A Native Lakota man, whose ancestral home is there, taught us that, in their tradition, spirituality means “the ability to feel connected.”  Because this area has served as an inspiration and renewal place for many people for many years, we will return there for this very special program.

This workshop is offered to men and women who are seeking greater connection–with themselves, loved ones, nature’s wonders, and/or whatever else is personally important.  No particular religion or spiritual practice will be promoted, although some Native American customs and philosophies will be introduced.  Because of the special nature of this program the number of participants will be limited to no more than seven participants.

Please note:  the typical experiential therapy group work done at Onsite will not be a part of this program. Each busy day will begin with a meditation exercise.  The rest of the day will involve a mix of travel, exercises, sharing, food and, hopefully, fun.  We will visit historically and spiritually important sites in the Hills.  At these sites, you will be offered the opportunity to take part in a number of activities designed to allow time to focus and connect more fully with themselves, others and their world.   Some moderate walking and hiking will be a part of this program.

The cost for this program is $1,900/person.   This includes mountain cabin lodging www.cabinsoftheblackhills.com , nestled in the middle of the Black Hills National Forest. (We will have exclusive use of the entire complex.  You may note that some of the rooms are more upscale than others.  We will fill those rooms on a first come, first served basis).  Each participant will have, at least, their own room.  This fee also includes all fees and supplies for the workshop.

Except transportation to and from Rapid City, South Dakota AND meals.

All cabins come equipped with apartment type kitchens, so we will be fixing our own breakfasts, packing our own lunches, and deciding as a group what to do about dinner.

This 4½ – day program is designed to help you:

-Meet and connect with other people looking to deepen their sense of connection to

themselves, others and the world around them

-Witness and use the gifts of the natural world to help provide

meaning to your life.

-Participate in activities designed to help increase your sense of connectedness.

For further information or to register contact Ted @ Ted@KlontzConsulting.com.  Please do not contact Onsite Workshops.

If someone would have asked me if I thought it would be a good idea to have two people try to improve the quality of a historically tumultuous, very public, relationship by filming a docudrama type TV program WHILE on a high pressured concert tour at the same time, I would have certainly, in all my infinite wisdom, said, “Are you out of your mind?”

In my mind, it would make as much sense as someone saying “Hey, let’s see if we can be better drivers by entering the Indianapolis 500!!!!!!” These two ladies had a public history of not doing so well with each other, whether it was working together, being in each other’s presence, or talking about the other.

Truth is, no one asked me if I thought it was a good idea or not. I was asked, long after the decision to move ahead with the project was made, if I would be willing to be there for them. I agreed to do that. That’s what I do. I try to help people, wherever they might be, and whatever they might be doing. I had no sense that I would even appear in the final editing of the series. That’s not what I was asked to do.

I began meeting with “The Girls” (my nickname for them) individually. Initially we talked about why they wanted to do this. Three goals emerged.

First, they wanted to forge a better relationship and thought this tour and TV show could provide them an opportunity to do so (I was still shaking my head at this idea).

Second, they wanted the public to have a chance to see how far they had come in the healing process of their once very publicly painful relationship.

And third, they wished that their story might provide hope for those viewers, who were struggling in their own relationships.

Next, we began to forge a set of agreements or a behavioral contract, if you will, as a way of trying to build a sense of safe “rules of engagement” between the two of them. They both had a lot of experience with each other over the years and it was relatively easy to come up with a list of what they needed from each other as well as what they didn’t want.

We met and The Girls shared their lists and, to the surprise of some, very easily came to a set of understandings, expectations and agreements. Included was an emergency plan which could be initiated by either one of them if they felt like the spirit of their agreement was not being honored.

They are both very strong women, and one day as I was driving home from an appointment with them, I realized that what we were about to do was the equivalent of trying to hitch up a team of two very high energy, high strung, headstrong, thoroughbred race horses. Typically, thoroughbred race horses don’t get along with each other very well. They have been known to try to knock their stall apart to try to get at and destroy the one next door. They certainly would resist being hooked together as a team, to pull a wagon (the tour) together. The Girls fit that definition perfectly. Once again I was left wondering, what were we thinking?

Then, I remembered from somewhere deep in the recesses of my mind, that there was an animal that often accompanied race horses to calm them down. Eventually I learned that the animal was a goat.

Race horses become quite attached to their goat. So much so, that often when the horse is sold, the goat goes along with them. Sometimes one goat serves to calm down a number of horses. Suddenly, I understood my role perfectly: I was The Girls’ barn goat.

I agreed to visit them on tour twice a week. The idea was to check in and see how the agreement was going. To help figure out ways to deal with things that weren’t working and to help them remember to celebrate what was working.

I don’t have a lot of experience with TV, but I do have some. Early on, it became clear to me that TV is not about education. It is about entertainment. In my opinion, this is especially true in the Reality TV/Docudrama world. Exploitation, often bordering on abuse of people on such shows seems to be the norm. So I was suspicious and felt protective of The Girls, wondering how I might be able to help keep them safe from that energy.

The first time I met the TV people The Girls were rehearsing for the concert tour. I had been asked to come to the sound stage and watch what was going on. When I walked in there were cameras and sound engineers everywhere. One of the executive producers introduced themselves to me and we began talking. I let them know that I was really concerned for The Girls and that their way of being with each other would be exploited for pure entertainment purposes. If that happened I was worried that the relationship between the two of them which they had been painstakingly piecing together for the last half-dozen years would fall apart before our eyes. That would be a tragedy.

They told me that they would do everything possible to help The Girls use this opportunity to further heal their relationship. They went on to say that they hoped to use the vehicle to accomplish the same goals as The Girls. Additionally, they indicated they had the same concerns as I did about the potential that this could wreck the relationship The Girls had developed. Despite my doubts, in looking at the final product, they honored what they said they would do. Kudos to Gay Rosenthal and Bruce Thoms. Two of the most respectful people I know.

