This may be published a bit out of order, given where I am.

But I’m not trying to chronicle this journey perfectly, if we’re being honest.

While I’ve been taking steps to accept where I am and what transition looks like, there have been moments of doubt.

Big ones.

Small ones that still manage to cut.

The kind that show up in the early hours when I’m somewhere between nightmares and sleep, and my brain decides it would like to hold a board meeting.

Two thoughts have been particularly persistent:

I thought I heard my calling, but maybe I heard an echo.

Am I on the precipice of another failure?

So let’s unpack those.

Unfortunately, I’m here too.

I Thought I Heard My Calling, But Maybe I Heard an Echo

I’ve mentioned it before, but nine years ago I tried this whole working-with-TCKs thing.

I moved to Arizona with a plan and a story I wanted to tell.

Things didn’t work out.

I moved home.

I wrote it off as a loss.

Nine years later, almost on the same day, I found myself back in the world of TCKs.

Several thousand miles away.

A completely different capacity.

But I was back, baby.

And honestly?

It felt significant.

Things started out beautifully.

Doors opened.

There was momentum.

I was in the UK, starting a life and joining a team.

For a while, it felt like all those years of wondering what the hell I was doing had finally led somewhere.

Maybe the thing I tried to do nine years earlier hadn’t actually been a failure.

Maybe I had just been early.

Maybe God had taken the scenic route.

Maybe all the wandering had brought me back to something I was always supposed to do.

Then we hit a snag.

And now I’m asking a much more uncomfortable question:

What if I heard an echo and ran toward it?

Because I was lost.

Hurt.

Heartbroken.

I needed something to give my time in Europe meaning, and I thought I had found it.

Maybe I really did.

Maybe I didn’t.

Maybe I heard something real and simply found myself in a season where the thing I thought would be easy is proving to be anything but.

Or maybe I heard an echo while desperately trying to climb out of a hole, and mistook the sound of my own hope for a calling.

There’s one for you.

How are we doing?

Me?

Shit, honestly.

But we press on.

Am I on the Precipice of Another Failure?

This one is more self-critical.

And if I let it run unchecked, it gets destructive quickly.

Since this thought surfaced, I’ve talked to a lot of people.

We’ve worked on reframing it.

I’m not where I was when it first hit.

But this is my Substack, and I think there is value in being honest about thoughts I’ve had even after I’ve started moving through them.

So here it is.

I’ve worked in a lot of different fields.

People think that’s interesting.

And maybe it is.

When I’m healthy, it feels like a collection of experiences.

When I’m not, it looks like evidence.

Evidence that I don’t stick with things.

Evidence that I fail.

Evidence that I keep having to start over.

And, if I’m being brutally honest, I have failed at a lot of things.

Sometimes gracefully.

Sometimes with the grace of a baby deer finding out it has legs.

Sometimes I knew it was coming.

Sometimes I absolutely did not.

Sometimes I made the right decision in a terrible situation.

Sometimes I made a terrible decision in a terrible situation.

And sometimes life just happened.

But when I’m in a dark enough place, all those distinctions disappear.

They become one big wall of:

You failed.

Right now, I feel like I’m standing in front of another version of that wall.

Another thing I may eventually have to explain.

Another set of questions:

“What happened?”

“Why didn’t it work out?”

“What brought you back?”

And every other question you get when you change fields, change direction, or move back to your depressing home city.

Things I truthfully don’t want to answer, or maybe don’t even have the capacity to answer.

Those questions are not inherently cruel.

But when you already feel like a failure, they can feel like an interrogation.

I’ve answered versions of them before.

When I got divorced.

When I lost the skate shop.

When I had to file bankruptcy.

When the first attempt at working with TCKs didn’t work.

Every time, there was a story.

Every time, there was an explanation.

Every time, I had to work out how to tell people what happened without turning my entire life into a cautionary tale.

And I am tired of feeling like I have to explain why something didn’t work.

Maybe Failure Isn’t the Right Word

This is where I’m trying to slow myself down.

Because I think I’ve made a dangerous assumption:

If something doesn’t work out the way I expected, then I failed.

But those are not necessarily the same thing.

A relationship ending doesn’t mean the entire relationship was a failure.

A business closing doesn’t mean every part of building it was worthless.

Moving home doesn’t erase what I learned somewhere else.

And something changing in my work does not automatically mean I was wrong to pursue it.

I know this intellectually.

Emotionally?

We’re still negotiating.

Because I want certainty.

I want to know whether I heard God correctly.

I want to know whether I made the right choice.

I want to know whether this season is a detour, a redirection, a pruning, a complete change of course, or simply a really shitty chapter I have to get through.

I would love a Google Maps voice to calmly say:

“Recalculating.”

Please make a U-turn when possible.

That would be excellent.

Instead, I get silence.

Or questions.

Or the occasional tiny moment when something feels right again.

And apparently, I’m supposed to do something with that.

Maybe I Don’t Need to Know Yet

I think part of accepting where I am means accepting that I don’t get to know the ending before I live the middle.

Annoying.

Deeply annoying.

I would like spoilers, please.

But maybe I don’t need to decide today whether I heard a calling or an echo.

Maybe I can admit that I desperately wanted this life to mean something, and that desire may have influenced how I understood what was happening.

And I can admit that wanting something badly doesn’t make it fake.

Maybe God can work through my desperation, my hope, my mistakes, my good decisions, my bad decisions, and all the weird little moments in between.

Maybe I heard something real.

Maybe I heard an echo.

Maybe I heard both.

Maybe the thing I thought was the destination was actually just one part of the journey.

I don’t know.

And I’m trying not to turn that uncertainty into a verdict on my life.

Because I am still here.

Still asking questions.

Still listening.

Still trying.

Still working out what God is doing, what I am doing, and where the two of those things meet.

Maybe that is enough for now.

I don’t need to know whether this is the calling.

I just need to keep listening.

And hopefully, next time, I’ll know the difference between the voice and the echo.

Lately, if you’ve been sticking around for my more dramatic posts, you may have noticed that this whole “fully living in the UK” thing hasn’t exactly gone to plan.

Things haven’t gone in the direction I expected.

They haven’t followed the timeline I had in my head.

And, in classic Danny fashion, I apparently thought I could solve uncertainty by having a very specific vision for how everything was supposed to turn out.

That worked beautifully.

Obviously.

So this morning, somewhere between forcing myself out of bed and trying to convince my brain that the day was worth participating in, I found myself asking:

What if I am completely misreading the story?

Not just the current chapter.

The whole thing.

Because maybe this is a tragic comedy.

Or maybe, more uncomfortably, it is a Greek tragedy.

And maybe the most interesting possibility is that neither of those is quite right.

Maybe I’m just still near the beginning.

The Tragedy

A Greek tragedy usually needs a protagonist who contributes to his own downfall.

Hubris.

Blindness.

The stubborn belief that if you are smart enough, determined enough, or important enough, you can force the story to go the way you want.

Which feels a little familiar.

I had a picture of what this chapter was supposed to look like.

Move to Europe.

Chase love.

Get my heart broken.

Stay because something bigger had opened up.

Find the work.

Find the community.

Fall in love.

Find the purpose.

Build the life.

I remember one specific room.

One specific sentence.

I had come back with a vision — years of watching TCKs fall through the cracks between countries, and a plan to actually do something about it.

Work across the bases that were supposed to be sending people out into the world, and help them land better than I had.

I said it out loud in that room, fully expecting it to be welcomed.

Instead, someone told me I wasn’t being a team player.

Not because the vision was wrong.

Because it was mine, and not the one they already had for me.

I remember sitting there doing the thing I now recognise as very on-brand: nodding, recalculating, already trying to work out how to fold my vision into theirs instead of asking why I was so sure mine had to survive intact.

That’s the scene, if I’m honest.

Not the visa.

Not the relationship.

That room.

I did some of those things I’d pictured.

Some beautifully.

Some badly.

Some in ways I could never have predicted.

But somewhere along the way, I stopped asking what was actually happening and started asking how to get the story back onto the track I had imagined.

That is a dangerous distinction.

When you think you already know what the story is about, every unexpected turn starts looking like a problem to solve.

A relationship ends?

Adjust.

The visa becomes complicated?

Fight harder.

The move becomes reality?

Get organised.

The work feels different from what you expected?

Push through.

Community takes longer to build?

Try harder.

Exhaustion?

Ignore it.

Keep going.

The protagonist has a plan.

The audience has concerns.

The protagonist does not notice.

Classic.

The Audience Knows

That may be my favourite thing about Greek tragedy.

The audience knows.

The protagonist doesn’t.

You watch someone make a decision and want to shout at the stage:

“Mate.

Stop.

You are making this worse.”

And they keep going.

Not because they are stupid.

Because they are operating from what they believe to be true.

That is what makes it tragic.

And maybe that is what has happened to me.

Not that I was foolish to come here.

Not that everything I believed was wrong.

But perhaps I became so attached to the story I thought I was living that I stopped paying attention to the story that was actually unfolding.

That possibility is uncomfortable.

Because then I have to admit that some of the suffering is not simply something happening to me.

Some of it has come from my own insistence on knowing what comes next.

My need to make the pieces fit.

My refusal to sit in uncertainty for very long.

And maybe the comedy is that I have spent months trying to explain the plot while the plot was still being written.

Recognition

Greek tragedy has another thing I find interesting: recognition.

The moment when the protagonist finally sees what has been true for longer than they realised.

Not necessarily the moment everything gets better.

Just the moment they understand.

That feels closer to where I am.

I am starting to see that getting the life I fought for does not automatically mean I know how to live inside it.

That a new country cannot fix old patterns.

That purpose cannot carry me if I have no capacity left.

That movement and progress are not the same thing.

That I can be deeply grateful for my life and still find parts of it painfully difficult.

That I can love what I have built and still need to change how I am living inside it.

That last one may be the hardest.

Because it means the answer is not necessarily going backwards.

It may not even be forwards.

It may simply be different.

The Comedy

And honestly, there is something ridiculous about all of this.

I moved across an ocean and somehow managed to recreate many of the same internal problems I had before.

Impressive.

Internationally mobile dysfunction.

A premium service.

I came here believing I was building a new life.

Turns out I brought myself with me.

Rude.

Very inconsiderate of me.

The same overthinking.

The same tendency to overwork.

The same habit of becoming useful so I can feel secure.

The same fear that if I stop moving, I might have to actually feel what is happening.

Turns out you can change countries without changing those things.

Who knew?

And maybe that is where the comedy belongs.

Not in pretending this isn’t painful.

In recognising how absurdly human it is.

We move.

We plan.

We predict.

We convince ourselves we understand.

Then life laughs at the plan.

The Story I Actually Want

So maybe I don’t want a perfect ending.

I don’t want a neat little redemption arc where every awful thing becomes secretly necessary.

I don’t want to look back and decide all of this happened because I needed to learn a lesson.

Some things were simply hard.

Some things were simply sad.

Some things hurt people.

Some things changed me.

I don’t need to make all of that beautiful to make it meaningful.

What I do want is an ending that makes the beginning look different.

The kind where I look back at the boy who moved to Europe for a girl and understand he was not foolish for going.

He just didn’t know what the journey would become.

The kind where losing the purpose I thought I had found made room for something I could never have planned.

The kind where the life I built isn’t the life I originally imagined, but somehow becomes more honest.

More sustainable.

More mine.

And maybe the greatest change isn’t external at all.

Maybe it is becoming someone who no longer needs to know the ending in order to keep living the middle.

I don’t know whether this is the beginning of something great.

The middle of something painful.

Or simply a story I haven’t learned how to read yet.

But I know something I didn’t know at the start:

I am not the author of all of this.

I get choices.

I get responsibility.

I get to pay attention.

I do not get to control every outcome.

Maybe I need to stop assuming that the story has to make sense to me while I am still living it.

Maybe I just need to stay in the story long enough to find out what it becomes.

And for now?

I’m still the protagonist.

Still confused.

Still occasionally ridiculous.

Still hopeful in ways I don’t always understand.

Still very much in the middle.

But I’m here.

And the ending, annoyingly, has not been written yet.

First and foremost, thank you to my mom for saying this phrase to me today and reminding me why I do this.

I was talking to my mom today about my writing.

More specifically, questioning it.

Why am I doing this?

Does it matter?

Am I helping anyone, or have I just built a very public filing cabinet for my emotions?

All reasonable questions.

Probably.

Then my mom said something that stopped me.

She told me I say the “quiet parts out loud for people.”

And there it was.

That is exactly why I started this Substack.

I was saying the quiet parts out loud for myself.

The things that felt too dramatic to say in conversation.

The questions I did not have clean answers for.

The ugly emotions.

The embarrassing ones.

The ones that make you stare at the page afterwards and think:

“You sure we’re publishing this?”

Unfiltered.

Messy.

A little chaotic.

Sometimes uncomfortable.

Very me.

Then, somehow, people started reading.

And some of those quiet parts turned out not to be mine alone.

Losing My Edge

I think lately I’ve lost a little of that.

My edge.

And by edge, I don’t mean being cruel or unkind.

I mean Danny.

I come with edges.

I always have.

I am deeply emotional.

I swear sometimes.

I make jokes when things hurt.

I ask questions that occasionally make rooms uncomfortable.

I have strong opinions followed almost immediately by:

“Okay, but what if I’m wrong?”

I believe deeply in Jesus while still being willing to say the Church has wounded me.

I love my life while occasionally admitting that living it is fucking exhausting.

I am hopeful and depressed.

Grateful and angry.

Confident and terrified.

Sometimes within fifteen minutes.

Those contradictions are part of me.

They are also part of my writing.

But somewhere along the way, I started rounding them off.

Making things cleaner.

Safer.

More polished.

A little easier to digest.

I would write something that felt true and immediately wonder how someone else might receive it.

Then I’d soften it.

Add context.

Add another caveat.

Explain that I definitely didn’t mean everyone.

Make sure nobody could possibly feel implicated.

Here’s what that actually looks like, in practice.

I’ve already written, elsewhere, about the day my rock bottom came down to a bottle in a shop bathroom, because I couldn’t make myself look another customer in the eye.

If I’d let the sanding finish the job, it would’ve come out something like: “I went through a period where I struggled with anxiety in customer-facing situations.”

Technically accurate.

Also dead on arrival.

Nobody weeps reading a sentence like that.

Nobody feels less alone.

It just sits there being correct.

Then I’d read the real version back and think:

Well.

That’s nice.

But where the hell did I go?

There is a difference between editing something well and sanding it down until there is nothing left to catch on.

I think I’ve been doing a little too much sanding.

Coming Back to Me

Then, today, I was reminded of a text I received about my writing:

(Quick context if you’re newer here: TCK stands for Third Culture Kid — someone who grew up outside their parents’ home culture. It’s its own particular kind of disorientation, and it’s most of who I’m writing to.)

“Danny and I met a couple of months ago. I had been reading his Substack and sharing it with TCKs and their parents for several weeks before that. The content was so helpful for TCK teens who felt seen for the first time, who had words to go with what they were experiencing, and who felt hope about the future where they had lost it before. I’m thinking of one particular teen who wrote me saying that they wept as they read and realized someone else had weathered the same storms that they were currently in. It was a breakthrough for them.”

I had read it.

But I needed to read it again and sit with it.

A TCK read something I wrote and realised someone else had weathered the same storm.

They had words for something that had felt wordless.

They felt seen.

They felt hope where they had lost it.

What else could I ever ask for?

Seriously.

Strip away subscribers.

Paid subscriptions.

Views.

Performance.

Whether this ever becomes a book, a career, or anything else.

Someone read my words and felt less alone.

That is enough to remind me why I started.

The Quiet Parts

Growing up between cultures gave me a lot of feelings before it gave me language for them.

I knew what it felt like to leave.

To come back.

To miss places that were not technically home.

