Begin Again with Winston Faircloth

Episode 15: Hair on Fire with Teresa McCloy

Release Movement — A Conversation with Teresa McCloy

All season, listeners have heard her name: the balcony is her image, and the farm in central Illinois where so much of this story happened is her family's farm. Today, you meet Teresa McCloy.

Teresa is the founder of The REALIFE Process, a coach, a certified spiritual director, and the author of Do What Matters: Live from Rest, Not Rush. 

Just before the pandemic, at a mastermind in Franklin, Tennessee, she sat next to a very tall, very frustrated man on a crowded back row and recognized exactly where she had been. She had the courage to say so. Winston credits that moment as the beginning of his path back.

In this conversation, Teresa tells what living with her "hair on fire" looked like, the three quiet minutes that began to change it, and what becomes possible on the far side of lament.

In This Episode

•      "My worth became in my doing": how Teresa's pattern of "everything depends on me" ran through motherhood, ministry, and a decade of walking with her son Eric through addiction, until his death in 2017.

•      "And what am I supposed to do?": the mentor who asked her to sit still for three minutes in a church nursing room, and the emotion her busyness had been holding back.

•      Recognition from the outside: why the biggest gift we can give one another is to say what we see.

•      The back row in Franklin, Tennessee, told from Teresa's side: the armor she saw, the "teddy bear" behind it, and why she says she probably didn't say it gently.

•      Release in Teresa's story: naming and honoring Eric's need to be known, and how grief that has been grieved can become a gift.

•      A high-school senior's question, "How do you deal with grief?", and Teresa's answer: write to your dad.

•      A first step for anyone whose hair is still on fire: Teresa's REST practice, and the invitation to "come away with me."

Featured Poems

Hundreds of poems available at https://myreuniontour.com/my-reflections

•      Tour Day 990: "Slowly" (opening)

•      Tour Day 992: "Next" (closing)

Mentioned in This Episode

•      Teresa McCloy and The REALIFE Process® → https://www.therealifeprocess.com

•      Do What Matters: Live from Rest, Not Rush, Using the REALIFE Process, by Teresa McCloy (now on audio) → learn more here 

•      Rest Notes: A Year of Quiet Noticing, Teresa McCloy's new book  → pre-sale coming Nov 9th

•      Rory Noland, Teresa's mentor

•      Sibyl Towner (Episode 4) and Erica Vinson Stearns (Episode 12)

Resources & Links

•      My Reunion Tour program → https://myreuniontour.com/the-journey

•      Schedule a conversation with Winston → https://chatwithwinston.com

•      My Reflections (poems + photos) → https://myreuniontour.com/my-reflections

•      Subscribe → Audible • Apple Podcasts • Spotify • Amazon Music

•      Search for "Begin Again with Winston Faircloth" in your favorite podcast streaming app

If This Episode Resonated

If today's conversation stirred something in you — visit https://chatwithwinston.com. Schedule a 30-minute, free chat with Winston. An honest conversation about where you are right now. And if today's episode resonated — share this episode with them. You're right where you're supposed to be.

About Begin Again

Begin Again is a companion to the My Reunion Tour program — a faith-based journey for people in the second half of life who sense that the identity they've been carrying no longer fits. Each episode moves through one of four movements of the soul: Remember. Recognize. Release. Reunite. Season One's sixty stories of perseverance and starting over remain in the feed. There is no wrong place to start.

• (00:00) - Intro

Episode 14: The Grief I Skipped

Release Movement

Nothing is released until it has first been thanked and grieved. Episode 13 was about the thanking. This episode is about the grief.

Winston names the four parts of the Release movement for the first time: name/honor, grieve/lament, befriend/forgive, and bless/serve. 

Then he sets two griefs side by side. 

When his father's health declined, he stepped away from work and walked with him every day until he died in April 2025, leaving nothing unsaid. But when his mother died some fifteen years earlier, he moved straight into caretaking for his dad and never let himself grieve her. 

It took a fourth pass through the oneLife Maps for him to notice.

That discovery opens a wider lament: for what his loyal soldier cost him, and for the boy who had to make a plan no child should have to make.

Spiritual director Sibyl Towner returns, and listeners hear from Teresa McCloy for the first time, ahead of her full conversation next episode.

