Chris Ryan Reveals How He Healed After His Son's Passing EP 379

Brian Smith  0:00  
Close your eyes and imagine. What if the things in life that cause us the greatest pain, the things that bring us grief, are challenges, challenges designed to help us grow to ultimately become what we were always meant to be. We feel like we've been buried. But what if, like a seed. We've been planted, and having been planted, we grow to become a mighty tree. Now open your eyes. Open your eyes to this way of viewing life. Come with me as we explore your true, infinite, eternal nature. This is grief to growth, and I am your host, Brian Smith, welcome to another episode of grief to growth. I'm your host, Brian Smith, and I'm honored to have you join us today. So whether you're a first time listener or you're a long time fall of our show, grief to growth is dedicated to helping you navigate through life's most challenging experiences. We explore profound questions about who we are, where we came from, why we're here, and where we're going today, we're going to together we try to strive to understand and grow from our grief, transforming our pain and the purpose. And today, I'm joined by Chris Ryan. And Chris Ryan is a fellow shining light father whose son has passed in the spirit we're going to talk about that today. He's a man whose journey through unimaginable loss has led him to a profound mission of healing and connection. He, alongside his wife sin, has navigated the heart wrenching loss of their son, Sean, who trans, whose transition at the age of 23 due to fentanyl poisoning. This devastating experience propelled Christensen and the deep research about the afterlife, eventually leading them in the support community of helping parents heal, where you may know I'm a member and on the board as well, their journey brought them not only to healing, but also surprising and uplifting encounter with their son during a public medium reading through a friend of mine our fair Gibson, and we'll talk about that today as well. Chris has channeled his professional expertise in marketing, communications and video production into a new and deeply profound personal project, compiling and editing a poignant collection of 25 short stories titled helping fathers heal, stories of love, loss and hope. And this book brings together the voices of fathers who, like Chris and myself, have faced the indescribable pain of losing a child. These men, united by a weekly support group, share their stories to offer hope, inspiration and a source of brotherhood to others on this difficult journey. So with that, I want to welcome Chris Ryan, degrees for growth.

Chris Ryan  2:36  
Thank you very much. It's an honor to be here. I appreciate it very much. Brian,

Brian Smith  2:40  
yeah, I have to say to you condolences. I you know for the loss of your son. I know. I don't know what that's like. I know what it's like to lose my daughter, but I know it's a very, very difficult journey. So before we get started, tell me about Sean.

Speaker 1  2:58  
Sean is and was, but I like to use the present tense sometimes. He's a fun kid. He was very, very independent and strong willed. He, you know, had his own, you know, drum beat that he was following, and it wasn't always what Mom and Dad told him to do, but that made it fun and interesting, you know, growing up, but he did become, you know, a little bit of an experimenter with alcohol and some drugs when he got into junior high and high school, he wasn't hanging around the right kids, and he wasn't taking the coaching from mom and dad very easily or very well, so that's part of his journey. And yet, he and I shared a lot of great times, both in athletics, when he was younger, later, when he got into his teenage years. We went to a lot of shows together, a lot of concerts. We really shared a lot of musical taste. So we had some really good fathers, some bonding times together, and I have a lot of really good memories with Sean, even though there were difficult days. Yeah,

Brian Smith  4:12  
that's interesting that you shared musical taste, because that's not really common a lot of times with fathers and sons. So what kind of music were you guys into? Are you guys into?

Speaker 1  4:20  
Yeah, yeah. He, well, he didn't necessarily take after dad music. It was more that I was adventurous and he had good taste. So, you know, he, he would play his music in his room, and we would hear it, you know, because he would play it loud, of course. So, you know, hearing, you know, some of the bands that were popular when he was coming up in the you know, he was born in 97 so the music he was listening to was alternative, indie music. So you've got bands like Flaming Lips, Tame Impala, you know, some of the parents, I'm sure, or, you know, watchers, you know, listeners. Would probably recognize some of these bands, but he didn't ever listen to the radio. He grew up in that generation where everything was available on demand on YouTube or through file sharing like Napster or whatever. So, you know, it's funny. I was, I was in radio 20 years prior to him being born, and then I got into a career in marketing and advertising, but my own son never once tuned in a radio station, just that was not a part of the way he would find music. It was very much driven socially which but so I took him to a lot of shows that were the bands he liked, and I'd be the old guy in the back of the room, tap on my toes because it was often really good music.

Brian Smith  5:44  
Yeah, yeah. Well, I know that Sean transitioned due to fentanyl poisoning. Was that something that you guys, I don't know if you can see that coming, or how tell me about about that. Well,

Speaker 1  6:00  
as I mentioned, he did start Experimenting a bit with alcohol, and then got into smoking pot in junior high. And he did have some self esteem issues growing up in his teen years, he was a kind of a late bloomer when it comes to, you know, sprouting his height for whatever reason, he had some anxiety issues, and we did go see family therapists and counselors, tried to see if we could find some things that would work for him. But, you know, he kept experimenting, and somehow, along the line, he got introduced to Xanax, and he really liked that, and that became his preferred drug of choice for many years. He also then experimented with other things, but the fentanyl was a surprise. He didn't know what he was taking. Yeah, he had bought some something online from I don't I understand this is a whole market. There's a whole dark market out there for kids that buy things off the internet. And he thought he was buying ketamine because it's used in depression and, you know, treating people with some of the conditions that he suffered from. So he does, did his research, and just didn't, didn't test what he was getting, and unfortunately, what he got was dosed with fentanyl.