One thing I can say is that everything that ended up being screened happened exactly as it was shown. At times, the challenges that The Girls encountered during the tour seemed impossible to believe that they weren’t staged. A number of times I said “if anyone were to write a fictional script, that represented what is going on right here, right now, someone would say ‘there’s no way we can put that in, no one would ever believe it’“.

So, I went twice a week and was with The Girls for 15-20 hours twice a week. We would check in, we would talk about what needed tweaked in terms of the agreements, we would share appreciations.

Sometimes the cameras were there, sometimes they weren’t. For the most part they became a part of the background and we mostly forgot they were there.

As I watched the tour progress and the weeks go by, the most amazing transformation slowly took place. Someone or some power greater than me had known that the tour and the filming actually served as a crucible where The Girls were working on their relationship.

They were more focused, and worked harder and more consistently on that relationship than I had ever witnessed them doing before. My doubter self, that couldn’t imagine anything less than a disaster when I heard what they had planned on doing, turned into a believer as I would watch them interact with each other both on the stage and off. They were able to accomplish a greater degree of intimacy in those four weeks than I had witnessed the previous four years.

I was amazed, and pleased: so happy for and proud of them. The love that I knew they carried for each other, but were unable to express, hidden under decades of pain and misunderstanding, became obvious. If you saw the series, what I will tell you is that what you saw was genuine.

Once upon a time I told them that my hope for them was that one of their most famous songs might be used to help them heal their relationship. My wish was that they would direct the words towards each other. On the final day of the tour, I saw it happen. The song was “Love Can Build A Bridge, Between Your Heart And Mine”. As they sang it I saw them turn towards each other and gift the words to each other. I cried at the sight.

I ended up being more visible on the show than I had ever imagined. A few people wrote notes of congratulations. These were often prefaced by “are you the same guy who………”

A few others let me know in no uncertain terms that they had decided that I was the worst example of someone who claimed to be a helper that they had ever seen. One commented that at my advanced age, they couldn’t believe that I had spoiled my legacy by working so poorly with such reprobates as The Girls, who they diagnosed as being hopelessly mentally ill.

I wrote that person back and said that I hope my legacy would remember that “he was willing to be with people that others had written off as hopeless”

If that were to be said of me, I would simply be passing on what someone had done for me, the one who more than once, was written off as “hopeless”.

That moment was one of those sacred moments that I have since come to treasure.  All of my fellow therapy group members were crying, my therapist was crying, I was crying, we all were crying, or so I thought.  But when I looked up, the man who was seated across from me, the man I had chosen to play the role of my father, sat there looking at me with a totally stoic look and demeanor.  He then looked down at his watch as if to say, “Are you finished yet?”

I shook my head, and thought to myself, that is exactly what my dad would do if he were here.  With that recognition, I literally fell out of my chair and collapsed on to the floor.  I went into a level of grief that I had never visited before.  My body shook as convulsive sobs went through my body.  I wondered if anyone had ever cried to death, if not, I was sure I would be the first to do so.  I lay there for what seemed an eternity.  Later, as the group was giving me feedback, the man who had played my father asked me, “Did I do something wrong?”  I said, “You did nothing wrong, what you did may have been the best gift I you could have ever given, you gave me the truth about my dad”.  What I meant was that in that moment of being totally unaffected by my tenderness and longing and by coldly and detachedly looking at his watch, I had realized that though still alive, my parents could never show up for me in a way the I had always wanted, certainly deserved, and still longed for.  It had been an excruciating process, but I finally, through years of therapy, understood.  What I understood was that no matter what I did or said they could not parent any better than they ever had.  It became crystal clear that it was beyond their ability and more importantly, was nothing personal.  I was 38 years old.

My life changed with that realization and though it is difficult for me to determine exactly when my recovery started, I do know that in terms of my relationship with my parents, I became an adult for the first time that day.  In some kind of spiritual way, I was able to release my mom and dad from their role as my mom and dad.  At the time, I didn’t understand how this was supposed to help, but I was to find out.

Six months later I got a call from my mom that my dad was to go into the hospital to have his third hip replacement surgery.  Now, my father did not have three legs, but he had been among the first to ever have that surgery, and at the time the process often needed to be repeated.  My father and I had never expressed our love for each other in words, and for some reason, that call from my mom made me realize that.  A voice inside me said, “You need to tell him you love him before it is too late.”  By this time in my recovery I had begun to know and trust that voice.  I decided to drive the 300 miles to see him and tell him that I loved him.

For moral support I took my wife and two children with me.  We arrived at the hospital the day before the surgery was to take place.  My mom and sister and brother were in the room when we arrived.  Though I entered the room with great resolve, and I had told my kids and wife what I intended to do, when I opened my mouth, I couldn’t get the words out.  My family lived in great denial about most things and the possibility of my 68-year-old father dying as a result of this surgery was never considered.  After twenty minutes of small talk and repeated attempts to say those three little words with no success, I felt this overwhelming need to get out of the room.  So I said my “goodbyes” and “good-lucks”, and left the room with my father’s echoing words of “It was foolish of you to drag those kids all this way just to see me in the hospital”.  As I walked down the hospital corridor, I felt totally defeated.  Then I heard this voice say as loudly and clearly as if it had been delivered over the hospital intercom, “Just go tell him”.

I told my wife and kid’s “I’m just going to go tell him” (I didn’t tell them about the voice in my head that had commanded me to do that).  They said what seemed to be in unison “We’ll wait here”.