In This Episode

•      The four parts of Release: name/honor, grieve/lament, befriend/forgive, bless/serve.

•      "Forever": a poem written two weeks after Winston's father died, and what grief looks like when nothing is left unsaid.

•      The grief Winston skipped: how caretaking for his father became a very good reason never to stop and grieve his mother.

•      Sibyl Towner on "tear soup," and why one eight-week course never finishes grief.

•      The valley map's two questions, "What happened?" and "What did I lose?", and why most of us only ever answer the first.

•      What the vow cost: marriages, closeness, a father's retirement party, and "the room that never got used."

•      Lament as faith, not its opposite: Psalm 13, and why "How long, O Lord?" is a prayer.

•      A 4-part practice for writing your own lament: cry out to God, name the complaint, recall when God was near, and ask for what you need.

•      Teresa McCloy on holding your story close until it has been grieved.

Featured Poems

Hundreds of poems available at https://myreuniontour.com/my-reflections

•      Tour Day 937: "Forever" (opening)

•      Tour Day 940: "Mom" (closing)

Mentioned in This Episode

•      Sibyl Towner, spiritual director and co-author of oneLife Maps™ (heard in Episode 4)

•      oneLife Maps™, the Valley Experiences map (introduced in Episode 3) → https://byf.onelifemaps.com/digitalmaps

•      Psalm 13

•      Teresa McCloy, founder of The REALIFE Process® (full conversation in Episode 15) → https://www.therealifeprocess.com

Resources & Links

•      My Reunion Tour program → https://myreuniontour.com/the-journey

•      Schedule a conversation with Winston → https://chatwithwinston.com

•      My Reflections (poems + photos) → https://myreuniontour.com/my-reflections

•      Subscribe → Audible • Apple Podcasts • Spotify • Amazon Music

•      Search for "Begin Again with Winston Faircloth" in your favorite podcast streaming app

If This Episode Resonated

If today's conversation stirred something in you — visit https://chatwithwinston.com. Schedule a chat with Winston. An honest conversation about where you are right now. And if today's episode resonated — share this episode with them. You're right where you're supposed to be.

About Begin Again

Begin Again is a companion to the My Reunion Tour program — a faith-based journey for people in the second half of life who sense that the identity they've been carrying no longer fits. Each episode moves through one of four movements of the soul: Remember. Recognize. Release. Reunite. Season One's sixty stories of perseverance and starting over remain in the feed. There is no wrong place to start.

• (00:00) - Welcome

Episode 13: Honoring by Name
Release Movement

At the end of Episode 12, Winston made a promise: to show what it looks like to honor, by name, specifically and out loud, what a pattern built in you before you ask it to stand down. This episode keeps that promise.

Winston sets the record straight on how his discharge speech came to be, from a reading assigned weeks before the Effingham retreat, to a blank page on the porch, to the nerve-wracking moment he first let someone else read it. 

Spiritual director Sibyl Towner returns with the story of handing The Springs to its next generation of leaders: speaking words of release before she could fully live them, and letting those words ask her a question. Then Winston names, one by one, what his loyal soldier built, and invites you to do the same.

In This Episode

• Why honoring is "re-membering": gathering the fragments of a life and saying thank you before ever saying goodbye.
• From the page to a witness: the vertical and horizontal "shape of the cross," and why honoring eventually needs a village, even a village of one.
• Sibyl Towner on releasing a place she helped build, the grandparent's posture of letting go, and the words that asked her, "Are you going to live me out or die me out?"
• Why specific naming matters: the difference between "thanks for everything" and naming what a pattern actually built.
• Winston's loyal soldier honored by name, with two lines from the discharge speech he wrote on the porch.
• A three-part practice for the week: name the need, name what it built, and let someone hear it.
• Why honoring comes before grieving, and grieving before releasing.

