The longer version

Every Sunday night I took inventory. Counted everything. Food cost was the number that told you whether the week had actually worked.

The answer was never on a clipboard. Took me years to figure out the same was true of myself.

I had my first son at nineteen. Opened Boston Chicken stores at twenty. Managed a Hooters. Got divorced at twenty-three. Had my second son. Got a DUI. Built a career. Got another one a decade later, when things looked more put-together from the outside. My sons and I lost each other for a while. I was busy building things I could control because I couldn’t lead the one thing that mattered.

Fifteen years in SaaS. Go-to-market organizations, emerging tech categories. I got good at the measurable stuff. What I didn’t track was the cost.

The ayahuasca came first. The first ceremony taught me to let go. To relax into myself. To stop performing the identities I’d spent decades constructing: Chris the father, the leader, the husband, the ex-husband, the entrepreneur, the savior of the world, the medium. When you strip those away, something remains. Not a role. Not a story. Just: I am.

Three and a half years ago I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I was forty-nine. The diagnosis didn’t excuse anything. It explained everything. So much lifted. There was nothing wrong with me. I belong here. I chose to be here.

That’s the thing I’m still learning to live from.

I work with information that comes from beyond ordinary perception. The book I’m writing with Dr. Carlos Warter explores what this means for teams, organizations, and human potential. It will be published by Park Street Press in spring 2027.

Two of my sons are in their early thirties. The other is a sophomore at CU Boulder. I have three granddaughters and a grandson on the way. Meredith and I have been together fifteen years. Chicago to Santa Monica. Back to Chicago a decade later. Empty nesters with empty, renewed passports. Building a life we actually want to lead. I love her more every day.

On Sunday nights I still take inventory. Different ledger now. Where I’m truly embodied. Where I’m still learning how to show up.

Also an ordained Dudeist priest (google it). Takes it exactly as seriously as it deserves.