Theseus has nothing on my wife Jenny, who I must credit for helping me overcome my fear of the minotaur at the sliding glass door. No––help is too weak of a word. She led me. Took me by the hand and said 

this is a symbol of your fear and it is not real 

and we all need you to work this out.

Because it was killing me. It really was. I was a husk of who I had been, of who I might be. And if I screwed up and let the fear get to me, I'd bring my whole family down with the ship. 

Jen has been the unsung hero of this tale, the person in the background of what has been and almost entirely male story. But she deserves, at the absolute least, a major shout-out here. Without her, I'd probably still be at the sliding glass door in Colorado, waiting for that minotaur to show up. 

She made my minotaur into joke by reducing it in size and multiplying it. Instead of fearing one big minotaur with a giant axe, she persuaded me to imaging dozens of them––each the side of a garden gnome, with proportionally tiny axes––scurrying around like the yippy little dogs I can't stand and bumping into each other. 

Bumbling, harmless creatures. Not things that could kill me. Not my father. Not the thing I feared in myself. Small things––individual fears that might have names––that I would eradicate one by one. Send off to their own kingdom where they could be happy and free, so they wouldn't scare me so much. 

Absolutely brilliant. Thank you, darling.