My story thus far... maybe you can relate
I was born to a young single mother and two loving grandparents. My story could have been different if my non-biological dad and mom didn’t come together when I was 1. I was raised in a nuclear family setting with three younger brothers. Sports, public school, scouts, all under the umbrella of being raised as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormon).
This is an important spot to point out some science that colors my coaching. From birth to about 7 years old we’re in something called a Theta State.
Here’s a good description - Theta waves are the brain’s way of soaking up information like a sponge. A child’s brain is highly plastic during these early years, meaning it can easily form new connections. This is why habits, learning abilities, and developmental skills are so easily acquired in this period – the brain is literally primed to learn and grow (https://mybrainrewired.com/rewire-the-brain/understanding-theta-waves-in-children/).
The way we perceive the world and adapt to exist in it are primarily formed during those crucial first 7 years of life. What religion were you raised in? How healthy was your home life? How did your parents teach and raise you? What culture were you surrounded by? There is so much to explore and question to understand how you do the world now because of that developmental period.
I moved around a lot; every 2.5 years on average. This took me out of my introverted shell and forced me to learn how to make friends quickly. I think that’s where I developed my love of people - we’re all so unique with experiences unlike anyone else. All 8.5 billion of us! Said another way - I wasn’t kept in a bubble. I experienced many different ways to do life.
During my teen years I had a solid core group of friends, was a youth leader in church and boy scouts, did well in school, played sports (and lots of video games), and went to early morning seminary. I also secretly held a lot of shame for the “sinful” things I did behind the scenes - smoked pot, drank, looked at porn, had “immoral” relations with girlfriends… I looked good on the surface and hid my “wickedness”. I was a mess!
Back to my story...
At 19, as all "worthy" Mormon boys do, I went on a two year mission. I loved God, believed strongly in my faith, and wanted to do what was right, but I did not feel a pull to serve. Everyone - my parents, my friends, my church leaders, my girlfriend and her family - all expected me to go. So I went. For five whole months before I couldn’t take it anymore and I pulled out. The shame I felt! I’m sure some of you can empathize with that feeling.
Welcome to adulthood
Thankfully my then girlfriend still accepted me and we were married shortly after I returned. I knew what I wanted in life and I was ready to start that life with her. No scandal, no baby on the way, just a deep love for the most wonderful woman I’d ever met. Couple that with a surety that I’d either work for my father who owned three very successful car dealerships or my father-in-law who was a New York Times best-selling author with a wildly successful seminar business. I was going to work for one of them, have a house full of kids, plant our roots, and live a happy Mormon life. Or so I thought.
At this point in my life, 19 years old, I was married and both of our families, our parents, were still structured in nuclear families. All of that was about to change.
My father, unbeknownst to me, had developed a drug habit and quickly lost his business, our family home, many of our family valuables. Over the course of almost a decade he was in and out of sobriety, seeking and attempting almost every form of treatment imaginable. My parents marriage did not survive and after 20 years together they divorced. The stable family I had known growing up was gone. My 3 younger brothers all succumbed to drug addiction as well and our family was completely broken.
My father-in-law also lost everything during the same period. His seminar business, based on stock market trading, saw much less demand after the 2001 dot.com crash, and then the IRS set their eyes on him. He ultimately served just over 7 years in federal prison for tax evasion (unjustly, in my opinion) and my mother-in-law served 2 years. They were salt-of-the-earth people who loved and served everyone they knew. This shook my faith in the government and the justice system of the US.
The saga intensifies...
Both of these unbelievable turn of events shocked my world. Somehow my wife and I had become the adults in the room, the pillars of normalcy, in a familial world of uncertainty. Instead of arguing over who’s family we’d spend Thanksgiving and Christmas with, we were the host home. This was not the plan! It made us grow up faster than we’d anticipated.
In my early twenties, while all of this craziness was going on, I heard a piece of wisdom at a seminar that I’ll never forget - “If you want to be a painter when you retire, why aren’t you painting now?” (Thank you Bob Trask!). That was a revelation to me! I had always wanted to be a drummer in a band, but didn’t think I had the skill to do it. That night I took a chance and found a band needing a drummer (on craigslist of all places). The next day I tried out and made the band. Talk about the power of manifestation! I was with the band for the next 3 years, creating music, living in my gift, touring, and having fun.
