This week, I'm sitting down with Arnold, a former corporate executive turned brain fitness coach, to talk about what it means to grow up in a home where love wasn't really on the table. His father was a military officer who brought command and control into every corner of family life. His mother, numbed by decades of SSRIs, seemed to exist in her own world. A coach once told Arnold he was "the man who grew up without love," and that phrase hit him like a freight train.
Arnold lost his father at 41. He describes it as a liberation, not a loss. The constant weight of never being good enough finally lifted. Years later, he spent eight years caring for his mother as dementia and Parkinson's slowly took over. What surprised him most? He actually liked her more during those final years. With the dementia came something he had never seen before: the real version of his mother, unfiltered by status and expectation.
We talk about what it's like to grieve someone you never fully had, how watching a parent decline can spark unexpected purpose, and why Arnold decided to channel all of it into brain fitness. He now helps people optimize their brains before decline ever sets in, because he saw firsthand what happens when prevention isn't part of the conversation.
This conversation covers heavy ground, but Arnold doesn't sugarcoat anything. He's honest about the family dynamics that shaped him, the conscious choice to become the opposite of his father, and the daily rituals that keep him grounded now. If you've ever felt like grief made you rebuild your entire identity, this one will resonate.
We get into:
Arnold's story is a reminder that grief doesn't always look like sadness. Sometimes it looks like freedom. Sometimes it looks like finally becoming the person you were always supposed to be.
🌐 Learn more about Arnold's brain fitness work: https://braingym.fitness
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