I’ve lived long enough to know that most lives are not straight lines—they’re braided ropes, pulled tight by competing loyalties: duty and doubt, silence and speech, survival and meaning. The tug of war has never really stopped.

I am a Vietnam Marine combat veteran who came home carrying questions no uniform prepares you to answer. War taught me about courage, but it also taught me about fracture—how easily the inner world can splinter when the outer world demands obedience without reflection. Those early lessons followed me into a lifetime of listening.

For more than twenty-five years, I worked as a psychotherapist in a psychiatric hospital, sitting with veterans, civilians, families, and the quietly overwhelmed. I learned that trauma is not only about what happened, but also about what couldn’t be spoken about afterward. Moral injury—though it didn’t always have a name—was everywhere. It showed up in guilt, rage, numbness, addiction, devotion, and silence. It showed up in kitchens, classrooms, bedrooms, and voting booths.

Alongside that clinical work, I kept writing—poetry, essays, parables, letters, myths—trying to say what ordinary language often avoids.

I’ve written about war, yes, but also about imagination, presence, masculinity, attention, aging, responsibility, and the cost of a culture that confuses noise with meaning. I’m as interested in the inner life of civilians as I am in soldiers, because war never belongs only to those who fight it. It ripples outward, quietly infecting families, communities, and nations.

I’ve spoken to mental-health professionals, veterans’ groups, students, and civilians—most recently addressing clinicians abroad grappling with rising suicide and moral injury in the shadow of ongoing conflict. Each time, I’m reminded that imagination may be as essential to healing as diagnosis.

My forthcoming book, The Tug of War, is not a manifesto or a manual. It’s a field journal from inside a life shaped by war and shaped again by listening. It blends story, reflection, poetry, and image to reach what facts alone can’t touch. It’s written for veterans and civilians alike—for anyone who feels the strain between who they were asked to be and who they are still becoming.

This website is not a destination. It’s a gathering place. A fire circle. A listening post.

You don’t need credentials to be here—only a willingness to look inward and stay curious.

“What we don’t tend, we repeat.
What we imagine, we can begin to heal.”