The Reclaimed Man · Episode 1

I Had Stage 4 Cancer and Crippling Anxiety.   Here’s What it Taught Me.

Dublin Airport. August 2022.

I’d just watched my son Edison play in the bronze medal match at the Under 21 Lacrosse World Championships. He was representing Australia. One of the proudest moments of my life.

I dropped the hire car, checked in, found a seat in the departure lounge.

And that’s when I felt it.

Heart rate in the high 90s. Chest pain. Shortness of breath. Nausea.

I had no idea what was happening to me. I didn’t know the word for it yet.

That was my first panic attack. And it was the beginning of two years I never saw coming.

What followed was debilitating anxiety, intrusive thoughts that terrified me, six weeks essentially housebound — and then a stage four prostate cancer diagnosis with metastases in my pelvis.

I was 48 years old. My life looked, from the outside, exactly like it was supposed to. Successful career. A family I loved. A home. A reputation. Everything a man is supposed to want.

And I was falling apart.

This is the episode I never planned to make — the story I’ve never told publicly. The panic attacks. The shame I carried in secret about my own son. The intrusive thoughts I kept from everyone. The psychiatrist’s couch. The cancer diagnosis that felt like the world being pulled out from underneath me. The treatment I didn’t want and had to learn to love. And the one word a friend said to me that changed everything.

And the one idea that held me together through all of it:

*This is not happening to me. It is happening for me.*

I won’t pretend that was easy to live by. For the longest time — months, closer to two years — I couldn’t find the gift. Couldn’t see what any of it was for.

But I held onto it. Because the alternative — hopelessness — felt like a door I didn’t want to walk through.

This episode is where The Reclaimed Man begins. Not because I’ve arrived at the other side. I haven’t. I’m still in the middle of this — still on the treatment, still doing the work, still learning what this season of my life is here to teach me.

But something has formed out of the fire. Something I couldn’t have designed. Something I could only have lived my way into.

If you are a man who has built a good life and still feels like something essential is missing — if you’re quietly struggling with anxiety, with the sense that the best of you might already be behind you — this episode is for you.

You don’t have to have it figured out. You just have to be willing to ask a different question.

“The man who asks ‘why is this happening to me?’ becomes a victim of his circumstances. The man who asks ‘what is this here to teach me?’ becomes the author of his story.”

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

# Episode 1 Script — The Origin: This Is Not Happening To Me

Before we get into today’s episode — I want to let you know that

I’m going to share some things I’ve never shared publicly before.

Including some dark moments around mental health, intrusive

thoughts, and a cancer diagnosis. If that’s something you need

to be in the right headspace for, just know that going in.

Dublin Airport. August 2022.

I’d just watched my son Edison play in the bronze medal match at the

Under 21 Lacrosse World Championships. He was playing for Australia.

One of the proudest moments of my life.

I needed to get from there to London. I had a one-day seminar the

next morning — marketing and practice growth for chiropractors.

A room full of people expecting me to show up and deliver.

I dropped the hire car, checked in, found a seat in the departure

lounge.

And that’s when I felt it.

Like I’d had way too many coffees. A kind of buzzing, wired feeling

that I couldn’t place. Now, I’d always been pretty good at checking

in with myself when something felt off — so I did what I always did.

I looked at my thoughts. Scanned for what might be worrying me.

Nothing. There was nothing there.

I sat down and meditated. Came back up. Looked at my watch.

Heart rate still in the high 90s.

And then it hit. Chest pain. Shortness of breath. Nausea.

I had no idea what was happening to me. I didn’t know the word for

it yet. But that was my first panic attack.

I called Lauren. My wife. I just needed her on the phone. I wasn’t

even talking to her — I was just checking in every few minutes with

a thumbs up emoji. Just knowing she was there was enough to get me

through.

I got on the plane that night. Two hours sleep. Maybe.

I woke up the next morning hoping it would be gone. That whatever

had happened in the departure lounge was a one-off — something I

could put behind me and move on from.

It wasn’t gone. It was just as strong as the night before.

I lay there in that hotel room thinking: how the hell am I going

to get through today? What happens if I need to just run out of

the room? What do I even say to these people?

And then the solution came to me. Food poisoning.

Before the seminar started I pulled Melissa aside — she was helping

me run the day — and said: “Listen, I had food poisoning last night.

