Humpty Dumpty and Kintsugi
On Great Falls and What Comes Next
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again.
The above picture is me, strutting the wall in style, from 4 years ago. No cares in the world. Living my best life. Fired up.
That was before the fracture. Before two equally real parts of me emerged. One is still on the wall. On boards. Advising VC firms. Posting on socials. Starting a nonprofit. Exploring startup ideas. Traveling a lot. Finding genuine joy. Petting my dogs.
For the other me, the wall is a receding memory. I vaguely recall the time before. Before gravity went from theory to reality. Before unexpected endings and life support and mental health clinics and suicide. We all eventually have a story about how part of us fell. This is mine.
My Kintsugi Era
These days, I think a lot about kintsugi, the Japanese art form of repairing broken ceramics with gold dust. The pottery will never look the same as it was, but it can be reincarnated into something novel, yet ancestral:
My kintsugi era has just begun. I’m not trying to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. The laws of entropy and fairy tales would imply that that’s not possible. But I am aiming to meld the shards into something precious and personal. And if you’re here, maybe you’re doing the same.
How to Fall Hard
In a superficial analysis, the breakage of my life can be dated precisely - 2/3/2026 at 10 am pt:
The call from the high school. But I’m in a meeting. Let me pickup just in case.
“Do you know where Summer is? We saw a concerning goodbye note on Instagram.”
Checking Life360. She’s at the dreaded Churchill Ave Caltrain stop.
She’s stopped at the place where her friend stopped their own life a year ago.
Sprinting to my car. Flooring it through Palo Alto side streets. Thinking of running the stoplight but mercifully it glows green. Swerving onto the narrow Churchill road by Palo Alto High School.
The monstrous Caltrain stopped, at rest, under arrest, charged, confessing its crimes. Sirens blaring.
Sprinting the 100 yards to the predatory locomotive. A few bystanders milling about, talking about who the fuck knows.
Me flying like a madman down the tracks, hoping that my temporary madness might forestall eternal sadness. Seeing her solo boot on the side of the tracks and trying to ignore its place in the evidence locker.
Caltrain workers shouting “you can’t be here!” “Where the fuck am I supposed to be? What’s the direction for grieving dads whose lives are collapsing under a mountain of iron?”
Asking the policeman if he found a body. “One dad to another, you don’t want to see it.”
Seeing Summer’s amazing mom and my other daughter walking from the far direction.
Falling. Falling. All of us falling, with no ground in sight.
But I’ve been falling long before that day. I definitely was falling when Summer had planned her first attempt a year before, causing me to leave my job. And all of those scares and panics and frantic psychiatric calls were mini collapses. Yet did I actually start my plummet on May 23rd, 2023, when I got a text that started another, deeply personal, ending? Did it begin on June 4, 2023 when my dad’s “six months to live” estimate fell to one day, in an instant? Or was it in January 2023, when our family’s idyllic heights fell crashing to earth as we learned more than we ever wanted to know about 5150 “suicide holds,” mental health clinics and “residential treatment options.”
When I look at photos of me in 2022, “fall from grace” feels like the understatement of the… forever.
But I think I’ve always been falling. From the warmth of the womb to the loneliness of a friendless childhood. 13 years of eating lunch solo will do that to you. From the relentless voice of my parents in my mind telling me I’m “not enough” to realizing that voice was my own, not theirs. “If you fail, you will fall” is my motivational self-talk.
The World Doesn’t Need Another Substack
I started this substack based upon nudging by my friend, who felt that, as much as I write about anodyne and ephemeral topics like AI and startups, I should share more of who I am personally. I reflected on the countless people who have recently said “if your life was a TV show, people wouldn’t believe it because it’s too messed up.” Winning?
What sold me on the concept was the litany of conversations I’d had with hundreds of others after my daughter’s suicide. One of the gifts during this harrowing year has been to witness strangers and friends open their hearts and wounds to me. Other parents who lost children to suicide. Moms and dads who worry about their kids’ recent attempts. Siblings who lost their brother or sister in this way. Adults who grew up in the shadow of the death of a parent.
