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Begin Again is for people in the second half of life who sense that the identity they've been carrying no longer fits. Host Winston Faircloth — spiritual director, daily poet, and fellow traveler — brings honest conversation, personal story, and original poetry to the journey of remembering, releasing, and returning to who God created you to be. Visit www.myreuniontour.com for more resources.
The Porch. Welcome to Begin Again. If you're new here, this is the release movement of my reunion tour, a faith based journey for people in the second half of life who sense that the identity they've been carrying no longer fits. Last time, I told you about four days I spent in Effingham, Illinois and about a war I didn't know I'd been fighting for fifty years until sometime over those four days, I finally called a truce. I told you the decision carried me out to a porch the next morning.
Winston Faircloth:Today, I wanna take you there. This poem is from tour day three twenty, and it's called Quietly. Before the dawn, the sweetest time of day, stillness, softness, with the expectancy we await. What shall this day bring? What words shall we hear?
Winston Faircloth:What meals shall we share? What miracle shall we witness? Mostly, we rush about missing the moments unfolding before us. Times to be treasure if we just be present. This morning, this day, listen.
Winston Faircloth:For the still small voice, quietly. Sunday morning, coffee in hand, the Porch of the Little House on Theresa and Dale's farm where I'd been staying for all four days. I'd give myself that day for quiet reflection. No agenda, Nothing scheduled. Just space to let everything from Friday's session with Erica settle.
Winston Faircloth:Twilight turning to dawn. That particular kind of silence you only get on a working farm before everyone else is awake. Not empty silence. Full silence. I told you last episode about the truce, about deciding sometime over those four days that a fifty year war inside me was over, even though I didn't yet know what that would mean in practice.
Winston Faircloth:What I haven't told you is what happened when I actually sat down with that decision and a blank page. Days earlier, Erica had pointed me towards falling upward and towards the story on page 43, the one I told you about back in episode nine. Villages in Japan after the Second World War holding a ritual for their returning soldiers. An elder would step forward and speak on behalf of the entire community, thanking the soldier by name for what he'd carried and releasing him from that duty so he could come home as something other than a soldier. I couldn't stop thinking about that ritual, not as history, but as something I was missing because nobody had ever done that for what I came to call my loyal soldier.
Winston Faircloth:There was no village, no elder, no ceremony waiting for him. If he was ever gonna be thanked and released, I understood that morning sitting on the porch that it was gonna have to be me. I was going to have to be my own village elder. So on my own, without an assignment or instructions on how to do it, I decided to write a discharge speech for myself, a letter, not to another person, but to the part of me that had been standing guard for over fifty years without anyone, including me, ever formally thanking him. A blank journal page was sitting in my lap, and a title came before I'd even decided to write one, letting go of the loyal soldier.
Winston Faircloth:I looked at those six little words for a long time before I wrote anything else. And then almost like the decision had already been made somewhere I couldn't see, the words started to flow. I didn't plan what I was going to say. I just started writing this letter to him, the part of me that had been standing guard for as long as I could remember. I wrote, thank you, brave one.
Winston Faircloth:You stepped in when no one else could know our secret. I wanna be honest with you about what that sentence cost me to write, not because of what it says. I'm not gonna get into the specifics of what happened to me as a child today. That story deserves its own space later in this series, and I'll tell it plainly when we get there. Yet what I can tell you today is what this sentence did.
Winston Faircloth:Writing four words, you stepped in when was the first time in fifty years I'd ever addressed that part of myself directly. Not analyzing it, not diagnosing it, spoken like you'd speak to another person in the room. The words just kept flowing. A vow I had made to myself at eight years old, a decision, really, though I didn't have that word for it back then, that if I could ever just become big enough, strong enough, self sufficient enough, nothing like that would ever touch me again. I wrote, your promise came true.
Winston Faircloth:We filled that shirt and then some. No one ever came close to harming us ever again. And then a few lines later, the sentence that actually broke something open in me. It's lonely inside the stockade, loyal soldier. Fifty years of being unreachable.
Winston Faircloth:Fifty years of protection so complete that it also kept out everyone I actually wanted close, dating, intimacy, even my own marriages. I had built exactly what I set out to build. And on that porch, perhaps for the very first time, I let myself feel what it had cost me. This is what I mean when I say honoring comes before releasing. I wasn't ready that morning to let the loyal soldier go.
