Latest / Masculine Containment / 52 - The Last Gift He Gave His Wife: Scott Mills' Brotherhood Story

Transcript

52 - The Last Gift He Gave His Wife: Scott Mills' Brotherhood Story · Masculine Containment

• 0:00
  Welcome to another interview episode of the Masculine Containment Podcast.
• 0:04
  Today I have the privilege, the honor of being joined by Scott Mills, one of the members of our third container.
• 0:11
  And as you'll find out as Scott and I go through this discussion, he experienced one of the most intense and severe life changes that a member can experience.
• 0:22
  while he was in the container and then afterwards and i'm looking forward to hearing from him i think you'll find parts of this story relatable and um scott i just welcome to the podcast brother thanks for being here alex thank you so much for having me i really really appreciate it yeah man so um let's jump in scott so tell me what was going on before you joined the brotherhood and what was what was life like for you what was happening yeah um
• 0:51
  So my wife Amy and I have been married for 35 years.
• 0:59
  We got married when she was 19 and I was 25 and had four kids kind of right off the bat.
• 1:07
  We kind of lived through the blurry years where, you know, you're just, you know, you have four young kids, they're two years apart.
• 1:15
  And it's all the things.
• 1:18
  But then kind of once, and obviously we had our ups and downs during that time, but it always felt like,
• 1:25
  It didn't feel like there was much in the way of problems in our relationship.
• 1:30
  Most of our problems were our kids, like sorting out their problems and their schedules and their drama.
• 1:40
  And we were, you know, I think kind of in a sense of a very model marriage.
• 1:49
  After the kids all were grown and flown and adults, I think that's kind of when the cracks started to show up.
• 2:00
  And part of that was me...
• 2:03
  starting to realize that my childhood was really not as normal as I thought it was.
• 2:12
  There was, like, I'm assuming you're familiar with the ACEs scores.
• 2:17
  Oh, sure.
• 2:18
  Yeah, so— And for those who aren't familiar, it's ACE scores is, like, adverse childhood events.
• 2:23
  Yeah.
• 2:24
  Like divorce or trauma of any kind, and it's a form that you fill out to tell you—
• 2:32
  how high a likelihood there is that you are still reacting to trauma from your childhood.
• 2:37
  Yeah.
• 2:37
  Yeah.
• 2:38
  So I kind of became aware of that around 2019-ish.
• 2:41
  And I was like, holy shit.
• 2:51
  it's a reaction so many people have when they take the ACE test it's like wait wait my child wasn't what I thought it was yes yes and um it kind of started it it there's a couple things that happened at the same time one of them was I saw Brene Brown's TED talk on shame uh which talked about
• 3:13
  When you experience trauma that involves shame, especially childhood trauma almost always does involve shame, if I remember correctly.
• 3:22
  She talked about how you end up turning off emotions or you can turn off emotions and that you don't get to select which ones you turn off.
• 3:30
  They just all kind of turn off.
• 3:32
  And I remember thinking back then, it's like, yeah, that's kind of my life.
• 3:37
  I live life in this very narrow band.
• 3:39
  There's not a lot of highs and there's not a lot of lows.
• 3:42
  And the reason why there weren't a whole lot of lows is because I was...
• 3:46
  I had not become aware of those childhood traumas in a way that made me realize how they impacted me and how they were impacting my relationship.
• 3:56
  So right around then, it's like this lid got, you know, pulled off of all of this pain and trauma.
• 4:06
  And so while I was never super demonstratively reactive in terms of exploding, that was not my style.
• 4:19
  I would have called it contained.
• 4:23
  You know what I mean?
• 4:23
  But now it's like, no, no, no.
• 4:26
  That was suppression, Scott.
• 4:27
  That was like you burying that as far down as you possibly can because just...
• 4:33
  Opening that can of worms is just far too painful.
• 4:36
  Anyway, start pulling, you know, start pulling all this stuff.
• 4:39
  And, and, and, you know, like when, when, when you start pulling all that stuff out, it's, it gets worse before it gets better.
• 4:48
  Um, and so during those next couple of years, I went through therapy, um, did some EMDR, which is incredibly helpful.
• 4:59
  Um, however, the, the kind of the, the ruptures in our marriage, um, like we were just missing each other in a way.
• 5:11
  I, a lot of the triggers for me from my childhood were rejection and abandonment.
• 5:17
  That could be its own podcast right there.
• 5:20
  That could be its own day-long seminar.
• 5:23
  Yeah.
• 5:26
  And there were a lot of things in my marriage that triggered those same wounds.
• 5:37
  And I had no fucking clue what to do with that.
• 5:41
  I knew I couldn't be honest because it was just too painful and hurtful.
• 5:47
  Um, and so the, the kind of the, the rupture continued to grow.
• 5:53
  Uh, we saw a couple marriage therapists.
• 5:56
  I was still seeing a therapist.
• 5:57
  She, I can't remember if she started seeing therapists, but, um, yeah.
• 6:04
  things weren't great, uh, to be honest.
• 6:08
  Um, I think we both independently thought about, you know, divorce, uh, which based on our history was like, uh, no one who knew us probably would have ever thought that that was possible.
• 6:24
  Um, like we were, we were kind of the model, model marriage.
• 6:28
  Um, and I have this, it's really interesting, this, um,
• 6:35
  have this letter that she wrote me from 2022 and it's, it's, you know, it's really long.
• 6:46
  Um, but after one of our ruptures, like you talked about again, I wasn't exploding.
• 6:52
  I wasn't, you know, yelling, like yelling and that was never part of our dynamic.
• 6:59
  But obviously being triggered, you know, something's happening in my body that told her that I was hurt and angry and protective.
• 7:10
  And this is what she said in 2022.
• 7:13
  She said, I don't feel safe emotionally, relationally, and sometimes physically when we have difficult conversations.