To feel foreign in the country I was supposed to belong to.

To adapt so often that sometimes I wasn’t sure which parts of me were actually me.

I just didn’t always know how to say any of that.

And unnamed things get heavy.

That has followed me into adulthood.

Addiction, and the hundred “Did I do something wrong?” texts I sent because blackout-me had left sober-me no notes.

Sobriety, and almost 10 months now since Dylan came over, talked me into letting my parents drive me to detox, and simply refused to give up on me. Cosy Toes the stuffed cat also came along and, heroically, did not give up on me either.

Faith.

Church, and that specific ache of walking into a building I’m supposed to call home and still feeling like I’m being sized up at the door.

Shame.

Belonging, and the slow realisation that a room full of people who need you is not the same as a room full of people who know you.

Depression, which apparently does not need a passport, because it followed me across an ocean and 5,000-plus miles without missing a step.

Community.

Home, which ended up being a country I never once put on the original list.

There have been so many times when someone else put words to something I had been carrying quietly, and I thought:

“Oh.

It’s not just me.”

Sometimes it was a friend.

Sometimes a writer.

Sometimes a song I listened to 12 times while walking to Tesco because, apparently, that is one of my primary spiritual disciplines now.

But being given language changes things.

It doesn’t fix the problem.

It makes you less alone inside it.

That is what I want my writing to do.

Not solve people.

Not teach everyone the correct way to live.

Boy howdy, I am wildly underqualified.

Just say:

“I know this feeling.”

“I’ve been there.”

“I’m still there.”

“Here is what it sounds like inside my head.”

And if someone recognises themselves in that, brilliant.

Keeping the Edges

I think this is the wake-up call I needed.

Becoming a better writer does not mean becoming easier to read emotionally.

It means becoming better at saying exactly what I mean.

There is a difference.

I want better structure, better sentences, more restraint.

I want to know the difference between the entry that belongs in my journal and the one that’s actually ready for you, not because it got safer, but because it got clearer.

I want to know when I’m repeating myself, and when I’m just circling because I haven’t found the real sentence yet.

I want to become good enough at this that I stop reaching for the safe version of things.

Case in point: I almost wrote about my addiction as “all the damage I caused because I kept trying to drink my feelings quiet.”

True.

Also nowhere near as true as a hundred “Did I do something wrong?” texts sent by sober-me to people blackout-me never left any notes for.

That is the kind of good I am after.

But I do not want to become polished at the expense of being recognisable.

I do not want to round myself into someone who never makes the reader uncomfortable because I was too afraid to leave an edge exposed.

Sometimes my edges are the point.

The awkward honesty.

The contradiction.

The sentence I almost delete because it reveals more than I planned.

The admission that I am still in the middle and do not have the answer yet.

That is where a lot of these pieces started.

And apparently, somewhere out there, someone needed that version of me.

Not the finished one.

Not the carefully packaged one.

The person who had already weathered enough of the storm to look back and say:

“Hey. I know what this feels like. You’re not the only one.”

So I think my mom was right.

I say the quiet parts out loud.

I started because I needed somewhere to put them.

Now, sometimes, saying them gives someone else words too.

I do not want to lose that because I became too concerned with making myself easier to handle.

I am Danny.

I come with edges.

Some of them need work.

Some of them probably always will.

But I do not need to sand all of them off to be worth reading.

I need to learn how to use them well.

I don’t actually know how you do that without accidentally sanding a few down along the way.

Nobody hands you a manual for this.

So here’s the honest version, not the tidy one.

I’m still sanding sometimes.

Still catching myself mid-stroke.

Saying the quiet parts out loud anyway.

Sunday morning, I was sitting around waiting for a friend to pick me up for church.

I realised I was anxious somewhere around the third outfit change.

Okay.

Probably a bit before then.

But we know I have a flair for the dramatic.

The strange thing is that this is what you’d call my “home” church now.

The place where I’m supposed to feel settled.

Comfortable.

Welcomed.

Seen.

All the lovely words we use when talking about Christian community.

And yet there I was, anxious about walking through the doors.

Anxious about shaking hands.

Making introductions.

Doing the small-talk dance.

Watching someone look at me and try to work out exactly what category I belong in.

Apparently changing outfits three times was not entirely irrational.

Because I went to church twice yesterday.

And at both churches, in very different ways, I felt like a project.

Church One: The Scan

I know I look different than your average churchgoer.

This is not breaking news.

I’m a new face.

And I have a life story that requires either thirty seconds or three hours to explain.

There is very little middle ground.

So I understand curiosity.

Actually, I like curiosity.

Ask me questions.

Please.

But there is a particular interaction I’ve experienced enough times now that I can almost watch it happen in real time.

The scan.

Tattoos.

Earrings.

Clothes.

Accent.

Unknown face.

Okay.

Who is this guy?

Then comes the conversation.

At the first church yesterday, I could feel it.

Nothing hostile.

Nothing particularly dramatic.

Just that gentle assessment.

Trying to work out where I sat spiritually.

Then eventually, what I do for work came up.

“I work in missions.”

And there it was.

The shift.

The questions changed.

The posture changed.

Then came the rest.

I grew up on the mission field.

Ten years in the Middle East.

A year in South America.

My parents work in missions.

I now work with Third Culture Kids, missionaries, and people preparing to go overseas.

Background check complete.

Apparently, I passed.

I’m safe.

And honestly, I find that interaction funny at this point.

Mostly.

Because sometimes people approach me with the intention of introducing me to a world I have spent most of my life in.

There is something objectively hilarious about that.

But underneath the humour is a question I can’t quite shake:

Would you still have wanted to know me if I hadn’t passed the background check?

Church Two: The Project

Later that day, I went to another church.

Different city.

Different people.

Different experience.

This time, it was less of a scan.

More of a full project launch.

I was introduced to person after person.

Then another person.

Then someone else.

At some point, I began to wonder whether there would be an organisational chart.

There was a brutally awkward introduction to a very disinterested pastor.

A definite sense that I needed to be connected to the right people.

Directed somewhere.

Helped.

Assessed.

I know some of this was almost certainly genuine hospitality.

I want to say that clearly.

People saw someone new and wanted to welcome him.

That is not a bad instinct.

But there is a point where welcome starts feeling like management.

Where:

“Let me introduce you to someone”

starts feeling less like:

“I think you two would get along”

and more like:

“I think this person can deal with whatever is going on with you.”

Except nobody had actually established that anything was going on with me.

Nobody had really found out who I was yet.

I was simply new.

Different-looking.

An unknown quantity.

And apparently in need of spiritual routing.

Then some of the language I heard moved into territory I found genuinely concerning.

I’m intentionally not going to recreate it all here.

Partly because this piece is not about publicly dissecting one church after one visit.

Partly because I want to sit with what I heard before making grand declarations about anyone.

But it was enough to make my friend, who invited me, and me deeply uncomfortable.

Enough to make me think:

If I know church culture this well and I’m feeling the urge to retreat, what would this experience feel like to someone walking through those doors for the first time?

The Funny Part

Here is what makes all of this slightly absurd.

I love Jesus.

I work full-time in missions.

I grew up on the mission field.

I’ve spent years thinking about faith, culture, church, theology, belonging, hurt, restoration, and what all of those things look like when they collide with actual human beings.

I am not saying that makes me spiritually impressive.

Absolutely not.

Please see the extensive archive of me publicly trying to work out what on earth I’m doing.

But it does mean that when someone sees my appearance and assumes they need to work out whether I know Jesus, there is some irony involved.

And I can usually end the assessment pretty quickly.

I pull out the mission-worker card.

The shoulders relax.

Lovely.

But what if I couldn’t?

What If I Actually Was Lost?

What if I really were walking into church scared?

Freshly sober?

Lonely?

Sceptical?

Angry at God?

Unsure what I believed?

What if I did not know the vocabulary?

What if I did not understand how church works?

What if the tattoos, stretched ears, accent, awkwardness, and uncomfortable body language were genuinely attached to someone standing at the edge wondering:

“Is there actually room for me here?”

If this experience makes me want to retreat, what does it do to them?

That question bothers me.

Because people know when they have become a project.

You can feel it.

There is a difference between someone wanting to know you and someone wanting to get you somewhere.

One starts with curiosity.

The other starts with an outcome.

One asks:

“Who are you?”

The other asks:

“How do I get you from where you are to where I think you should be?”

And even when the desired outcome is something we believe is beautiful, the person standing in front of us is still a person.

Not an objective.

I’m Not Asking You to Stop Caring

I know where some minds may go with this.

So, to be clear:

I am not asking Christians to stop talking about Jesus.

That would be a very strange position for a mission worker to take.

Talk about Jesus.

Talk about faith.

Ask me what I believe.

Disagree with me.

Pray with me.

Tell me what God has done in your life.

I genuinely love those conversations.

What I’m asking is that we stop treating human connection like the first stage of a conversion strategy.

There is a difference between loving someone enough to share what matters most to you and loving them because you hope they will become something.

People can feel the difference.

Especially wounded people.

Especially people who have spent years being assessed.

Especially people who already assume they will not fit.

If the relationship disappears the moment the person does not respond the way you hoped, then I have questions about what kind of relationship it was in the first place.

Start With the Person

I think sometimes we make this much harder than it needs to be.

You don’t need a perfect opening.

You don’t need to identify someone’s spiritual status in the first ten minutes.

You don’t need to funnel them toward the pastor before you know their surname.

Sometimes you can just talk to them.

Radical.

I know.

Ask their name.

Remember it.

Ask why they came.

Find out what music they like.

Complain together about the coffee.

Invite them for lunch because you enjoy their company, not because you think lunch is step two of a discipleship pipeline.

Let them surprise you.

And if the conversation moves toward faith, brilliant.

Go there.

But go there because two human beings are actually having a conversation.

Not because you have already decided what the other person needs from you.

That is the part I keep coming back to after yesterday.

At one church, I felt scanned until I passed.

At another, I felt handled before anyone really knew me.

Neither interaction was catastrophic.

Nobody yelled at me.

Nobody threw me out.

There were kind people in both places.

That matters.

But subtle things matter too.

The small signals that tell someone:

You are being assessed.

You are being managed.

You are being figured out.

Instead of:

You are being known.

I’m Still Going

I’m still going to church.

I still believe in it.

I have experienced too much genuine Christian community to dismiss the whole thing because some interactions have been uncomfortable.

I know what it feels like when people get this right.

When someone sees you rather than scans you.

When they ask questions without an agenda.

When they remember what you said last week.

When their interest in your faith grows out of their interest in you as a whole person.

When they do not panic at your questions.

When they do not need your story to end somewhere convenient.

That kind of community has changed my life.

I want more of it.

I want to offer more of it.

So if someone walks through your church doors looking different from you, sounding different from you, carrying a story you do not understand:

Please do not decide who they are before they tell you.

They may have spent eleven years on the mission field.

They may have spent eleven years avoiding church.

They may love Jesus.

They may hate everything Christianity represents to them.

They may have absolutely no idea what they believe.

You don’t know yet.

And honestly?

You don’t need to.

Not immediately.

Start with the person.

Find out who they are before deciding who they need to become.

If they need Jesus, love them.

If they already know Jesus, love them.

If they’re furious with Jesus, love them.

If they want absolutely nothing to do with Jesus, love them.

Not because love is secretly step one of a conversion strategy.

Because there is a human being standing in front of you.

That should already be enough reason.

I go to church.

I love Jesus.

I work in missions.

And yesterday, after walking through two different church doors, I still found myself wondering whether people wanted to know me or fix me.

So please.

Ask about my tattoos.

Ask about the Middle East.

Ask about my accent.

Ask about my faith.

Ask why I look like I should be carrying a skateboard into the service.

I’ll probably laugh.

Just find out who I am before deciding who I need to become.

I’m not your project.

I’m already a person.

Start there.

I can make myself useful almost anywhere.

It may be one of my more marketable skills.

Give me a room full of people, a struggling project, an unfilled rota, or a problem nobody quite knows how to solve, and I will find something to carry.

I can organise.

Listen.

Write.

Photograph.

Teach.

Make coffee.

Move furniture.

Ask questions.

Lighten the mood.

Keep things moving.

I know how to look around a room, notice what is missing, and quietly become it.

That can be a gift.

It has opened doors.

Built friendships.

Created opportunities.

Helped people.

It has also made it remarkably easy for me to confuse being needed with belonging.

The Machinery

I have spent months building a life in the UK.

I attend church.

I work full-time in missions.

I know the language.

I know how to pray in public.

I know when to stand, sit, sing, listen, and make the appropriate thoughtful face during a sermon.

I can talk about calling.

Faith.

Ministry.

What God is teaching me.

I can serve.

I can help.

I can make myself useful.

And usefulness can look a lot like belonging from the outside.

People rely on you.

Thank you.

Invite you into projects.

Ask for your perspective.

Tell you how valuable your work is.

All of that can be genuine.

All of it can also exist while you remain deeply lonely.

A person can become part of the machinery of a church, team, or organisation without ever feeling like part of its life.

They can stack chairs.

Serve coffee.

Run sound.

Lead prayer.

Listen to everyone else’s problems.

Take on another responsibility.

Become the dependable one.

Then disappear for a week and only be contacted when someone needs their shift covered.

That sounds harsh.

I know.

But I think it happens more often than we would like to admit.

Sometimes we become very good at finding places for people’s gifts without making room for the people carrying them.

We know what they can do.

We know which gaps they can fill.

We know whether they are reliable.

But do we know what they are carrying?

Do they have anyone to call?

Who notices when they become quieter?

Who asks the second question after they say they are tired?

Who knows what “tired” means in their particular language?

Capable

There have been Sundays when I stood in a room full of people and felt almost invisible.

Not because everyone was unkind.

There have been people here who have welcomed me beautifully.

People who invited me into their homes.

Fed me.

Prayed for me.

Remembered small details.

Called when they sensed something was wrong.

I do not want this essay to erase them.

Their care has mattered more than I know how to express.

But a handful of beautiful relationships does not mean isolation stops existing.

There have still been stretches where I wondered whether anyone would notice if I stopped showing up.

Times when conversations remained firmly attached to my work because work was the easiest thing to know about me.

Moments when I was struggling but continued offering the polished answer because I did not know whether the real one would fit into the time or space available.

There have also been moments when I felt more recognised for what I could carry than cared for as the person carrying it.

That is difficult to admit.

It is also not entirely anyone else’s fault.

I am very good at appearing capable.

I can turn pain into humour quickly enough that people assume the pain has left.

I say:

“I’m tired, but I’m alright.”

What I sometimes mean is:

“I do not know how much longer I can carry this alone, but I have no idea how to say that without feeling dramatic.”

Slight difference.

Easy to miss.

Sometimes capable people are left unsupported precisely because they appear capable.

The person who listens to everyone else goes home unheard.

The person who serves faithfully is assumed to be spiritually full.

The funny one makes the room lighter and then returns to a quiet room alone.

The missionary continues completing the work, so everyone assumes the missionary must be fine.

We can celebrate someone’s gifts while ignoring their wounds.

We can thank them publicly and leave them lonely privately.

Usefulness can hide loneliness remarkably well.

My Part in It

I cannot write this as though the entire problem exists outside me.

I help create it.

Sometimes I make myself useful because service is good.

Sometimes I make myself useful because usefulness feels safer than need.

If I am helping, I know my place.

If I am carrying something, I know why I am in the room.

If I am solving a problem, I do not have to wonder whether people would still want me there without one.

That is a much harder question.

Being useful gives me something clear to offer.

Being known requires me to offer myself.

Not my work.

Not my ideas.

Not my ability to carry a difficult conversation.

Me.

The tired version.

The uncertain version.

The version who cannot solve the problem.

The version who needs the call, the meal, the invitation, or the second question.

That kind of vulnerability feels far less efficient.

Very inconvenient.

