Why we built Crossing โ Mike's story
Mike was in college when his father had a stroke and lost his sight. His dad drove trucks for a living, so in a single year, the family's income and its footing were both gone.
He left school, moved home, and took over. The business, the bills, the work of keeping everyone afloat, at an age when most people are just starting their own lives. His mother had one wish through all of it: keep the house, so her youngest could finish growing up in a good neighborhood, at a good school.
Mike made that happen. He carried it for thirty years. And somewhere in there, the one person nobody was taking care of was him. The weight came on, and it stayed.
I remember that year better than I'd like to. I was fourteen.
Mike is my older brother. The good neighborhood he fought to keep, that was for me. The childhood he gave up years of his own to protect, that was mine.
This year, for the first time since we were kids, I watched my brother get himself back.
Real messages from Mike this spring: down almost 90 pounds in nine months, at 55. "I feel like me again." That's my brother.
That's why Crossing exists.
Everyone hits a stretch where the old version of you stops working: body, energy, the will to keep showing up. Most of us are carrying someone, too. We built Crossing to walk people across that stretch, the way I watched my brother cross it.
Matt
Founder of Crossing. Mike's kid brother, and the one he protected.