• 7:21
  Even everyday conversations, I feel on edge because I'm afraid something I say or do will trigger an anger or a disgust response.
• 7:32
  And obviously it goes on.
• 7:33
  But that was 2022.
• 7:53
  how to make it work, how to shift the dynamic.
• 7:58
  Not for lack of trying on her part or my part or marriage counselors.
• 8:03
  I think we saw three, three different ones during the next couple of years.
• 8:09
  But then things took a very, very...
• 8:14
  I'll also just kind of, this is kind of pertinent to this.
• 8:18
  It was in 2021, just before she wrote this, that she got long COVID, which really affected her bodily.
• 8:31
  So that's, that's, that's a big piece because she was not able to work.
• 8:35
  She was not like, she just basically, I kind of started a period where I started,
• 8:46
  caring for her in an ongoing physical way where I was increasingly taking care of most of our life together.
• 9:00
  There were things that she did, like take care of the bills and manage finances.
• 9:05
  But that, over those next four or five years, that...
• 9:10
  you know, that declined quite a bit.
• 9:12
  So increasingly I didn't feel like I was in a partnership where we were kind of shouldering this together.
• 9:24
  And resentment really started to build.
• 9:26
  And as she mentioned, discussed, I think that's how she interpreted it, but it was mostly resentment on my part.
• 9:37
  Then in, in,
• 9:46
  basically on her birthday in 2024, she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
• 9:55
  And so that became kind of our entire lives, trying to get healthy, doing all the things, chemo, radiation, surgery,
• 10:16
  Um, we worked with one of the country's top integrative oncologists, um, where, so like we were, we had, we had an amazing team.
• 10:30
  Um, but increasingly, increasingly, um, my, my entire life was trying, trying to survive financially and then take care of her.
• 10:43
  Yeah.
• 10:46
  And I will just say that, obviously, I think that part of what I came out of childhood with was a very high people-pleasing tendency.
• 10:58
  That was kind of my coping mechanism.
• 11:00
  That was how I stayed safe.
• 11:02
  That's how I kind of was able to manage my family dynamic as a kid.
• 11:10
  So I would have been...
• 11:13
  like what I'm about to share about how I took care of her, like the actions would have all been the same in terms of my commitment to her, my loyalty to her, my doing everything I possibly could to help her get well, be healthy, and fight cancer.
• 11:38
  But during those two years, like...
• 11:43
  the, the stress, the strain, the pressure was, was enormous.
• 11:51
  Yeah.
• 11:52
  Um, so then we kind of got the news in early June, which is, um, um,
• 12:07
  I think I don't remember the dates to be honest of our container, Alex, just because there's so much, you know, there's only so much room in my brain for, for things.
• 12:20
  Um, but it was early June that we realized that, um, we were in a palliative situation.
• 12:28
  Like her cancer was not going to be cured.
• 12:31
  It would only be managed.
• 12:34
  Um, yeah,
• 12:37
  And that was right about the time of, I don't know, first couple weeks of the container.
• 12:44
  Do you remember those dates?
• 12:45
  Yeah.
• 12:45
  So we started May 1st.
• 12:48
  Okay.
• 12:48
  And we went through July 10th.
• 12:50
  Yeah.
• 12:51
  Okay.
• 12:52
  Yeah, that sounds about right.
• 12:53
  I think I remember you sharing on one of our calls.
• 12:56
  Yeah.
• 12:58
  Yeah.
• 12:58
  Yeah.
• 13:03
  So.
• 13:08
  complete description of, of life before the container where we were missing each other, we loved each other, but she was, I made her feel unsafe because of my
• 13:30
  My pain and my trauma that was showing up in terms of resentment and in terms of just kind of growing frustration of what felt like the energy of the relationship really kind of going one way.
• 13:50
  Like, yeah.
• 13:51
  And, and I knew in my head, what's that?
• 13:54
  From you to her.
• 13:55
  Yeah.
• 13:56
  Yeah.
• 13:56
  And part of it is like in my head, I knew she doesn't, she doesn't have, she doesn't have it.
• 14:04
  Like she just does not have the energy to both try and stay healthy and give me much in return.
• 14:13
  I knew that.
• 14:16
  Logically.
• 14:17
  Logically, of course.
• 14:18
  Yeah.
• 14:19
  Um, but the, the, the gap was growing in my, in my soul.
• 14:26
  Um, I was feeling more alone.
• 14:28
  I was feeling more, uh, separated from her.
• 14:32
  And, and there were, I mean, there were times that I felt taken for granted.
• 14:39
  There were times that I felt not appreciated, um, not recognized, not seen for everything that I was doing.
• 14:49
  for her.
• 14:51
  Right.
• 14:54
  So, so that was kind of life, you know, kind of before the, before the container.
• 15:01
  And I would say I, I came across, I came across your Instagram sometime that spring, like March, April.
• 15:10
  And I, I could not wait to,
• 15:13
  to get into the container.
• 15:14
  Like I was like, come on, let's go.
• 15:16
  Cause I, I knew, I knew enough of myself and I had done enough work on myself to know that this was a piece I was missing terribly.
• 15:29
  Um,
• 15:30
  I had, during that period of time through the therapy, I had learned, discovered to not be afraid of the pain and the trauma and to be able to face it.
• 15:42
  But I did not know how to contain it.
• 15:44
  I only knew how to suppress it.
• 15:46
  And that's probably the biggest thing I learned in the container.
• 15:52
  So you came across an Instagram post and you got on one of our interviews.
• 15:59
  Yep.
• 16:00
  I think I can actually remember you being on an interview.
• 16:03
  What made you decide to join?
• 16:04
  Like, I know you couldn't wait, but once you got into it and started talking about it, what was it that made the decision for you, Scott?
• 16:12
  Um...
• 16:21
  To me, it was blatantly the missing piece.
• 16:25
  Contained.
• 16:26
  Yeah.