Brian Smith  7:25  
Yeah, again, I'm so sorry, and I hate to take you through that, but this is such a problem in our country now. It's so scary, because as far as I know, nobody takes fentanyl on purpose. It seems like it's always, it's, it's included something that people think they're taking something else. So it's just, well,

Unknown Speaker  7:45  
it is prescribed.

Brian Smith  7:46  
I mean, it is, yeah. I mean recreationally,

Speaker 1  7:51  
yeah, yeah. Now it's like, yeah, who would, who would go out and try to buy it, right? Yeah. It's just, it's, it's such a Russian Roulette type of thing that the kids are playing with now. And I I'm glad that there's more awareness. I think it's coming very late in the process, but yeah, I mean, I feel for the kids that came up during the pandemic and had to suffer through isolation, remote learning. You know, mental health is is definitely an issue that needs to be addressed. And I think, you know, it's complicated in terms of what you do in the household and how schools and other social institutions handle it. But you know, Sean, he was out of school. He was working. He even worked through the pandemic because he worked for a restaurant, and they were open for takeout. So he kept himself busy right there, where you are living in Cincinnati. Oh, really, yeah. He worked at Izzy's, so he was able to make the famous potato pancakes,

Brian Smith  9:02  
wow, okay, I didn't know he was in Cincinnati. That's pretty wild. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, um, after Sean's passing, what were your what were your beliefs in terms of afterlife, that kind of stuff, before Sean passed? And have they changed since?

Speaker 1  9:22  
Yeah, I grew up. I grew up in a very fundamentalist Baptist Church. Our AHA household was very much plugged into that whole Protestant right and wrong, sinner, hell, heaven, that type of thing. I underwent kind of a reformation of my own when I was a teenager, and I felt that I just it didn't fit for me, and so I did a lot of exploration and reading and, you know, expanding my own level of consciousness to include a more universal, encompassing, uh. Like an all encompassing thought of higher power that isn't just, you know, a white guy on a throne with a gray beard. So I really do feel that, and even before Sean that my spiritual beliefs were very much leaning kind of on that metaphysical side of that all roads lead to the same place. When it comes to religion, we're all searching for the same thing in our heart that that we're all looking for love, basically, and we try to find it in different places. And many people find that through specific religions, but other people find it in connection with other people, like minded people, and then other people try to self medicate to find it. So, yeah, yeah, when Sean passed, it didn't transform our philosophy radically, but we did want to find out where he went, you know, and if he was okay,

Brian Smith  11:00  
yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, I share a similar background with you. I grew up in that fundamentalist mindset, and I remember being in Sunday school, and they're like, everybody has a God shaped hole in their heart, you know, and only God can fill that, which is interesting, because, in a way, I think that's actually true. It's not the it's not the big white guy on the throne. But we all, we all, we're all searching for that love. We're searching that, for that connection, and that's why I think we see so much anxiety and depression in our young people, because we haven't taught, because socially, we're all isolated. And there's a whole lot of stuff going on right now, and I feel sorry for kids. You know that age, it's a tough time to grow up, tough time to be a parent, yeah, tough time to be a parent. Yeah, I was just talking with someone else who's got kids a little younger than mine, and with the with the internet and the phones and just way, everything has changed. It's, you know, it's, it's a lot more dangerous than it was when when you and I were growing up. That's

Speaker 1  11:57  
right, that's right. And the whole mental, social component with social media is, has? It's just there's a lot of wild cards out there. And you know how kids are? They don't, they don't always listen to their parents when they're teenagers. Some of them do. You know, I find it interesting. You know, I'm the it's We used to hang out at a swim club in the summertime. And so all the kids would swim and play, and then, you know, the parents would sit around the tables and have beers and talk about what their kids are doing, what they're doing in the fall. And you know, the kids who were, some of them, who were excelling at school, academically gifted, going to college. You know, the parents would, you know, they would take credit for it, and they'd say, Yeah, we're really strict. We really, you know, we make sure that they do their homework, and, oh, the teachers love our kids. And then, you know, what do you do if you're a parent of a child that struggles academically? Does that imply that I'm not a good parent. I mean, there's a certain kind of reverse shaming going on when you take credit for you know, these kids, they come into this world with their own soul plan and right? I don't think we should take too much credit either way. I think we just need to help nurture them and help them find their way and give them the support. But one of the dads in our dad's group in his story, in the book that we wrote, he said he was having lunch with a friend that he had worked with for years, and his son had also passed from fentanyl poisoning, had suffered from well, actually, I believe it was heroin that he succumbed to. But the other dad said I would chain my kid to a bed before I'd let him get addicted, which as a horrible thing to say to somebody who's grieving. And it also puts the shame on that parent that it as if they could have done something right about it? Yeah,

