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Manhood often feels like navigating through uncharted territory, but you don't have to walk alone. Join us as we guide a conversation about how to live intentionally so that we can join God in reclaiming the masculine restorative presence he designed us to live out. Laugh, cry, and wonder with us as we explore the ins and outs of manhood together.
The Hammer Throwing Doctor
00:00
Hey you guys, welcome back to the podcast. This is Chris Bruno and together I am with Jesse French. Jesse, so good to have you. And today you guys, we are joined by our good friend, Drew Loftin. Drew, welcome to the podcast. Yeah, it's really good to have you. Drew is on staff with restoration project. He is our Grove chaplain.
00:23
and gives leadership to our Grove Initiative. And there are lots of other things about Drew Loftin that we are going to be exploring here today. So Drew, it is great to have you on the show. And so welcome. I would love to start with this first tee up of a question. Before joining staff with Restoration Project, and even now that you're on staff with Restoration Project, you still do this now, but even before Restoration Project, can you just give us a little
00:53
Like highlight of the various careers that you have had. Yeah. I think so professionally as far as a pain job, I'd say medical has been the last since 2006. So graduated 2006 started in medicine shortly after them started in nephrology and internal medicine and did that for six years and then went into hospital medicine. And then
01:21
for the past nine years working internal medicine at a psychiatric hospital and a alcohol and drug rehabilitation, rehab hospital. And then prior to that, I did that professionally for a while, did that professionally while I was doing medicine as well for a short season as well. What was your event, Drew?
01:51
Hammer throw after college. Yeah. So you guys listening to the podcast, you have to recognize what just happened is that we have both a professional hammer and discus thrower, doctor, and chaplain all wrapped in one person. Yeah. He's on the show today. So welcome, Drew. It's great to have you. Super fun.
02:14
Drew, as we get to know you a little bit more, I'd love for us to kind of talk through, like in your world right now, you are walking through some really dark places with people, not you're walking through dark places, but you're walking through their dark places with them in some of the worst moments of their lives where they are hospitalized for some kind of psychiatric need or some kind of drug and or alcohol rehabilitation need. So,
02:42
What does a day in the life of Drew Loftin look like when you're there at the, you know, doing your rounds as a doctor? Yeah. And I would say that this, that has shifted for me pretty dramatically from the beginning to where I am now, largely due to just a lot of my own work. But so I'll round it one or two hospitals each day that I work. I'll see between usually between 15 to
03:11
to 40 patients per hospital, or I guess in total between the two hospitals. Rounding, so each hospital has different units. So I have the hospital I work at, the larger hospital down in Lewisville, there's a major depressive unit, there's a couple of intensive treatment units with psychosis and bipolar, and there's an adolescent unit with mostly depression. Then there's a drug and alcohol rehab section.
03:40
And then the other hospital is just strictly alcohol and drug rehab. So I, I'm responsible for the care of each of those patients, um, medically, just keeping them stable during their stay. So doing assessments just to make sure they're appropriate to be in the hospital first of all, and then doing assessments and follow-ups just throughout the state to keep them stable. So an action contact time is usually pretty short, which has been a big struggle for me is I think, especially with.
04:10
this process of doing my own work and just knowing the depth of the trauma involved. I think I was probably not aware of how much trauma was actually involved in those patients being in that setting in the first place. And so I think I have a better insight in that, a little bit more empathy, but also limited time to engage with them. And so I think that's my main struggle with going in and seeing that.
