“There are two things you can always say to yourself: ‘it’s not always going to be this way’ and ‘this is not the end of the story; it’s only part of the story.”
Meta Description: Turning trauma into purpose is possible — see how executive advisor Don Wood survived abuse, addiction, and 11 surgeries to help others heal.
Turning Trauma Into Purpose: A Leader’s Healing Journey
Turning trauma into purpose isn’t a slogan for executive advisor Don Wood — it’s the blueprint of his life. On a recent episode of the Purpose in Progress Podcast, Don Wood walked host Dr. Jim Price through a childhood marked by violence, a young adulthood shaped by grief, and a health crisis that nearly ended everything.
A Childhood That Taught Survival First
Wood grew up in an alcoholic household, staying alert for his father’s outbursts and learning, far too young, how to manage stress under pressure. One especially painful memory: his father striking his arm with a phone receiver after Wood tried to call police for help. Those early adaptations, he says, became the foundation of the leadership skills he’d later use in the corporate world.
Grief, Addiction, and 32 Years of Sobriety
During his senior year of college, Wood learned his mother was terminally ill. He turned to the one coping mechanism he knew — drinking, just like his father. At his mother’s urging, he entered rehab instead of walking at graduation. She passed away while he was in treatment, and he dedicated his recovery to her. That decision has held for 32 years.
Surrendering Control to Find Purpose
Years later, an intense pain sent Wood to the hospital, beginning an 18-month stretch that included 11 surgeries. Doctors were struck by how calmly he handled it. Wood explains it simply: lying in a hospital bed with no control over the outcome taught him that purpose isn’t about managing everything — it’s about trusting what you can’t control and using your story to help others, especially executives quietly carrying burnout and stress.
Wood’s new book, Forged, expands on these lessons, and his advisory work now centers on helping leaders find wellness in their careers, relationships, and sense of purpose.
If you’re navigating your own version of turning trauma into purpose, Wood’s story is proof that the hardest chapters can become the most useful ones — for you and for everyone you go on to help.
Listen to the full conversation for the details behind every story above: https://jimpricebooks.education/podcast/
Episode Highlights:
03:14 Growing Up in an Alcoholic Household: Don Wood’s Origin Story
07:00 College Rejection, Grief, and the Start of 32 Years Sober
10:46 Finding Purpose Through Faith After Addiction
12:45 The Night He Helped Deliver a Baby on Labor Day
16:42 Surviving 11 Surgeries
19:10 Helping Executives Heal From Hidden Burnout
19:32 Where to Connect With Don Wood
Resources:
📖 The Adventures of Harold from the Hood Book Series:
🚙A Trip to the Park: https://bit.ly/40Lvv6h
🤝🏽Friends Like Different Things: https://bit.ly/4ocAQxq
🍟 Fun Time Lunch Time: https://bit.ly/4odUCJ1
😤 When I Feel So Annoyed: https://bit.ly/4l6WSPt
Meet Don:
Don Wood is an executive advisor, speaker, and host of Men’s Leadership God’s Way, where he equips leaders to manage stress, burnout, and pressure through faith-centered, practical strategies. Drawing on his background in corporate leadership, athletic training, and over 32 years of sobriety, Don helps executives and high-achieving men strengthen self-awareness, deepen their relationship with God, and lead with greater purpose and resilience.
A survivor of childhood trauma, addiction, and a life-threatening 18‑month medical journey that included 11 surgeries and open-heart surgery, Don shares hard-won lessons on courage, character, and calling. He is the author of Forged: How Surviving the Unthinkable Taught Me About Leadership and works with individuals and groups through Don Wood Advisory, guiding them to live lives of wellness, impact, and intentional faith.
Connect with Men’s Leadership God’s Way:
Quotes:
05:43 “A lot of times, trauma is the thing that propels us to change in a positive direction and obey it.” —Jim Price
10:58 “God was even more interested in my life than I was, because he wanted to make sure that my purpose, that he created me for, was to be carried out while I was here.” —Don Wood
14:58 “God will put you into such situations where you won’t feel like you’re ready— but you are, because God’s with you.” —Don Wood
15:17 “There are two things you can always say to yourself: ‘it’s not always going to be this way’ and ‘this is not the end of the story; it’s only part of the story.” —Don Wood
transcript:
Don Wood: And this is a message I give to people, God will put you into situations where you won’t feel like you’re ready, but you are, because God’s with you. He’s going to see to it that you’re going to work through this, whatever difficulty you have in life, and you’re going to get to the other side of this. Because I’ll say to people, no matter how difficult your life is, there’s two things you can always say to yourself, it’s not always going to be this way. This is not the end of the story, it’s only part of the story.