I walked into my dad’s room and said “Dad, the reason I came was to make sure you knew that I love you”.  He reared up in his hospital bed and began coughing.  For a moment I feared that I had given him a heart attack.  I hadn’t.  As I turned around and walked out the door I felt victorious, saying to myself, “Yeah, I did it”.  I had, for the first time in my life, said out loud, the words “I love you” to my dad.  It was the first time ever that those words had ever been spoken between us.  I look back at that moment as the first time in my life that I had ever acted as an adult with my father.

Six months later, on my next visit and as we were saying goodbye, I had the urge to give my dad a hug.  In my recovery, in the groups I had been part of I had experienced for the first time being hugged by a man.  The last time my father and I had touched in any way was some 33 years earlier was when on my 5^th birthday, he had carried me from the car where I had pretended to fall asleep, putting me into my bed.  I look back on that as my ‘pretending to fall asleep in the car trick’, I guess, as a way to be held and touched by my dad.

During all those ensuing years, through all of life’s adventures, both good and painful, we had never shaken hands, slapped each other on the back, or touched in any way.  On that fifth birthday, he said, “From now on if he falls asleep, he’ll just have to sleep in the car”.  So if I followed through on this urge to hug him it would represent a significant shift in how we did our relationship.

As I stepped up to him I said, for the second time in my life, “Dad I love you”, put my arms around him and gave him a hug.  He got very rigid and actually began trembling.  I think he was afraid that I had gone way over the edge.  When I stepped back from him, I felt this surge of pride in knowing that I had actually reached out and got part of what I had always wanted from my dad.

If my dad would have said, “I don’t ever want you to touch me again”, or  “ I don’t ever want you to say that you love me again” I would have honored that, but he didn’t.  A few months later when we parted I stepped up to hug him and his arms opened about four inches.  That time as we stepped back, I choked up realizing that I was teaching my father how to touch his son.  I realized at that moment, that those four inches of movement represented a gold nugget that my father was offering.

He became curious about my work, which had evolved into ownership of Onsite Workshops, a recovery workshop business created by codependency pioneers Sharon and Joe Cruse.  He ended up coming to four of our week long programs, beginning when he was 72 years old.  After he attended what was to be his last program, he called my son and I up to the front of the room beside him and said to the others who had attended the workshop with him, “I have come to believe that if Ted’s mom and I would have known what I have been able to learn doing these workshops, his and his children’s lives would have been very different”.  Wow, another huge nugget.

Shortly after that, my dad fell ill with brain cancer.  Through that battle there were many more, rich nugget experiences.  One time in particular stands out.  After his first surgery, I happened to be with him when it came time for him to go to physical therapy.  The nurse asked me if I would like to go with him and I said “Sure”.  As my dad and I were working at putting rings on posts and putting balls in baskets, we were laughing and joking, I was taken back to that one day we had played together.  Now there was a second day.  That night as I stood before the motel mirror brushing my teeth, I was overcome with tears stemming from a sense of gratitude and fullness.  It was confusing to me because I had just come from the nursing home with the clarity that my dad would never walk again.  Then the words “unconditional love” came to me, and I realized that was what I had experienced with my dad that day.  I had no expectations of him or him of me, we just were together.

The next few years with my father were filled with many, what I came to call, “gold nugget” moments.  I continued to listen to that ‘voice’ in my head that said, “Go see your dad”.  Each and every time, he and I would have a golden moment of connecting.   The final one was on the day of his last surgery. Just before he was taken to the operating room I had this overwhelming sense of being so proud of how he had lived his life.  He taught me by example that it is never too late to learn, it is never too late to start “recovery”, and even how to die with grace.  I blurted out “Dad you know I love you, and I am so proud of you.”  He turned towards me and said “I don’t think I have ever told you how proud I am of you, the kind of life you have made for yourself, and I know I didn’t tell you often enough of my love for you”.  I leaned over him and hugged him goodbye.  When we finished and pulled away, this time as I looked at him, through my tear-distorted eyes, I saw his rolling down his cheeks.

Those were the last words my father ever spoke.  He died several months later.  The gift that my recovery gave me was the ability to realize that my father did not have gold bars to give, but if I could let go of my idea of what my father’s love should look like, there was a king’s ransom of wealth in the form of little gold flakes and nuggets that I would have missed, if I had not given up my sense of what I deserved and how it should be served up.

I want to let you know how important you have been to me in my life.  I know I haven’t seen or talked to you over the last twenty some years, but I think of you often.  I was recently telling my wife again how much I appreciate your influence on my life.  After seeing you recently, I began thinking about some of the lessons I learned by being around you.  You probably don’t realize some of the things that I do and try to pass on to my students, team members, as well as my own children that you taught me.  I want to tell you one of my especially important experiences.

After one the games I had played in, I don’t remember if it was football or baseball, you came up to me, looked me straight in the eyes and said “Gary, good job, I am really proud of you”.  No big deal right?  Wrong!  My Mom and Dad always let me know that they were proud of me and I appreciate them for that.  The difference is that they are my parents and are supposed to tell me things like that.  Here you are, my coach, my teacher, (and I considered you my friend) and you took the time to tell me that when you didn’t have to.  It didn’t matter if I had ‘won’ or ‘lost’.

Nine years ago, after one of my players pitched his heart out at an important championship game, I followed an impulse to walk up to him and say, ‘Good job, I am really proud of you’.   As I heard the words coming out of my mouth, I remembered the exact time and place you had told me the same exact words, they seemed like they were coming through me after all those years.

Andy (my player) went off to college.  Three years later he sat with me at a football game.  He had just found out that he had cancer.  He died seven months later.  About two months after he died, his mother brought an envelope to me at home.  She had been cleaning out Andy’s stuff and found a paper he had written while in college and she wanted me to have it.

