Blog

I met Ron early during my personal growth journey. We both volunteer at Foundations Workshops, the program that changed our lives. Now we pay it forward.

Ron and I have shared facilitation duties for 14 years. Ron has the distinction of being the only person who has hung around for about as long as I have. People see us as mentors, as a steady presence that reassures them because they know they can lean on us.

For Ron, it’s even more than that. Although we’ve presented the program in such far-flung places as Tennessee, British Columbia, Alberta, and other places throughout North America, the city with greatest longevity is Portland, OR.

Ron is considered the father of the Portland program. The year was 2004. At the time, the program was operating only in Pigeon Forge, TN. Ron approached Eldon, the leader of the program, about starting a second program in Portland. He loves to tell the story. Apparently they met in a back room, in a chicken wire cage used to store and secure equipment. It is the genesis story of a program that has affected the lives of more than one thousand participants in over 60 different groups. When other cities are included in the total, Ron has facilitated 115 Foundations workshops.

Starting a program in a new city is HARD. There is no onsite infrastructure or leadership. There are few volunteers for a program that runs primarily on volunteers. Most important, there are few alumni. Alumni are critical to a program where word-of-mouth is the only proven form of marketing or advertising.

Ron overcame these obstacles. Because I was primarily involved in the Tennessee program, I don’t know exactly how he did it. His wife Judy was instrumental. So was Judy’s sister Carol and her husband Mike. Other close friends and relatives lent their support and risked their good reputations. Bottom line: They all were committed to doing what it took to have what they wanted.

Even so, we’ve gone to cities where people could fill the first room but couldn’t keep it going beyond the initial workshop. Enrollment takes hard, hard work, and sometimes even hard work isn’t even enough. To make it 14 years in a single location is truly remarkable, and Ron and Judy have been there for the entire ride. All of the Portland participants owe a debt of gratitude to them.

Ron and I sit together at the back table during workshops. There is plenty of down time between our large group facilitation duties. When the participants break into small groups to share, we can often carry on a soft conversation. We learn a lot about each other during these conversations.

Ron is a quiet guy with deep convictions. He is thoughtful and his facilitation is well planned out. We have a very similar personality style. We’ve done much to change and mold the workshops around our shared strategic vision.

For instance, years ago the workshop involved a lot of getting into people’s faces, being confrontational in an effort to push people into change. Ron and I didn’t see that as productive. Participants would get a big “pop” or “high” from the workshop but the long-term effects were less certain.

Ron and I were instrumental in bringing a gentler, encouraging approach which relies on people deciding to change rather than having change foisted upon them. People could then take credit for their own change. It seems to work at least as well, and probably better than the “old school” days.

When I was young, it was hard to imagine older people—people my current age—being affected by events in their childhood. I thought, “It was such a long time ago. They certainly should have gotten past old hurts by now—shouldn’t they?”

Of course, now I know different. My childhood still affects how I see and interact with the world every hour of every day. That’s true for everybody, no matter what our ages.

Ron was raised in an abusive environment. When he became an adult, the consequences of this abuse manifested in him as rage.

But people can change if they do the hard work required. He is now a recovering rage-a-holic. The personal growth required to recover from his childhood has given him the wisdom, experience, and wealth of knowledge to guide others. He’s continued to counsel others through their own past hurts and hang ups.

I’ve never asked him what motivated him to change and gave him the strength to do it. But if I had to guess, I’d say his family was a huge factor. To my knowledge, Ron’s family is the most important worldly thing to him. He is a zealous protector. His family and the Portland workshop are two tall pillars of his legacy.

I believe he used to rage because tells me so. But I’ve never seen him out of control and have hardly ever seen him visibly angry. I simply don’t know the person he used to be. He did a tremendous amount of work before I ever met him. Given that I fly into a rage by the third straight red light I encounter while driving, I need to learn more from him. Obviously, my own rage ain’t about the red lights.

We are different in one way. Ron is very measured, even, and calm. I can get excitable when I need to. One day the participants were waiting outside to enter the workshop room. They were to come in with a lot of energy and excitement—loud music, jumping around, dancing, that sort of thing.

I had to go into the room ahead of the participants and leave Ron with them. So I told Ron, “Fire them up and send them in!” The look on Ron’s face was priceless. It was as if I told him to put the participants on a spaceship and send them to the moon. So I stayed and fired them up myself. We each have our own gifts.

