Every Day Is a New Beginning: Healing, Grace, and Men’s Mental Health

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0:44 Denzel Washington, welcome to Inspire Vision. Our sole purpose is to elevate the lives of others and to inspire you to do the same. Mark welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. Dr Doug. I sure appreciate it well, and I'm excited. You know, you reached out to me, and as we had a chance to, you know, text back and forth, I found an email back and forth. I found that yours, your approach. And what you're doing is just really effective and can really make a difference in people's lives. What I'd love for you to do is we get started, is kind of share with the audience who you are and what brought you to the point of doing what you're doing here and working with people awesome.

1:28 I love to do that. So so we said, my name is Mark Wigginton, I'm based in Austin, Texas, and so we're we're having an interesting time zone challenge together this morning, this morning, this evening. I you know, I'm I've had. Multiple phases in my life, and all those phases have kind of built on each other, and I think kind of the theme that has run through all those phases has been about self discovery. So whether that was you know, when I was, you know, a young person, I lived in a kind of a lot of chaos and I built that and brought that forward into my career. In my mid thirties, I went to rehab and then I. Went I changed my career and became a licensed professional counselor and got a master's degree and I worked in community and mental health. I did that for about seven years, and then I moved back into business. In that period of time of transition that was like a fifteen year window, and I had about twenty different jobs in that fifteen year window of the time I worked in community mental health and then came back into business. And then that led to kind of the last phase of my career where back to back I kind of had some self discovery, some real deep transformation, and I wound up in one job doing the same thing that used all my skills for the next fifteen years. So back to back, twenty jobs in fifteen years than one job in fifteen year.

2:50 Left full time work a couple of years ago so I could be a greater support to my parents. And then in twenty twenty three, I went through a period where my mother died, followed by my stepmother, followed by my father in ninety nine days in really quick succession. Wow, that led me to. Where I am today, this place of really kind of deep into introspection and kind to figure out, you know, what everything was about in the past so that I can use it as I move forward into my next chapter. Well, and you know, it's interesting because you know, we talk about new phases in our lives, new chapters in our life. I like to talk about new beginnings. And you've been through it through chatter, You've been through a few chapters, and I'd be curious and if if, if you don't want to be too transparent.

3:41 I appreciate that. But so you talk about you had your one job in business and then you went into rehab. Yeah, what what was causing you to get into that situation where I would assume you were a very successful businessman at the time. What happened? Yeah? Outwardly I was really successful, you know, I had kind of started my career. I was in a sales role and was very successful at that on the outside, but inside I was still pretty empty. I was still pretty hollow, you know, not to turn it into a drunklog, but I had you know, again, I grew up in a really chaotic environment.

4:21 You know, my parents married really young. My mother had me at eighteen, she was single, she was married at eighteen, she had me at nineteen, and she was single by the time she was twenty. So there was lots of movement, lots of juggling. So I kind of grew up in this real kreatic environment. And as a teen, like a lot of people, I experimented with alcohol and I found that was something that helped calm me. That was something that helped me manage the chaos internally, and that just carried through and it was a great coping tool until it wasn't. And when I was about thirty, that was the place where I said, you know what, this isn't working anymore. It's just it's not me. You know. When I went to rehab, I had no intention of changing my career.

5:04 You know, I had no intention. And I came back out and I was like, you know, this isn't what I really want to do, how I really want to spend my life. So I went back to school and got my degree and made the shift. Okay, So it's really interesting how deeply our childhood can affect us. And you know, as you say, for you, it was alcohol to try to just kind of wipe away all of those situations and you were doing something that you were being successful at, but as you said, you were not happy and when you went to rehab and as you went through that whole process, and I would assume that that was part of the inspiration for you going to psychology for a while. What were some of your innate self discoveries that you feel would be applicable to people who maybe at the point right now where they're working hard, but they find that they're relying on alcohol or drugs or whatever to compensate for something that occurred to them years previously that they've just not been able to deal with.