Poorly suited to a rota.

But relationships are not built on efficiency.

They are built when people are allowed to exist without constantly earning their place.

Needed Is Not the Same as Known

Being needed can feel wonderful.

It tells you that you matter.

That your skills have value.

That your presence changes something.

There is nothing wrong with that.

I want to contribute.

I want to serve.

I want to use what I have been given well.

But being needed is not the same as being known.

People can need your labour without knowing your fears.

They can praise your strength without noticing your exhaustion.

They can trust you with responsibility while never asking who carries you when the responsibility becomes heavy.

They can admire your openness while never creating space for you to be honest privately.

Being known looks different.

It remembers more than your role.

It notices when your jokes become sharper.

It hears the difference between “tired” and tired.

It invites you when there is nothing to accomplish.

It asks how you are doing without immediately turning your answer into advice.

It leaves room for silence.

It does not disappear when you have nothing useful to offer.

That is the kind of belonging I want.

Not a life where nobody needs me.

A life where being needed is not the only evidence that I matter.

Caring for the Capable

I think capable people can be difficult to care for.

We are convincing.

We arrive on time.

We finish the work.

We make the joke.

We remember everyone else’s crisis.

We say:

“I’ve got it.”

And often, we do.

Until we don’t.

The answer is not to assume every competent person is secretly falling apart.

That would be exhausting for everyone.

But perhaps it means remaining curious.

Checking in when there is no obvious crisis.

Inviting the person who usually organises the invitation.

Listening to the listener.

Asking the leader where they feel led, and where they feel lost.

Remembering that strength is something a person carries, not the entirety of who they are.

And for those of us who hide inside usefulness, perhaps the work is different.

We have to risk being honest before everything collapses.

We have to let people see needs they cannot solve.

We have to accept invitations without immediately asking how we can help.

We have to believe we are worth knowing even when our hands are empty.

I am still learning that.

Slowly.

Reluctantly.

One unnecessary offer to stack chairs at a time.

More Than What I Carry

I do not want to stop being useful.

That is not the conclusion.

Serving people is one of the great joys of my life.

I love noticing what needs care.

I love helping someone feel seen.

I love bringing order to chaos.

I love carrying things with people.

But I do not want usefulness to become the price of my belonging.

I do not want to be remembered only when something needs doing.

I do not want people to know my capacity better than they know my heart.

And I do not want to keep hiding behind competence, then resenting people for believing the version of me I presented.

I want to be useful.

But I also want to be known.

To be invited when there is no task.

To be asked how I am doing when I have nothing polished to say.

To be trusted with responsibility and allowed to admit when it feels heavy.

To be cared for before I become a crisis.

I think that is what real community offers.

Not freedom from responsibility.

Freedom from having to prove our worth through it.

A place where our gifts matter, but they are not the only reason we matter.

A place where the person carrying the burden is noticed before they collapse underneath it.

A place where someone can look at me, not at the work in my hands, and say:

“You do not have to carry anything today.

There is still a place for you here.”

I recently received a message from a friend who, like me, grew up on the mission field.

Their life has unfolded a lot like mine.

In some ways, it has been harder.

Addiction.

Isolation.

Uncertainty.

The lifelong struggle to answer a perfectly normal question like:

“So, where’s home for you?”

You know.

The classics.

Over the past nine months, we have spoken a lot about church.

About leaving.

Returning.

Wanting community.

Being afraid of community.

Trying to separate Jesus from the people who have represented Him poorly.

We even attended church together when I was in their country.

Then came a difficult season.

A rough patch feels like an understatement.

The patch has its own patches at this point.

The details belong to them, so I will leave those alone.

But over the past few months, they have slowly begun finding their feet again.

Recently, they attended a Christian weekend conference.

Afterwards, they sent me a message saying it had been interesting and that they might get involved with the prayer team.

Then they added:

“Maybe, if they’ll have me.”

I read that sentence more than once.

Maybe, if they’ll have me.

Not:

“Maybe I’ll enjoy it.”

Not:

“I wonder if prayer ministry is right for me.”

Not even:

“I’m nervous about getting involved.”

If they’ll have me.

Like prayer is a private club.

Like participating in church requires a certain level of spiritual respectability.

Like someone must first prove they are Christian enough, stable enough, sober enough, healed enough, or generally presentable enough to pray alongside other Christians.

What has someone experienced that makes that their first assumption?

And perhaps the harder question:

Who taught them to ask?

Who Taught Us to Audition?

I do not think most churches deliberately tell people they must earn belonging.

I have never seen a sign on a church door that says:

“WELCOME.

Terms and conditions apply.

No addicts.

No doubters.

No complicated histories.

Please ensure your life is emotionally tidy before entering.”

That would at least be honest.

Instead, the conditions are usually quieter.

They appear in who receives invitations.

Who gets trusted.

Who gets watched.

Whose story is treated as inspiring and whose is treated as concerning.

Who is allowed to struggle privately while remaining respected, and who becomes permanently defined by the worst thing they admitted publicly.

We say everyone is welcome.

And I think most of us mean it.

But people still learn that some versions of themselves are more welcome than others.

The healed version.

The useful version.

The version whose testimony has reached the part where everything worked out.

Good Lord, do we love that version.

They can stand at the front and explain how broken they once were.

Past tense.

Neatly contained.

Seven minutes, preferably.

A little sadness.

A clear turning point.

A hopeful ending.

Maybe a worship song afterwards.

Perfect.

But what about the person who has not reached the hopeful ending?

The person who came to church after drinking the night before.

The person who still does not know whether they believe all of this.

The person who wants to pray but is angry with God.

The person whose recovery has not moved in a straight line.

The person who cannot tell their story without crying, swearing, or contradicting themselves halfway through.

Do we want them too?

Not once they improve.

Now.

Welcome Is Not Belonging

Churches are often very welcoming places.

Someone stands at the entrance.

They smile.

They shake your hand.

They ask whether this is your first time.

They point you towards the coffee, which is usually either surprisingly good or an act of spiritual endurance.

You are told where the toilets are.

Someone may give you an information card.

You might even receive a free mug.

Beautiful.

But welcome and belonging are not the same thing.

Welcome says:

“You may enter.”

Belonging says:

“We noticed when you weren’t here.”

Welcome shows you where to sit.

Belonging saves you a seat.

Welcome asks your name.

Belonging remembers it next week.

Welcome invites you to an event.

Belonging invites you into someone’s life.

That distinction matters.

A person can attend the same church for months and remain almost entirely unknown.

They can learn the songs.

Join a rota.

Stack chairs.

Serve coffee.

Attend a small group.

Answer “How are you?” with “Fine” every Sunday.

They can become part of the activity of a church without ever becoming part of its community.

Not all church damage comes from what is done.

Some of it comes from what never happens.

The invitation that never comes.

The message nobody sends.

The name no one remembers.

The story nobody asks to hear.

The silence after someone takes the risk of being honest.

The second question that would have opened the door but remains unasked.

“How are you?”

“Fine.”

Then we move on.

Sometimes “fine” is true.

Sometimes it means:

“I do not know whether you have time for the real answer.”

Sometimes it means:

“I tried telling someone before, and they offered advice before I finished the sentence.”

Sometimes it means:

“I am terrified that if you know the whole story, you will decide I am too complicated to keep.”

People rarely walk away from church because someone forgot to invite them to lunch once.

They walk away after enough small moments have taught them nobody would notice.

I do not think most churches intend to communicate that.

But intention cannot make someone feel known.

Only relationship can do that.

The People at the Edges

I am not a theologian.

I am a tattooed man with a Substack and a complicated relationship with institutional language.

Please keep expectations reasonable.

But I have read enough of the Gospels to notice that Jesus did not make wounded people audition for proximity.

He did not wait for people to become respectable before sitting beside them.

He shared meals with people whose reputations entered the room before they did.

He touched people others avoided.

He allowed interruptions from people society had learned not to see.

He listened to questions.

He stayed close to grief.

He treated people as human before the crowd had finished explaining why they should be kept at a distance.

He did not approach them as future success stories.

He met them as they were.

That does not mean He never challenged anyone.

Love without honesty is not particularly loving.

But the challenge came within relationship.

People were not required to pass a test before being allowed near Him.

That matters when someone says:

“Maybe, if they’ll have me.”

Because if the Church is the body of Christ, people who are wounded, ashamed, addicted, uncertain, and trying to return should not feel like they are applying for membership in a club of people who have never fallen apart.

They should recognise something of Jesus among us.

Not perfection.

Not endless tolerance of harmful behaviour.

Not the absence of boundaries.

Jesus.

The kind of presence that makes a person believe they can tell the truth and remain in the room.

Would We Have Them?

It would be easy to answer my friend with:

“Of course they’ll have you.”

I wanted to.

But I cannot promise that.

Churches are made of people.

People can be frightened by what they do not understand.

People protect their comfort.

People can be loving one moment and deeply careless the next.

I cannot promise that every church will know how to receive my friend well.

I wish I could.

But perhaps their question is still worth turning back towards us.

Would we have them?

Not would we let them attend.

Would we have them?

Would we make space for the actual person?

Would we keep inviting them if they declined several times?

Would we sit beside them when their story made us uncomfortable?

Would we remain kind if recovery was uneven?

Would we trust them with small things without handing them authority too quickly or permanently treating them as suspicious?

Would we allow them to pray while they were still questioning?

Would we make room for their anger?

Would we care about them if they could not fill a gap on the rota?

Would we notice them beyond the testimony we hoped they might eventually become?

Because saying “everyone is welcome” is easy.

Belonging costs more.

It interrupts dinner plans.

It remembers birthdays.

It sends the message after the difficult week.

It sits in uncomfortable silence.

It asks questions without demanding disclosure.

It makes room for relapse, boundaries, repair, and consequences without reducing someone to any one of them.

It stays curious.

It remains.

Belonging asks something from us.

Not just from the person trying to enter.

A Place, Not Permission

I do not think we need another ten-step guide to creating better church community.

There are enough frameworks.

Enough books.

Enough leadership podcasts.

Enough suspiciously confident men standing beside whiteboards.

Some of them are helpful.

Probably.

But I think the beginning is much less impressive.

Notice people.

Remember what they tell you.

Ask the second question.

Invite someone to lunch without secretly recruiting them for a role.

Let the conversation remain unresolved.

Do not panic when someone admits they are angry with God.

Do not turn every vulnerable moment into an opportunity to teach.

Make space.

Not theoretical space.

Actual space.

A chair.

A meal.

A message.

A walk.

A relationship in which someone does not have to perform wellness, certainty, or usefulness to remain wanted.

That is the kind of Church I want to belong to.

It is also the kind I want to help build.

Not a perfect Church.

Good Lord, no.

Anything involving people will become complicated almost immediately.

But a Church humble enough to notice when its welcome has remained at the door.

A Church that cares whether people become known after they enter.

A Church where service flows from belonging rather than becoming its price.

A Church where the person who asks, “Will they have me?” is not handed a slogan.

They are handed a chair.

The question is not whether wounded people are good enough for our churches.

The question is whether our churches are becoming safe enough for wounded people to tell the truth.

My friend should not have to hide their addiction, doubt, grief, anger, displacement, or complicated path back.

They should not have to become less honest to become more acceptable.

And those of us already inside should be troubled that anyone believes otherwise.

Because people do not need permission to stand near the body of Christ.

They need to discover that there is a real place for their life within it.

Not just their gifts.

Not just their future testimony.

Not just the version of them that may eventually become easier to understand.

Them.

As they are.

Still healing.

Still questioning.

Still capable of contributing something beautiful.

Still capable of needing more than they can give.

Still loved.

My friend said:

“Maybe, if they’ll have me.”

I want to be part of a Church where that sentence slowly becomes unnecessary.

Where the answer is not something printed on a welcome banner.

It is something people experience.

In whether we remember.

Whether we invite.

Whether we ask.

Whether we make room.

Whether we stay.

Not merely:

“You are allowed to come in.”

But:

“There is a place for you here.”

About seven years ago exactly, someone said something to me that I carried far longer than I should have.

“Maybe this world isn’t for you.”

A simple sentence.

Not something that sounds like it could follow you through years, relationships, jobs, addiction, recovery, and every night in between.

But it did.

I don’t know exactly what they meant.

I don’t think they were telling me to disappear.

They may have been trying to say that I was sensitive.

That I felt things deeply.

That the world could be harsh, and I wasn’t particularly equipped to let that harshness roll off my back.

Fair assessment.

I have cried about coffee orders, train delays, old postcards, songs, moving countries, and more than one particularly beautiful patch of light.

I am not exactly known for emotional self-control.

But whatever they meant, I know what I heard.

I heard:

There is no place for someone like you here.

And at the time, I was already dangerously close to believing it.

A Rough Summer

I had recently moved back to Eugene after living in another part of Oregon for a season.

I was staying in a disgusting shared house with people I barely knew.

My room was so small I could nearly touch both walls if I stretched out my arms.

A cosy little shoebox filled with depression and questionable carpeting.

Very aspirational.

I didn’t have a proper job.

One of my first sweet companions in America, my dog Ted. E. Bear was put down.

I was in a relationship that was actively falling apart, and truthfully, I was mostly numb to it.

I was drinking my way through all of it.

On weekends, I worked for my parents doing yard projects so I could scrape together enough money for rent, food, and Miller High Life.

The champagne of beers.

The beverage of champions.

Or, in my case, the beverage of a man trying very hard not to think about his life.

That summer’s main project was a French drain.

If you happen to need someone to explain drainage systems or operate a Kubota mini-digger with the confidence of a man who watched half a YouTube tutorial, I’ve got you covered.

It was a pretty simple summer.

Article over.

If you leave out the emotions…

The failed job.

The move.

The relationship.

The drinking.

The growing sense that every attempt I made to build a life ended with me standing in a different room, surrounded by different people, wondering how I had managed to get lost again.

You know.

A rough summer.

Digging Trenches

For those who have managed to avoid learning about French drains, congratulations.

The basic idea is that you dig a trench and create a system that moves excess water away from somewhere it can cause damage.

Water builds up.

You give it somewhere to go.

Simple.

Effective.

Deeply metaphorical in hindsight.

I spent that summer digging trenches to carry water somewhere safer.

Meanwhile, everything in me was flooding, and I had nowhere for it to go.

So I drank.

I avoided.

I worked until I was tired enough to sleep.

I picked fights.

I stayed in a relationship long after I knew it was dead.

I told people I was fine.

Classic.

An absolute greatest hit.

And then someone said:

“Maybe this world isn’t for you.”

The sentence hit me at exactly the wrong moment.

Or perhaps the right moment, if your goal was to plant something destructive in very fertile soil.

Because I was already asking the question.

Why was living so difficult for me?

Why could other people work, make rent, build relationships, and move through the world without looking like they were in a constant fistfight with their own brain?

Why did everything sound so overly loud?

Why did each difficulty feel like concrete evidence that I always fell short?

Why could I not simply be normal?

Whatever that means.

The sentence gave shape to the fear underneath all of it.

Maybe the issue was not that I had not found my place yet.

Perhaps, then, the problem was not rooted in my environment or circumstances, but within myself.

What I Heard

I don’t know how long it took for:

“Maybe this world isn’t for you”

to turn into:

“Maybe everyone would be better off if you weren’t here.”

Probably not long.

Depression is efficient that way.

It can take one sentence, strip it of all nuance, sharpen it into a weapon, and hand it back to you as undeniable truth.

I began carrying the idea that my inability to fit into the world was proof I did not belong in it.

Not in a dramatic, poetic way.

In a quiet way.

A dangerous way.

The kind of belief that settles into your daily decisions.

Why take care of yourself if you are not planning to be here long?

Why stop drinking?

Why consider a career?

Why invest in people for longer than a few months?

Why imagine a future when every version of the future seems built for someone stronger, steadier, less complicated?

