This week, we talk with Marisa Renee Lee, a former official in the Obama White House and a regular contributor to Glamour, Vogue and The Atlantic. She discusses at length the struggles she endured after her mother was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, then battled and succumbed to breast cancer when Marisa was just 25 years old. She set that emotional journey between the covers of her book, GRIEF IS LOVE: LIVING WITH LOSS. In it, she offers a roadmap for readers to help them navigate the complexities of sadness and joy that accompany not just the loss of a loved one, but the loss of anything you love.

Highlights

Transcript

Gary Schneeberger:

Hi, friends. Here at Beyond The Crucible, we often get a chance to dive into some of the hardest moments of someone's life, everything from facing loss to trying to find your purpose in life.

This summer, we've been working extremely hard to pull together a full e-course, our first, filled with more than three hours of lessons learned on how you can find and fully embrace Second Act Significance. To gain access to this course, visit secondactsignificance.com. That's secondactsignificance.com.

Now, here's today's podcast episode.




Warwick Fairfax:

Welcome to Beyond The Crucible. I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Crucible Leadership.




Marisa Renee Lee:

When we took my mom off treatment, I wrote her a letter. And I promised her that I supported her decision and I was going to be just fine. We were the ones having honest conversations about the fact that her time was limited, and what did she want, where did she want to die, what did she want for her funeral? We had that kind of relationship and I felt like I needed her to know that I was going to be okay.

And I made the mistake, as a younger person, thinking that okay meant going back to work, going back to life and just going back to being who I consider myself to be. But what I didn't realize is the moment you lose someone you love, like someone who you consider to be one of yours, whether it's a parent or a spouse or a child or a best friend, you stop being the same person that you were before.




Gary Schneeberger:

So, what does okay look like after you've been through a devastating loss? How does the new person you become in the aftermath of that loss go on living even as you go on grieving?

Hi, I'm Gary Schneeberger, co-host of the show. This week, Warwick and I talk with the final guest in our special fall series, Gaining from Loss. She's Marisa Renee Lee, a former official in the Obama White House and a regular contributor to Glamour, Vogue, and The Atlantic. She discusses, in length, the struggle she's endured since her mother succumbed to breast cancer when Marisa was just 25 years old. She set that emotional journey between the covers of her book, Grief is Love: Living with Loss.

In it, she offers a roadmap for readers to help them navigate the complexities of sadness and joy that accompany, not just the loss of a loved one, but the loss of anything one loves. And the first healing step on that journey, she says, is giving ourselves permission to grieve even as we continue to love who or what we are grieving.




Warwick Fairfax:

Well, Marisa, again, thank you so much for being here. I just loved reading your book, Grief is Love, which was full of just so much profound wisdom. Anybody that's had loss, which is so many people, it is just raw, it's honest, it's impactful, and we'll obviously get into this book quite a bit.

But I'd love just to start, from what understand, you grew up in New York State, I think maybe upstate New York. Now you're in the Hudson Valley now, maybe that vicinity, I'm not sure, but talk a bit about your upbringing and obviously your mom and dad. And before we get to the loss, it's all intertwined, but what was life like for Marisa growing up?




Marisa Renee Lee:

Thanks so much for having me. It's always a little embarrassing listening to your bio being read. I try not to cringe. But thank you. Thank you both for inviting me on today.

Childhood honestly, was pretty, I would say ordinary and unremarkable. I had two parents who loved me very much and also loved each other, a little sister who drove me crazy, lots of friends. Both my parents were very active in my school life and in our community, from coaching basketball to serving on the PTA, being a Sunday school teacher. That was our life. Mom and dad both worked, but they were very clear that their work was all about providing the best possible life for me and my little sister. And it was really lovely and fun. Until one day, everything changed.

I was 13 and it was probably right around this time of year actually. And one day, my mom got really sick and she just never got better. And it would take years and lots of misdiagnoses, but ultimately, by the time I was 16, doctors discovered permanent damage in her brain that was caused by Multiple Sclerosis. So, it was a long journey to that diagnosis.

And my life at home, our family life, went from a very carefree, fun, sort of average existence to one that was much more stressful, and at times, overwhelming and disorienting. With a parent who went from being very able-bodied, and active, and involved to being disabled and in and out of the hospital, and sometimes bedridden or in a wheelchair. So, that was a really big challenge for me as a young person.




Warwick Fairfax:

So, everybody grows up differently. I mean, some people grow up in an environment where they don't know happiness. They know tragedy, maybe dysfunctional family, just a really hard upbringing. But it seems like there's two parts to your life.

One is before age 13 and after age 13. Obviously, when your mother died, when you're 25, there's another separation in the timeline. But talk about, at times, can you even remember what life was like pre-13? Because it just probably seems like a couple centuries ago. But it felt like there was a time, as you say, when life maybe not perfect, but was pretty good.




Marisa Renee Lee:

Yeah.




Warwick Fairfax:

And it went from pretty good to, I don't know if it was awful, but just really painful. It was just this dichotomy.




Marisa Renee Lee:

Yeah. No, you're absolutely right. And it's funny because, in my mind, and I should talk to my dad about this, I don't know if this is actually exactly how it happened. But I remember my parents going to New York City for their wedding anniversary and that's November 1st. And then I remember my mom, soon after that, becoming a different person and a different parent and a sick person. And I think the biggest thing that changed was I went from this very carefree existence and that's what childhood is supposed to be, right? To becoming a mini adult overnight, it felt like.

And I don't have any regrets for the time I spent as a teenager or a young adult helping to care for my mom and helping to care for our family. But it was a really big shift from what I knew before then. And it was hard. And it was also the '90s, so nobody was talking to me about my feelings. Nobody was suggesting that I go to therapy because it's complicated and challenging having a sick parent.

It was more, okay, this is the situation and we're all going to do the best we can. And we love each other, and we'll do what we can to support each other, and just keep moving forward. That was my parents' attitude, that was my attitude, my sister's attitude. And that's what we did. But it was really hard.




Warwick Fairfax:

So, talk about that period when you have the diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis, and later on, obviously, breast cancer. And it felt like it just got worse. I mean, it didn't get easier, you know?




Marisa Renee Lee:

Yeah.




Warwick Fairfax:

I mean, one major illness is enough, but more, I mean, it's hard to understand. But just talk about those years because it felt like you didn't have a normal childhood, normal high school or teenage years. You were sort of robbed, in a sense, of that.

So, probably one stage of grief is, is the person I thought I would be and the person my friends were, I wasn't. So talk about just, and I think you were one of the primary caretakers, caregivers. So just talk about those teenage years, which seems radically different than the teenage years of your friends, I'm guessing?




Marisa Renee Lee:

Yeah, it was. So, it's interesting. In order to write a book, that is at least partially based on your life experiences, you have to unpack a lot of shit. You really have to get at what is the truth, what was I really feeling, what was I really experiencing then? And what do I feel now? And work through a lot of that. Grief is Love required a lot of time in therapy.

And one of the things that I realized as an adult was that there was definitely a feeling of resentment. I didn't want to admit, when I was younger, how hard it was or how burdensome it was or how frustrating it was at times to have to play that role in my family and to have a sick parent, because the last thing that I wanted to do was make things harder for my mom, or frankly, for my dad either.

But in particular, I could see that she was in pain and still very much, every single day, trying to be a present, supportive parent to us. It didn't matter how sick she was, she was still going to find a way to get things together for our birthdays, to make sure that Thanksgiving and Christmas were special, to let us have whatever parties and gatherings we wanted to have with our friends when we were younger.

It didn't matter how much pain she was in or what she endured, she continued to keep that focus on us. And as a result, I wanted to do everything I could to make her life easier. And so, for me, that meant doubling down on being best in class with academics, and extracurriculars, and everything at school. And trying to create as many normal teenage childhood experiences as possible, so she didn't feel like her illness was having a negative impact on me.

It was exhausting and it had long-term health, mental and physical health, implications for me. Not talking about all of these complicated feelings. When you ignore your emotions, they don't go away. They manifest in other ways. And so for me, from the time I was probably around 14, 15, until today, I'm almost 40 years old, I've had all sorts of stomach problems. And I know that it started with mom gets sick with some mystery illness that nobody can figure out and the stress that put on me as a 13-year old.

I always say, whenever I have a chance to talk to people about my childhood and adolescence, I hope that young people hear about Grief is Love and hear my story, and find ways to get the support they need if they're struggling with either a sick parent or the loss of a parent, because it's really hard.




Gary Schneeberger:

We call this series Gaining from Loss, and for you to find the gains that were attached to that loss, those losses that you experienced, you had to do the soul work, as Warwick calls it, to get through and really dig in. And your book really helped you to do that.




Marisa Renee Lee:

Yeah, a hundred percent. It was a really hard book to write. Like I said, there was a lot of therapy, there were a lot of tissues and there was definitely some chocolate and some bourbon involved. But at the end of the day, I feel like the process of putting Grief is Love together was absolutely a healing experience for me.




Gary Schneeberger:

Hm.




Marisa Renee Lee:

And that is something that I'm grateful for. I don't know if I would have done all of this healing, all this soul work, as you just called it, if not for the book.




Warwick Fairfax:

That is profound. I want to get to the main loss of your mother and the book. But I think one of the things that you are saying is there was this dichotomy as you were dealing with the grief of your mother's illness. You were not letting it defeat you. You were being a strong, young woman. You were getting great grades, you would end up getting into Harvard College, which is obviously extremely impressive. And later on, as we've heard, you served in the Obama administration, worked in finance. You were not letting this defeat you. You are plowing through, pushing ahead, which is wonderful. It's an amazing thing.

But yet, at the same time, there was the other dichotomy of not letting yourself deal with the loss of the dream of who your mother was and your childhood. And you talk about this a lot in this book about this misnomer, that if I admit weakness or grief, I'm a weak person. Therefore, I'm a strong person, I will not let this defy me or defeat me. I'm plowing ahead.

So, there was some good in the sense that it's great to be in, from my perspective, driven to succeed, to achieve. I think that's wonderful. But there was the good and the bad. So, talk about this almost yin-yang thing, as you were dealing with this.




Marisa Renee Lee:

Yeah. I mean, I really believed that if I was honest about what I was feeling, that I would just be taken down by these feelings, and just end up in this super depressed and overwhelmed space that I would never come out of. So instead, I just tried to just bury them, just swallow them, shove them down and ignore them, which doesn't work. And in my case, manifested in both physical and longer-term mental health consequences.

I still struggle with anxiety from time to time. And I also bring that back to when my mom got sick and my childhood and my adolescence. And one of the things that I lift up in Grief is Love, that I think is really important for people to understand, especially overachievers who just want to keep plowing through the hard things. The only thing that makes difficult and challenging emotions easier to deal with is acknowledgement.

Naming our feelings is what reduces their power over us. And I think we often assume the reverse. And that's not just me saying that, that is actual research on the brain and emotion and healing. So if you are going through it right now, whether it's grief or something similar, and you're like, "Oh, I can't bring myself to even acknowledge it because that'll make it worse," that's actually what makes it a little bit better.




Warwick Fairfax:

So, how old was your mother? How old were you when she passed? So, just talk about that because you were going through grieving up until that point and you thought life was tough, it got exponentially tougher, the grief probably got exponentially worse after. And it probably seemed pretty bad before. So, just talk about what happened and the impact it had on you.




Marisa Renee Lee:

Yeah. So, it's funny you ask the age piece because I get really hung up on that. Because when my mom first got sick, I was only 13, she was only 37. And as a almost 40-year old, that feels crazy to me now. And then, when she was diagnosed with the cancer, I was 22 and she would've been 42, which was, is officially up here, that's younger than my husband is now.




Warwick Fairfax:

Hm.




Marisa Renee Lee:

And then when she passed away, I had just turned 25 and she had just turned 49. And so, it blows my mind sometimes thinking about how young she was when all of these things happened to her.

But as I was graduating from college, my mom had been having a bad, probably, let's call it three to six months, where she was in and out of the hospital a bunch, constantly going to the doctors. She's in a lot of pain and she wasn't a complainer. So, I knew that there was something wrong. My dad knew, my mom knew. We believed her, but a lot of doctors said that, basically, they thought it was in her head.

My grandmother had just passed away quite suddenly that fall. And folks thought that this was just kind of an emotional response that was manifesting in physical ways. She continued to seek out different doctors and support, and eventually ended up being seen by an orthopedic surgeon, thinking there was something wrong with her bones because nobody could figure it out. And the guy that she saw was actually also a family friend. So, he was really listening to her and very committed to uncovering what was going on.

And he found lesions on her spine. And he said and I will never forget this because I then saw him at a friend's graduation party a few weeks later. He said that was the worst day in his entire career. To be with someone that he knew on some level, so knew that she'd already been sick for all of this time and had gotten the runaround from all of these other doctors, and he found cancer at the bones. And had to tell her that, on top of the MS. He said it's a moment he will never forget.

And so, after the cancer was identified in her bones, we did follow up appointments with oncologists and learned that it was stage four breast cancer that had migrated throughout her skeletal system. And this was the week I was graduating from Harvard. And so, I went from doctor's office in upstate New York back to Cambridge, did all of the end of school year, senior week fun festivities, with just a cloud of grief and stress hanging over my head. And then I decided to spend a year at home with my mom and dad, just kind of helping them figure out how to navigate this very complicated diagnosis, or set of diagnoses, and health situation.

About two and a half, three years later, we took her off of treatment for both diseases, because at that point the cancer was in her brain. She was having problems with her lungs, her body had just had enough. And so, we made the decision together as a family. And then, a few weeks after we made the decision, we thought we had six months, a year, or something like that.

