My emptiness has been filled
For many years, I struggled with myself as to why I never seemed to have the drive to build a large, worldwide commercial construction business working for global clients.
For decades, I thought it was because of the emotional breakdown I had in 1992 and years of trying to heal from surviving the trauma of childhood sexual abuse and the anxiety it often caused. I believed I hadn’t given my maximum effort as an entrepreneur, and that constantly bothered me. It left me really unsettled.
Something finally dawned on me after watching the movie “The Adjustment Bureau” twice in one week. (Slight spoiler alert.)
There’s a scene when Anthony Mackie tells Matt Damon, an ambitious politician, why he won’t be with the love of his life. Mackie says something like, “…because she is enough and you won’t need to fill that void inside of you with applause and dreams of going to the White House.” That scene hit me like a ton of bricks.
I didn’t have to construct buildings around the world, and get rich in the process, to fight a sense of shame and unworthiness that caused an emptiness inside me. The void produced by childhood sexual abuse had already been filled, and I didn’t even know it.
My loving and supportive wife Karla has always been there for me since I married her in 1982. She made me whole when I thought I was damaged and weak. Even with all my entrepreneurial successes, I felt like a failure because I never scaled the business heights that I thought I could reach.
A line from a movie finally made it clear. That void, that emptiness, was an illusion. Karla and my children are enough for me. They filled a void I thought was there from childhood. What a blessing to finally realize that! That emptiness had long been filled by the best wife and children a man could ever have.
Now at the age of 63, I am finally feel free to “go hard” and really build my business. And I know it’s not too late.
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