Brian Smith  14:05  
wow. Well, it's good. It's good for us to talk about this. Because I think whenever my experience, whenever a parent loses a child, universally, I say universally, everyone I talked to, there's been some level of guilt that the parent feels like there's something I should have done something better. What it was, whether it was cancer, whether it was an accident, whether it was suicide, whether it was, you know, fentanyl, whatever. But I love what you said about our children have their own life plans. They have their own soul plans, and it's not on us to save them,

Speaker 1  14:39  
right? Yeah, we can't take credit or take blame, necessarily. We we have to be responsible and obviously give them the healthy environment that they deserve. But I was just in one of our helping fathers heal meetings last night, and we had a special guest come Fair. Gibson, yeah, and that was a very common predominant question in the group, is because a lot of, especially dads, are grieving process. You know, we are the protector, the provider. We like to fix things. We feel that many. I mean, just stereotyping, but there's a bird, I think, a heavier burden, just from the sense of what our culture puts on men and that you can't necessarily express your feelings like women can. We don't have the same sense of community. I don't think it's not as easy for us second nature, you know, for us to, you know, get together with the girls and go out shopping or whatever, right? So I do think it's harder for us to connect sometimes. But Farah addressed this, and she said in, and I've heard it in many medium readings, and you may have to Brian that you did everything you could, yeah, and that's one of the common threads in so many readings from parents with their children, is the child wants the parent to know you, you did great. You did everything you could. Yeah,

Brian Smith  16:12  
that is so important, and it's interesting because you just say that. You know, we talk about the the burdens of mothers and fathers, and I work with almost all women in terms of my business, which is sad, because it goes they reach out. It shows you how, how fathers do grieve differently, yeah, but I've said to a lot of times with mothers, because they have that physical connection to the child, you know, they've got that that we don't have as fathers. But you made a really good point, as fathers, we are supposed to be the protectors. We're supposed to be the ones that keep them safe. We're responsible for them. So my daughter passed away. She was literally down the hallway for me, and she'd been a week the week before, she'd been away, so she was like, she was on vacation in Florida, so she comes home, I'm like, okay, great, now I can protect her, because she's home, and then when she passes like, then it's like, Well, what was I supposed to do? Right? You have that feeling like I should have done something. But what, you know, because we, we do have that feeling as a parent, that we are ultimately responsible for everything that happens, yeah,

Speaker 1  17:16  
yeah. And it's, it's a burden, and I appreciate talking with someone like a fair Gibson or another medium that that help bring messages through from from the other side, that it's okay, and you did. You're you're a good parent. You did everything you could.

Brian Smith  17:38  
Speaking of fair, we brought our name up a couple of times. I know you had a reading. And I actually, I was there at the conference when her did the reading, but I watched it in the YouTube today. It's fast, it's fantastic. So I want to put a link in the show notes so people can watch it. And so Chris passed, and what time frame? What year was it? Sean?

Unknown Speaker  17:59  
Sean, yeah, 2021 it was September,

Brian Smith  18:02  
so you were just a year out when you were at the conference, almost,

Speaker 1  18:04  
yeah, just about 11 months out. So we were pretty fresh at that point. Wow, yeah, yeah.

Brian Smith  18:11  
And how did that reading impact you? Was that the first reading you had had?

Speaker 1  18:17  
I believe so, yes, I believe that is true, and it was spontaneous. We weren't expecting to get a reading, and we're in a room full of people, 900 people. Yeah, I went to the conference. My wife did the preliminary research, and was trying to find different ways of support, just as you mentioned. You know, a lot of times I think the moms or the women tend to look for help in research and get that connection and try to find sources for healing. I went to support her. She asked if I wanted to go. And I thought, Okay, I will. I'll go. And I know there was a lot of dads there that were in the same boat that we were there to support our lives. So, yeah, sitting in the auditorium and feeling the energy there's far as energy come over to our side of the room, and then having her start mentioning some very specific things, evidence it made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. It's like, Is my son actually poking me on the shoulder, telling me to stand up? Is this really happening? It was, it was thrilling, you know, is, that's the best word I can use to describe the feeling of of that connection with your child. Is, there's a excitement, emotion that comes with that connection. So, yeah, I mean, she, she nailed so many different things, some really strange, peculiar, specific things that were not posted anywhere. I wouldn't I had just torn a deck. Down a couple weeks earlier in the backyard and put up a new railing on the deck, and I was going to resin this railing, and I I thought I had mixed enough resin, and you never want to come up short, because you don't want to mix mix two batches. They cure at different speeds. Anyway, what came through from Sean was, you screwed up the finish. It doesn't even look the same. And so for her to bring that through that, and also, you know, my frustration at playing guitar, which, that's his guitar right over my shoulder, and that I stopped at the bar chords, you know, and he was kind of teasing, yeah, you couldn't get the bar chords. So, yeah, it was really thrilling to have that reading and to have confirmation that Sean was there, that he that he was seeing our life and he's around us, and that He loves us. It was really something. So the video you referenced, I did put together evidence side by side, yeah. So if anybody wants to see the reading, they get a chance to see Farrah on stage, but then I overlay images that we have of videos or photos of Sean wearing certain things or doing certain things, playing the guitar, but then also of the deck that I screwed up, yeah.