• 16:27
  And the idea of masculine leadership, not in the way that I'd grown up hearing about masculine leadership, which was kind of the...
• 16:42
  evangelical church like that what that was what we both grew up with and and i think that was probably part of what contributed to the fracture um was kind of that that model so i i knew that she wanted more leadership from me
• 17:04
  but I just had no clue what that looked like.
• 17:07
  I had no clue what that would even look like, at least in our dynamic.
• 17:18
  So when you talked about leadership being going first in terms of
• 17:23
  containing emotions and containing, um, first your own and then being a safe place for her to have her emotions contained.
• 17:35
  It's like, I, I know that that's, that's what we're missing.
• 17:40
  So, so yeah, I just, well, whatever it was, I, I, I wanted in, um, truly.
• 17:46
  And I, I think I told you on that interview, it's like, I, I expected this to be a four figure investment, but cause I've, I've, I've been involved in enough masterminds to know, you know, what, you know, what things, what things cost that promise transformation.
• 18:03
  Right.
• 18:04
  So, um, so yeah, I, I just was like, let's go.
• 18:10
  Yeah, I've been a high-ticket coach, and I've sold high-ticket products for a long time.
• 18:15
  This is about access.
• 18:17
  This is about how many men can we get this content to.
• 18:20
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 18:21
  And the growth will come, and the profitability will come someday.
• 18:23
  But right now, it's about how many men can we put in front of this.
• 18:26
  Yeah.
• 18:28
  So you joined.
• 18:30
  And tell me, Scott, so what did you start doing differently?
• 18:35
  What dynamic shifted for you, if any?
• 18:38
  Yeah.
• 18:40
  What was the learning there?
• 18:56
  Take your time, brother.
• 18:57
  Yeah.
• 19:04
  It's probably worth saying now,
• 19:07
  that because I don't think I talked about it.
• 19:11
  And this introduction talked about that.
• 19:14
  Yeah, the previously but um, middle of July, my wife lost lost her battle with breast cancer.
• 19:27
  And the decline was really, really fast.
• 19:31
  Um,
• 19:35
  from kind of the end of May to middle of July was, it was super, super fast.
• 19:44
  Um, so on, on the very, very first, um, session of the brotherhood, honestly, I mean, I'll just say that, that that one piece, I,
• 20:03
  Um, the next six weeks were such, were so crazy for Amy and me that I, I literally only attended two or three live, uh, because she was in and out of the hospital.
• 20:15
  Uh, she had to have a feeding tube.
• 20:18
  She had to have a, uh, a lung drain put in.
• 20:22
  Like it was, we were literally in and out of the hot.
• 20:24
  I think, I think she was in the hospital six of eight weeks starting at the end of May.
• 20:29
  Um.
• 20:33
  So the very, very first session, you had us do an exercise that just rocked my world in the best way possible.
• 20:50
  And there's probably details that I'm going to get wrong because I'm sure that I took some of that in and then it became, you know,
• 21:02
  I made something of it.
• 21:03
  Right.
• 21:03
  So, um, well, that's what we want to hear, Scott.
• 21:06
  What was it for you?
• 21:08
  Yeah.
• 21:09
  So you, you had us, um, you had us bring to mind kind of in a meditative state, um, a really painful experience.
• 21:22
  Um,
• 21:26
  which was fine.
• 21:26
  Like, I've got a smorgasbord.
• 21:29
  You know what I mean?
• 21:31
  You had choices.
• 21:32
  Yeah, a lot of choices.
• 21:35
  And then you had us feel that in our bodies, feel that pain, feel that anguish, whatever it was.
• 21:46
  And then you had us, like, ramp that up.
• 21:49
  10 times and I'm like, oh shit, I've, I've, I've, I've, I've had lots of experience sitting with painful emotions.
• 22:00
  And usually it's like, okay, I'm going to sit with this and I'm going to get through this, you know, not necessarily as fast as possible, but the goal is always to get through it.
• 22:09
  Right.
• 22:09
  The goal has never been to make it worse, to feel it, to, to really feel it.
• 22:17
  And so I was like, okay, this is wild.
• 22:21
  And with the instruction that while you're with your breath and with your imagination making that worse, you are telling yourself, Scott, you're safe.
• 22:32
  You are okay.
• 22:34
  The pain you're feeling is not making you unsafe.
• 22:38
  The pain you're feeling is all inside of you.
• 22:43
  And you can be safe and contained to, to use the word when you're feeling the most intense internal pain that you can possibly feel.
• 22:58
  And I was like, holy shit.
• 23:01
  That, I mean, I think I said this already, but I could have left the container right then, and that would have been enough to change my life forever.
• 23:15
  But then you had us do the opposite, where you had us find a pleasurable or a good positive feeling.
• 23:30
  And do the same.
• 23:32
  And what was kind of wild, at least for me, is that that was way more difficult than sitting with the pain.
• 23:47
  Partly because, um, again, referring back to the Brene Brown's talking about turning off your emotions.
• 23:56
  I, for the past five, six years, that has been the thing that has been true in my experiences, that it's like all of those, all of the painful experiences and all of the pain, like the negative emotions, I started to feel them and be okay with feeling them.
• 24:15
  But the more positive ones did not work.
• 24:18
  didn't come along for the ride.
• 24:20
  It's like they were, they were the caboose way, way out there.
• 24:24
  Of course I would feel happy.
• 24:26
  Of course I would feel joy.
• 24:28
  Of course I would feel peace or contentment, but they like, they were very small blips on the radar.
• 24:36
  And so that, that kind of, that was a mirror for me.
• 24:42
  And it was also a, a,
• 24:47
  it became something that could be a paradigm to reacquaint myself with those positive emotions where I could on a regular basis, go find those and bring them in into my body in a way that was real and authentic.
• 25:10
  And I can give you an example.
• 25:12
  Please.