04:36
number of patients is I just don't have enough time to really engage at the level that I want to. I'm curious, Drew, how that perspective shift of you saying, look, I've become more aware of how much trauma is part of the experience of the people that you treat. How has just even that awareness
05:00
shifted how you step into those spaces. And I hear you say there's a challenge of wishing there was more interaction time with them, but even just that shift of, oh, trauma is a huge part of the equation for these people and the situation they find themselves in. Yeah, how do you think even that perspective helps shape how you step into some of that work? I think when I first started, I had maybe a different perspective of
05:28
I didn't see my own trauma. I didn't see my own story containing the trauma. And so I almost had like the people that I was treating in this hospital were kind of like in a different category almost where I really just couldn't understand. I didn't, I couldn't understand. I guess I couldn't relate. I had more trouble relating to why they're even there in the first place until I began to see my own. And so
05:56
Yeah, did that answer the question? Yeah, I think that's a great answer of it feels like you're saying there's the division, kind of they're dividing the neat boundaries between them and you feels like those have faded and there's actually a shared sense of what they've gone through. Not identically, right? But yeah, that boundaries is not there. More of an understanding of what they're actually going through. I think when I was denying my own trauma,
06:24
I had more difficulty seeing their trauma and being empathetic to that. Drew, can you share a little bit about what you mean in denying your own trauma? What was that like for you? What happened there? Yeah, I think my story, the way that I always looked at it was like I had a pretty good childhood. Nothing significant happened. So I think the categorization of trauma for me was like, if it wasn't something big,
06:51
and obvious than it wasn't traumatic. And I think my story was littered more with the more subtle traumas, the more recurring traumas of, for me, more of neglect and abandonment, which I just wasn't aware of. I didn't have a huge traumatic occurrence or event in my story that was just obvious in that way. And so. Yeah, and so how did you become aware? For me, it was
07:21
Well, I joined a brotherhood group about nine years ago, based on this story where we began to enter into each other's stories around securities. I think for me, I've had to contain so many of my emotions and feelings for so long. I didn't actually know that I could actually share them with people. I didn't know it would be safe to share it with people and not have them leave. And so I think when we began to enter into each other's stories,
07:50
we began to share those parts of us, those insecurities, just the pain of what we've experienced for the past 40 something years of life. And those guys weren't actually leaving, they're actually leaning in more when I was doing that. And so for me, that was, I think, just a door to begin to explore those areas that I think I was afraid to explore. I definitely didn't want to do it alone.
08:19
I think that's an important thing to name. I definitely didn't wanna do it alone, and I don't know that you can actually do it alone. And so many men that are part of Restoration Project kind of recognize like, hey, there's something important here, and I love how you just said, I can't. You were afraid that if you shared these things, people would leave. And what you found was that when you shared these things, people leaned in. And the context of brotherhood, the context of being in a community of other men, is what...
08:48
what you're telling us opened the door for you to do some deep healing work onto and for you to become more whole and full in who Drew was designed to be. And it was really in that company of other men. I think that's profound, really profound. And the fear was, if you join this kind of thing, then you will be left, rather than what you found was that you will be found.
09:16
explore some of these things in a healing way. We've talked about the kind of the metaphor, right? But the picture that I have, as you talk about engaging and sharing some of your story with the other men, right? Is just this picture of almost of, they're not leaving you as you said, they'd leaned in, they didn't leave. And actually they're, I would say maybe like advocacy or joining of what God's heart is for you and joining his work kind of on your behalf.
09:45
Is that a way to describe that? That they had a sense of the ways that God was, was and is forming you and they, those other men actually participated with God on your behalf in the ways that they engage your story. I think everybody has like that deep feeling to be, to actually be known and seen. And I think by me allowing them to see those parts of me was also an invitation for them to open up as well. Yeah, so the
10:14
I think in order for me to protect myself in the past, I've had to become somebody else. So I don't even know if I knew who I was when I first started the process. I think I had so many masks on. I was convinced that I was this, but yeah, I think when we started that, when the walls started to come down, that's when I became a little more curious of like, oh, who am I actually? And I think that's where it takes other men.
10:42
And especially in the beginning to start, begin to speak into that. Those are those, these parts that you're revealing right now are parts of your glory. And I think prior to that, I was like, I just didn't reveal those fair enough. And if, if in all, so I wasn't aware of it. So when you said glory drew, what do you mean by that? The way that we reflect the image of price, the way that I think the way that we were designed from the very beginning, before we were born, that poem that was.
11:09
breathed into each one of us, what we were created to be on this earth. I think we were born as, and I think over time, the world comes against that, and we start to lose little pieces of that along the way. And so I think by the time I started into this work, of story work, so many of those pieces were already kind of faded or buried or hidden away, that's why I didn't really know who I was. So did you take us back to the hospital and,
11:37
the patients that you're engaging and kind of recognizing that, you know, 15 to 40 people, we heard your lament that you can't spend more time with them, but now the time that you do have with them, what has shifted inside of you as you are engaging with them? What's different about how you're doctoring? I think in that space where I have limited time, I'd say my presence, my presence isn't guarded. I would say, I would say prior to beginning this work, it was
12:06
Like I had to be stoic, I had to be strong, I had to be tough. I couldn't allow my emotions to come through. So I almost had to be flat during any kind of engagement with them. And so I think the shift in that has been those facades as well as have come down, those emotions have come. So even though it's a pretty limited interaction with them, I'd say it is way more intensely full of those emotions and empathy.