Been throwing up all night. I’m going to try and get through today,

but if I need to step out of the room at any point — that’s all

it is. I don’t want to make a big deal of it in front of everyone,

just giving you a heads up.”

That little parachute was enough. If things got unbearable, I had

a reason to leave. I had an exit.

I taught the whole day. Eight hours. The panic attack running in

full flight underneath every single minute of it. Nobody in that

room had any idea.

I tell you that not to impress you. I tell you that because I know

there is a man listening to this right now who is doing exactly the

same thing. Holding it together on the outside. Falling apart on

the inside. Showing up for everyone else while quietly wondering

how much longer he can keep this up.

If you’re that man…I see you. I know what that costs.

I got back to Melbourne. Lauren already knew most of it — she’d been

on the phone with me through the worst of it in Dublin, those thumbs

up check-ins every few minutes. But we debriefed properly when I got

home.

I was worried about what had happened. And if I’m honest — part of

me was almost hoping it was something cardiovascular. Something

physical. Something with a clear explanation and a clear fix.

Because underneath that, I think I already knew. I think I knew

that what I’d experienced in that departure lounge was an anxiety

attack. And that was confronting in a way a heart problem wasn’t.

A heart problem I could point to. Anxiety felt like something else

entirely. Something I didn’t have a framework for yet.

I went and got checked out anyway. Stress test, the works.

Perfectly healthy.

A few minor episodes after that. Small stuff. And then — nothing

for eighteen months.

Boxing Day. Eighteen months later.

Another one. Out of nowhere. Just as intense as the first.

We were in the city for the weekend — Lauren, the kids, Bourke

Street Mall on Boxing Day. Thousands of people everywhere. Sales,

noise, the full chaos of it.

And there I was. In the middle of all of it. Anxiety attack in

full flight.

I had a little more awareness this time. A little more control than

that first night in Dublin. But not much.

What I needed in that moment — the only thing I needed — was Lauren.

I just needed her to hold me. She didn’t know what to do. I didn’t

know what to do. Nobody around us had any idea what was happening.

But when she put her arms around me — that tender, loving embrace

— it didn’t make the anxiety go away. It just made it bearable.

Just enough to keep going.

And so that’s what we did. We kept wandering around the city.

Thousands of people streaming past us. Every now and then I’d just

need to stop, and Lauren would hold me again. And then we’d keep

walking.

When I look back on it now — it’s just madness. Two people quietly

navigating something terrifying in the middle of one of the busiest

places in Melbourne, and nobody around us had any idea.

It lasted a few days. And after that — I decided I needed to

investigate properly.

I started doing a deep dive on anxiety. Reading every book I could

get my hands on. Audiobooks. Appointments with naturopaths. Looking

at nutrition, at nervous system regulation, at every possible angle.

And somewhere in that investigation — I started to notice something

I hadn’t been willing to look at.

I need to give you some context here.

I have two older children from my first marriage — Mackenzie and

Edison. Being a dad to them was one of the great joys of my life.

I loved it. I was confident in it. Whatever else was difficult about

that season — and there was plenty — being their dad was something

I could hold onto.

The divorce was hard. Really hard. I lost a lot of self-confidence

through it.

And then Lauren came into my life.

I want to be careful how I say this, because I want to get it right.

Lauren loved me in a way I had never been loved before. Completely.

Safely. In a way that reached places in me I didn’t know were empty.

I had never felt that kind of love. And I didn’t realise until I had

it how much I had needed it.

When Sonny arrived — naturally, beautifully, as it should be —

Lauren’s attention went to him. She became a mother. And something

in me panicked. I started to yearn for that love I had finally found. And then —

and this is the part that filled me with shame — I started to resent

Sonny. My own son. I began, in some ways, to compete with him for

Lauren’s attention.

I loved my boy. I want to be absolutely clear about that. I loved

him deeply. And I loved being a dad. Those two things were

simultaneously true alongside a resentment that made me feel like

the worst kind of man.

How could I feel this way? What kind of father resents his own child

for existing?

That shame was enormous. And I had been carrying it — quietly,

privately, without telling anyone — for a long time.

I decided to do a guided mushroom journey with a therapist.

It was the single most difficult thing I have ever done. A very hard

trip. Very unpleasant. And also — profoundly clarifying.

Sonny came to me in that journey. And what I heard him say was:

*”Dad, don’t resent me. I’m here as a gift to you.”*

I don’t know how to explain that. I’m not going to try.

