31 janvier 2015 – Times & Transcript Theo Fleury sees new book as chance to start conversations

Ex-NHLer speaks at UdeM with therapist friend about overcoming trauma Brent mazerolle Times & TranscripT

Theoren Fleury says when he retired from hockey in 2003,“I had absolutely no clue what the rest of my life was going to look like.”

Today, the former NHLer with the Stanley Cup ring, Olympic gold medal and world junior championship on his stat sheet, has found a whole new purpose to his life – helping others come to terms with the traumas they have faced in their lives.

That’s why he and his friend and therapist Kim Barthel have written a book together called Conversations with a Rattlesnake. Compiled from 2 1/2 years of their conversations, the book is something the authors hope will inspire thousands of other conversations about trauma and abuse.

He and Barthel, who Fleury calls “the Wayne Gretzky of therapy,” took their message to a Moncton audience yesterday at the Université de Moncton.

Hundreds came out to hear the two speak, and have the two listen to them as part of what’s a nationwide speaking tour.

Fleury and Barthel became friends

– and both agree they are friends first and therapist and client second – when the two were fellow keynote speakers at a conference in Winnipeg. Fleury was there to tell the story he detailed in his first book with co-author Kirstie McLellan

Day, called Playing With Fire.

Barthel was there as an expert in childhood trauma who has worked with first nations in Canada, with child soldiers in Africa and child prostitutes in southeast

Asia.

Fleury slipped into the back of the theatre where Barthel was speaking and was immediately moved by what she had to say.

Afterward,“I said, ‘hey you, you just changed my life. And I think you will be working with me for the rest of yours,’ ” Fleury told the UdeM audience, organized by Prof. Roger LeBlanc as part of a university wellness initiative.

The story most Canadians already know is that behind the success on the ice, Fleury’s life was in tatters, haunted as he was by growing up in a troubled home where both parents battled addiction, followed by his sexual abuse at the hands of hockey coach Gra ham James. That led to an adulthood in which he battled his own addiction and lived in his own unhealthy rela tionships.

Today, Fleury has been clean and so ber for just short of a decade. He’s also worked to come to terms with his life.

“I always felt abandoned, not lov able, not good enough,” he said of his life up until recently. Only through his work with Barthel has he learned to be more loving and more compassionate he said,“I want to have more compas sion, and more compassion for myself.

Why Conversations with a Rattle snake? Because rattlesnakes are mis understood. For all that people fear them they only lash out when they’re threatened and in fact warn people away with the noise they make first in hope of avoiding a confrontation.

Barthel also spoke of how snakes also shed their skins and transform themselves, an apt image for anyone trying to change their lives.

It also speaks to Theo Fleury’s ab original heritage, which he credits with being the other great positive force in his life of late, the strength he has gained from embracing the spirit uality of first nations life.

“For the first time in my life, it’s the place I feel most comfortable,” he said “I feel comfortable in my own skin.”

Kim Barthel and Theo Fleury interact with an audience at the Université de

Moncton. photo: times & transcript