Featured Poems

Hundreds of poems available at https://myreuniontour.com/my-reflections

• Tour Day 987: "Re-Member" (opening)
• Tour Day 997: "Honor" (closing)

Mentioned in This Episode

• Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life, by Richard Rohr
• Sibyl Towner, spiritual director and co-author of oneLife Maps (heard in Episode 4)
• The Springs Retreat center, Indiana
• Erica Vinson Stearns (heard in Episode 12)

Resources & Links

• My Reunion Tour program → https://myreuniontour.com/the-journey
• Schedule a conversation with Winston → https://chatwithwinston.com
• My Reflections (poems + photos) → https://myreuniontour.com/my-reflections
• Subscribe → Audible • Apple Podcasts • Spotify • Amazon Music
• Search for "Begin Again with Winston Faircloth" in your favorite podcast streaming app

If This Episode Resonated

If today's conversation stirred something in you — visit https://chatwithwinston.com. Schedule a chat with Winston. An honest discussion about where you are right now.

And if today's episode resonated — share this episode with them.

You're right where you're supposed to be.

About Begin Again

Begin Again is a companion to the My Reunion Tour program — a faith-based journey for people in the second half of life who sense that the identity they've been carrying no longer fits. Each episode moves through one of four movements of the soul: Remember. Recognize. Release. Reunite. Season One's sixty stories of perseverance and starting over remain in the feed. There is no wrong place to start.

Episode 12: This Side of the Transom

Release Movement — A Conversation with Erica Vinson Stearns

A few episodes ago, Winston told the story of page 43: a coach handing him Richard Rohr's Falling Upward with one instruction. If you can't finish the whole book, at least read "Discharging the Loyal Soldier." Today, you meet that coach.

Erica Vinson Stearns has walked alongside Winston in coaching and friendship since that retreat. What Winston didn't know until this conversation is that Erica had been handed the very same passage years earlier, by Sibyl Towner, in her own season of starting over. 

Together they talk about what it actually takes to move from naming a pattern to releasing it, and why no one does that work alone.

In This Episode

• Why Erica chose the Loyal Soldier passage, and the discovery that it had first been offered to her by Sibyl Towner after a divorce in the middle of full-time ministry.
• Honor and grieve: why release begins by naming a way of being and thanking what it gave us, not by skipping straight to letting go.
• Protection that becomes a prison, and how an identity that kept us safe for a season can quietly start to confine us.
• "Do you want to get well?" The question from John 5, and why release requires our own participation.
• Practices of naming: a breath prayer drawn from Genesis, "Let there be light," and learning to notice without judgment what a pattern was protecting, whether fear, approval, or safety.
• Releasing the need for approval from voices we admire, including the expectations of our own inner voice.
• The discharge speech as a rough, aspirational first draft, and why having someone witness it mattered. 
• Erica's image of "the shape of the cross": the vertical work between you and God, and the horizontal work of being heard.
• "I haven't done this yet": a gentler posture for the threshold, and an invitation to befriend and interview our worry.

Featured Poems

Hundreds of poems available at https://myreuniontour.com/my-reflections

• Tour Day 991: "Hidden" (opening)
• Tour Day 998: "Door" (closing)

Mentioned in This Episode

• Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life, by Richard Rohr ("Discharging the Loyal Soldier," beginning on page 43)
• Sibyl Towner, spiritual director and co-author of oneLife Maps (heard in Episode 4)
• John 5:1–9 and Genesis 1:3
• Erica Vinson coaching → https://ericavinson.com

Resources & Links

• My Reunion Tour program → https://myreuniontour.com/the-journey
• Schedule a conversation with Winston → https://chatwithwinston.com
• My Reflections (poems + photos) → https://myreuniontour.com/my-reflections
• Subscribe → Audible • Apple Podcasts • Spotify • Amazon Music
• Search for "Begin Again with Winston Faircloth" in your favorite podcast streaming app

If This Episode Resonated

If today's conversation stirred something in you — visit https://chatwithwinston.com. Schedule a conversation with Winston. An honest discussion about where you are right now.

And if today's episode resonated — share this episode with them.

You're right where you're supposed to be.

About Begin Again

Begin Again is a companion to the My Reunion Tour program — a faith-based journey for people in the second half of life who sense that the identity they've been carrying no longer fits. Each episode moves through one of four movements of the soul: Remember. Recognize. Release. Reunite. Season One's sixty stories of perseverance and starting over remain in the feed. There is no wrong place to start.

