Author: TheDon McCoy

inspiration often comes by way of dreams. remembering and recording them has brought new understandings of life and this mysterious journey unfolding before me.

Crossing the Threshold: A counselor’s Reflection on Suicidal Despair

Posted on by TheDon McCoy

There are moments in counseling when a person reveals that they have stepped into a terrain they never imagined themselves entering. The first serious contemplation of suicide is one of those moments. It is not simply a deepening of depression or an intensification of distress. It is an existential threshold, a rupture in the continuity of one’s inner life. It becomes a moment when the psyche experiments with the possibility of ending itself. For many, this crossing is experienced not as a sole thought but as an emerging and all-encompassing moment, something that leaves an indelible mark on one’s mind and the body long after the crisis has passed.

Once a person has crossed that frightening threshold, that bleak landscape becomes known to them. It is no longer an unimaginable place but a sadly remembered one. It becomes a road that can be returned to with unsettling ease and with unexpected clarity. Some individuals come back from that edge with a deeper understanding of their own sorrow and suffering. They speak of limits they can no longer deny, of truths they had been delaying and of a new tenderness toward themselves. The encounter with self-annihilation becomes, paradoxically, a source of renewed commitment to living differently. They have seen the bottom of their despair, and in doing so, they discover a fierce honesty about what must change if they are to remain alive.

Others return from that threshold shaken and ashamed. They fear their own mind, as if it has revealed a capacity they cannot trust. They worry that the path is now carved into them, a groove they might slip into again when life becomes narrow and hopeless. Their relationship with self becomes fragile. They may feel damaged by the encounter or convinced that they are now permanently at risk. For these individuals, the threshold becomes a place of dread rather than insight, and they need help rebuilding a sense of safety within their own interior world.

In the clinical field, we are often trained to respond to suicidal ideation with urgency, protocols, and safety plans. These tools matter. They save lives. But they are not the whole story. What is sometimes missing is the recognition that the suicidal threshold is not only a crisis to be managed but an experience to be understood and integrated into a further healing and growth process. When someone tells us they have been to that place, they are not merely reporting a risk; they are revealing a profound moment in their story. Our task is to meet that moment with steadiness, curiosity, and dignity.

To do this well, we must be willing to sit with the gravity of what the person has encountered. We listen not only for danger, but also for meaning. What collapsed in them? What felt impossible to carry? What part of them was seeking relief, release, or silence? What did the threshold reveal about their longing, about their exhaustion? These questions are not only diagnostic; they are human. They help transform the experience from something terrifying and isolating into something that can be spoken, understood, and eventually metabolized into a deeper growth.

We also help the person map the terrain they have entered and experienced. Not as a checklist of warning signs, but as an intimate understanding of their own inner weather. What are the early signals that caused the road to narrow? What thoughts began to cluster? What bodily sensations arose? What relational patterns tightened or were lost to the chaos? This mapping is not about surveillance. It is about restoring agency. It allows the person to recognize the approach of despair before it overtakes them, and to reach for support without shame.

Most importantly, we accompany them as they rebuild a sense of safety within themselves. This is slow, relational work. It involves restoring compassion where shame has taken root, restoring choice where helplessness has settled, restoring connection where isolation has hardened. It is the work of helping a person trust that their life is still theirs to shape, even after they have glimpsed the possibility of an ending.

When held with presence and care, the encounter with suicidal despair does not have to remain a mark of brokenness. It can become a moment of profound self-understanding, a turning point in a person’s relationship to suffering, and a doorway into a more honest and compassionate way of living. Our role is not to erase the threshold but to help the person integrate it. It is our work to walk with them as they learn to live with the knowledge of that landscape, and to discover that returning to life is not only possible, but more meaningful.

TheDon McCoy

mindfulinterventions.org

Love’s Relationship with Mindfulness

Posted on by TheDon McCoy

Love and mindfulness are often treated as if they belong to different worlds, one in the realm of feeling, the other in the realm of attention. But in our true lived experiences, they lean toward each other. They keep finding their way back into the same room. When you sit with them long enough, you begin to see that each reveals something essential about the other.