I didn’t believe I was moving towards anything.

I was just getting through days.

Earn enough to pay rent. Dig a trench. Buy beer.

Trying not to think too far ahead.

And somehow calling that a life.

The Wrong Shape

Here is the awkward truth.

Even now, I am not convinced the world is always built for someone like me.

Not all of it.

We live in systems that reward speed, certainty, productivity, emotional detachment, and the ability to work through pain without making anyone else uncomfortable.

I am not particularly good at those things.

I need depth.

I need connection.

I need time to process.

I ask a lot of questions.

I feel things fully, inconveniently, and often in public.

I grew up between cultures and learned to adapt everywhere, yet never felt entirely at home anywhere.

I have panic disorder.

I struggle with depression.

I am recovering from addiction.

I have spent a lot of my life feeling like the wrong shape for the rooms I was in.

That part has not magically disappeared.

I still walk into spaces and wonder whether there is room for all of me.

I still worry that my emotions are too much.

I still question whether I am built for the work, the relationships, or the life I am trying to create.

Some days, I still feel like a window someone has tried to force into a grand doorframe.

You could say it’s still useful.

Just not here.

But I have stopped believing that being the wrong shape for a room means I should not exist.

Sometimes the room is the problem.

Not every room needs a grand doorway.

Sometimes the world asks people to become smaller, quieter, and easier to categorise because difference makes it uncomfortable.

Not fitting is not failure.

The Life I Nearly Missed

Seven years ago, I could not have imagined the life I have now.

I could not have imagined sobriety.

I could not have imagined moving across the world.

I could not have imagined building community in a country that was never part of my plan.

I could not have imagined writing publicly and having people tell me:

“I thought I was the only one who felt this.”

I could not have imagined sitting with Third Culture Kids, young adults, missionaries, and wounded people who are quietly asking the same question I carried:

Is there a place for someone like me?

I nearly missed all of it.

Not because my life is now easy.

Good Lord, no.

Please see the extensive catalogue of emotional field reports for evidence.

I still struggle.

I still have nights when my brain becomes a battleground between fact and fiction.

I still get tired.

I still doubt.

I still cry.

But I am here.

And the individual I once believed was too complicated for the world has become someone who helps other people find language for their place in it.

What a strange reversal.

The sensitivity I thought made me weak helps me notice people.

The pain I thought disqualified me helps me sit with pain without immediately trying to clean it up.

The life between cultures that made me feel homeless helps me recognise others who are searching for home.

The emotions I tried to drown, numb, hide- however you want to say it now become words that make someone else feel less alone.

That does not make the suffering magically worth it.

I am not going to tie a bow around those years and call every wound a gift.

Some things were simply awful.

Some things should not have happened.

But they did not get the final word.

Making Room

I think a lot of my life now is about making room.

For the person sitting alone.

For the kid who cannot answer where home is.

For the adult who feels ashamed of not coping better.

For the person who has been told, directly or indirectly, that they are too emotional, too complicated, too damaged, too different, or simply too much.

I know what it feels like to convince yourself the room would function better without you in it.

So I want to be the person who pulls out another chair and gently says:

You do not have to fit neatly to belong.

You do not have to be easy to be loved.

You do not have to become less human to survive being human.

If we’re honest, I need to say those things to myself too, daily.

Because the old lie is still there.

It still knows how to knock, and unfortunately it still occasionally finds a weak lock.

But it no longer owns the house.

Still Here

Maybe the world was not designed with someone just like me in mind.

I can live with that.

The world is not a finished thing.

It is being shaped every day by the people who refuse to disappear simply because there was no obvious place for them.

The artists.

The wanderers.

The people growing up and living between cultures.

The ones who ask uncomfortable questions.

The ones who feel they feel too much.

The ones who survived long enough to make room for someone else.

Seven years ago, I heard:

“There is no room for you here.”

Today, I hear something different.

I hear the friends who call.

The parents who answer.

The readers who show up.

The people who make room.

The young person who exhales because someone finally understands.

The life around me saying:

Stay.

You are not finished.

There is still room to build.

I may never fit neatly into this world.

I am no longer confusing that with not belonging here.

​

A few nights ago, I was walking to Tesco Express and listening to a song by Evan Honer, an artist who has quickly become one of my favourites.

The sun was low, the moon was beginning to show, and the light caught beautifully on the mismatched buildings.

You know, the perfect evening walk for someone who wants to get lost in thought.

And also wants a snack from the store at 8:30 pm.

Back to the matter at hand.

There’s a line in the song Curtains that hit me, the gist being that people show up to hear him process his feelings, but he’s the one who needs it most.

My armchair theory: it’s about the gap between how being a touring musician looks from the outside and how it actually feels.

Anyway, after having my gut punched by a song lyric, I made it to Tesco and got my snacks.

On my way home, I listened to that song again and again.

Every part of the song reflected the duality of doing something really cool while also finding it deeply difficult.

Hearing someone else say that publicly and so clearly felt like a whole new level of being seen.

When you move to another country and rebuild your life from scratch, it can be isolating.

And if you’re someone who needs deep connection, it can be overwhelming not to have that.

So Substack became my outlet.

Such a Cool Life

I hear a lot of people tell me that I live such a cool and exciting life. They see the travel, the photos in places they’ve never been, the new friends and experiences.

And to be fair, I live a cool life.

Let’s not get that twisted.

But I don’t necessarily live an easy, cool life.

I live on a shoestring budget.

I constantly worry about where I’m going to be living in three months.

I cry a lot.

And I mean a lot.

But I love my life. I get to do what I care about for work, connect with people, and live in a country I’m learning to love.

All of that to say, my struggle is not always obvious on the surface.

Unless you read my Substack religiously.

If that’s you, I’m sorry.

Not really.

Thank you for being here for it.

I put a lot of my life on public display through my writing. Sometimes it’s great, sometimes it’s wildly embarrassing, and sometimes it means something to someone I had no idea it would.

Sometimes I write to process alone, but your presence keeps the processing from feeling entirely lonely.

Why I Need This

If I’m being honest, the fact that 51 of you come to read what I write is unreal to me.

The fact that some of you pay to read what I write is even more unreal.

I started this with no intention of being anything other than a quiet little voice in a niche corner of the internet, processing life and trying to keep my head above water. Slightly dramatic, a bit chaotic, uncomfortably honest.

Sorting my mental filing cabinet publicly like an art display at some overpriced gallery.

Very normal Danny behaviour.

So thank you for being here with me.

But ultimately, I only need you to know two things:

I do this more for me than I do for you.

I’m grateful you’re here with me anyway.

“I need reciprocity in the language my heart speaks.”

A brief sentence I managed to squeak out while talking to my parents this evening.

A bit dramatic.

A bit overly poetic for a Friday night FaceTime.

Still true.

My parents and I have a ritual.

Almost every day, around lunchtime for them and 8 p.m. for me, we call.

They get the full download on my day.

I get them at peak energy.

A fair exchange, honestly.

We have a beautiful relationship now, especially after years of angst, addiction, mental health struggles, and general chaos, much of it brought about by yours truly.

Getting to know them again as an adult has been deeply healing.

Not just as my parents.

As people.

People with their own stories, fears, joys, disappointments, faith, work, and lives that existed long before I arrived and made things significantly louder.

Coincidentally, we all basically work in the same world now too.

Which means my two favourite people are also guides for the career and life I am building.

I am lucky beyond words.

“You Talk to Your Parents Every Day?”

You can choose the tone that sentence is being said in based on your mood today.

Surprise.

Admiration.

Mild concern.

Deep suspicion.

But yes, give or take travel, bad reception, and the occasional schedule collision, we FaceTime almost every day.

Some people find it endearing.

Some find it odd.

It was once a red flag to a woman I was on a date with when I stepped away for five minutes to call my dad because it was that time.

In hindsight, perhaps announcing, “Sorry, I need to call my father now,” in the middle of a date lacked context.

Still.

No regrets.

Our calls have reminded some parents that their children may eventually come back around and want to talk.

To other people, they probably mean nothing.

But to me, they mean everything.

And there is a simple reason why.

It is how they began.

7:30 and the Fireplace

To explain that, we have to go back a few years.

I was living with my parents briefly and going through a particularly rough stretch of life.

We would sometimes have dinner together, provided I was home and not trying to reach the nearest bar before I had to feel anything too deeply.

After dinner, around 7:30 most evenings, my dad would walk over to the fireplace nook and call his father.

My grandpa lived in California, and they only saw each other a few times a year, so those calls became their connection.

A connection my dad intentionally built and cultivated.

There are parts of their relationship that are not mine to share, but there is one detail that matters here.

My dad ended every call by saying:

“I love you.”

For years, my grandpa did not say it back.

My dad did not stop.

He did not become bitter.

He did not decide that love was only worth expressing when it was immediately returned in the same form.

He just kept saying it.

Call after call.

Night after night.

Until one day, my grandpa said it back.

I know my dad treasures that memory.

Not because he finally won.

Love was never a contest.

He treasures it because something opened.

A language that had been spoken faithfully for years was finally answered.

So, I Started Calling

A few years ago, my grandpa passed away.

Alongside the grief of losing his father, my dad also lost the rhythm they had built together.

The call.

The fireplace nook.

The same time each evening.

The chance to say, “I love you,” one more time.

Afterward, I would sometimes see my dad standing near that nook after dinner.

Contemplating.

Remembering.

Grieving.

Doing whatever a well-moustached man does while quietly carrying the loss of his father.

And I thought:

I have a phone.

I am free at 7:30.

I could make a call.

So I started calling him.

That was in 2023.

The calls have changed since then.

They have grown with us.

We talk differently now.

We ask better questions.

We process work, family, faith, relationships, fear, hope, and whatever bizarre situation I have somehow wandered into that week.

But the heart of it is still the same.

I want to tell my dad I love him every day.

I want to continue the rhythm he created.

Mom Joins the Call

One of the best changes is that my mom is now part of it too.

Getting both my parents for thirty minutes most days is an absolute gift.

They take time to hear me.

I take time to hear them.

We laugh.

We get choked up.

We process.

We pray.

We talk about everything and nothing all at once.

Sometimes they offer wisdom.

Sometimes I offer a wildly overcomplicated emotional field report that could have been summarised in three sentences.

Everyone contributes in their own way.

There are days when those calls are light.

There are days when I am barely holding it together.

There are days when one of them needs to be heard more than I do.

That is part of why they matter.

The relationship moves in both directions.

The Way Love Answers

I think I have spent much of my life trying to need less from people.

To be easier.

More self-contained.

Less likely to inconvenience anyone with the awkward reality that I am a person with emotions, needs, and a nervous system that occasionally behaves like a smoke alarm near a toaster.

But I do need reciprocity.

Not perfect balance.

Not transactional scorekeeping.

Not, “I listened to you for twenty minutes, so you now owe me exactly twenty minutes of emotional attention.”

That sounds exhausting.

I mean the kind of reciprocity where love is spoken in a language the other person can receive.

Where someone notices what helps you feel known and chooses to meet you there.

Where care is not assumed, but practised.

For me, part of that language is consistency.

Showing up.

Making the call.

Asking the second question instead of accepting “I’m fine.”

Saying “I love you” even when it feels obvious.

Especially when it feels obvious.

My dad taught me that.

Not through a grand speech.

Through a phone call at 7:30 every night.

The Call

So yes, I talk to my parents almost every day.

Not because I cannot function without them.

Not because I have failed to become independent.

Not because we have nothing else happening in our lives.

I call because love is worth making time for.

I call because I have learned that relationships do not remain deep by accident.

I call because I have lost enough people to know that “I’ll tell them later” is a dangerous little promise.

I call because my father showed me that you keep speaking love, patiently and faithfully, until the people around you know how deeply it is meant.

And now, every evening, that language is spoken back to me.

At 8 p.m., our phones ring.

For a little while, the distance between the UK and America becomes smaller.

We laugh.

We listen.

We pray.

We say what needs to be said.

Then, before the call ends, we say:

“I love you.”

And they say it back.

The language my heart speaks is answered.

What a gift.

Yesterday, I was talking to my parents when they told me our good friend Ahmed had passed away.

I hadn’t stayed in contact with him the way they had.

But every trip back to Egypt, my parents would see him.

And I know how much joy that brought my dad.

Ahmed was more than a neighbour.

More than the owner of the corner shop.

More than a familiar face on the dirt road where we lived.

He was family in the way people sometimes become family without ever needing the official title.

I grew up alongside his kids.

He defended my family when things were tense.

He welcomed our family into a place many Americans probably would have avoided.

He made space for us.

He cared for us.

He laughed with us.

And good Lord, that laugh.

This may be a strange detail to hold onto, but I’ll always remember him as looking a bit like Dick Van Dyke, especially when he laughed.

That’s how I want to remember him.

Laughing.

Warm.

Known.

Part of the strange, beautiful, complicated fabric of my childhood.

Grief Daisy-Chains

The painful thing about grief is that it rarely travels alone.

It daisy-chains.

One loss takes your hand and walks you directly into another.

And another.

And another.

So while I sat there thinking about Ahmed, I found myself thinking about other men I’ve lost.

Men from Egypt.

Men from different chapters.

Men who were taken before they could accomplish the many beautiful things that seemed to be ahead of them.

Men of peace.

Men of love.

Men of courage in the face of extreme adversity.

Then, because apparently grief enjoys digging through old filing cabinets, I started thinking about the years when it felt like an influential man in my life passed away every year like clockwork.

One after another.

Another phone call.

Another funeral.

Another name added to the list of people I still wanted more time with.

I’ve joked before that grief and I are good friends.

But if I’m being honest, I think we’re more like reluctant acquaintances.

The kind you keep running into even though you never invited them.

The kind that shows up at the worst possible moment, sits down beside you, and says:

“Remember this?”

And suddenly, you do.

For the Men Who Are Gone

For Boyd.

For Glen.

For Chester.

For Armundi.

For Ahmed.

And for the many more whose names I carry quietly.

There are so many words I wish I could say.

Words I’ve written and shoved into drawers.

Words I’ve screamed in my car while asking God why He had the audacity to take someone before their time.

Words I don’t know if I want to make public.

So I won’t.

Some things can stay between me, God, and the men who shaped me.

But what I will say publicly is this:

Thank you.

Thank you for pouring into my life.

Thank you for teaching me, in different ways, what it means to be a man.

Thank you for showing me gentleness.

Courage.

Humour.

Steadiness.

Faithfulness.

Thank you for being patient with a teenager who was carrying more angst, heartache, change, and mental health chaos than he knew how to name.

Thank you for seeing something in me worth tending.

Thank you for leaving fingerprints on the person I am still becoming.

I wish I had more time with you.

That is the honest part.

I wish there had been more conversations.

More questions.

More walks.

More meals.

More chances to say, “You mattered to me.”

But grief, as usual, does not ask permission before taking its seat at the table.

So here we are.

Remembering.

Missing.

Thanking.

Trying to carry forward what was good.

For My Dad

And then there is my dad.

Rich.

Who is still here.

And I am very, very lucky that he is.

I don’t want to wait until grief forces my hand before saying what should already be said.

I don’t want to save the truest words for after someone is gone.

So, Dad, this part is for you.

Thank you.

Thank you for teaching me how to love people.

Not theoretically.

Not from a distance.

But in the actual, inconvenient, costly ways love asks us to show up.

Thank you for teaching me how to say I’m sorry.

Thank you for showing me that strength and gentleness are not enemies.

Thank you for holding me when I was at my lowest.

Thank you for sitting with me in a psych ward with no judgment.

Thank you for not looking away when life got ugly.

Thank you for continuing to choose to know me.

Not just the kid version.

Not just the version you raised.

But the version I am now.

The tattooed, emotional, coffee-dependent, essay-writing adult son who keeps moving countries and processing his life publicly on the internet.