Episode 11: The Porch
Release Movement — Solo Episode

Episode Ten traced the four days that led to a truce. Episode Eleven goes back to one specific morning inside those four days — a quiet Sunday, before anyone else was awake — when a decision that had settled quietly the day before turned into actual words on a page. No one assigned this. Winston tells the story of what moved him to write his own discharge speech, inspired directly by a ritual he'd read about: villages in postwar Japan, formally thanking their returning soldiers before releasing them home.

In This Episode

•  Why the idea to write a discharge speech came from a story, not an assignment — postwar Japanese villages holding a ritual to thank and release their returning soldiers, and Winston's realization that no such ritual existed for his own Loyal Soldier unless he became his own village elder.

•  Four lines from the actual letter Winston wrote that morning, quoted directly — including the sentence that broke something open in him: ‘It's lonely inside the stockade, Loyal Soldier.’

•  The distinction Winston draws between writing the letter and holding the ceremony — honoring comes before releasing, and this was the honoring, not yet the release.

•  A second vow made in the writing itself: a promise to God to someday return to the exact place where it all began — a promise that took thirteen months to keep.

•  A look ahead to Episode Twelve, where Winston sits down with Erica Vinson Sterns — his coach that Friday — to hear the transition from her own perspective: what it looks like to move from recognizing a pattern to actually beginning to release it.

•  A note that the full discharge speech will be read in a future episode, in its entirety, at the place where it was eventually spoken aloud — still ahead, since Release is turning out to be the longest movement of the series.

Featured Poems

Hundreds of poems available at https://myreuniontour.com/my-reflections

•  Tour Day 320: “Quietly” (opening)

•  Tour Day 6: “Brave” (closing) — a reflection, not a poem, written less than a week after the porch.

Mentioned in This Episode

•  Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life, by Richard Rohr

Resources & Links

•  My Reunion Tour program → https://myreuniontour.com/the-journey

•  Schedule a conversation with Winston → https://chatwithwinston.com

•  My Reflections (poems + photos) → https://myreuniontour.com/my-reflections

•  Subscribe → Audible • Apple Podcasts • Spotify • Amazon Music

•  Search for “Begin Again with Winston Faircloth” in your favorite podcast streaming app

If This Episode Resonated

If today's conversation stirred something in you — visit https://chatwithwinston.com. Schedule a conversation with Winston. An honest conversation about where you are right now. And if today's episode resonated — share this episode with them. You're right where you're supposed to be.

About Begin Again

Begin Again is a companion to the My Reunion Tour program — a faith-based journey for people in the second half of life who sense that the identity they've been carrying no longer fits. Each episode moves through one of four movements of the soul: Remember. Recognize. Release. Reunite. Season One's sixty stories of perseverance and starting over remain in the feed. There is no wrong place to start.

Episode 10: The War Is Over
The Release Movement, Opening Episode

Recognize ended with a question: what would it look like to formally thank what has carried you this far, and then let it go? Episode Ten begins answering it — not with a technique, but with a true story. Winston takes listeners back to the fall of 2021: a compass that arrived in the mail from a grandmother long gone, a four-day personal retreat built around a friend's daughter's wedding, and the quiet, unglamorous internal war that had to end before any letter could ever be written.

In This Episode

•  The compass — an envelope from Winston's late “Grandmother Alice”, found by his sister among family heirlooms and mailed to him exactly one week before a trip he didn't yet know would matter this much.

•  The real shape of the four days in Effingham, Illinois: a Friday coaching intensive with Erica Vinson Sterns (who assigned Falling Upward, or at minimum its ‘Discharging the Loyal Soldier’ section), Saturday's wedding, a quiet unstructured Sunday, and a Monday coaching intensive with Teresa McCloy — all spent at Teresa and Dale's family farm.

•  Why the crossroads moment doesn't feel like clarity — it feels like a fight — and why the question ‘is this really for me?’ is a signpost, not a warning sign.

•  The distinction between a truce and a resolution: naming that ‘the war is over’ was not yet the letter, not yet forgiveness, and not yet healing — just the decision that a fifty-year-old vow no longer needed defending.

•  A tease toward a future episode: the porch of the little house, a blank journal page, and the first words Winston ever wrote directly to the part of himself that had been standing guard for over fifty years.