But six weeks later, we were hanging out in the living room. She was having a bad day, but she'd had so many bad days in the course of my life with her, that it didn't really didn't register that day was going to be the bad day, you know? And she and I shared a joke, and then she collapsed, and was gone a few hours later.

And leading up to her death, again, my type A, Harvard, Wall Street brain was like, I'm going to make the spreadsheets. I got my lists. I'm going to do everything I can to prepare myself, to prepare her, our family, for her to die. And I thought that because I was so organized around her death, that would make the grief easier on the other side. And it just wasn't true. I mean, it knocked me on my ass and I didn't understand why. And I spent months berating myself for having so many feelings about an ordinary occurrence.

We're all going to lose our parents someday, right? That's what I would tell myself. It's really not that big of a deal that your mom died, which is crazy. And it was awful. Until one day, and I don't know what shifted for me, I wish I could remember it, but I honestly don't know. But it was one day, six months after she passed away, I wrote in my journal, "There's nothing wrong with me."

Where the problem sits is in how our culture treats people who are grieving and how we talk about and describe grief and loss. Because what you see on TV and in the movies, where somebody dies, everybody puts on black and goes to the funeral, and then everybody goes back to life a few days or a week or so later, that's bullshit. That's not how it works.

And so, I wrote to myself and I said, "I'm going to write a book about grief that's not going to be super sad and depressing, that will tell the truth about what grief really is, and that will be a New York Times bestseller."

So, we're still waiting on the New York Times, but I think I checked the other few boxes okay.




Gary Schneeberger:

67% is good.




Marisa Renee Lee:

Right?




Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah. No, you sure did. So talk about that. I mean, life is pretty tough beforehand. And you're driven, Harvard, Wall Street. You've got the spreadsheets. And people might think, and you write about this in the book, Marisa is a great, she's that strong, black woman. She's driven, she's like a role model for other women, maybe other black women. She's doing it all. I mean, she is not letting anything defeat her. And there was this, I don't know if there was subconscious expectation within yourself.




Marisa Renee Lee:

Oh, yeah.




Warwick Fairfax:

But on the one hand, you had had this appearance of, boy, Marisa is intelligent, she's impressive, she's driven, she's somebody you admire, she's an amazing person, which is great for people to think that. That's not bad, that's awesome. But yet inside, and you write about having trouble sleeping, taking all sorts of stuff to try, inside you were breaking apart. I think you'd write about being in stairwells of hospitals where they know to leave you alone.

So talk about, there was the public Marisa, but then there's the private, internal, that people didn't know that was there. So, just talk about the overwhelming, almost tsunami, tidal wave of grief, that hit you that other people probably didn't really see.




Marisa Renee Lee:

Yeah. When we took my mom off treatment, I wrote her a letter. And I promised her that I supported her decision and I was going to be just fine. We were the ones having honest conversations about the fact that her time was limited, and what did she want, where did she want to die, what did she want for her funeral? We had that kind of relationship and I felt like I needed her to know that I was going to be okay.

And I made the mistake, as a younger person, thinking that okay meant going back to work, going back to life and just going back to being who I consider myself to be. But what I didn't realize is the moment you lose someone you love, someone who you consider to be one of yours, whether it's a parent or a spouse or a child or a best friend, you stop being the same person that you were before.

I didn't understand that at 5:37 PM on February 28th, when my mom died, that there was a part of me, for better or worse, that died with her. And now, what I needed to do to be okay was figure out who am I in this world without this woman who was both my mom, but also she was someone who I had oriented my life around to some extent since I was 13 years old. So, there was a lot of my identity tied up in her as well.

And because I thought that the grief would be easier, because I was prepared and organized, because I believed that I was strong and I'd already been through a bunch in life. And so, I didn't think it would be as hard as it was going to be. And then, because I promised her I would be fine, but didn't really know what that meant, I forced myself to go back to work two weeks after we buried her, to continue running a non-profit on the side while I worked on Wall Street during the height of the financial crisis. To try to be okay, even though I very much was not okay.

And because I had all of these messed up ideas about grief and loss, and who I was, and what I was meant to do, I didn't feel comfortable sharing with anyone else just how bad it was. But literally, every day, I was able to get myself up, get myself dressed. Sometimes it was hard, and only on three or four hours sleep, but I could get myself ready for work, get on the subway. But the second that I started to leave the subway stop at Wall Street in New York City, and climb the stairs to head to my office, I would start having a debilitating panic attack.

I could make it to the basement of the investment bank where I worked. And that's where I would spend the first, I don't know, 45 minutes, hour. I truly don't know how much time I've spent down there. And there was one friend who knew about my morning routine, the only other woman in the entire banking department. And she would come down whenever I emailed her, when I was starting to put myself back together, and she would bring me a Xanax from my desk, a cookie and a soy latte.

And that was my routine for months. And I just was like, "Oh, I guess this is what it's supposed to be." I don't really know what else to do. I'm not asking for help. That's what I did until it stopped. And so, I think it's really important when you're dealing with grief, or some other deeply challenging emotion or experience, to give yourself permission to just be with the feelings and to find your way through it. And to ask for help. Because you can't do this stuff on your own.

Healing is a very individual experience and your grief is very much yours alone. But that doesn't mean you have to do it all alone. And as supportive as my community of friends and family were at that time, I just didn't feel comfortable opening up to how bad it was because I thought that was wrong.




Warwick Fairfax:

I mean, that's so profound and so sad, but so real for everybody that's been through grief. I want to kind of pivot because you're talking about some of the themes in your book. And I love the title of your book, Grief is Love. Just talk about what you mean by that because there's some profound truth.

And before I let you answer that question, one of the sad and good things about tragedy is you can learn profound wisdom. It's not a wisdom that you want. You don't want to learn wisdom this way.




Marisa Renee Lee:

Mm-hmm.




Warwick Fairfax:

It's like, please, can you give it to me some other way? For whatever reason, the way the universe, God, however you view it, not everybody does, but there's the opportunity to learn profound wisdom through tragedy. And you certainly have, from my perspective. Whether you wanted to or not, you have. So, talk about Grief is Love because there's a profound concept behind that title.




Marisa Renee Lee:

Yeah. So for me, the title and the whole experience of writing the book was actually born from another loss. After years of infertility, and IVF, and egg donors, and doing literally everything in my power to get pregnant and sustain a pregnancy, including letting an acupuncturist electrocute my uterus, my husband and I lost the pregnancy a few weeks later. And I am a practical and progressive woman. So it wasn't even for me about the pregnancy itself, but it was more about the hope for our future life as parents, and the hope that we held for that child, having that taken away.

And this was at the end of a years long process. This was the last chance, the last opportunity, this is where everybody was placing their bet and it didn't work out. And when it didn't work out, I was both devastated that it didn't work out. I was also physically very sick from the fact that it didn't work out. And all I wanted was my mom. And at that point, she'd been dead for almost 12 years.

And I realized then, I was like, I'm definitely not over this. I never really understood what that whole getting over it thing meant, but I was like, I'm clearly not over it. I wish my mom were here to help me figure out what to do, to help me feel better, to take care of me. And she's not and it sucks.

And then, a couple months after that loss, when I was still dealing with both the physical and the emotional consequences, we all found ourselves living in the midst of a pandemic. And the only thing I could do was just write my way through it. And as I realized that there's no point in trying to get over it, and what you actually have to do is learn to live with your losses, I sort of understand that that is true because of the love that we share with people.

If somebody dies, who you have no connection to you at all, you are probably going to feel bad or maybe feel bad for their family. You're going to feel a little something if you are a person with some degree of empathy, right? But it's not the kind of thing that's going to continue to come up for you, that you're going to have to continually deal with. Whereas, when you lose someone who you share an unconditional love relationship with, your brain is forced to figure out what it looks like to exist in the world without them. And as a part of that, you need to reconcile all of this love that you shared with someone who's no longer here. And it's like, what does that look like? How does that work?

And I finally realized that the pain that we feel is because, fundamentally, that grief is inextricably connected to the love that you share with someone. And what I realized is love is both feeling and action. And I started thinking about this a lot as I became a new mom, when I was wrapping up this book. And it's like, okay, if love is both feeling and action, we grieve because these people that we love so much, that we shared so much of our life with, are no longer here because they can no longer act on that love.

And that hurts, that sucks, especially when other losses take place or things happen in life where you really want them there. But I think you can continue to both feel their love for you and continue to hold love for them.

Just because my mom's not here, I'm not going to forget about her. They're always going to be things that make me think about her, that make me miss her, or where I'm forced to acknowledge the absence. And so for me, fundamentally, I came out with, oh yeah, grief is just another form of love. And unfortunately, it's often a painful form of love.




Warwick Fairfax:

One of the things that you state, and there's so many profound statements, truths that you say. One that really struck me in particular is you say, "Grief, like love, is also limitless," which means we have to find a way to live with it. The profound truth is not like, okay, I'm a strong person. I'll take three to six months and then we'll be done. I'm going to find a way through it. And obviously, we're very different.

Both my parents, well my mother was extremely driven in a lot of ways, so I have some of her perseverance. But left to my own devices, I'd have a little bit of that mentality, is that I'm a strong-willed person, with perseverance. I'm pretty, if not very-well, aware of my feelings, faults, all the rest. I'm pretty self-aware. Okay, I have the intelligence like Oxford, Harvard Business School, I have the capacity, the intelligence, and the emotional understanding. I have what I need. Let's power through this, let's make it go away.

Because talking about it does help, no question. But it's not like it makes it go away.




Marisa Renee Lee:

Yeah.




Warwick Fairfax:

It makes it easy to live with. It's so profound that it's limitless. It doesn't go away. I mean, maybe it's obvious, but to me that's a revelation for most people that go through grief. It's like, oh really? Oh, you mean it's okay to have days when something triggers me?




Marisa Renee Lee:

Yep.




Warwick Fairfax:

And I lost my dad who was in his late eighties when he died, as I was from marriage number three. And my dad died in early '87, that's like 30 plus years ago. I still miss him. I will have dreams occasionally where he's in it.




Gary Schneeberger:

I've been looking for the right time to say this to you, Marisa. My mother passed away in 1994 and she was only 63, which now that I'm 57-




Marisa Renee Lee:

That's young.




Gary Schneeberger:

I can put only in front of 63, I couldn't then.




Marisa Renee Lee:

Yes.




Gary Schneeberger:

But that was 28 years ago. Working on the preparation for this show, studying your story and the insights that you've gained about how grief doesn't end, just like love doesn't end. You may be able to tell, if anybody is watching this on YouTube or you see a clip, you've been around for 140 episodes. You know, listener, that I like to wear hats. I'm a little fancy in terms of, but I also like to wear rings a lot. The problem is I can't wear rings on the show because they clack on my microphone.

But today, right before we got on this call, I have behind me a bookcase. This is going somewhere, trust me.




Marisa Renee Lee:

I trust you.




Gary Schneeberger:

I have behind me a bookcase and I have things stored in there. And one of the things I have stored in there is what you'll see here on my finger. That is a dollar bill that was folded into a ring and it was folded into a ring more than almost 40 years ago by my mother.




Marisa Renee Lee:

Oh.




Gary Schneeberger:

And as I was preparing this area to go with this show, to interview you, I was hit with a wave of grief. We talked to another guest last week about grief doesn't come necessarily in a linear process. They're waves and they can come when you don't expect them. And I was hit with this wave of grief about missing my mom. And I thought, you know what, I'm talking to Marisa Renee Lee today about the loss of her mother. I'm going to bring my mom with me to this episode.




Marisa Renee Lee:

I love it.




Warwick Fairfax:

There you go.




Gary Schneeberger:

And that grief that I felt in that loss, and I'm not going to lie and say that every day I think about her, I don't. Weeks, months can go by where I don't. But in that moment, I did. In that moment, the love washed over me just as the grief washed over me, and I thought, I'm going to honor her in this way. And I just want to thank you for both being honest about your grief experience and the lessons that you've learned, but then also inspiring me to bring mom to the show today.




Marisa Renee Lee:

I love it. I love it. Gary, I brought my mom too. I realize, you guys, you probably can't see this, but there's our picture-




Warwick Fairfax:

Oh, wow.




Marisa Renee Lee:

Our last Christmas. Yeah, I'm with you.




Warwick Fairfax:

Wow. You know what? And thank you for sharing that, Gary. I mean, what I love about what you're saying, and you talk about this in the early chapters, is just the permission to grieve your way. Everybody's different.




Marisa Renee Lee:

Yes. Yes.




Warwick Fairfax:

Everybody processes grief differently. And we often think that we need to be caring for others. You spend a good part of your life, you know, it's not about me, it's about others. And you write later about you've got to actually care for yourself. A lot of studies these days say, like in the airplane, you've got young kids, "Put the oxygen mask on yourself first." If you can't care for yourself, and this is in the later chapters, you won't be able to care in your case for your husband and your son, or you won't be a good friend or anything.




Marisa Renee Lee:

That's true.




Warwick Fairfax:

If you care for other people, you should care for yourself. So that's, in the way, the chapters. But I love just this permission to grieve. It's not weakness to say, "Hey, I'm not doing well." It's actually to me-




Marisa Renee Lee:

It's human.




Warwick Fairfax:

It's human. To me, it's a sign of strength, it's a sign of courage. It's being brave enough to say, "I'm not okay." It's not weakness, it's profound strength.

Talk about some of these lessons that listeners can hopefully understand. Grieve your way.




Marisa Renee Lee:

Yes.




Warwick Fairfax:

You have permission to grieve. It's not weakness, it's courage, to actually grieve and find a safe place, safe person, where you can say, "Hey, you know what? I'm not doing okay. I'm just doing terrible."




