My Story

I was 35 when I lost the right to make decisions for my own family. That’s not a metaphor — I had a felony conviction, and it sent me away from my wife and three kids for six months, to a federal prison camp in Lompoc, California. I want to say that plainly. For years I let people assume something vaguer — ‘a hard stretch,’ ‘some mistakes.’ True, but soft. Soft is what got me there.

I didn’t come from nothing. I had the blueprint — good parents, a father whose letters I still keep, every advantage a kid could ask for. So when I drifted through my late teens and twenties, running with my uncles, chasing the wrong things, telling myself I’d correct course later — there’s no excuse underneath it. That’s the whole point of this site’s name. I had every reason not to end up where I ended up, and I did anyway, because excuses are patient. They wait.

I said goodbye to Denise at the airport that morning without fully understanding what it would cost her — six months as a single parent, six months explaining to our kids why Dad wasn’t home.

I came home thinking I could step right back in. Denise didn’t let me, and she was right not to. There was a night at our dinner table where that became very clear. The sentence had ended. The repair hadn’t even started. The repair is the real work — it still is, almost three decades later.

What rebuilt us was movement. Denise and I started training together — first to stay sane, then because we were good at it, then because crossing finish lines side by side became its own language for what we couldn’t always say out loud. I’ll never forget hitting mile 22 of a marathon and seeing Denise and our daughter Nicole standing there waiting for me.

Thirty-six years later, Denise and I are still together, happier than I have any right to expect. We raised three children who are good, capable, kind adults — and they’ve now given us two grandchildren. None of that was guaranteed the day I walked through that door at Lompoc. It was built, one earned day at a time.

Why I’m telling you this

If you’re 22 and feel like you’ve got the world by the throat — invincible, smarter than the consequences — I understand that feeling better than almost anyone you’ll talk to today. I lived inside it. I’m telling you gently but directly: it’s not real. The bill comes due. Mine did.

But it’s not the end of the story. It wasn’t for me. Whatever you’re carrying — a mistake already made, or a choice you’re standing in front of right now that you already know is wrong — you don’t have to carry it alone, and you don’t have to wait until it’s as serious as mine was to ask for help.

That’s really all Above Excuses is. Not a brand. A standing offer: talk to someone before the choice hardens into a consequence. I didn’t, and it cost me six months and years of repair. You don’t have to make that same trade.

There’s always somebody there. Find them before you need them.

— Mike