• 25:16
  In the middle of May, like two weeks after we started the container, my wife planned a birthday party for me.
• 25:28
  a 60th birthday party.
• 25:30
  And so...
• 25:31
  Which, by the way, I can't believe you're 60.
• 25:33
  You look fantastic.
• 25:35
  Just so you know.
• 25:36
  It's wild.
• 25:37
  I don't understand it.
• 25:40
  I know for certain that I don't look 60.
• 25:43
  Some mornings I do feel 60, but in general, I don't.
• 25:48
  I mean, this is all natural.
• 25:51
  I don't do anything in my hair.
• 25:53
  I don't have a skin regimen.
• 25:55
  Like, I just...
• 25:57
  I don't, genetics don't, I don't even know.
• 26:02
  And so my wife planned this amazing 60th birthday.
• 26:05
  I had friends come from Alaska.
• 26:07
  I had friends come from Southern California.
• 26:10
  Like I had a ton of people show.
• 26:12
  We had like 50 people at my house for my birthday.
• 26:21
  And so one of the things I did was,
• 26:24
  in order to kind of reacquaint myself with the positive emotions was I sat with the RSVP list.
• 26:40
  And I went through every person that was coming.
• 26:47
  I closed my eyes and I
• 26:50
  remembered memories, and I remembered things that we did together, and I remembered...
• 26:58
  I was really basically touching how they loved me, which is...
• 27:12
  probably the deepest core wound that I have from my childhood is not feeling loved and feeling rejected and abandoned by both my parents, but in different ways.
• 27:31
  And so that
• 27:35
  that was, that was like a revelation is like, I can actually start to re re introduce and reacquaint myself with joy and happiness again.
• 27:45
  That's rooted in feeling loved.
• 27:57
  Which is incredibly powerful.
• 28:00
  And it's something that,
• 28:03
  I feel incredibly grateful both to you and to the brotherhood that I was able to make that discovery.
• 28:14
  To actually have a very... Something that just fucking worked, right?
• 28:25
  It's not like I'm not trying to imagine something.
• 28:28
  I'm not faking it till I make it.
• 28:30
  I'm actually...
• 28:32
  reaching out to those experiences and, and holding them and bringing them in and sitting with them and not dismissing them and not just moving on.
• 28:45
  Um, so that first week was, um, just fucking magic for me.
• 28:53
  Hmm.
• 28:55
  Um, and I think that,
• 29:02
  even as, um, even as the container progressed and we were in and out of the hospital, um, I could feel, I could feel the, like the triggers of resentment.
• 29:22
  It was like, I'm, I'm desperate for this content.
• 29:26
  Um,
• 29:28
  I'm desperate to try and heal our marriage.
• 29:35
  And I know it starts with me, but taking care of her, it just wasn't possible.
• 29:44
  Like, like there were several times we were in the hospital or we were on the way to the hospital, um, kind of a wild story, Alex is that.
• 29:56
  The day of my birthday, the day of my birthday party, there's 50 people at my house.
• 30:04
  And that morning, and Amy had just gotten out of the hospital like on Wednesday for I forget what.
• 30:15
  But that morning, that Saturday morning, she woke up and she's like, I think I have pneumonia.
• 30:21
  Oh, geez.
• 30:24
  And I'm like, okay.
• 30:26
  And so we called the ER, well, not the ER, the urgent care.
• 30:34
  And basically, you know, they asked her a bunch of questions.
• 30:38
  And so that like eight o'clock the morning of my party when 50 people are showing up,
• 30:44
  we're on the way to the urgent care.
• 30:48
  Fortunately, we have like an amazing support system.
• 30:51
  So her mom and her sister and, and a couple of my friends were like, no problem.
• 30:55
  We got this.
• 30:57
  And like, it all worked out.
• 30:58
  She was home and it was, it was kind of the last beautiful gift that she gave me was, was that birthday party.
• 31:10
  And it was, it's really kind of the last time that any of us really saw her
• 31:14
  in her element, healthy, um, relatively speaking energy, uh, happy, um, because it would be the, the beginning of June where she needed to have a feeding tube put in kind of a long story.
• 31:36
  She, um, for some reason, when they did one of the biopsies that they did
• 31:46
  it triggered something in her esophagus, which basically closed it up so that her esophagus was barely the size of a dime.
• 31:56
  It was like three or four centimeters, five centimeters.
• 32:01
  And so she couldn't eat.
• 32:04
  She couldn't even drink because anything that she would swallow would just go down to about her sternum and then just collect there.
• 32:13
  And so obviously some would drain down, but, but it would trigger, you know, coughing and throwing up.
• 32:20
  And it was just, it was pretty violent.
• 32:21
  So like early June is when she had to have a feeding tube put in.
• 32:26
  And that really was kind of like the beginning of the end for her physically.
• 32:34
  And again, it was something where looking back now,
• 32:41
  And knowing what I know about hospice, because that would come later, her body was already, I think, in the process in early June of dying.
• 32:50
  She wasn't hungry anymore.
• 32:52
  She wasn't thirsty.
• 32:54
  And everything I was doing was trying to keep her alive, right?
• 32:58
  Because at that point, we were still trying to, you know, maybe extend her life three, six months.
• 33:04
  So...
• 33:08
  you know, my, my entire world was like, okay, well, there's no feeding schedule.
• 33:13
  There's now, um, you know, hydration schedule.
• 33:17
  Um, I got, had to fight the insurance company to get an, uh, an in-home IV set up.
• 33:25
  Um, and, and here's, here's really where I'd say the, that practice from the first week
• 33:35
  really made the difference.
• 33:37
  And I will just say we had, we had space to do one ceremony together.
• 33:43
  Just one.
• 33:45
  After that, it was like, just, she wasn't like, we just couldn't.