Marisa Renee Lee:

Yeah. I think in American, and generally in western culture, we glorify all things positive. Like, I'm good. I'm okay. Turn your lemons into lemonade, blah blah, blah. But if you look at the research, as human beings, we are born with, I'm not going to remember off the top of my head, but five or six innate emotions. And half of them are things that we have come to judge and categorize as negative.

And it's like, how can it actually be negative if we were all born to feel these different things and to feel in this way sometimes? It's normal to be sad. And I'll tell you, being the parent of a baby right now has been a great reminder of the fullness of the human experience and the full spectrum of emotions that we should all be expected to experience. I'm sick of this sort of pull yourself up by your emotional bootstraps mentality. And instead, I want to see people giving themselves permission to just be human, to have a hard time, to have a bad day, to not feel like your best, most perfect Instagram-worthy self 24/7.

It's just not real. You can't live like that. And so, I wanted dig into a bunch of those themes in the book. But just to go back to what you said, a few things. Permission to grieve felt really important to me, because when I sat down to write the second version of this book, because the first version was one that I knew wasn't right, and I realized one day that it wasn't right because it focused too much on grief and less on healing.

I wanted to write a book that got at what has enabled me to live this full, hot pink, joyful life in the midst of multiple significant losses. And one of the first ingredients, and it was the first chapter in the book and also the longest chapter in the book, is permission. I finally had to stop trying to live up to either my own warped expectations, or other people's expectations around my personal emotional wellbeing, and give myself permission to feel however I feel each day about my mom, about the pregnancy loss.

When I was writing the book, there was also a lot of grief around going through the adoption process. That was just a really hard, stressful thing. So, once I started giving myself permission, it felt a lot easier to identify what are the things that can help me through this difficult time. Whether it's talking about and giving some voice to my feelings, or I find writing to be very therapeutic, or going to a counselor, or just going for a walk, or doing a meditation.

I felt like I couldn't get at the what's going to help me get through the really hard moments without first giving myself permission to feel and acknowledge the hard moments. And then one of the other things that I want to make sure people understand, we talked about how grief is limitless, how there is no timeline. And one of the things that I find a lot of people get really stuck on around grief is the idea of the five stages of grief.

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, brilliant woman, brilliant writer, researcher, but she herself makes very clear that that book and her five stages, that wasn't written for you or me, or for you, Gary. That was written for people who were dying themselves. And so, we have taken this dated framework, that wasn't even supposed to apply to bereaved people, and we have applied it to bereaved people in a way that I think, in more cases than not, causes harm.

Because when you hear something like stages, you think that there are these sequential steps, like AA, or the developmental milestones that we look for in our little children, that you're supposed to go through in this very ordered way. And when that doesn't happen, you're like, "Oh, I messed up. Now I feel like shit and it turns out I'm grieving wrong." No, that's not true. That's just absolutely not true.

So no timelines, no stages. Please give yourself permission. And I think that, while I'm very much opposed to the whole taking lemons and turning them into lemonade, I do think that grief and joy can exist simultaneously. If you are honest and open about what you're experiencing, I think that does sometimes create space for joy. And I'm not talking about the overwhelming sense of happiness that maybe you had on your wedding day, or when your child was born or whatever. But even just a moment where you know, you look outside and the sun is shining and you feel a little bit better for 90 seconds.

And so, I want to make sure that people honor the fullness of their experience, which can include some joy or some laughter, even when you're deep in grief.




Warwick Fairfax:

There's a lot of wisdom here. I mean, just a couple of the thoughts. Being vulnerable for a purpose, so to speak, or just expressing the fact you're not doing well. One of the things you obviously write about, certainly by implication, is you have to choose wisely. There can be some family members, who we love very dearly, who want to fix us. And they'll be like, "Oh. Thanks so much for sharing, Marisa. You need to do X. Do counseling."




Marisa Renee Lee:

Yeah.




Warwick Fairfax:

Counseling is not bad, but it's like, "Here's a five point plan how to help."




Marisa Renee Lee:

Or another common one is the like, "But you have this and you have this and you have that. So, don't be sad, don't be whatever."




Warwick Fairfax:

You have a wonderful husband and a baby.




Marisa Renee Lee:

Yeah, yes.




Warwick Fairfax:

You should be full of joy.




Marisa Renee Lee:

You should be fine.




Warwick Fairfax:

You should do meaningful-




Marisa Renee Lee:

Yeah.




Warwick Fairfax:

So, you want to find people that, not just a safe place, but a wise place. The safe and wise people will sit there and listen. They might say I'm sorry, they will be very short on answers and long on listening and empathy. And not everybody's wired that way. And if that's family member, that's great. If it's not, nothing against family.




Marisa Renee Lee:

Yeah.




Warwick Fairfax:

But find people that will listen and not try and fix you, right?




Marisa Renee Lee:

Yeah. Figure out who your crew is. Who are the two people, maybe three, who you can text when you're going through it, who aren't going to jump to solutions and are just going to meet you with compassion and empathy.




Warwick Fairfax:

Indeed. You talk also about grace, grace for yourself and grace for others. And that's not easy. I know, you write in the book about a very good friend, I think in college, who was playing for the Irish women's soccer team, and had a big match. And it's like, she's thinking, "This is one of the highlights of my career." You're thinking, "This is my best friend, you need to be here."




Marisa Renee Lee:

Yeah.




Warwick Fairfax:

And it took a while to get through that one, in different perspectives. But just having grace for you, for others, and forgiveness, that's important. Grace for yourself and other people. And if people talk about agree to disagree, but some people have, you might think, "Well, I would never do that. If I was on X soccer team, I'd drop it in a heartbeat." And you might think, "Well, I feel that's wrong."




Marisa Renee Lee:

Yeah.




Warwick Fairfax:

It may or may not be. But talk a bit about grace for yourself and grace for others, because it's easy for anger to just multiply, and start getting angry at other people rightly or wrongly.




Marisa Renee Lee:

Yeah. I think when you're hurting, it is hard to leave room for other people's imperfections of any kind. And when you're hurting, and you have expectations around how people in your life are supposed to support you and then they don't, it's really hard. And I think in some instances, frankly, proper boundaries may make most sense. If it's someone who's not interested in apologizing, or trying to meet you halfway and show you the care and love and support that you need, you probably just need to put up some boundaries and go find a different friend or family member to support you.

But when people are on your team and really want to be there for you, and bearing in mind the understanding that, as far as I can tell at this point, grief doesn't go away. So, you want to keep people in your life who really want to be there for you for the long haul because it's going to keep coming up. You're going to continue to be triggered by it. I just think it's really important to be willing to forgive and to extend grace because we're all human and most days we're all doing the best we can.

And then, I think it's equally important for you to extend grace to yourself. When you are grieving, grief takes over your body and your mind. And I'm not just saying that. There is scientific research that shows the direct impact that grief has on your brain. And that impact makes it hard for you to do the things that you've become accustomed to do, or in some cases, for you to do things the way that you're used to doing them because you're not yourself when grief has taken over.

I just think that grace, it really is a two-way street and I want people to think about grace as a key ingredient in living with loss.




Warwick Fairfax:

That's so well said. I know, as we are getting to the summary stage, a number of things you've said that are so profound is you don't get over loss, you don't get over typically grief. At least not from my perspective. You learn to balance grief and love, and living with grief, and living with your family and career. It's all different strands in the same stream, if you will. It's just part of life. There will be things that trigger you. Whether it's, my case, a loss of a family business, a loss of my dad, loss of my mother.

There will be things that come up and it could be simple as, I remember years ago, it's probably not a great example. But when my kids were small, they know I grew up obviously very wealthy. And when we had Christmas trees, we had staff to put stuff up, the Christmas ornaments up. Sounds kind of bizarre. And I remember my kids were small, and they said, "Well, daddy, that's so sad that you didn't do it as a family." And when they said that, I was just struck by a wave of grief and loss. Because it's like, you know what? You're right. I would've loved to grow up in a family where you're doing it.




Marisa Renee Lee:

Yeah.




Warwick Fairfax:

Most people take that for granted. Now that was part of, gosh, I guess I grew up different. In some ways, there's a loss of what others had, the simple Christmases rather than the stuff. That's a small example. But there will be things that trigger us, for some reason, out of the blue. And that's just part of life.

And what you're saying, and I want listeners to hear this, don't expect to get over loss. You might learn to live with it better, I don't know. But you learn to live with it. Does that make sense?




Marisa Renee Lee:

100 percent.




Warwick Fairfax:

Because sometimes people think if I read the right books, have the right counselor, and you talk about this, if I just found the right counselor, he or she could really flip the switch and I would be, "Praise God, I'm healed. No grief, that's awesome."




Marisa Renee Lee:

I mean, unfortunately, I just don't think that's how... You know, I'm almost 15 years into my journey following the loss of my mom. And the research that I looked at about, not just how grief impacts your brain, but also how love imprints on your brain. You are never going to forget about your father or about the fact that you know had this family business that is no longer a family business. You're never going to forget about those things.

And because they stay stored, and because you're never going to forget, there are always going to be moments, some joyful, some painful, that trigger you. It's just baked into who you are. And there's nothing wrong with that.




Gary Schneeberger:

This is a perfect time to listen to the captain, who's just turned on the fasten seatbelt sign, indicating that we have begun our descent to end this very fascinating and helpful discussion, and this cap on our series, Gaining from Loss.

I want to do a couple things, Marisa, before I let Warwick ask the last question. First thing, very important, how can listeners find you and find out more about you online? Where can they get their hands on your book and learn more about what it is that you do?




Marisa Renee Lee:

So, you can buy Grief is Love pretty much anywhere books are sold. Amazon, Target, local book sellers, Barnes & Noble, et cetera. You can find me, I'm Marisa Renee Lee on all social platforms and that's also my website. So please, please do follow along on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, et cetera. And I hope that you will consider buying the book.

It's not perfect. I don't know that there is a perfect book on grief, but I'm really trying to normalize the experience of grief and loss for people, and ensure that everyone has access to the things they need to heal from loss.




Gary Schneeberger:

And that's a perfect segue into the second thing I want to do here, because as I've said a couple of times, this is the last episode with a guest of our series Gaining from Loss. And there's something that I found, that you wrote for Vogue Magazine last October, called How I Learned to Find Joy During Times of Grief.

And the sentence that you have, that sort of sets up the five areas that you talk about, I think is a great capstone for this series. Because you say this, "As I've worked to manage my grief over the years, here's how I've learned to cultivate joy."

I would edit that a little bit, at the end of this series, for the context of this series to say, "As I've worked to manage my loss over the years, here's how I've learned to," I'll take out cultivate joy and with your permission, slide in, "create gain from the loss."




Marisa Renee Lee:

Yes.




Gary Schneeberger:

But here are the five things, and I want to do this. I've never done this before, but you've got the kind of mind I think is going to make this work out really well. I want to play this as sort of a fast money on a game show thing, where I'm going to tell you, I'm going to say, "Here's the first point that you said about this idea of how you manage grief over the years to find joy."

You have five points, and I don't want you to have to dive too deeply into it, but the first couple thoughts that come to your head when I say, "Here's the first thing you wrote that you do that." And the first thing that you wrote to cultivate joy, through grief and through loss, the first thing you wrote is, identify what you need and take it. Couple sentences on what you meant by that.




Marisa Renee Lee:

Yes, yes. Honestly, this gets back to what Warwick was saying about feelings. Figure out what you're feeling and then figure out what you need in order to access joy. It may be that today is just a day for you to sit with some sad feelings and let them wash over you so that tomorrow can be more joyful. Or it may be something more specific, like going to counseling. But whatever it is, figure it out and take it because you deserve to be happy.




Gary Schneeberger:

Excellent. Point one wrapped. Point two, set boundaries and stick to them. Couple sentences on that.




Marisa Renee Lee:

Yeah, this is a big one. I think especially with the approaching holiday season here in the States. I think it's really important, if you are having a hard time to not force yourself into a bunch of shoulds, for lack of a more technical term, like, "Oh, I should do this work thing. I should go to that event. I should celebrate Thanksgiving in this kind of a way, even though I'm pretty sure it's going to make me feel like shit." So, get rid of the shoulds and set boundaries around what you are and aren't comfortable doing while you're grieving.




Gary Schneeberger:

The third point is going to sound like, we've culled it from Crucible Leadership, Beyond the Crucible texts, because Warwick uses this exact phrase, it's in the new e-course that we've created. And your third point is to identify an accountability partner. What do you mean by that?




Marisa Renee Lee:

Oh, yeah. That's super important. So I don't know about the two of you, but I am really good at being hard on myself. And also, sometimes, not so great at doing the things that I know I need to do to care for myself. I preach about it, I talk about it all the time, but it's hard to put into practice when you have a full-time job, a new house, and a new baby.

And so, I have a couple of girlfriends who we hold each other accountable, to do the things that we know we need to do to, in order to pour into our families and pour into our work. And so, figure out who in your crew you can link up with and just be text buddies around, what are you doing for yourself today? What are your plans for the weekend? How are you making sure that you're getting the rest and the care that you need?




Gary Schneeberger:

Three-fifths of the way through, the fourth point of how you live with joy after loss is celebrate something, period. Anything. Talk about that.




Marisa Renee Lee:

So, my mom was a big celebrations person, so I'm all about celebrating wins even if they're teeny tiny ones. So, if you're having a hard time and today you manage to both get out bed and brush your teeth, feel free to celebrate that. It's okay. Give yourself a pat on the back.




Gary Schneeberger:

Awesome. And one of the things that you may celebrate, because I picked this up in some of the research, you love the Godfather, so do I.




Marisa Renee Lee:

Oh, I do love-




Gary Schneeberger:

If we ever meet, we have to watch, eat some cannoli and watch The Godfather. Here's your last point. And I love this point, not only for your story, Lisa. I'm sorry, Lisa.




Marisa Renee Lee:

That's my mother's name.




