Growing a Beard (IIPH)

Things fall apart. And they break sometimes. Like many of you, my journey hasn’t always been easy. Pain is very real. And so is loss.
Sometimes it’s hard not to let the weight of what we carry—or the memory of what we’ve lost—take over. Many of us know the reality
of struggle, and so many people suffer in silence. It’s hard. It’s hard not to give up when we face the repeated disappointments
of life. Like some of you, I’ve known loneliness. I’ve known defeat. I’ve fallen many times chasing mirages, and broken many bones
making castles in life’s fading sands. Sometimes, all it took was one solid wave to destroy what I had spent years building.

So I decided to give it a voice. All of it: the tears, the pain. And the lessons. The things I saw and learned and gained along my life
path needed a voice. I wanted to give back, in hopes of helping myself and others survive. But then it wasn’t just about surviving.
I didn’t just want people to survive inside their storms. I wanted people to thrive inside their storms. And so I wrote, as I walked through my own.

The words found in this book became my voice and my letter to the world. They became my deepest attempt to, not just pick myself up, but others along the way. I wrote because, just as we will fall in life, so will we rise. That’s the thing about this world. It never gives us only one kind of path. There is pain. Yes. And loss. And even darkness. But there is also light. There is hope. There is
beauty.

And there is also love and happiness.