6:15 Yeah, guys, that's such an important question. And you know, we can talk about this a couple of different ways. And I do a lot of work right now with with men and dealing with men's mental health issues. So I'm going to talk about it from the perspective of men's mental health, even though it's probably probably applicable. In both sides. The bottom line is that, you know, at least so I'm in the US and in this culture. You know, people of my generation, the Boomers, we grew up a certain way with a certain image of what masculinity was. Right, it was you know, it was. John Wayne, and you know Ethan Edwards and the Searchers, right or you know his character in the Shoots where you're strong and and you don't need anybody, and you know you don't have to, you don't rely on anybody, and you don't talk about what's going on today for today's generation. For our generation, it was John Wayne. For today's generation, it's John Wick. The same kind of behavior, right, But I think that's really true for a lot of us.

7:15 You know, we outwardly perform maybe without really taking care of ourselves, and that leads to this kind of double life where you know, we are all appearances, we are out there and really you know, making it happen in the world, but inside we still have you know, we still have feelings that are unresolved from childhood. You know, I've I work with a lot of people who follow kind of under the category of highly sensitive persons. And I don't know if you've talked about HSPs on your podcast, but it's this this trait of characters that are really about how you process deeply, and a lot of that stuff comes from childhood, so you know, it's how deeply you process. How do you respond to overstimulation, you know, and for me, responding to over stimulation was the alcohol to tone everything down, right. How do you deal with reacting emotionally, How do you deal with empathy and how do you manage empathy? Those are some of the key skills.

8:09 And how are you sensitive to kind of the subtleties. Well, those things all are powerful in helping people in business be aware, be present, know what's happening in the room, know what other people are feeling. But at the same time, if you're not manage it inside, it can. Become a real issue. And I think that's what happened to me in my journey, is that, you know, I had to manage my overstimulation. To that chaos that I grew up in, and then that just carried forward into work. And you know I talked about having twenty jobs in fifteen years. That was me continuing to recreate the chaos until I found a better way to cope, right until that second phase when I found a more effective coping skill. You know, that allowed me to be grounded and use all the lessons of my past.

8:52 Well, and it's interesting you talk about those childhood or even teenager whenever it happens, but those imprints that just continually come up, the reactivity, the emotions that come up that are in most cases initially totally. Out of our control. Right. You know, I love this concept of free agency, of agency, and yet I should sometimes think, you know what, for many people that doesn't exist because they are so controlled by those childhood experiences that have printed in their subconscious. Minds that anytime anything happens, their.

9:32 Response emotionally to whatever event comes up goes right back to that subconscious imprint or plural. The five year old drives the bus, right, you know, the adult is out there in front, but it's like the Wizard of Oz, who's the man behind the curtain? Right, the five year old? You know, the unresolved stuff that's. Happened, it impacts how we interact with the world as adults. Well, Andrew, when you went into rehab, I mean, you know, you talked about rehab and I think, okay, I get that, but not having ever been there, do they really delve into those childhood things? Do they really delve into how to overcome that chaos? Is controlling your lives as part of that or is that a separate thing that one works with in addition to working with overcoming whatever addiction there happens to.

10:28 Be see all of the above. So and and I went I had an opportunity, kind of a unique opportunity when I went to rehab. I went to a rehab in Canada that was had a little bit of a different focus, right, so it focused more on the behaviors that drove what they talked about as the X factor, right, So they talked about the behaviors that drove. Why you made the decisions you did to use whatever it was you were using, and they I was dealing with. You know, in my group, it was just people with alcohol, with alcohol, drug, sex, you know, work everything. There were there were spouses of people who had been before, you know, who were trying to learn how to understand the dynamics of the relationship being a relationship with a person who had a dependence. So, you know, there was a lot of deep introspective work and a lot of humbling work.

