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Wayward Purpose: Transforming Moral Injury into Moral Leadership
Working to Make Suicide Never an Option.
Content Warning: Some reflections discuss suicide, trauma, and/or moral injury. If you or someone you know is in crisis—especially active-duty service members or veterans—please reach out now: Dial 988, then press 1, or contact your local emergency number. Please, reach out to someone you trust and let them know how you feel. You don’t have to face any of this alone. Connection saves lives.
Transparency Note: This Substack includes affiliate links throughout. Any commission earned helps fund our mission.
Disclaimer: The views expressed here are those of the authors and of Wayward Purpose, and do not represent the U.S. Government, the Department of War, or any branch of the Armed Forces.
A Note Up Front
We are not clinical social workers, counselors, therapists, psychologists, or licensed medical professionals.
The founder of Wayward Purpose is an ICF ACC-credentialed leadership and human performance coach, now specializing in moral injury. With nearly twenty years of military service and leadership experience, he has led teams from as few as two to several hundred members, managed career fields encompassing thousands, influenced and written policy, and made contributions to major organizations. He has accrued hundreds of coaching hours.
As a systems thinker driven by curiosity, he excels at pattern recognition. He also holds a Master of Science degree, with a published thesis on best practices for communicating in complex digital environments, explicitly focusing on loosely coupled systems and communication within organizations (or LCCEs - Loosely Coupled Communication Environments).
Wayward Purpose is a home for those still finding their way: the service member, the veteran, the builder, the thinker, the neurodivergent mind, and the restless believer navigating transition, faith, misalignment, and the challenging yet disciplined work of healing.
Having participated in a variety of therapies, including cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), to address anxiety, depression, ADHD, grief, and loss, I share this not as a claim of expertise but to recognize our shared human experiences.
Our interest focuses on the intersection of moral injury, neurodiversity, and service, particularly among individuals who have spent years in high-stakes, high-meaning, and hyper-vigilant roles, such as the military.
What Is Coaching
Through hundreds of hours of coaching leaders, we’ve learned that not everyone is ready for the power and amazing gift of coaching. Coaching is about self-discovery: exploring possibilities, building awareness, empowering growth, facilitating insights, and providing space for reflection and discernment.
Coaching is distinct from counseling, therapy, mentorship, and consulting:
Counseling focuses on diagnosing issues, seeking stability, and treating symptoms.
Therapy addresses deep emotional and psychological challenges to support healing and personal growth, often with a focus on the past.
Mentorship draws on sharing personal experience and guidance to help others develop their skills.
Consulting provides expert advice and ready-made solutions to specific problems.
Coaching, by contrast, is a collaborative process that empowers individuals to discover their own solutions and achieve their goals, rather than diagnosing, healing, advising, or providing answers.
Occasionally, in coaching, we uncover deeper wounds that may require therapy as a first step. Our goal is not to replace therapy but to help people recognize when it is needed and how to seek it. Then, after the member receives therapy and is in a better place, we resume coaching.
PTSD, anxiety, depression, and moral injury are real. Moral injury is a spiritual and ethical crisis that many quietly carry. The feeling that something sacred within has been violated. This often manifests as loneliness, despair, and disconnection in today’s world.
At Wayward Purpose, we don’t diagnose or treat.
Instead, use the power of coaching, and we help people develop self-awareness, strengthen their faith, discipline, and sense of direction, and find a sense of community. So when the time is right, they can fully embrace coaching and moral leadership.
Our Mission
We exist to make suicide never an option.
Every day, service members, veterans, and those serving or leading in high-stakes environments face wounds that often go unnoticed. Wounds not only of body or mind, but of soul. These are wounds of conscience, spirit, and meaning. Moral injury is not simply a clinical issue; it is a profound spiritual and ethical crisis that can leave even the most resilient feeling lost, isolated, or in despair.
At Wayward Purpose, we partner with individuals to transform their experiences of moral injury into moral leadership. We honor the complexity and value of service, recognizing that moments of sacrifice, strain, or difficult choices can be both powerful and demanding. Our work helps people reconnect with their core values and strengths, supporting them in rediscovering purpose and integrity, and reaffirming the reasons that inspired them to serve in the first place.
We define Moral Injury simply as the Consequence of Conscience.
The cost of caring deeply about what is right and feeling the burden when it is violated. It is the wound that comes from holding onto a moral compass in a world that doesn’t always honor it, and the pain that arises when our sense of right and wrong collides with what we have done, witnessed, or endured.
This is where stories of service, trauma, grief, and redemption intersect with the quiet discipline and accountability required to become whole again.
This isn’t about chasing hype or shallow inspiration. It’s about facing darkness, writing and working through it, shifting awareness, and rebuilding faith, discipline, and direction until hope returns.
We offer self-awareness, not self-help, and remind you that purpose isn’t discovered; it’s reclaimed. We understand, because we’ve lived it.