The topic that had been assigned was “Write about an important person in your life”.  He wrote about me.  What had made me so important?  In his paper he described how important a moment it was for him, when I told him how proud of him I was.  It was the same story that I am now telling you!!!!

You have always made me feel comfortable and important.  I truly appreciate that.  You have always been special to our family.  My kids know all about you even though they have met you only once.

I reserve the word ‘love’ for family.  I always felt like you were family and I love you.”

I am reminded that one never knows what the effects of our actions will be.  Some, perhaps all of them get passed on.  Thankfully some of them are positive.

On the last day of the workshop, we were asked to prepare a list of questions to ask him.  We broke into small groups and were told that each group would be permitted to ask him one question from all of our combined lists.

One by one, each of the groups chose a representative to present their question.  That representative was asked to go to the front of the room and share their question in front of the entire group.  Quite honestly, I don’t remember whether he answered them or not, but I do remember the very last person and the very last question.

A man came to the front and said that his group didn’t have any questions about Mindfulness Meditation, but after a week of somewhat Spartan living conditions, they did want to ask the question they were sure everyone in the workshop wanted the answer to, and that was “where can someone go to ‘get laid’”.  Some of the audience laughed.  About 2/3rds didn’t.

I sat there in shock.  The week, with all of the meditation and yoga practice, had felt like somewhat of a spiritual experience to me, and I am sure for many others.  The question seemed totally out of context.  Totally in bad taste.

The gentleman, with a grin on his face, started to walk away, but Mr. Kabat-Zinn asked him to stay up front, he wanted to ask a question in return.  The man looked a little frightened, but agreed to do so.  So Mr. Kabat Zinn said, “Please tell me where that question came from”.  Regardless of the answer that the gentleman came up with, Mr. Kabat-Zinn, quietly and respectfully, simply repeated the same statement “Tell me where that question came from”.  The gentleman’s group tried to come to their representative’s rescue.  The general gist of their answers was that they were just kidding, trying to ‘lighten things up”, after such a “heavy” week.   Regardless of their answers, for about 20 minutes, Mr. Kabat-Zinn, made no comments, but simply kept inquiring as to “where that question came from”.

Finally, Mr. Kabat-Zinn said that he had heard enough.  He turned to the audience and said “We have all been affected by what has happened here.  We will all stay here in this room until everyone who wants or needs to say something about this has an opportunity to speak to the entire community.”  Though it was dinner time by that point, we all stayed in the room.  For more than two hours.

One of the points that I took away from that experience was much more than learning about Mindfulness Meditation.  It was that if I wanted to learn how to behave better, I needed to keep putting myself in front of people who knew how to handle situations like this, respectfully and appropriately.  Neither pretending it didn’t happen, nor scapegoating or vilifying the offender.  Until that moment, I had never had that experience.

He had invited my wife and I to come to Manhattan for a long weekend to conduct a workshop for high profile couples from the New York area.

I did as he directed and two weeks later, walked out of the store with over $2,000 in receipts for three days worth of ‘dress-up’ clothes.  As I got to the car, my head started pounding, I felt sick to my stomach and actually thought for a moment that I might pass out.  A seizure, a heart attack, low blood pressure?  Nothing that dramatic.  Even as these physical sensations were going through my body I knew it had to do with buying those new clothes.  I had never spent so much money on clothes for myself at one time in my life and I literally felt sick about it.  I knew it was about spending the money, a lot of money, on myself, for clothes!!!!!  I am a blue jeans kind of guy.   It didn’t make any economic sense to be concerned about this purchase because my friend, the sponsor of the program, had built in the cost of my new wardrobe to my fees, so it wasn’t about the money.

I had always been willing, even eager, to spend money on other people if I thought it would make them happy, but I never felt comfortable buying anything for myself except for the bare necessities.  Buying blue jeans and some shirts every few years was about the extent of my clothing forays.  I still have and wear on a daily basis, clothes I’ve had 10, 15, even 20 years.  In fact, the only suit I had at the time was purchased over twenty- five years ago.  The most I had ever spent on clothes for myself was maybe $150.00, and that had been only once or twice.

I was scheduled to go back and pick up the altered clothes a week later.  When I got to the store’s parking lot, I literally couldn’t get out of the car, even though the clothes were already paid for!!!  I was paralyzed.  I just sat there in the parking lot and finally left after 10 minutes.  I had to have my wife come back to the store with me later to get them.

Though I would joke about and tell this story many times, I truly couldn’t understand why I felt and behaved that way, or change my behavior.  Knowing that the behavior was silly and strange didn’t change it or make it better for me.  I knew that it had to do with some deep belief – a money script that I was carrying about money, clothes and myself, but I didn’t know what to do about changing it.

It would be two years later, when I was conducting a workshop and was using statements my grandfather had made to me 60 years ago as an example, that I suddenly remembered hearing over and over as a kid, “You should feel fortunate to have something to eat, and a roof over your head, and something to wear”.  As recalled this memory, I also felt a twinge of sadness, hurt, and loneliness.   As I was sharing the story and allowing myself to experience these feelings, I felt something shift inside of me and I intuitively knew without a doubt, in that moment, that this ancient, well-ingrained, childhood message had been the source of my dis-ease in not only buying clothes for myself, but also for my more general discomfort in doing/wanting anything for myself.

The dance my wife and I had played for decades was: “What do you want for your birthday, Christmas, to do, go, to eat etc.?”

“I don’t know, I can’t think of anything really”, was my honest response.   When I was asked that question, my mind would literally go blank.  For years I jokingly called that my “‘birthday white-out”.  I have since found that I am not the only one who suffers from this phenomenon. I know it drove her nuts, because rather than take me at my word and get/do nothing; she would eventually have to guess, do something, and could sense my general disappointment when the special day or moment came.  Disappointment because unconsciously I wanted something, didn’t get it and though my wife has many talents, mind reading isn’t one of them.