When we got back to the hotel room that night, Lauren and I were

sitting on the couch. And something happened that I will never forget.

Normally — without fail — Sonny would go straight to Lauren. Cuddle

up with his mum. That was just what he did.

That night he didn’t.

He came over to me.

He climbed up and cuddled into me.

Lauren noticed it immediately. Neither of us said anything in that

moment. We didn’t need to. Something had shifted in me — and

somehow, without any words, without any explanation, my little boy

felt it.

The resentment was gone. Just gone.

The next six months were some of the most productive of my life.

Clear. Creative. Focused. The anxiety completely disappeared.

Until June 2024.

My mum was unwell. Leukaemia. She’d had COVID and pneumonia on top

of it. She’d been in hospital, then respite. Now she wanted me to

drive her up to Coffs Harbour to stay with my sister.

To understand what that meant for me, I need to go back.

My parents separated when I was five. For the next five or six years

I lived with my mum. But I wasn’t having a great time. The school

wasn’t right for me. I missed my dad. And eventually — I made a

decision that no kid should have to make. I decided to go and live

with him.

I left my mum. I left my two sisters. And as I walked out the door,

my mum looked at me and said:

*”If you leave me, I never want to speak with you again.”*

I was ten years old.

I went six months without speaking to her. And then one day I picked

up the phone and called. We spoke. Slowly, carefully, we rekindled

things.

But the guilt never left.

The story I carried — quietly, for decades — was that I had done

something wrong. That I had abandoned her. That I had let her down

in a way that couldn’t fully be repaired. And my mum — I say this

with love, because she has since passed — was always aware that guilt

was there. And she knew how to pull on it.

I was also the only boy. Two sisters. And somewhere along the way

I had taken on the weight of being the man responsible for her.

The one who should be there. The one who should fix it.

So when she was lying in that hospital bed — sick, frightened,

asking me to drive her up to Coffs Harbour — all of that history

came with the request. It wasn’t just a favour. It was decades of

guilt and obligation and love all tangled up together.

At the same time, I was planning a surprise birthday for Lauren —

who obviously didn’t know about any of this. We were doing

renovations on the house. These are things I would normally have

gobbled up without a second thought. But I could feel the weight.

Building in my chest.

We were driving out to dinner to celebrate Lauren’s birthday when

it started again.

But this time was different.

This time the intrusive thoughts came.

I need to tell you what the intrusive thoughts were. Because I think

naming them matters.

They were thoughts that I should hurt myself.

I want to be clear — I did not want to hurt myself. That was never

the intention. But the thoughts kept coming. Uninvited. Unwanted.

And completely at odds with everything I knew about myself.

I had forty-eight years of extraordinary mental health behind me.

I’m not saying that lightly. I had genuinely taken time, throughout

my life, to feel grateful for my resilience. I’d been through

stressful situations — professionally, personally — and I had always

had something in me that held. I didn’t take that for granted. I

knew it was a gift.

Which is part of what made this so shocking. So disorienting.

If this could happen to me — after forty-eight years of that —

then what did it mean?

The thoughts terrified me. I felt like my brain was broken. Like

I had lost control of my own mind. And the repulsion I felt toward

those thoughts — the shame of even having them — would sometimes

make me physically sick.

What I didn’t know then — and what I want you to hear now if you

have ever experienced something like this — is that the repulsion

itself was a sign of health. Intrusive thoughts that horrify you,

that feel completely alien to who you are, are not the same as

wanting to act on them. They are a recognised feature of severe

anxiety. The thoughts were not who I was. They were symptoms of

a system under extreme stress.

But I didn’t know that yet. And so I did what most men do.

I kept them secret.

And in the secrecy, they grew. The shame built. The fear built.

The thoughts gathered power precisely because I wouldn’t look

at them directly.

The first moment I started to get any control back was when I

finally told Lauren.

I sat down with her and said: “These are the thoughts that keep

coming. I don’t want to hurt myself — but they keep coming. And

I’m scared.”

Just naming them out loud — to one safe person — began to take

their power away.

I want to hold that out to any man listening who is carrying

something like this in secret right now. The shame is not the

truth. The thoughts are not who you are. And the bravest thing

you can do is say them out loud to one person you trust.

I know how hard that is. I know what it costs to say the thing

you’ve been most afraid to say. But the secret was making it

worse. The moment I let Lauren in — even just a little — something

shifted.

