September 27, 2026
Grand day rising.
My Conversation with God.
Yesterday was emotional.
Really fucking emotional.
I dropped JJ off at the airport after 26 years together.
I cried in the car.
I felt that seven-year-old boy come forward—the one who remembered what it felt like when people he loved left and he stayed behind.
And I let him come.
I didn’t shut him down.
I didn’t tell him to stop crying.
I didn’t tell him to be strong.
I didn’t tell him we had shit to do and there wasn’t time for this.
I just stayed with him.
Just for today.
And apparently something about that story landed with people.
Hard.
It’s interesting because I thought I had been sharing what was happening between JJ and me for weeks.
The separation wasn’t new to us.
We knew this day was coming.
In fact, it had been postponed multiple times because of my knee replacement, the infection, the hospitalization, the PICC line, antibiotics—all the shit that happened unexpectedly.
JJ graciously kept moving her departure because she wanted to make sure I was okay before she left.
So yesterday wasn’t a surprise to us.
But apparently it was a surprise to a lot of people reading.
The messages started coming.
Comments.
Texts.
Voice notes.
People reaching out to me.
People reaching out to JJ.
At one point she texted me from the plane:
“What did you post? My phone is blowing up.”
People were telling her they were sorry.
Wishing her well.
Sending love.
And I thought:
What the hell? I’ve been talking about this for weeks.
But something about yesterday made it real for people.
Maybe because it finally became real for me too.
The airport.
The goodbye.
The tears.
The empty car afterward.
No longer preparing for the separation.
Actually living it.
And I want to say something about everyone who reached out.
Thank you.
Especially the men.
There were men who openly wrote:
“This made me cry.”
Men telling me they recognized that little boy.
The wounded boy.
The abandoned boy.
Men I’ve known for years.
Men I’ve coached.
Men I’ve worked beside.
Men I have somehow developed friendships with online even though we have never physically met.
Some of those messages brought me right back to tears.
I read my own post again last night.
And cried again.
Because it was real.
It was present.
And apparently it needed to come out of me.
But there was something else I noticed yesterday.
I felt held.
I felt seen.
I felt supported.
I felt loved.
And maybe most importantly:
I was able to give those things to myself too.
That feels different.
Last night I got into bed.
The dogs came with me.
One on my legs.
The other tucked against my torso underneath the covers.
And all three of us were safe.
Nobody needed to figure out tomorrow.
We had that moment.
We had that night.
God willing, morning would come.
And it did.
This morning I woke up and took Chapo and Jet for our walk.
We’ve done that walk plenty of times.
But this one felt different.
During much of my recovery, JJ was the one walking them three times a day.
As I’ve gotten stronger, I’ve gradually taken the morning walk back.
Then the afternoon.
Then the evening.
But this morning there was no JJ back at the house.
No music playing from the backyard.
No voice talking to a client somewhere in another room.
No other human frequency in the house.
It was just us.
Me.
Chapo.
Jet.
Day one.
Day one of Becoming Colin in his own frequency.
His own house.
His own space.
His own energy.
That is fucking surreal to say.
But interestingly enough, it doesn’t feel terrifying.
It feels peaceful.
Neutral.
I don’t need to jump ten years into the future.
I don’t need to spend the morning looking backward.
I don’t need to ask whether this separation ends in reconciliation, divorce, friendship, something entirely different, or something none of us can imagine yet.
I don’t know.
Today, I’m just here.
I’m looking through the window.
The leaves are barely moving.
It’s another cool morning.
The fountain is running outside.
Music is playing through the house.
My music.
That sounds like such a tiny fucking thing.
But for 26 years there has always been another human being’s energy in the space.
JJ usually woke up before me.
She would put her music on.
Her playlists.
Her vibe.
Her morning.
Today I chose the music.
Not because mine is better.
Because it’s mine.
And I’m noticing things like that now.
Who am I when there is nobody else’s presence in the house telling me—without either of us intentionally doing it—who I am in relation to them?
Who am I when I’m simply listening to myself?
That is new territory.
I’ve been responding to messages this morning because I genuinely want to answer them.
Nobody had to reach out yesterday.
Nobody owed me a comment.
Nobody owed JJ a prayer.
Nobody owed us kindness.
People chose to stop whatever was happening in their own lives and send a little piece of themselves toward us.
I want them to know:
I saw you.
Thank you.
This is the first time social media has actually felt social to me.
Not followers.
Not audience.
Not leads.
Not prospects.
Humans.
