“My son went from barely leaving his room to captaining his team. Jeff didn’t fix him — he helped him find himself again. I got my kid back.”
When I was 14, my father’s drinking was getting worse, and nobody in my house was talking about it. I didn’t feel good, and I didn’t have words for why. A crack was starting in my confidence — the kind where a voice moves in and tells you you’re not enough.
I call that voice “the Guy.” Most kids have one. I’ve known mine a long time.
The feeling I’d later learn to undoWhat saved me wasn’t a program or a diagnosis. It was fun, friends, and falling back in love with the world. One snowy morning in 1971, my friends and I invented a game we called Rompage — pure, unrestrained, joyful chaos — and every time we played, the crack in me healed a little.

I didn’t understand it then. I’ve spent the 46 years since figuring out exactly how it works, so I can hand it to your kid on purpose instead of by luck.



