Stories, tools and honest advice. No fluff.

We did not jump in taxis. In Rome and Naples especially, we used the metro, the buses, the trains. I made it a challenge for the boys. Right, you find the stop. You work out which number we need. You get us there. They did not always know the answer and we did not always understand the signs. But we figured it out together.

There is something about putting kids in a situation where they cannot just look to you to solve it. Where they actually have to think. That matters more to me than getting somewhere quickly.

In Naples we walked to the Maradona mural. It is a proper walk up through the backstreets. Maradona shirts everywhere, number 10s all around us. We found a small famous street on the way up, picked up some gelato and kept going. And then we got there. He is an absolute icon and that city knows it. With Argentina doing so well in the World Cup this summer, standing in front of that mural felt even more connected than I expected. The build-up walking through those streets, the atmosphere, was as good as the mural itself. That is what you get when you actually walk somewhere.

Pompeii and Vesuvius were something else. We walked the ruins first then headed up to the crater. My youngest got to the top, looked around and said, "Is this it? Where is the lava?"

I had to laugh. I am not sure how long he would have stayed if there actually had been some.

My eldest understood it. From where we were standing we could see Pompeii below us and the Bay of Naples stretched out in the distance. Those are the conversations you cannot have sitting at a pool bar.

Then Matera. I had seen pictures but genuinely did not know what to expect. When we turned a corner and the full view of the old city opened up, the boys had their phones out before I did.

The night before our last full day, I gave both boys a choice. Get up with me for the sunrise or sleep in. No pressure.

The younger one was having none of it. The older one said yes.

We walked down to the beach as it was just starting to get light, sat down and watched the sun come up over the water. I asked him what he had been grateful for on this trip. We just sat there in the quiet for a bit.

I just felt quietly proud of myself in that moment. I did not need to say it to anyone. I just let myself feel it, because I knew what it had taken to be sitting there.

I hope one day he thinks back on it and just remembers that his dad got him up for the sunrise. That his dad actually did that. That is more than enough for me.

The old version of this holiday would have looked nothing like this. One destination. All-inclusive. Unhealthy breakfast, overdo it on the food, get to the pool and start on the beers. Be physically present on the excursions but not really there for any of it. And then when everyone was asleep, head back to the bar on your own. Sleep and repeat.

Two years ago I would not have been up for that sunrise. I would have meant it the night before when I said it. And then the alarm would have gone off and I would have turned it off and gone back to sleep.

This was different. Proper things to see and do every day. A barbecue outside with the boys getting involved. Actually in the pool with them rather than watching from the side. Still getting my runs in because the marathon is under four weeks away and that does not stop for anyone. Finding the best gelato in each place, not just the nearest one.

They may not know the hours that went into planning this trip. But they will remember it. And so will I.

So if you have been telling yourself that you cannot enjoy a proper holiday without drinking: it does not feel the same. It feels better. Because you are actually in it.

Sonny

He said it like it was just a cute thing. "Yeah, she's copying what I'm doing."

So I stopped him. I said, do you actually realise what's happening here?

He goes, "Yeah, she's seen me getting fit, so it's good."

I said no, it goes deeper than that. What you are doing is setting the blueprint for who your daughter becomes. Don't be surprised if by the time she's 16 or 18, she's into her health, her fitness, her discipline. Not because you told her to. Because you modelled it. Because she watched her dad become someone worth looking up to.

And you could see it land. He went quiet for a second. Then he said, "Wow. So I'm not just doing something good for me. I'm giving her a deeper purpose. And I didn't even realise I was doing it."

That's the bit that gets me.

When you get sober, when you start looking after yourself, you think it's about you. Your health, your head, your energy. And it is. But it doesn't stop with you. Your kids are watching. It's going into their nervous system. They are learning what a man who looks after himself actually looks like, and they will carry that for the rest of their lives.

You are not just changing your own story. You are quietly writing theirs.

So if you are in it right now, doing the hard, boring, unglamorous work of staying sober and showing up, know this: someone small is watching, and you are becoming their blueprint.

Sonny

I stood at Lake Louise at sunrise and I just stopped.

The sun was coming over the mountains slowly and the water was this colour I have never seen before and everything was completely still and I remember thinking I am actually here. Not half here. Not waiting for the day to be over. Actually here, in this moment, in this place, feeling every single bit of it.

That feeling of being connected to something bigger than the day to day. Of looking at something so vast and so beautiful and realising that life has so much to offer when you are fully in it. I have been to beautiful places before. I have photographs to prove it. But I was not really there for most of them.

This time I felt it. All of it. And I will carry that moment with me for a long time.

Two years ago I might have been standing in that same spot but I would not have taken it all in the way I did that morning. The night before would have taken something from it. And even if I had managed to be present in that moment, by the evening it would have been blurred into everything else. Gone.