11:22 And group work. It's like if you've been to therapy and you go and you have a session with somebody and it's forty five minutes or fifty minutes and you kind of chat and you work your way through it, and then the last five minutes you drop your little door. You know, as you're about to leave, you drop the little bomb five minutes before you go. You don't get away with that. When you're locked away for twenty eight days, you know you're doing you know, sixteen hours of group work a day, you know, or working in your journal or whatever your tools are. So it really is a chance for introspection and it really it really jumps arguing me. Now, you know, we can continue on to my story and we can. Talk about how you know, the the process of recovery is not a straight line. And you know I worked after I finished that. I worked with people who were you know, in mental health settings, who were in substance abuse treatment settings. And there came a period of time when when I relapsed and wasn't able to reach out and went back into the business world. I chose to just say, listen, you know, I can't I'm not being honest with myself or with my clients. I need to turn and leave because I couldn't ask for help at that point, and I went back into the business world.

12:33 Then well, and then what finally got you back? If you are there now, what got you back? Because you know, you talk about something I think that's so important that we think that we can change overnight, and you know, we go to therapy, we go to rehab, whatever that happens to be. I know that I worked when I was working with as a consultant for some businesses, I worked with the rehab center, and as we talked about, I was very close to the owners and as we talked about it, it was an interesting story that they would help someone, they would leave, and then they would come back, and so there's just that repeat that continues to go on. And I think to some degree this gets into this whole concept of mindset, that at what point in time are you aware enough and in control enough, and that your mind is conscious enough to recognize that when that trigger comes up to get you to go have a drink or whatever, that you're able to recognize that and just kind of push it away.

13:38 But as you say, you know, these are habits. That who we develop all over our lives, and breaking a habit is really tough. So how did you ultimately so you went from working with people as a psychologists back to regular work, and as you say, even then you went back and fell back on the off the wagon. How did you if you have, how have you ultimately gotten to the point recognizing that I'm sure it always comes up for you, but how have you gotten to the point where you've been really able to truly overcome that and recognize that, Yeah, you know, always an alcoholic, but no longer for taking.

14:22 Yeah, So a long question, I'm sorry, A long answer, A long answer. It's going to be a long answer to that question because it encompasses so many different things. So, you know, first off, going back to to the phase of you know, working with people who struggled. You know, I I one of the jobs that I had during that phase is I worked in the county jail and a rehab center that was in the jail. So these are people who have you know, had risks and you know, a substance abuse issue was a core to why they committed their crime, and so part of their their journey through the criminal justice system included them having the opportunity to do this. So, you know, I was deeply involved in people who are struggling, and I would be there to help them understand the process of relapse right. And the key was that when I relapsed, I wasn't able to offer myself that same grace.

15:17 And that's something that happens a lot. You know, people perform care right for other people without really feeling worthy of observing that themselves. That's something that happens a lot in the mental health community. So I went back out and then I created this crazy world where you know, I lived on the road. You know, I was a consultant on the road, A trainer, sales consultant, management consultant. You know, you just talk about consulting, you know that gig right. And I was there all the time, and I created. An environment where I didn't have. Boundaries, and so I had the freedom to go out and to drink and do whatever it was that I wanted to. But still I had those the lessons in the back of my mind which set up this really powerful conflict. Right this really I lived this double life.

16:00 Is on the road. I was this kind of wild and crazy life of the party lamp shed, lampshad on the head guy, and then I come home and I try to be balanced. And I lived that way for a really, really long time until I had a hard consequence. I mean, I found myself being the guy on the side. Of the road, you know, doing the hoky poke like the people that I had dealt with, you know, eight years earlier. There was an eight year journey of that transition for me. And you know, even after that, and I found new ways to manage my anxiety, new ways to manage the over stimulation. I still struggled with alcohol, and. Every time I would drink, I would have that challenge. So I'm going to fast forward now through that story to the death of my parents, and you know that's that was in two.

