Welcome to Cracked Open
I’ve been living with muscular dystrophy my entire life, married for 23 years, a father to two kids, and a therapist for 25 years.
I write because I need to make sense of what it means to soften to ongoing loss without pretending I’m okay with it.
What This Is
There have been many mornings when I have woken up and my body has taken something else like a little more weakness, a little less range of motion, another thing I used to do easily that now requires help or adaptation or letting go entirely.
I spent decades trying to fix this, escape it, or ignore it. I built an entire life around pretending my body wasn’t betraying me. I compartmentalized the fear so effectively that I didn’t even know I was carrying it.
That strategy eventually collapsed.
What I’ve learned and what I’m still learning is that resistance multiplies suffering. The formula is simple: Loss × Resistance = Suffering. When you stop fighting what cannot be changed, the loss doesn’t disappear, but the suffering shifts.
This is what I write about, not as someone who’s transcended it, but as someone in the middle of the practice.
Who This Is For
You might be here because:
You’re navigating chronic illness or disability and you’re tired of being told to focus on gratitude when you’re actually grieving. You’re done with inspiration porn. You want someone who will say the truth: this is hard, it keeps taking things away, and no amount of positive thinking changes that.
You’re in a long-term relationship that’s transforming in ways you didn’t choose, through illness, aging, perimenopause, role changes, shifts in power and desire, and you need to talk about it without pretending it’s all growth and no loss.
You’re carrying shame about desire, need, wanting to be held, wanting things you’ve been told you’re not supposed to want or don’t deserve to have.
You’re interested in Buddhist and contemplative concepts but you’re done with spiritual bypassing. You want acceptance that doesn’t skip the grief, anger, and shame. You want softening that’s honest about how hard it is to soften.
You’ve been told to be resilient when you’re actually just exhausted. You’ve been expected to inspire others with your suffering when you’d rather just live with it.
You understand intellectually that there’s no fixed self to protect, but you’re still taking yourself very seriously, and you’d like some help with that.
Who I Am
I’m David. I live in Austin with my wife Debbie, two kids, and a menagerie of animals who think they run the house.
I’m a licensed psychologist in Texas and New York. I run therapy groups, work with individuals and couples, and teach about shame, grief, regret versus remorse, and why most people can’t actually hear each other even when they’re listening.
I’ve spent my entire life in a body that keeps changing the terms. Muscular dystrophy has been my most relentless teacher. It’s taught me more about suffering, acceptance, and the illusion of control than any training or book ever could.
I used to relate to my body through shame, then through pain and betrayal, and now, after a lot of work, I’m learning to tend to it. The shame and pain are still there. They’re just not running the show anymore.
I didn’t get here by transcending anything. I got here by developing a relationship with my body, learning to speak to it in a language it could understand, and practicing softening to what I cannot change.
That’s what I write about. The practice of softening. Not the achievement of it.
What You’ll Get
If you subscribe, you’ll get:
Weekly essays every Saturday at noon CT on disability, grief, shame, desire, relationships, and the illusion of self. I write about therapy, what my body is teaching me, how shame wraps around need, the difference between regret and remorse, why we take ourselves so seriously when there’s no fixed self to protect.
My goal is also to post 2-3 notes a day, mostly related to the theme of the Saturday piece.
I’m not here to fix you or inspire you or tell you everything happens for a reason. I’m here to write about what it’s like to live in a body that keeps taking things away, to stay married when everything is changing, to practice softening when resistance feels safer, and to stop pretending any of this is easy.
Start Here
If you want to know what this publication is about, start with these:
The Invisible Disability Hierarchy That Keeps Us Divided — Why disabled people fight each other for legitimacy instead of fighting the systems excluding all of us
There Is No Other — The voice that insists you’re fundamentally alone
The Need to Be Held — Shame wrapping around need
My Changing Body — The evolution of my relationship with my body across three stages
Regret vs. Remorse — The difference between punishing yourself and actually learning
P.S. If you subscribe, go to settings and choose which notifications you actually want. I post multiple times a week and I don’t want to be the reason your inbox feels like a burden.
— David
