Real Life Example of Suzy's Work
Read this Canadian CEO's True Story
Don owns a multimillion dollar international organization based in Canada. He sent this email after our CEO roundtable session where we worked through an old issue effecting 3 generations of his family for 16 years.
Dear Susan,
I have been meaning to write for some time. With the number of presentations you do I don't expect you remember me, however I want to give you some good feedback. Only too often we hear the crap and the good stuff slides. In your presentation you asked us to share a tough issue and see if you and the group might help us.
I shared an issue relating to my dad and lack of contact, 16 years had passed without speaking. The underlying issue related to he and my little sister. I did not want to betray her by calling on him.
In the meeting the hard ass member of the group dismissed the question as something for me to take up with a shrink. He rapidly polarized the meeting and my feeling toward his insensitivity.
But you and the rest of the group with me worked through the tension and came up with possible approaches. In January of 2003, I finally reunited with my dad. This was facilitated by talking with my little sister to see how she would feel about me calling dad (slow on the action we talked late 2002).
You see once I got past the fear of losing her and told her how I felt I found I really had nothing to fear. Not only was it OK with her she went on to say, "What happened between dad and her was just that between them". He's your dad too why should you feel you have to choose me over him"? Amazing the power of love eh!
My sweet little sister is from my dad's second marriage. Her mom died before my sister was one. Thirty-three years have passed since. I knew my dad's second wife, she was an amazing woman so it's easy to see where her daughter got some of her qualities.
I just wanted you to know that my world is bigger and happier because of you. My siblings and me are all tight, two of us from each marriage girl-boy,boy-girl. And we all are good friends and hang out together regularly.
Possibly if my dad had not been a schmuck back then I might have missed the beautiful opportunity to know my little brother and sister as I do. Out of every bad situation emerge many positives, this I firmly believe.
I talk to my dad often now, he lives far from me but I took my youngest son to meet him for the first time last summer. He wanted to meet his grandpa and so did I after all the years. It went quite well.
So Susan, I hope this letter finds you in good health and happy. Thank you for the role you played in changing my life! I hope one day, we meet again.
Love, Don (name has been changed to protect privacy)
If you are experiencing a difficult conversation that runs on and on in your heart and mind, even wakes you up at 4:11 AM...contact me for tips and a boost for your confidence. I wonder what would happen if you used all this energy for something else? Contact Suzy
Order the book: The Most Important Conversation Is the One You're Not Having by Susan E. Greene
|