16:43 That was in twenty twenty. Three, and that led me to this really deep introspection. I went back into therapy for the first time in a really long time, and one of the first things I learned as I as I worked with this therapist was about something that had evolved over time. It was a model called harm reduction. And so the harm reduction model allows allows provides for a person who is struggling with abstinence to determine what their own goals are, to say, you know what my life is working in these five areas I can I can manage whatever my drug of choice is, whatever.

17:25 I'm differing from And just because I'm. Not able to stay one hundred percent abstinent doesn't mean that I failed. It's not all black and white. It moves away from black and white, which if you really look at the original message of the twelve step programs of you know, if you go all the way back to the very beginning, who was do your best today and if you screw up, start again tomorrow. Right, That was the original message of the twelve step programs. Well, that's what what harm reduction does. And dog that gave me a new freedom, right, it gave me the freedom to make a decision without being bad if I'm not perfect, and that's what it. Yeah, that's it. An interesting you know, you mentioned the word grace, and I don't know where your theological ways are, but you know, regardless of that, when we think of grace and giving ourselves grace or receiving grace, what's interesting is that we don't understand so often that, as you said, you know, you change your mindset about the fact that, hey, if you decided to have a drink, rather than that feeling that guilt of okay, I've relapsed, that you look at it from okay I did that really shouldn't have, but I did, and then giving yourself the grace to forgive yourself.

18:39 And to move forward the next day. Yeah, And so let's tile us all the way back to the earlier question about perfectionism, right, and to the earlier question about you know, the you know, how were you performing so well in work and struggling inside? It's because I couldn't give myself that grace and it took me until I was sixty three years old to give myself that great race, and it's led to a whole new thing because you know, I can choose or not choose, and so I choose to not. I choose to be abstinate. You know, today I'm abstinate, right, and if i'm tomorrow, if something. Happens, okay, then I start again. Rights. It's about being more present with myself and giving myself that freedom. And I think that's so important for men, you know, I think in general, back to this, we've got to be strong, we have to be perfect, you know.

19:26 Guess what, give yourself a little bit of grace and give yourself the ability to be a human and to make mistakes and recover. From your stakes. Every single day you have the opportunity to choose again in every element of your life. Well. And I think what that does, too, which I find fascinating, is we give ourselves some grace and recognize that, you know what, I can have a new beginning, and I can have as many new beginnings as I need. Right. Do you find from your background in psychology, do you find that as someone moves away from that guilt and that perfection them to recognizing that, hey, give myself a little grace and start a new beginning again. Do you find that mentality helps them to be strengthened in overcoming some of those issues.

20:14 Absolutely. I mean giving yourself the freedom getting off your back, giving yourself the freedom to move forward, and to accept that none of us are perfect, right they except that it's okay that you're not perfect, I think is a really important key for anybody, you know, to be able to move forward. I mean, I deal with my work right now. You know here in the States, there's so much going on with the government and all the people who are being let go and laid off, and because of something of something that happened in that later phase of my career, I wind up working with a lot of people who were caught up in that, and even they need to give grace on themselves that something that's not their fault. You know, they were laid off, they were fired, they got the doge notice or they got the fork notice or what ever, the you know, the things that are involved in that for the people in the government sector, and they feel terrible guilt, you know, or they may have been top performers all along and got promoted and promoted, and then they got a letter that said you're being let go because your performance a substandard, which wasn't true. So even then, you know, half the time it's helping people get through that and I realize that it's not about them and uncover what the strengths are that they have that they've learned from that that they can take forward into the next phase.

