The Long Road Home

A true story of grief, betrayal, and the love that brought me back

Last Sunday, on Father’s Day, I released an excerpt from my memoir Almost - A Memoir of Love, Loss, and the Women Who Changed Me. That piece detailed my experience with Caleb (not his real name, I’ve changed his and his mother’s names to protect their privacy), and how the slow, unexpected unfolding of his love shifted the trajectory of my life.

Caleb didn’t just change me. He opened something inside me that might never have seen the light of day otherwise; my capacity to truly love, unconditionally.

I was a traumatized adult, emotionally frozen, disconnected from myself and the world around me. But through him, through being loved by him, I began to thaw. To feel. To believe, however cautiously, that I could be something more than what had been done to me. More than a victim of my past.

That transformation was neither fast nor easy. It was a long, often dark journey. But it carried me somewhere important; to the place where I could one day love my own daughter with unfettered, unconditional love.

That’s the miracle of love. It doesn’t just warm us, it rewires us. It expands our understanding of what matters in this existence. It teaches us things about the nature of the universe we couldn’t have discovered otherwise. It drives us to be better.

But here’s the part no one likes to say out loud.

Love also leaves us wide open. Vulnerable.

And that vulnerability? It’s not just a byproduct of love. It’s built into it. We become susceptible, not just to others who might use that love against us, but to the brutal weaponry of our own minds. Love is a double-edged sword. It’s powerful enough to resurrect you. But it’s just as capable of undoing you from the inside out.

I want to tell you a story where love did both. It nearly broke me. And it also saved my life.

Eight years ago, my mother died. And it shattered me.

After my mother died, I spiraled into one of the darkest chapters of my life. Grief consumed me slowly at first, then all at once. About a year later, I broke completely. I couldn’t work. I couldn’t function. I became trapped in my own home, too paralyzed by anxiety and depression to step outside, even just to get the mail. The isolation nearly destroyed me. I was clawing my way out of that hole, just beginning to find my footing again, when the person I trusted most, my wife, betrayed me.

I had stood by her through everything, including a devastating diagnosis of a terminal neurological condition that most people don’t face until their later years. I gave my love freely, cared for her deeply, and committed to the long road ahead. But at my lowest point, when I needed support most, she chose to leave, and not quietly. Her affair shattered me. The abandonment hit at the core of my deepest fear, leaving me feeling discarded, like my pain was invisible, meaningless. At that point in my life, I was ready to jump, literally. I didn’t see a way forward.

In the aftermath, I didn’t rise like some triumphant phoenix. I just… endured. At first, that was all I could do. Breathe. Eat. Sleep. Repeat. I felt broken, hollowed out by grief and betrayal. But somewhere in the stillness of that emptiness, a voice called me back to myself, not a dramatic revelation, but a quiet, constant truth; my daughter needed me. She needed her dad.

She saved me.

She didn’t rescue me with big gestures or perfect timing. It was simpler than that. A hug. A laugh. The way she looked at me like I was still someone worth loving. In showing up for her, day after day, I started to slowly show up for myself again. She gave me purpose when I had none. Her presence didn’t erase the pain, but it gave me something stronger than despair, a reason to keep going. She became my tether, my reason to get out of bed, to step outside, to live.

I’m still here because of her.

But the road wasn’t straight. For a while, I lost her too. Not entirely, but enough that it felt like a second death. During that year, my daughter was under enormous pressure from voices that didn’t always have her best interests at heart. She was pulled away from me, emotionally and physically, by people who used fear, guilt, and manipulation to shape her choices. I won’t point fingers. I don’t need to. What matters is that she was hurting, confused, and caught in something toxic. And I could do nothing but wait, hope, and stay alive.

There were so many nights I didn’t want to keep going. So many mornings where getting out of bed felt impossible. But I knew she needed me. Even if she didn’t know it yet, I knew. I bit down hard and marched forward, one agonizing step at a time. I wrote her letters I couldn’t send. I whispered I loved her to the ceiling fan. I held the line for her, even when I felt like I was unraveling. I called her every day, every single, painful day.

And slowly, she came back. One conversation at a time.

Finally, she came back to me physically. She came to visit me in Seattle, where I was living at the time. We had long, heartfelt conversations full of revelation and love. She told me the truth of what she’d been through, and I listened, my heart breaking for her experiences, but my face expressing care. I didn’t have answers, only arms to hold her and ears to hear her. But sometimes, that’s enough. That’s how we started healing.

Together.

And she saved my life.

It’s as simple as that.