Gary Schneeberger:

I'm going to back up. Well, okay, I'm not going to back up. I'm just going to say-




Marisa Renee Lee:

Yeah, it's okay.




Gary Schneeberger:

Marisa. Wow. Hello, Dr. Freud. That is fast.




Marisa Renee Lee:

Yeah.




Gary Schneeberger:

That's awesome. I mean-




Marisa Renee Lee:

She came to visit. Yeah.




Gary Schneeberger:

Well, because I'm talking about her, right?




Marisa Renee Lee:

Yeah.




Gary Schneeberger:

And that's the fifth point. The fifth point here is, and I love this for your story and for our series, your fifth point is Be a Lisa.




Marisa Renee Lee:

Yeah. So for me, Be a Lisa is all about giving back. And there is research that points to, when we are in service of others, it usually does help our own mental and emotional wellbeing. So when I say Be a Lisa, I mean find something you can do for somebody else.




Gary Schneeberger:

Excellent. Warwick, I'll let you have the last couple of questions. But that sounds a little bit like what we say at Beyond the Crucible, live a life of significance, a life on purpose dedicated to serving others, right?




Warwick Fairfax:

Just as we kind of sum up here, I love as you talk about the legacy of your mother and living her legacy in a sense. And I also love just the way that you've managed to use the loss to help so many. And I've found, in my own way, and I'm sure you are finding this, as you write about the pain and people say, "Marisa, what you've written really helped me," it doesn't make the grief go away, but maybe it makes it a couple degrees more manageable.




Marisa Renee Lee:

Yes.




Warwick Fairfax:

It's sort of drops of grace to a person that maybe feel like they're wandering through the desert and looking for an oasis.




Marisa Renee Lee:

Absolutely.




Warwick Fairfax:

I've found that it's not necessarily a reason to do it, but it's a byproduct. So, just as we summarize here, I often like to ask, what's sort of a word of hope that you would give people? Because maybe today is somebody's worst day, or worst year, worst decade. What's a message of hope that you would give to that person?




Marisa Renee Lee:

Well, it's funny that you use the word hope because I would say, "Choose hope." Keep believing that there is something better than the worst pain of grief. Because there is. And while we know the grief doesn't go away, it's not the devastating on-the-floor-of-an-investment-bank panic attack situation, that it was 15 years ago.

Now, it's more subtle and less overwhelming. And I have managed to create a big, full, joyful life in the absence of my mother while also creating space for her. But I think you can only do that if you are committed to hope and if you really believe that there is something better than the worst pain that you experience when you lose someone you love.




Gary Schneeberger:

That sound you've heard, listener, is the plane on the ground. That Marisa has landed the plane, and we've landed this series, Gaining from Loss. So, thank you, Marisa Renee Lee. Thank you, listeners, for being with us. Warwick and I will be back next week with a wrap up of all the things we've learned. See you then.

Rabbi Steve Leder thought that after officiating more than 1,000 funerals, he understood death and the loss experienced by those it leaves behind. But it wasn’t until his own father passed away that he felt in his heart, rather than just knowing in his head, the depth and breadth of losing a loved one.

The lessons he’s learned and the applications he’s still living out have made clear to him that the losses we experience in life can be the fuel for living more intentionally. He says that we can craft a life today that will make us good ancestors to our family that follows.

Highlights

Transcript

Gary Schneeberger:

Hi friends. Here at Beyond The Crucible, we often get a chance to dive into some of the hardest moments of someone's life. Everything from facing loss to trying to find your purpose in life. This summer we've been working extremely hard to pull together a full e-course, our first, filled with more than three hours of lessons learned, on how you can find and fully embrace second act significance. To gain access to this course, visit secondactsignificance.com. That's secondactsignificance.com. Now here's today's podcast episode.




Warwick Fairfax:

Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Crucible Leadership.




Rabbi Steve Leder:

Regardless of your beliefs, if you've ever suffered a terrible loss, it's not the end of the relationship. It's not the end of love. And we can take these terrible losses and use them to ennoble our lives. Dostoevsky said his greatest fear was that his life would not be worthy of his suffering. That is such a powerful idea. We all go through hell, all of us, and there are many forms of hell. There's the hell of losing someone you love. There's the hell of Alzheimer's. There's the hell of failure. There's the hell of public shame. There's the hell of betraying. There's the hell of being betrayed. There's the hell of cancer. There's the hell of a kid in trouble. The hell of addiction. We all go through hell. But the point is not to come out of hell empty handed, that is the point.




Gary Schneeberger:

And that friends is also the point of our special fall series, Gaining From Loss. Hi, I'm Gary Schneeberger, co-host of the show, and you've joined us today for our conversation with Rabbi Steve Leder, senior rabbi of Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles. And the author of, The Beauty of What Remains. In this conversation with Warwick and me, Rabbi Leder describes that even after officiating more than 1000 funerals, it wasn't until his own father died that he felt in his heart rather than just knowing in his head the depth and breadth of losing a loved one. The lessons he's learned and the applications he's still walking out have made vivid to him that the hells we experience in life can be the fuel for living more intentionally, the fuel to crafting a life today that will make us good ancestors to our family that follows.




Warwick Fairfax:

Well, Steve, Rabbi Leder, thank you so much for being here. I love just some of the concepts in your book, and we'll dive into it in a bit, The Beauty of What Remains, just what we can learn from loss and death. And I know obviously the death of your dad was pivotal in your story, but before we get into that, I'd love just a little bit of the background, behind the scenes. I know you grew up in Minneapolis, so talk a bit about what life was like for you and how you decided to become a rabbi. I'd say, what was your background and your journey?




Rabbi Steve Leder:

Well, I grew up in the first ring of suburbs outside of Minneapolis called St. Louis Park. And despite the fact that it was in the middle of Minnesota, it was a small little Jewish ghetto. I walked to school in the morning with a hundred Jewish kids just from my block. Now this was only about a 20 square block area, but it was all I knew. I'm the fourth of five children. My dad and my uncle who lived two houses down owned a junkyard together called Leder Brothers Metal. And that's where I learned about humility and hard work. My dad grew up on welfare. He too was one of five. My parents were 17 and 18 when they got married and had the five of us before they were 30 and no safety net.

And I was kind of raised in this culturally rich Jewish environment with a tremendous amount of catastrophic thinking. There was catastrophe lurking around every corner. We weren't poor but we lived like we were poor. I was the first and only in my family to go to graduate school, and my father sat me down my junior year of college and said, "Steve, I think you have a couple of choices here when you graduate, you could go to law school and run Leder Brothers, or you could not go to law school and run Leder Brothers." Those were my two career choices.

But because this was such a kind of blue collar upbringing, every creative pursuit was summarily dismissed throughout my childhood. You want to be a writer? Forget it. You want to be an actor? Forget it. You want to be a musician? Forget it. An artist? Forget it. You go to law school and you run a business. That was the way up and out. The one exception to that worldview was the synagogue. That was the one endeavor above reproach. That was the one place my parents would drive me too. If you wanted to play hockey, you were on your own. You wanted to play baseball, you were on your own. But the synagogue somehow was acceptable and it was there that I was allowed to express myself and be creative. And it was there that I met erudite, educated people. And I remember thinking at that age, if I could ever have a job where I got to wear a suit and a tie every day, wouldn't that just be the most remarkable thing?

Because really the business my family was in was a very dangerous, gritty, dirty, freezing cold and very hot kind of life. That was really it for me. I always just loved being there and expressing myself. I remember telling my dad, my senior year of college that I was going to apply to rabbinical school and his first response was, "Rabbis are beggars. Why would you do that?" So we had a kind of difficult time about that. And yet, once I was ordained and was in Los Angeles, my parents had a condo in Palm Springs and they would drive in on Saturday morning to hear me preach. And it wouldn't matter if there were 200 or 2000 people out there. All I saw was one set of teeth smiling and it was my dad. So he came around and ended up being quite proud of what I chose to do.




Warwick Fairfax:

I mean that's an amazing story because it sounds like, it wasn't like there was all these options here open to you, and you obviously wanted to live a different life than your parents and your uncle, that I guess was in business. And that's not a judgment, it's just, it's your life and you wanted to do something different. So it's interesting, and I love in the book how you talk about, I think you were at a Jewish summer camp and so... Rabbis are in t-shirts and shorts, and they're throwing baseballs and "I didn't know rabbis could be cool" and-




Rabbi Steve Leder:

Because the rabbis where I grew up in my home congregation were these very old stuffy, kind of Germanic, and like yellow teeth and greasy hair and they were scary. And then I go to this Jewish summer camp, which my parents sent me to by the way, because I got arrested for shoplifting when I was 14 and I was smoking weed every day in junior high school. They kind of woke up and decided I might benefit from some parental supervision because I was the fourth of five. They were kind of done by the time I showed up. And I remember going to this Jewish summer camp in Oconomowoc Wisconsin, on Lac La Belle, Gary, where your roots are.




Gary Schneeberger:

All right.




Rabbi Steve Leder:

Yeah. And I remember seeing rabbis, as you said, Warwick in t-shirts and shorts, who could throw a baseball. And I remember it very distinctly. I was 15 and I thought to myself, wait a minute, rabbis can be normal people. How is that possible? And it blew my mind, and I loved everything about the place and I really never looked back.




Warwick Fairfax:

So fast forward, you end up in Los Angeles in a very prominent synagogue, Wilshire Boulevard Temple, which from what I understand is maybe the oldest Jewish congregation in Los Angeles, and very prominent, and several campuses. So that's... To lead a synagogue like that and that history is obviously a tremendous honor. I think you've been there since 2003. So talk about that. I mean that's sort of an amazing journey.




Rabbi Steve Leder:

Well, I've actually been there since 1987.




Warwick Fairfax:

Oh wow.




Rabbi Steve Leder:

I've been the senior rabbi since 2003, I believe. But I was there in 1987. I started July 15th, 1987. I was 26 years old when they hired me. I knew nothing. But I really loved my culture, my people, I loved our narratives and I knew how to work hard, really hard. And those things combined to really, kind of wed me to the congregation. I was ordained with a class of 70, only two of us are still at the congregations where we began. Most clergy have 2, 3, 4, 5 jobs in the course of a career. I am now in my 36th year at Wilshire Boulevard Temple. It's very unusual, but there's an old saying in my business that congregations get the rabbi they deserve, and rabbis get the congregation they deserve.

It's like a marriage and we have a really good marriage. I have always worked very hard to put the congregation's interests first, and they've worked hard to keep me here. And together we've really grown. When I showed up, the congregation had 1800 families and now it's 2700. We had one campus and only a Sunday school, and now we have three campuses, three early childhood centers, two elementary schools and three Sunday schools and we have sleepaway camps and a conference center. So it's a lot of fun to run. It's obviously a lot of pressure too, but anything worth doing involves pressure, I guess.




Warwick Fairfax:

I want to make sure we get to some of the things in your most recent book, The Beauty of What Remains, and I'm sure that continues in the book, that's going to be coming out soon, For You When I Am Gone, because this series is about loss. And I think I find it interesting to say or that you've said, I think you gave maybe a thousand different eulogies. You had one that was really very widely respect and you thought, I've got this eulogy stuff down. After about a thousand, I think, you know what they say, practice makes perfect, had a lot of practice, maybe I'm not perfect, must be getting somewhat close. But then your dad died, which sort of transformed your thinking. So, I love the thinking behind that title. Talk a bit about what lies behind the title of The Beauty of What Remains.




Rabbi Steve Leder:

Regardless of your beliefs, if you've ever suffered a terrible loss, it's not the end of the relationship. It's not the end of love. And we can take these terrible losses and use them to ennoble our lives. Dostoevsky said his greatest fear was that his life would not be worthy of his suffering. That is such a powerful idea. We all go through hell, all of us. And there are many forms of hell. There's the hell of losing someone you love, there's the hell of Alzheimer's, there's the hell of failure, there's the hell of public shame, there's the hell of betraying, there's the hell of being betrayed. There's the hell of cancer, there's the hell of a kid in trouble. The hell of addiction. We all go through hell. But the point is not to come out of hell empty handed. That is the point.

Can you come out of hell with something that ennobles your life and gives you... And can you find some purpose within it? And I think that idea from Dostoevsky is, can we be worthy of the suffering we've endured? That's the mission. And that can actually make our lives more beautiful. My father's death has changed my life. I miss him, it hurts. But I am also leading a much more beautiful life today than I was while he was alive. And it is due in no small part to the fact that he died.

Kafka said the meaning of life is that it ends. It really is that simple. And I remember the moment that I realized that. I'm trying to tell this story quickly. So you're right. I was a rabbi for 31 years before my father died, and I had officiated more than a thousand funerals for sure. And I thought I kind of understood death pretty well. And then my dad died and I moved from rabbi to son. A lot of the book is about that evolution, and what the rabbi thought he knew that the son actually realized was wrong. So I'm sitting in the small room with my family, my four siblings and our spouses and the kids and my mom. And we're waiting for the rabbi to come in at the synagogue into that small room in the hallway and lead us into the chapel to see my father's body in the casket.

And then the caskets closed and then the funeral would begin. People would be allowed in. And the young rabbi walks into the room and I remember saying to myself, I know exactly how the rabbi feels right now, but I have no idea how I feel. I am in a new universe. And then the rabbi walked us in, and keep in mind I had stood next to a thousand families while they looked at their loved one's dead body. And to be honest with you, it didn't really affect me very much. I could have eaten a sandwich standing there, I was there to help them, but it was vicarious. And I had that professional shard of ice that one has to have in these situations. So he walks us into the chapel and I approached my dad's casket and body, and I looked down and I remember I put my hand on his chest because I didn't want to feel his skin because I knew it would be cold.