Mindfulness is the clearing of unnecessary inner dialog and chatter. It is the softening of our inner weather, the loosening of the grip of control. It is the willingness to meet the moment without trying to bend it to your will. When that softening happens, love can move again. Not the sentimental kind, not the desperate grasping kind, but the quiet, directional love that knows how to breathe with ease and grace. Mindfulness doesn’t create love, but it removes the debris that keeps love from being truly felt.

And love, in turn, gives mindfulness its orientation. Without love, mindfulness can become a technique, a way of quietly stepping back and hovering above your own life. But when love is present, your attention becomes a form of care. It becomes a way of tending to what is real. Love asks your awareness to be warm, to be honest, to be willing to stay. Mindfulness keeps that warmth from drifting into fantasy or fear. Together they form a presence that is both clear and generous.

Mindfulness also keeps love from dissolving into longing or projection. Love, left unchecked, can drift into stories about what should be or what might have been. Mindfulness brings love back to the ground. It holds the simple curiosities of what is here I need to attend to. What is needed. It doesn’t diminish love; it simplifies it. It lets love be love, not wishfulness.

And love keeps mindfulness from becoming an escape hatch. It refuses the version of mindfulness that floats above feeling. Love insists on contact with the person in front of you, with the truth of the moment, and with the ache that asks to be witnessed. Love pulls mindfulness back into the relationship, reminding us that presence is not a retreat but a way of being with the world.

Together, they create a way of meeting sorrow that is neither overwhelmed nor withdrawn. Mindfulness allows sorrow to be seen without being swallowed. Love allows it to be held without being fixed. Mindfulness says, “This is what is here.” Love answers, “And I will not turn away.” This is the heart of accompaniment, the place where presence and ache sit side by side, and neither one trying to outrun the other.

In the end, love is the direction and mindfulness is the discipline. Love points the way. Mindfulness keeps our feet on the path. Love is the intention; mindfulness is the practice. When they move together, they create a way of being, steady, warm, and deeply human.

The Root of Sorrow

Posted on by TheDon McCoy

I’ve come to believe that much of what we call anger, fear, hatred, or defensiveness is simply sorrow that never had a place to go. Sorrow is often the first wound—the original break in the continuity of our belonging. When it isn’t met, it doesn’t dissolve. It shifts shape. It becomes sharper, louder, more armored. But beneath all of that, it remains sorrow, still longing for a witness, still waiting for a breath and a moment of rest.

Most of the sorrow we carry isn’t ours alone. It’s older than we are. Families hand down their unfinished grief the way they pass down stories or heirlooms—quietly, without understanding or instruction, with a faint hope that someone down the line will know how to hold it. A child can grow up with vigilance that doesn’t match their life, or a shame that feels strangely ancient. These aren’t personal flaws. They are echoes—the emotional fingerprints of what previous generations couldn’t face, name, or grieve.

When sorrow goes unspoken long enough, it becomes generational. It becomes the emotional climate a family breathes. It shapes how people love, how they protect themselves, how they interpret the world. And because it’s invisible, it’s easy to mistake for personality or fate. Yet beneath the surface, the truth remains: the body remembers what the lineage could not resolve.

Healing begins the moment sorrow is witnessed. Not analyzed. Not managed. Simply witnessed. When someone can sit with their grief without rushing it or trying to shrink it, the whole system begins to soften. The body stops bracing. The psyche stops contorting. In that quiet, sorrow reveals itself not as a threat but as evidence of love—of what mattered, of what shaped us, of what we longed to hold onto. When sorrow is met with presence, the secondary emotions—anger, fear, defensiveness—lose their urgency. What remains is something more spacious, more gentle, more human.

Communities carry sorrow too. Cultures hold grief that was never metabolized—losses denied, histories silenced, ruptures left unrepaired. When a community finally names its wounds, something shifts. Grief becomes a source of connection rather than division. People begin to see their suffering as part of a larger story, and healing becomes a shared act. Ritual, storytelling, and collective remembrance become vessels that turn sorrow into resilience. A community that can grieve together becomes a community capable of imagining a future not defined by its wounds.

If sorrow is the root, then the work is not about correction or control. It’s about presence. It’s about the courage to face what generations before us could not. It’s about giving shape and language to what was carried in silence. This is relational work. Communal work. Deep ancestral work.