A brave choice on your part, honestly.

But you keep showing up.

You keep asking questions.

You keep learning from me.

And that means more than I know how to say.

I am beyond proud to be your son.

What a blessing.

What an honour.

The Ones Still Here

I don’t know how to wrap up grief neatly.

I don’t think we’re meant to.

There is no perfect bow for death.

No clean little closing thought that makes loss feel reasonable.

Sometimes someone is here.

Then they are not.

And the world keeps moving in a way that feels both offensive and strangely merciful.

But I think grief can teach us one thing, if we let it.

Say the thing now.

Write the letter now.

Make the call now.

Tell the people who shaped you that they shaped you.

Thank the ones who are still here while they can still hear it.

Because the men I’ve lost still matter to me.

Their lives still echo.

Their kindness still shaped something.

Their absence still hurts.

And my dad is still here.

So today, I am grieving Ahmed.

I am remembering the men who helped make me who I am.

And I am saying thank you to my father while I still get the gift of saying it to him directly.

Thank you.

For the men who are gone.

For the father who remains.

For the love that shaped me.

For the grief that reminds me it mattered.

“You know what you are? You’re a gardener, Danny.”

A very simple statement.

The kind of sentence that gets said casually and then immediately makes a home in your chest without asking permission.

The person who said it to me is someone I’m still getting to know, but I think we would both agree we are friends.

Maybe more than that.

Brothers on the same journey, just at different points on the path.

He has a few years on me.

A bit more life under his belt.

A bit more calm in the way he says things that end up rearranging my entire internal filing cabinet.

He has been a champion for me while barely knowing me.

He has made room for my story without making me feel like a project.

He has listened.

Asked good questions.

Spoken gently.

And somehow, in the middle of all that, he looked at me and said:

“You’re a gardener.”

And I haven’t stopped thinking about it.

The Actual Garden

The funny thing is, I do actually love gardening.

That feels important to say before this becomes one long metaphor and I lose everyone who came here hoping for emotional stability.

Good luck, by the way.

I love the dirt.

The planning.

The colour.

The absurd amount of hope required to put something tiny in the ground and believe it might become something beautiful.

I love the quiet work of tending.

Pulling weeds.

Moving soil.

Checking growth.

Getting mildly too emotionally invested in whether or not a plant has perked up since yesterday.

Very normal behaviour.

Very balanced.

During my first stretch in the UK, some of my happiest moments were spent helping other people with their gardens and outdoor projects.

Which was a deeply alarming moment of realising I am, in fact, becoming my dad.

Honestly, there are worse fates.

I loved stepping back after the work was done and seeing something take shape.

A corner cleaned up.

A plant put in the right place.

A little bit of chaos given care with intention.

There is something deeply satisfying about helping something grow.

Even if it isn’t yours.

Maybe especially then.

The Other Kind

But he wasn’t talking about plants.

I think he saw something I have spent a long time circling but not always naming.

I tend things.

People.

Stories.

Pain.

Community.

Hope.

The small, fragile parts of life that need patience more than performance.

I think that is part of who I am.

Not all of me.

I am also a deeply emotional human with tattoos, strong coffee opinions, a complicated relationship with sleep, and a growing archive of essays about crying in public.

Let’s not make this too poetic.

But somewhere underneath all of that, I think there is a gardener.

Someone who notices when people are wilting.

Someone who wants to make room.

Someone who sees the person sitting alone and thinks:

There should be space for them.

Someone who hears a story and wants to handle it carefully.

Someone who believes people can grow when they are given safety, time, and tenderness.

Someone who is learning that growth cannot be forced.

It can only be tended.

That one has taken me a while.

The Soil I Came From

I think part of being a gardener is knowing what it feels like to need tending.

I did not become this way because life was easy.

That would have been nice.

A tidy origin story.

A sunny childhood montage.

Soft music.

Maybe a few birds.

Instead, I grew up between countries, cultures, homes, and versions of myself.

Egypt.

Bolivia.

America.

A lot of movement.

A lot of goodbyes.

A lot of learning how to belong quickly before it was time to leave again.

A lot of trying to figure out what parts of me fit where.

Then came the other things.

The heartbreak.

The addiction.

The panic.

The shame.

The long nights.

The moments I was not sure I would make it to the next version of my life.

The seasons where I was more survival than person.

I don’t say that to make the story heavier than it needs to be.

I say it because gardeners know soil.

They know what has been compacted.

What has been neglected.

What has gone dry.

What needs pruning.

What needs protection.

What needs time.

And maybe that is one of the strange gifts of a life that has been hard.

You learn how to recognise what needs care.

Because you remember needing it.

The Work

A lot of my life now is about people.

Listening to them.

Walking with them.

Holding their stories.

Helping them find language for things that feel too tangled to name.

Especially the ones standing between worlds, trying to figure out who they are while everyone around them keeps asking where home is.

I know that ache.

I know the awkwardness of not having one clean answer.

I know what it feels like to be both too much and not enough, too foreign and too familiar, too adaptable and somehow still completely lost.

So when I sit with someone who is overwhelmed, displaced, grieving, angry, confused, ashamed, or quietly wondering if they belong anywhere, I don’t sit there as someone above them.

I sit there as someone who knows the terrain.

Not perfectly.

Not professionally polished into emotional invincibility.

Just honestly.

I know what it feels like to need someone to say:

“You’re not broken beyond repair.”

“You’re allowed to be here.”

“You can grow from this.”

“You do not have to become someone else to be worth loving.”

Maybe that is gardening, too.

Not forcing growth.

Not yanking someone out of the soil because they are not blooming fast enough.

Not shouting Bible verses at a seed and calling it discipleship.

Just tending.

Listening.

Watering.

Making space.

Trusting that growth happens slowly.

Often underground.

Often before anyone can see it.

The Cost

But here is the part I need to remember on the hard days.

Gardening is not the same as becoming the soil.

Caring for people does not mean disappearing into their needs.

Loving people does not mean carrying every burden until my own back gives out.

That is where I get myself in trouble.

Because I care deeply.

Sometimes beautifully.

Sometimes recklessly.

Sometimes in a way that forgets I am also a person who needs sleep, food, water, quiet, prayer, friendship, and the occasional emotional maintenance nap.

I can listen until my own thoughts start wandering.

I can pour until the cup is empty, then act shocked when nothing comes out when someone else needs a drink.

Very sustainable.

No concerns here.

But a gardener who never rests stops noticing what needs tending.

A gardener who never receives care begins to mistake exhaustion for faithfulness.

A gardener who never lets anyone else help eventually turns the garden into a burden instead of a place of life.

So if I am a gardener, I need to remember this:

I am allowed to be cared for.

I am allowed to need.

I am allowed to receive.

I am allowed to say, “I cannot carry this today.”

I am allowed to let someone else bring water.

I am allowed to sit down.

The garden will not die because I rested.

And if it does, then it was never mine to sustain alone.

A Note for the Bad Days

I think this is the part I want to write down for the version of myself who will need it later.

The tired version.

The burnt-out version.

The version who feels like every conversation is another root system tangled around his ribs.

The version who wonders if he is doing enough:

Helping enough.

Listening enough.

Growing enough.

The version who sits in his room and thinks:

What if I’m not actually good at this?

What if I’m too tired?

What if I have nothing left to offer?

So, Danny, here is the reminder.

You are not valuable because you are useful.

You are not loved because you can hold everyone else together.

You are not called to become an endless emotional support appliance with a passport and a caffeine dependency.

You are a person.

A loved person.

A healing person.

A growing person.

A gardener, yes.

But still a person.

And gardeners do not create life out of nothing.

They participate in what God is already doing.

They prepare the soil.

They water.

They prune.

They protect.

They pay attention.

But they do not command the sun to rise.

They do not force the seed to split.

They do not make the roots reach down by sheer willpower.

Growth is holy work.

But it is not work you do alone.

The Hope

Maybe that is why the word landed so deeply.

Gardener.

Not saviour.

Not fixer.

Not rescuer.

Not professional holder of everyone’s pain.

Gardener.

Someone who tends what is in front of him.

Someone who believes dead-looking things may still have life in them.

Someone who knows beauty can come from dirt.

Someone who understands that growth takes time.

I think I can come back to that on the days when life feels like too much.

When the stories are heavy.

When the work is tender.

When the old shame gets loud.

When the tiredness starts asking whether any of this matters.

It does.

Not because I can fix everything.

I can’t.

Not because I always know what to say.

Good Lord, no.

Not because I am endlessly strong.

Clearly.

It matters because tending is sacred work.

Making room is sacred work.

Helping someone feel seen is sacred work.

Reminding people they belong here is sacred work.

And learning to believe that for myself is part of the work too.

So maybe he was right.

Maybe I am a gardener.

Still learning.

Still tired sometimes.

Still figuring out which parts of my own life need water.

Still occasionally overthinking the whole thing to a deeply unnecessary degree.

Very on brand.

But I am here.

Hands in the soil.

Heart a little bruised.

Hope still somehow growing.

And on the days when I forget who I am, I hope I remember this:

I do not have to be the whole garden.

I do not have to be the rain.

I do not have to be the sun.

I can be a gardener.

That is enough.

Content note: This piece discusses church wounds, addiction, depression, and suicide without graphic detail. Please take care of yourself as you read.

While I was recently sitting and reflecting on some great speakers, worship, and community, a thought kept nagging at me.

“Is there room in your theology for their ideology?”

Then, as I sat with it a little longer, it became:

“Is there room in your theology for their humanity?”

The rough-around-the-edges.

The soft-spoken.

The deeply wounded.

The angry.

The doubter.

The person who has relapsed.

The person who has been praying for years and still does not feel better.

The person who believes differently from you.

The person who wants to believe but has been given very few reasons to believe they would be safe if they did.

Ultimately, the question I am wrestling with is this:

Is the way we use theology when responding to the human experience pushing out the very people who most need to encounter truth?

Not because theology itself is wrong.

Not because truth does not matter.

And certainly not because I believe Christianity is responsible for every wound inflicted in its name.

I am still a Christian.

An occasionally confused one.

A frequently frustrated one.

One who has grown up in the church, taken damage from the church, left the church, returned to the church, and repeated parts of that cycle more times than I would prefer to admit.

But I am here.

Still believing.

Still asking questions.

Still convinced that truth remains true even after it has been mishandled.

The problem is that although truth may survive mishandling, people sometimes do not.

When Truth Becomes a Blunt Instrument

Theology matters.

What we believe about God shapes what we believe about ourselves, other people, suffering, justice, forgiveness, bodies, relationships, failure, and hope.

It is not a small thing.

But theology can be used in more than one way.

It can give language to mystery.

It can hold us steady when life stops making sense.

It can remind us that pain is not the whole story.

It can also become a blunt instrument.

Something we use to win an argument rather than understand a person.

Something we place over a wound because sitting beside someone who is bleeding makes us uncomfortable.

Sometimes our answers are technically correct.

They are simply given at the wrong time, in the wrong way, for the wrong reason.

A person tells us they are drowning, and we explain the theology of water.

A person tells us they are struggling to breathe, and we hand them a verse about trusting God.

A person tells us they have been wounded by the church, and our first instinct is to protect the church from criticism.

We defend the body of Christ while ignoring the body standing directly in front of us.

The bruised one.

The exhausted one.

The one who had to gather every remaining ounce of courage just to tell the truth.

There is a time for correction.

There is a time for theological clarity.

There is a time to challenge destructive beliefs and behaviours.

But there is also a time to sit down.

To listen.

To stop preparing our response while someone else is still speaking.

To recognise that we may be standing on holy ground, not because the person’s conclusions are necessarily right, but because they are entrusting us with something sacred.

Their pain.

Their fear.

Their story.

Their humanity.

Decided Before I Spoke

For years, I felt rejected by the church before I had the opportunity to say anything.

I am heavily tattooed.

I have stretched ears.

I dress like a skateboarder because, well, I am one.

I carried struggles that did not fit neatly into a Sunday-morning conversation.

People could look at me and begin filling in the blanks.

Rebellious.

Lost.

A bad influence.

Maybe dangerous.

Definitely not leadership material.

Perhaps once God had cleaned me up enough, I could become useful.

I did not always feel as though people saw a person trying to find his way back to God.

I felt like they saw a project.

A cautionary tale.

A future testimony, provided I eventually became respectable enough to stand on a stage and explain how different I used to be.

Which is a strange feeling.

To be welcomed because people believe God can change you, while also receiving the message that the current version of you is making everyone uncomfortable.

There were exceptions.

Beautiful ones.

People who made room for me before I knew how to make room for myself.

People who did not need me to explain every tattoo, defend every struggle, or sanitise my story before they would sit beside me.

People who understood that belonging does not have to be the reward someone receives after transformation.

Sometimes belonging is part of how transformation becomes possible.

But there were also spaces where I could feel the room tighten around me.

I knew how I looked.

I knew what people assumed.

And after enough experiences like that, you begin rejecting yourself on behalf of everyone else.

You learn how to give the acceptable answer.

“I’m doing well.”

“God is good.”

“I’m trusting Him.”

All potentially true.

None necessarily honest.

Eventually, you become very skilled at presenting the version of your life that makes other people feel confident in their theology.

Meanwhile, the parts of you that are actually hurting remain untouched.

Theology as a Bandage

I have watched friends disappear deeper into drug abuse.

I have lost people I love to suicide.

I have seen profound suffering met with quick theological explanations because explanations are easier to manage than agony.

I want to be careful here.

Theology does not cause every addiction.

A poorly chosen Bible verse does not, by itself, cause a person to take their life.

Mental illness, trauma, addiction, shame, isolation, biology, circumstances, and countless other factors can overlap in ways too complicated for any single explanation.

But I have seen theology used as a bandage over wounds that required far more care.

Bandages such as…

Pray harder.

Have more faith.

Confess the hidden sin.

Choose joy.

Remember that God has a plan.

These statements may contain elements of truth.

Prayer matters.

Faith matters.

Addressing sin matters.

Hope matters.

But when they are used to shut down a conversation, they stop functioning as invitations into life and begin functioning as exits.

Sometimes people need prayer and rehabilitation.

Scripture and a therapist.

A pastor and a psychiatrist.

Repentance and protection.

Spiritual community and appropriate medication.

These things do not have to be enemies.

God is not threatened by trauma-informed care.

Faith is not disproved by the need for professional help.

A person’s inability to think their way out of depression is not evidence that they have failed a spiritual exam.

A verse can be part of that care.

It cannot always be the entirety of it.

Bandages are good.

But not when we place them over an infection and refuse to acknowledge what is happening beneath the surface.

The Limits of Our Understanding

I wonder whether part of the problem is that certainty makes us feel safe.

We say that God is infinite, incomprehensible, and beyond the limits of human understanding.

Then we behave as though our particular tradition, translation, denomination, pastor, podcast, or doctrinal statement has Him completely mapped.

We build systems to help us understand God.

Then, if we are not careful, we begin treating the system as though it is God.

The map becomes more sacred than the terrain.

That does not make theology meaningless.

It should make us humble.

There are convictions worth holding firmly.

There are truths I believe we should not discard simply because they are difficult, unpopular, or uncomfortable.

But firmness and humility are not opposites.

Neither are conviction and compassion.

We can believe that truth exists without believing we possess every possible understanding of it.

We can disagree with someone’s ideology without denying their humanity.

Radical, I know.

Perhaps even dangerous.

Next thing you know, we may start listening to each other.

What Did Jesus Make Room For?

When I look at Jesus, I do not see someone who was indifferent to truth.

He challenged people.

He named hypocrisy.

He confronted exploitation, self-righteousness, and the abuse of religious authority.

He told people to change.

But He also moved towards the people religious communities had learned to avoid.

The sick.

The poor.

The socially suspect.

The sexually shamed.

The politically compromised.

The doubting.

The grieving.

