I grew up in a world that was disciplined by my father, and that created a lot of fear. The fear of not being good enough, not being accepted, or being judged started to build defence mechanisms that later became my assets.
Those same defences drove me to achieve. I had a lot of success, both professionally and materially, in my mid to late twenties. That success eventually led me to stop playing hockey. Without the structure and accountability the game had given me, I drifted.
When I turned thirty, I began moving from place to place, chasing opportunities and trying to rebuild meaning. My relationships became less deep, and the sense of belonging I had always found through the game slowly disappeared. To escape those feelings, I turned to alcohol, and that began a fifteen-year cycle of building my life up and tearing it down.
The journey took me around the world, but wherever I went, I could not outrun myself. On the outside, it looked like everything was working, but underneath, I always felt like a fraud. No matter what I achieved, it never felt enough.
Eventually, I lost everything that success had given me. I found myself in Toronto, alone, drinking, and broken. It was there that I stopped trying to hold it all together and finally let people in. That moment was the start of my recovery. Not just from alcohol, but from disconnection. I began to understand that what I had been chasing my whole life was not success. It was belonging and purpose. From that truth came accountability.
ReTribe was born from that understanding. It is built on the idea that we are stronger when we can show up as we are, not as we think we should be. It is about creating a culture where people can be tough and tender at the same time.
The lessons that saved my life now guide my work. Helping athletes, coaches, and communities find balance, connection, and purpose is not just what I do. It is who I am. I am deeply curious about how, as humans, we have achieved so much in this world and yet forgotten so much of our humanness and our true human power. I believe unlocking our full potential happens in community, and when we do that together, we can accomplish anything.