• 33:53
  And like, I, I still have,
• 33:57
  I have my notes that I wrote down right here of my, you know, what I, how I wanted to lead the detainer, um, or the ceremony.
• 34:10
  And it was, it was, it was really powerful.
• 34:14
  It was really, um, really, really amazing.
• 34:20
  And afterwards she said, I'm skeptical, but I'm hopeful.
• 34:25
  Um,
• 34:27
  And that was, that was it.
• 34:33
  But I will say that probably the biggest, the biggest influence from that time, from early June to the time that she died in the middle of July, the biggest gift was, and I just have to say, it was the last gift that I was able to give her was containment.
• 34:54
  Containment.
• 34:58
  Because caregiving at that point got really intense.
• 35:02
  I can imagine, Scott.
• 35:03
  I mean, I'm like feeling it in my body as you're sharing, brother.
• 35:08
  Sounds like the level of intensity was like beyond a 10.
• 35:14
  Yeah.
• 35:14
  I mean, I still have the...
• 35:20
  I, we needed to track what she was drinking.
• 35:23
  We needed to track what she was eating.
• 35:25
  I have, I have a yellow pad of every single day, you know, the schedule of her feeding, the schedule of her fluids, the schedule of her meds.
• 35:36
  Um, and like, I was like, I'm not going to miss a thing.
• 35:40
  You know what I mean?
• 35:41
  It's like, I'm, I'm, I'm on it.
• 35:43
  Um, and it was incredibly intense.
• 35:47
  Yeah.
• 35:48
  And I'd say that where masculine containment came into the picture was that as I was just
• 36:15
  as I was literally emptying myself to take care of her, um, I was able to do it from a place of, I just call it pure love and pure care without any of the resentment that had been building over the last years.
• 36:39
  five years of taking care of her from, from other things from the long COVID and during her early stages of cancer, including all of the doctor visits and including all of the chemo visits and including the surgeries and including the radio, like all of that.
• 36:59
  Um, I was able to, when I started to feel those triggers of the,
• 37:08
  like there's nothing coming back.
• 37:10
  You know what I mean?
• 37:12
  There is the occasional thank you.
• 37:16
  But there's, there's, there's, there's nothing she could, could do.
• 37:20
  Like, like there's as far as like partners, like it was all one way.
• 37:23
  Yeah.
• 37:25
  And, and whatever resentment, whatever frustration, whatever I was feeling about all the things I wasn't doing in my business, all the things that, that were, that I felt were slipping through my hands.
• 37:40
  Um, and that I was losing her, like all of that was, was inside of me.
• 37:47
  Um, and in those moments, um,
• 37:52
  I was able to say to myself from that first week and the brotherhood, Scott, you're safe.
• 38:02
  You're okay.
• 38:05
  There's something there.
• 38:06
  There's something inside of you that is feeling this deficit.
• 38:11
  It doesn't mean that the deficit's not real, but right now it's,
• 38:15
  Adult you is going to have to give and make up that deficit to whatever is being triggered inside of you because it goes back to nine-year-old Scotty where you're feeling this deficit and it's making you afraid or it's making you angry.
• 38:30
  It's making you resentful.
• 38:32
  And in that moment, and in those moments, I literally felt like I could take a breath in and I could visualize myself getting bigger.
• 38:42
  I was expanding so that I could contain whatever that emotion was, whatever that trigger was, so that whatever I was giving in terms of care to Amy, it was not tinged by that.
• 39:00
  Yeah.
• 39:02
  was something that she noticed.
• 39:04
  There was something that she could feel.
• 39:08
  She said so to me and she also said so to her friends.
• 39:13
  In fact, she said so to her, her brother, who's actually one, one of my best friends.
• 39:22
  He said to her at one point, it's like, man, it seems like Scott has leveled up.
• 39:30
  Um, in how he's taking care of you, something like that.
• 39:34
  And she said, you have no idea.
• 39:36
  It's like he's 10 X his, his love and care for me.
• 39:41
  And it was because whatever I was, whatever I was expressing to her was coming from a place of containment and not a place of deficit.
• 39:53
  And.
• 40:05
  the last six weeks, again, once, I think, I think once she had the feeding tube, you know, there was,
• 40:19
  I think that there was, well, we knew that there was fluid being produced from the cancer in her upper chest wall.
• 40:29
  That's what was collapsing her esophagus.
• 40:33
  The next thing that happened was she had fluid on her lungs.
• 40:37
  And so she had to go get, I think it's called a thoracentesis.
• 40:42
  I've tried to get all these medical words out of my head.
• 40:44
  But like every... You don't have to remember the words.
• 40:49
  It was like some doctor.
• 40:50
  That's not what that's called.
• 40:53
  No, we'd have to go in and, you know, with a big, big needle and, you know...
• 40:59
  drain that liquid and, and, um, sometimes it was, it was as much as a liter.
• 41:04
  Sometimes it was two liters.
• 41:06
  So picture two, like a two liter bottle.
• 41:10
  Um, that's, they were draining it from her lungs and then, um, shit, dude, this is, this is wild.
• 41:19
  Um, um,
• 41:24
  Her birthday was June 24th.
• 41:26
  That's when she found the mass, you know, in 2024.
• 41:34
  And my youngest son happens to live in Australia.
• 41:38
  And early June, we said, we don't know how much time we have left with mom.
• 41:43
  Could be three months, could be six months.
• 41:46
  Would you consider moving back, you know, for the next six months to a year?
• 41:52
  Yeah.
• 41:53
  Um, and so to his credit, um, he and his, he and his wife did, and she happened to, he happened to be here the day before her birthday.
• 42:05
  So he arrived on the 23rd of June.
• 42:09
  And he said to me, should I wait and just surprise her for her actual birthday?
• 42:13
  And I said, no, we have no idea like what's going to happen.
• 42:18
  So he came the day he flew in, jet lagged and everything.
• 42:23
  And it was just, it was truly amazing.