That awareness was followed by another.  I became aware of a long standing money script in my family that to want or ask for anything specific when asked was to appear ungrateful and selfish.  Especially selfish.  To be a ‘good’ person in my clan, one was not supposed to actually tell someone what you wanted when they asked.  So over the years I gradually lost touch with ‘wanting’ anything.

Recalling this memory also helped me understand the incongruity of my behavior around gifts.  While being frugal with myself, I had a compulsive generosity when it came to giving freely to others, often to excess.  I now understand that I was trying to protect others, especially my family, from those painful feelings I had as a kid growing up.

He told of an incredibly painful past.  He was a Vietnam Veteran, but the pain had started long before.  So much so, that he volunteered for the war, hoping to end his life in some kind of meaningful way, but end it none-the-less.   During the war, he had been a helicopter pilot.  As he told his story he said that looking back, he had used his helicopter experiences in Vietnam as a way to try and end the pain that he carried to the war.  Without one ounce of pride or bragging he told us that he would repeatedly volunteer for missions to rescue troops when no one else would.  Time after time, he would insist on going; all the while hoping that he would be killed.  Helicopters would be shot down all around him; seven helicopters he was piloting would be shot down.  Seven without him getting a scratch. No one else was ever injured either.

This type of risk taking ended one day when, as usual he volunteered once again.  He said that he had a habit of volunteering not only himself but his best buddy and co-pilot too.  On this day, their helicopter was shot down again, and as usual, Woody didn’t get a scratch.  His co-pilot was not so lucky.  He suffered nearly fatal wounds that ultimately resulted in an amputation of both his legs from mid-thigh.  Woody told us that he never did anything like that again in Vietnam, because he didn’t want to hurt anyone else.

Though he said that his buddy had forgiven him for taking him into such risky situations and for the wounds he suffered, Woody could not forgive himself.  This incident had served as just one more example to him of how worthless he was, and how he felt that all he ever did was end up hurting people, especially people he cared about and loved.

Upon his return from Vietnam, he told us that he continued trying to kill himself by doing every crazy stunt that he could think of or had an opportunity to try.  Still, he was never injured and couldn’t understand why such a simple thing, trying to end his life, was so hard.

The day Woody did his therapeutic work in group was one of those not so unusual 70 + degree days in January in the Black Hills.  Warm enough to need to use the air conditioners but because they are so loud, we opened the front and back doors of the group room, to take advantage of the wonderful warm breeze.   The work he did was powerful.  It seemed especially significant because he had chosen a Marion, a Lakota lady to represent his spiritual guide and higher power since through his experiences in life he had lost all faith in a traditional sense of God.  She told him of her people’s belief in the special powers of the Hawk and the Wolf and that she would use their power to help him. He did incredibly deep work.  Actually, at one key moment in the work, a bird flew in the back door, circled the room and flew out the front.  It all happened so quickly that we couldn’t figure out what kind of bird, but it was a big one.  We were sitting there in awe, certain that we had witnessed divine intervention on behalf of Woody.  Then we remembered what Marion had said about calling on the power of the hawk to help Woody.  Wow!  Even those higher power skeptics were quieted by that one.

The piece of music I had used to close his work was a song called “The Rope”.  It is a song about a man who goes out to sea, his ship is sunk in a storm, he is on a life raft feeling as if there is no hope and has given up, when he hears a voice calling “reach out for the rope”.  That was a very moving song to Woody.  Later that evening, he asked me if I would allow him to hear it again and I gave him the song to take to his room for the night.

Marion, the Lakota lady, related in her feedback to Woody, that she, in fact, had seen the spirits moving around the room as he did incredibly deep and profound work.  When he had finished, he said,   “I have never felt such relief and peace like this in my life”.  “I have never felt better”  “I never want to leave this special place”.

The next morning, Wednesday, I had arranged to meet Joe Cruse (husband of Sharon Cruse, who had created Onsite) who had flown in to meet one-on-one with the clients as they began to close out their treatment week.

I was staying at the Kelly Inn in Keystone.  Joe and I had planned on going to the workshop site a little early and stopping by a special overlook that I had recently discovered.  I got a call that morning from Joe and instead of him saying “I’m ready to go”, he said that our night supervisor had called and told her of an emergency.  Joe said “Woody’s down, it looks like he had a heart attack while he was taking a hike with a group of other clients on the flume trail early this morning, we need to get there right away”.

I immediately said “He is in my group and did such powerful healing work yesterday, I hope I didn’t do anything wrong”.  Joe, said, as only he could replied “I hope not either”.  If I was looking for assurances, it wasn’t going to happen then.

We drove to the Nugget.  Woody had already been taken by ambulance to the hospital.  We went to the site on the flume trail where he fell.  He had been on a hike with a half dozen other people, three of whom happened to be physicians; one an emergency room specialist.  As we reached the spot, I stooped over where he had fallen and picked up the plastic top of a syringe used by the paramedics in their attempt to help Woody.

Later in talking to members of the group who had been hiking with Woody, they said one minute he was with them leading the way, talking and joking and the next he was on the ground.  Initially they thought he had tripped and fallen, but very quickly realized that something much more serious had happened.  They had sent someone back for help as they took turns administering CPR until the paramedics arrived.

When Joe and I arrived at the workshop site, we, as well as the community, were in a state of shock and disbelief.  It was breakfast time and we decided to keep the whole group together to help deal with the event.  Joe called the hospital and told them that he was the Medical Director of Onsite and would like to have an update on Woody’s condition when they had one.