Brian Smith  21:25  
And the thing about, you know, Farrah, when it comes to medium readings, they can be all over the place. Some are, some are not that great. Some are are good, and some are like, fantastic. And Farah is just like, crazy good. Because nothing, you know, because I have, I've had many readings, and sometimes they'll say things as kind of generic, like, you know, did you start a scholarship fund in their name? Well, a lot of us parents have, you know, stuff like that. But far is saying things like, okay, the socks, you know, and the railing on the deck, and they're carving in the wood, which was him writing all over his guitar. I thought, That's right, yeah. So it's, it can be life changing, and for for someone like yourself who was raised with that that background, did you ever have any any thought in the back of your mind, like media readings aren't good? I shouldn't be doing this, or were you passed it at that point?

Speaker 1  22:13  
No, I didn't have that feeling at all. But I I was frustrated because I didn't feel like I could openly share it with everyone that I know, because my community is full of people from different backgrounds and faith, and I could tell there was a few people I shared it with, and I thought, yeah, I thought, I think they will get this. But it crossed a line. It became somewhat of a taboo in their philosophy. So even sharing online, I found myself, it's almost like kind of, kind of like coming out, in a way, is you're you're making yourself vulnerable to a belief system or a thought system that people may poke holes at or ridicule or just, you know, sign you off, like, God, I don't want to hang out with that guy. He's playing with the devil. Yeah? So, yeah, I do. I'm aware of the audience when I do share those stories, but I still like to share,

Brian Smith  23:16  
yeah? Well, I think it's something, and I'm glad you, you did and you do, because there is still a sense of taboo about and it's it's interesting because it comes from both sides, both extremes. It comes from the fundamentalist religious people and the fundamentalist materialists who say that it's impossible, that you're being you're being fooled, that it's just your your grief and and that mediums are grief vampires, you know, and so I think we need videos like yours out there, which it's, it's just undeniable. I mean, the evidence that they're brought through. You

Speaker 1  23:50  
know, it's interesting. Brian is after I created that video, and she didn't know I was making it, I went to the the audio visual team, and I just asked them, Did you record that session. Can I get a copy of that? And I gave her, you know, I let her see it first. And she was so thrilled, because her father is one of those people who absolutely, when you die, you are worm food, you know, she you are not going anywhere. And her father had never seen her work, had never understood what she does, so this was a chance for her to actually share that with him, which was a thrill for her. I

Brian Smith  24:30  
didn't know that well. Yeah, that's that's really cool, because, you know, I'm lucky enough to know some phenomenal mediums and Pharaohs is definitely one of the best and just totally natural. So again, I would encourage people, it's going to be in the show notes, to just watch. It's only like, what, seven, eight minutes long. I think, right,

Speaker 1  24:50  
exactly. It's not that long, yeah, but it is, you know, she's, she's a very free spirit, she she cusses, you know, I think. And I don't know how you feel about this. Do you think certain personalities of spirit, like my son, he and Farah, I think would get along? There's, it seems like the the readings that I've had seem to be mediums that kind of get into that vibe of his personality. And that was one of the most impressive and surprising things for me. And getting medium readings is how the personality would would stay with that spirit, and you'd still hear the sense of humor, which I just love that.

Brian Smith  25:35  
Yeah, yeah, because we've been, again, kind of conditioned to think, if we do go on that people are, well, now there's, they're enlightened, and they're, you know, they're gonna have a sense of humor anymore. And it's like, no, they come through the same and, you know, and people like Farrah, I think there's, I think you're right, there's, there could be an affinity between the medium and the person in spirit, and a really good medium allows that person to kind of take over the personality. You can actually sometimes watch their bodies change and watch their faces change, and people that are in the reading will recognize it's like, well, that's exactly the way that he would talk, or, you know, stuff like that. So you said at that first conference, this was in 2022, if I remember correctly, yeah, because I was there, um, you were kind of the, what we call the drag e the first, the first conference I went to was, was the first helping parents heal conference. And it was at that time I forgot what the percentages of women, it was almost all women. And the guys that were there, almost universally, were like, Okay, well, you're going, I guess I'll go along with you. But after that you came back. Is that when you joined helping fathers heal.