21:28 Well, and you talk about the word perfection, and I have looked at that word for so many years, and you know, I look at it from the standpoint of imprints that have occurred early in childhood, particularly for people who are religious, and you know, be. There for perfect. And yet as I've really studied it, I've recognized that number one, that's not what it meant. We have an incorrect definition of what is used as the word perfect when in fact you go to the digital meaning used in the Hebrew was be complete, just be complete, And that changes the whole sense of guilt to one of oh, okay, I just need to work on certain things. But what I find fascinating here in Thailand, I've asked some people, so tell me a little bit about the word perfection, and they say, we don't even have that word in our language. We don't even have it, and so it's interesting where you have the English speaking people that have that, and I'm sure in other countries where they still have that concept of perfection and how that can so deeply affect a person's mentality and their whole emotional stability.

22:40 You know, you talked in that interview that you did a few months ago with Marcos about your experience with that you're learning about Buddhism while you're there. Is that tied to this sense of self acceptance and complete lists completeness and lack of perfection. Is that what you're finding in Thailand? I think so. And I look at it from the perspective of doing, and again I focus on this to some degree that you know, there's always this constant comment that you need to do, you need to do, you need to do so that you can become. And I've always looked at it from a little different perspective, and it's like, you know, what, as you become, you will naturally do, and so it's just it's that reverse of recognizing that, Hey, quit worrying about what you're doing or what you can't do and so forth, just work on as you have that transformation of becoming, and as you do that, then naturally you will do And so I think that yes, in here in Thailand with Buddhism, of course, his whole focus was that inner piece, that inner sense of you know, getting away from the struggling and so forth. And I find that that's true in in many religions, in many faiths, that that really is the case if you look at it and if you get honest with what's going on.

24:08 So yeah, I think from that perspective, Now do they do they have issues here? Absolutely, because as they see sometimes what they're doing, there's that whole issue that I don't even want to talk about because in some ways they're so kind, they're so friendly, even though you know their lives can be very difficult. But then again, many of them spend the day drinking, and so you have that concept of kindness and love, which I think is universal here. But at the same time, they're still dealing with those issues of boredom or whatever it happens to be struggling that cause them to go into that direction. And I'm not talking about everyone, but just where I happen to live is very rural and so I observe that a lot among the HI workers.

24:57 It's still about humanity, yes, you know, I mean the human condition is striving to be striving to be perfect and not being successful, and so you know, we all have to find our way to cope and deal with it, I think, regardless of our culture, regardless of our gender. Well, and that's true in allowing the ego. In fact, we talked about that this morning in another podcast, the fact that we can have a very positive ego or we can have an ego that's affecting us negatively. And I know that you know that's talked about in a number of books. But you know, as you look at that, do you find that part of the challenge that many of the men are experiencing where they're working hard, they're being successful, but they're not really finding that sense of peace within themselves that part of the issue is that ego of I need to do this in order to be that, and I need to have this in order to be that.

25:58 Do you find that that's the case? So how do you help them to not eliminate an ego because that's what I don't believe, but recognize it, right, a positive ego has us move forward into very positive direction, and negative ego is the one that keeps controlling us and tells us if we do this or if we have this, we will be accepted. Yeah, So that takes us back to rehab, and it takes back to one of the lessons that I learned that stuck with me and I've used consistently through my own life and I share with other people. And what I learned there was kind of three parts of the ego. So I learned that there's a bully that we use to present ourselves and again maybe that's the person that's out there and outperforming. And then there's a scared child that's behind them, right, that's the five year old that's kind of pulling the strings.

26:48 And then there's a third. Part that's the identity, and that's the peacemaker between the bully and the scared child. And the deal is finding a way to integrate the bully and the scared child to allow your identity to shine through who allow you to become who you really are and who you're meant to be. You know, kind of as this I mean, if you want to say, as a spiritual person having a human experience, and again that takes us back to acceptance. Well, and that's so true. And you know you talk about rehab, you talk about therapy, and you are a psychologist. I mean, you have that background and training. And what I found is I've interviewed a number of psychologists that one of the things that comes up is the approach. Now, you talked about the fact that when you went to Canada, their approach was not just you know, the twelve step program, but it was also getting into the real causation of what was going on and what was motivating that I would assume in general they probably have a greater success rate from that approach. And I know that as people are going to therapists, one of the things that we've talked about is they need to be aware if they find that all of there is this talk talk talk talk talk, that they need to find a different therapist because there are those good therapists out there, such as yourself, because I know you approached it that way where they get into let's look at the real causation, what's going on here, and let's figure out those childhood imprints, those emotional imprints that are causing this behavior, and how you

