You ever hear that phrase “He’s had a lot of work done”? Well when it comes to Sarah Faircloth, what I admire is not that she’s had “work done”. What I admire about Sarah is how much work she HAS done. Sarah has been through years and years of therapy starting as a girl. Now she IS a therapist herself having done the hard work of completing masters level courses, earning her degree and getting her certification. Having done the work herself, she has the street cred to talk to young women about their struggles because she’s been there.
I first knew Sarah by reputation as a superb yoga instructor who didn’t treat the discipline like it was aerobics. She embodied the spiritual practice and discipline of yoga as a philosophy of life.
Then I knew her husband, a great dude and a wonderfully gifted musician.
Then I got to know her as a warm and giving human being who embarked on a journey to become a marriage and family counselor. What impressed me most about our lengthy conversation recorded last year in the living room of her home was how frank she was about the struggles within her own family of origin.
She showed me (and now you through this week’s podcast) how she could at once love and admire her father yet still stand up to him when he began raging at her children. She drew bright lines. She stated calmly that as long as that kind of raging went on, her father would not be seeing his grandkids.
And you know what? He changed. Her father did his own heavy lifting to address a lifetime of rage. It took a while but he did it. And Sarah admires her father as much for that heavy lift, for that internal work, than she does for any of his professional accomplishments which are numerous. The dude is kind of badass.
And Sarah is Badass with a capital B. She’s one of those rare humans I meet who I can instantly see has learned and evolved and transformed within this particular incarnation. She and her husband make no bones about how tough it is to make a long term marriage work through kids and tensions and empty-nesting and growing old(er) and becoming new and different people.
For these ManListening podcasts, we usually try to cut a couple of hours of conversation down to 30 or 40 minutes. We let this one run longer because there was just so much great stuff we really need to hear. She’s like a yogi. And I’m always up for learning.
Thanks Sarah! I’m grateful to know you.
The @ManListening #podcast with Sarah Faircloth drops Thursday, November 26, 2020.