I have learned a lot of hard lessons in my life, in a lot of different ways. The one in front of me right now is the simplest and the heaviest. I have a brain injury, I need time and rest to heal, and the only way I can buy that time is the generosity of others. My dear friend and former wife Jodie Snyder, along with other friends, set this fundraiser up to make that possible and to keep a roof over my head while I get there.

That is the short version. The rest is below, but if you read nothing else, you have the part that matters.

In August, I will have been sober for two years. It is still the thing I am proudest of. That recovery taught me how to keep showing up one day at a time even when the path ahead is unclear, and how to ask for help when I cannot do a thing alone.

I spent those two years rebuilding. I made it through back surgery in the spring of 2025 and the long recovery that followed. I was almost whole again. Then this past March I started a treatment called TMS, transcranial magnetic stimulation, for depression and anxiety. It was supposed to be routine. A way to quiet the noise so I could keep building the life I had fought to get back.

It injured my brain instead.

In April my doctors diagnosed me with a brain injury caused by the treatment. Since then I have lived with an atypical migraine condition, constant ringing in my ears, brain fog, memory trouble, bone-deep exhaustion, an ADHD that runs amok even with my medication, and a mood that turns on me when I push too hard. Light and screens are hard on me now, so the little I can manage on a computer happens in short bursts, and I lean on dictation far more than typing, especially on my phone. This is more like a concussion than the headache the word migraine brings to mind.

After twenty-five years in the performing arts, I built a consulting practice called Unity Vertex. I cannot run it right now. I had to stop working entirely. My doctors say recovery could take up to six months, but no one can promise that. The honest answer is that we do not know.

So I am in recovery again. A different kind this time, but it has handed me the hardest lesson of the first kind, and the most freeing one. The opening line of the Serenity Prayer asks for the grace to accept the things I cannot change. I thought I understood it. I did not. Not until now.

When I first fell ill I was drowning in shoulds. I should be chasing that job. I should be finishing that client’s work. I should be building that project. But the condition kept saying no. This far and no further. Beyond here lie dragons. I could take a pill and push a few more steps, but the dragon’s foot only landed harder for it. So I learned to stop. To accept the limit instead of fighting it.

I am grateful I learned to meditate before any of this. Grateful for the practice of sitting still and letting a moment be what it is. It turns out I can be okay just being. Even when I am not okay.

Here is where things stand. Because of your generosity, I am covered for the moment and I can rest. That rest is not a luxury. It is the treatment. But the runway runs out at the beginning of August, and after that it is up in the air.

What I need is time. Time to heal. Time to breathe.

I have applied for federal disability. The process is slow and nothing is guaranteed. In the meantime I have cut my life down to the studs and I am living as simply as I know how. The basics do not stop coming: rent, groceries, utilities, medical bills, insurance.

I am not being passive about any of this. I work with a case manager, and together we are applying for every form of aid I can access, from government disability to charitable programs and other resources designed to help people in situations like mine. I have a friend who knows these systems well, who has unfortunately had to help others navigate them, and she is pointing me toward every avenue that might stretch what I have as far as it will go. Still, none of it closes the gap. That is where I need you.

The treatments work slowly, if they work at all. The shots, the pills, the physical therapy, each one has a long efficacy window, so we will not know for a while how much any of it helps. Some of it does seem to be doing something. My headaches have eased. But the brain fog, the memory trouble, the exhaustion, and the mood that turns on me when I push too hard are all still here.

I pray it keeps moving in the right direction. But every doctor tells me the same thing. The medicine helps where it can. The real cure is time and rest. That is the one prescription I cannot fill alone, and that is where I need you.

Recovery taught me that asking for help is not weakness. Still, it is the hardest thing I know how to do. So here is what I keep telling myself. If I were sitting next to someone in my shape, feeling what I feel, and they told me they were ashamed to ask, I would not let them sit there. I would tell them the thing we all learned in grade school. Raise your hand when you need help. So I am raising mine.

If you have already given, thank you. If you are able to give again, thank you again. And if you wish you could and simply cannot, you are no less a part of this. Send me that loving kindness. I believe it reaches me. I believe it makes a difference.

I converted to a faith built around tikkun olam, the idea that we are here to repair the world and leave it a little better than we found it. Thank you for repairing a little of mine.

Much love,

Matt