A father's journey of love, loss, and discovery as he learns to embrace and support his transgender daughter—one clumsy step at a time.

In the summer of 2011, at a family gathering in the northwoods of Wisconsin, a four-year-old named Simon—the only child of a couple from West Central Wisconsin—quietly made a bold statement. Donning oversized fairy wings, Simon's attempt to dress as a girl stunned the extended family into silence. Four years later, Simon told their parents she was a girl and would be wearing a dress to her ninth birthday party. By thirteen, she had legally changed her name to Simone. From that point forward, the family began making regular trips to Madison to see an endocrinologist at the University of Wisconsin's Pediatric and Adolescent Transgender Health (PATH) Clinic.

As Simone transitioned and entered adolescence, her father found himself grappling with increasingly complex questions: How could he fully support her without being consumed by worry for her safety? What should be done with family photos that captured a version of Simone that no longer existed? And how could he mourn the son he thought he had while wholeheartedly embracing the daughter he now loved?

In Return to Joy, orthopedic surgeon Dr. Keith Kahle offers a raw, deeply personal exploration of the long-term effects of “father-wounding”—a form of trauma rooted in unmet emotional needs, silence, or absence from a paternal figure. Drawing from his own life experiences, Kahle examines how these wounds manifest throughout adulthood in relationships, physical and emotional health, and personal identity. With a blend of memoir, medical insight, and compassionate storytelling, he shows how seemingly minor childhood messages can create lifelong patterns of shame, reactivity, and self-doubt.

Structured around the journey from order through disorder to reorder, the book charts a path toward healing. Kahle shares vulnerable stories of his upbringing, marriages, parenting missteps, and physical ailments, all through the lens of trauma and recovery. From traditional therapy to psychedelic-assisted healing, he explores the tools that helped him shed a “cataract of the soul” and rediscover joy. Return to Joy is a moving guide for anyone confronting inherited pain, offering hope, recognition, and a path toward wholeness.

When my eyes creaked open and tried to find focus, I didn’t know where I was. The room was dim, my wrists were tied to the bed rail, and the dull ache of a needle in my hand throbbed through the fog. Motionless and silent, I lay staring at the ceiling until everything started coming back to me—the hallucinations, my teeth were melting, the menacing trolls teetering around the bedroom; uncontrollable shaking while my wife, Robin, helped me take a shower; and the catatonic ride to the emergency department of Meriter Hospital. After being ushered into an exam room, my memory was a void until this silent, dim awakening moment.

Alcohol withdrawal can kill you, and I would have been a statistic had I not made it to the ER. I drank almost every day for nearly two decades and an obscene amount for a few years leading to this point. This is my story. Now twenty-nine years sober, I’m one of the lucky ones who lived to fight another day. Join me as I chronicle my journey through coming of age, rock and roll debauchery, a downward spiral into the depths of substance abuse, and then like a phoenix rising out of the ashes, the joy and accomplishments in my ongoing recovery.

If I can help encourage just one of those among you who are struggling or someone you love to see that it’s possible to make the change, to find your way out of that rabbit hole of alcoholism, and feel how beautiful life can be above ground, it will all have been worth it.