I'll Be Happy When...
I checked my net worth the way other people check the weather. It was in the millions, on paper, and it wasn't pride so much as proof. Then a business failed, a marriage ended, and Maddie died. Chris Coulter on what he'd confused with his own worth, why teenagers are learning the same habit faster than we did, and the one question worth asking a fourteen-year-old instead of asking what's next.
Aren't We Talking About Mental Health Too Much?
I run a mental health company, and some days I think we talk about mental health too much. Not for the reason you'd expect. The phrase itself has gone abstract. "We all have mental health" is as useful as "we're all animals," true and inert. This is about why awareness stopped working, why vague conversation feels like too much conversation, and what changes when you get specific.
You Built Your Audience on the Back of Your Daughter's Death
Someone who mattered to me said I built my audience on the back of my daughter's death. I remember it word for word. Instead of firing back, I took the accusation apart honestly. Yes, Maddie's story reaches people, and I've watched it happen. What the accusation misses is the story I refuse to tell and the families I've never charged. This is about the line between advocacy and exploitation, and who gets to decide where it sits.
Why I Still Talk About Maddie
People wonder why I still talk about my daughter. She died in 2015, she was fourteen, and there's a quiet expectation that a dead child gets a shorter runway than a living one. This is my answer. It's about who Maddie actually was, the videos she left behind without meaning to, what it costs me to tell her story, and why the silence people offer out of kindness is the hardest part.
If I Could Speak to the Father I Was in 2015
Eleven years after losing his 14-year-old daughter Maddie, Chris Coulter writes a letter to the father he was in early 2015. What he would tell him about "fine," about quiet, about staying one question longer. What that father got right. What he couldn't have known, because nobody teaches parents what to look for. For every parent carrying guilt, and every parent with a teenager home tonight: grace.
I Don't Fear Talking About Maddie. I Fear People Forgetting Her
A father who lost his 14-year-old daughter to suicide explains what most people get wrong about grieving parents. Avoiding her name doesn't protect him. It erases her. This piece covers why bereaved parents want your stories, what to say to a grieving parent, what to avoid, and the one small act that matters more than any card: mention the person. Say the name. You will not remind us. We never forgot.