Episode 25 - The story behind the Man in Motion

I started recording a completely different episode—and stopped because it wasn’t honest.

So instead, I answered the questions I keep getting: Who am I? Why do I have a podcast? What qualifies me to talk about any of this?

In this episode, I tell the story behind The Man in Motion—from the Marines, divorce, and years of stuffing everything down, to the loss of our daughter Madison, GriefShare, Madison’s Path, and the work that followed.

I’m not a therapist, and I’m not here to pretend I can fix you.

This show is my response to being on my knees, asking for help, and finding almost no one there.

It is me offering my hand and telling you that you’re not alone, you have value, and you deserve a better life than you’ve given yourself.

This is why I started The Man in Motion.

If this hit, share it with someone who needs to hear it. 

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YouTube → https://youtube.com/@themaninmotionpodcast

Presented by Madison’s Path
https://madisonspath.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to episode 25 of the Man in Motion Podcast. I know you're used to me starting off with some little opening monologue that kind of relates somehow into the topic of the day. In all truth, I had already started that. Um I was a good nine or ten minutes into recording an episode, and I just decided it wasn't right. I wasn't feeling it. And so I I killed it. I uh I stopped the recording and we're gonna rework those notes. But the problem is that leaves me with nothing for today. So I'm just gonna talk. And if this rambles a bit, well, I apologize, not really, but you know, I do. Uh because I I'm getting a few questions and some emails, which thank you for the emails. I read every single one I've gotten so far. Um, and while I haven't responded to every single one, not every single one needed a response. So thank you for them. Keep them coming. If you have questions or comments, you know, very much welcome them. There's a couple questions I keep getting though. Who the hell am I? Why do I have a podcast? Um, what are my qualifications? And uh what's what's my story? So I think that's what I'm going to talk about today. Who I am. Why do I do this? I think to understand why I do this, you have to understand how I got to where I am. Where to begin this story. Born and raised on a farm. Um in my early teens, my grandfather sold the family farm, and I continued working as a farmhand uh all through junior high school and high school. Got out of high school, started working construction, spent some time cooking in there as well. Joined the Marine Corps at 23. Um, and was actually in uh response to my father passing away. My father passed away, and I decided it was time for me to join the Marine Corps. My father was a veteran, my father's father was a veteran, so on and so forth. Um it just seemed to be a part of myself that I needed to explore. Joined the Marine Corps in 1999, 2004. I got out. Uh was an interesting time to be in. That's about all I'm gonna say about that. Uh got out, went to school, just uh uh I shouldn't say just because I think tech schools are way underrated and very, very important. But I went to a tech school for computer networking, which was a skill set I already had, but I just needed a piece of paper to get hired that said I knew what I was doing. Um got married, got a job on the railroad as a locomotive engineer. Fast forward just short of ten years, got divorced, which was ugly. Divorce was always ugly, but mine was pretty bad. And uh took three years to get divorced. Got remarried. I'm a father to four daughters, technically two daughters, two stepdaughters, but I've never called my stepdaughters step. They are my daughters. I don't I don't do that shit. Um my they're my daughters. So that's kind of the background, which brings me to the crux of the matter. When I got out of the Marine Corps, I was broken, and I don't say that lightly, and I know many of us don't come out intact, especially during that time frame. And I'm nothing special in the fact that I just ignored it, and I just it's like, all right, whatever, this is what it is, and I am going to just ignore it and continue trying to live my life. So then I get divorced. I find someone who somehow managed to love me when I was on my knees and had nothing, barely had a pot to piss in and was sleeping at a friend's house. And she loved me and she took me in. And we started trying to build something together. And then COVID happened, and the world shut down in uh the end of June 2021, uh, my whole family caught COVID. Um, and it was right when you know they had said, oh, it's it's safe to go out, and you take your masks off, and it's like, okay. But my entire family caught it. I got it. My wife, all four of my daughters, my father-in-law, and my niece. We all got COVID to varying degrees. But the sickest among us was myself, my father-in-law, and my daughter Madison. Stepdaughter, technically, but again, I don't do that shit. Um and the three of us, we got it the worst. Uh we uh, you know, spoke to the doctors and we're trying to follow all the current recommendations, but then one day Madison was off, and she said to her mom, I think I need to go to the hospital. So we called an ambulance. They showed up, her blood oxygen was in the 50s, which is terrible. It's supposed to be in ninety-eight. Um fast forward. July twelfth, twenty twenty-one. She her body just couldn't take anymore. Um she crashed, lung collapsed. And on 20, on uh, excuse me, July twelfth, we had to make the decision that no parent wants to, and we had to tell the doctors to turn the machine off. Because even with the machine, she was barely meeting the definition of alive. And that sucked. Um that really sucked. There's no other way to put it. There's so many words, and they all sound dramatic and and powerful, and it just they none of them, none of them seem to match the actual experience. And yet, somehow, in the midst of all this, as we're walking out of the hospital, having said our final goodbye and held her hand until the end, somehow my wife looks at me and says, We cannot be the sad house. We cannot be the sad people. I don't know how, but we have to get through this. We have three other daughters, three other lives depending on us. And to this day, I still don't know where she found that strength. I don't shortly after Madison's funeral, my wife stumbled across a banner hanging on a church that said grief share, and it was Tuesday nights at seven o'clock. Um so we she she called the phone number on there, spoke with uh a gentleman who has become