Jim Price: Hello, I’m Dr. Jim Price, and welcome to The Purpose and Progress Podcast. This is the place where we explore how purpose can guide our actions, and how growth can become a part of our everyday lives. On the show, I talk with amazing guests, from educators and creators to everyday people with extraordinary stories about the challenges they face, the lessons they’ve learned, and how to keep moving forward. My goal is to share conversations that inspire you to live intentionally, embrace growth, and take meaningful steps to your own purpose. Let’s get started.
Hello, everyone. Welcome again to The Purpose and Progress Podcast Show. I’m your host, Dr. Jim Price. Here on this show, we share inspirational motivational stories about people who are inspiring others to be the best versions of themselves through self awareness, self love, understanding all the aspects of themselves that can help them create abundance and create positivity in their life. We should love to share all the stories of wonderful folks that are able to inspire change. And sometimes, people will see people that are successful, and they don’t always know the process that it took to get there. And this show is definitely about seeing that process. People see the glitz and the glamor, and all the good things happening, but they don’t always know about the story that it took to get there, the journey that happened to get there. And today is no different.
We have a fabulous guest today. He is an executive advisor, Founder and host of The Don Wood Show podcast, formerly known as Men’s Leadership God’s Way. Drawing on his background in corporate leadership and athletic training, he helps executives manage stress, strengthen self-awareness, and lead lives of greater purpose. I’m glad that I’m blessed to have Don Wood on the show. How are you doing, Don?
Don Wood: Well, thank you, Jim. It’s a privilege to be here.
Jim Price: Thank you for opening up to be a guest on the show as well. We’re always wanting to find and connect with people who are inspiring others to be the best versions of themselves, and inspiring change in a positive way. It’s no different with you. You’ve definitely seen a lot of success already, and we’re gonna get into a little bit of the process of the journey. There’s always a process, there’s always a journey that precipitates getting to the levels and the steps of success, wherever it is. Reaching those goals, reaching those aspirations of what you want to reach, so we’re going to touch upon that and get to know the journey and stuff. So to start off, we would like to find out when you feel that your journey started, and what influenced that?
Don Wood: Wow, that’s a great question. I would say my journey began when I was a young boy at home. We grew up in an alcoholic household where I had to be on alert. I am alert all the time. I had to be resourceful. I had to know when to perform and when to stay quiet. There were nights where I could hear my mother yelling for me because my father was hitting her, and I would run down, and I would try to rescue my mom. And so at a very early age, I learned adaptability, and I learned leadership skills of how to deal with stress under pressure without even realizing it. That is probably too young of an age. I remember that by the time I was in 3rd grade, I would be sitting alone in the cafeteria drinking milk. Because at that time, that’s how you treated ulcers. I’d be sitting there all alone in the cafeteria thinking, here I am, I’m the only one in the cafeteria. I’m by myself. I had to create an environment for myself where I could entertain myself and create a new reality in terms of becoming adaptable to things that were, to be honest, lonely for me.
Another thing, and I share this in many of the articles that I write, my father was beating my mother, and I went to the phone to call the police. He took the receiver out of my hand, and he hit my forearm many times with the receiver. And then before we knew it, he had left. And there I was sitting in my mom’s lab, and I was looking at my forearm with the bumps that had formed on my forearm. I remember running my finger over the bumps, pretending that it was a train going through the mountains. It was this kind of adaptability, or this adaptive strategy that I would create from a very young age that really lended itself to becoming very effective in leadership in the corporate world.
Jim Price: Thanks for being so open, candid and honest with your experiences. I think sometimes, a lot of people, they hear messages like that, and they feel like, okay, well, other people are experiencing the same thing. And being able to overcome those obstacles and work through a lot of time trauma is the thing that propels us to change in a positive direction. For myself, trauma can open up those doors of purpose, and understanding one on a deeper level. Those experiences are definitely traumatic experiences, and they stay with you. When you get through working on the trauma and stuff like that, and get to that point where you can put yourself in a position where you’re dealing with your purpose and what you’re meant to be here for, to help others, inspire others and let them know that they can overcome obstacles even in situations like that, that’s just a heartfelt story. Perseverance in that way. I thank you for sharing that, being open and candid about that experience. It allows our audience to also be able to understand that even through our experiences, we can turn those experiences to something positive in our lives through the traumatic experiences and stuff.
Don Wood: And you can imagine coming out of that household, I didn’t have a lot of confidence. Because my father would always say to me, you’re never going to amount to anything so I didn’t do well in high school because I withdrew. I wanted to go to college, and I remember a friend of mine was going to this university, and I wanted to go and be with them. I’ll never forget receiving that rejection letter saying, you’re not admitted. I was determined to prove myself so I went to community college for two years, and I did so well in community college that I went on to enroll into the most competitive university in the state system. It was Binghamton, it was State University of New York at Binghamton. I got accepted.
