Who Ties Your Shoes?!
A tired, heartfelt, and occasionally sarcastic open letter from a teacher standing at the edge of summer asking one very important question: “Who ties your shoes?” This reflection explores learned helplessness, accountability, over-parenting, student burnout, teacher exhaustion, and why sometimes the most loving thing adults can do is step back and LET. THEM.
Potential: The Ugliest Word
Monday, A Midsummer Night’s Dream nearly got cancelled. By Friday, we had sold out every performance before opening night even happened. Somewhere between teenagers carrying scripts like emotional support blankets, Shakespearean chaos, audience laughter, and one very validating conversation with a parent, I found myself thinking a lot about trust, leadership, culture-building, and the curse of seeing what something could become. This one’s about all of that — told, appropriately, as a play in five acts.
I’m Fine… and yet, I’m Not
May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and while I’m proud of how far I’ve come in my journey with anxiety and depression, today is a reminder that growth doesn’t mean the struggle disappears. I know I’m blessed. I know I’ve come a long way. And still—I’m struggling. This is a real, unfiltered look at what it means to be “fine”… and not fine at all, and the truth that sometimes the most honest thing we can say is, “This just sucks right now.”
What Comes After the Goodbye
From airport goodbyes to Broadway lights, I expected to sit in the quiet. Instead, life met me in unexpected ways—reminding me that joy and grief don’t take turns. They coexist. This is what comes after the goodbye.
You Were Never Broken
I spent a lot of my life believing something in me needed fixing. That I didn’t fit, didn’t measure up, didn’t belong.
I didn’t grow up feeling like I fit in with other boys, and somewhere along the way, that turned into a belief that something in me was broken.
This is a story about survival, identity, faith, and what it takes to finally understand that I was always enough.