G. Scott Graham Interview Published on: 28, Aug 2025

Most people don’t really find their path — most are conditioned to swallow what they’re served. Parents, church, politics, whatever’s on the menu. I couldn’t do that. Being gay in a world that didn’t want me visible meant I had to push back. And once you’ve fought one opposing idea, you realize you can push against any of them.

The University of South Florida was where I learned that lesson. I wasn’t hiding in whispers or rumors — I was out, front and center, even stepping into official public roles like the "USF Minority Affairs Advocate." When people wondered why a white guy would do that, the answer was simple: I was gay, and I wasn’t going to pretend otherwise. That taught me that living your truth isn’t optional if you want a meaningful life.

Then, in 1984, Outward Bound blew the lid off everything: a nine day adult canoeing course in the Florida Everglades. Forty years later I’m still guided by the motto I first heard on that course: "To serve, to strive, and not to yield." That became my compass.

And that's the same compass that drives my writing. Whether I’m talking about grief, psychedelics, Buddhist precepts, or the pitfalls of marijuana legalization, I don’t write to play safe. I write because I know other people are experiencing these things but staying quiet. I hope that if I put my truth out there, it gives them permission to step into theirs. Courage is contagious.

Honestly, it feels like plate-spinning half the time. I’m running from one pole to another, and yeah, sometimes the plates crash. That’s just part of it. But I wouldn’t trade it, because all those roles feed me. They give my life meaning.

It’s not new — I’ve always been that way. In college, I kept switching majors. Computer engineering, music, psychology, communications. By the time I finally graduated, I had racked up so many credits I walked out with two completely separate bachelor’s degrees. Not a double major — literally two full degrees. My advisor finally said, “You need to get out of here.” That’s when I realized variety wasn’t a distraction for me, it was my fuel.

And it still is. That’s why I can write a book on psychedelic therapy, then turn around and write one on paddleboarding with my dogs, and then dive into grief or meditation. It’s all connected. The coaching, the writing, the farm animal rescue, the volunteer EMT work — they all cross-pollinate. A good friend of mine once called me a cornucopia of knowledge. Maybe I am. What I know for sure is that the diversity doesn’t scatter me, it energizes me. It’s what keeps the plates spinning.

Like a lot of the books I write, this one filled a gap I didn’t see anyone else filling. Nobody was really talking about how to safely paddleboard with your dogs. But, like most of my books, it wasn’t just about the topic — it came straight out of my own life.

When my husband of 31 years died in a horrific car accident — he was trapped in a car fire — I couldn’t go back to the places we had built our life together. Disney, New Orleans, the Allagash… every trip felt like a ghost. I needed something that wasn’t tied to our past. So I bought a camper, started camping, and tried to reinvent who I was. Of course, the dogs were right there with me.

At first I tried mountain biking with them, but that was a disaster. Two dogs off-leash around cars and trails? Forget it. Hiking was a big part of my life too, but after two total knee replacements, that wasn’t happening anymore either. I needed something that let me camp, be outdoors, exercise, and stay connected with my dogs.

That’s how paddleboarding came into the picture. I had never been on a board before, and certainly not with two dogs. We learned it together, from scratch. And that was the breakthrough — it wasn’t me teaching them, it was us figuring it out side by side. That shared learning deepened our bond more than I could have imagined.

That’s what inspired the book. On the surface it’s a guide to paddleboarding with your dogs. But really? It’s about rebuilding a life after loss, and discovering joy again with the companions who never left my side.

Oh, the first challenge? Not dying. I know. Dramatic. But let’s be honest — paddleboarding with dogs looks adorable on Instagram, but in real life, it can be dangerous. You flip in the middle of a lake, your dog panics, and suddenly you’re not making memories, you’re making headlines. I wasn’t about to let that happen to Groot and Rocket.

