Group Therapy.

“Group Therapy from Above and Beyond: Michael’s episode number 100.”

That could be the name of a weekly streaming rave music series I love.

It could also capture my experience becoming a coach learning with a fantastic group of professionals, young and old, all themselves moving through various life transitions. This training came to me at a time of daunting, fulfilling, frightening, rewarding personal and professional growth. I arrived unsure of lots of things with a “we got this”, fake it until I make it, mask securely placed—the kind weary survivors often wear.

Years into this personal transition journey, I now have a clearer sense of where the walk is taking me.

I still don’t know, though, what initially jolted me onto the journey and all the change.

Maybe it was years of meditation practice with a beloved Buddhist Meditation Group.

Maybe it was long hours cycling alone on New Jersey rural roads.

Maybe it was pandemic isolation.

Maybe it was a surprise career opportunity that moved my wife and me from our bucolic Princeton homestead of almost two decades back to Seattle.

Whatever it was, I changed, seemingly suddenly and dramatically.

One day, I exploded out of a 60-year-old carcass like one of those hatching movie aliens. A fresh bloody baby me emerged, bewildered and drooling, looking around with curiosity and wonder.

In short order I went from dependable husband and father of two grown wonderful children, steady senior program officer with 17 years of experience at a major U.S. foundation to a 65-year-old “out” gay man, divorced from his beautiful wife of 32 years, re-married to a sweet also beautiful ex-Marine husband, exploring astounding ever expanding horizons I previously could only have barely imagined.

I love challenges, feed off them. Love learning. Love changing. But even for me, these five years have been dizzying. There has been much joy and laughter, lots of shed tears, days and nights of sleepless terror—all sprinkled with exploring, experiencing and learning.

In the process I perplexed, surprised and disappointed many, including family and friends.

Many stood with me.

Many called me, to my cringing disgust, “heroic”. 

More than a few abandoned me.

That is how I joined this journey. It’s not that I anticipated needing or wanting group therapy, but that’s what my coaching colleagues became: a group of champions helping me inquire, learn, explore, confront and grow, while becoming a coach, myself.

With the group’s encouragement, I experimented with myself, my purpose, my own coaching approach, and how I managed my personal and professional interactions. 

I asked things of those journeying with me that surprised and sometimes shocked me. For instance, in a Santa Barbara LifeForward ™ group outdoor park exercise, I asked colleagues to encircle me and chant horrible, degrading things repeatedly at me, like: “faggot!”, “you’re a terrible husband and father!”, “you are a self-absorbed narcissist!” (you get the picture), as I physically moved through and around them in that park, trying to metaphorically get through my “shitty committee of hateful, detracting voices” and the constant pain those voices generate toward my loved ones.

Incredibly those colleagues did that for me. It could not have been comfortable for them, but they did it for me.

They helped, a lot. Their willingness to help “showed’ me a way forward.

That exercise was one of many steps on this journey. Those individual small steps started building into this journey. The accumulated steps became a walk toward a stronger, bolder person. I started slowly at first but then began picking up momentum toward the gentle souled, actual Michael, away from the hyper-vigilant one who over decades had accommodated, people-pleased, achieved for acceptance, shape-shifted to meet others’ expectations.

Along the way, I discovered that I am no longer willing to be that edited Michael who became whatever was required to survive.

I found the courage, I guess you’d call it, to turn from self-condemnation to acceptance. I met a community of fellow travelers and seekers, each on their own change trajectories, prompting me to do the hard work necessary to make that turn.

These colleagues and coaches helped me keep going on our walk together.

My clients grounded me and highlighted the urgent need to get clear about my purpose. It became critically important, I decided, to face my edited past where I avoided my authentic voice and self. I decided to work hard to understand and accept myself in part to serve my clients.

The result of all the effort: a Michael walking in his own authenticity and, by doing that, walking for yours as well.

I’m walking with a coaching purpose focused on what I strongly believe our troubled time needs.

Maybe it’s naïve, but I believe we need kind, caring, compassionate leaders who listen to and learn from their hearts, minds and bodies.

We need leaders willing to join the walk proudly as their most secret, most authentic self.

We need leaders so transparently comfortable with that authentic, secret self that everyone walking with them feels safe in their own respective authenticity.

That’s a tall order.

Will I be successful helping to nurture that kind of leader?

I have no idea.

Honestly, it doesn’t really matter that much because I do know with absolute certainty that I am already on the way.

I hope you’ll walk with me.