Are you living, or just existing?

The story

Winter 1989 started like any other.

Twelve years old. Cold, dark, England in December. I thought I had the flu.

By Christmas Eve I couldn't stand up. My sister came to wake me and my legs just didn't work.

Nobody could tell us what it was, not for weeks. Something was stripping the coating off my nerves, and the paralysis climbed. Legs, waist, chest, fingers. Then my voice.

So when the doctors told my parents I might not live through the week, I was lying right there and I couldn't say a word back.

I wasn't sad. I was furious. Furious that it was happening. Furious about all those years of school preparing me for a life that nobody had told me might not turn up.

Then I didn't die. Months in hospital. But I didn't die.

Nobody hands you a manual for that. People say "just be grateful." Fuck that. You can be grateful you survived AND angry that it happened. They can coexist. They do coexist. Anyone who tells you otherwise hasn't been where you've been.

I call it angry gratitude. It's the name of the book, and it's done more for me than positive thinking ever did.

I had to learn everything again. How to swallow. How to speak. How to stand. Then I walked the ward clutching a pillow, terrified of falling, and to this day I don't know what I thought the pillow was going to do.

The boy who went into that hospital didn't come out. Somebody else did.

A young Martyn Church paddling a red kayak — Long hair, red boat, no fear of cold water.

At 14 that somebody found kayaking. At 16 an instructor marked my first teaching certificate with nines instead of tens. When I asked why, he said that if he gave me tens I'd have nowhere left to go. Nobody gets tens. I've never forgotten it.

Then rivers, rock faces, Scotland in December, an avalanche I outran in my socks, a summer camp in America, and an awful lot of saying yes.

The river taught me the thing I still teach. Read the water ahead. Don't stare at the end of your own boat.

Martyn Church running whitewater in an orange kayak — Read the water ahead.

A Derbyshire village, then Philadelphia, the North Carolina mountains, Pittsburgh, and now Boulder, Colorado, with my wife of 25 years and our two boys.

I've wanted to teach people how to live since I was a teenager, back when I couldn't understand why everyone around me seemed blind to it. That's the coaching. That's the talks. That's the whole book.

Martyn Church with an eagle-owl perched on his gloved hand — Say yes. Even when it has talons.

A paraglider above the Boulder foothills

Martyn Church paddling whitewater, black and white film

Martyn Church paddling a blue kayak through a rapid

So what are you going to do with yours?

Three ways to work with me

1:1 coaching

For people who've caught themselves asking "is this it?" and didn't like the answer.

Therapy is great for some things and I'm not knocking it. But some things can't be talked through in a room with soft lighting and a box of tissues. Some things you only learn on a river, on a rock face, or on a long walk where the conversation ends up somewhere neither of you planned.

I've done this work alongside therapists, helping their clients move through fear that had been sitting in them for years. I did it with business owners through COVID, when fear was running the company, and the kitchen table with it. I've done it through ceremony. I've done it in the woods.

What I say most often: we don't have a problem, we have a situation, and every situation has a solution.

I call it Life Work balance. Life goes first on purpose.

Email me about coaching · or start with chapter one

Martyn Church on a ridge above a Colorado canyon — Coaching doesn't always happen in a room.

Speaking

Your people already know they aren't really living. Nobody has ever said it out loud in a room they're paid to sit in.

That's the talk.

What the room leaves with

One question they can't put down: am I living, or just existing?
Permission to admit that fear is making the decision, and a way to work with it instead of around it.
One thing they will actually do this week. I make them write it down before they leave.

I've talked about fear to Caterpillar executives and business owners in North Carolina. Before that I spent years running leadership and team programs for Team Concepts in Philadelphia, teaching managers how to talk to the people who work for them.

Hospital wards. Rivers. An avalanche in Scotland. A climber who fell 42 feet while I was packing my kit at the bottom. True stories, and not one of them borrowed.

Are you living, or preparing to live?
Fear and the role it plays in your life.
Fear, love and compassion in a relationship that lasts.

They sound heavier than the rooms actually feel. We laugh a lot.

Keynote, 45 to 60 minutes · Half day workshop · Fireside conversation · All hands
Boulder, Colorado. I travel. I've crossed an ocean for less.

Booking

Send me the date, the city, who's in the room and how many of them. I'll come back with what I'd do with them.

Enquire about speaking

Talk footage goes here when I have it

Martyn Church speaking to business owners at a Caterpillar event, wearing a Know Fear shirt — Talking fear at Caterpillar, North Carolina. The shirt says know fear.

Retreats

A few days out of your life to look at your life. Small groups, time outdoors, and honest conversation about what you'd actually do with your time if you believed it was running out.

Sometimes that's a sweat lodge or a pipe. Sometimes it's lying in the grass while singing bowls and a gong do the work. Sometimes it's a fire and a question nobody wants to answer first.

Everyone who sweats with me leaves with a pair of hand-stamped silver feathers. Memento mori on one, memento vivere on the other. Remember you will die. Remember to live.

I've helped run more of these than I can count. The first one under my own name happens this September. The list hears before anyone else.

Get chapter one and you're on the list

Martyn Church with singing bowls in a meadow at golden hour — Golden hour, Boulder foothills.

The book

Angry Gratitude

The self-help shelf says pick one. Angry or grateful. I was both, lying in a hospital bed at 12, and I've been both most days since.

It's a memoir and a field guide. There's a navigation guide at the front so you can start wherever you actually are rather than at page one. Every chapter ends with questions and one thing to do before you carry on reading.

Seven chapters written. When it's finished, the people on my email list hear about it first.

Read chapter one free

Angry Gratitude by Martyn Church, working cover: a pair of hand-stamped silver feathers reading memento mori and memento vivere — Working cover. The feathers are the ones everyone leaves a sweat with.

Testimonials

Empty on purpose
until they're real

Angry Gratitude

The book starts where I nearly stopped.

Chapter one, free, by email. You'll also get The Martyn Test when it's ready, retreat dates before anyone else, and a shout when the book is finished.

Stamped · Day 13,377

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Are you living,or just existing?

Read chapter one of Angry Gratitude

Winter 1989 started like any other.

1:1 coaching

Speaking

Retreats

Angry Gratitude

The book starts where I nearly stopped.