And falling is everywhere in life, if you look for it. Unexpected divorces. Regretted marriages. Breakups. Layoffs. Financial hardship. Physical injury or handicap. Unsupportive or abusive parents. The feeling of “I should have been further along by now.” Fears about the future. Especially now.
In the last 3 months, I have gained immense awe for the range of human emotions that we experience on this earth. But looking at social media, you wouldn’t know it. We all (me included) share our shiny sides. Heck, I think half of the photos online of me include sequins! And if we demonstrate vulnerability, it’s packaged and practiced after the challenge is over, in vintage TED Talk fashion. I’m sure there is a “What My Brain Cancer Taught Me About Answer Engine Optimization” speech online. None of this is wrong. We need the shiny side to live our lives. I need it. It’s just incomplete. And I think we lose something in an incomplete world.
Not All Bloggers Wear Capes
I’m here to tell you I’m in it. There is no “thank you for coming to my TED Talk.” I promise no happy ending with a swinging hug. I have not completed the Heroes Journey. I don’t even know if I’m the Hero, the Villain or the Victim. I have no lessons to share. One of my Humpty Dumpties is still on the ground, shattered, aching, reeling and lost, while the other is so grateful for life and is planning so much more. It’s confusing. But much like with kintsugi, I hope this is where the real magic of life begins.
My posts will largely be letters to myself about how I’m trying to locate my bearings and find a path to meaning, joy and beauty amidst the rubble. I’ll include the strange ideas my mind gravitates toward, mixing physics, philosophy, poetry and pop music into a hearty stew of Mehtaphysical-ness (trademark pending):
On Identity: The Ship of Theseus and Lady Gaga
On Time: Einstein and “Hamilton”
On Lasts: Savoring and “Pompeii”
On Memory: Kahneman and Taylor Swift
On Guilt: Quantum Mechanics and Carly Rae Jepsen
On Parenthood: Unanswered Texts and “In the Heights”
On Meaning: Albert Camus and Kermit the Frog
On the Future: Schrodinger’s Cat and Dog People
On Grief: Love and Stephen Colbert
On Survival: Entropy and Broken Eggs
On Noticing: Sonder and “This is Water”
On Closure: Death and the “Cheers” Finale
On Objects: Banality and Holiness
On Therapy: Analytical Frameworks and Kleenexes
On Mental Health: Waiting Rooms and Dave Matthews Band
On the Path: Dylan Thomas and “The Dark Knight”
On Freedom: Janis Joplin and Bob Dylan
On AI: Generating and Degenerating
On Tough Questions: Like How Are You Doing?
Everyone Has a Second Coming
The poet William Butler Yeats penned the classic line:
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold
I’m here to report that Yeats is right. No matter his agility or tenacity, Humpty will eventually fall off the wall. Or at least one version will. In all timelines across all multiverses or branches of Many Worlds. But the title of Yeats’ poem, “The Second Coming,” contains the answer. It’s not over. Something new will emerge.
I think we can all internalize kintsugi and forge the fragments of our pasts with the magic of the moment to create something new yet timeless. Or at least I hope we can. So begins my journey.
This is incredibly powerful. I’m so sorry for what you and your family have gone through. The way you put words to something so complex and raw will resonate with more people than you might realize.
I wish I could say I didn't know how you feel, but I do. I went through (is that the right word? implies there was an end and there has not been... yet) a series of loss after loss after loss in 2024 with some of them just... I don't have words for the experience - the sights, the sounds, the aftermath. And I've tried keeping the shiny side out there up on the wall and making sure that's what folks see, but it's hard. Some days it's impossible.
The ragged, beat up, still struggling with CPTSD, angry, and unresolved side peeks out at least a few times a week (as recent as this morning) and yet as a society we're just not built to handle the "Oh, you're *still* grieving and processing?" side of humans. Sometimes I just want to throw a chair, put a hole through a wall, or retreat into the woods. Sometimes I need to.
I've got no words of wisdom or comfort unfortunately. It's wonderful that eventually folks like you and I learn how to mask or temporarily box up the off-wall-version, but I agree: it leaves us incomplete.
PS: You should know that you inspired me to buy a sequined jacket + shirt set some months back. I guess in some way I kind had a moment of "if I can't actually feel shiny, I can at least look it".