🪽Some decisions change you forever. In 2023, I had to make one of them.🪽
I stood in a hospital room, staring at my father.
The man who taught me how to walk.
The man who taught me to see the world in full color.
Now unconscious.
Now held together by tubes and machines.
The doctors spoke in numbers.
5% chance to survive surgery.
5% chance to still be himself if he made it through.
But the real decision, the hardest one, was not about odds.
It was about love.
I held his hand and said what no child ever wants to say.
"Papi, it’s time. I have to let you go."
I said it softly, almost like I was trying to convince myself it was the right thing.
That is when it happened.
A single tear slipped down his cheek.
The doctors told us he would never wake up.
They said he would never hear us.
But that tear told me everything.
He heard me.
That moment didn’t just break me.
It broke me open.
And when life breaks you open, you have two choices.
You can collapse. Or you can create. I chose to create.
I launched The Failures Only Podcast, with my co-hosts where I shared the hard truths about grief, career pivots, and learning to fail forward.
I threw myself into my previous business, Sidehustle.law, building late at night, fueled by questions I wasn’t ready to answer.
That side hustle became my bridge to Trademarkia, my next role, my next reinvention, my next chapter.
Grief gave me clarity.
Loss gave me focus.
And somehow, heartbreak gave me the courage to bet on myself.
Losing my father didn’t just change how I showed up at work.
It changed how I showed up everywhere.
I held my mom closer.
I listened to my wife with both ears and my whole heart.
I redefined success to mean building something meaningful without losing the people who make it matter.
This untitled book I’m writing?
It’s not just about loss.
It’s about what grief gives you if you let it.
The gift of reinvention.
The gift of clarity.
The gift of becoming the person your younger self always hoped you’d become.
I hope to release this book next year with the help of my writing coach Charlie Vazquez.
And if any of you are authors, I would gladly accept all the tips, advice, and lessons you wish you knew before publishing your first book.