This is where my practice lives—at the threshold where people can finally set something down. In the quiet space where sorrow can be named without fear. In the conversations that help someone trace the lineage of their emotional patterns and choose a different inheritance. My role is not to fix. It is to accompany. To witness. To help reweave a story that began long before our personal memories.

To reconcile generational sorrow is to interrupt the cycle. It is to offer the next generation a different emotional landscape—one shaped not by avoidance, but by understanding; not by fear, but by presence; not by inherited wounds, but by the possibility of a new belonging.

Sorrow may be the root, but so is love. And when sorrow is finally allowed to speak, it often leads us back to the very thing we thought we had lost: our capacity to feel, to connect, to imagine, and to heal.

Love Remains

Posted on by TheDon McCoy

The sorrow in my heart grows

Beyond the pale of everyday life

No more does the sun so shine

So brightly had the future glowed

With the underbelly whispering softly

Dissent and anger run black like poison

This country, so God loving and fearing

Disillusionment spread with dirty words

Hate and power seeping into minds

So void of purpose and love gone not

Will once again return as the pattern fulfills

Love remains against the shallow face of hate.

Evil From Within

Posted on by TheDon McCoy

Remembering the Center in a Disordered Time

There are seasons in a nation’s life when the greatest danger is not an external threat but a quiet corrosion from within. It begins subtly, almost invisibly when ego, ignorance, and hatred start shaping the atmosphere of public life. Over time, these forces do more than distort institutions; they disfigure our shared sense of what it means to be a decent and caring society.

Ego is often the first fracture. When public life becomes a stage for performance rather than stewardship, when leaders cling to image instead of responsibility, the common good slips out of view. A nation guided by ego forgets how to look at itself with honesty. It loses the capacity for self‑reflection, the humility that keeps a people tethered to reality. This is the first sign of a country drifting from its center.

Ignorance follows—not the simple absence of knowledge, but the refusal to learn, to listen, to be changed. It is a turning away from complexity, a shrinking of curiosity, a suspicion of nuance. When ignorance becomes a civic posture, a nation forfeits its ability to imagine new possibilities. It becomes brittle, reactive, easily manipulated. This is the quiet rise of willful unknowing.

And in the space created by ego and ignorance, hatred takes root. Hatred offers shortcuts: easy enemies, simple explanations, a counterfeit belonging built on exclusion. It narrows the moral imagination until neighbors become abstractions and strangers become threats. Hatred does not merely divide a people; it hollows them out. It is the most seductive form of moral amnesia.

But the deeper tragedy is this: these forces diminish everyone. A nation ruled by ego cannot grow. A nation ruled by ignorance cannot adapt. A nation ruled by hatred cannot endure. The erosion is spiritual long before it is political.

And yet, even in such seasons another story is possible.

Renewal begins in the smallest of human gestures: choosing presence over performance, curiosity over certainty, compassion over fear. It begins when ordinary people refuse to participate in the dehumanization of others, when they insist on seeing the world and one another clearly. This is the slow, steady work of re‑anchoring a community.

I have come to believe that the antidote to evil from within is not outrage but presence. Not louder arguments, but deeper attention. Not purity, but humility. The work is relational, embodied, and often quiet. It happens in conversations where someone feels seen for the first time in years. It happens in circles where grief is allowed to breathe. It happens when a person discovers that their story still has weight, still has dignity, still has a place in the world.

A nation remembers its center when its people remember theirs.

The path forward is not grand or dramatic. It is the daily practice of refusing to shrink the circle of belonging. It is the discipline of tending to the human spirit, our own and one another’s, with steadiness and care. It is the courage to imagine a future not built on fear but on the simple conviction that we belong to one another.

Evil from within is real. But so is the quiet, persistent work of those who choose to live differently. And in the end, it is this work, patient, relational, grounded in presence, that keeps a nation from losing itself.

December 18th

Posted on by TheDon McCoy

I sat at my mother’s bedside as the afternoon faded, the room dim and quiet except for her breathing—shallow and delicate, a rhythm I knew by heart. Pancreatic cancer had stolen her strength with cruel speed, and now she seemed to shrink beneath the covers, her hand small but warm in mine. I tried to memorize the feel of it, scared it would soon be gone.

