Madison—

If you ever want to understand why I reached for a bottle at night, I need to start long before you were born.

I grew up in an environment where drinking was not a red flag.

It was background noise.

It was “how we do things.”

It was family tradition and stress relief and social glue all braided together.

If you didn’t drink, you were the strange one.

Looking back, I can see it clearly for what it was:

a generational curse disguised as normal behavior.

Nobody called it that, of course. They called it:

blowing off steam relaxing taking the edge off

And when the next day’s fallout came—arguments, hangovers, money gone, tension thick in the air—it was written off as just part of life.

When that’s the water you grow up swimming in, it doesn’t feel like a choice.

It feels like destiny.

Against the odds, a different path

If I could sit across from you and tell you one thing about that part of my story, it would be this:

I inherited a script I did not write.

And against the odds, I chose to stop performing it.

I need you to know both pieces.

I want you to understand the context—that I was shaped in a place where numbing was the accepted answer, where reaching for a drink wasn’t seen as dangerous but as responsible. The message, spoken or not, was:

“This is what adults do. This is what we do.”

I also want you to understand the choice—that at some point, I stopped treating it as unavoidable and started treating it as a curse I could break.

That doesn’t make me a hero. It makes me a man who got tired of paying the interest on other people’s decisions.

The world is finally catching on to this dynamic. The “sober curious” movement is full of people questioning the drinking culture they inherited, asking whether what was “normal” in their families was ever actually healthy. Many are choosing clarity, not because they hit a dramatic rock bottom, but because they’re done pretending the old script fits. 

That’s me, too.

I realized that every time I used alcohol to soften the night, I was:

avoiding the work my soul needed adding new damage on top of old pain rehearsing the same story I swore I didn’t want you to inherit

Self-medicating didn’t delete the bad. It made more of it.

And eventually, I had to deal with all of it anyway.

So I decided to start keeping the bad to a minimum.

Choosing awe instead of anesthetic

Here’s the part I didn’t expect:

When I stopped numbing, I didn’t just end up with more pain.

I also ended up with more wonder.

These days, I go out of my way to look for awe in my normal life:

a sunrise that paints the sky like a promise a sunset that makes the day’s struggle feel strangely worth it a lake so flat it looks like glass, reflecting the world back perfectly still clouds drifting in shapes that mean nothing and everything at the same time

It might sound small or silly to some people, but it’s not.

Researchers and therapists are talking constantly now about the power of awe—how brief moments of wonder in nature can reduce stress, improve mood, make you feel more connected, and even slow your sense of frantic time. 

Other folks call these “glimmers”—tiny sparks of good that help regulate your nervous system and counterbalance all the heavy. 

For me, awe is not just a wellness hack.

It is an act of rebellion.

Every time I stop to watch the sky change colors instead of pouring a drink, I’m saying:

“The way I grew up is not the only way to live.

I choose to be here for this.”

Every quiet, beautiful moment I actually feel—without numbing, without rushing—marks one more brick in a different kind of inheritance.

Why this matters for you

You haven’t spoken to me in five years. I respect that distance.

But even from here, I know something that research is now spelling out in headlines:

A father’s mental health leaves fingerprints on his children—on their behavior, their sense of safety, their way of moving in the world. 

You lived closer to my storms than I wish you had to.

I can’t rewrite that.

What I can do is this:

Refuse to pass the curse forward, even indirectly. Do my own inner work instead of exporting it to the next generation. Build a life where clarity is normal, not exceptional.

If you ever have a daughter of your own one day, I want you to be able to say:

“My dad grew up where drinking was the accepted behavior.

He didn’t stay there.

He turned and walked in another direction.

I’m walking even further.”

That’s generational change. Not perfection—progress.

Clouds with a different meaning now

You told me once how you handle intrusive thoughts now:

You picture them as clouds on a warm summer day—drifting across the sky of your mind, passing through instead of taking over.

I do the same.

It’s fitting, really.

Clouds used to be what I avoided seeing clearly when I drank:

the storm in my own head, the fog over my choices.

Now, they’re reminders that thoughts are not permanent and curses are not final.

A thought appears:

You’re just like the men you came from.

I watch it.

Name it.

Let it drift past.

Another appears:

You’ll never fully outrun this.

I notice it, and then remember: I already have moved further than many expected me to. And every day I stay awake and sober and attentive, I move further still.

The sky holds them, and then releases them.

I’m allowed to do the same.

Mountains, monsters, and mercy in the bloodline

In this chapter of my life, the pieces look like this:

The mountain Breaking a pattern so old it feels like part of my DNA. Choosing clarity, responsibility, and awe—every day, not just on anniversaries or rock-bottom nights. The monster The generational curse itself: that voice that says, “This is just who we are. This is what men like us do. Don’t be dramatic. Don’t be different.” Mercy The simple, repeated fact that I do not have to obey that voice. Mercy is a sunrise after a sober night. Mercy is a lake like glass instead of an empty bottle. Mercy is a sky full of clouds that no longer scare me.

In the same journal that birthed the stories and metaphors of Mountains, Monsters, and Mercy, I’m writing a different kind of record now: notes about the moments of awe that kept me grounded and the choices that quietly broke the curse a little more each day.

If you ever flip through those pages years from now, I hope you see more than a man who struggled.

I hope you see a man who:

grew up in an environment where self-destruction was accepted behavior named it for what it was—a generational curse and, against the odds, chose a different path

Not perfectly. Not painlessly. But persistently.

I love you, Madison.

Enough to face what shaped me.

Enough to refuse to hand it to you wrapped in a pretty story.

Enough to keep choosing awe over anesthetic, so that your inheritance is lighter than the one I received.

Dad