Speaker 1  26:42  
Yeah, at the conference, I went to a breakout room where there was a meeting of fathers. And at the conference, some of the dads were wearing a badge that said, Ask me about the fathers group. Yes, I really didn't know much about it. I think maybe I had heard about it, but I hadn't attended a meeting or joined so that that gave me a chance to meet some of the dads and then hanging out by the pool, because we did some of that and had a few beers and just sat outside and talked. That was great, because then you get to know some of these guys personally, and hear their stories, and you see where you have a lot of commonalities, like that's one of the best things about the dad's group is, and that's why the book is called Helping fathers heal grief, hope and our search for connection is because as fathers, We We need that connection. I think the women connect perhaps easier with each other. So we're searching for connection with our departed child, but we're also looking for a way to connect with each other. And isolation is it comes too easily to men in the grief world, and I was guilty of that. I've just threw myself into work. After Sean passed, I became preoccupied with other things, which is a form of isolation, I guess I just kept my head down,

Brian Smith  28:15  
yeah, and I think that's very common. And again, I think it's something really important to talk to because, frankly, most of the people that are listening to this are going to be women, and they're going to be thinking about their their husbands or their significant others, and sometimes wondering, what does he grieve? You know? Does he care? He doesn't grieve the way I do. I don't see him crying, you know? I don't, I don't. I don't see that. And they don't realize sometimes we will turn to work, or we'll turn to athletics, or we'll turn to alcohol, or we just want to we isolate, because we don't want to be seen as vulnerable or be seen as weak. That's right, 100% right,

Speaker 1  28:51  
yeah, and that's I would if for any any woman that's listening to this. I know it sounds like a shameless plug, but the book is written by 25 dads who are all feeling varieties of the same thing. And so there are really some helpful common threads throughout the book where a dad might feel that, okay, I'm not alone. You know? I get where that guy's coming from. And there, there are dads in there who felt like they didn't really even start grieving for three or four years, yeah, because they just kept themselves so preoccupied. And so, you know, they become there's a breakthrough at some point, and the heart softens, and you open yourself up and you surrender to this, knowing that you there's nothing you could have done just accepting. You know, acceptance is such a powerful word in the healing process for for me, just accepting and then surrendering, just moving through what you're going through, you can't move on, necessarily, but you just have to. Accept it and surrender to the emotional loss that comes with grief. That's a part of the healing process. I think, yeah,

Brian Smith  30:09  
yeah. And I think the book, you know, again, is written by fathers and people. I think, well, this is for fathers. But if, if you're a woman and you're have a have a male in your in your relationship. It the books for you also to maybe help you understand a little bit better what, what it is we fathers struggle with. There's a song by Jason Mraz, which I was thinking about music, called Frank the fixer. And it's all about how his grandfather fixed everything, and how he's he's a fixer. And that's, that's what, that's how men are. You know, a lot of times, women will say, I just want you to listen. I don't want you to fix it. You know, because guys are like, you know, let's, let's solve this. Let's fix this. Yeah, and when we have a child on the other side, accepting it's something we can't fix is a big hurdle to get over.

Speaker 1  30:56  
Yeah, I agree. It, it's, it's, it, a common theme that dads will feel a sense of failure. Maybe it may not be guilt, necessarily, but failure is a really common word that would come up, yeah, that I failed my family, I failed my child. I mean, I even, I mean, I'm I'm not above that. I felt that too. We live in San Diego. Sean was back in Ohio, where we all lived, and where he went to school and had a lot of friends. He came out here. We did rehab, we did an intervention. We had sober living. He was in our house, but he just didn't want to stay with it, and it became chaotic. And one of the hardest things for a parent with a child who's suffering from addiction is to ask them to find their cure outside the house. Yeah, we went to a lot of Al Anon meetings, and that's a struggle for a lot of parents is they want to keep their child in the house to protect them. I don't want to go through what Chris is going through. There's no way I could handle life if I, you know, kick my kid out and then something bad happened, right? But you just you have to make your decisions based on what's right for you and for us, our life was just completely becoming chaotic, and so he went back to Ohio willingly. We helped set him up. But I did feel kind of, sometimes a sense of doubt about, gosh, you know, I could have avoided that. If he were here, he wouldn't have been there, but, but, you know, again, last night in the meeting, Ferris said, No, there's a sole plan. Whether he was in San Diego or Ohio, there was a contract and he was going to and he even said when he was living he didn't think he was going to make it to 24 and he didn't. He didn't say it in a defeated way. He just almost said it like he just didn't as a as a teenager, growing up, or young adult, he just felt like he had a short life expectancy. And I don't know where that came from, but that's, again, not an unusual thing to hear No,

Brian Smith  33:11  
and that's one of the great things about joining an organization like ours, because you hear that a lot. My daughter said, and she was, she was healthy, she wasn't, you know, involved in stuff that you would have thought was dangerous or anything. But she said, I remember when she was like, 10 years old, she said, I don't, I don't want to grow up. It was actually what she said. She didn't want to, she didn't want to go through puberty and that kind of stuff. And she made all kinds of little comments like, you know, I'm not afraid of death, and things that you don't expect a 1012, 1314, year old child to say, and she was 15 when she passed, and she made a comment just a few weeks before she passed, about like, when, when I die, I want to be cremated and buried under a tree, which, you know, why would you say that when you're 15 and a half years old? You know, for and, like I said, she was healthy. So understanding that our children do have soul plans, understanding that there's nothing we can do we can't. And I deal with, I'm dealing with, you know, clients right now that you know, 13 year old child that just that passed. I if I just done this, he'd be okay. Well, if you kept him in the house, unless you literally change or don't change, into his bed, and he still could order drugs on online. There's nothing that we can't we can't control our children, even when they're young, let alone when they're, when they're, they're, you know, early adults. But letting go of that is, I think, what's really helpful. Because when we talk to other people, I found this helpful, and you let me know how you feel about it. When I hear other people blaming themselves, I universally say it's not your fault, right? We always say it's not your fault, but we can't say it to ourselves. Yeah,

