Episode 14: The Grief I Skipped

Release Movement

Nothing is released until it has first been thanked and grieved. Episode 13 was about the thanking. This episode is about the grief.

Winston names the four parts of the Release movement for the first time: name/honor, grieve/lament, befriend/forgive, and bless/serve.

Then he sets two griefs side by side.

When his father's health declined, he stepped away from work and walked with him every day until he died in April 2025, leaving nothing unsaid. But when his mother died some fifteen years earlier, he moved straight into caretaking for his dad and never let himself grieve her.

It took a fourth pass through the oneLife Maps for him to notice.

That discovery opens a wider lament: for what his loyal soldier cost him, and for the boy who had to make a plan no child should have to make.

Spiritual director Sibyl Towner returns, and listeners hear from Teresa McCloy for the first time, ahead of her full conversation next episode.

In This Episode

• The four parts of Release: name/honor, grieve/lament, befriend/forgive, bless/serve.

• "Forever": a poem written two weeks after Winston's father died, and what grief looks like when nothing is left unsaid.

• The grief Winston skipped: how caretaking for his father became a very good reason never to stop and grieve his mother.

• Sibyl Towner on "tear soup," and why one eight-week course never finishes grief.

• The valley map's two questions, "What happened?" and "What did I lose?", and why most of us only ever answer the first.

• What the vow cost: marriages, closeness, a father's retirement party, and "the room that never got used."

• Lament as faith, not its opposite: Psalm 13, and why "How long, O Lord?" is a prayer.

• A 4-part practice for writing your own lament: cry out to God, name the complaint, recall when God was near, and ask for what you need.

• Teresa McCloy on holding your story close until it has been grieved.

Featured Poems

Hundreds of poems available at https://myreuniontour.com/my-reflections

• Tour Day 937: "Forever" (opening)

• Tour Day 940: "Mom" (closing)

Mentioned in This Episode

• Sibyl Towner, spiritual director and co-author of oneLife Maps™ (heard in Episode 4)

• oneLife Maps™, the Valley Experiences map (introduced in Episode 3) → https://byf.onelifemaps.com/digitalmaps

• Psalm 13

• Teresa McCloy, founder of The REALIFE Process® (full conversation in Episode 15) → https://www.therealifeprocess.com

Resources & Links

• My Reunion Tour program → https://myreuniontour.com/the-journey

• Schedule a conversation with Winston → https://chatwithwinston.com

• My Reflections (poems + photos) → https://myreuniontour.com/my-reflections

• Subscribe → Audible • Apple Podcasts • Spotify • Amazon Music

• Search for "Begin Again with Winston Faircloth" in your favorite podcast streaming app

If This Episode Resonated

If today's conversation stirred something in you — visit https://chatwithwinston.com. Schedule a chat with Winston. An honest conversation about where you are right now. And if today's episode resonated — share this episode with them. You're right where you're supposed to be.

About Begin Again

Begin Again is a companion to the My Reunion Tour program — a faith-based journey for people in the second half of life who sense that the identity they've been carrying no longer fits. Each episode moves through one of four movements of the soul: Remember. Recognize. Release. Reunite. Season One's sixty stories of perseverance and starting over remain in the feed. There is no wrong place to start.

• (00:00) - Welcome
• (01:16) - Opening Poem
• (04:30) - The Grief I Skipped
• (08:43) - What It Cost
• (12:55) - How to Write a Lament
• (17:06) - Closing Poem

Episode 13: Honoring by Name
Release Movement

At the end of Episode 12, Winston made a promise: to show what it looks like to honor, by name, specifically and out loud, what a pattern built in you before you ask it to stand down. This episode keeps that promise.

Winston sets the record straight on how his discharge speech came to be, from a reading assigned weeks before the Effingham retreat, to a blank page on the porch, to the nerve-wracking moment he first let someone else read it.

Spiritual director Sibyl Towner returns with the story of handing The Springs to its next generation of leaders: speaking words of release before she could fully live them, and letting those words ask her a question. Then Winston names, one by one, what his loyal soldier built, and invites you to do the same.

In This Episode

• Why honoring is "re-membering": gathering the fragments of a life and saying thank you before ever saying goodbye.
• From the page to a witness: the vertical and horizontal "shape of the cross," and why honoring eventually needs a village, even a village of one.
• Sibyl Towner on releasing a place she helped build, the grandparent's posture of letting go, and the words that asked her, "Are you going to live me out or die me out?"
• Why specific naming matters: the difference between "thanks for everything" and naming what a pattern actually built.
• Winston's loyal soldier honored by name, with two lines from the discharge speech he wrote on the porch.
• A three-part practice for the week: name the need, name what it built, and let someone hear it.
• Why honoring comes before grieving, and grieving before releasing.

