To Do The Landmark Forum Or Not, That Is The Question

Look, we’ve all been there. A friend went to some weekend thing called “The Forum” and they get in touch with you out of the blue to say: YOU HAVE TO DO THIS! Even though they say it’s about increasing your performance at work or having better relationships with your family, the fervor with which they speak about their experience and how YOU HAVE TO DO THIS feels almost religious.

The Forum is a three and a half day course taught by a self-development company called Landmark Worldwide. When I was twenty years old, two much older mentors of mine offered to pay for The Forum for me. I didn’t understand what it was really. I was a semi-pro breakdancer and a bartender, so it just didn’t seem to have anything to do with my world. Would it help me win a competition or get a more lucrative gig? Probably not, so I just never followed up on the offer.

Shortly after that, I kept hearing about The Forum, The Forum, The Forum—acquaintances calling me randomly to “get something complete” about how they treated me two years before, or a friend inviting me to some sort of graduation night they were having at their course. I just wasn’t interested.

Ten years, many relationships, and two careers later, I finally felt called to go to The Forum. I was over my failing financial situation, and I thought this class that everyone was gaga over might fix that.

I had heard that you sometimes call people in your life directly from the course, and I figured that’s fine, as long as I don’t have to call my Dad. My dad was a cancer survivor who’d somehow made it through ten brain surgeries and a tragic divorce. He became a hermit, smoking four packs of cigarettes a day in a cramped and filthy apartment, and—from my point of view since the age of 7 onward—appeared to be on the verge of death.

I loved my dad so much, in a polite kind of way, but being with him made me profoundly sad. In my own mind, I called him “my kryptonite,” because I felt weaker every time I was around him.

I went to The Forum on a Friday morning In September, declaring to my friend Angelina as I drove into the parking garage that I would do whatever they asked to do, but I would not be calling my Dad. She lovingly reassured me I could call or not call whoever I wanted.

It took me a day and half in The Forum before I realized the jig was up. I had to call him. I cried and resisted and cried some more. When I finally picked up the phone, I had learned enough in the course to start with an apology. “Dad, I’m so sorry for the way I’ve been making you wrong about the way you’ve been living your life.”

He said he’d been wondering why I’d been feeling so sorry for myself all these years about it. What? This insightful guy was not the painfully predictable dad I thought I knew so well. He invited me to come be with him and my brothers the next time they visited him in DC. We got to spend time all together again, for the first time since we’d been teenagers.

My relationship with my dad was never the same again. We moved past polite love to an authentic super warm and loving relationship. When he got really sick and went into the hospital, I snuggled him in his hospital bed, massaged his feet, and we laughed a lot together….or “chuckled” as my dad would say.

The year after I did The Forum turned out to be the last year of his life. Without The Forum, I would have spent the rest of my life wishing I had been a better daughter, that I could have figured out how to “save him.” And least, that was what I had always envisioned would happen since the time I was 7.

Instead, I get to remember how much we loved each other, how far we came, and how I was the last one to be with him the day that he died—and because we were so close, I was able to make sure that he died totally “complete” with his life.

I could have never predicted what The Forum was going to do for me. Did it fix my finances? No.* But what it did give me was a real love with my dad and peace of my mind for the rest of my life (rather than regret)—both of which are absolutely priceless.

So should you do the Forum? It’s 100% up to you. Should you wait till you feel “ready?” Absolutely not. Chances are if you’re reading this article all the way to the end, you’re a lot more ready than you think. Whether it’s your career, your finances, your love life, your art, your mom or your dad—there’s no reason good enough to wait. If I had done The Forum when my mentors first offered it to me, I’d have had 10 great years with my dad. Instead I got one. And I am so very, very grateful.

*It wasn’t until after I did the two communication courses at Landmark that my income quadrupled.