So I put my hand on his chest. Now to understand the power of this, you have to know something about my dad and about me, throughout our lives we looked almost identical. Like if you saw a picture of my father at 10 years old and a picture of me at 10 years old, you could not tell the difference. And I looked down and my first thought was, that's how I'm going to look when I'm dead and my son is bending over my casket. I am going to die. 55 years old and all those funerals, it had never really occurred to me in the core of my being, I am going to die. And that realization changed my life for the better. And that's also why I called the book, The Beauty of What Remains. It applies to the memory of my father, but it also applies to the precious time I have left, which now is more beautiful to me than it ever could have been otherwise.




Gary Schneeberger:

We've called this series Gaining from Loss, what you have just described, Rabbi was a gain from your loss. And it hasn't been a one time gain that you kind of put in your pocket. It's a gain that you put in your heart and it informs your living moving forward. Right? I mean it's not an overstatement to say, as I think you may have said earlier on, it's changed your life.




Rabbi Steve Leder:

It changed my life. And this concept, by the way, a gain through loss, I'll tell you where my mind is going, and it may be of interest to you guys and your listeners, which is the concept of sacrifice. So we tend to think of sacrifice in our culture as a net loss, as a negative. She made so many sacrifices. He made the ultimate sacrifice. But the Hebrew word, the biblical Hebrew word for sacrifice, Korban, comes from the same family of words as Krovim relatives, Kiruv to gather in, Krovim I'm sorry, Krovim are relatives. Karov means to be close or near. In other words, from a psycho linguistic standpoint, the biblical concept of sacrifice was the way you got closer to God and to the people who matter. And it's a counterintuitive way of thinking about it. But the idea being, you never are poorer by giving. And it's not a net loss, it's a net gain. And if you think, well, let's just try an experiment quickly, Warwick what are the two most important things to you in your life?




Warwick Fairfax:

Well, I'd say my faith and my family, my wife and my three kids.




Rabbi Steve Leder:

Your faith and your family. What are the two things you have sacrificed the most for in your life?




Warwick Fairfax:

Probably both of those groups.




Rabbi Steve Leder:

Exactly. So we really do feel the closest to and the richest from the things we sacrifice the most for, it is a gain through loss.




Warwick Fairfax:

Wow. I mean that is so profound. I mean, there's so much in this book to really dive into. I mean, a lot of it's counterintuitive, at least for those of us who are living and not a few heartbeats away from death, which hopefully most of the listeners are there. I mean, just even in some of those early chapters when you talk about, most people are afraid of dying and what you say is that people who are actually are dying in those last stages. They're not afraid of dying. If they have any fear, it's more they want to make sure that their loved ones are okay.




Rabbi Steve Leder:

That's right.




Warwick Fairfax:

I think, even your dad, I think, it's like, "Steve, just tell me you're going to be okay." I mean, that that's some profound learning that we can have from those who are having their last breaths.




Rabbi Steve Leder:

Yes, death is as natural as any other part of our lives. And the closest thing I... Look, and by the way, let's be clear, I'm talking about people who are literally actively dying a day or two away from death. I've been at hundreds of those bedsides. I always ask, "Gary, are you afraid?" And the answer a hundred percent of the time is no, not for themselves. And the closest thing that I can compare it to for the living is imagine yourself with the worst jet lag you've ever had in your life, right? You are just a freaking zombie. What do you want to do? All you want to do is get to that hotel, get into bed, darken the room, pull the covers up over your head and go to sleep. You're not anxious about going to sleep, you're not depressed about going to sleep, you're not sad about going to sleep.

It's the most natural thing in the world. That's the closest analogy I can give you, to what it means to be a day or two from death. Now you might say, "Well what about the people who die suddenly? Steve aren't they afraid?" No, because they don't know it's coming. You get hit by a bus, you don't know it's coming. So really this fear of death is not, it's really catastrophic thinking. It is not how it goes down.




Warwick Fairfax:

It seems like, as you thought about your dad's death and what happened, and just more generally, you have one chapter, you talk about Psalm 23, which is you rightly say, in Christian and Jewish funerals, it's prominent in almost all. And this idea that we don't stay in darkness forever, that we move forward despite very real losses. And I love how you say, somewhere you move, rushing past the pain isn't fair to our heart. So talk about how that there is darkness with death, but yet it's not the end. Obviously if you're a person of faith is not the end for them, but it's also not the end for us who are living.




Rabbi Steve Leder:

Right. That's right. The verse you're referring to is, Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil for thou are with me. The poet is telling us, it is a long dark valley, but we walk through it. We can put one... And sometimes in life, just being able to put one foot in front of the other is a profound act of faith. And grief is one of those times. By the way, also, if you think deeply about this metaphor of grief being a valley of shadows, if you think deeply about a shadow, no matter how long, no matter how dark, it's actually proof of light, you cannot have a shadow unless a light is still shining. It's obstructed, in the Psalm, it's the sunlight obstructed by mountains because you're in a valley, in grief it's obstructed by loss.

I often say to people, grief is love obstructed. It's there, it's shining, but it is obstructed. A shadow is proof of light, pain and grief are proof of love. And also I think... Now this is where I think the poet misses the point and where, by the way, I'm 62 years old, my entire generation missed the point and every generation to follow, because we were all raised under the thinking of Elizabeth Kubler Ross who divided death and dying and mourning and grief and loss into stages, five stages. And that implies that grief is a linear process. And what I learned in the aftermath of my father's death is that grief is an entirely non-linear process. Kubler Ross, you would think, okay, first I'm going to feel A then B, then C, then D, then E, and then I'm done, like grief is some kind of rash that clears up.

In the book I say that, anyone who thinks the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, knows nothing about grief, because grief is non-linear. Therefore you cannot do it wrong, you cannot do it out of order. And the only expert in your grief is you. And I feel that grief, for me at least, and I think for many is much more like waves. I think waves are a better metaphor, because they come very close together and they're very large and very aggressive at first. But they do spread out. They do become less frequent, they become less aggressive. The undertow is not quite as powerful. And it is equally true that you can have days, weeks, months, years even, of calm, beautiful seas. Your back is turned one day and some rogue wave of grief just rises up and takes you down. And that's the truth of it.

Now, that grief taught me something that made my life better. To extend this wave metaphor. Before my father died, I was the kind of guy who when confronted with a wave, a wave of anything, a wave of anxiety, a wave of hard work, a wave of illness, didn't matter. I would plant my feet in the ground, stick my chest out and say, come on, I'm stronger than any wave. I am going to hold my ground. But we all know what happens to someone whose default setting is such, when a new kind of wave hits them, a typhoon, a tsunami that they have never, ever experienced before.

You end up being thrashed, turned upside down, smashed against the rocks, scared, grasping, flailing, gasping for air. That's what happens when you try to stand up to a certain type of wave. So what I learned is there's a better way, which is, when you see these and feel these enormous waves coming, you lie down and you float with it, until you can stand up again. And I also discovered that while you're floating, if you reach your hand out, very often there's someone standing near you who will take your hand and help lift you from that suffering. And that changes your entire life. The Talmud says the prisoner cannot free himself. That's a very powerful insight, particularly for men, by the way.




Gary Schneeberger:

This last several minutes of conversation, what pops in my head is something I read in an interview that you did, talking about the pandemic, where you talked about coming out of the pandemic, the emotion that you felt. Somebody asked you how did you feel going through that emotion? And yeah, there was a lot of grief for a lot of people, and we've been focusing a little bit on death. But you started out by talking about all kinds of things that can cause loss and grief. The pandemic was one of those things. And you said that, when asked what was your emotion coming out of that, you said gratitude.

And it's led me to want to ask you this question, and I've asked other guests, I mean, have you found gain from loss? But I want to ask you this is, it sounds like what you're talking about, we tend to think the opposite of grief is joy. It seems to me maybe what you're talking about, especially that idea of if you reach your hand out while you're resting, there's a hand there to help you go through it. Maybe is it possible or in your view is the opposite of grief, gratitude? Is that a fair statement to make?




Rabbi Steve Leder:

Very. First of all, I don't think there is an opposite of grief.




Gary Schneeberger:

Okay.




Rabbi Steve Leder:

All of life is separation and loss. Blessings don't come any other way. So I'm not sure. I don't think it's a binary reality. You're either grieving or you're something else. Quite to the contrary. So what I discovered in writing the book, what I realized I was really writing about was dualism, was the duality that death forces us to confront. The dualities, right? The dualities of love and loss, light and darkness. Let's talk about memory for a moment. The duality of memory. Clergy are full of cliches about memory. May his memory be a blessing. You'll always have her in your memory. Da da da. Yeah, that's all true. But yeah, it's true that memory is beautiful, but it is equally true that it really, really hurts. It's both. It's like, in the book I say, it's like being caressed and spat on at the same time.

And so for me, listen, I love my father. I feared my father. I loved my father. I feared my father. I lovde my father. I feared my father. My father was a great father. My father was a terrible father. There's dissonance, there's dichotomous tension in all of us all the time. And death forces us to look at that. I'm alive, I'm going to die, I'm alive, I'm going to die. Everything matters. Nothing matters. Everything matters. Nothing matters. Now what it did for me, is I finally understood that making peace with the irreconcilable nature of life's dualities is a resolution. Making peace with the fact that these things cannot be resolved is a resolution and it brings me peace.




Warwick Fairfax:

Well, I mean that is profound. I mean there it is, duality. And I can relate to so much of what you said. My mother died five years ago at age 95. My dad, who was a lot older, died in his eighties back in January 87. So long time ago. And even though my dad has died, whatever that is more than 30 years ago, there's still maybe not waves of grief, but maybe ripples. I'd look at a photograph or there'll be memories with both of them, of joy and others of sadness. Things that I loved about them to things that I didn't appreciate quite so much. And there is that duality. But I love what you talk about is through loss, there is gain in the sense, you talk about death as a great teacher, if it impels us to serve the living, I mean we appreciate the best about them.

You write elsewhere, you appreciate the things that you didn't like about them, you make a choice not to be like that. I think we can be the captain of our own ship in terms of our character and life. We can choose to live differently. You, in your books say the way you parent is different than the way your father parented. You try to, as we all try to, do a little bit better.




Rabbi Steve Leder:

That's right.




Warwick Fairfax:

Hopefully your kids will endeavor, nothing against you, try to do it a little bit better than you. And so the virtue of a cycle goes on. So talk about just some of these profound lessons that you feel like death can tell us about life, what's important. You say elsewhere, nobody wants your crap, which I love that phrase. It's like, I'm sure with your congregation, it's not all about how many millions or billions you accumulate. Nothing wrong with that. But I don't think you've given too many eulogies in which you said, "Okay, here we're going to walk through this person's balance sheet and income statement. How many houses and cars?"




Rabbi Steve Leder:

Here's the simplest example, and I talk about this in my new book, which is now out called For You When I'm Gone, I ask the question in the book, I make an observation about headstones. Now I spend a lot of time in cemeteries. And despite the fact that we all, every one of us is unique, we lead unique lives. If you walk through a cemetery, you will see an extraordinary universality to inscriptions on headstones. Why? Because when you have to distill a person's life down to 15 characters per line and four lines total, that's like half a tweet. You are engaged in a very, very enlightening act of essentialism. What do you see on headstones? You don't see anybody's resume, their net worth, where they went to college, where their grandchildren went to college, their children's GPA, their jean size, their zip code, none of it.

None of it. What do they all say? Loving husband, father, grandfather, brother, friend. Loving wife, mother, grandmother, sister, friend. That's it. It all comes down to the tiny handful of relationships we have that matter. It all comes down to this simple profound fact that it is not what we have, but who we have that defines our life. Now the question is, are we living that way? And this is why death is such a powerful teacher. In fact, I think death is the only teacher. And I wish there was another way to be awakened.

I've always wanted to write a book of how to have your second child first. But you can't, right? It's a great title, but you can't write the book. You have to experience these things in order to learn from them. You cannot do it theoretically. I was at a thousand funerals before my father's. I thought I knew a lot. I knew nothing. Nothing. This is why I'm so interested, as both of you are, in pain and in death, because they are the things that shake us up. Marshall Mcluhan said, "I don't know who discovered water, but it wasn't the fish."

Right? Now, when does a fish discover water? When it's yanked out of the water and wriggling on a hook. That's when a fish figures out it was in water. That disruption, it takes something disruptive to enlighten us. I wish there was another way, but I certainly haven't found it.




Warwick Fairfax:

It's so true. I mean, in probably a hundred plus guests we've had on the podcast, I can't tell you how many people have said how loss was a great gift. We had an Australian woman who dove into a suburban pool in Sydney. She was 13, became diagnosed as a quadriplegic. She was athletic. A couple decades later, she's a consultant speaker. And she said, "What I went through was a gift." That to me, I'm not saying that's right, but there's a sense of loss can teach us. Even in my own case, losing 150 old family media business on my watch, I've learned so much from that. There's even gift in there.




Rabbi Steve Leder:

Well, I'm sure-




Warwick Fairfax:

It's a crazy concept.




Rabbi Steve Leder:

In its own way it probably liberated you, right?




Warwick Fairfax:

Indeed. Well said.




Rabbi Steve Leder:

Yeah. Yeah.




Warwick Fairfax:

Well said.




Rabbi Steve Leder:

Yeah, yeah. Because I'm sure as hell happy. I'm not running Leder Brothers Metal. I would be rich and bored. So look, I think we have to be careful here. I am not trying to idealize pain and loss. I am not for a moment saying that that woman's life was worth becoming a paraplegic or a quadriplegic. What I think we are all saying is, but neither is it worthless, if you have to go through hell don't come out empty handed.




