Lemonade out of lemons, glass half full, keep the faith. Fuck off. You try being optimistic after your third major disease diagnosis in nine years. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about the power of the mind and positive thinking, but there’s a point when you’ve crossed the line and start wondering what the hell is going on.

But let’s back up the truck and start with the basics: I’m Kris. 

A surfer turned founder. A dad. A husband. A guy who’s built a life out of solving problems and creating products, some digital and some physical. I’m also a guy with Parkinson’s. Just one of several diagnoses that have taken residence in my body over the years and the one that I’ve been hiding for nearly a decade. 

Not exactly the membership I applied for, but here we are.

THE WAYBACK MACHINE

I was born twelve years after my siblings, which meant I essentially grew up with five parents: my actual parents and three older siblings who were more than happy to participate in the raising, criticizing, protecting, and general management of me.

I was the baby. Very much the baby.

My mom, Camille Barbarino, and I were especially close. She was Italian-Sicilian, fiercely loving, and the unofficial mother to nearly every kid I knew. On weekends, she let my friends congregate at our house, bomb the neighborhood hills on skateboards, watch movies, “sneak” beers, and generally behave as if adult supervision were more of a loose concept than an enforceable policy.

And yes, I actually have a cousin named Vinnie Barbarino. No, he wasn’t named after John Travolta’s character. He was born first.

Dana Point, California was where I called home. A bright, sunny beach town where kids learned to surf before they learned to drive. Strands Beach was my playground. Those early mornings in the water taught me about rhythm, and the kind of presence that doesn’t come from apps or scented candles.

I had an eclectic group of friends: Eric O. Johnny M. Durs. JQ. Johnny Law. Dizzy. These were the people who knew me before careers, mortgages, children, and medical diagnoses turned us all into allegedly responsible adults.

At fifteen, I had a seventeen-year-old girlfriend, which naturally led to one of adulthood’s most important rites of passage: buying condoms. There was just one problem. Neither of us could drive. So we rode our bikes to the local liquor store to buy them.

Try maintaining an aura of sexual sophistication while pedaling home with prophylactics.

James Dean had a Porsche.

I had a BMX.

THE REST OF ME

The rest of my formative years offered no shortage of evidence that good judgment was still under development. There was the Death Mobile, every bit as reassuring as its name suggests: a stolen car (not by me), an empty lot with a dirt-bike track, mustard plants tall enough to conceal several terrible decisions, a very steep slope, and, by the end of it, my friend’s soiled shorts.

There was the time I climbed a hundred-foot electrical tower using six-inch pegs to see a raven’s nest, because apparently electrocution wasn’t sufficiently covered in the normal childhood curriculum. And there was the roughly seventy-foot cliff I jumped from into the ocean. An idea that seemed perfectly reasonable at the time and absolutely fucking insane once I became a parent and imagined one of my own kids doing it.

Somehow, I survived all of it and made it through Catholic high school in San Juan Capistrano. Then I traded in my boardshorts for Birkenstocks and headed up north to CSU Chico, where I became a hippie with long hair down past my shoulders, an arsenal of pot paraphernalia, foosball, and Ellen.

Ellen and I met as sophomores and immediately had a spark, but it wasn't meant to be, not during our college years anyway. When I wanted to be more than just friends, she had a boyfriend. And when she was ready to be with me, I had a girlfriend. So we settled for a great friendship until we graduated and were free of significant others which finally allowed us to be together, and we still are today.

Eventually, college gave way to careers, and the two of us made our way to Walnut Creek in the San Francisco Bay Area. What began as the place we landed gradually became the place we stayed. We found our forever home, raised a family, and built a life together.

For a long time, life seemed normal. 

Then came the stretch of years that changed everything.

NEARLY A DECADE

For ten years I pretended everything was just dandy while navigating a slow, uneven unravelling. This book is me stepping out of the “I’m fine” fog and saying out loud: This is hard. Not every minute. But enough.

I’m writing this because secrets are heavy. And because someone out there just got diagnosed and feels like they’re losing their mind. And I want that person to know they’re not alone. That this disease is not the end, and it sure as hell doesn’t define you unless you let it. I want this book to be a pressure valve. A hand on your shoulder. Or maybe just the thing that makes you laugh while taking your fifty-fourth pill of the day.

This book isn’t a guide. It’s not advice. It’s not some courageous manifesto wrapped in motivational slogans. It’s just one guy’s truth, told with honesty, humor, and a healthy dose of irreverence.

And if it makes one person out there feel even a little bit more seen, then every tremor, and every typo at the keyboard will be worth it.

I’ll be real with you, writing this hasn’t been easy. As I type these words, I’m overwhelmed with PD Emotion Sickness (my term for a cacophony of mixed emotions happening simultaneously which is common in some people with PD).

Now let’s talk about the moment when the record scratched and the music stopped - when I was diagnosed.