28:22 can literally understand and move those to the side so that now you can truly become who you want to become. Yeah, so. Most of the work that I do right now is as a coach and integrating this the counseling background that I have, but being forward focused. And so it's exactly what you talked about. One of the key differences I think in my experience have been having been a therapist, a counselor and then moving forward to be a coach is that, you know, a counselor helps you kind of process the stuff in the back, and a coach helps you helps you focus on moving forward. It's much more action oriented, like you just said, So, you know, finding somebody I think that has the kind of that unique experience of having, you know, a strong foundation in counseling, psychology, a key business you know, thirty years at almost twenty five years in business, following that and then moving combining those things together to the being an executive coach.

29:29 Those are the things. That enabled me to work with clients and help them move into action, you know, And I sneak things in, right, you know, I sneak things in like I'm not going to say, tell me about when you were five. But one of the first exercises that anybody ever does when they work with me is, Okay, sit down and look at every job you've ever had. That goes all the way to when you threw newspapers when you were twelve years old, right and look and tell me in every single job right down, what was good, what sucked. And what I learned. And when you do that kind of an inventory, you. Start to uncover patterns, so I don't have to go what were your patterns? You know, I helped them uncovering the business world what their patterns are and guess what those patterns are going to be reflected in your life.

30:11 And it helps uncover what you need to do to move forward to break that pattern. You know, that's on the challenge side. It also uncovers what the strengths are that you're bringing forward into the next phase of your career. Well, and that's great. You know. One of the things that you and I talked about is the experience you had with your dad and your relationship with your father and how that was such a journey for you and the impact that that had. Would you mind sharing with the audience that story? Sure, and there are multiphases to that story. I already mentioned that their marriage, my parents' marriage didn't last very long that you know. Again, they were married when she was eighteen, She had me when she was nineteen.

30:53 She was single by the time she was twenty. So I met him when I was ten for the first time, you know, we saw each other. There were a few times back and forth after I wanted to rehab. It was brought up to me as something that I really needed to resolve in fact or rehab storry. So it was brought to something that I really needed to resolve, and so I reached out to him. Let me, let me struggle, what did you need to resolve. The impact of the impact of his absence in my life, okay, and the impact that it it had on me. You know that I never it was one, Doug. It was one of the biggest challenges of the whole time because they said, oh, you know, like they would do psychodrama and you'd have to like role play this thing, Like, dude, I don't have anything to role play, you know, and they're like, oh no, And you know, we had to work through it. And I found an incident, you know, and where I had seen him and we worked through that, and so that that lack of relationship, and I think that's true again for a lot of men, right the lack of relationship, whether your father was physically absence or emotionally absent, is one of those key things that influences how we move forward.

31:58 So, you know, after or I got out of rehab. I reached out to him, and he came down and visited and and you know, he was actively drinking, and at this point I wasn't. Right at this point, I was freshot rehab, and so I was we weren't able to connect, and we met and then we really kind of didn't see each other for a while. And then I went to school, I got my degree. I worked at the jail, and that's when I started to. Have this really transformative experience because, like I said, I was working in you know, an inpatient basically an inpatient rehab inside the jail. So we'd have groups where all men. Really the first time I had ever been in a group of men that way. I've been in the military, but it's you know, it's mixed gender. It's a very different thing. Every once in a while, these tough guys, you know, covered with tattoos, and you know, histories or problems and challenges would get real, and they might talk about their father and their relationship. But most importantly, I found that they talked about the last lack of relationships they had with their sons and their nephews. And know it was I could relate to that, you know, I could relate to the loss. So then I would work outie as they say, inside defense and outside defense. So then I work outside the fence in the adolescent boot camp, and I'd go and have groups with young men who were the sons and nephews of the men inside the fence, who then would talk to me about their anger about the loss of relationships with their fathers and uncles. So the dads were talking about their grief over the loss