It didn’t fix it. Not even close. What followed was still one of

the hardest periods of my life.

But I wasn’t carrying it alone anymore.

This didn’t disappear in a couple of days.

This was the start of six weeks where I was essentially housebound.

And I want to give you a picture of what that actually looked like.

Before all of this, my day started at five, five-thirty in the

morning. Up, out the door, walking the dog in the pitch black. Just

me and the dog. I loved it. That quiet, dark solitude was one of my

favourite parts of the day.

Now the thought of it terrified me.

You know that feeling when you wake up in the middle of the night

and you hear a sound — and for a split second your entire body

floods with adrenaline? That immediate dump. Heart hammering. Every

sense on high alert. That feeling like someone might be trying to

break in?

I was living like that. Twenty-four hours a day. Seven days a week.

For six weeks.

It was exhausting in a way I don’t have words for. And on top of

the physical exhaustion — the loss of control. The terrifying

question that wouldn’t leave me alone:

*Am I going mad? Is this something I’m never going to get out of?*

Because I kept waiting for it to pass the way the others had. Two

days, maybe three, and then it lifted. That had always been the

pattern.

But this time it didn’t lift. Weeks went by. And then more weeks.

And the waiting itself became its own kind of torture.

I kept working. All my client calls, all my coaching — nobody knew.

I could hold it together for that. Not just competently — really

well. I could be on a Zoom call with twenty clients, delivering

my work at a high level, and not one of them had any idea what

was happening inside me the moment I closed the laptop.

That realisation built something in me I didn’t expect.

Empathy. Deep, bone-level empathy for humanity.

Because when I started to venture back outside — slowly, carefully,

to the supermarket, to the street — I would look at the people

around me differently. I would look at a stranger and think:

what is actually going on for you right now? How many people

in this supermarket have got everyone completely fooled?

Because I almost had everyone fooled.

The people who knew were the ones closest to me. Everyone else

saw a functioning, capable man. Nobody saw what was happening

underneath.

And I started to understand — really understand — that this is

true for so many people. That the gap between what we show the

world and what we are actually carrying can be enormous. That

suffering at this level is far more common than anyone lets on.

That understanding changed how I see people. It changed how I

see men in particular. And it is part of what called me toward

this work.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Back to those six weeks.

I tried fighting it. Pure resistance. Knuckled down like it was

a hard workout — like if I just pushed back hard enough it would

break. That didn’t work.

I tried surrendering to it completely. Just letting it have its way

with me. That didn’t work either.

I was trying to find the right way to relate to something I had

never encountered before. Something that didn’t respond to any of

the tools I’d always relied on.

After a couple of months — I remember this clearly — I finally made

myself go out for a walk. My same loop. The one I used to do in the

dark without a second thought.

I was talking out loud to myself the entire way.

*You can do this. You’re strong. You’re brave. You’re capable.

You can do this.*

Over and over. If anyone had walked past me on that street they

would have thought I’d lost the plot entirely.

Maybe I had. A little.

But I didn’t stop. And I finished the loop.

That was perhaps the first small step. A glimmer. The tiniest

crack of light in what had felt like a completely dark room.

And underneath all of it — underneath the fear and the shame and

the exhaustion — there was something else. A voice. Quiet but

persistent. Something deep inside me that I couldn’t fully explain

and couldn’t fully silence either.

It was telling me that this was happening for me.

Not to me. For me.

I didn’t know what that meant yet. I couldn’t see the shape of it.

But the voice was there. And some days, it was the only thing that

kept me putting one foot in front of the other.

I started seeing functional medicine practitioners. Low testosterone.

Low vitamin levels. A few other things. We worked hard on all of it

for the best part of six months.

Progress was painfully slow. There weren’t good days — not really.

There might be a good afternoon. A couple of hours where the weight

lifted slightly and I could breathe a little easier. And then it

would close back in again.

But those afternoons mattered. They were proof that something

different was possible. That this wasn’t permanent. Even if I

couldn’t hold onto that proof for long.

The intrusive thoughts, though — they didn’t shift. If anything,

as the months went on, they started to change shape. To migrate

into new territory. And that brought a new wave of shame that I

didn’t know how to handle.

That’s when I reached despair.

I made an appointment with a psychiatrist.

I remember walking down the hallway to his office. The smell hit

me first — that clinical cleanliness. Antiseptic and still. The

smell of a place where people come when they have run out of other

options.