What sobriety actually gave me that morning was not just the moment itself. It was the ability to still feel it hours later. To sit at dinner that evening and talk about it properly. To wake up the next day and still have it. That is what true presence actually means. Not just being there. Being able to carry it with you.

A few days later I was up before everyone else and ran 23km through the streets of Vancouver while the city was still waking up. The seawall. The water. The mountains in the distance. 30,000 steps done before the day had even begun, the rest of them still in bed. We went to a bar later to watch the England game, which was honestly pretty painful until the last ten minutes when it finally woke up (you know how it is with England). I was on water the whole time and did not miss a single second of it, including the good bits at the end. Seafood restaurant after, early night, and up sharp the next morning feeling clear and ready.

And here is the part I want to be honest about. The thoughts still came at times on this trip. Not cravings exactly, more like memories, the kind the brain fires when you are in a certain place or sitting around a certain table that it has always associated with a drink. They arrived and passed quickly because the anchors are already set and the routines are already running and the thoughts have nowhere to land. That is what two years of honest work actually produces. Not the absence of thought but the ability to let it pass without it meaning anything.

What I did not expect was what happened around me during those nine days. I did not preach to anyone. Did not lecture. Did not make a single person feel judged. I just got up early, kept my routines, went on my runs, and got on with enjoying every single day. And quietly, without anyone asking them to, some of the men started cutting back themselves. A couple of them got up and came on a run with me. Nobody told them to. They just saw what the mornings looked like and wanted a piece of it.

You do not change the people around you by telling them what to do. You change them by showing them what is possible.

One of the things that made this trip feel even more meaningful was that clients had been sending me tips on where to go in Calgary and Vancouver before I even left. And in Vancouver I got to meet one of my clients in person for the first time. Sitting across from someone who has done the hard yards and seeing where they are now, that is why I do this.

South Asian men are told you need a drink to enjoy a trip like this, to relax, to be part of it, to fit in with the boys. I am the living proof that is not true. I have genuinely loved every single day of this road trip and alcohol has not been any part of that.

If you are reading this and you have been telling yourself you could not enjoy a holiday like this without drinking, or that you would not fit in, or that the boys would give you grief, none of that is true. It is just the pattern looking for a reason to keep going.

Sonny

Here's what took me years to understand. The shame in our families was never about drinking too much. We all watched the uncles drink too much at every function and nobody said a word. The shame was in the naming of it. In saying out loud that it had become something. In asking for help. In letting anyone outside the four walls see that the picture was not as clean as it looked.

That is what sharam does. It does not stop the drinking. It stops the conversation about the drinking. And without that conversation, the pattern just keeps running, quietly, inside a silence the whole family holds together without ever agreeing to.

For a long time, what stopped me saying anything was a quiet fear that admitting it out loud would be a sign of weakness. And underneath that, another one. If anyone found out about my drinking, what would it do to how I am seen? I was a senior leader in a secondary school. A good teacher, a good leader, the person other people looked to. Admitting this felt like it would cost all of that.

My wife had a set of answers ready for every function I missed. He's not feeling well. He had a long week. He sends his apologies. She got so good at it she stopped noticing she was doing it. My boys learned to read which version of me had walked through the door before I had even sat down. None of us chose that. It just became how we lived, because the conversation felt more dangerous than the silence.

And all the while, the drink was quietly taking things I will never get back. I stopped playing with my boys. I stopped properly engaging with them, being in it the way a dad is meant to be. Some evenings what I wanted most was to be left alone, so I could drink and drown myself in my own sorrows. That is the part nobody sees. The drink does not just take the big moments. It takes the kickabout you kept putting off, the bedtime you were too checked out to enjoy, the version of you your kids actually needed in the room.

The days started to blur into one. I would get up and not really know why anymore. Same fog, same routine, same pour at the end of it, on repeat. Like Groundhog Day, except nobody was laughing.

The loneliest part was never the drinking. It was knowing all of that, and still saying nothing.

Here is what I know now. I am an even greater role model leading a life where I actually speak my truth than I ever was protecting a version of me that was not real. Everything that has changed in my life came from one thing. Saying that truth out loud, enough times, until I was finally open to admitting I needed support. And then doing the part most men stop short of. Actually following through and getting it.

And you have to do it for you. Not for them. For years I told my family I loved them, and I meant it every single time. But I had never loved myself first, and because of that they were never getting the best version of me. They were getting what was left.

So if any of this sounds like your house, here is the one thing I would ask you to do this week. You do not have to tell your family. You do not have to tell anyone. Just say it once, honestly, to yourself. Name the thing. Because naming it, even in private, even just to you, is where everything else starts. The silence only holds while it stays unbroken.