The people whose bodies, histories, professions, or reputations made respectable society uncomfortable.

Jesus did not always affirm their decisions.

But He repeatedly affirmed their humanity.

He saw people before He saw categories.

He allowed people to approach Him with incomplete theology, mixed motives, misplaced hope, and messy lives.

He did not wait for them to become easy to understand.

He made room.

And somehow, in that room, truth became something more than a weapon.

It became an encounter.

This is one of the reasons I cannot walk away from Christianity entirely, even when Christians have wounded me.

The centre of the faith is not a theological system.

It is a person.

A person who touched people no one else wanted to touch.

A person who wept beside a tomb even though He knew resurrection was coming.

That detail matters to me.

Jesus knew the ending.

He still made room for grief.

He did not stand outside the tomb and tell everyone to cheer up because Lazarus would be fine in a few minutes.

He entered the sorrow.

He wept.

Only then did He call life out of death.

People Are Not Problems to Solve

I am not arguing that Christians should abandon conviction in the name of making everyone comfortable.

Comfort is not the highest good.

Love sometimes challenges.

Truth sometimes wounds before it heals.

But people can usually tell the difference between being wounded by truth and being wounded by someone who enjoys feeling right.

One feels like an invitation towards wholeness.

The other feels like being reduced to an argument.

People are not theological case studies.

They are not illustrations for sermons.

They are not evidence that your doctrine works or that someone else’s does not.

They are people.

Complicated.

Contradictory.

Capable of faith and fear existing in the same body.

Capable of relapse after years of progress.

Capable of sitting through worship while quietly wondering whether they will survive the night.

The human experience is rarely tidy.

Our theology should be strong enough to enter that mess without immediately demanding that it become presentable.

Making Room

Maybe making room begins with asking a different set of questions.

Not: How do I correct this person?

But: What happened to them?

Not: How do I defend Christianity?

But: What version of Christianity did they experience?

Not: Which verse will end this conversation?

But: What would love require of me right now?

Not: How quickly can I move them towards the correct conclusion?

But: Can I remain present even if their healing takes longer than my patience?

Making room does not mean agreeing with everything.

It does not mean surrendering discernment.

It means remembering that no disagreement removes someone from the category of human.

It means understanding that when someone is drowning, explaining the meaning of water can wait.

Pull them out.

Sit beside them.

Help them breathe.

There will be time for deeper conversations once they know they are safe enough to have them.

Is There Room?

So I return to the question.

Is there room in your theology for their ideology?

Perhaps.

Perhaps not.

But there must be room in our theology for their humanity.

If our understanding of God leaves us less capable of compassion, less willing to listen, less curious about suffering, and more comfortable expelling people who confuse us, then something has gone wrong.

Not necessarily with God.

Not necessarily with truth.

But perhaps with the way we have understood them.

I still believe truth matters.

I still believe theology matters.

I still believe the church can be a place of healing, belonging, restoration, and profound beauty.

I have experienced enough of that to keep returning.

But I have also seen what happens when theology becomes a shield against empathy.

When it is used to cover wounds rather than help clean them.

When people become collateral damage in our pursuit of being correct.

My hope is not that we become less committed to truth.

My hope is that we become more like the One we claim is true.

The One who moved towards wounded people.

The One who listened.

The One who touched.

The One who wept.

The One who told the truth without forgetting the person standing before Him.

Because truth may remain true after it has been mishandled.

But the person harmed by our handling of it may spend years wondering whether there is still room for them.

We should be able to answer that question.

There is.

There has to be.

Today was the first day of a work conference.

A joyous occasion.

A time of prayer, connection, looking forward, and growing together.

As a member of staff, I’m here to serve and help in the areas I’ve been assigned.

Which is a very polished way of saying:

I’m working all weekend.

But it’s good work.

The kind that fills my cup.

Even if the cup is occasionally filled while I’m running on very little sleep, too much coffee, and a deep internal need to sit quietly in a room for approximately six business days.

You know.

Standard Danny things.

So, as the conference approached, I found myself sitting somewhere between excitement and dread.

Excitement because I do genuinely love this work.

Dread because conferences are a lot.

People.

Noise.

Schedules.

Small talk.

Big talk.

The kind of emotional stamina required to be “on” for several days in a row.

But in the middle of that jumble, I had one comforting thought I kept coming back to:

At least I have my own room.

A simple thing.

A boring thing.

A thing most people probably wouldn’t think twice about.

But for me, it mattered.

A lot.

The Room

After getting the basics sorted, I went to check into my room.

I grabbed the key.

Found the door.

Opened it.

And saw two beds.

Now, there are a few possibilities when you walk into a room with two beds.

Maybe you simply have options.

A bed for sleeping.

A bed for dramatic outfit changes.

A bed for throwing your bag onto and pretending that counts as unpacking.

Beautiful.

Wonderful.

No issues.

Or.

You have a roommate.

One of those options is fine.

The other is a hard no.

I think you can guess which one.

So I walked back to reception and asked, as calmly as I could, if they could check whether I was sharing the room with anyone.

And I found out I was.

With someone I didn’t know.

Now, I want to be very clear here.

This was not anyone trying to be cruel.

This was not some grand act of negligence.

This was almost certainly a normal rooming mix-up in the middle of a busy event.

These things happen.

But bodies remember things before logic has time to put on its shoes.

And mine remembered quickly.

My stomach dropped.

My chest tightened.

My brain started doing that deeply helpful thing where it produces every possible worst-case scenario in under three seconds.

Very efficient.

Very unhelpful.

The person at reception made a light joke about how I’d know my roommate by the end of the weekend.

A harmless joke, absolutely.

A normal joke, if you don’t know the story underneath the person standing in front of you.

But I did know the story.

My body knew the story.

And suddenly, I was not standing at reception anymore.

Not really.

I was somewhere older.

Somewhere scared.

Somewhere I did not want to revisit in the middle of a work conference.

The Ask

This is where shame gets weird.

Because needing safety can feel like making a fuss.

Even when it isn’t.

Even when the need is valid.

Even when the accommodation is reasonable.

Even when the situation is objectively understandable.

There I was, standing in a place full of people I respect, feeling like an absolute burden because I had to say:

“I can’t share a room.”

Not because I’m picky.

Not because I’m precious.

Not because I need the luxury of solitude, though honestly, I do love a bit of solitude.

But because this is one of those lines in my life that does not move.

It was a “I get my own room, or I sleep in the car” kind of moment.

And I meant that.

So I found a friend who knew enough of the story to understand why this mattered.

I barely had to say anything.

Just some shaky version of:

“I got booked in a room with someone else.”

That was enough.

He looked at me and immediately understood.

No interrogation.

No raised eyebrow.

No making me justify it.

No asking me to relive something painful so he could decide whether my need was valid.

He just moved into action.

Calmly.

Kindly.

Quickly.

And the situation got sorted.

Being Seen

I don’t know if I can fully explain what that meant to me.

I don’t know if I have the right words for it yet.

Which is inconvenient, given the whole writing thing.

But I think it felt like healing.

Not the whole thing.

Not some dramatic, final, cinematic healing where the music swells and suddenly I’m fine forever.

Let’s not get carried away.

But a piece of it.

A small one.

A meaningful one.

Because he remembered.

He didn’t have to.

Life is full.

People are busy.

We all carry a thousand details about a thousand people, and honestly, most of us are doing well if we remember where we left our keys.

But he remembered.

He remembered enough to know that this was not a preference.

It was safety.

And I didn’t have to give a long, painful speech about why.

I didn’t have to explain the details of a night that changed how safe I feel in certain spaces.

I didn’t have to make my trauma presentable.

I didn’t have to prove I was hurting enough to be helped.

He saw the panic.

He saw the fear.

He saw me.

Partly because I have the worst poker face in recorded history, and you can read my face like a Substack emotional field report.

But mostly because he knows me.

Loves me.

And wanted me to be safe.

What a gift.

The Shame

The strange thing about trauma is that the original event is not the only hard part.

There are aftershocks.

Little ones.

Quiet ones.

Ridiculously inconvenient ones.

Years can pass, and still, shame can show up in the most ordinary situations.

A room assignment.

A hand on your shoulder.

A joke you weren’t ready for.

A question you don’t want to answer.

A moment where you suddenly have to decide whether to explain yourself or silently panic.

That’s the part people don’t always see.

The awkwardness of having to say:

“I need this.”

“Please don’t do that.”

“I’m not comfortable.”

“I can’t share that space.”

“I know this may seem small to you, but it is not small to me.”

And then comes the shame.

The fear of being dramatic.

Difficult.

Too much.

Complicated.

A burden.

All the lovely little words shame keeps in its back pocket for moments like these.

But I’m learning something.

Slowly.

Painfully.

With a bit of reluctance, as usual.

Having needs does not make me a burden.

Having boundaries does not make me difficult.

Asking for safety does not mean I am weak.

It means I am paying attention to the parts of me that are still healing.

And that matters.

Learning the Shape of Honesty

I’m still learning how to talk about this part of my story.

That feels important to say.

Sometimes I’ve been too casual.

Too cavalier.

Especially in seasons when I was drinking, and the feelings would come out sideways.

That could overwhelm people.

Sometimes I’ve gone the other direction and built a brick wall so high that nobody had a chance of seeing what was actually going on.

That also did not help.

But I’m learning there is a middle way.

A careful way.

A way to tell the right people, in the right moments, with enough honesty to be known and enough boundaries to remain safe.

Not everyone gets the whole story.

Not everyone needs the whole story.

Not every wound needs to become a public exhibit.

But when the right people know enough, healing has more room to happen.

Shame loosens its grip.

The burden does not vanish.

But it is acknowledged.

Seen.

Made less lonely.

And sometimes that is the beginning of something.

Not Alone With This Anymore

Putting this simply:

Not everything is a team lift.

Some things cannot be carried for us.

Some memories live in our bodies.

Some fears are ours to tend.

Some healing has to happen slowly, privately, and in ways no one else can force.

But many things are still a team effort.

Emotionally.

Spiritually.

Relationally.

People need people.

Sometimes someone helps carry the heavy thing.

Sometimes they just make the room safer.

Sometimes they remember what hurts.

Sometimes they stand nearby and say, “You’ve got this, mate,” when making it one more day is the whole victory.

And sometimes they don’t need the full explanation.

They just believe you.

They just act.

They just help.

That kind of love does not erase what happened.

But it does tell the wounded part of you something important:

You are not alone with this anymore.

And that matters.

More than I know how to say.

So yes, needing a single room felt awkward.

It felt embarrassing.

It brought shame with it.

But it also brought something else.

A friend who remembered.

A need that was met.

A body that got to feel safe.

A story that did not have to be dragged into the room in order for me to be cared for.

That feels like healing.

Not all of it.

But enough to keep going.

There’s a lot to be said for moving to a new place after it was somewhere you only half-lived for a few months.

With little to no real planning.

Which is probably an oversimplification.

But also not a lie.

When I left in November of 2025, I knew I was landing in France.

Then going to the Netherlands.

Then back to France.

Then probably back to the Netherlands.

And so on until one of those places somehow became home.

The UK was not on my list.

The UK was a stop-off because I ran out of time in the EU and didn’t want to go home.

A deeply well-planned life strategy.

Obviously, it became a lot more than that.

It became my new home.

My new community.

My new life.

My new insert-whatever-trope-fits-here.

And yes, the irony of my using of tropes after harping on tropes is not lost on me.

I pinky promise.

Just Because It Worked Out

Just because it worked out does not mean it has been easy.

I could probably leave this section there.

Very restrained.

Very literary.

Unfortunately, you know me.

I am a glutton for overexplaining to the point of emotional discomfort.

The reality is that just because I battled it out with bureaucracy and came out on top, I think, it does not mean my problems magically disappeared.

The visa came through.

That is massive.

That is beautiful.

That is worth celebrating.

But paperwork does not heal depression.

A plane ticket does not erase borderline crippling anxiety.

A new country does not automatically quiet the parts of your brain that learned how to survive by staying afraid.

I wish it did.

But I have found, annoyingly, that I am still myself wherever I go.

Even 5,015.1 miles away.

Give or take.

Still Me

I made it 5,015.1 miles away from the closest thing I’d call my hometown.

That does not mean everything is different.

I am still a person who struggles with depression.

Deeply.

I am still a person with severe anxiety.

But with fancy meds now.

Growth.

I am still a person who struggles to sleep most nights.

And when I do sleep, I have nightmares.

A little less often now.

But still.

I don’t say that for pity.

I say it because I think there is a temptation, once something works out, to pretend the hard parts stop counting.

Like once the big answer comes, all the smaller aches are supposed to quietly pack up and leave the room.

But they don’t.

They stay.

They change shape.

They get softer sometimes.

They lose a bit of their volume.

But they still exist.

And I think it is important to say that.

Because I am better.

I am.

But “better” is not the same as “untouched”.

The Inventory

A year ago, the idea of moving to Europe felt more like a desperate wish than an actual plan.

My friends laughed at me for wanting it.

Lovingly.

Probably correctly.

My parents had doubts about whether I could handle it.

Also lovingly.

Also, probably correctly.

But I did it.

I did the damn thing.

And I am better for it.

Nine months ago, if you told me I’d go to a pub quiz sober and make it through without panicking the whole time, I would have laughed at you.

Six months ago, if you told me I’d find myself through a breakup and land in a small town in the UK with work that mattered to me, I absolutely would have laughed.

And probably punched you in the arm for casually suggesting my relationship would end.

Fair warning.

Three months ago, if you told me I’d have a community that does its best to love me where I am, and that I’d be skateboarding again on the Isle of Wight with a new-yet-somehow-old friend, I definitely would have laughed.

One month ago, if you told me my writing would open doors for me to help TCKs in a tangible way, that I’d have the opportunity to work on two books, and that a movie I started nine years ago might come back to life, I don’t think I would have laughed.

I think I would have waited until I was alone.

And then I would have cried.

Which, to be fair, is exactly what happened.

But you get the point.

Somehow, in ways I could not have planned, a lot has worked out in my favour.

The Reality as of Now

Full disclosure: I started writing this out of frustration.

This essay.

Article.

Emotional field report.

Can someone please tell me what to call these things?

I sat down feeling tired.

Frustrated.

A little (extremely) overwhelmed.

Still carrying the weight of everything that did not magically resolve just because the visa did.

I wanted to write about how hard it still is.

How confusing it still feels.

How I can be exactly where I want to be and still feel wildly unsettled.

And I stand by that.

It has not been easy.

But somewhere in the middle of writing, I started taking inventory.

Accidentally.

Annoyingly.

And the list started getting longer.

The good list.

The “wait, hold on, a lot has actually changed” list.

The “hey dude, maybe you should stop for half a second and acknowledge this” list.

I have felt more loved than I have in years.

Maybe more loved than I have in my life.

I have found more kindred spirits than I could have hoped for.

I have reopened old wounds and let them heal properly this time.

I have named some of my harder emotions instead of letting them run the whole show from the shadows.

I have been seen.

Known.

Welcomed.

Remembered.

I have cried in public and survived.

Multiple times.

A true legacy.

I have built something resembling a life in a place that was never part of the plan.

And somehow, it is good.

This One Doesn’t Get a Bow

I don’t know how to put a bow on this.

Which is probably fitting.

Not everything gets a bow.

Some things get a pause.

A deep breath.

A moment of looking around and saying:

“This is still hard.”

And then:

“This is still good.”

Both can be true.

That is the part I keep learning.

Just because it worked out does not mean it is easy.

Just because it is hard does not mean it is wrong.

Just because I am still struggling does not mean I have not grown.

And just because I am 5,015.1 miles away does not mean I became someone entirely new.

I am still me.

Still anxious.

Still tired.

Still healing.

Still overthinking.

Still writing far too many essays about feelings.

But I am also braver than I was.

