How did I get here!!

A question I have been asked a lot lately is what inspired you to write a book about emotions. After journalling about for the past week. Here is how I got here.

Let's start with the moment in time that changed my life forever, on 25th September 2014, I headed to work, I was not feeling great that day but the operations manager was off because his baby had been born, so I was covering for him, as the sales manager, my role was to manage client expectations in line with production capacities, I was also a yes man and on this particular a day a client who was giving me volume aka helping me meet my targets was demanding a shorter deadline, being a people pleaser and problem solver, I headed into the factory and spoke with the lads about the customer requirements and shifted things around which meant moving another customers job back a day and out of the way of blasting.

Feeling proud I went outside to let the customer know they would get the job on time. Then headed back into the factory to check in on the guys but something was different in the 10 minutes that I was outside the factory had gone from a loud industrial space to a space of eery silence. As I walked in, the owner said "don't go down there, I can't go down there it is bad". I walked down to the direction he pointed and a worker was pinned under a 500UB around 6 metres long weighing 3 tonnes. That worker was Brendon, we had history, Brendon had worked with me at a previous company, where I had him fired for coming into work drunk, then he came to another workplace where I said do not give him a job, then he came to this workplace and I said to the operations team, interview him and if he is suitable for the role put him on a work trial for 3 months.

As I see Brendon pinned under this steel my mind goes into rescue mode, I could just see what needed to be done, I start barking orders at people to get equipment, then someone said Micheal sit with Brendon and someone says no Corey will do it. So I found myself in a situation where I was sitting on a pile of steel with Brendon's head in my chest, it was much worse than I had initially thought his stomach cavity was pierced and he was losing a lot of blood. Brendon said to me"Don't let me die" I simply said "I will stay with you" and I did.

I spent Brendon's last moments of his life, staring into his eyes and holding his head as I passed him onto paramedic, I had this sense of a new energy in the room, his soul had left his body and then I lost time. I had been able to remain calm for this experience to be present with Brendon but then my mind collapsed in what I now know to be an out of sequence event.

People tell me I was howling, hysterical and sat in a shower where people stripped and dressed me, then took me home, I don't remember any of it. What I did know is I was broken and this led to a question "If my brain is this broken, I am going to rebuild it differently"

At the time I did not really understand why some people involved in Brendon's death were able to go back to work and tell me to harden up in front of a psychologist when I did my first walk-through after the event. They were simply able to compartmentalize and put it in a box and get on with life.

For me, that was not possible. In my mind I was to blame for his death, I had told them to give him a job, I had told him to move that steel in the morning and this was something that was haunting me along with replaying those last moments. I know now that it was not my fault and we can't control the uncontrollable.

It has been 8 years since and I can be in Perth for the anniversary it used to build for weeks now I stop and reflect in silence on Brendon's life and death. At the funeral, I found myself angry at myself that I did not know him, I had taken the 10% I saw at work at face value and made some assumptions, He was a drunk and rode a Harley, I didn't know he had 3 kids, that he coached his son's soccer team for many years, that he had a 1-year-old grandson, that he looked after on weekends, He was a husband, father, brother, coach and family man with his own demons, not to dismiliar to me, we just had different ways of coping, his was alcohol, mine was being successful, proving my worth through being a boss, closing the deal and impressing the bosses.

There is a whole separate story for how the company handled the situation with me, ignoring their psychological advice about my return to work, having private investigators taking photos of me dropping my kids at school. I ended up walking away because they simply did not know how or did not want to support me. There are many layers to this.

Initially, I spent my time hiding on a bike, on my own, burying myself in my own physical pain, being out for 20-30 hours a week, riding to the hills sitting at Araluen, seeing psychologists but feeling like I was on a merry go round, retelling the story and revisiting the pain. One day I was dropping my son at school and I seen a signup sheet for reading and it was empty so I started reading to kids on any days that had no parent helper, recently my oldest son Riley said that is his first memory of me, sitting and reading with him and his classmates at school.

This helping people became a part of my healing journey, I got my bronze medallion and started patrolling at the local surfclub, started a charity called Project ReCycle taking bikes into schools and rebuilding them over a term with kids who were disengaged from education. Partnered with Cycling Development Foundation to take it out to the regions, partnered with organisation like Sea Containers WA to have staff come into schools and mentor kids. Organised a pump track to be built in Yangebup securing funding from the state government.

Andrew, Jo, Lillian and myself at a mentoring program.

This story started in the middle of my journey and the earlier part of my journey will provide context for the evolution of "The Little Book of Big Emotions". When I was working with Stef Sifandos, he asked me to discuss with my wife, what words would my wife use to describe me and at the time those words were Angry, Arrogant, Arsehole. I often think about why she stayed with me and it all comes back to values and commitment to our marriage vowel something I am deeply grateful for, I'm not sure I would have survived this experience without her.

To put some context around my anger, I have memories of screaming at a mates wife because she critized something we had built, I've screamed down the phone at builder for having unreasonable expectations, gone crazy in board rooms, I've written about this in another blog discussing domestic violence and what that looked like for me as a man.

Fast forward to 2020 and we had this called Corona Virus which resulted in many of us not being able to work in our chosen fields. My main work was rites of passage into adulthood programs with teens and something that I experienced with them when I asked them what their current emotions are they comeback with 3 things, Angry, Anxious and Depressed and it was this that really led to a question " How can I create something that will help children and family understand and shift emotions so they are not stuck in these lower states.

The result of this question was "The Little Book of Big Emotions" which evolved into Big Emotions Academy and is just a continuation of my mission to create generational change.

There is so much more to my story and this is just a snippet to provide some insight into what drives me and how I got here.