At about 8:25 AM, the phone in the back of the room rang.  The room went totally silent as Joe went back to take the call.  Joe hung up and said “As of 8:18 this morning, Woody expired”.  I had the fleeting thought, “how ironic is it that we try to help people be clear and direct, and in this moment we use the word ‘expired’ instead of died?”   The truth is that Joe was in his best medical doctor form on that day, and we were all more than glad that he was there to support us.

Woody’s roommate shared that the night before Woody died he told him that for the first time in his life he felt like his soul was as peace and repeated that he didn’t want to go home.  Now, he wouldn’t have to.  He died with his new family being with and loving him in a way that his original family back home could not.

Three minutes later the phone rang once again.  Again Joe answered.  This time he called one of the participants to the phone.  Again, the room was totally silent as he took the call.  He came back into the room, sat down, looking very confused, and said “you are not going to believe this, but some of you know that my wife and I are in the process of adopting a baby.  My wife just called to say that the baby we had been waiting for was born about 20 minutes ago, he is a big beautiful baby boy who was born at 8:18 this morning”.  We all just looked at each other, stunned.  The man whose baby had just been born had also been Woody’s roommate.

We all just sat in silence.  There was more than one of us who wondered about the timing of this ‘coincidence’.  If we had any doubt, the rest of the week was filled with events that would test even the most spiritually skeptical of us.  We were about to experience a series of events that left even non-believers scratching their heads for ways to explain what happened.

Eventually we all went back to our small groups and began processing the loss of one of our group mates.  There were a lot of feelings about and affirmations for how Woody had in such a short time gifted, touched and inspired us all.   As I sat there listening to the others share, I had the sense that by his death, Woody had divided himself up and given each of us each our own treasured piece of himself for us to take home with us.

We decided to conduct a formal ceremony to celebrate Woody’s life that evening.  To prepare for it, that afternoon, our group took a walk to an overlook we had been to previously, to each look for something to take back to the ceremony to represent a remembrance of Woody.  As we were walking in silence back from our pilgrimage, I heard a raucous screeching noise, looked up and a hawk flew overhead, circled us and flew off into the mountains.  Marion simply said “There’s Woody”.

As a part of the ceremony, I read the Native American version of the 23^rd Psalm.  That version talks about the ‘rope of love’, and, instead of talking about going through the valley of death, it uses the metaphor of  being drawn up between the mountains, where perhaps God might take the pilgrim’s heart, but at the same time, give him a place to live for eternity.

One of the men from another group shared that during his meditation time earlier that day he had fallen asleep and dreamed of being with a group of people who were walking in the forest behind the Gold Nugget.  He noticed a stream and looked across and saw Woody sitting on a rock in his flight jacket.  Woody looked up and saw the group, and encouraged the group to go on, calling out to them that he was ok.  (Woody had not worn his flight jacket to the program, the man did not even know that he was or had ever been a pilot).

Marion, our Native American lady, from our group, upon hearing that, doubled over in her chair, shook her head and just groaned.  Earlier that week she had told us, as a part of her work, that her 3 year old niece had tried to commit suicide recently.  The suicide attempt had failed and when the little girl was asked why she had tried to kill herself she said that she had a dream where she had seen her mother, (who had recently died), sitting on a rock across a stream in the mountains and she wanted to go be with her.

Marion, I noticed, oddly, that evening, except for that comment, was the only person who had said nothing or came forward with anything to contribute to the pile of objects that were being presented to celebrate Woody’s life.

On the last day our group had decided to get up very early and go to the actual place where Woody had fallen two days before, to give him his LCP medallion, and to say our final goodbyes.   We found the spot, where a tree was growing impossibly out of a rock.  It was a place where you can see the trees, the top of the mountain, the sun rise, and in the bottom of the canyon Spring Creek runs.  Marion said “good choice Woody”.

I had suggested that perhaps we could all take the objects that had been collected from the community during the ceremony the previous night and leave them there to honor and symbolize the effect he had on our lives in the short time we had known him.  I had taken a pine cone, since I had once learned that it is only in the process of the fire that the seeds of some pine trees are released for new growth.  It seemed that somehow a fire, often seen as a tragedy, not unlike a death, actually is necessary for rebirth.  One by one, we placed the objects and shared a gift/lesson that Woody’s being in our life for even such a short time had given us.  I was next to last, only Marion, as had happened the night before, had not presented an object nor had anything to say.  As I reached to put the pinecone on the ground at the place his head had fallen, a feather actually fell, landing directly on the back of my hand.  Marion said “Oh my god” as I picked it up.

Marion gasped and began speaking.  Through choking tears she told us she had been looking for the last day and a half for a feather to use in his honoring, but had been unable to find one.  She said she had not participated last night because she had not found what she was looking for.  Now it appeared to her and all of us at this last moment.

It seemed clear to Marion and many others of us that Woody’s spirit, gave her and us, this one last gift, and in his own way said his goodbyes.  We walked speechless back to our group room at the Gold Nugget, very full and in a state of awe, knowing that if we tried to tell anyone else about this series of happenings, it would sound like fiction.

These are just few of the incredible things that happened that incredible week.

But the story wasn’t quite over yet.

Sharon’s Epilog

10 years later, Sharon and Joe were doing one of their favorite things, taking a cruise.  The exercise director and they begin talking.  They found out that they had many mutual touch points, the most shocking was that she had been Woody’s fiancée when he came to the program in January 1992.