Featured Poems
 
Hundreds of poems availble at https://myreuniontour.com/my-reflections

•  Tour Day 593: “Moment” (opening) 

•  Tour Day 995: “Truce” (closing) — written especially for this episode. 

Mentioned in This Episode

•  Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life, by Richard Rohr

Resources & Links

•  My Reunion Tour program → https://myreuniontour.com/the-journey

•  Schedule a conversation with Winston → https://chatwithwinston.com

•  My Reflections (poems + photos) → https://myreuniontour.com/my-reflections

•  Subscribe → Audible • Apple Podcasts • Spotify • Amazon Music 

• Search for “Begin Again with Winston Faircloth” in your favorite podcast streaming app

If This Episode Resonated

If today's conversation stirred something in you — visit https://chatwithwinston.com. Schedule a conversation with Winston. An honest conversation about where you are right now. And if today's episode resonated — share this episode with them. You're right where you're supposed to be.

About Begin Again

Begin Again is a companion to the My Reunion Tour program — a faith-based journey for people in the second half of life who sense that the identity they've been carrying no longer fits. Each episode moves through one of four movements of the soul: Remember. Recognize. Release. Reunite. Season One's sixty stories of perseverance and starting over remain in the feed. There is no wrong place to start.

The Recognize Movement, Closing Episode

Episodes Six through Eight named the vow, told its origin, and honored the Loyal Soldier who carried it. In this episode, Winston tells the story of the day it all finally came into focus — a coaching retreat, a reading assignment he almost skipped, and one page of Richard Rohr's Falling Upward that gave him permission to hold two things at once: gratitude for a pattern that had carried him for decades, and readiness to finally let it go.

In This Episode

•  The story behind page forty-three of Falling Upward — Rohr's ‘Discharging the Loyal Soldier,’ and the post-WWII Japanese ritual (via Bill Plotkin) that gave Winston language for his own recognition moment.

•  Why recognition isn't a single insight but closer to a ritual — honoring what a pattern built, then deliberately releasing it.

•  The Balcony — an image from Teresa McCloy, a future guest on the show — for why you can't see your own life clearly from inside it.

•  Two very different kinds of forced slowing in Winston's life: a retreat he didn't choose, and a consulting practice that went quiet in 2019.

•  Romans 12:2 and the idea of a mind being renewed — not through more effort, but through release.

•  The question Winston is carrying out of the Recognize movement and into Release: what would it look like to formally thank what has carried you this far, and then let it go?

Featured Poems
Read the full poems in My Reflections: https://myreuniontour.com/my-reflections

•  Tour Day 993: “The Wall” (opening)

•  Tour Day 994: “Higher” (closing)

Both poems were composed this week, in the course of writing this episode — and ‘Higher’ independently landed on the exact dance-floor and balcony images the episode is built around.

Books Mentioned in This Episode

•  Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life, by Richard Rohr

•  The Critical Journey: Stages in the Life of Faith, by Janet O. Hagberg and Robert A. Guelich

Resources & Links

•  My Reunion Tour program → https://myreuniontour.com/the-journey

•  Schedule a conversation with Winston → https://chatwithwinston.com

•  My Reflections (poems + photos) → https://myreuniontour.com/my-reflections

•  Subscribe → Audible • Apple Podcasts • Spotify • Amazon Music 

•  Search for “Begin Again with Winston Faircloth” in your favorite podcast streaming app

If This Episode Resonated

If today’s conversation stirred something in you — visit https://chatwithwinston.com. Schedule a conversation with Winston. An honest conversation about where you are right now. And if today’s episode resonated — share this episode with them. You’re right where you’re supposed to be.

About Begin Again

Begin Again is a companion to the My Reunion Tour program — a faith-based journey for people in the second half of life who sense that the identity they’ve been carrying no longer fits. Each episode moves through one of four movements of the soul: Remember. Recognize. Release. Reunite. Season One’s sixty stories of perseverance and starting over remain in the feed. There is no wrong place to start.

Episode Seven told the story of where Winston’s vow of self-sufficiency began. Episode Eight turns and looks directly at the part of him that carried that vow out into the world — the part he calls, borrowing from Richard Rohr, the Loyal Soldier. Before naming what the vow cost, Winston pauses to honor what it built. Then he names the cost — not as shame, but as an honest accounting. The episode closes by turning outward, inviting listeners to ask the same questions of their own Loyal Soldier.

