The fall was sudden. The pain intense. The injury quiet and hidden, too personal to share. Only 4 people from my personal life know what I was going through. I never felt more alone.

Meanwhile, life kept going in. I have responsibilities. I can’t turn off. I need to show up for my family, for my kids. I can’t stop being there father. I can’t stop providing. I so desperately needed a sabbatical from work to process what I was going through, but none was available to me. And so I had to keep showing up at work, doing my best to bury my struggles and keep checking things off todo lists.

I worked hard this last year. I worked hard to not let on that I was in crisis, to keep things moving at work when all I wanted to do was run away from it. I worked hard to be a source of unconditional love, a stable foundation for my family while my own foundation crumbled. And above all I’ve worked hard on myself, questioning my beliefs and values, and perhaps most importantly my understanding of myself.

Outwardly, I’m much the same person I was a year ago. I’m ostensibly living the same life, with the same job and family life, and spending my spare time in most of the same ways. Inwardly, this has been the most significant transformation of my life so far. I’ve learned so much about myself, about anxieties that I’d allowed to drive my life without truly realizing they were there. I’ve realized how despite my best intentions, I’ve not been present in the ways that most matter. I know now that I can’t fix everything, that sometimes its more important to accept things are hard and will be hard, and I can’t problem solve them away. And I’ve learned just how much I was avoiding my own sadness, and how doing so was making me angry and resentful instead.

I’m learning to get out of my head, embrace my emotional states without attributing cause to them, and I’m so much better off for it. I’ve realized there’s a beauty to sadness; that when we don’t avoid it, it can bring peace and calm. And in that calm I can be so much better as a father, and I hope as a partner as well.

I fell into a chasm, and I haven’t made it out just yet. But I’ve found solid footing, and am climbing out. How long it’ll take to get out, or if I ever fully will, I can’t know. And that’s ok.