Warwick Fairfax:

And that's really, you summarize it so well. We don't choose the catastrophes, the crucibles, the calamities that happen to us. Whether it's death, a car accident, alzheimer's, a cancer diagnosis. None of us choose that. None of us want to go through that. But if you have to, at least have some good come out of it, learn something from it.




Rabbi Steve Leder:

And if nothing else, it deepens our ideally, it deepens our empathy for the suffering of another.




Warwick Fairfax:

Amen. It so does. There's one quote you say in some articles that you talk about living as a good ancestor. I love that phrase. And other people talk about what do you want your eulogy to be. Live that eulogy today. I mean a couple different writers have come across have said that, and that's so profound. Because you don't want to be on your deathbed with your, I think, what two kids is it? Saying, yeah dad was pretty good, but I wish A and B. I mean none of us are perfect, but you hope that they say, dad may not have been perfect, but he gave us his all. He loved us deeply. He spent time with us. It wasn't all about his day job. He was a good man and a good dad. And I respect him, I admire him. I feel blessed to have him as a father. I mean, it's probably something along those lines, I'm guessing.




Rabbi Steve Leder:

In the new book. The first chapter is about regret. And I discovered something, again counterintuitive. I'm very interested in these counterintuitive things about life. In looking at what most people regret at the end of life, I discovered that what most people regret most is not something they did. It's something they didn't do. It's not the mistakes of commission, it's the mistakes of omission that people regret most. Because as I often say to people, you cannot have a better past, if you missed an opportunity, you cannot have a better past. So regret ideally should impel us like loss, like pain, to march into a better future.




Gary Schneeberger:

I am not going to regret my omission to say that sound you heard listener was the captain turning on the fasten seatbelt sign. And for the first time in 140 episodes, I get to say the reason that we're going to have to land the plane here is that rabbi Leder needs to catch a connecting flight in a few minutes.




Rabbi Steve Leder:

That's right.




Gary Schneeberger:

Before I go, rabbi, please tell listeners how they can find out more about you on the internet, how they can find your books, how can they learn more about Steve Leder?




Rabbi Steve Leder:

Well, thank you. I appreciate the question. My books are all on Amazon. Just go to Steve Leder, L-E-D-E-R. The new one came out in June. It made the New York Times bestseller list, which I'm really proud of. It's a team effort to get that far, believe me. I'm on Instagram. That's one great way to follow me and kind of keep up with what I'm thinking and doing. And that is @steve_leder. Again, L-E-D-E-R. I have a website, steveleder.com. You can find me at Wilshire Boulevard Temple, at that website. And that's the easiest way to kind of connect. And I actually do answer all of my DMs myself on Instagram. So if you want to communicate, that's a great way to do it.




Gary Schneeberger:

Awesome. Warwick, we've got a couple minutes left before we have to bid farewell to the rabbi. What's your final question?




Warwick Fairfax:

Well, you have so many profound quotes in the book that we've just been discussing, but there's one kind of... At the end and it says, the older I become and the more distance from my father's life and death, the more I realize how incumbent it is upon us all to make the legacy we inherit more beautiful and more authentically our own. Not only by living as our loved ones lived in their finest moments, but also by choosing what not to carry forth from their worst. So if you think about your father's death and loss, how would you summarize just some of the most profound lessons, that you learnt from that experience, that you want your congregation and especially your kids to learn from the death of their grandfather?




Rabbi Steve Leder:

Let's start with the negative and end with the positive. I did not and will not continue to raise my children to fear me. I grew up with a dad who said I don't want to have to hit because if I do, I break bones. I do not want to raise my children to believe that there is catastrophe lurking behind every corner. And I do not want to have the kind of marriage my parents had, which was horrible. And I don't want to be belittling and judgmental in the way my father was. Those are the negatives. Those are the things I've tried to leave behind. On the positive side and there are many. My father had an amazing ability to enjoy a moment, in the moment. He would often, when he was eating something delicious and usually cheap and plenty of it, he would just look at me and say, "Are we living?"

Like, is this not the greatest thing ever, this hot fudge sundae? Are we living? Or walking in the sunshine, he grew up in the cold and the sunshine was a miracle to my father. So those things, the appreciating the extraordinary nature of the most ordinary things, a slice of a ripe avocado made my father so happy. So I try to remember those things. And also, he was really funny. He really loved to laugh and he was wicked smart, and he worked so hard for so long. And those are things that I hope I can enhance and bring more deeply into the world. And it was shown to us sometimes in very odd and difficult ways. But he was fundamentally committed to all five of his children being good people. And I hope that I have done the same, not only with my children, but with my entire congregation. And that to me will be honoring the best of my father.




Gary Schneeberger:

What you have just heard listeners is what gaining from loss sounds like with Rabbi Steve Leder who has a plane to catch. So until we are together the next time, thank you for being with us.

When the Beyond the Crucible team was brainstorming a name for our special fall podcast series on navigating through crucible experiences involving the loss of a loved one, or of a dream, or of an aspect of our identity, we were a little concerned about the name we settled on: Gaining From Loss. Was it too glib? An oxymoron? Would listeners – not to mention our guests sharing the details of their losses – think it insensitive?

At the root of our trepidation we wondered: Is it a bridge too far to say that a loss that devastates us can lead to a gain that enriches us?

We worried unnecessarily, as it turned out. Each of the five guests we interviewed agreed that gain could indeed come from loss. That it indeed came from their losses. With the holiday season now upon us – serving to heighten the intensity with which so many of us struggle with losses both old and new – we’ve culled key learnings from each of our guests to help you on your journey of gaining from loss.

Here are five practical action steps to lead you along that path:

  1. Be patient. 

Jason Schechterle was barely a year into his dream career as a police officer in 2001 when his squad car was hit from behind while stopped by a taxi traveling more than 100 mph. The explosive fire in which he was trapped for minutes left him in a coma for two and a half months, initially robbed him of his sight and led to severe scarring and disfigurement as he endured 56 surgeries to first save, and then improve, his life.

Through the physical and emotional trauma of all that he lost in the crash, he has come to live by a motto he encourages those he talks to as a motivational speaker to live by: “Sometimes the most beautiful, inspirational changes will disguise themselves as utter devastation. Be patient.”

His patience led to him and his wife adding a third child to their family, realizing his dream of working as a homicide detective and embracing all he’s not just suffered through, but grown through. “I have gained everything,” he says today, “and lost nothing.”

  1. Work to change what you cannot accept.

Shelley Klingerman’s police office brother, Greg, was murdered last year in an ambush while he walked to his car after work. She was devastated by the loss but refused to let that evil act be the period on the sentence of Greg’s life. She refused to “accept what she could not change” and instead dove into changing what she could not accept.

She launched Project Never Broken, a nonprofit committed to extending hope and healing through stressing resiliency to other law enforcement officers and their families struggling through the aftermath of trauma. In doing so, she is ensuring the true essence of Greg lives on while also serving others.

  1. Understand there is room for your pain on the other side. 

Kayla Stoecklein lost her husband, Andrew, to suicide in 2018, leaving her a widow with three young boys to raise and an unexpected, uncertain future to face. What she learned as she moved forward, tentatively at first, was that “It’s a daily choice to welcome and acknowledge the pain, and it’s a daily choice to welcome and chase the joy.”

“The wounds we carry with us are not obstacles to simply get over,” she says. “Rather, our wounds are the way through. And loss gives us new eyes to see the grace threaded through all humanity.”

She wrote a book — Rebuilding Beautiful: Welcome What Is, Dare to Dream Again, and Step Bravely into What Could Be — to both document her journey in gaining from loss and to help guide others along the same path. It is a 256-page encouragement that “a beautiful world waits for us on the other side of loss. A world so expansive it has room for our pain.”

  1. Intentionally cultivate joy as you continue to grieve. 

Marisa Renee Lee’s mother lost her battle with breast cancer when her daughter was just 25 years old. In the near decade and a half since then, Lee has crafted a successful career working on Wall Street and in the Obama White House. Her successes, she says, have come not in spite or even because of the loss she’s lived through. She has been able to live with the loss and thrive beyond it because she’s also never stopped living with the love.

As she puts in in her book, Grief Is Love: Living with Loss, “We are taught that grief is something that arrives in the immediate aftermath of death, and while that’s certainly true, it’s not the whole story. Grief is the experience of navigating your loss, figuring out how to deal with the absence of your loved one forever. It’s understanding that the pain you feel because of their absence is because you’ve experienced a great love. That love doesn’t end when they die, and you don’t have to get over it.”

In fact, she says, a critical key to managing grief is to find joy to accompany it through such means as leaning into celebrations – even if it’s for obscure holidays – and focusing on serving and encouraging others. She calls that “Being a Lisa” – her mother’s name – because that’s who her mother was.

  1. Live as a good ancestor to those who come after you. 

Steve Leder, Senior Rabbi of Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles, says that even after officiating more than 1,000 funerals, it wasn’t until his own father died that he felt in his heart, rather than just knowing in his head, the depth and breadth of losing a loved one. The lessons he’s learned and the applications he’s still walking out have made vivid to him that the losses of all stripes we experience can be the fuel for living more intentionally.

In his book The Beauty of What Remains he exhorts readers to do that via a simple message: to recognize how fleeting and finite time really is, and to allow that realization to prompt us to make the most of our blessed lives with the people we love.

He has a surprising way of inspiring that in others. “I often tell people that a great way to think about your life is to live as a good ancestor,” he says. “We don’t think of ourselves as ancestors when we are alive, but we are all going to be ancestors after we die.  A very instructive question to ask while alive is, ‘Am I living as a good ancestor for the generations yet to come?’  Most likely that will lead to a very meaningful life.”.

Loss is one of life’s most devastating crucibles. But it can not only be moved beyond, it can be an experience that leads to some of life’s most enriching gains.

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It is fair to ask what gain Kayla Stoecklein experienced from the loss of her husband, Andrew, to suicide in 2018. What good could possibly come from where she found herself after such a devastating tragedy? What beauty could be birthed from those terrible ashes?

In our conversation with Kayla this week, she answers all those questions in ways that will inspire you as much as they surprise you. She discusses with Warwick the moving and meaningful truths she’s packed into her book — Rebuilding Beautiful: Welcome What Is, Dare to Dream Again, and Step Bravely into What Could Be – which documents her journey of, as she puts it, discovering how loss gives us new eyes to see the grace threaded through all humanity.

Her encouragement to all of us? A beautiful world waits for us on the other side of loss. A world so expansive it has room for our pain.

Highlights

Transcript

Gary Schneeberger:

Hi, friends. Here at Beyond the Crucible, we often get a chance to dive into some of the hardest moments of someone's life, everything from facing loss to trying to find your purpose in life. This summer, we've been working extremely hard to pull together a full e-course - our first - filled with more than three hours of lessons learned on how you can find and fully embrace Second-Act Significance. To gain access to this course, visit secondactsignificance.com, that's secondactsignificance.com. Now, here's today's podcast episode.




Warwick Fairfax:

Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Crucible Leadership.




Kayla Stoecklein:

While we were away from him the following day for just a little bit, taking some of those next steps, we were getting a guest speaker for Sunday, we were making a plan for that team rally that was supposed to happen that evening. We were calling other pastors, asking questions, picking their brains on inpatient facilities while we were away from him making a plan to take care of him, take care of his mind, and take care of his health. He attempted suicide and it was an absolute blindside. We had no idea how sick his mind really was, how big his pain truly was, and we just had no idea. And so, he was rushed to the hospital and they ran a bunch of tests on his body and the doctors delivered the most terrific news that there was nothing that they could do to save his life. And so, on August 25th, 2018, he took his last breath. And with that, I took my first in this very unexpected life as a widow at 29 years old with three little boys that were two, four, and five.




Gary Schneeberger:

You may wonder after hearing those heartbreaking life-changing words, how this week's guest Kayla Stoecklein fits into a series we're calling Gaining from Loss. What gain was there in her losing her husband in such tragic fashion? What good could possibly come from where she found herself emotionally and circumstantially after such a devastating tragedy? What beauty could be birthed from those terrible ashes?

Hi, I'm Gary Schneeberger, co-host of the show. In our conversation with Kayla, she answers all those questions in ways that will inspire you as much as they surprise you. She discusses with Warwick the moving and meaningful truths she's packed into her book Rebuilding Beautiful: Welcome What is, Dare to Dream Again and Step Bravely into What Could Be, which documents her journey of as she puts it, "Discovering how loss gives us new eyes to see the grace threaded through all humanity." Her encouragement to all of us, "A beautiful world waits for us on the other side of loss, a world so expansive, it has room for our pain."




Warwick Fairfax:

Kayla, again, thank you so much. I just loved reading your book, Rebuilding Beautiful. And it's worth really stating exactly what you have on the front cover of this book, it says, Welcome What Is, Dare Dream Again and after Rebuilding Beautiful, the title it says, and Step Bravely into What Could Be. I like to think I'm a reasonable writer, but I've got to say this was superbly written, deeply profound, moving and we'll get into what your loss was. My loss was very different. As listeners know, a loss of 150-year old family business. And yes, there was mourning, there was grief. Very different. You can't compare crucibles. But so much, if not all of the book, even though I haven't suffered your loss, I deeply related to. I mean, it was just profound, overwhelming, it was a gift to be able to read this, and obviously we don't know each other.

I'm not somebody that says things if they don't mean it, so I'd just be nice and say thank you, it was an interesting book. I don't know what I'd say, but I wouldn't say what I just said. I don't believe in being nasty, but I don't believe in false praise. So this really was a gift to be able to read this and I got a lot out of it from my own personal loss situation. So before we get to the loss, tell us a bit about Kayla Stoecklein growing up, your family, just what was life like pre-loss. So I know you grew up in Southern California, I believe, so just tell us about what life was like for Kayla growing up.




