Author: TheDon McCoy

We are the caregivers of our collective future. fostering selflessness, grace, openness and love can only secure our future. If you harbor hatred in your heart, look deeply, it is actually a hole within that love hasn’t been allowed to fill. It is due to your reluctance to be curious and understand the reason for your ignorance regarding why the reason that hole exists.

I remember when I first entered the field I have been in for some 30+ years now.

A friend had suggested that I check out a Residential Treatment Center in Ellsworth Maine that may be hiring. I had been a Graphic Artist working at t local newspaper and had been doing that work in various capacities for over 10 years. But life was losing its appeal. I disliked the work I was doing, designing and selling advertising for the paper.

I was curious about why this friend suggested such a change to me. ‘because you are really good with kids.’ She stated. So, I plucked up the courage and drove to a treatment center on a lovely lake that had been a lodge. Now called The Homestead Program, it housed 35 adolescents who had significant behavioral difficulties and could not manage home or school life.

I quickly learned that there was significantly more to the picture than I could ever have imagined. I was interviewed by the director and within an hour was hired and working ‘on the floor’ that day. Homestead had a boot camp mentality about how to change behavior in teens. I found it severe and abusive. Archaic punishments were doled out for any infractions.

One such punishment was called ‘scrubbing,’ whereby the teen who incurred the punishment was told to get two hand scrub brushes and get on their hands and knew and scrub back and forth on one place for either five, ten or fifteen minute according to the severity of the ‘crime.’ My first encounter with this was when a 14 year old yelled at me and gave me ‘the finger’ when I asked him to clear his plate after breakfast. Before I could tell him to get the brushes, he pointed to th bucket holding them and walked over.

Here was this young person on his hands and knees as I stood before him making sure he completed the chore. Having no formal training I was immediately struck by my first enlightenment in human psychology and the world of abuse. Actually it was more of a memory of childhood, but that connection came later. As I said, I was standing before this kid and I realized that he was a victim of physical and sexual abuse by members of his own family!

The realization floored me. I knew he needed to complete his chose, but I did not eed to stand in front of him. I grabbed a nearby chair and sat next to him and began to have the first of many conversations with the kids there. I truly learned more in the time I worked there than at any other time in my career. I learned that this was my calling and I needed to pursue it from that day on. I also learned that using abuse to change behavior is an awful approach. Love, curiosity and understanding, along with conversation are the best approach.

Today, I remain terminally curious, as a former supervisor had asked us to be. I do not look at a person as a diagnosis not ‘treat’ them as a person with a code for billing their insurance. We all are on a journey called life. Sometimes that journey becomes rocky and difficult. Sometimes we get lost in the forest of sorrow and fear. The many that chose to seek help, learn to become fearless in their climb out of trauma and pain. For them, the road is tough, but oh so worthwhile. I have been fortunate to have met and worked with such brave souls. Thank you all for such a beautiful journey so far!

The ugliness was incredible to witness

Words like vipers spit from his perfectly formed lips

His piercing blue eyes mere slits as his anger seethed

His oh so perfect ego so very bruised

By the person who was supposed to love him

But she did

He didn’t see it. His self-absorbed mind raged at anyone

No true friends, no one dare get close to him

His face and body were perfect gifts from God

When he died no one attended his funeral save for his wife who wept

Months later in another world in another time

He was reborn to his sorrows as a distant heartache

For in the mirror he witnessed a face grotesque

The lessons not learned before

Have become revisited.

It has all been done

The words and emotions

Conversations long forgotten

A quiet place held the fragments

The distance worlds further between hearts

Than in reality

A smile vaguely remembered

The warmth of hugs long gone cold

The house is quiet

The music lasted but a moment

Words are now lost…

Martin sat in my office at the edge of the couch. His hands were clasped as he was bent forward with his arms resting on his knees. Martin’s head was down. He briefly looed up and made eye contact with me when I asked him to stand up for a moment. He looked confused.

I went over to my desk and opened the top drawer. The afternoon sun was shining through the partially closed slats of the shade on the window. It illuminated a roll of painter’s blue tape which I took out. I walked over to Martin, stopping a few feet away. Bending over, I ripped off about a foot of the tape and placed it on the rug a foot in front of him.

