One year ago, almost exactly to the day. I was in counseling. I was in deep intensive counseling with neither of the guys. I was across the country. I had no access to the outside world. My life had fallen apart days earlier. I thought that my life was over. I was going to end it all.

I won't go into all that story I have at different occasions in this podcast. But to say that I hit rock bottom would be an

understatement. I had completely hit rock bottom. And I'm in this counseling. I did not want to be there.

Really. I wanted healing, but I knew this is like I didn't want my life to be at this point where I'm at

this deep intensive counseling. And so we are with, I'm with nine other guys, again, across the

country, no access to the outside world with guys I don't know. We're going through this intensive group counseling for most of our time. And then we would get pulled out for these one-on-one counseling sessions. So I get pulled into my first one-on-one counseling session. I'm sitting in the office with this counselor. And he looks at me and we're just, I literally just met him.

And he says, all right, man, tell me, you know, what's going on in your brain today. Something, something like that, some version of that. He says this and I just start to weep. One, because all the emotions of the last, you know, several days and weeks had hit me. And I was just feeling a lot of, I was kind of overwhelmed with emotion.

So I just,

I couldn't get myself really together.

I'm crying pretty hard.

And he's like,

well, had hit me and I was just feeling a lot of I was kind of overwhelmed with emotion so I just I couldn't

get myself really together I'm crying pretty hard and he's like what you know talk me through it what

are you what are you feeling and I said you know every other time I've been into a counselor's office

in my life which wasn't a lot I hadn't done a bunch of counseling before last year but every time I

had been in a counselor's office up until that point,

I knew that I wasn't going to be completely truthful. Whether I said that consciously or not,

I just knew I wasn't going to be fully, like, I wasn't really, really ready yet. And so I told him

in that moment, and one of the reasons I was so emotional is because I said, I'm prepared to be fully

truthful. Like, I'm ready to go under in the surgery. I'm ready to get all the cancer ripped out. And so I'm a truth teller. Like, I'm committed to being a true teller. Those words just kind of, not even on purpose, but just kind of slipped out of my mouth. I said, I'm a truth teller now. And I knew that those words

were going to have consequences because if it was true that I was going to tell the truth, it was going to cost me a lot. It was going to mean that there was a lot of hard work to do. I wasn't going to try to squirm out of anything. It was like, I'm going to tell the truth. I'm to get everything out. I'm going to purge all of it. And I'm ready to find some healing because

everything else I've been doing on my own has not been working very well. I'm going to get everything out. I'm going to purge all of it. And I'm ready to find some healing because

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