Softer than I was.

More honest than I was.

More loved than I knew.

And maybe that is the inventory I needed.

Not a bow.

Not a clean ending.

Just the reminder that this life I stumbled into, fought for, cried over, and somehow built from a stop-off I never planned to keep, is not perfect.

But it is mine.

And there is so much goodness here.

Life’s a gamble.

No one gets out alive.

Time waits for no one.

And every other deeply unhelpful phrase someone will inevitably say when you are trying to make it through another day.

We’ve all heard them.

Probably from some well-meaning sage of a friend who drops a life-is-short cliché into the middle of your existential spiral and expects it to help.

Which, to be clear, it usually does not.

Sometimes I think I’d rather hear:

“That sucks, and I don’t have the answer.”

Because at least it’s honest.

We Don’t Have Answers

The truth is, we don’t have as many answers as we like to pretend we do.

We have ideas.

Beliefs.

Hope.

Faith.

Theories.

Coping mechanisms with better branding.

And some of those things matter deeply.

I don’t want to dismiss them.

I have faith.

I have hope.

I have things I believe with my whole chest, even on the days when my chest feels like it is trying to cave in on itself.

But I also think there is something painfully human about admitting that we do not fully understand life.

We don’t.

Not really.

We know pieces.

We know fragments.

We know what has helped us survive so far.

We know what has hurt.

We know what has healed a little.

We know the songs that got us through certain years.

We know which people feel like home.

We know which coffee shops make the world feel slightly less on fire.

But the whole thing?

The grand map?

The clean answer?

Good Lord, no.

If you have that, please send it over.

Preferably laminated.

The Problem With Certainty

I think certainty can be comforting.

I also think it can be terrifying.

Depending on the day, I swing between the two.

Some days, I want someone to walk into my life with a clipboard, a five-step plan, and a clear explanation of what the heck is going on.

Other days, the people who seem most certain scare me the most.

Because sometimes the loudest person yelling, “I know the way!” is just recklessly hacking through a forest with a dull machete and a map from 1882.

For the wrong continent.

Confident?

Absolutely.

Correct?

Deeply questionable.

And I think that’s where a lot of us get hurt.

Not because people don’t mean well.

Sometimes they do.

But because someone else’s certainty can become dangerous when it leaves no room for your grief, your questions, your pace, or your humanity.

Sometimes what we need is not another answer.

Sometimes what we need is someone willing to say:

“I don’t know either, but I’ll sit here with you.”

Probably Helpful

There are a million self-help books, podcasts, devotionals, motivational YouTube videos, and suspiciously confident people standing in front of whiteboards telling us how to live so we never feel like this again.

And some of them are probably helpful.

Some.

Maybe.

But none of them can fully answer what it means to be a person trying to live through uncertainty.

None of them can remove the ache.

None of them can perfectly explain why some seasons feel like walking through fog.

None of them can guarantee that if we do everything right, we’ll never feel lost again.

Swinging in the Dark

Maybe we’re all swinging our arms in the dark, hoping to hit something that feels like a door to somewhere better.

Some of us are quiet about it.

Some of us are loud.

Some of us dress it up in better language.

Some of us turn it into theology.

Some of us turn it into art.

Some of us turn it into productivity.

Some of us turn it into control.

Some of us turn it into jokes because if we stop laughing, we might start crying in a Tesco aisle.

Again.

No further questions.

But underneath all of it, I think most of us are asking some version of the same question:

“What do I do with a life I don’t fully understand?”

And I wish I had a better answer.

Truly.

I’d love to end this with something clean and wise.

Something you could underline.

Something that makes me sound like I know what I’m doing.

Unfortunately, that would be false advertising.

Well, That Was Bleak

So what the heck do I do with all of that?

For now?

I keep going.

Annoying answer.

I know.

Deeply unsatisfying.

But maybe that’s the work.

I keep writing.

I keep praying.

I keep asking better questions.

I keep letting people love me when I would rather disappear into my own head.

I keep drinking coffee in familiar places.

I keep texting my friends when the dark gets too loud.

I keep looking for the door.

I keep trying to be honest about what hurts without pretending hurt is the whole story.

And when someone else is struggling, I try not to hand them a tired phrase and call it wisdom.

I try to sit with them.

To listen.

To say:

“That sucks, and I don’t have the answer.”

Not because hope is gone.

But because honesty is sometimes the first kind of hope we can offer.

Maybe none of us fully knows the way.

Maybe we’re all swinging in the dark more than we care to admit.

But if we’re honest about that, we might stop pretending we’re alone in it.

And that feels like something.

Not an answer.

Not a map.

But something.

A hand in the dark.

A voice nearby.

A reminder that while we may not know exactly where we’re going, we do not have to stumble forward alone.

Somewhere between the lack of sleep, the jet lag, the massive life change, the reality of building a future in the UK, and sitting alone in my tiny home at 4:15 in the morning, everything hit me at once.

Rude, honestly.

I was hoping my emotions would submit a visa request first.

Maybe go through the months of waiting.

But no.

They just showed up.

All at once.

Uninvited.

Carrying luggage, nonetheless.

Which feels especially offensive because I just finished dealing with my own.

I’ve been so focused on moving forward that I think I accidentally forgot I am a person.

A bold oversight.

I had a goal.

Get the visa.

Get back to the UK.

Start the work.

Build the life.

Keep going.

And to be clear, those are good things.

But somewhere along the way, while I was doing the very human work of pressing on, I started stuffing emotions into the back closet of my brain.

And as always with emotions, they did not stay there politely.

They bubbled back up.

So here I am.

It’s early.

I can’t sleep.

I’m lonely.

I’m anxious.

I’m overwhelmed.

I miss my parents.

I miss familiar things.

I miss not having to think so hard about every small piece of life.

Things are not all sunshine and roses.

Which is inconvenient, because I do love a good narrative arc.

Terrified to Tell My Friends

This is, in many ways, a self-inflicted problem.

I know that.

But I’m still going to say it.

I’m terrified to tell my friends I’m not doing well.

My old friends.

My new friends.

My over-here friends.

My over-there friends.

The people who knew me before this chapter.

The people who met me in the middle of it.

The people who have cheered me on while I’ve tried, very publicly and very earnestly, to rebuild a life.

Over the last nine months, I’ve heard some version of the same beautiful sentence again and again.

“It’s so good to see stable Danny.”

The sober Danny.

The hopeful Danny.

The “he’s actually doing the damn thing” Danny.

And I love that version of me, too.

I really do.

I fought hard for him.

I’m proud of him.

He’s not fake.

He’s not a performance.

He is real.

But he is also tired.

And right now, I am terrified that if I admit I’m struggling, people will think he disappeared.

That the progress wasn’t real.

That the stability was temporary.

That I’m backsliding.

That I’m becoming the version of myself everyone was relieved to see healing.

I know, logically, that my friends will not respond that way.

I know they love me.

I know they would rather know the truth.

I know they will not exile me from the community for having the audacity to be human at 4:15 in the morning.

But fear is rarely impressed by logic.

It tends to just keep talking.

The Problem With Being “Okay”

I have said “I’m okay” too many times when I was not okay.

A classic.

A greatest hit.

A wildly unsuccessful coping mechanism that somehow keeps getting remastered.

The problem is that “I’m okay” can start as a kindness and turn into a wall.

At first, you say it because you don’t want to worry people.

Then you say it because explaining feels exhausting.

Then you say it because you don’t want to be a burden.

Then, eventually, people believe you.

Which should be the goal, right?

Except now you’re alone with the thing you insisted wasn’t there.

I think part of me hoped that being stable meant never needing to say, “Actually, I’m not doing well.”

But I don’t think that’s stability.

I think that’s hiding with better branding.

Real stability probably has more room in it than that.

Room for bad nights.

Room for tears.

Room for anxiety.

Room for needing people.

Room for saying, “I’m still here, but today is hard.”

The Expected Thing Still Hit Hard

The annoying thing is that none of this is surprising.

I knew this would happen.

Or at least, I knew it in the vague, intellectual way we know things before they actually happen to us.

I knew that after months of stress, visa chaos, travel, uncertainty, goodbyes, hellos, and constant movement, my body and brain would eventually ask to process what I had been carrying.

I knew there would be a comedown.

I knew the joy would be complicated.

I knew rebuilding a life in another country would not magically become easy just because the paperwork finally said yes.

But knowing something is coming does not mean it hits softly.

Sometimes the expected thing still knocks the wind out of you.

And this has.

There is still so much unknown.

Where will I live long term?

How will my community grow?

How do I build rhythms here that are healthy and sustainable?

How do I keep pursuing the work I care about without burning through myself like cheap fuel?

And the big one, apparently:

How do I tell people I’m not okay without feeling like I’ve failed them?

So Here It Is

So, for better or worse, here it is.

I’m not doing okay right now.

Not in a dramatic, everything-is-burning way.

Not in a hopeless way.

Not in a “please panic” way.

Just in a deeply human, very tired, emotionally overloaded way.

This is a lot.

A lot to take on.

A lot to process.

A lot to hold.

And I think it is better to name that now than to let it fester.

Better to say it while it is still something I can carry with others than wait until it becomes something I crack under alone.

I have done that before.

I have hidden things until they got heavier.

I have said “I’m fine” until the sentence stopped meaning anything.

I have made loneliness worse by pretending I didn’t need anyone.

And honestly, I’m tired of that.

The stable version of me is not the version who never struggles.

The stable version of me is the one who tells the truth sooner.

Even when it feels embarrassing.

Even when it feels inconvenient.

Even when some part of me is still convinced I should be easier to love than this.

One More Change

I’ve upended my life in a lot of ways recently.

Sobriety.

Moving.

Faith.

Work.

Community.

A new country.

A new future.

A new version of myself I’m still learning how to live inside.

So I might as well add one more change.

A good one.

I’m going to stop pretending that being okay is the price of being loved.

I’m going to stop treating my struggles like evidence that my progress wasn’t real.

I’m going to stop assuming people only want the stable version of me.

Because the truth is, the people who love me do not need me to be impressive.

They need me to be honest.

So today, I’m going to send a few honest texts.

Not dramatic ones.

Not “please fix me” ones.

Just honest ones.

The kind that say:

“I’m having a hard day.”

“I’m feeling a bit lonely.”

“I’m not doing great, but I’m trying.”

That shouldn’t feel revolutionary.

But for me, it kind of does.

And maybe that is what stability looks like now.

Not having it all together.

Not being fine all the time.

Not becoming some emotionally cast-iron version of myself who never spirals, cries, misses his parents, or wonders what the heck he is doing.

Stability looks like telling the truth before the truth crushes me.

It looks like letting people in while the room is still messy.

It looks like saying:

“I’m not okay today.”

And trusting that the people who love me will not leave the table.

I had planned to publish an article today about how rest is good.

A noble idea.

A mature idea.

A “look at me making healthy choices” idea.

I was going to take a break from writing about crying over little moments for a few days while the jet lag settled.

But, as with many things in this wild little life, my plans were foiled.

By coffee.

Naturally.

I went to my favourite coffee shop in High Wycombe, fully prepared to walk up to the counter and blurt out my order like a normal person.

A deeply manageable social interaction.

Except, possibly, when you’re jet lagged.

But before I could even open my mouth, the barista saw me, smiled, and went, “Oat flat white to have in?”

My order remembered.

Just like that.

And I would be lying if I said I didn’t almost cry.

Because this wasn’t even my regular barista.

This was the guy who had seen me maybe six times before I left the UK.

Six times.

Apparently enough.

Good Moments

Logically, I know three weeks is not a long time.

I know that.

As an adult, three weeks is basically two grocery runs, a few missed emails, and suddenly wondering why your calendar looks like it was assembled by a four-year-old with a grudge.

It’s not long.

But when you’ve spent enough of your life leaving places, three weeks can still feel like enough time for everything to shift.

Enough time to wonder if your place still exists.

Enough time to ask the very calm, emotionally stable question:

“Have I been forgotten?”

So when someone remembered my coffee order, it felt like more than coffee.

It felt like being seen.

Welcomed.

Remembered.

Like some tiny part of the life I’d been building here had stayed intact while I was gone.

And good Lord, I needed that.

My Tiny Home Was the Same

The other piece of this is my tiny little home.

I came back, and it was all the same.

Even how I made the bed.

My skateboard and guitars tucked away together.

My organised chaos still under the coffee table.

My bowl of coins was still on the counter, which I mainly keep to baffle some of my friends. Because who even uses cash these days?

The space I had left behind, not entirely sure what I would return to.

I had braced myself for change.

Because apparently, I am always braced for change.

Very relaxing way to live.

Highly recommend if your hobbies include anxiety and emotional whiplash.

But when I walked in, everything was the same.

The flat was still there.

My things were still there.

The little life I had started building was still waiting for me.

And for the first time since last November, I walked into a space and thought:

“This is my home.”

Does it need some organising on my part?

Absolutely.

Does it need some “Danny” personality?

Definitely.

Do I care right now?

Not really.

Right now, I’m just grateful.

The Sign

Quietly, I think I was asking for a sign.

Not loudly.

Not dramatically.

Not falling to my knees in the middle of town while the pigeons of High Wycombe gathered as witnesses.

But somewhere in the quiet part of me, I was asking God for a reminder that I was supposed to be here.

That coming back was right.

That High Wycombe was not just another temporary stop in a long line of temporary stops.

That I hadn’t made this all up in my head.

And in the span of 24 hours, I got more than one.

A remembered coffee order.

A flat that stayed the same.

A few good moments arriving right when I needed them.

I won’t dive into all of them.

Some things get to stay mine for a while.

But I will say this:

Somewhere between the coffee shop, the familiar room, and the small kindnesses I didn’t know how badly I needed, I felt something I hadn’t felt in a long time.

Settled.

Not fully.

Not perfectly.

Not in a “everything is figured out and I will never spiral again” sort of way.

Let’s not get carried away.

But settled enough.

Enough to breathe.

Enough to smile.

Enough to believe I might actually be where I’m supposed to be.

Not Forgotten

I think that’s what coming back gave me.

Not certainty.

Not a five-year plan.

Not a perfectly mapped-out future with clear signage and a welcome basket.

Just a remembered coffee order.

Waking up in a room that stayed the same.

A handful of small reminders I didn’t know how badly I needed.

And honestly, that was enough.

Because sometimes belonging doesn’t announce itself with grand gestures.

Sometimes it shows up quietly.

In a coffee shop.

At a familiar counter.

In the smile of someone who remembers what you order.

In a room that still feels like yours when you come back to it.

In the gentle realisation that maybe you did not disappear the moment you left.

Maybe your chair was still at the table.

Maybe your place was still here.

Maybe you were remembered.

Today, I believe I was.

And for today, that is more than enough.

I’ve written about shame before.

Very reasonable of me.

Very, “look at this man learning things in therapy and trying to put them into paragraphs.”

And I do believe what I wrote.

I believe shame and guilt are different.

I believe guilt can point us toward repair.

I believe shame usually points us toward hiding.

Lovely.

Clean.

Neatly packaged.

Unfortunately, healing rarely respects the packaging.

Because as much as I can write about shame, name it, define it, and call it out from a safe distance, the reality is that shame still knows how to find me.

I’m still in the messy middle.

I’m still on a journey.

I’m still the scared kid.

I’m still the person in the pew trying to believe grace is really for me.

And some days, shame still feels like the loudest voice in the room.

Sewn In

I don’t know if I can remember a season of my life where shame wasn’t somewhere in the background.

Maybe not always screaming.

Maybe not always front and centre.

But there.

Humming underneath things.

Making normal human moments feel heavier than they needed to be.

Did I say that wrong?

Was I too much?

Was I not enough?

Did I disappoint God?

Did I disappoint people?

Did I disappoint some invisible committee in my head that apparently meets daily for the sole purpose of reviewing my spiritual, emotional, and social performance?

