I Published a Book. Now What?

In March, I became a published author, which is so insane to still say and truly believe.

After months of thinking, writing, rewriting, questioning, editing, overthinking, talking about it way too much, and probably driving everyone around me slightly insane, From I Do to We Do officially became a real book that people could hold in their hands.

And then something funny happened….Life… kept going.

There’s so much buildup to publishing a book. You think about launch day. Preorders. Podcasts. Interviews. Reviews. Amazon rankings. Social media posts. You refresh pages you absolutely do not need to refresh over and over and over again.

You spend months climbing toward this one giant moment.

And then the next day comes.

You have clients. Your kids need things. Someone can’t find their shoes. There are emails to answer. The dishes are somehow back in the sink.

And your book is just… out there.

What I didn’t fully understand before publishing is that the hardest part isn’t the climb.

It’s the drop-off.

There’s this emotional arc that builds over months. You carry an idea. You refine it. You sacrifice nights, weekends, mental space, presence with your family. You tell yourself it will all feel worth it when the book is finally out there.

And then it is.

And instead of relief, there’s this strange emotional silence and loneliness.

For me, it wasn’t just excitement or pride. Which, don’t get me wrong, I had plenty of that throughout the process.

There was also something heavier.

A kind of post-build depression I didn’t expect. I felt so alone, misunderstood, and lost without a focus for what to do now.

Because when you’ve been carrying something for that long, when it’s been part of your identity, your pressure, your purpose, your private obsession, releasing it doesn’t just feel like a celebration.

It can feel like loss.

Like your nervous system finally realizing it doesn’t have to hold its breath anymore… and not knowing what to do with the air.

There were days in that stretch where I felt oddly flat. Not unhappy exactly. Just… emptied. Like I had been sprinting for years and suddenly crossed a finish line I didn’t know how to stand behind.

And I kept thinking about something I once talked about with Apollo Ohno on my podcast.

On my podcast, I had the privilege of talking with one of the most decorated U.S. Olympians about something explored in the documentary The Weight of Gold and his recent book, Hard Pivot: what performance, pressure, and success actually feel like at the highest level.

He shared an idea that stuck with me then, but I don’t think I fully understood it until I lived my own version of it.

The difference between finishing fourth and winning bronze.

Think about how absurdly small that difference can be.

A fraction of a second. Sometimes .001 seconds.

You’ve trained for years. You’ve sacrificed, obsessed, pushed your body beyond what most people can imagine. You’ve visualized the moment over and over again. You’ve built parts of your identity around getting there.

And then you finish fourth.

By .001 seconds.

You’re still one of the greatest athletes on the planet. Nothing about your talent changed. None of the early mornings, injuries, sacrifices, or years of work disappeared.

But somehow, it can still feel like failure.

Because there’s no medal. No podium. No tangible thing to hold up and say:

“See? All of that was worth it.”

That’s what makes fourth place so brutal. Years of effort can suddenly feel like they’re being measured by one microscopic outcome.

Bronze, though?

Bronze gives you an anchor.

Years later, most people probably won’t remember who took third. They may not remember your name, the race, or how close it was.

But you remember.

You remember standing on that podium.

You remember the medal around your neck.

And that medal carries everything with it—the early mornings, the losses, the injuries, the sacrifices, the people who helped you get there, and every tiny decision that made that moment possible.

It’s not just proof that you finished third.

It’s a reminder of everything it took to finish at all.

And I’ve been thinking about that a lot since publishing my book.

Because writing a book has its own strange version of the podium.

You spend months working toward one moment. Writing. Rewriting. Editing. Questioning whether any of it is good enough. Giving up nights, weekends, mental space, and time with the people you love because you’re building toward something.

Then the book comes out.

And almost immediately, your brain moves the finish line.

Did I win?

How many copies did it sell?

Where did it rank?

How many reviews does it have?

Are enough people talking about it?

Did it become what I imagined it would become?

And that’s where I’ve realized I have to be careful.

Because if I measure years of work only by what happens after publication, I can somehow turn an extraordinary accomplishment into a failure.

I can become so focused on whether I won gold that I forget:

I wrote a freaking book.

A real one.

It exists. It’s published. Something that lived in my head, my computer, and way too much of my mental space for years is now out in the world.

That’s the medal.

Maybe this book doesn’t become the “gold medal” version I once imagined. Maybe most people will never know my name or have any idea how much went into creating it.

But I get to remember the win.

I get to remember what it took to get here.

And maybe that’s what I’m still learning a few months after publishing:

Not every accomplishment needs to become something bigger before you’re allowed to call it an accomplishment.

Sometimes we’re so busy staring at the podium spot we didn’t reach that we forget to hold the damn medal we already earned.

And here’s the weird part about this particular medal: once you earn it, you send it out into the world.

Writing a book, especially one about relationships, marriage, parenting, and my own experiences, is incredibly vulnerable. I wasn’t just sharing ideas. I was sharing pieces of myself.

Stories from my marriage. Lessons I’ve learned as a therapist. Mistakes I’ve made as a husband. Moments I’ve experienced as a dad. Things I’ve watched hundreds of couples struggle through behind closed doors.

And once those stories are out there, they aren’t really mine anymore.

Someone reads the book on an airplane.

Someone highlights a paragraph.

Someone buys it and leaves it untouched on their nightstand for three months. (Yes, I’m talking to you.)

And every once in a while, someone sends me a message saying:

“We needed this.”

Those messages have probably meant more to me than anything else.

More than the rankings.

More than seeing my name on the cover.

Even more than getting to put “published author” in my bio, which, to be clear, I will continue doing because I EARNED THAT ONE.

Because somewhere along the way, I’m realizing there might actually be two wins here.

The first was writing the book.

That’s my medal.

The second is what happens when I let it go.

When something I wrote helps a couple have a conversation they weren’t having before. When someone feels seen in a struggle they thought was only theirs. When two people understand each other a little differently because of words I once sat alone typing into my computer.

I can’t control how many copies sell or where the book ranks.

But I can remember why I wrote it.

Because that was always the point.

I think some part of me imagined publishing a book as this giant finish line.

You write it.

You launch it.

People buy it.

Confetti falls from the sky.

Oprah calls.

Obviously.

Instead, I’ve realized publishing is much more of a beginning—which I have, and continue to, battle with that reality.

Over these last few months, I’ve had to keep asking myself:

What do I actually want this book to do?

And the answer isn’t simply “sell copies.”

I want it to start conversations.

I want couples to stop believing that struggling after kids means something is wrong with their marriage.

I want dads to understand that showing up emotionally matters.

I want moms carrying an invisible mental load to feel seen—and to have language to explain what they’re experiencing.

I want couples to move from:

Me vs. you

to:

Us vs. the chaos.

Because parenting is chaotic enough without turning the person sleeping next to you into the enemy.

A few months after publishing a book about marriage through the parenting years, my wife and I welcomed our third child.

Because apparently the universe has a sense of humor.

Suddenly I wasn’t talking about sleep deprivation, invisible loads, communication, resentment, teamwork, emotional regulation, expectations, and maintaining connection in theory.

I was back in it.

At 2:00 a.m.

With a newborn.

Two older kids.

A recovering wife.

A house that somehow needed things from me every seven seconds.

And a nervous system going:

HAHAHAHA GOOD LUCK, AUTHOR BOY.

And weirdly?

It has made me believe in this book even more.

Not because we’re doing everything perfectly.

We absolutely are not.

But because I’ve been reminded that strong relationships aren’t built by getting everything right.

They’re built by having something to come back to when everything gets messy.

And believe me...

It’s messy.

More on that next.