Both of my roommates were valedictorians of their high school class, and I thought, I don’t belong here. I remember being so terrified that first semester, but I showed up, and I did well. In my senior year, I learned that my mom was terminally ill from cancer. All those years I had promised myself I would never be like my father. I went to the one coping mechanism that I learned from my father about how to deal with the news of my mother’s terminal illness, and that was drinking.
And by the time I reached my final semester of my senior year, I had to make a decision. My mom said, Don, I want you to go and take care of yourself. And so what I did is I enrolled in rehab, and I had to forego graduation to go to rehab. And when I was in rehab, my mom passed away. I remember that day that I learned that she had passed away. I had made a promise to myself that I was going to go into recovery and do it for her. I was going to dedicate my recovery to her. And to this day, I’m 32 years into sobriety. And what it’s done for me is it’s given me the tools to have empathy, concern and genuine care for others when I’m helping them through their traumatic events in life.
Jim Price: Wow. Oh, my goodness. Talk about trials, tribulations, and opticals in life. Grief and loss, those are all traumatic in that sense. When you lose loved ones, and even with myself when my grandma passed, I kind of blocked it out for like two years like it never happened. But eventually, I got to the point where I had to work on that and heal, and go through that process grieving aspects of things. But sometimes, it takes time. Everybody deals with trauma and grieving in different ways. Everybody has their own way of dealing with it. And however you deal with it, it’s okay. Everything happens with his divine timing. So however people deal with their grief, trauma and stuff, at some point, there can be positive change, there can be growth from those experiences and stuff like that.
I always like to say, sometimes, these obstacles and stuff in life actually help us grow stronger. We’ll appreciate it more because of all the things that we went through to get there. I always like to share some time out. You’ve really shared so many of the obstacles that you faced throughout your journey. Is there an obstacle that was probably the most difficult for you that you did face? I know you’ve mentioned all the grief and the trauma in terms of growing up, childhood and stuff. If you were to say one of those was probably projecting you to go toward your purpose, what would that be?
Don Wood: When I went into sobriety, I really turned to my relationship with Jesus Christ. I learned that I was created for a purpose. And then God was even more interested in my life than I was, because he wanted to make sure that my purpose that he created me for was to be carried out while I was here. I was given a couple of gifts that I was to use to serve others, and that’s when I would feel the best about myself. The message that I send to everyone is that you have a couple of gifts that are meant to be developed so that you can serve others. And if you think about it in your life, when you feel the best about yourself, it’s when you’ve helped someone and you’re using the gifts that you’ve been given, and you would do it all day long if you could.
Jim Price: Absolutely. That’s the truth. Sometimes, people are light workers, and that’s what their spirit leads them to do, to help others. They have a helping spirit about themselves. You get good things in return. You get good karma and all this good stuff in return when you’re able to help others and be genuine about it within your heart. Sometimes, people just do things. But when you can do things from your heart and do it genuinely on what you’re doing when you’re trying to help others, it’s so much more meaningful and impactful as well. When you’re able to do it in that way, you’re definitely on that path to the purpose and light worker aspect of things, incorporating God and all those things on your journey as you continue to inspire people and stuff like that. I would also like to, as far as achievements, what achievement that you hold dear to you. If you were to say, whatever achievement that’s kind of dear to me.
Don Wood: Well, that’s a great question, Jim. It was a situation when I was a junior in high school. I played football. And as you know, with football, they have two a days that place two weeks before school begins where you come home and you’re so tired and you don’t even want to eat dinner. You just want to go right to bed and hopefully get ready for the next day. And it was a Friday evening, and my mom and dad went out to dinner, and I was in bed. This was back in the days where they didn’t have voicemail. So the phone rang and rang and rang, so finally I got up and answered it. And this woman who was on the other line sounded intoxicated, and she said, Don, is your mother home? And I said, no, she’s out to dinner. She said, please tell her that Kathy called, and it’s very important that she calls me when she gets home. So I left a note and went back to bed.
An hour later, my mother yells upstairs, Donnie, get your clothes on, you’re coming with me. Because my mom and dad had returned, my father was intoxicated so he went to bed, and it was a note that I’d left for this woman that was a friend of my mom’s who was in labor. She lived out in the country in the middle of nowhere, and so my mom and I went. We called the ambulance. The ambulance couldn’t find the place, and my mom and I delivered a baby on Labor Day weekend. It was the miracle of child birth that my mom and I had participated in. And right after the baby was born, that’s when the ambulance showed up. So I had called my football coach and said that I can’t make it to practice because I was up all night delivering a baby, and he thought it was a joke, and he hung up on me. He thought it was a prank because it was Labor Day weekend.
Jim Price: Now that right there, that is a glorified achievement. I’m telling you, to be able to be in a situation where you were able to help someone in that way, and during a situation like that.
