June is Men's Mental Health Month, a time to talk about something many men struggle with but few feel comfortable discussing openly. For much of my life, I believed that strength meant handling things on my own. As a soldier, I was trained to push through difficult situations, adapt to challenges, and keep moving forward no matter what. During my military career, I completed two overseas deployments, one to Afghanistan and another to Iraq. Those deployments meant leaving behi

It's 2:00am and the thoughts just keep swirling & swirling... water, utilities, mortgage, sport fees. Literally impossible to manage everything solo. But that's exactly the expectation for a single parent. There are single parents, and then there are lone ones. I fall into the latter category. It was never in my dream book, or even in my childhood journals, to manage life with kids completely on my own. I wanted partnership, friendship, a love that drops it all to just simply

I walked down to the Police Station that day… slowly, my head hung the lowest of the low. Feelings of extreme sadness, anger and shame flooded my mind. I was just building my career in Social Work. My professional reputation mattered. But everything was seemingly crumbling behind closed doors. How can this even be my life, I thought. Things like this just don't happen to me. I had been separated from my ex at that time for a substantial amount of time. I had primary care of t