The problem was, all the info out there was useless. YouTube was basically: ‘slap your dog on the board and hope for the best.’ Half of them didn’t even have lifejackets on their dogs! That’s like letting your kid ride shotgun without a seatbelt.

So we turned it into a science experiment — and a comedy routine. How do you get two dogs back on the board without capsizing? How do you land without Rocket spotting a squirrel and launching herself into the beachgoers? I will tell you this: the first dozen attempts were chaos. But once we started treating it like any other training — sit, stay, heel — it clicked.

Now it looks like we’re just out there goofing off. I’ll toss a frisbee, Groot will leap off, swim it back, hop on like she’s auditioning for Cirque du Soleil. But the truth is, we’re practicing drills that could save their lives. That’s the unexpected lesson — safety doesn’t have to kill the fun. If you train it right, it is the fun.

The Tao of Grief is actually my fifth book on grief. In a way, it distills everything I wrestled with in the first four into something more like wisdom teachings — short, sharp chapters that you sit with, puzzle through, and let work on you. It’s not me lecturing. It’s more like holding up a mirror and saying: "Here, look at this differently."

Writing it forced me to be brutally honest, especially about the lies we’ve all been fed about grief. I spent years as a counselor, telling clients grief was something you “work through,” a set of stages you complete. I regret that deeply. It’s baloney. Writing about my own grief showed me where modern psychology gets it wrong, and where a Buddhist perspective has it right: grief isn’t a problem to solve — it’s something to integrate, to embrace.

We’ve been sold this myth that the goal of life is happiness. That’s nonsense. The goal of life is to live fully. And if you live fully, you’re going to hurt. You’re going to lose people you love. And that pain is proof that you loved deeply. Without it, joy is flat. Without darkness, light is meaningless.

So when someone says ‘sorry for your loss,’ I get it, they’re trying. But honestly, what we should be saying is something like, "Congratulations." Congratulations on living in such a way that you can feel this much pain, because that means you also lived in a way that allowed this much love. That’s what grief taught me, and writing was the way I got there.

I hope they resist the nonsense modern psychotherapy feeds us about grief. The idea that it’s a neat little process, with stages you check off like a to-do list, and then you’re done. And if your grief lasts too long? Guess what — since March 2022, you’ve got a new diagnosis: prolonged grief disorder. That’s not science. That’s arrogance.

What that really says is: regardless of how profoundly you've loved or how deeply you've opened your soul to another person, your grief has an expiration date. And if you don’t fit inside that timeline, something’s wrong with you. That’s baloney.

The Tao of Grief is a rebellion against that thinking. It says grief isn’t a problem to fix, it’s part of being fully alive. If you resist anything, resist the pressure to “get over it” on someone else’s schedule. Your grief is proof that you lived and loved. That doesn’t need treatment — it needs honoring.

You know, until you asked that, I’d never really stopped to think about it — but wow, these practices have absolutely shaped my writing, though I see how I resisted it for a long time.

Ānāpānasati is about presence. Vipassanā is about cultivating equanimity. Mettā-bhāvanā is about loving-kindness. For years, none of that was in my writing process. Instead, it was driven by failure and self-condemnation. I had convinced myself that a “real writer” writes an hour a day, every day — like flossing your teeth or going for a run. And when I couldn’t live up to that, I put myself through the wringer.

Funny, right? I’ve spent years writing about grief and railing against the idea that there’s one right way to grieve. Yet there I was, doing the exact same thing to myself about writing.

Eventually, my practice forced me to soften. Ānāpānasati taught me to show up in the present moment — even if that meant writing all weekend long and then not touching the keyboard for two weeks. Vipassanā taught me to have equanimity about that rhythm, to accept it as it was instead of fighting it. And mettā-bhāvanā reminded me to treat myself with kindness, instead of beating myself up for not fitting into someone else’s formula for success.

That’s the crossover between meditation and writing for me. It’s not about following rules. It’s about finding your own rhythm, being kind to yourself, and letting the work come from presence instead of pressure.