33:29 of relationships with their sons and nephews, and the sons and nephews were talking about their anger about their relationships with their father. This impact, this really impacted me tremendously as I kind of worked through my own things. So this is in the snail mail days, and I wrote a letter in my father and I said what I just said to you, and I wrote at the bottom, I'm one if you or the other let me know. And within a matter of a couple of weeks, you know, snail mail. So then the matter of a couple of weeks he knocked on my door and said, I got your letter. Let's talk. So you know, I'm thirty five, and that kind of took us to the next level of our relationship. At that point, I was still in recovery, I was still working in the community. He wasn't, So we still kind of bounced back and forth off each other. And then as I went through my relapse journey and went back, you know, went back to drinking, we were able to find that as a common bond and whether it was healthy or not, it was something that allowed us to move our relationship forward in that phase. So now fast forward through that period of time, you know, we still kind of bounced off each other. I was still struggling with my double life as I went through this and trying to get healthy, but would be uncomfortable with who I became often when I was with him, because I would try to please him with you know, or to match him with the use. But so now it's fast forward to twenty twenty three and going through this traumatic time, So I said, the first thing that happened was that my mother died, and then following that his wife, his

35:01 second wife, my stepmother, died and then he died in this ninety nine day window. And I have two have siblings, two half siblings, and then a nephew that all live up there, and we're with him, and you. Know, they we had all kind of touched each other a little bit. It was like he was the hub and we were spokes, so we kind of touched each other, but it was really about Jack. And they called and asked me to go there because he was really ill and it looked like it might be the end. And Doug what happened. I went up there and you know, Trudy was gone, his wife was gone, she had already passed. He was in the hospital. So they let you know, they said, go stay at his house. Just go go stay there. There's no TV, there's no nothing in there, but just go stay there instead of staying at a hotel. And I walked in and because they had already started with the loss of their mother, they'd gone through so many things at the house. And Jeff, my brother, answered me this box and he says, hey, this is the only thing we haven't gone through. This is the private the you know, the private photo. This is Jack's private photos, and it's the only thing we haven't gone through. Take some time and look through these things. And so I pick up and I open this box.

36:07 And it's really kind of the story of his life in these photos. And in the middle of. This there's a bag, plastic bag, and I pick up the plastic bag and all it's. All photos and letters for me. And it's not just photos and letters for me from when we re established our relationship. It's somehow photos of me from a time from the time, you know, before we established our relationship, from. The zero to thirty phase. And it was just so impactful to uncover this and see that, you know, at some level, he really he really kind of did pay attention and care and it refrained so much of how I looked at my life and how I looked at our relationship. And again, this is literally days weeks before he passed and I was up there and we actually had a chance to talk about that and get to kind of a different level of reconciliation. And it's a big part of this journey, this transformational journey that I'm on since that season of grief of losing those three very important people, and it just showed me something really different.

37:15 I mean, it just showed me, you know. It helped me understand that he was doing the best he could with the resources that he had, just like I had been in my life doing the best I could with the resources I had. Sorry, that was a long answer, Yeah. But that was a wonderful answer, and I appreciate your transparency. You know, what comes to my mind as you talk about that is, particularly in the United States, you hear all of these statistics about children that. Grow up without a father. Yeah, and you know, recognizing the damage that can occur. But one of the points I think you make for many who have gone through divorces, because you know, it's upwards of fifty percent, and there's obvious reasons for that, some ballads and not but the importance, I guess what I'm getting from you, and I want you to just briefly talk about this is the importance of the dad, because usually it goes to the mom. Usually they get custody.