In This Episode

•  Why honoring the Loyal Soldier has to come before naming what he cost — and what the vow of self-sufficiency genuinely built across thirty years.

•  The quieter, undramatic version of Winston’s life that the vow made impossible — not tragedy, but absence.

•  A theological distinction at the center of the episode: the difference between defending a vow, being crushed by it, and simply counting its cost honestly.

•  Four loyal soldier portraits — The Guarded One, The Self-Contained One, The Armored One, and The Achiever Who Arrived — each naming a different way a Loyal Soldier protects, and what that protection quietly costs.

•  The question Winston is inviting listeners to sit with: What has the Loyal Soldier been standing in front of — and what might be on the other side of that door?

Featured Poems

•  Tour Day 598: “Center” (opening)

•  Tour Day 653: “Seen” (closing)

Resources & Links

•  My Reunion Tour program → https://myreuniontour.com/the-journey

•  Schedule a conversation with Winston → https://chatwithwinston.com

•  My Reflections (poems + photos) → https://myreuniontour.com/my-reflections

•  Subscribe → Audible • Apple Podcasts • Spotify • Amazon Music • Search for “Begin Again with Winston Faircloth” in your favorite podcast streaming app

If This Episode Resonated

If today’s conversation stirred something in you — visit https://chatwithwinston.com. Schedule a conversation with Winston. An honest conversation about where you are right now. And if today’s episode resonated — share this episode with them. You’re right where you’re supposed to be.

About Begin Again Podcast

Begin Again is a companion to the My Reunion Tour program — a faith-based journey for people in the second half of life who sense that the identity they’ve been carrying no longer fits. Each episode moves through one of four movements of the soul: Remember. Recognize. Release. Reunite. Season One’s sixty stories of perseverance and starting over remain in the feed. There is no wrong place to start.

Winston’s Recognition Story — Recognize Movement

Episode Six named the Wall and introduced the vow of self-sufficiency at a high level. In Episode Seven, Winston keeps the promise he made at the close of that episode — telling the specific, personal story of where the vow began, what it built across three domains of his life, and what years of spiritual direction and map work eventually helped him see. This is the most interior episode of the season.

In This Episode

•  The “dual life” Winston lived for decades — professionally thriving, personally struggling — and how success in one domain let him avoid facing what wasn’t working in the other.

•  The two-wall structure: the first wall he found a way around, and the second wall — the 2019 collapse of his consulting practice — that removed every remaining exit.

•  The origin of the vow: a decision made at age eight, in his father’s bedroom, that would go on to shape the next five decades.

•  How that vow expressed itself across three domains of Winston’s life — his body, his career, and his relationships.

•  Stage Two of recognition: a second, quieter vow beneath the first — a decision to stop trusting his own inner knowing.

•  The question Winston is carrying into this season, and inviting listeners to carry too: What have you been overriding — and how long have you been overriding it?

Featured Poems

•  Tour Day 636: “Shelter” (opening)

•  Tour Day 910: “Still” (closing)

A Note on This Episode

Some of what Winston shares here — including his experience with weight and a twelve-step recovery program — is personal and was not easy to tell. He shares it not for its own sake, but because naming it clearly is what finally made the deeper pattern visible. If parts of this episode land close to home, that’s worth paying attention to — and worth talking through with someone you trust.

Resources & Links

•  My Reunion Tour program → https://myreuniontour.com/the-journey

•  Schedule a conversation with Winston → https://chatwithwinston.com

•  My Reflections (poems + photos) → https://myreuniontour.com/my-reflections

•  Subscribe → Audible • Apple Podcasts • Spotify • Amazon Music • Search for “Begin Again with Winston Faircloth” in your favorite podcast streaming app

If This Episode Resonated

If today’s conversation stirred something in you — visit https://chatwithwinston.com. Schedule a conversation with Winston. An honest conversation about where you are right now.  And if today’s episode resonated — share this episode with them. You’re right where you’re supposed to be.