Oh, that question hits home hard right now. On June 19th, 2025—just twelve days after a hip replacement—I lined up for a Tough Mudder-style obstacle race. My physical therapist and I had gone through the obstacles one by one, crossing off the ones that posed too much risk. I made it through about half of the ones we’d agreed on safely. Then I saw the water slide.

I’d done it before, but it hadn’t been on the course in years. I hadn’t even discussed it with my PT. In the moment, I thought, ‘it’s just water.’ So I went down. The result? A triple femur fracture, a dislocation, and a second hip revision. That one decision changed everything.

And let me tell you, the amount of judgment I got afterward was staggering. People lined up to tell me I was reckless, irresponsible, crazy. But here’s the thing: if I had skipped that one obstacle, I’d have photos of myself from that obstacle course, twelve days after hip surgery, with no injury. Same race, different story. That’s the reality of risk—it can go either way.

Am I enjoying being on crutches right now, eating PB&Js because I can’t carry a plate? No. Would I do it again? Absolutely. Not the slide—I wouldn’t repeat the same mistake with what I know now. But the race? The risk? The alignment with who I am? Every time.

Because here’s the truth: if you don’t risk, you don’t live. It’s the same with love and grief. If you don’t risk loving, you’ll never grieve. And if you don’t risk living fully, you’ll hit 90 and be drowning in should-haves, could-haves, and would-haves. I’d rather hobble around on crutches right now than live safe and end up with regrets at 90.

F**k everybody else’s opinion. I have to live in alignment with myself. That’s what matters.

For me, service isn’t something I squeeze in on the side — it’s the center of my life. How you live day to day is the clearest reflection of what you actually value. You can say whatever you want about your philosophy, but if someone followed you around with a camera, what would they see?

I had a roommate once, and if you’d filmed him for two months, you’d come to one conclusion: his purpose in life was to make liquor companies more money. That’s all he did. And while that sounds extreme, a lot of people live the same way — lost in distractions, waiting to die.

That’s not what I want for myself. My life is built around service because it creates something bigger than me. Running a farm animal rescue, volunteering as a firefighter and EMT, teaching Tai Chi — these aren’t hobbies, they’re choices about how I spend my time and energy.

Life isn’t a cruise ship with endless nachos and margaritas. It’s not about collecting houses or cars. For me, it’s about showing up, doing the work, and leaving the world a little better than I found it. That’s my philosophy in action.

Honestly, the whole experience was surprising at first. None of us — me, Groot, or Rocket — had any clue what we were doing. It wasn’t like hiking, where I just taught them to heel beside me. We were all brand new to it, figuring it out together.

Picture it: I’m wobbling on the board trying to find my balance, and Groot — a ninety-pound black lab — decides to flop to one side. Suddenly, all three of us are about to go swimming. She figured out pretty quickly that her movements mattered as much as mine. Rocket, being a Jack Russell, just thought the whole thing was hilarious.

What really surprised me, though, was how it cemented our bond. We literally had to get our “sea legs” together. Now, when I haul the paddleboard out and clip on their PFDs, they know exactly what’s coming. Their tails start going, and it’s like: ‘Yep, this is OUR thing.’

So yeah — funny moments, near-capsizes, lots of learning. But the best surprise was realizing that paddleboarding wasn’t just an activity. It became part of who we are as a family — a way to play, to connect, and, in a funny way, to heal together.

I tell them: of course you’re going to struggle. Because on some level, you’ve internalized that external garbage — this idea that grief has an expiration date, that if you don’t move on, something’s wrong with you. That’s not truth, that’s conditioning.

For decades, gay men were told something was wrong with them. They were given electric shocks and called sick — and then in 1973, the APA took a vote, and suddenly millions of people were ‘cured.’ How can your humanity be decided by a vote? It’s ridiculous.

