“Healed men will lead differently, they love differently, they father compassionately, they serve sacrificially, and they live powerfully.”
—Don Wood
Some moments from childhood stay buried for years, but they keep shaping the way we lead, connect, and protect ourselves. Many of us learned early to hide pain and power through it alone, yet something inside keeps asking for rest and truth. This episode sits in that tension where old wounds and new hope collide.
Don shares a childhood story that marked his identity and leadership for decades, then unpacks how a moment of healing later in life reframed everything he believed about protection, belonging, and God’s presence.
Press play for a story that meets the hidden places many men carry and reminds us that redemption reaches deeper than memory.
Topics covered:
• How early trauma shapes leadership and identity
• The hidden beliefs formed in chaotic homes
• The spiritual impact of childhood shame
• EMDR and the process of reprocessing pain
• A transformative encounter with Jesus by a mountain stream
• How healing changes the way men lead, love, and serve
Episode Highlights:
02:47 Childhood Trauma and Its Impact
06:37 The Wounds That Follow Into Adulthood
08:01 Discovering EMDR and Therapeutic Healing
10:33 The Transformative Experience by the Stream
14:03 The Call to Help Other Men
Quotes:
02:51 “As a child, there’s nothing more terrifying than hearing the person who’s supposed to be your protector crying out for you to protect them.” —Don Wood
11:37 “The man I had become met the boy I used to be. There was integration, healing, and wholeness. And then something even more powerful happened— I sensed the presence of Jesus.” —Don Wood
13:28 “Jesus didn’t change the past, but he changed the meaning of the past.” —Don Wood
14:22 “Jesus is not afraid of the wounds we hide. He rescues the little boy inside us, and he turns trauma into a testimony, your pain into a purpose, and your suffering into a calling.” —Don Wood
15:28 “Healed men will lead differently, they love differently, they father compassionately, they serve sacrificially, and they live powerfully.” —Don Wood
Meet Your Host:
Don Wood is the founder of Men’s Leadership, God’s Way, where he coaches executives and leaders to achieve clarity, confidence, and peace without sacrificing their health, faith, or family. Drawing from his own journey through adversity—including overcoming addiction, serious health challenges, and personal loss—Don inspires others to lead with conviction and purpose. His faith-based approach emphasizes transformation, resilience, and the power of vulnerability, helping men discover their unique gifts and live out their calling. Don is dedicated to equipping leaders to experience true success by trusting in God’s wisdom and strength.
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Transcript:
Don Wood: Welcome to Men’s Leadership, God’s Way. I’m your host. Don Wood. This is the place where men learn to lead with faith, clarity and conviction. Together, we’ll explore real stories and biblical principles to help you be a model of integrity in your work, family and everyday life. Let’s get started.
Well, welcome to Men’s Leadership, God’s Way. Today, this episode is sacred to me. It’s not going to be a leadership lesson or a list of principles. It’s my story about a moment in childhood that shaped me in ways that I didn’t understand for decades. It’s a story about fear, shame and isolation. About a little boy who hid in a dark closet, and the Savior who, years later met him by a mountain stream.
I want to talk to you today, guys, about the wounds we carry, the lies we absorb, and the redemption Jesus offers to all of us even in the darkest memories that we try to forget. And this episode is titled, The Closet, the Stream, and the Savior: A Story of Redemption. And my prayer is that you’ll listen to this story and find something on your own where there are wounds and childhood experiences, and it begins to open to the healing presence of God.
I grew up in a home that looked normal from the outside. But behind closed doors, it was confusing, chaotic and violent. My dad was an alcoholic, and my mother lived in fear. I’m this little boy trying to survive the emotional storms that erupted in our house almost every night. There were no safe rooms or calm places, no stability or protection. And from as early as I can remember, I lived with this deep tension in my body, always bracing for that next explosion, or argument, or any unpredictable rage. I had ulcers by the time I was in 3rd grade from all the stress. Here, I am 8 years old walking down to the school cafeteria in the middle of the afternoon to drink milk just to soothe my stomach. On picture day that year, I had a bruise over one of my eyes, and this was all very normal to me. Police cars pulling up to our house was also something that happened on a regular basis.