About Begin Again Podcast

Begin Again is a companion to the My Reunion Tour program — a faith-based journey for people in the second half of life who sense that the identity they’ve been carrying no longer fits. Each episode moves through one of four movements of the soul: Remember. Recognize. Release. Reunite. Season One’s sixty stories of perseverance and starting over remain in the feed. There is no wrong place to start.

“What If the Life You Crafted No Longer Fits?”

There’s a question I’ve been sitting with for years.  Not a question I invented. A question I lived inside — for a long time, without knowing it had words.

What if the life you crafted no longer fits who you are becoming?

This is the opening episode of the Recognize movement — the second movement of My Reunion Tour. And it begins here: with a question that is already alive in most of us by the time we arrive at midlife. The restlessness. The hollowness. The sense that something we built our days around has gone quiet.

In this episode, I want to name what that feeling actually is. It’s not a malfunction. It’s not a midlife crisis. It has a name — and the name comes from one of the most honest books (The Critical Journey) I’ve read about the journey of faith.

Janet Hagberg and Robert Guelich call it the Wall.

The Wall is the inflection point where the formulas and identities and coping structures that once worked stop working. Not because you failed. Because you’ve arrived at the place where the outer life and the inner life can no longer avoid each other. Where the inward journey — the one you’ve been deferring — becomes unavoidable.

You could avoid this wall. But you can’t go around it. You have to go through it.

This episode also introduces the hidden vow — the unconscious agreement underneath the identity. And it ends with a promise: in the next episode, I’m going to tell you the most personal story I’ve shared on this podcast. Something that happened when I was eight years old. Something that explains everything that came after.

IN THIS EPISODE
•  Why recognition is gradual — a dawning, not a flash — and why relief, not drama, is the emotion when it finally arrives

•  The Wall: the inflection point where former identities and coping structures stop working (from The Critical Journey by Hagberg and Guelich)

•  The key distinction that changes everything: the incident is not the vow — the incident is where the vow was born

•  The vow of self-sufficiency — and the three places it shows up: the body, the career, and relationships

•  The Loyal Soldier revisited: not the origin of the identity, but the response to the vow that deployed him

•  Four portraits of the Wall: the empty nest parent, the caregiver whose role has ended, the person of faith in a dry season, and the achiever whose success arrived hollow

•  A closing poem: Tour Day 721: Trust — the crossroads reframed as continuation

•  A closing question to carry into the week — and a specific tease of what’s coming in Episode Seven

MOMENTS FROM THIS EPISODE

“You could avoid this wall. But you can’t go around it. You have to go through it.”  — Winston Faircloth, drawing from The Critical Journey by Hagberg & Guelich

“The incident is not the vow. The incident is where the vow was born.” — Winston Faircloth, Episode 6

THE CLOSING QUESTION

* What did you decide about yourself in the hardest moment — and are you still living inside that decision?

REFERENCED IN THIS EPISODE

•  "The Critical Journey: Stages in the Life of Faith" by Janet Hagberg and Robert Guelich — the source of the Wall concept

•  Richard Rohr — the Loyal Soldier concept from his book "Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life"

•  The oneLife Maps — the four-map tool from The RealLife Process (Teresa McCloy) referenced throughout the Remember movement

•  Tour Day 731: Search — opening poem

•  Tour Day 721: Trust — closing poem

RESOURCES & LINKS

•  My Reunion Tour program  →  https://myreuniontour.com/the-journey

•  Schedule a conversation with Winston  → https://chatwithwinston.com

•  My Reflections (poems + photos)  →  https://myreuniontour.com/my-reflections

•  Subscribe to Begin Again  →  Audible •  Apple Podcasts  •  Spotify  •  Amazon Music  •  Your favorite podcast app

IF THIS EPISODE RESONATED
If today’s conversation stirred something in you — visit https://chatwithwinston.com. Schedule a conversation with Winston. An honest conversation about where you are right now. And if today’s episode resonated — share this episode with them. You’re right where you’re supposed to be.

ABOUT BEGIN AGAIN
Begin Again is a companion to the My Reunion Tour program — a faith-based journey for people in midlife and the second half of life who sense that the identity they’ve been carrying no longer fits. Each episode moves through one of four movements of the soul: Remember. Recognize. Release. Reunite. Season One’s sixty stories of perseverance and starting over remain in the feed. There is no wrong place to start.