Ron takes great pride in his facilitation, and deservedly so. One of the most challenging facilitation roles is large group sharing. There is very little structure. The facilitator uses his intuition, his skills, his compassion and wisdom to help others see what’s going on in their lives and what they might do about it. This is usually a job for our most experienced facilitators: Rick, Ron, and me.

Ron relishes the role, and so do I. The most personally satisfying moments of our jobs often come during this process. It takes all we have, all we are, all of our courage and wisdom. It is the job other facilitators aspire toward, and wonder if they would have the courage do if it was offered to them. Ron handles the responsibility with aplomb.

Ron loves to make things with his own two hands. He creates woodworking projects. His handiwork can be seen in many items in the workshop room. He sees it as an outlet for his creativity to solve a problem with a unique item he’s fashioned specifically for the job.

He is hard-working, dedicated, and dependable. He is responsible for the transportation and storage of all the equipment used in the workshop.

Ron is kind and tolerant. One year I sent a ham to Ron for Christmas. He’s a vegetarian. Instead of embarrassing me for the faux pas, he quietly gave the ham to somebody else.

Then the next Christmas, I gave him another ham. It wasn’t until the third year that I finally realized my lack of awareness and sensitivity. Ron was gracious and forgiving.

Ron is honest and forthright. He gives people the benefit of the doubt, yet maintains good relationship boundaries. He sets the example for others to follow.

Ron lives his integrity. He is the same person no matter where he is, what he’s doing, or who he’s with. He doesn’t cut ethical corners.

Ron keeps me grounded. As he’s a steady, calming presence for everybody else in the workshop room, he’s my steady presence as well. I know he has my back.

Ron is my close friend. I look forward to seeing him every workshop. When I’m with Ron, I feel like I’m at home, wherever I may be.

Rick and I met in 2008 as fellow volunteers in the Foundations workshop. We took parallel paths to increasing responsibility: Small group facilitation, large group facilitation, team leadership, mentorship, company leadership. We’ve worked side-by-side throughout, learning from each other and improving our craft.

In recent years, Rick has taken on the responsibility of overall leadership of the Portland program. He replaced me as president of the organization and is a long-term board member. When I stepped down as president, I chose to nominate Rick as my replacement. He was hesitant, but as always he did what was best for the organization.

He takes the lead in enrollment. This means that he is responsible for filling the room with participants, the hardest and most thankless job in the program. Most people, not even I, realize just how much time he spends interacting with prospects, prodding and encouraging them to attend.

It isn’t easy to convince people to attend a 3-day intensive workshop where they know they’ll be asked to confront their fears and talk about their emotions. Just ask Rick. It took four years of prodding and encouragement by others before he finally agreed to attend the workshop. The paradox of trying to explain the benefits of the program is that people can’t assess the value of those benefits until they actually go through the program. Rick helps people make that leap of faith. People trust him when he tells them that it will be well worth it.

Rick also does the all-important introduction session in the workshop room. It sets the tone for the entire program and sets him up as lead facilitator in the eyes of the participants. In reality, there’s no hierarchical leadership structure in the room, but people always look for the person who’s “in charge.”

Because of the many important roles he plays, the participants are actually not wrong. If there’s a single leader of the program in Portland, it’s Rick.

Which is what makes my experience with Rick all the more remarkable. When I’m in the room, he almost always consults with me and treats me like a mentor. He’s led dozens of programs without me, so he’s more than capable. He doesn’t need my advice. Yet he includes me in most of the decisions made during the course of a workshop and respects my judgment.

From this, I’ve learned that Rick doesn’t let his ego get in the way, despite the fact that he’s ambitious. He’s willing to continue learning and growing even after doing the program more than one hundred times. And when it comes to running a workshop, he places the quality of the participants’ experience above all.

Rick’s facilitation skills have improved continuously over the decade I’ve watched him. He has an easy, disarming way with his audience. He relates to people well and they respond. This is very important in a workshop where people enter extremely nervously. He has a professional demeanor which allows people to relax because they know they are in capable hands.

During the workshop, we need to build trust quickly. This is difficult because we’re all strangers walking in. But Rick is usually not a stranger to them because they’ve already talked with him and established a rapport.

In the initial session, Rick has the participants play a silly game trying to guess where South America is in relation to the United States. He takes 20 minutes or more playing this game with the group. I disliked watching him spend so much time on it because we get behind schedule right out of the gate.

What I finally realized was that he was further developing his rapport with them and building trust. This is exactly what needs to happen early in the program. He was so smooth with it that I didn’t even realize that’s what he was doing.