I sat down on his couch. And I curled up. Literally curled up —

this man who had spent his whole career helping other people, who

had always had an answer, who had always found a way through.

Curled up on a psychiatrist’s couch, crying. Telling him I wasn’t coping

with my life. Begging for help.

He told me I was severely depressed.

That didn’t make sense to me. I loved my life. I loved my family.

I had always considered myself to have extraordinary mental health.

Depression — in my mind — was something that happened to men who

had things to be depressed about. A difficult relationship. Trouble

with the kids. Financial stress. Real, identifiable problems.

I couldn’t tick the box on any of those things.

And yet here I was. Curled up on a psychiatrist’s couch. Severely

depressed.

But Mark — the psychiatrist — gave me something in that room that

I hadn’t been able to give myself through all those months of

searching.

He told me my brain wasn’t broken.

He told me my system was overwhelmed. That there was a difference.

That what I was experiencing had a name, had a pathway through,

and that we were going to find it together.

He told me I wasn’t a monster for having the thoughts I’d been

having. That the intrusive thoughts — as terrifying as they were

— were a recognised symptom of a system under extreme stress.

Not a sign of who I was. Not a sign of what I was capable of.

And he told me I wasn’t going mad.

I had been catastrophising the worst possible outcomes. Lying

awake at night wondering: am I going to be hospitalised? Is this

something I never come back from? Is this who I am now?

To hear an expert say — clearly, calmly, with certainty —

*no. Your brain isn’t broken. Your system is overwhelmed.

There is a road forward.*

That was everything.

He recommended medication.

That was confronting in a way I struggle to fully explain. I had

never taken painkillers. I was a chiropractor — my whole philosophy

was built around the body’s innate ability to heal itself. The idea

of taking anti-anxiety medication was completely foreign to my

identity.

But there was a message coming through me during this whole period.

Quiet but persistent.

*Surrender.*

And I kept resisting it. Because surrender felt like giving up.

Eventually — I stopped fighting it. I took the medication. And

slowly, gradually, things began to stabilise.

Slowly. But they did.

I got well enough to do something I’d been wanting to do for a

long time. We packed up a caravan — Lauren, Sonny, and my folks

— and headed off around Australia.

These were the people I felt safest with through all of this. The

ones who knew. And having all of us together, moving, exploring,

being out in the world — it felt like exactly what I needed. A

chance to refresh. To reset. To draw a line under what had been

the hardest chapter of my life and start something new.

I was hoping the trip would mark the end of a phase.

In some ways it did.

In other ways — it was the beginning of something I hadn’t seen

coming.

Just before we left — I noticed blood in my semen.

Now there are not many things you want to see less of when you look

down than blood. That is not a sight that fills you with confidence.

I can tell you that for free.

I went to my GP. He thought it was probably a bladder or prostate

infection. Tests came back with a really high PSA — around 12. But

I’d been doing a lot of exercise on the stationary bike at the time,

and it’s not uncommon for that to irritate the prostate and push

the PSA up. So we had a reasonable explanation.

He said: “Why don’t you come off the bike for two weeks and we’ll

test again.”

I did. Two weeks later — my PSA had halved. Down to around 6.

That was encouraging. Really encouraging.

He said it was probably prostatitis. The standard treatment is

antibiotics — but the last thing I wanted was more drugs in my

body after everything I’d already been through. So we agreed to

watch and wait. Check again when I got back from the trip.

Off we went. Three months around Australia. Lauren, Sonny, my folks.

The reset I’d been desperately needing.

When I got back — I went in for the retest.

My PSA was 30.

It had more than quadrupled while we were away.

My GP looked at the results and said: “This is definitely

prostatitis. Makes complete sense given everything.” And then

almost as an afterthought, with a bit of a laugh: “I mean,

it’s either that or prostate cancer — but that’s not what

this is.”

The way he said it. Like the second option was almost too

absurd to consider.

He referred me to a urologist. Just to be safe. He was pretty

clear that’s all it was — being thorough. Dotting the i’s.

Her name was Sarah. She examined me and ordered an MRI. My

follow-up appointment was two weeks away.

After about a week — the results were sitting there somewhere

and I could feel it in the background. Not panic. Just a quiet

hum of something I couldn’t quite ignore. I called her rooms

and asked if she could just read me the results over the phone.

Save me the trip.

