Three rocks.
The chain you’re joining the back of. Tristan tells them whole, in his time, with consent intact.
The friend
A terminal diagnosis. A surgery. A walking-out the other side. The friend who showed me the way back when I had none — his story isn't fully mine to tell yet.
The stroke
Frequency, the body, the arm that came back. A hard chapter, still being told in its own time.
The slip
This morning. The rock slipped — a few hours lost in the dark. The community that found me, and the lift back up. In Tristan's own words, below.
The Rock Slipped.
the founding document · lived, not drafted
The rock slipped today. And for a few hours I forgot how to push it back up.
This morning my arm wouldn’t move…. And I’m not going to pretend I handled it well.
I slipped straight into the dark. Lost the thread. Forgot every tool I’ve been using to stay in the light and tap into the frequency that’s been carrying me through this. All it took was a moment… a backward step and I was cooked. Pulled down in the mud.
Then my dad, who knows me as a filmmaker, reframed it for me:
He said: when you write a script, you write obstacles for your protagonist. The best stories aren’t the ones where the hero glides through. They’re the ones where the hero is pushing a rock up a hill, and it rains, and the rock slips, and they push harder. The slip is the story of a good script. Without it, there’s nothing to root for.
That cracked something open for me. But what really pulled me out of the mud was the people who showed up. A friend came by to lift my spirit after a call for help. Another friend who’s been through his own version of this recovery shared his story, his energy and experience (his slipped rock)… and he is living proof that the rock goes back up. Finally, my neurologist visited and confirmed it: this is what the road looks like. It’s raining and the hill is slippery … it’s inevitable to slide backwards.
I went from feeling completely cooked. Alone, helpless, laying trapped, sorry for myself in the mud.
But then I got hit with a sense of empowerment… even though it had felt lost forever… and that was the moment. That was the proof.
All of a sudden it was flowing positive energy and vibes, and it felt like I was being pulled back to a place where I could tap into the frequency again. I started to sense hope. Find some light. Feel the lift. And it hit me like an epiphany:
This is the signal! This is the power of the movement. The shared energy from people around me pulled me back into the frequency.
That’s the whole thesis behind this ship of unconditional love and a source of light and positive energy to help others out of the dark, to manifest more light and uplift themselves out of complete darkness. So the plan is still set. To spread high-intent positive energy at scale, with intention, with architecture, to people who need it most. This morning I lived the reason it needs to exist. When you’re in the mud, you can’t get out alone. You benefit from other people’s light to find your own again.
The rock slips!! You push harder. That’s the script! And I am driven to help empower those in need with the strength to push that rock up the hill. You have to push the rock up. Nothing you want typically comes easy. You fight.
I have a big MF fight ahead of me and I cannot slip into the dark like I did… lost and hopeless… sucking my drive empty without energy to fight. But then it turned around… and it took a community. I have so much love and appreciation for all of you. Your compassion, support, unconditional love, sharing and connection has pulled me out of the dark. This has me feeling lit up… charging up for the big fight ahead.
And that’s it. This is the thesis. If this resonates with you… welcome aboard. I need your help to spread the light for everyone else in the dark. Let’s go!! We are going to bring the light to the fight. Unconditionally.
Before the cancer, I was already lost.
You wouldn’t have seen it.
I was functioning … building things, showing up, making it look like a life. But the guy doing it was a costume I’d gotten good at wearing. Layer by layer, year by year, until I couldn’t remember which version was actually me.
Then I got sick. And when the stakes get real enough, the costume falls off … you stop performing because you don’t have the energy to, and it turns out you never needed to. The kid underneath came back up through the cracks. The real one. The one who was there the whole time.
That return … coming home to who you actually are … is the thing this whole machine is built to help other people find. You’re going to read a lot of stories here. These two are mine.