• 42:29
  But what's wild is that that night, um, like literally that night, the day before her birthday, um,
• 42:38
  her oncologist called and said, I need you, whatever you're doing right now, you need to stop and go to the ER because there is fluid around your heart.
• 42:47
  That is, is that is so dangerous.
• 42:51
  Like you can't wait till morning.
• 42:52
  And so that night we went into the ER, she had to have a drain basically put in, into the lining around her heart because there was fluid getting produced around there.
• 43:04
  Um, so, so,
• 43:08
  that was again, I'm kind of getting, getting into the weeds, but all that to say is that that next, you know, a couple of weeks, three, three weeks was just the most intense period imaginable.
• 43:23
  Um, and, um, she went on hospice care basically on like somewhere on the 11th or 12th of July.
• 43:32
  And then she was gone, um,
• 43:36
  July 19th.
• 43:38
  So yeah, I think that I think that containment was the last gift I was able to give her.
• 43:56
  Man, thank you for sharing that with us, Scott.
• 44:02
  Yeah, I'm kind of at a loss for words, brother.
• 44:06
  It sounds like such an intense journey, but I think it's something that all of us as men can learn from because one of the things that men often tell me or project around this work is that I'm doing all the work and there's no reward.
• 44:26
  Yeah.
• 44:27
  You know?
• 44:28
  Yeah.
• 44:28
  And why would I do all the work?
• 44:30
  Why should I do everything?
• 44:31
  Why do I have to do all of it?
• 44:32
  Yeah.
• 44:32
  Yeah.
• 44:34
  And you and I both know that's coming from a young place.
• 44:36
  Yeah.
• 44:37
  You know, it's coming from a young, wounded place of seeking fairness and justice and, you know, having resentment.
• 44:47
  What does it mean to you now that you were able to do the work to get it to the place where Amy was said, you know, that you 10x'd your capacity in that extraordinarily difficult time?
• 45:00
  Like, what is that worth to you now?
• 45:02
  Mm-hmm.
• 45:13
  I'd say there's two things and that's a really good question.
• 45:18
  It's not one of my standard ones, Scott.
• 45:20
  Yeah.
• 45:23
  I'd say that, um, I'd say that being able to love her in a way that she deserved in those final weeks is,
• 45:43
  without, without my baggage coming through.
• 45:47
  Um, like it was obviously it, that period was insanely intense for me, for my family, for my kids, for my mother-in-law, for her sister and her brother.
• 46:06
  Like we had a bunch of people here and it was just intense, but, um,
• 46:10
  but it was intense for her, right?
• 46:12
  Like she's experiencing this in a way where at some point, like her ability to communicate, just, I mean, everything just fell off a cliff.
• 46:26
  Um, and so being able to give her that gift in her final weeks where she was not having to deal with,
• 46:40
  any of my bullshit.
• 46:42
  She was not having to deal with my resentment or my anger or my whatever.
• 46:51
  And I'm sure, I'll just say, I'm sure it came out at some point, you know, I'm not, I'm not definitely.
• 46:56
  There was no perfection.
• 46:57
  Of course.
• 46:57
  Yeah.
• 46:58
  No perfection, but let's not, yeah.
• 47:00
  Let's not even strive for perfection, please.
• 47:02
  Yeah.
• 47:02
  No, especially given what you had going on.
• 47:04
  But so, so I would say that giving her that gift, I feel,
• 47:11
  Like when I look back and, um, man, there's, there's obviously there's things you wish you could have said or done or like, like there's.
• 47:27
  I have a, I have a weird relationship with regret.
• 47:34
  Um, I don't necessarily regret things too much.
• 47:38
  Um.
• 47:40
  I can be hurt by them, but, but I don't have, I don't have a lot of space in my, in my makeup for, for regret.
• 47:51
  But I think that looking back over the last two months of her life and, and, and being able to say, there is no regret.
• 48:01
  Like I have zero, I have zero, zero, zero, zero.
• 48:05
  And how I showed up for her and how I showed up and how I modeled that for my boys.
• 48:11
  That's something that they both, you know, at her memorial, my oldest son got up and just talked about how I showed up for my wife in that time.
• 48:25
  My mother-in-law talked about it.
• 48:28
  as well.
• 48:29
  Um, so that's what that means to me.
• 48:33
  I think it's just like whatever send off, like whatever's on the other side of that veil is like, like that send off was as pure as I could make it humanly speaking.
• 48:51
  And then I'd say the second thing that, that I left with as, as I feel, um,
• 49:01
  I feel proud of myself.
• 49:03
  God, I am so fucking glad you said that, dude.
• 49:06
  I feel really fucking proud of myself for how I showed up.
• 49:11
  And, you know, five years ago, I would never, like those words would never have come out of my mouth.
• 49:19
  Yeah.
• 49:22
  Too much religious baggage.
• 49:24
  Too much shame.
• 49:29
  to be able to like say that genuinely.
• 49:32
  So I think that showing up in that way, in that crucible, like you said, I'm really fucking proud.
• 49:42
  And it also gives me a, I'm just kind of realizing this right now.
• 49:57
  gives me a lot of confidence looking forward to whatever's next, not necessarily relationally.
• 50:05
  Um, cause right now I'm just too fucking raw for, I think anything, uh, relationally, um, but my world has been.
• 50:20
  Yeah.
• 50:32
  Um, my entire world has been blown up and they talk about grief, re-organizing you and D in like the person you were before the death or whatever, that person is no longer, is long, no longer there.
• 50:52
  And the.
• 50:56
  amount of energy that I feel like I have for whatever this next phase is, I just don't have it right now.
• 51:12
  Which is kind of scary.
• 51:13
  I, I,
• 51:18
  what I was doing before in online marketing.
• 51:22
  I, I just don't have the juice to go back to that right now.
• 51:27
  Maybe it'll come later.