Kayla Stoecklein:

Yeah. I've lived in Southern California my whole life, still live in Southern California and growing up had an older sister, parents who were married, grew up going to church every Sunday. It was a huge part of my upbringing and had a great suburban middle class upbringing. Yeah, no complaints.




Warwick Fairfax:

What were your dreams growing up pre-meeting Andrew?




Kayla Stoecklein:

Yeah. I think every little girl dreams of one day getting married and being a mom and having a family, and so, I think I held tightly to those dreams and I always knew I wanted to work as well. And so I didn't never really knew what that would be, but I was excited to go to college and figure it out. I think I changed my major three or four times and still ended up with a degree that I don't even use. But I think there was a covering over my childhood and I had a great upbringing and my parents did the best with the tools that they had been given and the families that they were raised in. And they did get divorced when I was a senior in high school and led me into this new journey where I really felt like I was on my own at 18 years old and left home and never went back.

And I met my husband sophomore year of college. I was a sophomore, he was a junior and we fell in love really fast. There's a saying at Christian colleges, "ring by spring" and I had that ring by spring. We were engaged when, goodness, I think I was 20 years old, we got engaged and 21 when we got married, he was 22 and we just started our lives and he was called to ministry. So I was excited to learn how to be a pastor's wife and learn the ins and outs of ministry and I had grown up in the church, but I had no idea what it meant to actually be on staff and lead a church. And so, I was eager to learn and excited to do it all with him.




Warwick Fairfax:

Well, it's funny you mentioned that. I have three adult kids, like 31 into 20s. They all went to a Christian college, Taylor University in Indiana, which is very missional wonderful place. But none of them either gave or got a ring by rings, it's like we were hoping. But hey, given that my dad was married three times, my mother twice and I was from the last marriage of each, I said, you want to find the right one who obviously from my perspective is a person of faith and also it's good to be cautious, but maybe I gave too much of the caution sermon. I don't know. But yeah, it didn't happen to my kids. But that's all good.

So you got married to Andrew and from what I understand his dad was a pastor of a pretty big church in Southern California and then he became lead pastor and his dad passed away. I'm sure no church is perfect, but sounds like it was a great church and being a pastor's wife is not easy, lead pastor's wife, everybody thinks you're meant to be this role model and you're human doing your best and a lot of stress and pressure. I know Andrew obviously had his challenges, so talk about what life was like pre-loss, just being married, you began to have small kids, pastors' wife. What was life like for Kayla in that season of life?




Kayla Stoecklein:

Yeah. Like I said, we got married very young and just went straight into ministry. And his parents had started the church when Andrew was three years old, and so he had grown up in it. It was like the fourth sibling, part of the family. They all just deeply loved the church and cared for the church. And so, Andrew was on staff as the creative arts' director when his dad was diagnosed with leukemia in 2011, we were only married for a year, andrew was 23 years old and he just totally stepped up in a million ways and was preaching regularly on Sundays and there were a lot of Saturdays as well. His dad modeled for him that you show up and speak on Sunday no matter what. As best as you can, you show up and speak on Sunday and don't let anything get in the way of that.

And so even while his dad was sick and battling leukemia, we were recording message series from the hospital room. He would show up and be wheeled onto the stage and his wheelchair. He just tried his best to still lead the church through his pain, and that was modeled for Andrew. And so Andrew did the same. He led the church through his pain and through the loss of his dad. His dad passed away in 2015 and his dad was his mentor, his dad was his hero, his dad was his best friend. And so, it really was a catastrophic loss for Andrew, and I don't think Andrew really took the time he needed to take to grieve that loss. He took two weeks off and then went straight back to work and preached an incredible series on heaven. And his heart was for the church, he wanted to lead the church through their pain.

And it was modeled to him that you just keep going and so you just kept on going and we kept on having babies. We had our first boy in 2012 and our next boy a couple years later and our third boy a couple years after that. And so, our home life was also very busy, you don't really find rest at home when you work all day and you come home to toddlers and babies. But life was full and it was good and it was beautiful and it was meaningful. And I found so much purpose in supporting Andrew and being a pastor's wife and being a stay at home mom and supporting the Women's Ministry and supporting the MOPS Ministry. And it was a really beautiful, meaningful life. And on paper, I think Andrew and I both had everything we could have ever asked for and more.

He was in his lead role at the church. I was married to this very successful, handsome, driven guy, I had the mom car, we had the beautiful home, we had the three beautiful blue eye boys. Life wasn't easy, the pressures of ministry and the learning curve of ministry, it was huge. We had a lot to learn. Andrew was very young and I think he felt like he had a lot to prove and big shoes to fill, his dad's shoes to fill. And so we were really young, had a lot to learn and then burnout happened.




Warwick Fairfax:

So talk about that, because obviously that's a bit of a backstory to the loss, anxiety, burnout. Tell us about that. And I'm sure you've thought about a massive amount and I don't know how much of that was related to his dad dying so young and Andrew being so young and just the expectations and the family business in a sense, except this is for the Lord. And I have a feeling that probably played a factor in some of the challenges. So it took a bit about pre-loss, just some of those challenges Andrew faced in that period.




Kayla Stoecklein:

Totally, Andrew felt the pressure to carry the mantle of responsibility at the church, for sure took that very seriously. And also, I think he felt the pressure to carry his family. He was the oldest son in the family, and so, he felt this pressure to take care of his mom and to help take care of his sister and his brother, and also our little family that was growing. All of the pressure, the years of just running fast and running hard and not stopping and never grieving the huge loss that he had, I think all of that just totally caught up with him. And he started experiencing panic attacks in the fall of 2017. And that was the first just warning sign of something is not right. And it's like I describe it as we have this dashboard and then the lights start going off, it's time to get your oil changed, it's time to pull over, it's time to check the brakes.

And I think some of those lights started going off on Andrew's dashboard. Andrew had just shown up and done so much and he was a superhero in all of our eyes, and so, we just all assumed he was capable, he could handle it, he had done it, he would continue to do it, and nothing was going to get in his way of his calling. And so, at first we thought, well, maybe it's just a thyroid problem. He had had a thyroid problem in high school and so we thought, "You know what, we'll just go see a doctor, get some medication, I'm sure the panic attacks will go away." So we kind of shrugged it off, no big deal. But the panic attacks kept getting worse and worse and worse. And it got so bad that he ended up in the hospital in April 2018.

So he had suffered for over six months from these panic attacks that were very debilitating, happening three to four times a week, and he was still showing up and preaching on Sunday. There was even a Sunday, it was Easter Sunday in 2018 and he had a massive panic attack in the bathroom in the offices right before he was supposed to be on stage to preach. And somehow some way he did, he got on stage, he worked through it and he's on stage speaking, I'm in the green room crying and I'm like, "What in the world is happening? What are we doing? What are we sacrificing for the sake of the church? And is it worth it?" And so the following week, he landed in the hospital and that's when we said, "Enough is enough. Something's going on here. These panic attacks aren't going away. It's not a thyroid issue. What is happening?"

And so we all decided, Andrew agreed that it was time for him to take a sabbatical. And his sabbatical had no end date really and truly the lead staff at the church and the board of directors told him, "Take as much time as you need." And our family was telling him the same thing, "Take as much time as you need." And that was really hard for a guy that's very driven for success, that loves his job, that deeply, deeply loves the church. I think it was really hard for him to stop, to give himself permission to rest and to heal. And so, he went on the sabbatical in 2018 and just a few weeks later, we were sitting in a psychiatrists' office and he was diagnosed with depression and we all were able to connect to all the dots and it just made sense for him.

And I was a little surprised, and I'll never forget sitting there and I had nothing to say but the doctor looked at me and said, "Your husband has depression." And I was so shocked and so stunned that I didn't say anything. And then we walked out to the car and got into the car and I turned and looked at Andrew and I said, "How did we end up here?" I was just so shocked and so surprised and it really caught me off guard. When I married this guy, 21 and 22 years old, I never thought depression would be a part of our story. But Andrew and the doctors were both very confident that he was on the low end of the spectrum and that with rest and medication and time off work, that he would be back to himself and back to work in no time.

And so, we took the sabbatical very seriously. We were seeing a therapist together for two hours every single week. He was seeing a psychiatrist every other week. He was taking medication for the depression and anxiety. He was spending time with mentors. We went on a two week road trip, just the two of us to spend time on our marriage. We had people over to pray over our home, to pray over him, like we were coming at it from every angle and really truly doing everything we could to help him rest and heal. And by the end of the summer in 2018, the doctor thought he was getting better and Andrew thought he was getting better, and so they thought the next right step in his healing journey would be to go back to work. And so, he went back to work August 1st, 2018 and hit the ground running and gave two powerful weekend messages on the topic of mental health.

And he talked about his journey with depression. He talked about suicide. He gave out the suicide hotline number. He quoted statistics from the NAMI website out of anybody, he would've known where to go for help, he had the resources, he had the phone numbers, he would've known where to go. And then headed into the third weekend, he was ready for Sunday, we had a big team, volunteer team rally. We were supposed to have that Friday night. So he was looking forward to that. And his mind was still very fragile, he had told our family and told our staff that he was at about 65% when he went back to work and was helping to ease back into ministry over time. But anybody in ministry could probably tell you it's really hard to ease back into ministry. Ministry is a full on thing, just this full on beast of itself.

And so, he had a really bad day in the office that week and his fragile mind just could not process some of the information that he received at work, and he just spiraled. And the spiral was big enough and loud enough for our lead staff and for our family to say, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. This guy is much sicker than I think we realized. And maybe he wasn't ready to go back to work and maybe we need to take some more steps for his healing and maybe he needs to go to an inpatient facility. Maybe he needs to take a longer sabbatical." I don't know what he needs, but maybe he needs more time. And so while we were away from him the following day for just a little bit, taking some of those next steps, we were getting a guest speaker for Sunday.

We were making a plan for that team rally that was supposed to happen that evening. We were calling other pastors, asking questions, picking their brains on inpatient facilities while we were away from him making a plan to take care of him, to take care of his mind and take care of his health. He attempted suicide and it was an absolute blindside. We had no idea how sick his mind really was, how big his pain truly was. And we just had no idea. And so he was rushed to the hospital and they ran a bunch of tests on his body and the doctors delivered the most terrific news that there was nothing that they could do to save his life. And so, on August 25th, 2018, he took his last breath. And with that, I took my first in this very unexpected life as a widow at 29 years old with three little boys that were two, four, and five.




Warwick Fairfax:

I mean, it's probably hard for listeners to get their hearts around what you just have said. I mean, obviously you've found miraculously a way to move forward, but in those weeks and months after, you obviously did a lot of gut churning, reflection, what did we miss? What did the doctors miss? What could we have done? A swirl of questions and what could I have done better to a swirl of anger, whether it's at God, doctors, people at church, whoever, it's like, couldn't somebody have done something? Maybe anger at Andrew? Why couldn't you have taken care of yourself years ago? Or talk about some of the swirl of emotions in those weeks and months after. Because I'm sure it was, I can't think of the word to describe it, just horrific as an understatement. But what were some of the swirl of emotions and thoughts in those weeks and months afterwards?




Kayla Stoecklein:

It's a sea of would've, could've, should'ves. When somebody dies by suicide, you're just surrounded and engulfed in a sea of could've, would've, should'ves because the truth is, anybody that loved him and knew him would've done anything in their power to save him. We just had no idea how bad it really was. And I often describe his death like a child drowning at a swimming pool at a birthday party. He was really truly surrounded by people that loved him and we just had no idea he was drowning, we had no idea how bad it really was. And it took me a long time, it took me a long time to let go of some of those regrets to work through some of those regrets and the things that I missed. One of the main things I missed, Andrew did talk about suicide and there was a conversation that we had at our kitchen counter a few months before he died.

And he was telling me he was up in the middle of the night and he was struggling with suicidal thoughts, and I just totally did not take him seriously and reacted out of my own exhaustion. It was a really hard summer on my end as well. I was caring for our three boys while he rested and they're home for the summer, so that was a full-time gig, and also trying to care for him and living with an unpredictable spouse. His depression, I never knew what version of Andrew I was going to get coming out of the bedroom in the morning if he was going to be happy or sad or angry or exhausted, if he would spend the whole day in the bedroom or if he'd spend time with us. I just never really knew what I was going to get. And so, I was exhausted and isolated in my own ways.

And his therapist described that I was also co-burdening his depression, so I was carrying his depression with him. And so in that moment when he told me he was struggling with suicidal thoughts, I wasn't able to respond with the heart of love. I just totally reacted out of my own exhaustion and emotion and said all the things you're not supposed to say to someone that's struggling with suicidal thoughts. So I had to work through that, and part of working through that for me was writing and sharing all the things I did wrong and the things that I wish I would've said. And I wrote a whole blog about the things that I wish I would've said. And once somebody tells you they're struggling with suicidal thoughts, it's time to lean in, it's time to ask questions. Questions like, do you have a suicide plan? What problem are you trying to solve through suicide? Do you know when and how you would do it? How often do you think about it? It's time to take it seriously.

I should have picked up the suicide hotline. I should have picked up my phone and called the suicide hotline number or texted the crisis text line or called his therapist and his psychiatrist and two of his best friends and his family members and told them, "Hey, this is serious. Hey, this is much scarier and much worse than we thought it was and his life is actually in danger and he's contemplating suicide." I just had no idea how bad it really was, and I really truly believed it would never happen. And I know I'm not the only one that has had that experience. I know for many of us, we don't know what to do with the word suicide. We don't know how to respond to the word suicide. We don't even know how to say the word suicide out loud.

