Homecoming

Every January, I pick a theme to navigate the year with intention. A habit I picked up from an ex with extraordinary creativity and imagination. At the start of 2025, navigating a challenging relationship, I asked for Clarity and Alignment. I knew it would be a hard year, but I didn’t know just how confronting it would be.

THE RUPTURE

There were several rupture points this year, both inside myself and in the relationship, that shook the foundation of my belief system. And then there was one night —one of those before-and-after nights— when the truth landed so hard that it split my life in two.

The relationship I had poured everything into dismantled before my eyes, crumbling under the weight of dishonesty, betrayal, avoidance, anger, resentment, and finally, something I could see so clearly —incompatibility. The betrayal wasn’t just of trust. It was of myself: finally, I could see all the moments I had minimized my intuition, short-circuited my self-respect and values in the name of love.

I know I did so consciously - because I cared, because I wanted to extend understanding and compassion. Because I hoped it would carry us where I thought we could go. But the cost was real and much greater than I was willing to pay. It was costing me, me.

That rupture drove me straight into the depths of my consciousness and shadows. Grief. Disorientation. Rage. The kind of ache that comes when the life you thought you were building dissolves overnight. When you know the person you chose to share your life with —your first big love— isn’t ready, or able at this time, to follow you on that journey.

And then finally, I felt the echo of my childhood, and with it all the trauma I was still carrying from the troubled marriage of my parents - the betrayals, the pain, the resentment, the desperation, and the charged energy of an unhealthy connection that doesn’t know where and how to resolve.

Beneath all of that, something steadier and stronger was forming: a clean, undeniable clarity and conscious foundation for who I was. Pain stripped away the inherited relational patterns I absorbed but weren’t mine, and made room for my truth.

What became clear, looking back, is that every moment I denied my truth, I knew. The knowing was always there —quiet, persistent, and rather inconvenient:

• When my body tensed up because it sensed a lack of truth.
• When solitude let a subtle voice surface, telling me something wasn’t right.
• When anger rose to signal that something was off.

My mind, however, is quite brilliant at manufacturing rationalizations to protect me from any truth that demands self-confrontation and change. Fear dressed up as logic is how I convinced myself for 20-or-so years that I was straight and definitely not gay.

The mind creates explanations, excuses, and timelines to keep us in the familiar. “Never underestimate the power of denial” is a quote from American Beauty that stuck with me ever since I saw this movie.

But familiarity is not the same as alignment. Embracing what is true —while freeing and powerful— is paradoxically one of the scariest and hardest choice one will make, again and again.

My mind, however, is quite brilliant at manufacturing rationalizations to protect me from any truth that demands self-confrontation and change. I call this process reckoning. Fear dressed up as logic is how I convinced myself for 20-or-so years that I was straight and definitely not gay.

Over time, I learned that the mind alone is not trustworthy when it comes to decision-making. It is just too good at rationalization. Real clarity comes when the mind, heart, and soul are aligned and speaking the same truth. And for that inner voice to surface, fear has to be moved out of the way - especially when the fear is that alignment may cost us something: an image of ourselves, a relationship, a job, a version of life that appears safer simply because it’s known.

The real cost is the one we pay when we ignore that truth: a life lived smaller than who we are meant to be. The soul always knows, and waits for us to listen. But there comes a point when it becomes louder: the body is the first to show us that something is off. Chronic diseases and inflammation are often symptoms of something deeper that waits to be acknowledged.

THE RECKONING

In 2022, I ended up in the hospital with sepsis: my colon had ruptured under the weight of the stress of my job. I was leading a large organization at Riot Games as Executive Producer. It was my first stint as leader of a project of this scale and magnitude, and things were not going well. We had just scaled enormously and quickly, and were confronted with serious challenges. The truths I struggled to face until then became life-changing learning:

• I learned that I was too controlling and attached to specific outcomes and processes, and anything that challenged them caused massive stress in me —and as a result, in my organization.
• I learned that some people —leaders in particular— can be extraordinary in many ways, but if they’re not ready or aligned with your needs and values, and if they’re not willing to change and grow at the pace required, they cannot be the right leaders.
• And finally, I learned that to generate different outcomes, it had to start with me.

This became the organizing principle for everything that followed.

To stop controlling and start leading, I needed to stop fearing and start trusting. And to do that, I needed to build confidence. Hard-earned confidence, the kind that isn't performative or posturing; it comes from a deep sense of worth, adequacy, humility and inner-trust. I realized it was time to shed my imposter syndrome and gather the courage to build the kind of confidence that expresses with openness and curiosity, not defensiveness and control.