Winston Faircloth:I wanna be clear about that. Writing a letter is very different from the ceremony. This was the first time I'd ever said thank you, and I meant it. Something happened in the writing that I didn't expect. Somewhere in the middle of that letter, without deciding to, I made a second promise.
Winston Faircloth:This time, not to the loyal soldier, but to God. I vow to one day return to the exact place where this all began and to release this to the one who bears all our burdens. I didn't know when. I didn't know how. The discharge itself felt impossibly far away.
Winston Faircloth:Someday, somehow, and not anytime soon is that actual sentence that was in my spirit. I remember thinking that if I ever said the words from my discharge speech out loud in an actual place, I wanted to say them with conviction and from experience and not just aspirational words on a page. What I wanna name for you today is this. The letter itself is not a release. Yes.
Winston Faircloth:It was the honoring that makes real release possible. Please don't try to skip this step because if you go straight to letting go without first thinking whatever you've been caring for what it built and protected, letting go doesn't hold because I know I've tried the softer, easier way, and it never works. So here's what I'm inviting you to consider this week for whatever your version of the loyal soldier has been. What would it look like to write him or her a letter? Not to fix anything, but just to say thank you and really mean it.
Winston Faircloth:The interesting part of this journey is you don't have to know what comes next. I never did either. It took me thirteen months before I was ready for what came next. But what I do know is that this experience of declaring the truce, saying the war's over, and then through writing in a journal, a discharge speech in my own, it really propelled me forward. It challenged me in a way to write down beautiful words that one day I'd hoped to embody.
Winston Faircloth:I knew at the time I was writing, I was so far away. But one day, somehow, somewhere, I would be able to say it with deep conviction and deep experience. So today, I'd like to close with a reflection. This is not a poem. This comes from tour day six, which was less than a week later after leaving the porch.
Winston Faircloth:Here's what I wrote in my journal. We all know dozens of professions where bravery is a job requirement. Loyal soldiers, first responders, frontline workers, all bring their full measure of being fearless. How about us in our normal day to day lives? Have we ever been brave?
Winston Faircloth:It is toughest to be brave when the stakes are high, emotions are raw, and when we're tired. And yet, there are also crossroad moments in life, a pause, a split second to decide whether to speak or remain silent, knowing deep down that this moment will never be repeated. One, path safe, the other surrender. Today was one of those moments. Perhaps Mandy Hale said it best.
Winston Faircloth:It's okay to be scared. Being scared means you're about to do something really brave. And when those words were offered back to me, I knew. I was scared, but then I was brave. Today, I wanna leave you with the same question that I carried while I was on the porch.
Winston Faircloth:But as I left the porch out of Effingham and coming back home to Tampa, the question was, what have you been carrying that has never once been thanked? What have you been carrying that has never once been thanked? Don't rush past the thanking and honoring to get to the letting go. I promise you, the letting go will still be there when you're ready. Next time, we're gonna be sitting down with Erica Benson Sterns, the coach who was with me for that first intensive on the Friday before all of this.
Winston Faircloth:And we're gonna talk about the transition itself from her perspective, what it looks like to move from recognizing a pattern to beginning to actually release it. And later in this movement, I'm gonna read you the Discharge speech in full, every word of it, the way I eventually spoke it out loud in a place I never expected to return to, written that morning from the porch. That's still ahead of us. Released as a movement of the My Reunion Tour takes longer than you expect, and I don't wanna rush past any part of it. So if today's conversation has stirred a desire for you to do this work, I'd love to walk that path with you.
Winston Faircloth:If you're ready to begin, visit myreuniontour.com or review the show notes for resources, including a link to schedule a conversation with me. Just an honest conversation about where you are and whether this is the right season for you. Thanks for listening to the Begin Up Again podcast. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcast, whether that's Apple Podcast, Audible, Amazon Music, Spotify, anywhere you listen. Just use the search term begin again with Winston Faircloth on your favorite podcast streaming app.
Winston Faircloth:Finally, if today's conversation reminded you of someone who's never let themselves say thank you to the part of them that's been standing guard, make sure to share this episode with them. I'm Winston Faircloth, and you're right where you're supposed to be.