Choosing to Believe the Wrong Story

When I was around 4 or 5, my parents split up and my 2 brothers and I went to live with our dad. He was a great loving father who did many things with us, and I enjoyed myself immensely. I’m not really sure why they split up, they just did and that’s all I knew at the time. I was told a story by my dad and my step mother back then that I believed, unfortunately it was not the right one, and was designed to make me dislike my mother.?I don’t think that was their intent, but that is what happened.?All through my childhood when opportunities would present themselves for me to meet my mother, I turned them down because of the story I was holding on to.

“How could she leave when I was just a small boy?” I’d ask.

“Why would she never send a birthday card or Christmas present?”

“Why doesn’t she want to see me?”

Truth was she DID want to see me, but it was always shut down before it got to me. She DID send Christmas and birthday presents but they were sent back to her unopened.

I just never knew any of this, and so I shut anything about her out of my life.?As far as I knew, she was dead to me, and at that age I didn’t really understand anything else.

And so, time passed and her memory faded until I was 18 and I met her face to face in a public setting.?I was working a part time job at the local K-Mart stocking shelves and one day this very pretty older woman came up to me and said, “Hello Paul.”?I felt like I knew her, but I couldn’t put my finger on how.

“Excuse me, how do you know me?” I asked innocently.

“Why, I’m your mother.” She said.

“No you’re not, my mother left me a long time ago.”

“Yes, that was me and I’m so so sorry. Can we talk sometime?”

“No. I’m not interested.” I said and turned and walked away as rude and as ignorant as you can imagine and left her standing there with hurt showing all over her face.

I reasoned to myself, “if she can walk away from me, why can’t I do it to her”.

To me, that was one of the biggest, deepest mistakes that I’ve ever made in my whole life… so far.

Then years and years later, while I was home for a visit, my two brothers “kidnapped” me one evening and took me to see her as she was recuperating from surgery.

They had had a life that included her.?She babysat their children, she was over for Christmas dinner, she got to be with them on their birthdays, and they wanted me to have that too.

“You’re never going to forgive yourself if you let this opportunity to make things right slip away. SO like it or not, you’re going.” They told me and grudgingly I went along.

I have rarely seen true joy on anyone’s face like I saw on my mother’s face that evening.?I felt like I had come home after being away for so long, and it just felt right. We talked for hours and I got to see her for the person she really was.?I had finally buried the “story”.

I got to see her a few more times over the next few years before she died. The last time she was in palliative care in hospital in St. Johns. She was laying in bed, hooked up to oxygen, in and out of coherence, so I just sat and told her about my life and about my children, her grandchildren, who she would never get to meet, but I promised I would tell them all about her so they would be as proud of her as I had come to be.

As I was getting ready to leave, knowing this would be the last time she saw me, she sat up in bed, grabbed my hand, squeezed it with all her strength and said to the nurse, “This is my son who I lost a long time ago, but he found me, a little late, but he found me all the same, and now I have to let him go.”

A week later she was gone.

And I miss her again.

What have I learned? The only true thing we have in life are the relationships we create and nurture.?Give people a chance, they will surprise and delight you if you will listen to them and give them respect.

Remember, you can’t turn back the hands of time, but you can wind the clock up again.

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My vision is quite simple:?to make an impact on the lives of the people who have been entrusted to me: You (for reading this article), my family and my clients.?

I?coach people. Direct, practical, innovative, meaningful. I?coach for excellence.I?love what I?do... and so do my clients.

Over the years I've?noticed that business coaching that was supposed to make us stronger actually took away our confidence and made us doubt ourselves. Confidence and people skills aren't developed just by measuring and planning everything, they grow through doing and learning from experience and by taking risks. People want to make a difference. Build teams. Be better understood. Live more confidently.

I am committed to creating a world where business people communicate and act with confidence to create better worlds for themselves. Worlds where they feel powerful and free to express themselves. Worlds where something as simple as conversation creates energy, understanding and impact. Worlds so exquisite, I?couldn't imagine doing anything else.

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