Why the secret? That part takes a little more explaining, and it starts with the worst year of my life.
When Michael’s mother, Sarah, died eight years ago, I watched my son come apart at the seams. He dropped out of graduate school within a semester. He started living off credit cards he couldn’t afford, calling me every few weeks asking for a little help, just this once, just to get through the month. It took him hitting an actual rock bottom — declaring bankruptcy at twenty-three, sitting across from me at my kitchen table with his head in his hands — before something in him finally woke up.
I remember that night clearly. He was twenty-three years old, humiliated, furious at himself, and he looked up at me and said, “I don’t know how to fix this.” And I remember the exact moment I decided not to fix it for him.