38:14 The importance of the dad, even though they've moved into a different direction of their life. The importance of staying in touch and close with their kids as much as they can. Right, sometimes if the exife will allow, Right, Yeah. Sometimes. Before I answer that, I just have to give. You a little, a little anecdote that I think reflects what you're saying so much. And again, I'm a boomer, so I'm a child of the sixties. And the first time I realized that I wasn't the only person in the world that didn't have a dad, I was about ten, and you know, during that and part of that was easing and bullying. About the fact that I didn't have a dad. Okay, So fast forward now to I'm working in my practicums to get my master's degree, and I work in all the different schools. I worked in elementary schools and all the different levels of schools, and I was doing this group for ten year olds and there was one kid that was getting really picked on or teased by the group, and it was because he was the only person in the group.

39:15 That had two parents living at home. Wow. So the juxtaposition again, you know, as you just said, you know the prevalence of divorce, you know, the changes, the absence of the fathers, all of that is so tied together, you know, even dealing again with the kids. You know, the kids in the boot camp were trying to many of them were seventeen eighteen and already had children, you know, and we're trying to do what they could to be able to support the baby mama and to support the baby. And sometimes that's what got him in trouble because they could go work in McDonald's for seven dollars an hour, where they could sling crack for you know, two hundred dollars a day, right, Yeah, and that was part of the conflict. So you know this the absence, the absence of a male role model, you know, is so prevalent in our culture and it creates so many challenges because men don't know how to perform well. They they don't learn or they learn by watching John Wayne or John Wick. Yeah.

40:15 And so dads, if you're divorced and your children are with your ex, for heaven's sakes, stay close to them. Do whatever it takes, if possible, to get that communication open, because it makes a difference. As you say, yeah, they're going to recognize whether you're there or not. They're going to know that and it's going to impact them and this isn't about guilty dads, because dads are doing the best they can with the resources that they have, right exactly. So, as we close, and again it just amazes me how fast time goes by. And this has been just an incredible conversation. I appreciate it. But how do people find you? Yeah? So, like I said, I had a pretty long business career, So I hang out on LinkedIn, So you can find me on LinkedIn at Mark Wigan ten.

41:03 I also have a website. It's focusing on results, focusing on results dot com. And from there, you know, you can subscribe to my newsletter. I read a newsletter that comes out every other Tuesday focusing on it's called. Your Next Chapter. So it's focusing on midlife transition, the kind of things that we talked about, and other issues that are related to midlife change. Those are the best ways to find me, and I'd love to have your audience subscribe. Oh wonderful. And so as we close, what would be that final thought, that final message you'd want to share with the audience. Well, I think I think there are really two pieces to it. One is talking. Back about my relationship with my father and that evolution and you know, it might not have been the relationship that either one of us really wanted, but it was the relationship that we had, and it was the relationship that we made work. And back to your point about the importance of connecting, and I think that that tied to the message of you know, understanding that you don't have to fix everything, you know, you just have to open a door. And really kind of the bottom line being every day you have the chance to start again. Okay, no matter how old you are, every day you have a chance to start again.

42:18 Oh that's wonderful, Mark, thanks so much. Number one. I appreciate you reaching out to me like you did on LinkedIn, and it's rare that someone does that on LinkedIn, so I appreciate that. And you know, quite frankly, your story and what you're doing now I think is making such a difference for the people you work with. So I want to just applaud you for that. Well, thank you. And I will say Doug that there are so few mental health focused or transformation focused podcasts. You're making a really impact by your message as well. I mean, it's important to let people know that it's okay to talk about this stuff. And you do that well. Thank you and folks, thanks for listening, and I hope you've enjoyed this. Be sure to reach out to Mark.

43:02 I think that you're going to find some really interesting stuff, particularly the newsletter I think is great. So thanks for listening. I hope you'll join us again soon. This is doctor Doug as usual, saying no mistake