Daryl Wood's Blog

For over ten years I have shared TED* with my coaching clients and the women who came to my retreats. It has been and still is such powerful work for helping people to see themselves and their world in a new and meaningful way. And it blended beautifully with the Shadow Work and Perspectives Program I was already teaching.

Over the years I lived more and more into the principles of TED* and put the effort in to become a TED*/3VQ practitioner. Soon I found myself in corporate settings giving organizations the opportunity to shift their culture in positive ways. It was gratifying work both corporately and with individual clients.

While it wasn’t always easy, I consciously used these skills as my husband Doug navigated a difficult journey with head/neck cancer in 2017. After the initial feelings of being Victimized, we knew we had to find a way to not just survive but to thrive. We managed relationships, our own and with others, and tested our resilience through the medical system for six years. We both leaned into being Creators as we approached the challenges. I had to wrestle with my inherent need to Rescue. Persecutors popped up everywhere and we found a way to hold ourselves as capable and resourceful no matter what.

And then after celebrating a special anniversary with loved family on August 31^st 2023 we got news that Doug had MDS leukemia. The prognosis was grim, and we knew we would face this with the same determination and ingenuity that we had in the past. What we didn’t know was that this was a formidable foe that would tear apart our lives. We tried hard until there was no trying left. Doug passed away November 12^th. His two months of suffering were over and mine began.

Every time I had taught TED* I reinforced with people that there is a grieving process after every encounter with the Victim Role. It may be a few seconds when you drop a plate; or a few days when you have to rearrange flights; or even a few weeks when you have to adjust to a job change. There is always a time, whether we acknowledge it or not, that we mourn what we have lost. And so it was that I fell deeply into grieving and stayed there for weeks. And who could blame me? We had a once-in-a-lifetime love and were so bound by the 25 years of devotion. The people around me had never seen me so weak and vulnerable. I said and did things that seemed irrational and was blessed with loving support from family and friends.

And every now and then I wondered how I could be so helpless when I had the best tools ever to recover? TED* and 3VQ had been a centering force for getting through the ups and downs of life. In the suffocating weeks after his death, I barely thought of TED*. Trying to keep breathing and doing what needed to be done was all I could manage.

And when I did start to have space in my life for anything else I remembered the dozens of times I had sat with someone at a retreat and asked them “What do you know about yourself now that you couldn’t have known if this had never happened?” And the best TED* question I ever ask (or some version of it) is “Given that this is your current reality and I know you don’t like it and since we can’t change it, how will you be with this?”

How will I be with this? Good question.