Her staff member said: *”I’ll get back to you shortly.”*

Fifteen minutes later: *”Sarah would like to see you this

afternoon.”*

I knew in that moment. You don’t get called in the same afternoon

for good news.

I went in. Lauren and Sonny were with me. Sarah was warm with Sonny — talking

to him, making him feel at ease. And then she turned to me.

*”You have prostate cancer. You have secondaries in your pelvis.

We need to get a biopsy organised right away.”*

It felt like the world had been pulled out from underneath me.

Like a dream that had gone wrong. I kept expecting to wake up

— every morning for the next month — and find that none of it

was real.

But it was real.

Stage four prostate cancer. Three lesions in my pelvis. A primary

tumour in my prostate.

The PET scan that followed brought one small mercy — it hadn’t

spread beyond that. Three lesions in the pelvis. The primary in

the prostate. That was the full picture.

that was enough.

The days after the diagnosis were like nothing I had ever

experienced.

My family were extraordinary. They rallied immediately. There

were tears — a lot of them. The people closest to me showed up

in ways I will never forget.

And yet.

Despite all of that love surrounding me — I felt completely alone

in it. There is something about a diagnosis like this that no

amount of love can fully reach. Something that lives in a place

only you can access. The middle of the night. The quiet. Just

you and the reality of what you’ve been told.

I remember lying in bed with Lauren. Just holding each other in

the dark. And at different moments, one of us would say it out

loud:

*”I don’t want you to die.”*

*”I don’t want to die.”*

Just those words. Hanging there between us.

And in those moments — as alone as I felt, as dark as it was —

that voice was still there. That quiet, persistent thread that

had carried me through the anxiety, through the intrusive thoughts,

through all of it.

*This is not happening to you. This is happening for you.*

If anything — it got louder. More insistent. Like whatever was

moving through me needed me to hear it more clearly now than ever.

I still didn’t know what it meant yet. I couldn’t see the shape of

what was coming. But I held onto it. Because it was all I had.

Once the initial shock began to settle — and it did, slowly —

we moved into the next question. What do we do?

The people closest to me immediately started reaching out on my

behalf. Recommendations came in. I found an extraordinary

naturopath who specialised in oncology. And the specialists —

there were a lot of them — started applying pressure. The language

they used was scary. Urgent. The kind of language that makes you

feel like every day you wait is a day lost.

But something I read early on stayed with me: don’t rush.

This had been developing for some time. It wasn’t going to be

solved or destroyed in a week. The pressure to make immediate

decisions — I understood where it came from, but I wasn’t going

to be rushed into something this significant without being sure.

Over the next three weeks I saw four different oncologists.

I was fortunate enough to get in front of some of the best in

Australia.

To a tee — every single one of them said the same thing.

Androgen depletion therapy.

But something else happened during this period that I hadn’t

expected.

I picked up the phone and called Dave.

Dave had been a patient of mine years earlier. He had walked

through brain cancer — and he had done it in a way that I had

never forgotten. With bravery. With class. With a kind of quiet

power that stayed with you.

I sat in my car and called him. And what I was really asking —

underneath all the words — was: what do I do? How do I get

through this?

And Dave said: “You need to surrender to this.”

That fucking word again. Surrender. It had been following me through

this entire journey — coming up again and again in the quiet

moments, in the dark, in the spaces between everything else.

And every time it came, I pushed back against it.

I said to Dave — with more than a little frustration — “Dave,

that word keeps coming to me. But surrender means giving up.

And there is no way I am giving up on this.”

He didn’t miss a beat.

“No,” he said. “Surrender doesn’t mean giving up.

Surrender means trust. Trust in the process.”

Trust in the process.

It was another way of saying what I had been trying to hold

onto all along. This is not happening to you. It is happening

for you.

But hearing it from Dave — a man who had walked through his own

version of this and come out the other side — it landed

differently. It landed in my bones.

Within days of that conversation, I walked into a tattoo studio.

And I had one word tattooed on my arm.

*Surrender.*

Not as defeat. As a daily reminder. As a commitment — to trust

the process, to stop fighting what is, and to stay open to what

this is here to teach me.

It is still there. I look at it every day.

The diagnosis also shone a light on something else I hadn’t

expected.

It turns out that what I had been experiencing — that anxiety

that came out of nowhere, that descended on me without warning

or explanation — is not uncommon in the lead-up to prostate

cancer. The body had been carrying something long before the

tests confirmed it. Long before anyone put a name to it.