Speaker 1  34:49  
I agree, and I get it goes back to the word acceptance. It's not about accepting the responsibility. It's about accept. Accepting just the reality of of what happened, and accepting our proper role in the the family contract or the the experience that we've just gone through. We when, after Sean passed, we obviously, we flew back to Ohio as soon as we could, when we got a call, he was in the emergency room, and they said, Your son is very sick, which, that's a very strange thing to hear from a medical professional, because it's so nondescript. So I was trying to find out what happened, and they just said, you should be here. So we we got on a plane the next day, we got out there. He was in ICU for about a 24 hour period before we had to make the ultimate decision and discontinue life support. He just was not there was no brain activity. Hardest, hardest thing we've ever had to decide. After that, we went to his, the house he was sharing with a couple of roommates. And I'd been to that house once before because I helped him when he moved back there, I took his, you know, clothes, brief suitcase full of stuff and and he was already living there, you know, I was kind of shuttling back a suitcase full of other winter clothes, and the house was kind of a wreck. I mean, it was three young, 20 something kids, so it wasn't clean, getting some boxes and cigarette butts and all, you know, beer cans, but on the on the patio, front porch where he passed away, where they the paramedics found him when we got there to pick up his belongings. It had all been cleaned up, and I'm sure the roommates wanted to kind of sterilize the house because emergency technicians were going to come over. Maybe police, they probably didn't know. Anyway, the whole place was clean, and yet, on the coffee table, in an ashtray, was a single little one of these little stones that has an engraved gold word. And the word was, accept. And I don't know who put that there. Why that word was chosen. We just took that as as a sign. And I just feel strongly that that is, it's the first step in the 12 steps. The key to healing is, is that word acceptance, and part of that is surrender. You just have to to let yourself go and go into that darkness. And that's why we need people like you to help guide us through that darkness, because it can be very overwhelming. Yeah.

Brian Smith  37:43  
So, so let's talk. We've talked. We mentioned helping parents heal. So people, so people just, I'll just say it now helping parents heal, that org is where you can find helping parents heal. And we are an international organization. Got groups all over the place, but also there's a big online component. And then several years ago, helping fathers heal kind of grew out of that. So tell people about your experience with helping fathers heal, and what that is

Speaker 1  38:09  
that's a weekly zoom call that we have. So there's a Facebook, a private Facebook group for fathers. We do have a vetting process to make sure that we are getting men and that they actually have a child in spirit, and then they're given access, you know, with a zoom link and pass code to join the meeting. That's really all that's involved. But every week, we have probably around 30. Sometime last night we had up to almost 50 because we had Farah Gibson, so it was kind of a special event. But we just talk every week about what's going on. There's no agenda. We do have facilitators, but, you know, we always welcome new dads. Give them a chance to talk, introduce themselves, let us know, you know, tell us about their child, and then there could be a topic, but we just take it wherever, wherever there's always somebody that has something that's up. Could be an anniversary of some kind, an angelversary, a birth date, Mother's Day, they're going through legal, you know, battles for custody of the sibling. It just could be anything, but there's a lot of there's a lot of need, and we just listen to each other, and it's a safe place. It's a safe place for dads to talk about what they're going through. And again, we don't try to fix it. Sometimes, maybe somebody has some advice, but we really just try to listen and and let people know that they're not alone, and if they do need help that, yeah, we'll, we'll get together and try to help them.

Brian Smith  39:46  
Yeah, I have to say it's a wonderful thing. And I've been in lots of support groups where it's, you know, couples, or where it's mostly women, like it usually is, and a lot of times the guys will just kind of sit back and let. The women talk, and it's, what is great about this, is it's all guys, and, you know, there's an opportunity for people to share. And lot of times people come, they'll come for a little while, and they don't say anything for a few weeks, but then eventually they'll open up.

Speaker 1  40:13  
That's right, yeah, you don't even have to turn on your camera. I mean, there's, there's no requirements, very low bar, yeah, yeah, you can slip in unnoticed, you know, stand in the back of the room by the door, but, you know, whatever you feel safe with, but that's the main thing. Is, we just want to create a safe space and kind of a sacred space, where our children can be lifted up and celebrated remembered. We can say their names, and some of the best meetings are when we we bring up memories of our kids. We talk about, is there a song that that ties you to your child? Or is there a memory? Is there, you know, whatever it might be, you know, sometimes you know, we're not always crying and and grieving actively. Part of the grieving process can be that remembering those good times and holding on to those church memories. And I find it healthy to hear other dads talk about that, and you can see them lighten up by the end of the the Zoom call, you can see that their their countenance has changed, because they've been able to share some stories, even if they didn't say anything. They just felt like that helped. I heard some good things. I can take some some of that back with me this week. So

Brian Smith  41:39  
what I know your backgrounds in I know video production, and there was something before that, marketing and advertising, yeah. So what? What gave you the idea that I'm going to put out a book of these fathers stories? How did that come about?