‘Martin,’ I said looking him square in the eyes. ‘you have been complaining about your life to me for the past six months. We talk and discuss the problems with work, the problems with your marriage and with you feeling like you have no future. The only thing that you haven’t done in our sessions, it truly decide to work on yourself.’ At this point, Martin began to squirm a little bit. He shifted his weight from one shoe to the other and back. He then started to sit down.

‘No Martin!’ I said with a slightly raised voice. ‘remain standing for a minute. I put this strip of blue tape on the ground before you for a reason.’ He looked down at the tape then glanced at me for his usual brief second before averting his eyes elsewhere. ‘As I stated, you haven’t made any steps forward to begin to change your life.’ Martin looked at the clock on the wall. “I know our time is about up, but I have one last task, one last attempt to have you choose to move forward and stop complaining.’

‘Martin, that strip of blue tape represents the border between where you are currently in all your anguish and sorrow, and your decision for choosing to begin to grow and face your problems as you see them. Stepping over that tape is your choice to truly begin to work on yourself and face the challenges you have been avoiding. It will not be easy. But I can assure you that the end result will be beyond your wildest expectations. But that is only if you chose to do the work with your entire heart and soul.’

‘What is your decision Martin?’ he stood there tears streaming from is tightly closed eyes. Martin sat down and began to sob uncontrollably. A few minutes later he opened his eyes and quietly got up from the couch. He was careful to not step over the blue tape. Martin quietly picked up his coat and made his way to the door. ‘See yo again next week, Doc?’ he asked like he needed my permission to return. ‘Of course Martin. I will be here, and so will that strip of blue tape. I suggest you reflect on its meaning.’

An old nemesis visited me last night.

I had awaken to the air feeling extremely dark and heavy.

There was a deepness to the night that went beyond the norm.

His presence was immediately felt before I realized

Walking in our darkened home as my wife slept soundly

It truly appeared that the one night light struggled against the doom

I felt him following me, just out of arm’s reach.

In the bathroom I avoided the mirror

as I felt his presence more distinctly.

Acknowledging him I offered no thought save for

Your presence holds no power here

I hive risen beyond your influence.

With that he vanished and the air lightened.

Is this the end of everything?

What was once held in esteem

Is now a mundane afterthought

Honor and decorum are a distant memory

Rights have superseded responsibilities

Patience and understanding

Replaced with immediacy and immediate demand

Anger is the new religion

Division and hatred

Replacing community and inclusion

Is there a way forward

 That will not destroy us?

Ask ChatGPT for that answer…

In my practice, I attempt to bring an understanding of what is the absolute truth. The heart of the matter in each and every conversation I engage in. It is an elusive simplicity that evades most at the best of times and is all but absent, at least in the troubled minds, during the worst of times. The ability to understand the origins of hatred and anger is the beginning steps in realizing the absolute truth.

In my attempts of guiding my clients to find their own personal truth, or as the gifted and wonderful author Paulo Coelho stated, our own Personal Legend, the negative emotions of anger and hate seem to be most difficult to transform. The Letting Go is often a painful task when removing hate and anger from one’s heart and letting the object of the hatred leave the heart and head.

I have not named the Absolute Truth as yet, in hopes that you, the reader, can divine what I am writing about. If you have lost that truth in your heart, the word will prove elusive. It sits caged and dormant in yourself awaiting the deep and often painful work of unlocking the cage and letting it out to the world. I can only lead you up the cage. I can only (hopefully) get you to visit that which is crying for release. It is ultimately your decision to become fearless and open your heart.

A lot of nothing in my heart today

The emotions still raw and fresh on my skin

My eyes still see his stillness, breathless

Sorrow remains like winter chill that heat cannot penetrate

Empty songs and stories play without end

 Sadness washes my heart pale

I felt you leave as you lay silent and still

When the moments passed and the quiet was deafening

Nothing filled my heart as love left with you

My heart shall fill again as memories return

Keeping my heart open is the only choice

Sorrow is love being emptied out

(in honor of Giacomo Guiseppe Dipisa)

Young boys learn how to be a gentleman from their elders

A young man with no positive role model will struggle to find happiness and goodness in the world

One person can change the life and future of a child

They can, through their actions and honest wisdom, guide a young person to fruition

Later, we sit with the thoughts and memories of the elder gentlemen and how we strived to live up to their guidance.

Generations are modeled and defined by the lives of the elders.

My thought is a question, what words would your great-grandchildren use to describe you when you are gone.

Live your best, be a gentleman in all occasions.