I watch how Rick relates to the group and wonder, “Why can’t I be more like Rick?” Then I quickly recognize and correct my own self-defeating thoughts. Yes, I admire Rick’s abilities and qualities as a facilitator. And I also have my own different and equally valuable abilities and qualities. It would be great to be just like Rick. But it’s good for me and the participants that I am just like Steve.

Rick and his wife Heather are my wonderful Portland-based hosts. In fact, Heather really deserves her own letter, as she is also somebody in which I can confide. If I’m still in town the morning after a workshop, the three of us find a restaurant to have brunch and talk. After a long, tiring marathon workshop, I’m sure the two of them would treasure some down time. But they are generous with their time, and I am privileged to enjoy their company.

Heather and Rick like to jokingly rib each other. It took me by surprise because neither of them appear to do this with other people. It’s an endearing part of their relationship.

Whenever I have a full day, Rick and Heather play tour guides and show me the area. Portland is vibrant and Oregon is naturally spectacular, and there’s always something new to show me. They must enjoy showing people around, because they spend a lot of time showing me around. Once Jamie came with me to Portland and the four of us did the tourist thing.

Heather and Rick eat vegan. Heather prepares vegan food for me and takes me to vegan restaurants. The first time I went to a vegan restaurant, I was confused to find meat on the menu. Turns out that [meat-not meat] is common in those establishments. I’m afraid Heather hasn’t converted me. I’m a die-hard carnivore. Now that my son and daughter-in-law also eat vegan, I’m not clueless about it.

Rick treats people fairly and with respect. He has a practical, rather than dogmatic approach to life and relationships. He seems to believe that love is the most important guiding philosophy. In this we agree.

The last decade working and playing alongside Rick have been meaningful, important and exhilarating. We have sharpened our skills, learned from each other, and have co-created an incredible journey. We pursue our life purposes together.

More important, our friendship has grown and deepened throughout. We trust each other. We lean on each other. We share our triumphs and struggles. It’s pretty remarkable for two guys who live 2,600 miles away from each other.

Rick, my life is richer because you are in it.

I am tempted to call Cindy a kindred spirit. But upon reflection, we really aren’t. And that’s the beauty of it.

I met Cindy as a fellow attendee of the most extensive personal growth experience I’ve ever attended. It consisted four “retreats” spanning nine months. The entire experience covered 22 days. It was called a leadership program, though many in our group would end up disputing that.

I can’t say much about the retreats because they are covered by a confidentiality agreement. So I’ll just say that participants were encouraged to open up to others in ways that fractured the group. I opened up too, which placed me in a position where some others in the group feared or judged me. It also made it impossible for me to stay neutral in what felt like a dysfunctional family dynamic. One quarter of our group dropped out before the final retreat.

Emotionally, I went to the place I usually went when under severe judgment: extreme shame. Cindy provided me with crucial support when I needed it badly. She stuck with me and listened with compassion to the pain caused by others’ judgment and exclusion. By doing so, she risked her own standing within the group.

Cindy was—still is—a trail blazer. She saw where the group could go; what it might be. And she started to clear a trail for it. (That sounds like a leadership quality to me.) Problem was, nobody was following her. It was very political. There was a lot of backbiting and eventually outright hostility. By the end of the program, many in the group had turned against her.

After the retreats were over, Cindy and I continued to speak on the phone, usually about once per month. We scheduled it to make sure there was always a “next” talk. We still do, seven years later.

We like to do “deep dives” and talk about topics that have meaning for our whole lives rather than simply catching up with surface events. When we start a conversation with, “How are you?” it is a question to be taken seriously. She’s on a list of maybe six friends I can tell just about anything to. That’s because I know she will not judge me, and I will not judge her.

We are both life coaches. We take our “coach” hats off during our phone conversations, but we still get the benefit of each other’s training and insight. We know how to listen and refrain from advice unless it is welcome.

So here’s why Cindy is not a kindred spirit: We are very different. This is particularly apparent when it comes to our views on politics or spirituality. People with my views and people with her views are often seen on the news yelling at each other across a police line.

What’s our secret? Do we avoid those topics, in order to keep the peace? No. Do we enjoy the spirit of debate and shake hands when it’s over? No. Do we change each other’s minds? Sometimes, but not fundamentally.

Instead, we appreciate each other for our disparate views.

For example, Cindy is a very spiritual person. I am a scientist at heart. (Actually, Cindy has a degree in engineering, so she understands science perfectly well.) Whereas I choose to be a skeptic, Cindy chooses to be more open-minded.