I remember nights lying in bed and hearing my mother scream my name because my father was beating her. And as a child, there’s nothing more terrifying than hearing the person who’s supposed to be your protector crying out for you to protect them. One time I tried to call the police, my father ran into the room, and he ripped the phone away from me, and he beat my arm with a receiver. Later on, I remember sitting in my mother’s lap, and I was running my finger over the bumps on my forearm pretending that it was a little train going through the mountains. This was my childhood. And somewhere inside, I formed beliefs I didn’t have language for. I’m not safe. I’m alone. I must protect myself. My feelings don’t matter. Love is unpredictable, and good things will get punished. And these wounds didn’t just remain in my childhood. They traveled with me into my adult life, my leadership, my relationships, and my overall identity. But nothing etched itself deeper into my soul than what happened on my first communion.
Now, I am in 4th grade, and this is supposed to be a special day of celebration, a milestone of faith in the Catholic Church. The family came and gathered in our home for the celebration. My grandmother was there. There was dinner, cake and ice cream, lots of smiles and photographs. And of course, that was an excuse for my father to get drunk. And for that moment, I felt noticed and important. But as usual, my father was drinking heavily all throughout the afternoon. And after the celebration was over, my mom and my sister took my grandmother home. And while they were gone, the neighbor across the street called me and he said, we have a gift for you for your first communion. So I went over there, and these neighbors were railroad hobbyists. So down in the basement, they had a whole village that they constructed, and they wanted to show me in addition to the village that they had made. And I was like, oh, this is cool. But when I got back, my father thought I had taken too long. He ripped off all my clothes, and he whipped me from head to toe with the belt. And when my mother came home, she found me hiding upstairs in the closet with welt marks all over my body.
I can still remember the sting of the pain, the humiliation and the confusion. And of course, the shock of being punished on a day that was supposed to be holy, sacred and a day of celebration in that dark, cramped space. I felt safer than being out in the open. And when my mom came home, she found me sitting there naked, curled up, covered in welt marks. And that night carved something into me, something deep that would really take decades to unravel. Here’s what it taught me, joy isn’t safe. Success isn’t safe. Certainly, attention or celebration isn’t safe. And being seen has no safety. Because on the night the ceremony was supposed to affirm me, I was shamed, stripped, beaten and hiding out. I think you can imagine the wound was certainly not just physical. It was spiritual, emotional, and at an identity level that I couldn’t even describe. And that wound followed me silently all the way into my adulthood.
Now, children don’t think in complex psychological terms. What they do is they draw simple conclusions. If this happened, it must mean something about me. For me in this situation, it became, I’m not worth protecting. I’m not valued. I don’t matter. I’m certainly on my own. Good behavior doesn’t guarantee your safety. But here was the big one, where was God? Didn’t you watch what was going on? And these lies were built into the structure of my nervous system. And for years, I carried them into leadership roles, relationships, work, insecurities, overachieving, perfectionism, certainly people pleasing, fear of being seen having joy or having any kind of celebration. And most importantly for me in the business world, fear of success. The shame from that night lived deep inside me, and this hidden script silently controlled my adult life.
And then decades later, I was introduced to this concept called EMDR. This therapist had said, oh, you had to try it out. And what it stands for is Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. And what it does is it helps you reprocess traumatic memories so that you can become healed. So I thought, I’ll give it a try. She said that it worked for a lot of soldiers coming back from war. Of course, I had come back from my own battles, hadn’t I?
***Hey, guys, you ever feel like you’re leading on the outside but running empty on the inside? Hi, I’m Don Wood, Founder of Men’s Leadership, God’s Way. I work one on one with executives and leaders who are ready to trade burn out confusion and isolation for clarity, confidence and peace. My coaching is designed to help you to lead with conviction without sacrificing your health, faith or family. So if you’re ready to experience the transformation you’ve been searching for, visit mensleadershipgodsway.com, and let’s start your journey today.
So I’m sitting there in a therapist’s office, and we were working through some of the earliest memories, the sights, the sounds and the emotions. And suddenly, I’m doing this therapy, and this memory unfolded, and something shifted in my mind. I could see just as clearly as possible, there was this adult ME running up the stairs in that house. I’m bursting into the bedroom. I throw open that closet door. And there in the dark, curled up, shaking was little Donnie. And I, the adult me, scoop him up into my arms, and I run out of the house. I wasn’t angry or ashamed of him. I wasn’t disappointed in him. I was rescuing him. And something in my nervous system, something I guess was in my spirit clicked. And for the first time ever, the boy inside me experienced protection, safety, strength and presence. And this was powerful for me.