Speaker 1  41:55  
Well, I'll be totally honest, I was in a medium reading shortly. It was probably the spring. It was after the parents conference. We had scheduled a medium reading, and the medium said, or Sean said, through the medium, I don't know exactly, but that there's a book in me, and I had no clue what that meant. I'd never read a written a book. I read a lot, but I don't write. I'm not a real big journal or I do know how to write, but writing a book was not on the list of things that I felt like I had to do. But right in in hearing all these dad's stories, I thought, you know, this is part of the healing process. Is telling your story and feeling like your child has a place that is a legacy or something that is commemorative or memorializing their life, their name, and the love that you shared together. And I just asked in a father's meeting, do you guys think that would you be willing to write a chapter if we were to try to get a few guys together and see if we have enough stories to write, you know, a book, and I was hoping for 21 was my goal. And sure enough, we had, over a period of three or four or five weeks, we had enough hands go up in the air that they said, Yes, we're willing to do it. And so I composed kind of a 10 question outline so that at least they could, if they, if they didn't feel comfortable trying to write an essay like a storyteller, just answer these 10 questions and we'll put it. We'll put it together for you. And so there was a tremendous amount of editing involved with the book. Tom Madsen and Harry brule are a couple of the dads in the group, and they did a lot of the help, you know, with crafting the stories in a way that it would, it would hold together, right? So I think the dads would agree it was, it was healing for them, cathartic, and now they've got something where they feel like that, my my child is in there, and my descendants are going to read that book, and they will know what our family went through at this point in time. Yeah,

Brian Smith  44:13  
I think it's awesome. It's awesome project, awesome legacy for for the children that are in spirit, for the fathers to do that. But again, I know it's going to touch a lot of people. Maybe people are unexpected even at this point that. Or maybe, maybe a woman will pick it up and read it and say, I understand a little bit better, you know, what my husband's going through. Because again, I think a lot of times we as men have trouble expressing that. So was there, what was there anything in the in the overall arch of the book that surprised you, any overall themes from the 25 different stories?

Speaker 1  44:49  
Yeah, a lot of the fathers referred to their child as an old soul. And I asked, actually, I asked. Last night in our call with Farah, because she's talked to a lot of these dads, and she's, you know, in touch with spirit. So I asked her if this is a common theme for children who pass that they're humans, that it's premature, you know, this is out of order in terms of the natural order of life and and she agreed and said that, yes, some of these not only are the children signing up for something that will be difficult and will be painful for the ones they love, but as parents, we also signed up for this. And that we are, it's hard to say, but we are somehow blessed or privileged to go through such a difficult life lesson, because it is just a tremendous growth, opportunity and grief to growth. You know that, I mean, we really are growing through the pain that we're suffering from. So that that was a theme in the book that came up as a as a constant or consistent and also a couple of medium readings that I had, and that other fathers had, the mediums in one in particular, Isabella Johnson said something about your writing a book, the children are excited their stories will be told. So there was a component there that the children were helping, and a lot of the fathers felt that their child was helping them articulate. And Isabella even said it's mostly boys, though I only see about seven girls in the group, so she's connecting with this group of children who are helping write the book. And I went back. I never done it before. I went back to count the 25 stories of those 25 she was dead on correct it was seven girls, and the rest were young boys or men that that passed. So to know that the children were involved and kind of maybe helping or conspiring, I'm sure that in medium readings, you've, you've, you've heard that that the children can help to bring people together. Oh, yeah. And so to know that that that was the case was really rewarding, that that this could have been a bonding experience again, for the dads with their children,

Brian Smith  47:38  
yeah. So when it comes to fathers, if someone's listening to this and that they're early in their grief, what? What advice would you give a father early in grief?

Speaker 1  47:55  
Don't try to be strong. Don't Don't try to be anything other than just authentic, be true to yourself and try to try to just get in touch with how you're feeling, and then go from there. It's so natural for us as guys to try to put on a good face, a strong face, especially if, you know, unfortunate like, you know, we've got an employer and they're saying, Okay, well, it's been six weeks. You know, our human resources policy means you have to come back to work. How do you how do you deal with that? I mean, so my advice would be to to try to find like minded people who are in the same boat condition. You know, helping fathers heal is a safe place for you, or other organizations or grief counselors or other types of therapy, but But find yourself some help. Don't try to go it alone. That would be the most important thing I could suggest and and don't expect your spouse to be the single silver bullet to solve things, because that's a heavy burden to put on your spouse. Try, try to find yourself doesn't have to necessarily be professional help just find it your group of people who understand you and that will give you a safe space to just be with you while you grieve. Yeah,

