My ‘One Word’ this week is: INVISIBLE

How heavy is your invisible backpack?

If yours is anything like mine was for most of my life, it’s packed to the brim.

As Leslie Weirich shared during our podcast conversation, it doesn’t matter how successful you are—we’re all dealing with challenges in our lives.

Her son Austin’s invisible backpack was so heavy, he died by suicide in 2016. Since then, Leslie has made it her mission to end the stigma around mental health.

Instead of sharing our challenges with people who can help us, we end up stuffing all of our stressors, rejections, hurts, fears, and insecurities into our invisible backpacks.

Let me share just a few of the items I had in mine:

✅ Childhood traumas swept under the rug,

✅ Walking away from my biological family.

✅ Fear of my testicular cancer recurring.

✅  Diminished self-worth from job losses.

✅ Juggling career and fatherhood.

✅  An intense fear of flying.

Is that heavy enough?

For years, I actively chose to ignore these issues. I compensated by depending on my wife to make me feel like a whole person.

My invisible backpack finally knocked me to the ground when my wife was diagnosed with advanced breast cancer in 2011. The idea of losing her completely unmoored me. And the reality that she might no longer be around to complete me hit me like a tsunami, forcing me to face the fact that I had no idea who I truly was.

Her diagnosis became my “trigger moment”—the major life event that would shake up every aspect of my life so I could lighten the load that was hindering me from finding my true identity.

A combination of therapy (which I continue today) and a supportive community of trusted family, friends, and colleagues who cared enough to listen created that “safe environment” I needed to begin removing those items piece by piece.

My goal now is to be a resource to my children, friends, and clients; to listen with an open heart and mind, help them remove their items, and model the life they can have when their backpack becomes lighter.

If there’s one lesson Leslie taught me, it’s this:

You need people to help make your invisible backpack lighter.

After all, as Leslie says to me all the time: Connection is protection.

Whose invisible backpack are you helping make lighter? And what items can you remove from your own?

Please take the time to listen to this life-saving conversation with Leslie…it’s a real game changer.

#HOPE37🏈