• 51:30
  Um, but the thought of going back to what I was doing before, um, makes me just want to sleep.
• 51:40
  Makes me want to go to bed and like sleep for four days.
• 51:45
  Um, but,
• 51:49
  I think that, I think that looking back to that, that period and how I, and how I showed up and, and I think that it gives me confidence in my capability that, that somewhere, somehow I'm going to find whatever it is I need, um, because I've done it before.
• 52:13
  Right.
• 52:14
  Right.
• 52:15
  Um, and I know that there's a path forward.
• 52:19
  I don't know how long it'll take.
• 52:20
  I don't like, I, I don't know the details, but showing up for myself in that period of time and showing up for my wife in that period of time and my, and by extension, my family is, um, yeah.
• 52:36
  I guess in this conversation, I'm realizing that I have the confidence that it'll be there.
• 52:43
  I'll find it at some point, even though grief is its own thing, as I'm discovering.
• 52:54
  And thank you for digging, for digging deep and for feeling that with me, Scott, and with us and letting everyone hear it.
• 53:03
  It's one of the things that I share with men is that when you practice containment on the other side, there's a level of connection to yourself and a level of understanding of yourself and a level of pride and confidence in yourself that maybe you haven't experienced before.
• 53:18
  Absolutely not.
• 53:20
  Yeah.
• 53:20
  Right.
• 53:21
  And like when I look at, when I look at, you know, there's a lot of guys who say this is hard and it's a lot of work and this is difficult.
• 53:29
  And then I look at yours and it's like, okay guys, let's go listen to Scott's podcast.
• 53:35
  Whatever you're saying is hard and difficult.
• 53:38
  You need to listen to this one.
• 53:39
  But, um,
• 53:42
  What's so validating to the work is that even given the intensity and complexity, Jesus, Scott, and the emotionality and the chaos of your situation, what I'm hearing in the story is just like every single day was chaos, or at least most were chaos.
• 54:03
  Even in that, holding containment has resulted in a level of confidence and connection in yourself and understanding of yourself.
• 54:12
  And I'm so glad you said pride because my next comment was going to be, I hope you're proud of yourself.
• 54:18
  Like really, I hope you're proud of yourself because as men, especially men with conditioning, we have this aversion to pride.
• 54:29
  You know, we have this aversion to recognizing ourselves when we actually, you know, step up and do the right thing.
• 54:35
  Or when we have a moment where we can feel pride, we often suppress it and turn it off and make it go away.
• 54:41
  And in doing that, we make it so that we don't connect to that again to do it again.
• 54:45
  And so I'm just so glad that you said that, brother.
• 54:47
  Yeah.
• 54:49
  Yeah.
• 54:51
  I think that another little spur of,
• 54:57
  road from that first, first couple weeks in the brotherhood.
• 55:04
  Um, one of the things that struck for me was, um, the idea of having a ceremony with your, with your wife or your partner, where you're sitting with whatever's here and containing it.
• 55:24
  right?
• 55:27
  Just on a relational level, inviting whatever happens to be in her body, in her spirit, inviting that into, you know, the container that you as a man create for that, for that time.
• 55:44
  They, the idea of a ceremony really struck a chord with me.
• 55:48
  Um, yeah,
• 55:51
  And one of the things that I, I knew and you, you kind of referred to it just a minute ago.
• 56:00
  It's like the idea of, of kind of losing yourself.
• 56:06
  Again, this kind of goes back to my conditioning as a child.
• 56:13
  My identity and my, my safety was in,
• 56:19
  becoming whatever I needed to be to make sure that my mom was okay.
• 56:24
  She was the volatile one.
• 56:25
  She was the one that was uncontained, to just put it out there in terms of our vocabulary.
• 56:34
  And that was a very dangerous thing.
• 56:38
  And so that's where the people-pleasing came from.
• 56:41
  That's where I learned to be whatever I needed to be
• 56:46
  to stay out of trouble, to make sure I was okay with mom, and to stay, you know, to make sure she was okay.
• 56:56
  Because if she wasn't, then the shit hit the fan.
• 57:01
  But in the process, I lost my connection to myself.
• 57:06
  And I would say that over the last, you know,
• 57:09
  50 years.
• 57:10
  It's like, I, I didn't have a connection to myself.
• 57:13
  I had a connection to whatever it is I needed to, to be, or to, to, um, put out into the world in order to be okay.
• 57:24
  And so the ceremony was,
• 57:27
  And I literally took the document of the ceremony.
• 57:33
  I made a copy so that I could start having a ceremony of connecting with myself, of sitting with whatever's here so that...
• 57:52
  So that in connecting with myself, I could, I could have that to, to put out into the world with my wife or my family or whatever.
• 58:01
  Um, and so that was kind of my morning that became over the last, you know, two months that actually four months now.
• 58:11
  So it's almost been two months since she passed.
• 58:13
  So time is like a weird thing for me right now.
• 58:16
  But the two months before she died, I would literally sit out on my back patio with my coffee.
• 58:23
  And I would have a ceremony very similar to what you described, smudging.
• 58:29
  I had incense.
• 58:30
  And I would sit with whatever's here.
• 58:33
  What's the emotion that's here?
• 58:35
  Most mornings, I would just sit out there and cry.
• 58:37
  Mm-hmm.
• 58:44
  because I knew my wife was dying, like right in front of me.
• 58:52
  And so I would sit in that ceremony and try and reconnect with myself, which then, that was the mechanism for containing what was happening in me so that I could contain what was happening with us.
• 59:12
  And I think that
• 59:15
  that the, yeah, reconnecting with the person that you lost in yourself, I'm still figuring that out.
• 59:28
  I don't feel like, like, I feel like I'm like baby steps, like literally baby steps in that process, but it's happening.
• 59:37
  It's happening.
• 59:38
  Right there with you, brother.
