“There is a deeper wound when people don’t hear our words of affection. There is a greater loss when people don’t hear our praise. It’s a loss for them, and we’re diminished by it because there’s something… a certain level of grieving when we know that our expression of ‘I love you’ has fallen on deaf ears. That hurts at the soul level.”
Trey Pennington, From the Dynamite Dialogs
As many of you know, our world is short a storyteller.
And all of us, his friends, fans, followers and family, are hurting at the soul level. Because we know that our expressions of “I love you” were not enough.
After Trey’s first attempt to end his life was made public, I sent him an email. We weren’t close friends, although we shared a stage and many core values, our paths did not cross often. But a story he told to me during a conversation we had while preparing to record a dialog for a product I was launching kept coming back to me. It was so poignant, so powerful and so clearly something Trey was passionate about, that I asked him to repeat it when we recorded that dialog.
It was the story of Amanda. A little girl he’d known at Hidden Treasure school, Amanda was considered “non-verbal/non-communicative.” And yet, she managed to communicate her feelings to Trey in a way that he never forgot.
I emailed him a reminder of that story. I said “people are trying to tell you something, are you listening?”
In the end, as you know, the voices in his head were louder than all the “I love yous” that were being shouted and whispered, emailed and posted. We were all “Amandas” - as he said in the dialog, “We are all non-verbal/non-communicative.”
I listened to our conversation again after a friend sent a DM on twitter alerting me that he was gone. I’d clicked through the photo album he posted only hours before and wondered what was in his mind. But as many have noted, the posts leading up to that morning’s decision indicated a positive outlook. I thought about how we weren’t getting his message and he wasn’t getting ours. Non-verbal/non-communicative indeed.
Trey was best known as a social media expert and advocate, and in the dialog you’ll hear his passion for that medium coming through loud and clear.
I once mediated a panel with him and several others and, while he seldom took the mic to respond to questions, his fingers flew over the keyboard as he tweeted his responses to the audience. (That’s me with Trey and Lewis Howes, another panelist, at the same event that he mentions in the dialog - Zig Ziglar was also one of the speakers.)
But Trey’s real passion, beyond the medium of social media or digital messaging, was story.
He and I talked a great deal about the “universal lessons” in story - what it requires from us and what it offers. He was often heard to say that all humans, universally, have a deep desire for three things; “to be heard, to be understood, and to know that they count.”
We’re all wondering how we failed to hear and understand, and how Trey failed hear or understand us and how he could not take it in just how much he counted to so many.
I’m sharing this audio - originally part of a product - because the stories Trey told may not have reached him, but I hope and believe they will reach many of you.
I ask you - no, I challenge you - to do what Trey did for Amanda, but could not do for himself. To breathe in the love, to let others know that we know what they are feeling and that yes, it counts.
“Turning Communication into Conversation” with Trey Pennington
| [audio:http://dixiedynamitecoaching.com/DD_recordings/Trey_Pennington_Dialog.mp3] |
Dixie, thank you for sharing your perspective and thoughts on Trey’s passing. While I never got the opportunity to meet him, I am deeply moved by reading all the tributes to him all over the web. The world definitely lost an amazing teacher and storyteller.
It is one of the beautiful things about social media – we can be blessed with the light of so many people even if we are never in the same room or even the same state.
Dixie, thank you for sharing this. Listening to Trey share ideas during you two’s conversation made me smile often. Trey was one special fella’, and I’m so thankful that his legacy will continue on through the wisdom he shared during interviews just like the one you were kind enough to share here.
I appreciate you my friend,
Josh 🙂
Trey made me smile and laugh – but more than that he made me THINK and FEEL. The people who can do that are truly priceless. (that includes YOU my friend.)
I never knew Trey. My mother’s name was Pennington before she got married and her mother committed suicide. I feel I follow Philip Larkin’s advice in ‘This Be the Verse’: http://www.artofeurope.com/larkin/lar2.htm. There is verse in conversation. There is unity in communication. But the unity has to be with genuine love.
Thank you for this post. It reinforces my decision to devote my work to helping vulnerable adults. I pursue verse, because it assumes no unnatural unity. And I help adults, because someone’s got to.
Beautiful tribute Dixie! I did not know Trey well at all, but was inspire by him. My book (in-progress) is all about ‘stories’ and I was drawn to him & his writing as a result. I was stunned & saddened by his choice. Having been through depression myself, I know how challenging ‘silencing those voices’ can be. It is so profoundly sad that we have lost such a gifted person. It is also a great reminder that it is easy to get busy in life, and miss the things that matter most. May we all listen a little deeper as a result…
“listen a little deeper” – yes exactly. And believe in the things we hear at that level that are GOOD!
This is such a wonderful interview and one of the messages(there are many)I really heard is so important. It applies no matter if I’m dealing with clients, friends or my children, because we all want and need the same thing: To be heard, to be understood, to feel that we count.
Although I never heard Trey speak, I feel fortunate to learn about him and from him through you and this fabulous interview, Dixie. Many thanks
Trey and I had so much fun talking about the “universal messages” we found in stories. Not many people see story the way he did. So happy I had this to share.
Thank you for sharing your time with Trey. The world has lost a gentle heart.
Love
Annette
Yes, this one and many more. It seems the gentle hearts are also the most vulnerable.
Dixie,
Beautiful tribute to Trey. I met him at XBM. What a gentle soul. I’m so sad for the loss of any human life, but especially one who could not make the pain go away.
Jean
You make such a beautiful point – there are so many like Trey who fight pain daily and many choose the same way of stopping it. And our world is diminished by the loss of each and every one of them.