I Say, “I am a Coach!”

My mom and dad divorced when I was about four years old. They did the typical arguing back-and-forth over missed weekends that had been planned and rescheduling holidays. 

All the while, my mom dated toxic muscle heads or overzealous car owners or any combination in between. Some were nice enough, most were assholes trying to accommodate for a broken boy within themselves. 

In my mother’s attempt at creating a family out of desperation, as well as approval from her dying mother by claiming she “liked this one,” my mother would marry the man that would be my stepfather for the next 10 years. 

He was “nice enough.” We got along. He was in the Air Force. Just like my real dad. He was from the South, so it was almost mandatory that I learned to fish and handle a rifle. I thought that was cool. Truth be told there’s a lot of good things that I learned from my stepfather. But, that’s for another story. 

The long and the short of this particular narrative is that my mother and stepfather were fast enabling each other’s addictions post wedding. It was mostly your standard liquid sunshine habit with their best friend Jack. Mr. Daniel’s was always around. Often starting arguments and leaving my mother and stepfather to fight it out. Literally.

Sometimes I’d find myself hiding in my closet underneath my toys and stuffed animals when things got too elevated, too hot and loud, too confusing or too rash or violent. Mostly I’d find myself hiding in my closet when I would actually begin to fear for my mother’s life. 

The thuds, slaps, and punches of violent drunken parents can be a confining and prickly experience for a child to say the least. Paralyzing even. Trying to make sense of it all can steal one’s voice, one’s confidence. Steal away the trust to speak for fear that something may happen to me as well. I would find myself afraid to move. Afraid of what I was hearing. Even more afraid of the silence. Until the fear would become so great that I would finally break out of my closet, running to the chaos, yelling with all my might and all my fear, ”STOP!!!” 

The parallels of reclaiming my voice and some dark chapters of my childhood are leaving me in a strange silence as I write this. A kind of moment of silence in mourning for a time in the past. A moment of silence to honor the first time I found my voice. Even though I have forgotten many times since, as I remember now, I imagine whispering to the little boy version of me hiding in the closet that “It’s ok now. That it’s safe.” I want to tell him the fighting is done. There is no war anymore. There is only love. There is only trust. It’s time to play! It’s time to stay in the sunshine. It’s time to sing and be happy! 

To break out and away from fear is, in many ways, a painfully scary thing. Something most never do in a lifetime. This is a layered game of onion that I’ve played many times before. However, like any good game or puzzle, they can get more tricky along the way. 

To remember who I am. To remember I’ve spoken up before and saved lives. To remember I’ve been speaking the entire time and now speak with assistance from the divine. The divine self. The divine path of humble leadership and empowerment. Because if I can do it, Holy Shit! So can you!

Now, I know that there is plenty missing from the story of little boy me in the closet to where I stand now. Stay tuned. Those are simply future stories to share. 

The pandemic was, to say the least, an experience of experiences, for all of us. For the first time in our present history the entire world was thrust into scarcity, fear and doubt at the hands of the very people most looked to for help. Chaos ensued and is still blowing like an eastern wind. Fractures and dissonance burned through the country, the world, like wildfire, leaving social desolation and deaths of varying sorts in its wake. 

The last 2+ years has been a kind of closet that we all have been hiding in, in some way or fashion. Hiding from the turmoil of all the personal, political and, scientific fractures that are like drunken parents beating on each other in the early morning hours. Relentless and toxic, until someone says, “STOP!!”

As I claim my voice and simultaneously claim myself as a coach, I realize that this is how I heal. Taking the shitty situation and excavating golden nuggets from them. Reframing the sadness of my parents as an experience that teaches perspective later. It’s very sad that my parents treated each other in the ways that they did. However, I was simply a witness to their story. A witness to a story that provided a perspective of overcoming and standing up to find my voice, to say “STOP, it’s my turn to shine.”

I will feel free and happy on this journey. I will speak my truths and share my stories. I will manifest a foundation of confidence and love. I will figure it out with generous flow. I will feel strong and curious about all of my abundance. Movement and flow of thoughts is what will serve me. Strength and happiness to tackle whatever is on my path. Openness to my ideas that always flow freely with confidence through me. I am ready now, and so it is.

We all have a song to sing, a story to tell. We all have a contribution to our neighbor without judgment and with an open heart. After all, if you talk with enough people, it becomes beyond evident that we all have our own version of my “drunken parents” or “hiding in the closet.” 

To claim one is to claim the other. Now, this is my voice as a path to the coach within me. This is my intentional vulnerability as a path to strength. This is what I claim.

To claim I am a coach is to understand that I am whole and complete. To understand that I have all the tools I need to live as my highest self, with appreciation, kindness and forgiveness. To claim I am a coach is to see beyond my service to who I truly am. 

Who am I? I am Duane Pascal. I am a me. I am a father. I am a partner. I am a brother and a son. I am a storyteller. I am a healer. To a select few, I am uncle. To most, I am friend or family. To some, I may be mysterious or misunderstood. I’ll take that too. It’s an experience after all. And to the world and the universe, I am.

And so it is…