• 59:40
  yeah I don't feel like I don't feel like you stopped that process I feel like it's like a ongoing discovery um Scott is a means to kind of bring this home and uh allow you to maybe share if there's a guy out there who is thinking about doing this work um he's in a place of resentment or he's in a place of
• 1:00:07
  you know, having challenges in his relationship, you know, maybe he's feeling like it's too much.
• 1:00:15
  What advice would you give somebody who's considering stepping into containment and stepping into this work?
• 1:00:20
  Yeah.
• 1:00:31
  I think I'd say that
• 1:00:34
  those triggers of resentment or anger or, um, fear.
• 1:00:47
  Those, those things are, I think remnant for me, those things are typically remnants of me as a boy, waiting for someone to come rescue me.
• 1:01:07
  I needed someone to show up for me and it never happened.
• 1:01:13
  I needed someone to love me.
• 1:01:15
  I needed someone to care for me.
• 1:01:17
  I needed someone to love me and accept me and stay with me.
• 1:01:24
  Um, and I think that that desire, I don't think that ever goes away.
• 1:01:34
  And I think that there's a ton of grown men,
• 1:01:38
  really wishing that somebody would show up for them still, because it's that younger, it's the younger boy that's still waiting for that.
• 1:01:48
  And I think that part of the dynamic of men is like, we're required to show up for other people.
• 1:01:56
  We are required to show up in a way that
• 1:02:00
  starts to pave over that and, but also kind of reveal how much we want somebody to show up for us.
• 1:02:09
  And when it doesn't happen, that's where the anger and resentment start to build.
• 1:02:17
  But I think that the thing that I would say is like, at this point, the only person that can, that can show up for you is,
• 1:02:30
  is you like you, you are the only one that can show up for you now that, that can make up that deficit.
• 1:02:41
  And as a, as the adult grown ass man connecting to that little boy, that's hurt, scared alone.
• 1:02:53
  I don't, I don't understand this dude.
• 1:02:54
  This is so, this is wild to me.
• 1:02:57
  But when I started being able to like connect to that, that younger me and give him what he needed, it was like, I was receiving it back in real time.
• 1:03:11
  Like it's, it's, it's the wildest thing.
• 1:03:14
  Right.
• 1:03:15
  But it's just fucking works.
• 1:03:18
  Um, and so, um,
• 1:03:22
  So I guess I would say that at this point, there's not going to be someone that shows up for you that meets that need other than you.
• 1:03:34
  No one's coming to save you.
• 1:03:35
  No one's coming to make it better.
• 1:03:39
  Even though that's exactly what the little boy inside of us longs for, you get to be the one that rides to the rescue for yourself.
• 1:03:49
  Yeah.
• 1:03:50
  So I think that doing the work of masculine containment, even outside of whatever it might do for your relationships, is the most powerful work I think you can do for yourself.
• 1:04:06
  And I would say you're worth it.
• 1:04:09
  You are worth doing that work.
• 1:04:12
  Um, even if you were abandoned, rejected, uh, left alone, traumatized, abused, whatever you, you are worth someone coming to your rescue.
• 1:04:24
  And at this stage in the game, the only person that can be is you.
• 1:04:29
  That's what I'd say.
• 1:04:32
  And Scott, that was profound, brother.
• 1:04:34
  Um, yeah.
• 1:04:38
  Especially the part about, I mean, and I totally like related to what you were saying about how out there and weird it is that when you really do, when you do the work to connect to that younger part of you, you actually do feel it in real time.
• 1:04:55
  Yeah.
• 1:04:55
  Yeah.
• 1:04:56
  You know, like you actually feel that connection that, and like, I don't know the words, the perfect words to put to this, but for me, it feels like peace and validation and connection and love.
• 1:05:11
  Yeah.
• 1:05:12
  And I can be in the middle of like frustration and resentment and irritation and like a trigger and go from that to peace, validation, connection, and love.
• 1:05:20
  Yeah.
• 1:05:22
  Man, thank you so much for closing this discussion with that reflection.
• 1:05:27
  It's beautiful.
• 1:05:28
  Yeah, thank you.
• 1:05:29
  And Scott, thank you for recording this at such a time of vulnerability and such a time of grief and raw feelings and emotions.
• 1:05:41
  I think...
• 1:05:42
  Men are going to be touched by this.
• 1:05:44
  I want to have as many men as possible hear this podcast and hear our discussion.
• 1:05:49
  And just want to deeply express my gratitude for you and thank you for this, man.
• 1:05:57
  I appreciate it.
• 1:05:59
  I think that it's, I think it's part of, part of the healing journey, right?
• 1:06:03
  To give words and process.
• 1:06:08
  Um, and, and in a way, this is an exercise in containment itself, right?
• 1:06:12
  Like these things are like, so, so fresh.
• 1:06:17
  Um, I, I cry every day, every day.
• 1:06:23
  And, and,
• 1:06:26
  because it's like those nerves are so raw inside of me.
• 1:06:30
  Um, and I'm no, I have, I'm not afraid to cry, but I also now I have something more I can do with it than just not be afraid of it.
• 1:06:39
  I can expand to meet whatever it is I'm feeling.
• 1:06:45
  Thank you so much, Scott.
• 1:06:47
  Um, if you're listening to this podcast and you related to some of what Scott shared, um, I,
• 1:06:54
  And you know you have those feelings of resentment and being triggered and being moved into a place where things don't feel like you're connected to yourself.
• 1:07:04
  Or maybe you've been in a relationship where you have lost yourself.
• 1:07:08
  Take a minute now and go to thebrotherhoodsociety.com.
• 1:07:11
  Sign up on our page for either our wait list or for an interview.
• 1:07:15
  I'd be honored to meet you in person.
• 1:07:18
  And, yeah, I'd be honored to walk this path with you.
• 1:07:21
  Scott, thanks again, brother.
• 1:07:23
  Of course.