In some strange way — that was a relief. Not that I had cancer.

But that the anxiety hadn’t been random. Hadn’t been a sign that

I was broken or losing my mind. My body had known something was

wrong. It had been trying to tell me.

I just hadn’t known how to listen yet.

The treatment was its own confrontation.

My cancer is known as castrate-sensitive — that means it feeds on testosterone for fuel.

The treatment is androgen depletion therapy. They wanted to crash my

testosterone to zero.

Chemical castration. That’s the crude term for it.

And for a man like me — for most men, if I’m honest — testosterone

wasn’t just a hormone. It was identity. It was what I believed made

me a man.

It was the fuel behind my intimacy with Lauren. The drive behind

my business. The energy behind my fathering. The thing that got

me out of bed in the morning with something to give.

Take that away — and who was I?

The side effects are significant and they don’t soften them for

you. Libido crashes. Muscle mass decreases. Energy drops. And

here’s the cruel irony that wasn’t lost on me for a single second

— androgen depletion therapy massively increases the risk of

anxiety and depression. The rate of suicide in men on ADT is

significantly higher than the general population.

This was the treatment I was being asked to embrace. A man already

fighting anxiety and depression, being given a treatment that

feeds both.

My background as a chiropractor made it even harder. My whole

philosophy — my whole professional identity — was built around

the body’s innate ability to heal itself without interference.

And here I was being asked to flood my system with drugs that

would fundamentally alter who I was.

I resisted. Of course I did. I looked for another way. I read

everything I could find. I asked every question.

And then — slowly, reluctantly, honestly — I came to a

realisation.

My body couldn’t cope with this on its own right now. The fire

was too big. I needed to put it out first. And then — once the

fire was out — I could look at rebuilding the house.

I did some deep work with a therapist named Cathy. And in those

sessions, a different question started to emerge.

Who am I as a man — really?

Because if testosterone was what made me a great father, a great

husband, a great business owner — then what happened to all of

that when the levels dropped to zero?

And the answer that came — slowly, quietly, but with a certainty

I hadn’t expected:

I am more than my biology.

I am more than a chemical level. More than a hormone reading on

a blood test. There is something fundamentally inside me that

doesn’t live in my testosterone. Something that makes me who I

am as a father, as a husband, as a man — that no treatment can

touch.

That realisation didn’t make the treatment easy. It is still

a daily challenge. The side effects are real and I navigate

them every day.

But it changed everything about how I met it.

I stopped fighting what my body needed. I found a way — not

immediately, not easily, but genuinely — to love this treatment

I had never wanted.

And in doing that, I found something I hadn’t expected to find

in the middle of cancer treatment.

Myself.

Here’s what I want you to hear.

Through all of it — the panic attacks, the intrusive thoughts, the

housebound weeks, the diagnosis, the treatment — there was one thread.

One idea I kept coming back to.

*This is not happening to me. This is happening for me.*

I want to be honest with you about what that actually looked like

in practice. Because it wasn’t a neat philosophy I had figured out.

For the longest time — months, closer to two years — I had no idea

what it meant. I couldn’t find the gift. I couldn’t see what any

of this was for. I just couldn’t.

But it fuelled hope. And in those darkest hours, hope was the only

currency I had.

I had a choice — and I want to name it clearly because I think

this is the choice every man faces when life brings him to his

knees. I could be hopeful or I could be hopeless. That’s it.

Those were the two options.

I chose hope. Not because I could see the destination. Not because

I understood what was coming. But because the alternative —

hopelessness — felt like a door I didn’t want to walk through.

So I kept coming back to it. In the dark. In the hospital waiting

rooms. Lying in bed at 3am. In the moments I couldn’t see any

further than the next hour.

*This is not happening to me. It is happening for me.*

I want to be clear — we are now more than two years into this

journey. And it is only in these last few months that I have

started to get some clarity around what it actually means. What

the gift actually is. What this has all been for.

The Reclaimed Man is part of that answer. But it took two years

of holding onto a philosophy I couldn’t yet explain to get here.

So if you are listening to this and you are in the middle of

your own darkness — and you cannot find the gift, cannot see

what any of it is for — I want to say this to you directly:

You don’t need to know why yet.

Just hang on.

Keep asking. Keep listening. The message will come. It came for

1. It will come for you.

I want to be clear — this is not a story I’m telling from the

other side. I have not completed this journey. I am still in it.