a very good friend of mine, a mentor, a brother, Pastor Joe Martin. And next thing you know, Tuesday night, we're at the grief share program. It's if if you're not familiar, grief share is a 13-week program. It helps uh helps you kind of figure out your grief and deal with it. After attending the grief share for a while, my wife decided that she wanted to start teaching mindfulness and the only way to do that was for her to go and become a health coach. All the classes that she that she found that would allow her to teach mindfulness required you to either be a coach, a nurse, or there was something else. I think maybe a psychiatrist or a therapist or I forget what, but regardless. So she uh she enrolls to become a life coach. Uh and at the same time, we volunteered to start facilitating the grief share to help out. For the next three years, um we facilitated two 13-week sessions of the grief share program at our church. During that time, I found Christ. I had been agnostic up until that point. Um, I found Christ, became a Christ's servant minister. Uh Stacy finished her life coaching classes, became a health coach. Uh, excuse me, a life and health coach. And towards the end of our time with the grief share program, we had an idea. What we noticed was that people needed more. People wanted more. The grief share is a great program, but there are some people who need something to follow it. Not because it doesn't work, but because, and this is in hindsight, they they lose connection with themselves. They've that that grief changes their identity so much that they lose connection with who they are and how they feel and what they're doing in the world. And they need help reconnecting. So at the same time I started coaching school, um Stacy and I also began to create our program. Um, our business, if you've noticed on the logo, it says uh Man in Motion presented by Madison's Path. Our business is Madison's Path. That's the umbrella under which we operate. Um, and our main program at Madison's Path is the unstuck program. And that's that's how we describe it. You're stuck, you're ready to move forward, but you don't know how, and you're spinning your wheels. So we created this program, and it's been hugely successful. We're gearing up for our seventh round of seventh, eighth, eighth round of classes coming up here, and uh great turnout every time. We're working on making it bigger, but and this is what I've noticed through three years of grief share, three years of unstuck program, men, we suck at this. We live in a society where we're supposed to just rub some dirt on it, stuff it down, and not feel anything, and that's become the normal. And when we go through something where we need help, where we need more, where we can't just stuff it down, we don't we don't know what to do. And we just keep trying to keep stuffing it down, or we drink it away, or we whatever, whatever, whatever we use in the moment to get past where we're what we're feeling, whatever unhealthy fucking coping mechanism we come up with, it um and we destroy ourselves with it, and we destroy everyone around us. How do I know this? Because that was me. That was me. Up until Madison had passed, I just stuffed everything down, ignored it, didn't feel it, didn't pay attention to it, pretended it wasn't there. And it worked. Sort of. It was functional, I was productive, but I couldn't feel a goddamn thing because I was so numb to every single emotion except anger. Anger was the one emotion that was always there. I always had that, that was always in me. And when Madison passed, I I couldn't, I couldn't stuff it down anymore. I couldn't hide from it, I couldn't ignore it. And then when I went to find a therapist who actually deals with men and men's issues, there's no one. I mean, I I eventually found someone, shockingly, who's not far from me, but we you know, there's there's no one out there. So that's what this is. Not a therapist, not pretending to be. I'm not telling you this is therapy, I'm not saying I can fix you because I can't even fix my damn self. What I am telling you is that you deserve a better life than you've given yourself. That we all hurt, we all go through the same shit, that we've all been through some shit. And what you don't realize is that in spite of all the shit you've been through, if you're listening to this, you're still standing, you're still here. Nothing has yet knocked you to your knees that you haven't gotten up from. And that is strength, that is power. Madison's path and the man in motion. This is my response to being on my knees, to begging for help, and there being no one there. You know, Madison's path, we address the community as a wider umbrella, wider audience. But the man in motion, this is the men's perspective. You know, when I when I started this, it was I was talking directly to men, but the reality is this is the same shit women deal with. I'm just giving it out from the man's perspective. Many of my listeners are actually women, which shocks me still. I'm grateful for it, don't get me wrong. But and overwhelmingly, they tell me that they deal with the same stuff. So, what is this? What what is the purpose of this? Number one, to let you know you're not alone, to help you feel seen, to help you feel heard. For you to listen to this and and and in your head go, holy shit, he just said the thing that I've been feeling. The thing that I've been thinking and trying to ignore. He just said it and he said it, and he's putting it out there on the internet. You're not alone, you're not crazy, you're not stupid. You deserve to be heard, you deserve to be happy, you deserve to live a good life. And the only way to get to that shit is to get all the bullshit that's stuck in your head and get it out. And deal with it, acknowledge it, see that it's there. The man in motion is me offering my hand to you and telling you there's a better way. The man in motion represents my journey, it represents me digging through all the bullshit that I've buried away in my head and in my soul, and all every fucking emotional scar and and there is no topic I won't talk about here except for one. There is never politics on this show. Never. My goal is to bring us together, not divide us. And in the day and age we live in, politics is way too divisive. And I don't give a shit whether you vote red or blue. I don't care. You're a human being, and you deserve to know that you're not alone, but you have value, and that all the shit you've been burying, you can let it go. So I think that's it for today. Take what's useful, leave what's not. Know your value. Know that you are worth something. And keep moving.