Grief’s getting the same treatment today. If you mourn longer than culture thinks is acceptable, you get diagnosed and handed a prescription. That’s not healing, that’s control.

So when people ask me if they should be moving on, I tell them no — you don’t move on, you come out. Just like the LGBTQ+ community had to claim who they were, you have to claim your grief. There’s nothing wrong with you. Your grief is proof you loved deeply, and the last thing you should do is minimize that to make other people comfortable.

At its core, adventure is about stepping outside your comfort zone. When I worked for Outward Bound and Project Adventure, we used to explain it with three concentric circles. The first circle is comfort — it’s safe, predictable, nothing bad happens, but nothing changes either. The second circle is growth — that’s where you take risks, where challenge meets possibility. The third circle is danger — step too far, and you can get hurt.

Healing and growth happen in that second circle. You’ve got to step out of comfort, because comfort doesn’t heal. Comfort numbs. And a lot of people stay stuck there — wrapped in TV, alcohol, routines, even family bubbles — cocooned in a kind of micro-peace that keeps them from ever stretching.

Adventure forces you out. It puts you in that growth zone where you’re uncertain, a little scared, but alive. And that’s where transformation happens. Of course, I learned firsthand on July 19th that if you cross into the danger zone, you can get injured. But even that taught me something: the line between growth and danger is real, and finding that sweet spot is the art of living.

Ha! I actually wrote a whole book about this. It came out of coaching clients who were stuck in exactly that place — no sense of direction, no idea where to start. I am currently rewriting that book. Because, honestly, my early books? They were written like a kindergartner with crayons. I’ve been going back to rewrite them with a sharper pen, but the core idea still works.

Here’s where I tell people to begin: make a bucket list. Everybody knows what that is — the things you want to do before you die. At first, your list will be filled with what the world tells you should be there: stand on the Great Wall, stand on top of the Eiffel Tower, eat something weird like squid. That’s fine — write them down.

But then keep going. The longer you work on that list, the more personal it becomes. Real stuff starts to surface. Maybe it’s watching your daughter graduate, being there for your grandchild’s first soccer game, or taking a road trip across the country. Once you’ve got a good list, start looking for themes. Those themes are the values that point to your true azimuth.

So if family shows up again and again, you know that’s a core value. If adventure keeps popping up, that’s part of your compass. And once you know those values, decisions get easier. When work asks you to stay late but your grandkid has their first game, you don’t waffle. You already know which choice lines up with your azimuth.

That’s how you start. Not by magically knowing your whole life’s direction, but by paying attention to the values that surface when you dream about what matters before you die. That’s your compass. Follow it.

On the surface, it looks all over the place: grief, meditation, time management, even paddleboarding with dogs. But there’s a clear thread running through everything I write.

I write when I see two things: first, a gap where people aren’t getting the guidance they need, and second, a chance to challenge the “official story” that doesn’t really serve people. My early books were more practical — fitness, time management — but even then, the fitness book wasn’t about reps or gyms. It was called Get Off Your Ass and Mow the Grass — the idea was that real health comes from living differently, not just consuming differently. That’s a theme that never left my writing.

With meditation, it was the same. After my first Vipassanā retreat, I realized people were being given an all-or-nothing formula that was actually setting them up to fail. So I wrote Now What? to offer a sustainable way forward. With grief, I had to push back against the cultural myth that you’re supposed to “move on” in neat little stages. My books on grief are about integration, not completion.

And even the lighter ones — paddleboarding with dogs, or writing about the best campgrounds — come from the same place. I saw people doing these things with no guidance, no voice telling them how to do it safely, or how to deepen the experience. So I gave them that voice.

So what ties it all together? Service. Every book is about helping people live more fully — whether that means navigating grief without shame, building a meditation practice that lasts, or just not flipping your paddleboard with a ninety-pound lab onboard. At the end of the day, the subject matter shifts, but the mission doesn’t: fill the gap, challenge the myth, and serve the reader.

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