There are still really tough days. Days where the philosophy

feels hard to hold onto. Days where I have to remind myself —

sometimes out loud, sometimes more than once — that this is

happening for me, not to me.

I am feeling better than I have in years. The treatment is

working. Things are moving in the right direction. But I am

not cured. I am not finished. I am not standing at the top of

a mountain looking back down.

I am on the path. Just like you.

And that is precisely why I am here — now, before I have all

the answers, before the story has a neat ending — because I

have learned that waiting for perfection before you begin is

just another way of not beginning.

I am not a Reclaimed Man. I am a man in the process of

reclaiming himself. That is the invitation I am extending

to you.

Not “follow me, I’ve figured it out.”

But “walk with me. I’m still figuring it out too.”

It is a choice. A daily choice. About how to meet what life

brings.

The man who asks *”why is this happening to me?”* becomes a

victim of his circumstances. The man who asks *”what is this

here to teach me?”* becomes the author of his story.

I chose to be the author. I choose it again every day.

And what I have found — slowly, over two years, in ways I

couldn’t have predicted — is something I hadn’t expected.

A calling.

Over the last few months, several men have reached

out to me. Each of them carrying something heavy. Different

circumstances — but the same undertow. Quiet suffering.

Disconnection. The feeling of having built a life that doesn’t

quite feel like theirs anymore.

And I found that what I’d been through — the anxiety, the

diagnosis, the inner work, the philosophy that held me together

— gave me something real to offer them.

Not theory. Not a framework I’d read in a book.

Something earned.

And in those conversations, I realised something.

What I had yearned for — desperately, through the darkest parts

of this journey — was someone who had walked a path like mine.

Not necessarily the same diagnosis. Not the same story. But

someone who had been in the darkness and come back from it.

Someone who could say: I know this terrain. I know what it

costs. And I know it leads somewhere worth going.

That person didn’t exist for me. I had to find my own way through.

But I also started to see something bigger at play.

We have lost something as a culture. Something that previous

generations understood — that a man moving into this stage of

life needs more than just time passing. He needs an initiation.

A rite of passage. A transition into wisdom, into power, into

the fullest version of himself.

That transition no longer exists. There is no ceremony. No

elder waiting to receive him. No map for what this season of

life is actually for.

And so men arrive here — at 45, 50, 55 — with all they have

built, and no framework for what comes next. The dreams they

carried in their youth start to feel naive. Unreasonable. Too

lofty for a man at this stage of life. And slowly, quietly,

they tell themselves to settle. To be grateful. To accept that

the best of them has already happened.

Our communities are suffering for it. Our families are suffering

for it. And the men themselves — carrying all of this in silence

— are suffering most of all.

The Reclaimed Man is my attempt to offer what I never had.

A path. A framework. A community of men walking this together.

It’s an invitation — for men who are ready to stop settling and

start expanding — to walk this path together.

I’m not standing at the top of a mountain calling you upward.

I am a man in the process of reclaiming himself, a few pages

ahead of some of you and behind others.

What I know is that the path leads somewhere worth going.

And no man should have to walk it alone.

Here is where I am right now.

My primary tumour has halved in size. Twice. The metastases in

my pelvis are in the process of healing. My PSA is stable.

The anxiety — it hasn’t disappeared completely. But I experience

it rarely now. And when it comes, it no longer paralyses me the

way it once did. That alone feels like a miracle compared to

where I was.

I am still on the ADT treatment. Still navigating the side

effects. Still looking at options to manage it differently over

time. Still doing the work. Still learning what this season of

my life is here to teach me.

I am very much still in this. Not through it.

But something has formed out of the fire. Something I couldn’t

have designed. Something I could only have lived my way into.

The Reclaimed Man.

If you are a man in the middle of something dark right now —

something that feels like it’s happening *to* you — I want you

to consider the possibility that it might be happening *for* you.

You don’t have to know what that means yet. You don’t have to

be able to see the gift. I couldn’t see mine for two years.

You just have to be willing to hang on. And to keep asking

the question.

That’s it for today. I’ll see you in episode two — where I want

to hold up a mirror and ask you a simple question:

*Is this you?*

Thanks for being here and Before you go — I want to leave you with just one question to sit with. Whatever you’re carrying right now — is it happening to you? Or is it happening for you? I’ll see you in episode two.”