Don Wood: And this is a message I give to people, God will put you into such situations where you won’t feel like you’re ready, but you are, because God’s with you. He’s going to see to it that you’re going to work through this, whatever difficulty you have in life, and you’re going to get to the other side of this. Because I’ll say to people, no matter how difficult your life is, there’s two things you can always say to yourself. It’s not always going to be this way. And this is not the end of the story, it’s only part of the story.
Jim Price: Sometimes people say that the storm doesn’t always make them laugh. Sometimes people get storms in their lives, and that’s a part of life. You get storms in your life, and eventually the sun does come out to shine. It’s just about persevering and pushing through that storm, and doing the things you need to do to stay positive, and keep a positive mindset and all that stuff in that way.
Don Wood: And it prepares us for the challenges that are ahead in our lives.
Jim Price: Yes, absolutely.
***Looking for books that spark imagination, and teach valuable lessons? The Adventures of Harold From The Hood has four wonderful titles: A Trip to the Park, Friends Like Different Things, Fun Time Lunch Time, and When I Feel So Annoyed. Kids can enjoy animated videos, fun coloring pages, and interactive activity books that make learning about empathy, friendship, and social skills exciting. All books are available on every platform. Dive in today at jimpricebooks.education. jimpricebooks.education. Stay blessed.
Jim Price: So if you were to say, in terms of future projects and things like that, maybe that’s in the works for you, what are some things that you’re looking forward to working on? Any future projects?
Don Wood: Yeah. I just finished a book. It’s called Forged: How Surviving the Unthinkable, What it Taught me About Leadership. Later on in life after I had a corporate career, I decided that I wanted to serve the Lord in the ministry, so I left a very good job at Bell South in Atlanta, Georgia to go off to seminary. I came back to Atlanta, and then moved up here to Massachusetts where I had a local television show called Harcourts for Life, where I would read scripture, and I would say, now we’re going to apply this scripture to your life today. And I built that bridge. Well, in the middle of all that, one day I was writing something for the show and I had this intense pain in my lower right side. I’m like, what’s going on? And the next thing I know, I was down on the floor in agony, and my wife came in and rushed me to the hospital. And it was the beginning of an 18 month journey where I went through 11 surgeries.
It started out with kidney stones, which led to septic shock surgeries, which led to open heart surgery, and to kidney. Through that whole journey, the medical professionals were just amazed at how they said to me, you take everything in stride. You never complain, and you just accept everything. And it was because here I was sitting in my bed after all these surgeries, and realizing that there was nothing I could do beyond the length of my bed. Anything that was going on, I had no control over. And God had me one on one where He wanted me, and He wanted me to know that this is my purpose going forward, to encourage people that are going through burnout, pressure, and stress.
I really have a heart for men. A lot of executives today have hidden challenges that people don’t see. They only see them from the lens of performance. I want to let men know that I understand them, and I can help them get to the other side where they can live a life of wellness with their relationships, with their career, with their family, and their overall purpose, and why they’re here in the first place.
Jim Price: Wow, that is so inspirational. And sometimes, people just don’t always know how to navigate a lot of that in their own personal lives and everything. This has been such an inspirational holistic way of looking and experiencing things. How can our viewers be able to connect with you in terms of your work and things of that nature?
Don Wood: The best way to get in touch with me is just go to my site at donwoodadvisory.com, and there’s all kinds of resources and ways where you can get in touch with me if you want to work with me individually or in groups.
Jim Price: Could you say that one more time?
Don Wood: Yes, it’s donwoodadvisory.com.
Jim Price: Okay, excellent. Don, this has been such a fabulous conversation, an inspiring conversation in a lot of ways. I’m sure our audience and viewers are going to be inspired in so many ways just by all the wealth and knowledge that you’ve shared with us today, and being open and candid about your experiences. Those experiences uplift others and know that they can go through and meet challenges as well. I appreciate you, Don, for joining us today on another fabulous episode. We’re always blessed, and it’s definitely been a pleasure to have you on the show.
Don Wood: Thank you, Jim. I really appreciate the opportunity.
Jim Price: Thank you once again. This is the episode of The Purpose and Progress Podcast Show. I’m your host, Dr. Jim Price. And as we do, we try to motivate others to do the best versions of themselves to go through healing, overcome trauma and things, and share the journey of others who have similar experiences, and go through those things through a motivational lens and everything. Please subscribe to the channel, and we’ll see you next time. Stay blessed.
Thank you for joining me on this episode of The Purpose in Progress Podcast. I hope today’s conversation gave you insight, inspiration, or a fresh perspective to help you move forward with purpose. If you enjoyed the episode, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who could use a little encouragement. You can also support the podcast through the donation link in the show notes. Every contribution helps us keep sharing stories that uplift and inspire. Remember, your purpose is waiting, and progress never stops. I’ll see you next time.