Yet despite my skepticism, Cindy feels comfortable sharing about her spirituality with me. She tells me stories that fascinate me! Although I don’t abandon my skepticism, I can see the effect of her spirituality on her is real, vibrant, and powerful.

I thought, “If Cindy could get this much meaning and power from her spirituality, couldn’t I be open-minded about it?” And so I have.

She keeps my skepticism from draining the color and life from my worldview. I’m still too much of a skeptic for my own good. But I value having Cindy in my life to remind me that there are important, powerful things in life that cannot be measured or classified. For example: Love.

Here’s my point: If we define each other by our beliefs, and are loyal only to those people who believe the same, then we objectify others based on the groups to which they belong. We’ve done this all along when it comes to race, gender, age, socio-economic status, etc. But until now I’ve never seen people HATE each other so much simply because of what the other believes. It is tearing us apart.

If you want to be part of the solution, start by reading this book: Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone by Brené Brown, my very favorite author.

As for Cindy and I, we got to know each other as human beings first. That’s what the book says too: “People are hard to hate close-up. Move in.”

Cindy is such an invaluable friend because she’s so different from me, not in spite of it. She gives me her female perspective. The mere fact that she is a woman makes it easier because men don’t easily talk about feelings to other men. And because she’s different in so many other ways, I learn a lot more from her than if I was to talk to somebody just like me.

Being able to do our “deep dives” into topics with such sensitivity, acceptance, and compassion is rare. I’m not sure how many others have this opportunity. Some—maybe most—don’t want it. It can be scary to be vulnerable and cultivate intimacy.

I still admire her courage as a trail-blazer. She often interacts with the world the way she should be, whether or not the world is the way it should be. And the world sometimes tries to punish her for that.

The growth I’ve seen in her is miraculous and spectacular. Although I don’t like the word “enlightened” (because, you know, scientist stuff), I have no problem calling her the most enlightened person I know. This is because I actually see her life working better as a result of the hard work she’s done. I’m proud that she credits me with doing the small service of pointing her in the right direction from time to time.

Cindy, you are not my kindred spirit. And that has made all the difference. I will be grateful for the rest of my life.

Having a baby is a strange thing. We go into it thinking about a cuddly figure entirely dependent upon us for its survival. It is “ours,” something that will make our lives complete. We rarely think about the long gradual process of turning over our child’s life from ours to theirs, from it being our dream to being his or her dream.

The first time I felt the weight of this is when Anna started going to school. Suddenly she was putting her own names on her assignments, doing her own work, and creating her own permanent record. She had started becoming her own person.

Up to that point, Jamie and I were her teachers. I remember teaching her vocabulary. She was good at repeating words. I would point to the sky and say, “Moon!”  She would say “Mooon!”  I would say “car” or “chair” or “truck” and she would point to it and repeat it. (The “tr” in truck would come out more like an “f.”)

As I drove with her in the car seat, I would say “red light stop!” and “green light go!” and she would repeat it until she learned what it meant.

I remember her first completely original sentence. Jamie was holding her and she wanted down. So she cobbled this sentence together: “Get the baby outta here!”

Anna had a strong will, and in many ways still does. (When Anna was small, Jamie even bought a book titled The Strong-Willed Child.) She was—and is—fiercely independent. We had to hold her tightly in our arms, because as an infant if she saw something she wanted, she simply dove for it. She demanded our attention. If we put her down, she would immediately run out of the room. Then one day she actually sat and played by herself for 20 minutes. We held our breaths and rejoiced.

When Anna was born, a friend custom sewed two Raggedy Ann dolls for her. They were her “Raggys.”  She loved one until the face and appendages came off. Then she did the same to the second. Jamie mended them until they became unmendable. She tried sewing a new Raggy, but Anna rejected it. We still have the two original Raggys in a shadow box hanging in the hall outside my office. One of them has a face redrawn on it and the head is sewn directly onto the legs.

When Anna was a baby, Jamie wanted her to like our cats, so she would take Anna’s hand and pet the cat. It worked. Anna grew to love our pets. She took our cat Gidgett when she left home, and now has her own menagerie of six cats, four dogs, and a horse. She would buy t-shirts with animals on them, wear them well after she outgrew them, and refuse to get rid of them. As a teen, she bred finches.

Whenever we lost a pet, Anna took it particularly hard. She would hyperventilate. She had to learn the hard way that having a pet means watching it die.