She turned her head just a little, her voice so faint I had to lean close. “Am I going to heaven?”

Her question knocked the wind out of me. I made sure she wouldn’t see the fear that gripped me, or how the room felt like it was spinning. I said the only thing I could: “Mom, you’ve done so much good that you’ve got the golden ticket. You’re indeed going to Heaven.” I tried to grin, to make it sound light, almost like a joke. She looked relieved, like I’d handed her something solid, something she could lean on at last.

I didn’t realize that would be the last real conversation we’d have. I had no idea how many times I’d replay those words, wondering if they were enough.

A few days later, I was walking from the subway in Manhattan on my way to work. The city was its usual chaos—blaring horns, footsteps, the subway’s echo still in my bones. My phone rang. My niece’s name flashed on the screen, and my stomach clenched.

I ducked into a doorway, trying to carve out a pocket of stillness in the city’s bustling noise.

As soon as I answered, I knew, I the jagged storm of crying and shouting, grief that shook through the phone. My sister’s voice cracked and broke: “She’s dead, she’s dead!”

My insides froze. I said I’d come as soon as I could, but the words felt far away, like someone else was saying them. I stood for a long moment before moving against the stream of people walking to their jobs.

The train ride home was a numb blur. People talked, checked their phones, sipped their coffee, living in a world that hadn’t stopped. I sat perfectly still, stuck between the last words I’d said to her and the stark reality I was heading toward.

Somewhere in that deafening silence, I held on tight to the memory of her question—and my answer. I hoped, with everything I had, that she clutched that golden ticket close to her heart as she crossed into whatever comes next.

The days after, grief settled everywhere like an endless fog. I moved through it quietly, doing what had to get done, feeling somehow there and not there at the same time.

Then, a few mornings later, I awoke to the memory of a dream so clearly it felt more like a visit, and a message than just sleep.

I was in an old farmhouse—lived-in and warm, the kind of place where love seeps into the walls over the years. The kitchen was well worn but cared for, everything in its place. A stairway with an old oriental rug runner led to the second floor.

An elderly couple walked ahead, climbing the stairs. I followed. At the top, a very well-dressed Black man stood behind a velvet rope—like outside a fancy club. He greeted the couple by name, lifted the rope, and let them through.

When I stepped forward, I saw a doorway past him, and behind it a glaring, brilliant light—so bright I couldn’t see anything else.

He let the rope down again and gave me a gentle, fatherly look. “Sorry, son,” he said softly. “It’s not your time.”

Then I woke up, the dream glowing around me. I lay there in the quiet morning, and suddenly, absolutely knew—

Mom had made it.

After Mom passed, something in me shifted. There was no big moment, no real collapse, just a slow, quiet settling, like dust falling after you stop shaking up a room. I kept coming back to that last conversation, to asking her if she was going to heaven and me telling her she had the golden ticket. At the time, I just wanted to comfort her. But after, those words became something heavier, an anchor I clung to when the grief felt endless.

The days felt strange. I did what needed doing, quietly, but inside I felt in limbo—caught between the world where she was here and the world where she was gone. I didn’t cry much. I didn’t talk much. It was like my feelings had gone under the surface, waiting for something I couldn’t name.

But that realization—Mom had arrived—settled deepest of all.

It wasn’t a thought, and it wasn’t something I reasoned out. It was just a knowing—gentle, certain, and needing no proof at all.

In that moment, some part of me softened. The grief stayed, but it changed—it wasn’t so much a wound anymore, more like a door. Not one I was meant to walk through yet, but one I could stand before, unafraid.

And the golden ticket? It didn’t feel like a gift I’d given her anymore. It felt like something she’d always had—earned long ago, before I ever put it into words.

A Conversation Between Two People

Posted on by TheDon McCoy

A Mindfulness story

They met on the back porch just after sunrise, the air was still cool enough to feel clean. He stood there with a mug warming his hands, watching the steam rise as if it might offer some kind of direction.

His old friend sat beside him, the kind of man who didn’t need to fill silence to feel present. He’d lived enough life to stop performing it. He sipped his coffee slowly, like time wasn’t something to chase anymore.