I was reminded of one just the other day.  It involved my daughter.  There was a time when she was in college when she was going through a very difficult and sad situation.  Over the course of several days of working through it, we found ourselves in a movie theater unconsciously attempting, I would imagine, to distract ourselves for a bit.  As we sat talking and eating our popcorn waiting for the show to start, she leaned her head on my shoulder.  I so much wanted to put my arm around her and by doing so let her know that I thought everything would be ok.  Instead, I sat there frozen.  Paralyzed, in part, because my family just didn’t do things like that when I was growing up.  I don’t remember touching except in anger.  There was a part of me that knew the right thing to do; I literally just couldn’t move my arms.

The “want to” vs. the “I am afraid to” debate went on for what seemed like a long time.  All the while I sat rigid.  Eventually the moment passed, and she sat up and we watched the movie.  The moment and opportunity to support my daughter by had passed.  I imagined that she took my lack of response as some kind of rejection.

Several years later, in a therapeutic setting I had the opportunity to hold her as I wish I would have originally.  It was a beautiful experience and very fulfilling and healing for both of us.  It still doesn’t quite take away my regret.

Subsequently, I have resolved to never let something like that happen again, if I can help it.  And, as far as I know, I haven’t.   Some lessons cost more than others.

My relationship with money had always been one filled with a good bit of mystery and intrigue.  Mystery, because I seldom knew what was going to happen until it happened.  Intrigue, because I was under the misguided assumption that forces in the universe were conspiring to ensure that my money stuff would take care of itself.

I believed in what I now call Ted’s Perverted Law of Karma.   If I worked hard, sacrificed, was a good person, did the right things for the right reasons, then all my financial needs would be taken care of.  I organized my entire life around that unconscious belief.

There was no need for me to worry about my future.

Rather than recognizing when the universe did provide me with opportunities to take care of myself financially throughout my life, I kept waiting for the magic moment when the universe would say, “Ok, it is now time to cash in. You have done well, so now we will take care of you.” As a result, I stumbled from on financial situation to another, without much of a sense of purpose or plan.

Though I had nearly twenty years of recovery under my belt and had seen my relationships with myself, my wife, children, and friends grow, prosper and mature, I couldn’t quite get a grip on my relationship with money.

One chilly Thanksgiving afternoon I received a phone call that broke the news that at the final hours, yet another promising business deal that was supposed to provide for our retirement was not going to work out after all.

With my wife gently weeping on the couch, I stated with more conviction than I felt, “I don’t know what I mean or how to fix it, but there is something really wrong with my thinking when it comes to money and how it works that keeps getting me into situations like this.”

Once again, in my financial life I had found myself at the mercy of someone else’s behavior.  Throughout my recovery I had grown to believe that for everything that happened to me, I was at least 50% responsible. For the very first time I was able to entertain the idea that there was something fundamentally wrong with my belief system regarding money and how it works.  In a way, I had reached a bottom with my money thinking, and was for the first time ready to ‘think again’.   I was determined to find out what my part was.

Much to my wife’s consternation and more than one kick under the table, I asked everyone I could corner about their relationship with money.  I was curious.  I was a sponge.  I began to realize that a lot of people have very weird belief systems about money and how it works

I eventually contacted our CPA and told him I thought it was time for us to begin taking care of our own retirement.  We came up with a very simple plan.  Send him a check every month and within a reasonable amount of time, we would have enough to retire.

Problem was that even though we had the money, and would actually write the check, we couldn’t send it in.  It would sit on the corner of our desk.  Our CPA would call, badger, cajole, beg, and plead, and though we would say ok, we just couldn’t quite send it in.  I had lots of excuses that sounded good, but the truth was they were excuses.  This went on for nearly two years.

In what I have come to recognize as God’s timing, one day I received through a third party a note from an acquaintance, a financial planner, who I had not heard from in twelve years.  He told me about some of the work that he was doing with clients, he included a book, and asked me to let him know if I knew anyone who was interested in figuring out their self-destructive financial behaviors.

Did I know of anyone?  I immediately called and began talking with him about the quest I had been on to understand my relationship with money. I used my retirement savings behavior as an example of knowing what I was supposed to do and had committed to do, but I couldn’t do it.  He very quickly helped me get to the core of my problem.

He very simply asked me to envision or imagine what retirement would look like.  My mind went absolutely blank.  Nothing.  Then a vision began to emerge of me sitting someplace warm, doing nothing.  I immediately felt revulsion.  I had just seen what retirement meant to me.  It meant, “I quit”.  Suddenly it was crystal clear to me why I had not been able to send the checks in.  I DIDN”T WANT TO QUIT!!!!  By not sending the checks in, I was guaranteeing I would never have to.  I would be a pitiful soul in my 60’s, complaining and feeling victimized because I couldn’t afford to retire after a life of service to others.

The details of what happened then are another story.  Suffice to say that by re-defining what retirement could mean for us, we are now saving at four times the rate that we originally believed that we could.

What would prove to be the most important exercise came next.  I was asked to identify what my deepest loves, needs and desires were.  To help me with this process I was to imagine that I had only one day left to live.  Twenty-four hours from now I would be dead.  I was asked to answer, “What would I regret never having done, left undone, what relationships would I feel badly about having not come to peace with?”  I felt really good about having very few regrets.

The exercise did, however, inspire me to begin immediately taking care of those few loose ends that I did have.  Those included making sure that the three most important people in my life, my wife, Margie, son Brad and daughter Brenda, knew how much I loved them and how grateful I was to have them be a part of my life.

I immediately began sorting out those parts of my work life that I could let go of, so I could begin living my new vision of what retirement meant, years before I actually retired.

I was really liking this.   I was so profoundly affected by my experience that I helped create a workshop for others like me who’s early unconscious childhood beliefs about what money  means and how it works keeps them stuck financially.

It was invigorating. I was feeling great.

Then the next April I went for my annual Mayo Clinic checkup.

