to define me, and to unravel everything I thought I was building.

But the in-betweens, they were good.

We settled into a real life together. A simple, honest life. We had the beginnings of a great little family. And Caleb and I bonded in a way I hadn’t expected. I found myself in completely alien territory, loving a child for the first time in my life.

At first, I didn’t know what to make of it. I would sit with those feelings, turn them over in my mind like some mystical Rubik’s cube, trying to understand what they meant. They felt strange. Outlandish, even. But they kept growing. I found myself caring about that little boy more than I cared about myself.

We spent hours together, lost in imaginary worlds he built. I was still a kid in many ways myself, and it wasn’t hard to step out of adulthood and fall into those games with him. His happiness, his pure, unfiltered gratitude, melted parts of me I hadn’t even known were frozen.

I remember once, when he was sick, feverish and miserable. I would have done anything to take it from him. I would have gladly carried his sickness if it meant he could be well again. I held him for hours, trying to comfort him, feeling a helpless kind of love I barely recognized, and didn’t fully understand. Later, I overheard him telling Laura how amazed he was that I would do that for him, like it was some kind of revelation that a father figure might care that much. It broke my heart.

It wasn’t that he hadn’t known love; Laura loved him fiercely, with a mother’s conviction. It was that he hadn’t had a father who stayed. A father who gave that kind of love freely. A father he could simply trust to be there.

And in that moment, I realized just how much he had needed it, and just how badly I wanted to give that to him.

And then came the moment I fell completely, irreversibly in love with him.

We were driving home from preschool, chatting about his day, when suddenly he grabbed my arm off the wheel and squeezed it with all his little might. I turned, ready to gently scold him, I needed both hands to drive, but then I saw his face. And it stopped me cold.

At first, I didn’t understand what was happening. My arm had been yanked off the steering wheel, and my first instinct was confusion, maybe even defense. What was he doing? Was he upset? Trying to get my attention? My brain scrambled to make sense of it, flipping through every possibility except the truth. Because the truth... was foreign. Incomprehensible. I had no reference point for it. The idea that a child could love me; love me so much that he’d reach out in a spontaneous burst of affection, wasn’t even in the realm of possibility as far as I knew.

But then, like a slow cresting wave, the realization broke: He’s hugging me. Not hurting me. Not demanding anything. Just hugging me. Because he loved me.

The recognition didn’t just land; it rang through me like a struck gong, vibrating in every corner of my being. I was breathless. Paralyzed by something too big to name. Epiphany rolled over me in a disorienting way. My chest filled with something warm, terrifying, and sacred.

Somehow, through the lump in my throat, I found words. I looked down at him and my ragged voice choked out, “I love you, buddy.”

And when he looked up at me and said, “I love you too,” without a moment’s hesitation… something in me changed forever.

That moment, that simple, miraculous moment, was a turning point for me. Not immediately. I wish I could say I was suddenly healed in a blinding flash of brilliant light. I wasn’t. But that doesn’t diminish the importance of it. Even if it would take decades for the fruit to fully ripen, something was planted inside me that day. Something real. Something good.

It was the beginning of my journey back to the light.”

I never saw myself as a father then, not really. I was still fumbling through my own trauma, still trying to believe I deserved anything good. But that hug changed me, forever. It didn’t fix everything immediately. It didn’t save me from what would happen next.

But it did shift my reality.

It gave me a glimpse of the man I might one day become, and the strength to eventually become the father I am now to my daughter. A father who can carry her love, and respond to it in a way that’s healthy, grounded, and with the grace she deserves.

And my daughters love, well, that truly did save me.

But that is another story.

On this Father’s Day, I carry that moment with Caleb like a compass. Proof that love, even in its smallest gestures, can reroute a life.