About the Book
The Sum Total
COMING SUMMER 2026
What if your life is not unfolding randomly, but remembering itself?
The Sum Total: What the Heart Knows When the Soul Remembers is built upon the profound idea that we are the accumulation of every experience we have ever lived. Every joy, every disappointment, every risk, every wound, every triumph becomes part of the living total that shapes who we are and who we are still becoming. No two lives gather the same experiences. No two paths construct the same interior landscape. Our history becomes our lens, and that lens influences the choices we make. Those choices then shape what follows.
We are not isolated events. We are the living continuity of experience, memory, and choice extending beyond a single lifetime, always in motion.
The title itself is the premise. The Sum Total is not a metaphor. It is the reality that every moment adds to the whole. What the heart knows speaks to the intuitive recognition we feel before we can explain it. When the soul remembers suggests that what we experience as intuition may not be new knowledge at all, but remembered understanding.
In 2015, Michael lost his son to meningitis. His son's transition home after just one and a half trips around the sun had a profound impact on Michael's life and his sense of self. Michael had long taken pride in the fact that he had protected kings, queens, religious leaders, and talent across the globe, yet he found himself unable to protect his own baby boy. The loss did not simply fracture a season of life. It altered his understanding of connection, presence, and what endures beyond the visible world. Grief did not erase love. It reshaped it. The bond did not disappear. It deepened.
Years later, during surgery for a life-threatening aortic dissection, Michael crossed a threshold that most only contemplate could happen... was it a theory?
As his body struggled to survive, he experienced what he describes as a moment beyond time. There was no chaos in that space. There was recognition. Familiarity. Presence. Reunion…He saw his son.
The relief was complete. The kind of relief that removes weight from the body and argument from the mind. In that space, there was no unfinished business, no anxiety about what had been left undone. There was peace. And there was an understanding that he should return to the world.
The decision felt real. The pull to remain felt powerful and safe.
Yet he came back.
That question became unavoidable. Why return after loss? Why step back into a life marked by grief when peace was within reach? Why resume the unfinished work of living when you could just float away?
The Sum Total does not attempt to prove what happens after death. It does not argue doctrine, nor does it seek to persuade through theology or philosophy. Instead, it focuses on the premise of life itself. It explores the possibility that life and death, joy and grief, light and shadow are not random experiences but part of a larger continuity shaped by choice. Even when a decision feels inevitable, even when circumstances seem beyond our control, the deeper question remains: what if those choices were made long before our first breath?
The heart knows. We sense truth before we articulate it. We recognize familiarity before logic arrives. We experience moments of déjà vu, subtle echoes in time, patterns that feel older than this present life.
How many times have you said, or heard someone say, “In my heart, I know this to be true”?
The question is simple. How do you know?
What is that place within you that recognizes truth before evidence appears? What part of you responds before your mind assembles logic? That recognition does not originate in explanation. It originates in awareness.
The premise suggests that what the heart feels is not new information but remembered understanding. The heart reacts. The soul recalls. The mind attempts to catch up.
But it is the soul that must remember.
The premise continues. Our experiences are not isolated accidents. They are additions to a living total. The sum of what we endure informs the choices we continue to make. Every move, every dream, every turning point becomes part of the equation shaping who we are becoming.
Did he return simply to share his story, or did he return to complete the ascension his soul had agreed to pursue?
That is not a rhetorical question. It is the central inquiry of this work.
The Sum Total invites readers to consider that their own lives may hold similar patterns. That their own experiences may not be meaningless interruptions, but deliberate chapters in a larger unfolding. That awareness carries responsibility. That belief itself is a choice. And that every move we take and every dream we make begins with a decision that shapes the total we are building.
Michael does not ask the reader to agree with him. He asks only that you accept the premise long enough to examine your own life through a different lens.
If you are the sum total of your experiences, what are they shaping you toward?
If your heart already knows, what is your soul waiting to remember?
And if given the opportunity to remain in peace, would you return?
FEATURED EXCERPTS LIBRARY
“Life often feels random as we live it. Only in hindsight does rhythm begin to emerge.”
“It was as if, in the process of writing about my life, my life began revealing its structure.”
“The echo does not scream. It rings quietly, persistently, from the future to the present.”
“The question is never whether the message was sent. The question is, did we listen?”
“For every move we take, and every dream we make is created by choice.”
“Healing does not mean returning to who you were before the break. It means becoming who you are now capable of being because of it.”
“We were never powerless. We were learning.”
“A bad day is not a bad life.”
“Every experience shapes who we become.”
“Sometimes what feels like chaos is actually construction.”
“Awareness changes everything.”
“Grief is not the end of love. It is the evidence of it.”
“The soul does not forget. It waits.”
“Belief is a choice.”
“The past does not chase us. It echoes.”