Rachel and I had made an agreement to wait 5 years into our marriage before having kids. We knew we’d married young and wanted to give ourselves and our marriage time to grow and mature. At 24 my band was on the edge of going big, but our 5 year wait was also up. What to do? We had a huge show at SXSW in Austin Texas… all the big producers would be there and it was our bands chance to make it big. I played my heart out! But my decision was already made… I wanted to start a family and band life was not the way to raise kids. So I quit the band and we welcomed Gabriel 9 months later.
I committed to my banking career, bought our first house, and got ready for domesticated life. We added baby #2, Camden, three years later. After another 2 years, we welcomed baby #3, Thatcher. We sold our first home and upgraded to a bigger house to hold our growing family. This was our nesting phase. Our extended families issues all started to settle as well - my dad and brothers all worked into sobriety (all still successfully!), and my in-laws re-entered society. Life was looking good. I continued climbing the corporate ladder and grew my paycheck. We’d made it through the hard times and now we could rest and enjoy life.
I remember sitting on the couch with Rachel as we counted our blessings. We were dreaming about our next steps. I said, “I’m grateful our family is healthy!” Little did I know that one week later we’d be in the hospital having emergency surgery to remove a tumor from our 1.5 year old Thatcher. The cancer battle that ensued was not what we were expecting.
What could have been a nightmare (and it was not pleasant by any stretch of the imagination) became a trial that grew every member of our family. We saw love and support. We challenged the accepted treatment plan (chemo, chemo, and more chemo) and found alternative medicines, in conjunction with Western oncology, to heal our son.
Peace finally, or so we thought...
This also was the major shove Rachel and I needed to start really questioning the world we’d been raised in and had settled on as our own. She started practicing energy healing, first with Reiki, than both of us with Emotion Code, then she continued to explore and add additional modalities to her repertoire. I was still the primary bread winner and felt unable to explore my calling in life, but was more than happy to hold the space needed for Rachel to grow.
I knew my time would come at the right moment.
I believe whole heartedly in the serendipitous timing of all things in my life.
My path appeared with three major shifts in my life in ’22 and ’23 that have altered my life’s timeline for the better -
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I moved my family from WA to ID leaving behind the direct influence of family, friends, and the religious community we knew.
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I went to the Psychadelics Conference in Denver, CO the summer of ’23 and discovered the healing power of plant medicines.
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I hired a life coach!
...let me rewind a bit. I was raised with the Food Pyramid, the DARE program. I was a freshman in high school when 9/11 happened. My dad, father-in-law, and grandpa’s were all Fox News watching, Rush Limbaugh loving conservatives. I am a child of the 90’s. I thought the FDA knew how to recommend good nutrition and only approved drugs that were good for people. I knew street drugs were all bad (and this was reinforced by seeing how they tore my family apart). I knew the government only had our best interests at heart. I knew my side was right and the other side wrong. And I knew my faith tradition was correct.
All of this was foundational to the way I knew the world.
As they say, there’s no growth in a comfort zone and no comfort in a growth zone! My 20’s and 30’s were filled with a series of events and experiences that helped deconstruct all of these beliefs.
Some had started to be broken - I have since learned that the food we eat matters. As Hippocrates said, “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.” I learned not all drugs are made equal - the pharmaceutical companies have a monopoly on “sick”-care in this country and completely ignore (or outlaw) alternative forms of medicine. I've come to recognize the government is not coming to save anyone; they generally exasperate the problems they're meant to fix.
And most recently I deconstructed my own faith tradition. At times this was unsettling, exciting, scary, hopeful, hard, jarring. Ultimately, it was healing, transformational, freeing, and, for the first time in my life, gave me the chance to know myself wholly. It wasn’t easy to step into this space - deconstructing everything that I thought made me, me! But when each piece was taken down, exposed to scrutiny, and allowed to be fully explored I was able to discover myself and be the best most true version of myself.