12:36
in that space. And I think just the presence that I bring of my calmness and strength and gentleness, I think I would say that shows up in a more significant way as well. I love that you said that because for a lot of reasons, but one of them is I love that you said presence and you didn't say, well, hey, you know what, over my professional career, because of the trainings and conferences that I've
13:02
I really now have these wonderful therapeutic techniques that I've acquired. And so now I really am able to, you know, do these six or seven steps. Like it's quite the opposite, right? It's, Hey, no, even it's not about this content or information or knowledge that I have. It is, it is at a much simpler, but more beautiful level of, of my presence with people and how I step into that space like that, Drew, I would imagine for those people is
13:32
deeply needed, especially in what they're experiencing is to actually have someone, even for a brief amount of time, to see them well, to offer their presence, not in a flat or guarded way, seems profoundly needed. Yeah, especially in that setting. They don't need more information. I mean, they still need the information, but they need presence. They need to feel like somebody is actually with them. So I would say that witness has been hugely important.
14:01
And to notice too, Drew, that that did not come because you went to a conference or a training on how to be more present with your patients. It came through some of your own personal work, your own personal healing, so that you could bring that restorative presence to them. And that is the, that's what this is all about. That's what Restoration Project is all about is, is ushering men from, from where they are into becoming more that restorative presence in their worlds and in their lives. And here you are with
14:30
patients that are in some of their darkest moments and to bring that kind of restorative presence, I can imagine, transforms even just in a few minutes, being able to be seen and understood and known and not prescribed and not fixed and not content delivered, but seen. That begins to shift, I would say, I would imagine for each person that experiences that towards healing themselves.
14:59
And I love knowing that you're out there doing this, knowing that you're out there, you know, in these, in these places, in these hospitals with these people who need that kind of presence more than, you know, more, more now than any other time in their lives. So yeah. What have you seen, Drew, in, in the other men that, you know, don't tell us their stories. Those are there for, for them to tell. But what have you seen in other men in your brotherhood group over these nine years? What's happened?
15:30
Yeah, I think probably the biggest commonality is just like, say we all feel like we belong. We come back, we've been meeting for nine years now and we come back every week. We know it's a safe place to come to. We know that we will enter that space seen and known and heard. And I would say before that, especially in my world, I didn't have that safety or stability. I didn't have that place.
16:00
what feels like to me, like it feels like a home or family. And so I would say that just for the whole group, the commonality of that individually, I think, I think we come in with different stories and we've had a feeling in different ways. And I could go through each of the guys and point out, but I would say each of us had been impacted in significant ways, each one of us, which has allowed us to show up.
16:30
in our workplaces and in our homes and in our spaces and in more fuller ways. Yeah. And all because men have chosen to be together in their stories. What were you going to say, Jesse? Sorry, I cut you off. Yeah, no, just one of my favorite conversations over the last couple of years was from one of the wives of one of the members in your group who I've gotten to know a little bit. And she just to hear her say from her perspective, not only the shift in her husband, but
16:59
but she's been able to say, look, the other men in the group, as I'm, as I'm friends with them and we do share life together, like I've seen that shift in those other men too. And so just to hear her confirm that and to speak to that just with such an encouragement of, Oh, this, this shift is, is palpable and invisible to all. It's yeah, it's, it's that obvious. Yeah. Well, thanks to you for being part of the podcast today.
17:27
looking forward to having you back in the future. And just thanks for being a hammer throwing psychiatric doctor to bring your presence into those dark spaces. So you guys, he is our growth chaplain. Love to have him on our team at Restoration Project. And hopefully you all can meet Drew at some point, live and in person at one of the things that we're doing that you can come to and make sure that you.
17:53
Check out the website, check out the emails, become part of our list and all that so that you can get information on where you get to meet the hammer throwing doctor. So Drew, thanks so much for being a part of the show today. It's been great to have you. Yeah, thank you guys. Thanks, Drew.