Hard earned confidence isn’t performative or posturing, it comes from a deep sense of worth, adequacy, humility and inner-trust.

To get there, I needed to work on a few things:

• Expand my capacity for stress and emotional load, big time.
• Reframe trust. Trust didn't mean I would always get it right. It meant trusting that I would figure it out —or maybe I wouldn’t, but everything would still be okay, as long as I did my best, and operated from a place of conviction rather than fear.
• Treat “the obstacle is the way” as a practice, not a slogan.
• Hold alignment as non-negotiable.

We joke at Riot Games that we say “alignment” twenty times a day. But the reality is simple: to make and operationalize good decisions as a leader, you and your team must be deeply aligned on your values, your mission, your goals, and how you’ll navigate the challenges ahead —together— and everyone has a role in that.

Every obstacle is an opportunity to re-shape this alignment, work through the problem, and grow into the next version of a team capable of handling bigger and bigger challenges. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Success doesn’t come from a lack of tough problems; it comes from the ability to work through the hard stuff and, through that repeatable process, unlock your team’s potential to overcome larger and larger problems.

I will speak more, in another post, about how I integrated those changes. That work is what allows me to navigate ambiguity, make and operationalize large scale decisions, and carry the pressure of big creative visions with confidence, enthusiasm, and joy.

What I didn’t realize until this year was how difficult it would be for me to apply that same principle to my personal life. My therapist said: “it’s normal, home is where things become existential”.

Authenticity, self trust and confidence in my personal life arrived through a similar shocking rupture as it did in my job. I ended up at the hospital again - thankfully this time, without sepsis. I felt a deep sense of despair, confusion and loss. And again, this brought me clarity.

Authenticity arrived to me as a demand:

• Stop abandoning yourself.
• Let your truth be spoken, internally and externally.
• Stop reshaping your perception to maintain peace or preserve a relationship that does not exist —neither in the way your mind imagined it nor in the way your partner wants you to see it.
• Stop dimming your intelligence, emotional depth, creativity, or intuition to meet someone else’s limits.
• Offer compassion to the parts of you that didn’t know how to hold that boundary earlier, and to the person you loved. You were both doing your best.

Authenticity arrived to me as a demand: stop abandoning yourself. Let your truth be spoken, internally and externally. Stop reshaping your perception to maintain peace and the idea of a relationship that does not exist.

Leaving wasn’t difficult this time. It was decisive. I walked away with clarity, and as much compassion as I could hold, and with that single act reclaimed the parts of me that had been waiting for oxygen.

And the moment I stopped negotiating with misalignment, as I had in my professional life, everything that was truly mine began moving toward me, and everything that wasn’t moved away.

THE RETURN

Creativity returned. Energy returned. Music, writing, new friendships, new projects —including this one— rose up in the span of months. My system came back online. It felt as if the world had been waiting for me to close the wrong door so that the right ones could open.

Integrity, in practice, is simple: behave in alignment with what your core values already know. It isn’t about being an asshole in the name of truth. It’s refusing to betray your own perception while still treating yourself and others with dignity. It’s choosing clarity over fantasy, self-respect over longing, and discernment over blame.

Integrity is measured at the point of cost: when alignment asks you to choose truth over comfort, values over attachment, and self-respect over immediate relief or impulses. It requires self-awareness, vulnerability, intentionality, and the 8 C’s: curiosity, calm, compassion, creativity, confidence, courage, connectedness, and clarity.

Integrity is measured at the point of cost: when alignment asks you to choose truth over comfort, values over attachment, and self-respect over immediate relief or impulses.

This chapter —rupture, reckoning, reassembly— is just the beginning. What follows is the long walk home: peeling back the familial patterns, the learned fears, the societal narratives, and the emotional conditioning that once asked me to stay small, stay polite, stay quiet.

I can appreciate why I once lived that way —those patterns kept me safe for a time— but I don’t need them anymore. And I don’t want them anymore.

THE HOMECOMING

Follow Your Spark starts here. Not as a brand, not as a business, but as a doorway towards a new path. A recording of what it looks like to rebuild a life in full alignment, with truth, depth, purpose, and the version of yourself that was there all along.

If something in this journey sparks recognition in you, I’m glad. You may be awakening, too.