People sharing their stories because I shared mine.
Men telling me they’re angry.
Lost.
Afraid.
Going through something similar.
People writing long messages about their own relationships and wounds and lives.
Maybe this is what the fucking thing was supposed to be for in the first place.
Human beings connecting with human beings.
Not constantly shopping our wares.
Not always pushing the next product.
Not every interaction needing to lead somewhere.
Sometimes:
I see you.
You see me.
And that is enough.
Yesterday also made me think a lot about love.
People are confused.
How can you talk about how much you love someone and still let them leave?
How can two people have this much reverence for one another and still separate?
I understand the question.
I watched another version of marriage growing up.
My parents remained married for 30 years.
The marriage ended when my mother died.
But from the time I was maybe 16, I knew she was unhappy.
From my perspective as their son, she stayed for the children.
She worried about what her friends would think.
My father was a doctor.
She was the doctor’s wife.
There was an identity.
An image.
A life.
I watched two people who could function like best friends and roommates but, in my experience, had lost much of the intimacy and connection that makes a marriage feel alive.
I heard arguments about business.
Money.
My father’s infidelities.
I saw my mother’s pain.
I’ve said before that I believe she died of a broken heart.
I can’t know that medically.
That is the meaning I made from watching a woman I loved carry what looked to me like enormous sadness for years.
But I remember something forming inside me:
I will not confuse staying with loving.
And I don’t want to repeat my parents’ marriage.
JJ doesn’t want to repeat hers.
This was the third marriage for each of us.
Two people who had both been here before, in different seasons, with different commitments.
And here we are now asking perhaps the hardest question yet.
If God gives us another 20 or 30 years on this earth, how do we want those years to feel?
Not look.
Not what will make everybody else comfortable.
Not what people think a husband and wife who have spent 26 years together are supposed to do.
What do we actually desire?
JJ is a good woman.
I believe I am a good man.
We both have good hearts.
We both have missions.
Dreams.
Desires.
And both of us deserve the opportunity to discover what truly makes us feel alive.
That doesn’t mean marriage becomes disposable.
It doesn’t mean you leave every time shit gets hard.
Fuck, if that were the rule, JJ and I would have been gone 25 years ago.
It means longevity alone is not enough reason to stop telling the truth.
Sometimes love doesn’t mean gripping tighter.
Sometimes love is saying:
I want you to discover who you really are—even if I don’t yet know what that discovery means for us.
And I want that freedom too.
Choosing me as she chooses her.
That is where I am.
At 65, I have fewer fucks to give.
But I want to be clear what that means.
It doesn’t mean I stopped caring.
I probably care more deeply than I ever have.
I care about JJ.
I care about my children.
My grandchildren.
My friends.
These men reaching out.
My body.
My work.
My relationship with God.
My impact.
I have plenty of fucks to give.
I’m becoming more selective about where they belong.
I have fewer fucks to give about judgment.
Whether everybody likes me.
Whether they approve of how much I curse.
Whether my transparency makes somebody uncomfortable.
Whether telling my whole truth makes me look less polished.
Because I’m releasing those shackles.
I spent too much of my life afraid I wouldn’t be enough.
Afraid I wouldn’t be liked.
Afraid somebody would see something in me and decide:
Nope. I don’t want him.
But hiding parts of myself feels deceptive now.
You cannot tell one side of my story and pretend the other side didn’t happen.
I was not a perfect spouse.
I broke rules.
I betrayed.
I entered this relationship as an addict.
I hurt people.
I operated from insecurity.
There were times the wounded boy showed up.
Times the wounded teenager took over.
Times the wounded man drove the fucking car.
That’s part of the story too.
And maybe that is another thing I’m finally beginning to understand:
There isn’t just one wounded child inside me.
There’s a whole fucking daycare.
There’s Sad Sammy.
Angry Andy.
Fuck You Freddy.
Fearful Frank.
I Don’t Matter Matt.
Not Good Enough Glenn.
Rejected Reggie.
And I’m sure some new little motherfucker is going to introduce himself next week.
For most of my life, those parts would show up and I didn’t necessarily know who I was dealing with.
One would grab the steering wheel.
React.
Defend.
Run.
Attack.
Please.
Over-explain.
Collapse.
Shut down.
And I thought that was just me.
What’s different now is that I can see them.
Sometimes I can feel one arriving before he even says anything.
And instead of telling him:
“Shut the fuck up.”
“Go away.”
“We don’t have time for this.”
I can say:
“I see you.”