The Way Back: A Crisis Demanding A New Kind of Response
Traditional approaches, such as therapy, mentorship, and consulting, offer lifelines, but often miss something crucial: the inner journey of discovery and the reclamation of faith, direction, and meaning from pain. Wayward Purpose stands in that sacred gap. We acknowledge that some wounds can’t be healed with a diagnosis or quick fix; they must be understood, witnessed, and gently woven back into one’s life through faith, reflection, discipline, direction, and community.
Wayward Purpose exists to help you rebuild faith, discipline, and direction through meaning, moral repair, and community. Every story shared, coaching session offered, forum hosted, or journal created fuels our mission.
When you subscribe, pledge, share, or support us, you help others find the strength to endure. By learning to lead from pain, we transform wounds that once made us question our purpose into proof of it.
The Work We’re Building Here
Transforming Pain Into Leadership: Our mission is clear and unwavering.
To change the mindset and to make suicide never an option.
Not through empty words or surface-level advice, but by helping people transform moral injury into moral leadership. We are here to:
Create a space for those struggling, questioning, or healing.
Illuminate the journey from loss and disconnection to self-awareness and leadership.
Demonstrate, through vulnerability and personal stories, that our deepest wounds can fuel our greatest purpose and strength.
Wayward Purpose is a living movement grounded in reflection, research, and renewal (and yes, that’s plenty of alliteration for now!).
Currently, these are the creative projects and writing threads we’re weaving in this digital space:
🪶 Wayward Essays:
Each titled Wayward [Theme], these raw, emotional reflections offer words to what so many carry in silence. Sometimes they hit hard, sometimes they quietly reassure, “yeah, me too.”
💭 Wayward Thoughts:
Shorter pieces exploring our ongoing work in moral injury, faith, service, and the unique crossroads where belief meets burnout and neurodivergence meets meaning. This is our mental sketchbook, where we write publicly and spontaneously.
🎙️ The Wayward Podcast:
A developing project that translates our research, stories, and insights into accessible conversations. We’re using tools like Google LM Notebooks to strip away jargon and bring more humanity to the topic. (I have been told I have a face for radio, haha).
🫱 The Guidon Circle (Coming Soon):
A fellowship of service and storytelling. A place for honest voices, shared witness, and dedicated forums to shift cultural norms. As it grows, we’ll share collective pieces, essays, and reflections from The Guidon Circle right here.
✍️ Poetry:
I’ve returned to poetry. Old and new pieces, some best left in notebooks until they’re ready. A small series might emerge if inspiration and caffeine align. Poetry lets us distill big emotions into a few words while bringing them fully to life.
Together, these essays, thoughts, podcasts, poems, and shared reflections are the foundation of Wayward Purpose’s mission-driven work.
The Movement: What Makes Us Different
While others offer answers, we offer space for honest stories, real grief, rigorous self-reflection, and the patient work of becoming whole. Our projects, essays, conversations, poetry, podcasts, art, products, and fellowship give voice to experiences we often face alone.
Rather than just asking, “How can we help you survive?” we ask,
“How can you become a leader shaped by what you’ve endured?”
Wayward Purpose is our mission and movement to make suicide never an option.
We’re currently in our “Do One” phase of See One, Do One, Teach One. We walk this road together, one honest reflection at a time.
If you’re new here, start with our latest essay. Or share your own and tag us, because silence kills, but storytelling heals, one conversation at a time.
Soon, if you are a subscriber, you’ll be able to join The Guidon Circle: our fellowship of service and story.
A New Standard of Care:
Wayward Purpose is not just a platform; it’s a movement demanding that we take moral injury, suicide prevention, and the journey back to purpose as seriously as any wound of war or hardship. Every subscription and every story shared is an act of hope and proof that healing, leadership, and reclaiming purpose are possible.
We do this because we’ve lived it. Every day, we lead from our wounds—not despite them, but because of them. Together, we can make despair temporary and purpose lasting, ensuring that suicide, today and tomorrow, is never an option.
What You’ll Get as a Free or Paid Subscriber:
Insightful essays, podcasts, and honest conversations about moral injury, faith, neurodiversity, and leadership
Honest stories from others who have felt lost or out of place
A safe and welcoming community space for reflection and connection
Tools and practices to help you reclaim discipline, direction, and hope
Coming Soon: Access to The Guidon Circle. Our fellowship of service, story, and shared growth
Why Subscribe Now?
Find belonging among others committed to authentic healing. No empty inspiration, just genuine support
Transform pain and doubt into a new kind of leadership rooted in experience, empathy, and purpose
Be part of a living movement to make sure suicide is never an option for anyone left behind
Get updates when we write things. Simple.
This mission is deeply personal:
I’ve been there in my own way. We all have different stories and experiences, and the thing with moral injury is that no one can fully understand another person's moral injury. It is a personal experience unique to each individual. So I can't say that I know exactly what you are going through, but I can say I understand moral injury. I share this work as someone who has faced darkness, questioned my own value, and found meaning again through community and purposeful leadership.
If you’re here, you belong. Start by reading our latest essay, or if you feel ready, share your story. Every voice matters, and together our reflections become proof that despair doesn’t have the last word.
Subscribe now to join Wayward Purpose and receive updates from us in your inbox. Storytelling heals, and leadership begins with honest conversation.