We All Need Healing.

A few months ago, I was in Scotland golfing with a group of friends that I’ve had for the majority of my life. Every year for the last 20 years we have taken this annual trip… and usually we stay relatively close to where we’re all originally from. But for the 20th year we wanted to do something really special, and we’ve been planning to go to Scotland for the last decade. (That way no wives/girlfriends could say there wasn’t notice.🪧) 

Scotland is about as good as it gets for golf…. Although let’s not confuse “good” with “fun.” 😂 More on that in a moment.

Throughout these 20 years we’ve seen guys date, get married, have kids, move, end relationships, change jobs… and yet, each year, we go on this wonderful adventure. So much changes in our individual lives, yet we get to come back to this group and this experience year after year. 

We laugh, we celebrate, we golf, we catch up, debate all the hot topic subjects. And the beautiful thing is: despite any differences in opinion, there is love and respect present. We can still hang out and not agree. We’re there for friendship, new experiences, competition, and there is a challenging of one another, yet a deep sense of reverence and respect.

I feel blessed to have been surrounded by good men. I played soccer with the majority of these guys growing up. Our friendships have spanned over 30 years for the majority of them. What a gift it is.

Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity.
- Khalil Gibran

I think a lot about how rich my friendships have been for my life. How important they’ve been to hold me in the hardest moments. And if I’m being really honest (here goes…), the way public health, the government and the media managed covid and then tried to get more vaccine uptake, had me terrified I was going to lose a lot of those friendships. In one of the collectively hardest moments of all my (our) life (lives), I felt like I might lose people I have stood beside, and who have stood beside me throughout my life.

I felt like I was given a choice: Get the vaccine and keep your friends/family, or don’t, and be called right-wing/evil/selfish, and lose those you love and you thought loved you.

I was working with a somatic therapist recently and I was sharing that I felt a deep pit in my stomach I just couldn’t get rid of. I felt like a martyr, a victim. (You've likely seen me write about it to take ownership). 

She said to me (I’m summarizing), “Mark, you were a victim. You faced a real threat to your survival, to your friendships, your safety. Much like you learned as a child, you make the challenges in your environment mean that you, yourself are the problem.” 

Gahhhhhhhh. 

“Until you honour the grief and pain that truly is in there, you will stay frozen. It’ll show up as indecision, confusion, etc. But your nervous system is stuck."

She asked me to put words to the pain in my stomach, and without a pause I started crying from the deepest recesses of my gut and said, “They weaponized my friends and family against me. 😭"

I want to qualify a few things and ask you some questions to consider:

1. Using shame and morality to influence behaviour is toxic in interpersonal relationships. As Brene Brown said about using shame in public health: “Shame is a tool of oppression – it will never be a tool for social justice (or public health).”

It’s especially toxic when used on a global level. We are all victims of this unethical strategy used by public health/government and media. And while we might say, “but they were doing the best they could.” Nope, they were not. They were irresponsible with behavioral change techniques. They weaponized human psychology and our need for belonging. We have all suffered. We have all experienced a collective trauma. 

They crossed ethical lines and created MASSIVE division. We are left to clean up the pieces of the relationships/friendships/families they destroyed… and in the wake of relational destruction we have experienced the greatest wealth transfer in human history, the world is mostly in economic ruins, and our relationships more strained than they’ve ever been.

I’m here for that repair. Because the pain and shaming has occurred on every side… and it’s time to stop pointing fingers and start opening our hearts and hugging one another.

2. We all need healing. We all need community. When I cried from the depths of my soul, I realized how much we all need repair. How much it isn’t about who did what, or how, or whatever… it’s, “Can I sit and hold your pain with you? Can I hear your experience? Can we build a bridge back to one another?”

3. You might vehemently disagree with what I’m sharing, you might think all those techniques were necessary, you might wonder why I’m still talking about this — and I truly respect your opinion and experience. I love that you don’t agree, and if anything, I want to hear more about why, and what me sharing this brings up in you. No matter your choice, how have your relationships been impacted?

Let’s get back to golf and wrap this up in a bow… I promise there’s a deeper metaphor here. 

As I was on hole 10 of Carnoustie (nicknamed Carnastie for obvious reasons) and the wind was blaring at 40 mph from left to right, I was thinking about how much I didn’t want to be in the wind. How I wanted to done the hole. How I wanted to be having a different experience than the one I was having. I noticed I wasn’t fully present, because the present was hard. It was cold. I didn’t want to be there.

I haven’t wanted to be in a lot of circumstances in my life. I haven’t wanted to sit with and endure what I was enduring. I haven’t wanted to feel a lot of what I’ve felt. I realized in that moment on Carnoustie how much richness there was in the experience I was having. That the wind was perfect. That I was standing on one of the most famous golf courses in the world with people whom I love, who I thought I might lose, who in the end never left me. I created stories about the wind and the cold, just like I’ve created stories for other people’s experiences in my life, and their thoughts about me. The wind wasn’t out to get me, it just was.

And while we have all suffered in so many ways in our lives, and truly lost relationships over so many things, including vaccines and such, here we are. Can we stand in the integrity of our own hearts despite all the reasons not to? Can we be the victims of experiences, yet turn those experiences into wisdom, transformation, love and community? I think you and I can.

I have recently seen the richness in the last four years. How much I’ve learned about myself, about others, and about who we can become when we’re afraid. I see how fleeting life is. How important love is. How powerful a healthy human system is when it can hold fear and integrity at the same time. And how important modelling the holding of difference is for not only our society, but especially for our romantic relationships and families.

"Questioning is sacred, dissent is productive, if you start to debate you may discover something that transcends the binary. You may discover a third opinion, and it will inevitably be wiser than the first two." 
- Jonathan Haidt

We want the epic relationships, but not the hard conversations. Yet it is hard conversations that create epic relationships. You can’t have one without the other because one requires the other.

I’m here for it all.

No matter what you’ve been through, your experience is valid. Your suffering is real. Now let’s create more love.

Mark

P.S. Have you joined the waitlist for my new online community yet? Waitlist members get first hand access when registration reopens!