“You’re quiet this morning,” the friend said.

A small shudder moved through him. “Just thinking.”

“About what?”

He hesitated—not because he didn’t know, but because saying it aloud made it real. “About what it means to live now. After everything. After not being afraid anymore.”

The friend nodded, as if he’d been waiting for that. “Ah. That part.”

“What part?”

“The part where life stops being something you endure and starts being something you have to figure out again.”

He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. “Yeah. That.”

The friend leaned back, the chair creaking softly beneath him. “When I went through it, I thought something was wrong with me. I thought meaning was supposed to come back all at once. Like flipping a switch.”

“Did it?”

“No,” the friend said, smiling. “It came back like sawdust in morning light. Little pieces drifting around. Barely noticeable until suddenly they were everywhere.”

He looked down at his hands—the calluses, the faint grain lines that never fully faded. “I don’t feel lost anymore. Just… I don’t have words for this. I don’t know what to do with it or how to name it.”

“That’s because you’re not rebuilding the old life,” the friend said. “You’re building the one that fits you now, one that is new and uncharted.”

He frowned. “But how do you know what fits?”

“You don’t,” the friend said. “Not at first. You try things. You pay attention to what feels alive. You let yourself be curious instead of certain.”

He took a sip of coffee. It tasted different—not better or worse, just more noticeable.

“I keep waiting for some big purpose to show up,” he said.

The friend laughed softly. “That’s the old way talking. Purpose isn’t a lightning strike. It’s a conversation. One you have with your days.”

He let that settle, chewing on it the way he did when something landed deeper than expected.

“So what did you do?” he asked.

“I started small,” the friend said. “I asked myself what felt good in my hands. What felt honest in my chest. What didn’t drain me. And I followed that.”

“And that was enough?”

“It was a beginning,” the friend said. “And beginnings are always enough.”

He looked out at the yard—the early light catching on the grass, the dogs moving quietly through their morning rituals, the world waking up without asking anything from him.

“I think I’m ready for that,” he said.

The friend nodded. “I know you are. You wouldn’t be asking these questions if you weren’t already on your way.”

He didn’t say anything after that. He didn’t need to. The morning spoke for both of them—the warmth of the mug, the slow breath, the simple fact of being here without needing a reason.

For the first time in a long time, the question wasn’t why live.

It became how.

And that felt like the beginning of something real.

Later that week, they sat on the porch again, the afternoon light slanting low and warm. He had spent the morning trying to meditate—or something like it—and it had left him more frustrated than calm.

The friend noticed before he said a word.

“You’re carrying something today?”

He exhaled sharply. “I tried sitting this morning. Breath work. Mindfulness. All the things I used to teach. It felt… pointless.”

The friend turned toward him, those clear blue eyes seeing more than he wanted them to. “Pointless how?”

“Like I was pretending,” he said. “Like I was going through the motions of someone I used to be.”

The friend nodded slowly. “Ah. That part.”

He frowned. “You keep saying that!”

“Because it’s real,” the friend said with a knowing smile. “It’s the part where the tools you once taught don’t fit the person you are now.”

He looked down at his hands. “I used to guide people through this. Help them find their breath, their center. And now I can’t sit still for ten minutes without feeling like I’m faking it.”

“Mindfulness isn’t a skill you lose,” the friend said. “It’s a relationship that changes. Like seasons. It’s always there, waiting for you to find a new reason to use it.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means the version of mindfulness you taught came from who you were then as the counselor, the guide, the one who held space for others.”

“And now?”

“Now you’re the one who needs the space,” the friend said gently. “And that changes the practice.”

He swallowed hard. “It feels like failure.”

“It isn’t,” the friend said, each word deliberately. “It’s honesty. You’re not broken. You’re just not who you were when you taught those practices. And that’s okay.”

He let that sink in. It hurt, but in a clean way.

“I keep thinking I should be better at this,” he said. “That I should know how to navigate this. That I should be able to use the tools I taught for so many years.”

“Mindfulness isn’t a tool,” the friend said. “It’s a posture. And right now, your posture is different. You’re not guiding others. You’re learning how to guide yourself.”