Brian Smith  49:28  
I completely agree with that. You know, we call it our tribe, and my wife and I found helping parents heal not very long after Shayna passed and happened to have a vacation in Phoenix. So I met Elizabeth Azaan, who lives there. She's the founder for people that don't know. And we went to the first conference, which was in 2020 No, not 2020 2019 I think 2018 somewhere about around then. And we've been, we've been at both conferences, and we're going again this year. Here and some of our best friends now are people that we've met through helping parents heal. We met at that first conference. My wife met these, this group of eight women, and they all bought it, and they still text each other pretty much every day, you know, even all these years later. Yeah. So I completely agree with you. And again, for guys, a lot of times, we are going to try to go it alone. We're just going to knuckle down and bear through it, yeah, helping fathers heal is a safe place to release a little bit of that burden. Talk about some of these things that, you know, like, again, practical things like, when do I try? When do I go back to work? How do I handle my anger? Because, you know, times we have a lot of anger, what's a, what's a safe way to channel that? Because we don't want to, we don't want to take it out on our spouse, right? So that's right, yeah,

Speaker 1  50:45  
that's and you know, some of the dads who have some of that anger component, it's not unusual for fathers. I think this is also a unique thing. Is advocacy, getting involved in doing something meaningful, seems to be a common theme in the healing process for men, right? One of our dads is a police officer in Wisconsin, and he he's got a butterfly garden that he, you know, that was abandoned land by the city, and he's gotten people volunteers. They've just completely renovated this beautiful garden. Other dads do blood drives because their child needed transfusions and couldn't get the blood they needed. So, you know, writing this book for me gave me a sense of purpose. David Kessler has a great book called finding meaning, and I think that that's a, you know, you try to find a way to give meaning to what that child meant in your life and advocacy, whether it's alcohol prevention or drug it. There's several dads that are really very active in the Fentanyl crisis, yeah, trying to educate young people. So that's another theme, but it is a way to kind of maybe transform some of that anger or a negative emotion into something that is positive, because I think that's important too speak, do something constructive. I

Brian Smith  52:11  
always tell people there are no negative emotions or no bad there are no bad emotions, but there's a there's a proper way to channel it. Yeah, I wish I could remember who it was, so I can give them credit. But there was a guy that built a boat, like a, like a rowing boat, but it was like this beautiful wood, and he spent year, you know, all this time, building it, and he takes out, like once a year on his son's birthday or angel date. I think it was. But a lot of guys, you know, they're create that's a way to pour something that's so hard into something that's creative. So, you know, you hear other people, you know, you might say, well, that wouldn't work for me. I'm not going to, like, you know, start a nonprofit, but maybe I'll build something, or maybe I'll, I'll volunteer at a certain place that you know, and use the skills I have and do it in my kid's name, and it'll that'll transform that, that grief, into something that's much more productive.

Speaker 1  53:05  
Absolutely, yeah, yeah, that's, that's a, that's a very healthy thing. And that's, yeah, you mentioned nonprofits. Quite a few of the dads in the book, they did, you know, in some way, try to create either a scholarship fund, or one of the dads, his daughter was a star student. She was studying to be a veterinary, a veteran, a veterinarian, and so now he's his goal is to, every year, send somebody through veterinary school. So yeah, it just putting purpose to that child's life and putting your energy into that purpose. I don't know, somehow, just that child's spirit pours through you in a way that makes you feel connected and like you're doing something to help,

Brian Smith  53:56  
right, right? You're continuing their legacy. You know? Because, again, there's this feeling a lot when, when we lose a child that early, like their life's been cut off, yeah? And it doesn't have to be, you know, their, their life can continue. And it continue. It's, it's, it's backwards from what we expected, right? We expect our life to continue through them, yeah, but it's the opposite. We were put in the role of like, okay, we're now their their hands and their feet here. So I really appreciate what you're doing. I really appreciate you putting together this, this project that's going to it's going to reach a lot of people. It's going to help a lot of people. So thanks for doing that,

Speaker 1  54:35  
my honor. And I just feel like I'm a vessel. The other dads wrote, you know, large majorities of it, and I'm just glad to share that with with all those dads. It's it. We're all proud of that. Yeah, so there's going to be a lot of good hugging and high fiving at the conference. Yeah,

Brian Smith  54:52  
that's coming up in a couple of months. So remind people of the name of the book, where they can get it, and all that kind of stuff. Yeah.

Speaker 1  54:59  
So it's helping fathers heal grief, hope in our search for connection. And it is available on Amazon as well as Kindle, so you can get an ebook as well. And yeah, it's, I think it'll, it'll help whether you're male or female, or, you know, even a sibling or a brother or sister of somebody just to know, know and understand what the grief journey is like, I think, is, you know, if we can establish some more empathy in the world, can be, you know, nothing but good can come out of that.

Brian Smith  55:36  
Yeah, and Chris, if people want to reach you, can they reach you through your website.

Speaker 1  55:40  
Yeah, that's fine. Chris Ryan, video.com, there's a place there to leave a message. It's totally fine,

Brian Smith  55:48  
awesome. Well, thanks for doing this today. It's good to good to talk to you.

Speaker 1  55:51  
I appreciate it. Thank you, Brian, I appreciate what you're doing. All right, enjoy

Brian Smith  55:55  
the rest of your afternoon. You too. Thanks. You.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai