This week, two guys who looked, from the outside, like they had life solved. Dave Raymond, the original Philly Phanatic. Matt Ross, the man who took School of Rock global.
This week, both conversations had me wondering the same thing.
Both of them built something that worked. Both of them had it all come apart at once: the diagnoses, the marriages, the kids, the companies, the parents, all of it landing in the same short window. And what got me is that neither of them clawed back with one big heroic decision. They came back slowly. They came back by continuing to show up, and by leaning on something they'd been carrying the whole time without ever calling it by name. I think that's the part we don't talk about enough. Sometimes the thing that saves you isn't new. It's just finally the thing you reach for.
"A tick above hopelessness. I wasn't thinking about self-harm anymore. And then, tick by tick by tick."
If something in that landed, here's where to go:
DAVE RAYMOND
about a picture-perfect life that broke in a matter of weeks, and the character that carried him back
MATT ROSS
about sitting alone in a basement at fifty with everything in ruins, and choosing to grow instead of fold
Until next time, Matt
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