She loved watching two VCR tapes in particular: Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day; and 101 Dalmatians. Sometimes we would attend a birthday party, and after a while we’d notice that most of the children at the party were crawling around pretending to be Dalmatians.

Anna loved spending time with me. When she was young, my time with the family was limited. I was running a tax-related business, and from Thanksgiving until Valentine’s Day I practically lived at the office. Jamie would often take the kids to extended family in Mississippi for Christmas because I was too busy to go. For this reason, I believe Anna and Molly in particular craved my time and attention. Andrew was a bit too young to remember.

Like all my children, Anna is smart, and she was the most academically oriented. She always looked to achieve.

I bought a telescope and we’d look at the sky together. Molly and Andrew looked through the scope and then moved on, but Anna was fascinated. We started going to star parties together, standing out in fields in the dark looking at the sky alongside a bunch of mostly middle-aged men. I think she loved it because she got to spend time with me as much as any other reason.

Always the achiever, she went to the University of Virginia and majored in Aerospace Engineering and Astronomy. Originally she was majoring in Astrophysics rather than Astronomy. She wanted to change majors, but saw it as some sort of personal failure. She called me to talk about it, and I asked if she would ever use what she was learning in Astrophysics. She said that if she had to do Astrophysics for a living she might as well shoot herself. So I finally convinced her to change majors.

She’s sometimes prone to this kind of hyperbolic language. She often says that if she ever gets pregnant she would “throw herself down the stairs.” We don’t expect grandchildren anytime soon.

Shortly after she left for college, we were talking face-to-face, and she asked me if I was mad at her. The question took me aback. I assured her that I wasn’t the least bit angry. But I don’t know if I really took the time to truly understand where she was coming from. I’d have to guess that it was because I didn’t call her very often once she left for college, whereas Jamie would stay in touch quite often. She asked a very grown-up question and I could have used it to more vulnerably discuss our relationship.

I felt a nagging sense of shame about not keeping in touch very well with any of my children. I hope they understand that it’s difficult to for me to call just to chat. I do much better talking to people when the topic is something that really matters. They still call me when they want advice. Still, it’s kind of like saying “I love you.” Yes, my family knows I love them, and it’s still nice to hear it from me more often.

Speaking of which: I rarely told my family I loved them when my children were young. It felt excruciatingly vulnerable. This doesn’t make a lot of sense, yet I think many people know what that feels like.

After I started my personal growth journey, I started saying “I love you” to my kids. By this time, Anna was about 14. Whenever I told her I loved her, she would say “Uh-huh.” I guess it felt vulnerable to her too. After a while it became easy for both of us, as it did with Molly and Andrew.

Right about that time, it also dawned on me that I only had a few short years before Anna left home. (I had yet to ponder that I would lose all three of my children in quick succession, but that time would come!) I can remember listening to the song “Butterfly Kisses” and weeping. When my children were born, it seemed like I would have them forever. Turns out it was such a brief period.

We did the college tour thing and she fell in love with the University of Virginia. It was so far away—much farther than the schools Molly and Andrew would pick. And she didn’t know a single person there. When we dropped her off to college, it truly felt as if we were abandoning her.

Her freshman year I invited her on a ski trip and told her she could invite a friend. So she called me and asked, “Uh… can my friend be male?”

And so it is that I was the first in the family to meet Matt. Anna wasn’t sure how she felt about Matt then, but Matt knew exactly how he felt about Anna. It took a while, even after the ski trip, but eventually they started dating. Then it took a while after that before she would admit it to us.

Anna and Matt got married right after graduation. They live in Maryland now and Anna isn’t afraid to tell everyone how much she adores him.

Anna is spirited and ambitious. After being hired as a civilian for the Navy, she still took time to earn her master’s degree in engineering at the University of Maryland.

Anna knows how to dream. She has eclectic interests. For instance, she recently started knitting small stuffed animals. She loves lab work, so she now works at a lab where chemistry would be more useful than the degrees she has. Even though she’s worked in engineering for seven years, she’s seriously looking at working in a zoo. She’s also looked at creating various inventions for horse care (controlled through an app!) and has considered getting into horse nutrition.  Matt wants to be an entrepreneur even more fervently, and has test-flown several ideas.

Anna is enthusiastic. She would much rather be busy than bored. When things seem “stuck” to her, she gets depressed.

Anna, I love you with all my heart. I taught you from a young age to be like me. I hope that’s more of a blessing than a curse for you. I am proud of you, and the person you have become. You are no longer ours, but your mom and I can take a little credit for the amazing person you have become.