After the usual round of tests my Doctor came in to the room and seemed to be a little nervous as he began to talk to me.  He said, “I want to know if you can come back more often”.  I said, “Sure, what’s up?”

He said, “Your liver disease has reached the final stage before liver failure occurs.  This means that liver failure is possible and you are at high risk for developing liver cancer.  We’d like to monitor you more closely.  If it happens and we can catch it quickly enough there’s a chance we can save your life.”

We said our goodbyes and I left his office.  I was stunned by the news.  In that one brief moment it seemed as if my entire universe had shifted.   I thought about my plans for retirement and wondered if I would live to see that day.

As I walked out of the hospital, I called my wife and told her the news.  Talking to her, for some reason, I suddenly flashed back to those exercises I had done several years before when I was struggling to understand my relationship with money.

I heard myself saying, “Remember that exercise I did, the one that asked me to consider what regrets I might have if I had only twenty-four hours to live?  Well, as I am talking to you right now, it doesn’t seem like an exercise.  It feels a little like the real thing.  You know, I don’t have any regrets.  I can’t think of anything important that is undone.  All of the people that I love know that I love them and I know that they love and honor me.  There is no unfinished business with any of them.  I can’t tell you how grateful and lucky I feel.

As I said those words, ironic as it may sound, tears of gratitude began to well up and run down my cheeks.  Who could have ever predicted that my journey to understand my irrational relationship with money years before would pay off with such a huge blessing of fullness and richness.

I continue try to live each day as if it is my last, to say what needs to be said, do what needs to be done, and I feel grateful.  This is not a drill.  It is the real thing.

In my work with people and their money issues, I have a saying.  “It is never about the money”.  For me personally, that has proven to be absolutely true.

The good news is that apparently, knock on wood, my liver condition has stabilized.  I am still grateful each day that I have choices about what I want to do and how I want to live my life.  I am fully aware, that someday I won’t.

I had learned from experience that when it was clear I couldn’t do anything to change the situation or help someone who had medical challenges, (especially terminal ones) there was one thing I could do. I could show up. I could touch them. I understood from my own lying in the sick bed just how powerful those two things could be. I had once been in a serious car crash and had never forgotten the power of someone just holding my hand or kissing me on the forehead when there were no words to be spoken or anything they could do to change things.

On one of my visits, I went to see him. The visit went as usual. He was sleeping most of the time, opening his eyes and looking around from time to time, but mostly sleeping. I was alone with him, sitting by his bedside holding his hand, fussing with his hair, just hanging out there with him, neither of those things seeming to make any difference in terms of whether he was awake or not.

When he did wake up, he seemed to startle awake. He would look really afraid. He would pull at his feeding tube, which I knew he hated and would never, if he would have had his choice, have wanted to “live” that way. The doctors had put it in a couple of days after his most recent surgery, when, unexpectedly, he didn’t recover to the point where he could talk or eat.

The feeding tube had been in months now. It was clear that he wasn’t ever going to get better. It was excruciating to watch him, in what appeared to be fear, in what might have been pain, in what was obviously a place he didn’t want to be, or more certainly, a place where it was hard for me to see him be.

I spent a couple of relatively uncomfortable hours with him. When he was awake, I would tell him about Margie, and the kids, the business, and what I was doing. He mostly was asleep. There would be times he would open his eyes and look around, but couldn’t even respond by squeezing my hand when I asked if he could hear me.

Sadly, as always, I left to go to my car, to drive back to the airport and fly home. On my way out to the parking lot, there was this little voice that said to me, “You need to go back”. Long ago, after some really hard lessons and big prices I had paid, I had learned to listen and trust that voice.

Even though I trusted the voice, I still engaged in an internal debate. On the pro side, the message was simple, “Go back.” On the con side the messages were streaming. “Why do I need to go back, since I just spent nearly three hours with him?” “He doesn’t even know I am here”. “He doesn’t respond and he is asleep most of the time. What good is going back?”

I started walking back in anyway, even though it meant that I would probably miss my flight back home. As I approached his room, the thought came to my mind, “You know I don’t believe that I have ever really looked at my father’s eyes.” I couldn’t have told you, from firsthand experience, what they looked like, even what color they were. In our family we didn’t look at each other like that.

So now I understood what “the voice” needed from me. Go back in the room, and find my father’s eyes, and look at them. When I entered the room, he was fast asleep. As I pulled up a chair to sit beside him, he turned his face towards mine and as if I had asked him to, opened his eyes.

I have to tell you I was shocked. I was looking into the bluest, blue eyes I had ever seen. It was a startling, piercing, deep, rich blue. I was overwhelmed with their intensity. I just looked into them for a long time. He looked into mine. Both of us totally unashamed by such intimacy. Neither of us looking away, not even for a moment. I have no idea how long we sat there looking at each other. All sense of time escaped. We were just looking. I was just drinking it in. As we sat there looking at each other like lovers might, there was a moment where it seemed that he was sending me a gift. The only way I can describe it is that it was like something was being passed down to me. Something of the generations. Something ancient. It seemed as if the message from his was “It’s yours now, I am done”. Then he closed his eyes and turned away. As I got up to leave, I kissed him on the forehead, squeezed his hand, told him I loved him and left. On the way out, the voice said to me “That’s the last time you will see your father’s eyes”. And it was. I am so glad, that once again, I had listened to “the voice”.

What is “it”? I don’t have words to describe it, but I know what “it” is. “It” is ancient. “It” is generational. I saw and felt it again, unexpectedly, when I looked into my granddaughter Morgan’s eyes for the very first time.

I think we all have “the voice”. I hope I can continue to be in touch with myself enough to hear and listen to its wisdom. Not doing so has brought me unspeakable pain. Doing so has brought me incredible blessings.