It was the last day of August in 2020, and after 20 plus years going to work in my Redmond, WA office I was finally closing up shop. It was also in the middle of COVID and today as I approach the end of August 2025, I guess I’m taking a moment to reminisce.
I really can’t believe it’s been five years already. In one regard it seems like it was just a minute ago and on the other it seems like a past life. I don’t think that’s unusual for anyone who retires from a career, sees, and experiences the whole cadence of their life altering, regardless of whether it was good or bad. For me it was both.
It wasn’t a sudden decision based on the pandemic or the precariousness of the world; the retirement just so happened to coincide with those metrics. In June of 2018 I made a decision to retire on the first of the year 2020. It was time. I was already over 70 years old. My enthusiasm had not waned, not for a moment. There were times that I felt like my passion had become a burden, but not enough in and of itself to lead me to change the course of my life forever.
I’m blessed to have been able to do, for over 20 years, something that I truly love and I am truly passionate about, not many people can say that. I would tell people all the time that I believe we live in the age of miracles, different from biblical times but miracles, nonetheless.
My career choices had led me to experience weddings, babies being born, high school and college graduations, and most importantly restoration of families. Every one of those events, including funerals and tragic endings, leads me to believe in miracles. I have seen babies be born and go off to college, I have seen relationships that were dead get resurrected and come back to life and because of this I believe in miracles. One of the many clichés of Alcoholics Anonymous to encourage people is to say don’t leave before the miracle.
I set my course to retirement with stated clarity and intentionality. I had a cadre of men around me who had to one degree or another demonstrated a connectivity to the program I built, and each one of them had some degree of commitment to seeing whether it was sustainable or not, whether I was there or not. I had a vision, and I had a plan.
My clarity was that if this program called No More Secrets (NMS) died on the vine after I retired so be it and I was OK to accept God‘s will. Coming to that resting place was pivotal for me personally, I did not need NMS to live forever. As the next year and a half unfolded, the conversation went from theoretical to practical and different people stepped up to do different things. I, with great humility and gratitude feel blessed to continue to see NMS thrive, and be as vibrant as ever, and for that I am profoundly grateful.
My office building was in the process of being sold and an exit date and strategy would’ve happened whether I decided to retire or not. That did make it a lot easier for me. Change was going to come, whether I liked it or not.
By the time January 1, 2020, came it was clear that my last day in this venue was going to be the last day of August 2020. Since I stopped seeing people individually after the first of the year the only thing left in that building would’ve been my groups that happened on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday evenings from 6:30 to 9:30pm.
My own personal group, which I have been doing for 3 1/2 years of the designated four years, was scheduled to continue business as usual on Monday nights until graduation night in June. COVID charted us an unexpected new path. The last six months of that group was on Zoom as much of the world when into lockdown and tried to utilize modern technology to meet its personal needs. Doing group on zoom was huge for all of us and odd, but at least I had a personal relationship with each of the men that went back for at least four years if not more, but it was a challenge. Most of all I missed the hugs.
The annual graduation experience had to be reworked to meet the moment of the zoom day. To be told, I was making it up as I went along. It seemed to have all worked out, imperfectly perfect.
July and August of 2020 was totally dedicated to finding a home for the things in my office some of them were typical office stuff like a white board, bookcase, file cabinets, an office desk etcetera. Everything had to go and everything was free. Using social media, I got the word out. With masks on and keeping the appropriate distance people came and things got gone.
The things I cared most greatly about were my personal moments and the individual pictures that covered almost the entirety of my wall space.
The extensive collection of 20 plus years of topical and useful books connected to my craft we’re going to go home with me to be stored in my basement much to my wife’s chagrin.
The personal gifts that were given to me by people expressing their gratitude I also was keeping. The hardest obstacle to clearing my office were the wall pictures, I need to give that some context.
Starting in 2002 every year NMS had an annual softball BBQ picnic in August in a public park for friends and family. Every year we also had a holiday party on the second Thursday in December. The holiday party was like putting on a mini wedding for 100 plus people in semi-formal attire with catered food, live music from an in-house band and the opportunity for me to talk about the state of the union of our family of choice while everyone ate a high-quality meal.
During each of those events in each of those years we would gather together in the park outdoors at a hilltop and in the party, venue moving tables to create an open space in order to take a huge group photo.
Over the course of years those photos came in different shapes and sizes of squares and rectangles, some larger than others. By the time August of 2020 came there was literally no space left on my office walls to hang any more pictures period. Like I said, it was time to leave.
Over the course of the 20+ years and 350 different men and women who came in my office their initial reaction to seeing walls full of people was shocked and fear.
I had never been anybody’s first counselor and it’s an understatement to say that my office appeared vastly different than any other professional office anyone had ever been in. Most counselor types go out of their way to make sure that one client never sees and or meets or even knows of the existence of another client. The way I ran No More Secrets was 100% antithetical to that concept. Everyone knew everyone and so it was, all the pictures were on the wall. Our successes and our failures right there for all to see in living color.
The initial shock that a newcomer had walking into my office led many of them to either be very interested in this community as a concept or very scared of this community as a concept. Truth be told, beyond dealing with compulsive sexual behavior and typical love addiction the real commonality of all the men who walked in my office was that they all had an intimacy disorder.
I referred to these men as news sports and weather guys. They carried so much internal shame that they did not let their shadow side be seen by anyone. Not a brother, not the best man from their wedding, not a former college roommate, no one. In my initial interview with them when I mentioned this, I asked them if they had any close men friends, most 85-90% said no. The other group who said yes, citing a golfing foursome as proof or work buddies that they went out with occasionally as proof. In order to make my therapeutic point I would then ask them did any of those intimate men friends know that they were sitting in my office now. The answer was always no. Shame is toxic.
The pictures on the wall scared most of them. If they stayed long enough, they came to see the gift of being known by a group of men. The pictures were crucial part of how I did my work and yet I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone in my field.
Over the course of years seeing people in their first photo and how they presented for the rest of the time in the program was visual proof that people could change. A first-time picture of a husband and wife very unhappy to be there would oftentimes end up being a couple seated front and center with a huge smile on her face several years later.
Even with 100 faces in the picture I could tell you a personal story that was meaningful about the collective healing power of the experience. I decided to look at each picture and offer the big group picture to a particular person that this particular picture would mean something to. Ultimately what they did with that picture I had no control over and was truly none of my business.
During COVID that August I invited people over the phone to come to my office so I could present them with their keepsake photo if they were so interested. As each picture disappeared from my wall and I got to see these people in front of me in my office for the very last time, we had meaningful dialogues all the while trying to keep social distance. I wouldn’t have traded that experience for anything.
I took pictures during the month as my office emptied out taking a little photo book of the demise of where I worked for over 20 years. On that last day, Dr. Hillarie Cash, who had this entire experience a reality by offering me office space, love and support came to the office, and we had our pictures taken, masks and all left the building for the very last time. What a long and wild ride it’s been.
As I was leaving what I had known to embark on a new chapter of my life, it was truly the sadness of a happy time.
The five years of retirement have been exhilarating, challenging, very scary, and wanting more. Our travels have taken my wife and I to Puerto Vallarta in Mexico, Alaska, Paris, France, Cordova in Spain, Montpellier in France, and all stops in between on the Mediterranean. We even got to spend 3 weeks in Italy!
Just this past May, my wife and I went to the Netherlands, Belgium, England, and Dublin. Eleven cities in 4 countries in 28 days. And for all this wonderful travel I feel very blessed.
The scary challenging part of this retirement experience was that in October of 2023 I got diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus. After chemotherapy and radiation, I had a successful 11 1/2-hour surgery, Followed by a year of immunotherapy and countless complications.
As a result of great medical care, supportive family, No More Secrets folks and God, I’ve been cancer free for over 28 months.
When people ask me if I’m back to normal I always tell them I’m back to a new normal. Forever grateful.
As for No More Secrets, it is still up and running. NMS has three working groups. The lead counselor is a former client of mine who got well, saved his marriage and decide to become a therapist and went back to school well into his 40s to make that happen. Two other men volunteer to assist in co-facilitating the groups. We have a man who loves the social aspect of NMS and organizes by getting us tickets for baseball games and continuing on in a tradition of our five-movie night a year, our summer picnic and our December holiday party, minus the pictures on the wall.
In the 12 step meetings I go to I still get to see former clients who are now old friends as I continue to meet the new men who drift into No More Secrets lost in space, drowning in shame and trying to figure out how to stop what they can’t stop on their own.
My passion is still there to help men who suffer from this illness and couples on the brink of divorce. My role has changed and that has removed the burden. I am now just the old guy in the room who might be deemed to have some wisdom. I believe being surrounded by 30 year old helps to keep me young, and as the wisdom of Alcoholic Anonymous teaches us, you have to give it away to keep it. It’s a simple concept, carrying the message and not the mess.
I’m more convinced than ever of the fatal nature of this illness. It’s a death of 1,000 cuts. So preventable, so treatable and yet so hard to identify and face, and as I always wrote at the end of each and every blog: Misery is optional!
I can’t wait to see what the next five years brings me. Until then don’t leave before the miracle and remember the keys to the kingdom are there in front of you just for the taking.
NO MORE SECRETS 