To my children

This is long overdue.

I was not present enough. Not in the ways that mattered most — the ordinary, daily, showing-up kind of present. I know that. I am not going to dress it up in explanations or spread the weight of it around. I made a lot of mistakes as a father, and I take full responsibility for them.

I am also not going to ask for forgiveness in the first line of a letter on a website. That would be performance, and you deserve better than that from me.

What I am doing is this: building a space where you can find me — what I think, what I am working on, what matters to me at this stage of my life. A place where I can, over time, show up in the way I should have shown up earlier.

I have lived three lifetimes — businesses built, continents crossed, ideas wrestled with, mistakes made. Through all of it, the one thing I did not get right enough was staying close to you.

I am not asking you to respond immediately, or to meet me halfway before you are ready. I am simply telling you the door is open, and I intend to keep showing up here.

Come when you are ready. I will be here.

JR