“Come here.”
“I got you.”
That might be the biggest difference between me today and the man I was 25 years ago.
I am learning to be the parent to those wounded parts that I needed when those wounds were created.
Not because my parents were pieces of shit.
They weren’t.
They did the best they could with the consciousness, circumstances, wounds, and tools they had.
And they still fucked some things up.
Both can be true.
They left scars.
But they are both gone now.
They cannot come back and remove those scars for me.
They cannot rewrite what little Colin decided certain experiences meant.
And to be fair to that little boy, he didn’t consciously sit down and create those meanings.
His nervous system did what children’s nervous systems do.
It tried to make sense of things it could not understand.
They left. Maybe I’m not enough.
Something bad can happen at any moment. Better stay ready.
Other people fall apart. I need to hold everything together.
Those beliefs served him.
They protected him.
They helped him survive.
But I’m not seven anymore.
And only I can decide whether those old meanings still get to run my life.
That is the work.
And the work is never fucking done.
Every relationship becomes a mirror.
Every partner.
Every friendship.
Every argument.
Every trigger.
They show us something.
I believe we often find people who expose precisely the places inside ourselves that still need our attention.
And after 26 years with JJ?
Man, have I had a fucking mirror.
And so has she.
Maybe that is part of the gift we have been to one another.
Not because we fixed each other.
Because we exposed each other.
Love will do that.
Intimacy will put a flashlight on the parts of you that you would much rather leave in the basement.
And eventually you get to decide:
Keep hiding?
Or go downstairs and meet them?
I’m going downstairs.
Every fucking room.
Because Becoming Colin isn’t really about becoming some brand-new human being.
It feels more like calling all the scattered pieces of me home.
The addict.
The betrayer.
The protector.
The scared little boy.
The angry teenager.
The husband.
The father.
The grandfather.
The businessman.
The coach.
The man who wants to build an empire.
The man who cries in his car.
The man who curses.
The man who prays.
The man sitting quietly this morning with two dogs sleeping under blankets while music plays through an otherwise empty house.
All of them.
Nobody gets exiled anymore.
And maybe that’s what King Colin actually means.
Not a man who has eliminated every wound.
Not some perfectly healed motherfucker who never gets triggered again.
That man doesn’t exist.
King Colin is the man who knows who he is when the wounds come forward.
The man who can say:
I see you.
I know why you’re here.
You can sit with me.
But you don’t need to drive anymore.
That feels like sovereignty to me.
Knowing what I want.
Saying yes to my yeses.
No to my noes.
Not living ambiguously.
Not hiding behind lies or old stories.
Connecting deeply with other humans.
Speaking my truth without shame.
Living without being chained to limiting beliefs that were created by versions of me who were simply trying to survive.
That is the road.
And yes, it’s going to hurt sometimes.
Yesterday fucking hurt.
Today doesn’t.
Not in the same way.
Today feels lighter.
Neutral.
Present.
And I don’t need to manufacture sadness today because yesterday mattered.
I don’t need to stay brokenhearted to prove that I loved JJ.
Yesterday was yesterday.
Today I’m watching sunlight beginning to break through a cloudy sky.
The leaves outside are still.
I can hear the fountain.
My music is playing through my house.
The dogs are already tucked under blankets taking their morning nap.
And I’m here.
With God.
With myself.
Grateful to be alive.
Grateful to be standing.
Grateful to be walking.
Grateful to be healing.
Grateful for yesterday.
Grateful for today.
Grateful for all of it.
And to every person who read yesterday’s words and took a moment to send me something back:
Thank you.
To everyone who sent JJ love:
Thank you.
To the men who admitted they cried:
I see you.
To everyone who shared a story, a prayer, a message, a voice note, a little piece of your heart because I shared a piece of mine:
I’m grateful for you.
I appreciate you.
I love you.
Yesterday, the little boy inside me was afraid somebody was leaving him.
Today, I realize something.
I’m still here.
And maybe that’s what Becoming Colin has been about all along.
Not becoming someone else.
Not finally becoming worthy.
Not finally becoming healed enough.
But gathering every scattered part of myself back into one place and saying:
Come home.
All of you.
You belong here.
Day one.
My house.
My music.
My dogs.
My sadness when it comes.
My joy when it comes.
My mistakes.
My scars.
My dreams.
My faith.
My life.
All of me.
And for the first time, maybe I’m not asking permission to be any of it.
I am becoming Colin.
Make today amazing.
Namaste.
Colin F. Watson