For most of my life, I believed I was broken. Not temporarily broken. Fundamentally broken. I collected the evidence: childhood abuse, four divorces, four DUIs, and the day my infant son Malachi died in 1999. I turned everything that happened into proof that I was the kind of person who deserved to suffer.

But the question that finally changed things wasn’t:

“How do I get someone to love me?”

It was:

“Can I stop hating myself long enough to consider that I might actually be worth liking?”

I spent my life directing my energy outward—toward employers, partners, family, everyone around me—because giving that same attention to myself felt selfish. I never consistently considered myself someone worthy of the same effort I gave everyone else.

Then I started recording conversations with myself. No script. No performance. Just honesty.

And somewhere in that process, I started to like the person I was talking to.

Not love. Not some perfect version of myself.

Just like.

That became the doorway.

What this episode IS:

• A raw confession about shame, self-punishment, and learning to stop abandoning yourself
• An honest look at why liking yourself may need to come before loving yourself
• A conversation about what happens when you finally give yourself the attention you have always given everyone else

What this episode is NOT:

• A self-help formula
• A clinical explanation of trauma
• A motivational speech about becoming a better version of yourself

This is about one question:

What if the person you have been running from is the person who has been waiting for you all along?

July 31st, 1999, my infant son Malachi died. I carried that loss for years as proof that I was a bad person—that somehow I deserved punishment. But the question that eventually changed everything wasn’t just about grief.

It was about love.

I wanted somebody to love me. I wanted somebody to love. And I had to face a brutal truth: I didn’t know what the hell love actually was.

I had spent my life accepting definitions handed to me by religion, culture, relationships, and expectations about who I was supposed to be. I thought love was something you earned after becoming the right kind of person.

So I sat down with a blue Bic pen and an accounting ledger. No pencil. Because I knew if I used a pencil, I would start erasing. I wrote down what I actually wanted. Not the answer that sounded good. Not the answer that made me look like a better person. The truth.

And then I asked myself the question I had spent years avoiding:

What if love is possible for someone like me?

What this episode IS:

• An honest conversation about shame, self-punishment, and the search for real love
• A personal story about questioning the definitions of love we inherit without realizing it
• An invitation to examine what you actually believe about your own ability to be loved

What it is NOT:

• A grief recovery formula
• A religious explanation for suffering
• A motivational speech telling you to ignore your pain and move on

This is about one question:

What if you are not as impossible to love as you have always believed?

I recorded this on July 28th, 2026 with no intro music and no polish.

I am 60. No PhD. I spent most of my life feeling broken and out of place — parental abuse, four divorces, four DUIs, the death of my infant son Malachi. I abandoned myself by giving everything to everyone outside me because caring for myself felt selfish. It took decades before I liked myself. Only after that did I consider loving myself. That is when Sharon arrived. The archive episodes were born while she went through stage-three cancers so I could stay present instead of drinking.

This is the first episode where I play one of my own songs — lyrics I wrote. “You Love My Scars.”

If you are still crying into the pillow at night, still managing the impression, still convinced the real you is unlovable, the free book Kick Rocks is waiting. No email. No opt-in.

Just the truth.