Life After Door Kicking: Why I Had to Start Writing or Explode

“LifeAfterDoorkicking” came about while I was racking my brain for a name that captured the mess, meaning, and momentum of everything I wanted to say. I had this piece—this raw, unfinished, rewritten dozen-times-over piece—sitting in my phone notes, itching to break out of the screen and into the world. It wasn’t polished, it wasn’t perfect, but it was urgent. Like it had been waiting for the right moment, and I realized that if I didn’t post it somewhere now, I’d suffocate on the silence I’d been keeping.

So I made a blog.

And I needed a name.

“LifeAfterDoorkicking” just… fit.

It’s a nod to the past I come from—kicking down doors, literally and metaphorically, in combat zones and in life. It’s also about the aftermath. The part no one trains you for. The part they don’t write manuals about. The part where you’re not dodging bullets but memories. Where the fight shifts from external chaos to internal reckoning.

This blog is about that life after.
After adrenaline.
After uniforms.
After war.
After trauma.
After the numbness, the rage, the guilt.
After being a hammer in a world full of things that aren’t nails.

It’s where I try to unpack all that: the philosophy I cling to, the history that grounds me, the therapy I never thought I’d need, and the story I’m still trying to make sense of. It’s about parenting through PTSD, loving through scars, and rebuilding an identity that doesn’t rely on violence to have value.

This is LifeAfterDoorkicking.
It’s messy. It’s real.
And I hope you find something in it that makes you feel less alone in your own aftermath.