But the story wasn’t over. Because in this imagery, I just didn’t carry him out of the house. I took him to a place I had never seen before. And suddenly, in the imagery, I’m in the mountains beside this beautiful, peaceful stream with sunlight glistening in on the water. There’s this enormous boulder sitting right beside it, and little Donnie is sitting on the boulder, and I sat next to him in the mountains. And for the first time in his life, he wasn’t afraid, alone or in hiding. For him, this was serenity, peace, stillness and safety.
This little boy looks up at me, and I look at him. And in that moment when our eyes meet, something sacred happens. The man I had become met the boy I used to be. There was integration, healing and wholeness. And then something even more powerful happened. I sensed the presence of Jesus. And in that mental picture, in that sacred scene by the stream, I suddenly felt Jesus standing right behind little Donnie. He wasn’t distant, silent or passive. But he kneels behind the little boy. He placed his hand on his back, and he spoke to him. This is what he said, we’re the ones every wounded child longs to hear. We’re the ones that whenever we’re in pain, we want to hear these words. And this is what Jesus said, Donnie, I’ve been with you since the moment you were formed. You were never alone. I saw every tear, your fears that you experienced every single night, and I want you to know something. I delight in you. You’re worth loving and protecting, and you’re mine. I created you. I have a purpose for your life. I’m more interested in your life than even you are, and the stakes are high for me. I’m with you, little Donnie, every step of the way.
And in that moment, the closet, to beating, the shame and fear, all of it lost its power because the Savior stepped into the memory. He reclaimed the boy I was. He restored my dignity, and he rewrote the narrative. He healed the wound and filled my heart of abandonment with belonging. Jesus didn’t change the past, but he changed the meaning of the past. And for me, this changed everything. People sometimes ask me why I speak to men the way I do. Why I’m so passionate about leadership that’s not just strong but healed. Why I care so deeply about helping guys break isolation and live with courage, peace and clarity. Well, it’s because I know what it’s like to lead with wounds inside you. I know what it’s like to carry fear into adulthood. What it’s like to feel alone in rooms full of people. What it’s like to feel unworthy of joy. And what it’s like when your childhood trauma becomes your adult blueprint. But I also know something else. Jesus is not afraid of the wounds we hide. He rescues the little boy inside us, and he turns trauma into a testimony, your pain into a purpose, and your suffering into a calling.
That closet taught me fear, and the stream taught me peace, and my savior Jesus taught me redemption. It’s the foundation of everything I do today, every coaching session, workshop, podcast. Every conversation I have with a guy who feels alone, he might feel ashamed or overwhelmed, it all flows from what Jesus did for me in that moment with little Donnie. And my calling is simple. I help men meet Jesus in the places where they stop growing. I help leaders face the wounds that shape them, and guide men into healing, restoration and strength. Because I got to tell you, healed men will lead differently. They love differently. They father compassionately. They serve sacrificially. And they live powerfully. And it’s the work I’m committed to for the rest of my life.
And guys, as you hear my story today, I want to speak directly to the little boy inside you. The one who still remembers the fear or the sadness, shame, confusion, betrayal and loneliness. You matter. Your story is important. Your wounds need healing, and Jesus is not ashamed of any part of you. What he did for me at that stream, he wants to do for you. So guys, let Jesus in. Invite him into the memory. You’ve avoided the story, you’ve buried the pain, you minimize the place where the boy inside you still sits in the dark, because the Savior is still in the business of redemption.
This is Men’s Leadership, God’s Way. And today, if this message touched your heart, I’d love to talk with you sometime. You’re not alone. Guys reach out to me. You’re never alone, and you never have to lead in isolation. Until next time. Walk in straight. Lead with courage. And let Jesus finish the story he started in you.
Thank you for spending time with me today on Men’s Leadership, God’s Way. I hope this episode gave you encouragement and practical tips you can use right away. And if you would please take a quick moment to rate and review the show on Apple or Spotify, your support helps more men discover how to lead with awareness, courage and confidence. And if you’re ready to take the next step in your leadership journey, you can learn more about my coaching services and resources at mensleadershipgodsway.com. Until next time, let God’s wisdom be a guide in every decision you make in your life you.