Featured Poems

Hundreds of poems available at https://myreuniontour.com/my-reflections

• Tour Day 987: "Re-Member" (opening)
• Tour Day 997: "Honor" (closing)

Mentioned in This Episode

• Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life, by Richard Rohr
• Sibyl Towner, spiritual director and co-author of oneLife Maps (heard in Episode 4)
• The Springs Retreat center, Indiana
• Erica Vinson Stearns (heard in Episode 12)

Resources & Links

• My Reunion Tour program → https://myreuniontour.com/the-journey
• Schedule a conversation with Winston → https://chatwithwinston.com
• My Reflections (poems + photos) → https://myreuniontour.com/my-reflections
• Subscribe → Audible • Apple Podcasts • Spotify • Amazon Music
• Search for "Begin Again with Winston Faircloth" in your favorite podcast streaming app

If This Episode Resonated

If today's conversation stirred something in you — visit https://chatwithwinston.com. Schedule a chat with Winston. An honest discussion about where you are right now.

And if today's episode resonated — share this episode with them.

You're right where you're supposed to be.

About Begin Again

Begin Again is a companion to the My Reunion Tour program — a faith-based journey for people in the second half of life who sense that the identity they've been carrying no longer fits. Each episode moves through one of four movements of the soul: Remember. Recognize. Release. Reunite. Season One's sixty stories of perseverance and starting over remain in the feed. There is no wrong place to start.

Episode 12: This Side of the Transom

Release Movement — A Conversation with Erica Vinson Stearns

A few episodes ago, Winston told the story of page 43: a coach handing him Richard Rohr's Falling Upward with one instruction. If you can't finish the whole book, at least read "Discharging the Loyal Soldier." Today, you meet that coach.

Erica Vinson Stearns has walked alongside Winston in coaching and friendship since that retreat. What Winston didn't know until this conversation is that Erica had been handed the very same passage years earlier, by Sibyl Towner, in her own season of starting over.

Together they talk about what it actually takes to move from naming a pattern to releasing it, and why no one does that work alone.

In This Episode

• Why Erica chose the Loyal Soldier passage, and the discovery that it had first been offered to her by Sibyl Towner after a divorce in the middle of full-time ministry.
• Honor and grieve: why release begins by naming a way of being and thanking what it gave us, not by skipping straight to letting go.
• Protection that becomes a prison, and how an identity that kept us safe for a season can quietly start to confine us.
• "Do you want to get well?" The question from John 5, and why release requires our own participation.
• Practices of naming: a breath prayer drawn from Genesis, "Let there be light," and learning to notice without judgment what a pattern was protecting, whether fear, approval, or safety.
• Releasing the need for approval from voices we admire, including the expectations of our own inner voice.
• The discharge speech as a rough, aspirational first draft, and why having someone witness it mattered.
• Erica's image of "the shape of the cross": the vertical work between you and God, and the horizontal work of being heard.
• "I haven't done this yet": a gentler posture for the threshold, and an invitation to befriend and interview our worry.

Featured Poems

Hundreds of poems available at https://myreuniontour.com/my-reflections

• Tour Day 991: "Hidden" (opening)
• Tour Day 998: "Door" (closing)

Mentioned in This Episode

• Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life, by Richard Rohr ("Discharging the Loyal Soldier," beginning on page 43)
• Sibyl Towner, spiritual director and co-author of oneLife Maps (heard in Episode 4)
• John 5:1–9 and Genesis 1:3
• Erica Vinson coaching → https://ericavinson.com

Resources & Links

• My Reunion Tour program → https://myreuniontour.com/the-journey
• Schedule a conversation with Winston → https://chatwithwinston.com
• My Reflections (poems + photos) → https://myreuniontour.com/my-reflections
• Subscribe → Audible • Apple Podcasts • Spotify • Amazon Music
• Search for "Begin Again with Winston Faircloth" in your favorite podcast streaming app

If This Episode Resonated

If today's conversation stirred something in you — visit https://chatwithwinston.com. Schedule a conversation with Winston. An honest discussion about where you are right now.

And if today's episode resonated — share this episode with them.

You're right where you're supposed to be.

About Begin Again

Begin Again is a companion to the My Reunion Tour program — a faith-based journey for people in the second half of life who sense that the identity they've been carrying no longer fits. Each episode moves through one of four movements of the soul: Remember. Recognize. Release. Reunite. Season One's sixty stories of perseverance and starting over remain in the feed. There is no wrong place to start.