Hey there! My name is Weston Michael McWhorter. It’s a long name. Kind of unwieldy at times. And honestly, most people just call me “Wes”. Which is fine. The only time I was ever called “Weston” growing up was when I was in trouble with my folks, or about to get a good talking to. In fact, it was usually conjoined to my middle name so whomever was about to do the hollering made sure I understood in no uncertain terms that it was most certainly me who was being hollered at.
But all manner of yelling aside, I like my name. A lot. So, I decided as a part of the unveiling of this updated and upgraded version of my online presence, I would go back to my roots. To my birth name. To the big ‘ol name that is mine and to embrace it; albeit with much less hollering involved.
This is honestly my least favorite page to write for this site and sometimes read on others’, because often the “About Me” page feels like a prosaic accounting of accomplishments and accolades strung together in an effort to demonstrate authority and subject matter expertise in order to feel one’s specialness.
What qualifications and authority do I have that I feel gives me the right to express myself this way? Well, for starters, I’m alive. I’m also awake. Awake to my beauty and awake to my bullshit. And those two things matter – a lot.
I’ve felt “called” in a way to pivot my life towards this work; to use my own experiences and observations in life to help incite growth in others. I don’t arrive here from an place of education or professional expertise. I come from an honest place of humanity, a belief in the interconnectedness of all things, a raging curiosity about the human experience and great deal of care for the well-being of others.
If you stick around here long enough, you’re going to get to know me well. Really well.
I spent a large part of my life trying to figure out and “fix” the fucked-up parts of me in a half-ass manner. That pursuit left me twice-divorced, broke, teetering on the verge of alcoholism and completely awash in disillusioned self-loathing and misery. Seemingly powerless to overcome this dark reality. A “victim”. An emasculated “baby man” who was filled with fear and anxiety hidden by false bravado and a brittle veneer of stability.
This shell of a person I had become was a far cry from the person I knew in my heart I was capable of being. The man I knew I could be. The father. The partner. The brother. The son. The leader.
The summer of 2019, I took a month to check out of New Orleans and to drive around the country. August is my birthday month, and I saw this as an opportunity for some extreme “self-care” after surviving the previous year’s divorce, the collapse of my much beloved cycling café in New Orleans and selling the home my ex-wife and I had built for our family. So I packed up my bikes, books and journal and hit the road. The month began with epic solo bike rides in the Carolinas, Virginia and New York. Then I spent a weekend in Maine for an Order of Man retreat where I had the opportunity to fellowship with men from all over the country who are actively engaged in building a personal framework of growth for themselves.
I connected with an old friend and his family in Vermont before heading west to Colorado where I was given an epic tour of Boulder’s front range with my homies Brett, Josh and Jay. I also had the absolute best time reconnecting with my friend Jess at his ranch out in Southwestern Colorado. He and I have been friends since high school and share a love of bike racing, horses, good food and cold beer.
Then it was on to Arizona for another retreat. This time with The Mankind Project , where men gathered to dig deep into their shadow selves to begin a process of connection and healing. Intentionally structuring the month in this fashion allowed me to begin and end in ways that were deeply healing and connected to spirit.
True healing is not the fixing of the broken, but the rediscovery of the unbroken.
~ Jeff Foster
Those 31 days out on the road revealed to me a simple truth; you cannot run from or fix your past, you can only integrate those experiences into the present moment in an effort to make better choices that ideally lead to better outcomes for yourself and others. This is an active process. This is an ongoing process. A process that requires humility and grace and subjugation of ego on the regular.
As I sat for my morning meditation today (May 31, 2020), the quote at the end of the mediation was from Jeff Foster. He relates that, “True healing is not the fixing of the broken, but the rediscovery of the unbroken.” This way of thinking represents a profound paradigm shift for me. It also provides an appropriate backdrop for all that encompasses This Life Without Limits. So with that in mind, I suppose you could see all of this as my best attempt yet to create alignment and harmony with my past self and future self. To leverage the talents and gifts I have been blessed with in an effort to incite others to do the same in their own lives.
In the summer of my 47th year, I began to rediscover the unbroken parts of me. Every day since I strive to uncover something else that gives me hope.
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