Exhausting little group.

No, they are not taking any new members. I’m sorry.

The way I carry shame sometimes makes it feel like it was sewn into me.

Like I came out of the womb ready to repent and feel like the worst person alive for coughing on a silent train.

A dramatic baby, apparently.

Conviction or Shame?

This is the part I wrestle with the most.

Is this conviction?

Or is this shame?

Is God gently pointing at something that needs healing?

Or am I reacting to an old wound?

Is the Holy Spirit inviting me toward life?

Or am I hearing the echo of something someone said years ago with too much certainty and not enough tenderness?

Woah.

There it is.

The core of the article.

Always fun when the thesis kicks the door down halfway through.

Because I do believe in conviction.

I believe God corrects us.

I believe there are things in me that need to change.

Good Lord, are there things in me that need to change.

But I’ve also learned that not every heavy feeling is holy.

Not every accusation is from God.

Not every voice that sounds serious is sacred.

Sometimes what I call conviction is actually just shame wearing church clothes.

And that distinction matters.

A lot.

Truth After the Damage

I’ve been thinking about this for a while now.

Is truth still truth after the damage is done?

I think it is.

But damage changes how truth is heard.

A sentence can be true and still be delivered in a way that wounds.

Correction can be necessary and still be given without love.

Someone can need growth and still not deserve to be crushed in the process.

Because sometimes the words were technically right.

But the tone was wrong.

The posture was wrong.

The fruit was wrong.

The truth was handed over like a hammer instead of held out like a guiding light.

And when that happens, you don’t just remember what was said.

You remember how small it made you feel.

You remember how quickly you wanted to disappear.

You remember the way your body learned to flinch.

That doesn’t make truth less true.

But it does mean we need to be tender when we hand it to people.

Especially wounded people.

Especially young people.

Especially people who already believe, somewhere deep down, that they are difficult to love.

The Voice I Learned

Somewhere along the way, I learned to treat shame like a spiritual discipline.

I don’t think anyone meant to teach me that.

At least, not always.

But I learned it anyway.

I learned that feeling terrible about myself meant I was taking sin seriously.

I learned that being hard on myself meant I was being humble.

I learned that if I didn’t constantly monitor every flaw, every motive, every tone, every thought, and every failure, I was probably drifting into pride.

Very peaceful.

Very sustainable.

Ten out of ten.

No notes.

Except actually, many notes.

Because that kind of life does not make you holy.

It makes you exhausted.

It makes you afraid.

It makes you suspicious of joy.

It makes you flinch when love shows up without a lecture attached.

And I don’t think that’s what Jesus came to give us.

The Jesus Part

I can’t write honestly about shame without writing honestly about Jesus.

Because Jesus is the reason shame does not get the final word over me.

Not therapy.

Though therapy has helped.

Not writing.

Though writing has helped.

Not community.

Though community has absolutely helped.

Jesus.

That’s the root of it.

That’s the thing I keep coming back to when shame starts making its case.

When shame tells me I am too far gone, Jesus tells me I am loved.

When shame tells me I am disqualified, Jesus tells me I am invited.

When shame tells me to hide, Jesus calls me into the light without disgust.

When shame tells me this is who I am, Jesus reminds me whose I am.

And that changes everything.

Not always instantly.

Not always neatly.

Not in a way that means I never struggle again.

I wish.

That would be a much shorter article.

But it changes the foundation.

Because the truest thing about me is not my worst moment.

It is not my deepest insecurity.

It is not the thing I regret.

It is not the old accusation I keep replaying in my head.

The truest thing about me is that I am loved by Jesus.

Fully.

Completely.

Without shame.

Free

So yes, shame still shows up.

It still knocks.

It still knows my name.

It still knows which doors in my heart have weak locks.

But it does not own the house anymore.

That matters.

I am not free because I finally became good enough to outrun shame.

I am not free because I healed every wound perfectly.

I am not free because I figured out the exact difference between conviction and shame and turned it into a tidy little thought for the internet.

I am free because Jesus tells the truth about me.

And His truth is stronger than the damage.

Stronger than the voices that mishandled it.

Stronger than the shame that tried to wrap itself around it.

Stronger than the parts of me still learning how to believe it.

The truth remains true even after the damage is done.

But the truth sounds different in Jesus’s voice.

It does not sound like disgust.

It does not sound like condemnation.

It does not sound like, “How could you?”

It sounds like mercy.

It sounds like love.

It sounds like, “Come home.”

Shame says, “This is who you are.”

Jesus says, “No. You are mine.”

And that is where I am learning to live.

Not perfectly.

But freely.

I think I wrote three essays today.

Or articles.

Or emotional field reports.

Or whatever we’re calling these public journal entries.

Most of them will probably never see the light of day.

Some will get sent to friends.

Some will sit in a document folder until I forget they exist.

Some will make it to Substack, where a deeply kind group of people will once again choose to read the inner workings of a man running on jet lag, coffee, and far too many feelings.

Brave of you, honestly.

But right now, I’m not writing because I have a perfect plan.

I’m writing because I need somewhere to put everything.

And by “everything,” I do not mean a clear, organised set of emotions.

That would be lovely.

No, what I have is a junk drawer.

A skein of yarn that will never return to its factory elegance.

A pile of half-folded laundry in the corner of my brain.

And apparently, the only way I know how to make sense of it is to keep writing.

The Outlet

I’ve always loved writing.

I don’t want to pretend this is some brand-new thing that fell out of the sky and landed in my lap during a dramatic season of life.

I’ve written for years.

Songs.

Journals.

Prayers.

Notes.

Half-finished thoughts.

Things I was proud of.

Things that should probably remain between me, God, and whatever notebook they’re trapped inside.

But this is different.

This is the first time I’ve shared so much of myself while still actively becoming myself.

I’m not writing from the other side of everything.

I’m writing from the middle.

The messy bit.

The still-processing bit.

The “I’m not entirely sure what this means yet, but I think there’s something here” bit.

Which is a bit terrifying.

Because sharing polished thoughts is one thing.

Sharing yourself while you’re still doing your best is another.

For a long time, music was the place I put everything.

Not neatly.

Good Lord, no.

You should see some of the things I wrote.

Boy howdy.

The angst.

The longing.

The deeply dramatic metaphors from a teenager who had absolutely no business being that heartache-y.

And yet, it helped.

It gave the pain somewhere to go.

It gave the chaos a structure.

Did every song need to exist?

Probably not.

Did some of them keep me alive?

Yes.

And I don’t say that lightly.

Lately, essays have become the new songs.

Less melody.

More punctuation.

Same ache.

I Fly Out Tomorrow

I fly out to the UK in less than twenty hours.

I say goodbye to my parents in less than sixteen.

I start, or maybe continue, a new life in roughly forty.

That math may be wrong.

Time zones are involved, and I have chosen not to respect them.

I get to time-travel a little, which feels fun until my body retaliates for the next week like I personally betrayed it.

So here I am.

Sitting on a loaned bed.

Staring at mostly packed bags.

Trying to organise my belongings and my head at the same time.

A bold strategy.

Currently unsuccessful on both counts.

There are clothes everywhere.

There are thoughts everywhere.

There are emotions I thought I had processed sneaking back into the room like they forgot their keys.

And I keep writing.

Not because I’m trying to be profound.

Not because I think every thought deserves an audience.

It does not.

Please, someone stop me if I start publishing grocery lists with emotional subtext.

I’m writing because this is the only way I know how to stay present in a moment that feels too large to hold all at once.

The Deluge

There have been plenty of jokes recently about how much I’ve been writing.

Jokes that if my train ride goes from two hours to four, I’ll somehow turn it into an essay.

Accurate.

At first, I got defensive.

Maybe a little offended, if I’m honest.

Not my finest moment.

Sorry, E.

But I’ve come to love the jokes.

Because I think they mean I’m seen.

Not in a polished, curated, “look at this very impressive writer doing writerly things” kind of way.

More in a:

“There he goes again, turning mild inconvenience into emotional excavation.”

kind of way.

And honestly?

That feels like love.

To be known well enough that people can joke about your patterns.

To be seen clearly enough that someone notices what you do when the world gets too loud.

To have people gently laugh and still keep reading.

That is no small thing.

So yes, there may be a deluge of essays.

Some may be good.

Some may be moving.

Some may be absolute slop.

Some may be three paragraphs away from becoming something meaningful before they collapse under the weight of their own metaphor.

Very on brand.

But I’m learning that not everything I write has to become something.

Some of it just has to move through me.

Some of it just has to keep me company.

Some of it just has to help me survive the next goodbye, the next airport, the next long-haul flight, the next season of becoming.

That matters too.

Because writing, at its best, is not just performance.

It is not just publication.

It is not just content.

Sometimes writing is maintenance.

Sometimes it is prayer.

Sometimes it is breathing.

Sometimes it is sitting on a bed surrounded by half-packed bags and saying:

“I don’t know how to hold all of this, so I’m going to put some of it here.”

And then another sentence comes.

And then another.

And then another.

Until suddenly, I’m still here.

One sentence.

One essay.

One emotional field report at a time.

I have two days left in the States before the big move.

Depending on when this goes out, I may already be somewhere over the Atlantic, aggressively dehydrated, running on aeroplane coffee, and questioning every life choice that led me to another long-haul flight.

You know.

Growth.

The funny thing is that this move doesn’t feel exactly like a move.

It feels more like returning.

I’m going back to the hodgepodge life I had already started building in the UK.

The coffee shops.

The church.

The people.

The streets I’ve begun to recognise without thinking.

The life that somehow started feeling like home before I had official permission to stay.

But it’s still a move.

And moves, even good ones, have a way of stirring up more than luggage.

The In-Between

Right now, I feel like I’m sitting between two camps.

On one side, there are the familiar things.

Family. Old friends.

Places I’ve known for years.

The specific kind of comfort that comes from not having to explain how anything works.

On the other side, there is the life I’m returning to.

Not completely new. Not completely settled.

Somewhere in the strange middle.

A place I know, but am still learning.

A community I love, but still fear losing.

A future I’m excited about, but can’t fully predict.

It’s a strange landscape to live in.

I would love one clean emotional experience.

A nice, tidy feeling I can put in a labelled box.

Excitement. Sadness.

Fear. Joy.

Pick one and move on.

But instead, as usual, my heart has decided to become a junk drawer.

Everything is in there, and it’s coming with me through TSA whether I like it or not.

The Question Under the Questions

I’m leaving without all the goodbyes I wanted.

I’m leaving without picking up every item I thought I’d bring back.

I’m leaving with some things neatly tied up.

I’m also leaving with questions.

Where will I live in six months?

How do I navigate healthcare, travel, and all the systems that still feel foreign?

How do I build a life in a country that is becoming home, one confusing step at a time?

And then there’s the bigger question.

The one that feels slightly dramatic to say out loud.

Which, I am learning, may simply be my brand.

Do I still have a place in my community in the UK?

I know.

Very emotionally stable of me.

It’s only been three weeks. Three weeks is nothing.

As an adult, three weeks disappear if you blink too slowly. You answer some emails, do laundry twice, miss one appointment, and suddenly it’s July.

But somehow my brain is still asking:

Has everything changed?

Did people move on?

Will my place feel different?

Do I still have room there?

Do I still belong?

This Isn’t Really About Three Weeks

I know this sounds dramatic.

Trust me.

I can hear it too.

There’s a very reasonable adult part of me saying:

“Mate, calm down. You were gone for three weeks. Nobody held a community-wide vote and decided your chair was no longer available.”

Fair.

Probably true.

But I don’t think this fear is actually about three weeks.

I think it’s about being a kid without a country.

I think it’s about being a Third Culture Kid and learning early that leaving and returning are never as simple as adults make them sound.

When you’re a kid, three months is not three months.

Three months is an entire lifetime.

A summer can change everything.

Friend groups shift.

Inside jokes are born without you.

People get taller.

Someone gets a new haircut and suddenly acts like they’ve discovered philosophy.

The world keeps moving while you’re away.

And when you come back, everyone says, “Welcome home,” but you can feel it.

Something is different.

Maybe it’s them.

Maybe it’s you.

Usually, it’s both.

Ten-Year-Old Me

So now I want you to go back to those questions with me.

Not as an adult.

Not with a fully developed brain and a calendar app.

Go back as a ten-year-old kid who still went by Daniel, never Danny.

A kid who came back to America for a few months on sabbatical with the promise that he’d return to Egypt.

A kid trying to enjoy things that felt more foreign than familiar while quietly wondering what would happen to the life he left behind.

I remember navigating American grocery stores and feeling like I had been dropped into a strange museum of things I thought I already knew.

Name-brand food was everywhere.

The real stuff.

The stuff that, in Egypt, had commonly been a knockoff or a rip-off.

Oreos were not Borios.

Cereal aisles looked like they required their own map and possibly a spiritual guide.

Everything was bigger, brighter, louder, and somehow more overwhelming than it had any right to be.

Then there were the clothes.

Good Lord, the clothes.

I had to learn very quickly that Old Navy was not, in fact, the height of cool-kid fashion.

Which was devastating news.

And apparently, zip-off pants were not the cultural reset I believed them to be.

Again.

Devastating.

There is a very specific kind of embarrassment that comes from realising the things that made sense in one world do not translate cleanly into another.

The snacks. The clothes. The jokes. The references.

The way people moved through a room like they already knew the rules.

And there I was, trying to act normal while quietly downloading an entirely new operating system for belonging.

Where will I live?

Will my friends still be my friends?

Will I still fit?

Will my place still be there when I get back?

Will I have to start over again?

Pretty terrifying questions at ten years old.

And if I’m honest, they’re still pretty terrifying at twenty-nine.

I’ve just gotten better at dressing them up.

Now they wear adult clothes.

Visa logistics.

Housing uncertainty.

Community building.

Career development.

Long-term planning.

Very mature.

Very professional.

Still the same fear underneath.

Do I have a place?

The Chair at the Table

I think that’s what moving does to me.

It doesn’t just ask me to pack a bag.

It asks me to trust that there will still be a chair at the table when I return.

And historically, that has not always felt guaranteed.

Not because people were cruel.

Not because communities intentionally pushed me out.

But because life keeps moving.

People change. Places change.

You change.

And when you’ve lived enough of your life in transition, it becomes very easy to believe that belonging is temporary.

Something you borrow. Something that can expire.

Something that disappears if you’re gone too long.

That is the lie I’m trying to stop believing.

Slowly and honestly, somewhat painfully.

One move at a time.

Going Back

The truth is, I am excited. Deeply.

I get to go back.

The visa came through.

I have housing.

I have work that matters to me.

I have people I love waiting on the other side of this flight.

That is no small thing.

I don’t want my fear to drown out the miracle of that. But I also don’t want to pretend the fear isn’t there.

Because both are true.

I am grateful. I am scared.

I am hopeful. I am tired.

I am ready. I am absolutely not ready.

Again, the heart junk drawer remains undefeated.

Moving. Again.

So here I am.

Moving. Again.

Packing bags.

Saying goodbyes.

Trying to remember what adapter goes with what country.

Attempting to convince myself that I definitely do not need to bring that extra hoodie.

I will bring the hoodie.

Let’s not lie to each other.

But underneath all of that, I think I’m doing something bigger.

I’m trying to comfort the ten-year-old version of me who still worries that leaving means losing.

I’m trying to tell him:

You can go.

You can come back.

You can belong in more than one place.

And the people who love you do not disappear the moment you leave the room.

I don’t know if he fully believes me yet.

Honestly, I’m not sure I fully believe myself yet.

But I’m learning.

The plane will take off.

The bags will come with me.

The questions will too.

And when I land, I’ll keep doing what I’ve been doing for most of my life.

I’ll step into a place that is familiar and new.

I’ll look for my chair at the table.

And this time, I’ll try to believe it’s still there.