When I was younger, I planned to guide big mountains.
I studied wilderness leadership at Prescott College. I completed a semester with the National Outdoor Leadership School. I had an internship lined up in Nepal. Life, in my mind, was about risk, adventure, and purpose.
And then-life had other plans. We found out we were pregnant with our first child.
Suddenly, it felt irresponsible to haul gear up Himalayan peaks when I had a family to consider. I shifted gears and studied outdoor education. I figured I could split my time between guiding and teaching. It was the first of many small compromises-each one well-intentioned, each one giving away little pieces of myself in service of something bigger.
Eventually, we moved back to the midwest. Goodbye, mountains.
Hello, safe job.
One night after work, my then-wife asked me how my day was. I told her, “Same as yesterday. Probably the same as tomorrow.”
And then I said something that would later echo louder than I wanted: “One day, this won’t be enough. I’ll be 40. And I’ll leave.”
We tried marriage counseling. We had another child. Two trial separations later, we divorced.
I felt like a failure. The one thing I thought I’d be good at-raising a family, being a solid husband, a present father-I had lost.
And yet.
Something interesting happened in the wake of that unraveling. I went back to the things that had always made me feel most like me.
I restarted the summer outdoor program I’d once created for teens. I trained for ultramarathons-100 miles, brutal terrain, middle-of-the-night, “Why am I doing this?” kind of races. I met new people, people who shared that hunger for growth, effort, and renewal. I built something new. And I fell in love again-with a woman who met me where I was on the trail and in the hard places. We spent a week in the Pacific Northwest together, climbed the glaciers and snowfields of Mount Rainier, and I proposed.
The rest, as they say, is history.
I became a coach not because I have all the answers- but because I know what it’s like to have to ask better questions.
Questions like:
- “What do I do when the future I pictured disappears?”
- “How do I rebuild when I feel like a failure?”
- “What if the story’s not over?”
Today, I help people write new chapters.
Sometimes we climb mountains. Sometimes we run long distances. Sometimes we sit quietly and take one small brave step.
This is my story. Now I help others reclaim theirs.