He stared out at the dogs sprawled in the shade, the world moving at its own unhurried pace.

“So what do I do?”

“Start where you are,” the friend said. “Not where you were. Not where you think you should be. Just here.”

He closed his eyes for a moment—not to meditate, but simply to feel his own breath.

“It’s strange,” he said. “I used to tell people to meet themselves with compassion. But I don’t know how to do that for myself.”

“That’s because compassion is easier to give than receive,” the friend said. “Especially for someone who spent a lifetime holding others.”

“So how do I learn.”

“The same way you taught others,” the friend said softly. “One breath at a time. One moment at a time. One honest admission at a time.”

He let out a long, natural breath.

And for the first time in a long time, it didn’t feel like he was failing at mindfulness.

It felt like he was finally practicing it.

A few days later, the friend challenged him again.

“You’re hiding,” the friend said.

He blinked. “What.”

“You’re hiding behind the idea that you’ve changed too much to practice what you taught. That you’re too disillusioned, too far gone.”

He looked away, jaw tight.

“You taught people how to meet themselves,” the friend said. “How to breathe through discomfort. How to sit with uncertainty. How to be present in the dark. Now it’s your turn.”

“I don’t trust it anymore,” he said quietly.

“No,” the friend said. “You don’t trust yourself.”

That landed hard.

“You don’t have to teach,” the friend said. “You don’t have to perform. But you do have to show up. For yourself. For this life you’re still living.”

“I’m scared,” he admitted.

“Good,” the friend said. “That means you’re close to something real.”

And something shifted—not loudly, but enough.

Enough to try again tomorrow.

The next morning, he sat on the porch alone. No friend. No conversation. Just him, the dogs, and the quiet.

He closed his eyes. Let his hands rest on his knees. Tried to follow his breath.

It lasted maybe forty seconds.

His mind spun—old memories, unfinished projects, the ache in his shoulder, dinner plans. He sighed, frustrated.

“This used to be easier,” he muttered.

One of the dogs rested her head on his foot, grounding him.

He looked at her, then at the yard. The soft light. The stillness.

And he realized: He wasn’t failing. He was simply different.

The man who once taught mindfulness had been composed, practiced, fluent. This version of him—post-career, post-collapse, post-fear—was raw. Unpolished. But honest.

And maybe that was enough.

So he tried again. Not breath work. Not a body scan. Just sitting.

The dogs. The porch. The ache in his shoulder. The quiet.

He didn’t fix anything. He didn’t perform. He just noticed.

And something shifted—small, but real.

Enough to feel the sun on his face. Enough to hear the birds without naming them. Enough to understand that presence isn’t a technique.

It’s a willingness.

He stayed there a while. Not meditating. Not practicing. Just being.

And when he finally stood, he didn’t feel accomplished.

He felt real.

And that was enough.

Chance Meeting

Posted on by TheDon McCoy

Chapter 1 Excerpt:

The café’s low murmur felt like a soft blanket wrapped around Mia as the rain drummed a gentle, steady rhythm against the windowpane. Warm pools of amber light spilled from vintage Edison bulbs overhead, illuminating swirling steam above porcelain cups and casting long, flickering shadows across glossy wooden tables. Mia cradled her delicate teacup, inhaling the bright, citrusy scent of Earl Grey mingled with faint undertones of cream. She watched raindrops trace meandering paths down the glass—tiny travelers meeting, parting, then speeding together toward the sill in a liquid dance. Beyond the pane, umbrellas bloomed like black and colorful mushrooms on the slick sidewalk, their owners hustling past in dark coats, each canopy just brushing the next as if an invisible boundary held them apart.

Jordan had entered with the storm still clinging to him. His shoulders were hunched, jaw tight, and every movement carried the sharpness of irritation. The rain had soaked through his coat, leaving him chilled, and the crowded sidewalks outside had felt like an obstacle course of umbrellas and hurried strangers. Even here, in the café’s glow, his mind buzzed with restless static—unfinished tasks, the press of time, the nagging sense that he was perpetually behind. He tapped his fingers against a table, quick and uneven, as though trying to drown out the hum of his own thoughts.

Finding Center, a Mindfulness Novel. 2025