The truth is the word suicide made me feel so uncomfortable and I didn't know what to do with it. And so, I just totally ignored it and never brought it up again. And looking back, I wish I would've asked him about it every single day. I wish I would've asked him, "Are you struggling with suicidal thoughts today? What does that feel like? How can I help you?" I wish I would've told his psychiatrist and his therapist that he was struggling, but I had no idea. There's a huge learning curve when it comes to mental health and everybody's mental health journey and journey with depression or suicidal ideation or whatever the diagnosis may be, is so unique to that individual. And so, I think Andrew was even lost within himself. I don't think Andrew even fully understood what was really going on in his own mind.

And his psychiatrist said something to us after he passed away that was really helpful that I've held onto. He told us that 90% of suicides are impulsive. And so, it's this in the moment overwhelming flood of pain and pain that many of us are incapable of understanding unless we've lived it, unless we've been there, unless we've been that close to the edge. There's an author Ann Voskamp and she wrote a blog about suicide and she described it as being trapped in a burning building and the only way to escape the flames is to jump from the window.

And so, I really truly have no idea what those final moments were like for Andrew. I have no idea what it must have felt like to live with the pain he was living with. And so, at the end of the day, there's so much grace for him, there's so much grace for me and the things I didn't understand and the things that I've missed, and I've made so much peace with that and just had to let go of those would've, could've, should'ves in order to move forward and rebuild a brand new life without him.




Gary Schneeberger:

And what you just said about grace being threaded through life, there's a line that you've said "loss gives us new eyes to see the grace threaded through all humanity." We've called this series Gaining from Loss, which in some people's eyes be a little controversial, how can you gain from loss? But that is one thing for sure that you have gained in the way that you live your day-to-day life through loss, is that you have received new eyes to see the grace that is threaded through all humanity, right?




Kayla Stoecklein:

Right. Yeah. It's given me so much compassion and empathy and my pain has given me access to this steeper stream of humanity that I never had access to before because I'd never experienced that kind of pain before that kind of loss before. And so, it's like when you're the person walking around the grocery store with unseen pain, it makes you realize that there are thousands of other people walking around the grocery store with unseen pain and that you are not the only one going through something difficult, that there's tons of other people going through very similar things and grieving very similar losses and walking through their own prescription of pain.

We all have our own prescription of pain and we're all going through or have just gone through or just about to go through something difficult. And so, it's totally given me empathy and compassion and grace for the grumpy person at the cash register at the grocery store, for the grumpy mom on the sidelines of the soccer fields, for the stranger that cuts you off on the freeway. It's like grace upon grace upon grace upon grace. We truly have no idea what it's like to walk in anybody's shoes but our own.




Warwick Fairfax:

And that's so profound. I think one of the things I'm guessing you must have had to deal with is forgiveness, forgiveness of Andrew, of yourself. It's easy for outside people who haven't gone through this to say, "Well, how many of us are experts in suicide?" We don't study it, we don't take courses because, I mean, there's a lot of things we could do in terms of, I don't know, take a lot of courses about what happens if a kid falls in a pool and there's about to drown or there's all sorts of things you could prepare yourself for, but it just seems so abstract. So yeah, I've got three young kids to take care of. I don't really have time to read and take courses and all that. And so, it's almost impossible to really know how bad it is until it is. And as that psychologist said or psychiatrist, if it's an impulse, even if you were an expert at everything, it may not have made a difference.

So how did you come to peace with both forgiving yourself, others, God? Because I would've thought one of the key steps to moving beyond, as you call it the pit, your worst day is that sense of forgiveness. You must have given where you are now, how did you manage to do that, forgive yourself, Andrew, and the world, everybody?




Kayla Stoecklein:

Yeah. I think it's an ongoing process. I think it took me years to forgive Andrew, to forgive myself, to forgive the team that was surrounding him. I think it takes embracing every sharp edge of our pain, it takes allowing our pain to transform us and teach us and allowing ourselves to feel everything we need to feel and work through those feelings, work through those feelings of anger, work through those feelings. For me, my loss and my grief brought me all the way to the edge of myself, and I struggled with my own suicidal thoughts, which gave me even greater empathy and compassion for Andrew. And I've even changed my language in the way that I talk about suicide. And before Andrew died, I would've said things like committed suicide and now I say died by suicide. I don't use the word committed because committed is a word we attached to phrases like committed a sin or committed a crime or committed a murder.

And all it does is heap further shame and blame onto the shoulders of the person who died. And even that small shift in language has changed to everything for me and it's given me compassion and empathy for Andrew. Even that phrase alone extends forgiveness to Andrew, and that phrase alone too will change the way that my boys grieve this loss. And I hope that they're able to discover that same empathy and compassion and forgiveness for their dad that I've been able to discover as well and really truly believing that the suicide isn't anybody's fault, that it wasn't my fault, it wasn't Andrew's fault, it wasn't the doctor's fault, it wasn't the church's fault. At the end of the day, it's a horrific tragedy and no one is to blame. And I think it takes a long time to get there. But I think when we do get there, we're set free. I think unforgiveness keeps us in chains and when we're able to make peace with our circumstances, when we're able to make peace with what happened, were set free.




Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah. Again, forgive me for being a broken record, but what you said is, again, just so profound about embracing the pain. And I want to pivot as you both unpack your story as well as talk about lessons that listeners can learn from your story. Pain reads a lot of reflection, there can be wisdom from pain, the most unwelcome wisdom you want, but you're gifted that, to use your words, it's a sacred gift, which I love that phrase. So you have several sections in the book in this new book, Rebuilding Beautiful, which again, I love the title, that's such an magnificent phrase. Embrace, heal, explore, dream, live. that first one, embrace, about embracing your pain. And let me just interject for a second, what's fascinating about this is I identify with this book so much, but yet I haven't had this kind of a loss.

I met my wife in Australia, we've been married over 30 years and every day I say thank you Lord, and I don't take that for granted at all ever, especially with my dad being married three times, my mother twice. I'm very familiar with the consequences of divorce, which is horrific, certainly on the kids. But yeah, all of the things you talk about, and again, I don't want to take up your time, but just so that listeners understand that even if you haven't lost a spouse, you might have had other kinds of loss. Maybe you're dealing with a Parkinson's diagnosis. We've had people on the podcast with that or a loss of a limb, there's all sorts of losses that are horrific and tough to get over. And so, the circumstances are different, but I don't know if you can say it's equal, the pain, I have no idea what that means, but it's certainly deep. Please go ahead.




Gary Schneeberger:

I've been here, Warwick, I'm going to do what you may not do and ask you because you've said it to me, you read Kayla's book and each one of the points that you were reading through, you felt that experience yourself from your own crucible experience of losing the family media dynasty. I mean, it is applicable. The truths that she speaks are applicable in how you do that. So I just want to make sure that I tap you on the shoulder and make sure that you share that.




Warwick Fairfax:

Absolutely. Yeah. So just briefly, because I don't want to take away from you Kayla and your story and wisdom. But yeah, I mean, for me, growing up in this 150-year-old family media business, I was founded by a person of very strong faith, a strong businessman for Christ as I've ever come across. There was this history of service to the community. We had the equivalent of the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post in our country. I grew up in this very wealthy family business, dedicated my whole life to going in that, did my undergrad at Oxford Wall Street, Harvard Business School. It was all about duty and services to the country. And didn't matter if that was my vision, it was my duty kind of thing. So maybe Andrew felt it was his duty to go to his family business in a sense, the church, nothing wrong with that.

Then when I did the $2 billion takeover and it has fell out of family control under my watch. Yeah, it wasn't just a business. I felt like I betrayed my dad, my ancestor, this sacred cause, I wasn't clinically depressed, I wasn't suicidal, I didn't ideate that way, but I was not in a good place because I just kept crucifying myself like, how could I have been so dumb? I had a Harvard MBA, how could I have made such stupid assumptions? Of course, animosity amongst my family. I don't try to hurt anybody, I'm not that kind of person. But just trying to understand the pain, try and understand what happened and gradually trying to forgive myself, which was years and years. And every once in a while, I fall off the wagon and have a unforgiving thought to myself. I mean, just it can be a sacred gift and you are right.

It does give you compassion. I mean, I'm empathetic by nature, I like to think, but it has increased my compassion and not judging other people and pain for a purpose. And so yeah, I could go through every single chapter of your book and describe how it relates to my loss. And that's the universality of what you've written, Kayla, is it's not just about suicide, it's about loss in general. And this is just profound. I mean, as I said, I could go on forever about what it means to me. So yeah, the first section is embrace. I love embrace the friction or as you colorfully say, embrace the suck, very to the point, don't run away. I mean, there's a lot of shaking off the shame. Is that what would you say is in terms of embracing the loss, what's the most profound thing? Because you have a lot of thoughts in those three chapters.




Kayla Stoecklein:

There's a quote by the author Jerry Sittser, it's beautiful quote, and he wrote a beautiful book called A Grace Disguised that I would highly recommend to anybody that's going through a season of grief. And in this quote, he was having a conversation with a friend and describing what it looks like to go through pain and to go through loss and to feel everything you need to feel. And in this conversation, they were talking about what that is and they were talking about the quickest way to reach the sunrise, the quickest way to get through what you're going through, isn't to head west chasing the sunset, but it's to head east plunging into the darkness until you reach the sunrise. And so, I think that embrace part for me has been that deep dive, that plunge, that willing to go head first into the trauma and the pain, willing to show up for the hard work of healing, willing to feel everything we need to feel.

I think so often in western culture in America, we don't like to feel pain, we don't like to feel uncomfortable. We like to avoid pain at all costs, we like to numb our pain at all costs. I know I could have walked into a psychiatrist office and walked out with a giant bag full of prescriptions because of the things that I've gone through, would've been very easy for me to do that. And not that that's wrong, I think medicine is incredible and can be a beautiful gift to people that are struggling, but for me, I saw what the medication did to my husband. And so, I wanted to go on this journey of healing as natural as possible and as holistic as possible.

And I'll never forget sitting in the therapist office and explaining to her, "This hurts like hell. When is this not going to hurt as much as it hurts? I don't want to get up and live with this pain for another day. I want to be out of my body. I don't want to feel any of this." And she looked at me in the eyes with tears in her eyes, I was crying and she had tears in her eyes too and said, "Kayla, the way that you're feeling is exactly how you're supposed to feel." And that was such a gift to me and such an encouragement to me that I didn't need to run away from my pain, I didn't need to run away from the feelings. I needed to allow myself to feel the feelings, I needed to allow myself to welcome the reality of what is and all that was lost and grieve every single loss.

When you lose a spouse, it's like there's a million other losses that I had to grieve not just the loss of Andrew, but the death of a million little dreams and big dreams that I had of a life with him and what I thought my life was going to look like for the rest of my life. And it's an ongoing grieving process, it's an ongoing embrace and it really truly is like spreading wide our arms and welcoming every jagged sharp edge of our story. And I think when we do that, when we allow ourselves to feel it, when we allow ourselves to plunge through the darkness, we really truly do reach the other side. And for me, it took three years. It took three years to finally come up for air. It took three years to finally see the light again and to really believe that life could be beautiful again and start to see that life could be beautiful again even if that life was without Andrew.




Warwick Fairfax:

Again, I have to think of another word other than profound because it just gets annoying for me to say.




Gary Schneeberger:

Meaningful.




Warwick Fairfax:

Thank you. There you go. What you just said was so meaningful. I'll say insightful for the next section. You're right, you cannot find your way out the other side unless you go through the pain. It is so true. I love the phrase you say, "Our wounds are the way through." It's just so good. So the next step, you talk about kind of healing because one of the things I know you had to do is find your identity. I mean, it sounds like you're struggling a bit with your identity when you were married to Andrew and who am I, am I anybody else other than the pastor's wife. And it was a bit of a challenge in that season, but it probably got even worse once he went. So talk about just you've embraced the pain, but how do you begin to heal and find your identity?




Kayla Stoecklein:

Yeah. Yeah. That was a huge and continues to be a huge part of my healing journey. And so much of who I was was wrapped up in who Andrew was because he was the lead pastor of our church because our lives revolved around Sundays, revolved around Andrew, everything was working towards Sunday. He was larger than life, he had a big personality, he was very charismatic, he was very intense, very driven. And there really wasn't a lot of room for my dreams or ambitions or ideas in a marriage with Andrew. And so, I let go of a lot of that. And that was hard, when we were married, letting go and making peace with like, "Okay, this is what my life is going to look like and this maybe isn't what I thought it was going to look like, but this is beautiful too and I can find purpose and meaning here too." And I did, I found purpose and meaning in the Women's Ministry and serving in the Mom's Ministry and then also just serving Andrew.

And I was an excellent pastor's wife. I mean, I really truly was an excellent pastor's wife and was there in the front row every single Sunday that he was preaching, had our three boys with their hair done, ready to go, got there early, got them checked in and I would bring him lunch, in between services I would have dinner ready for him when he got home. Very intentional. I woke up at 4:30 every morning to spend time on my own with my Bible and reading and journaling and exercise so that the house could be peaceful and I could be ready for the kids when they woke up. If that's what I was going to be called to do for the rest of my life, I was going to do it well. And I found purpose and meaning within it and it was beautiful.

And there was a lot of sacrifice, a ton of sacrifice in that marriage as well. A lot of sacrifice of self, of sense of self in order to do this, what felt like this bigger calling, this bigger mission, this calling that was bigger than both me and Andrew leading a local church, doing the work of God. It's so interesting when your career and your spiritual life collide and it was just like we were serving together this thing that was so much bigger than us and that felt like such a huge honor to be able to do that with him, and I was so honored to be his wife and so proud.

After he passed away, I had a friend over and we were packing up my house and I was crying and I said to her, "It feels like I'm packing up my pride," because I was so proud of my life. I was so proud of the life that we had built together. And so after he passed away, it really was this unraveling of, okay, if Andrew's not here anymore, if Andrew isn't leading and driving our family, I kind of describe it like Andrew was in the driver's seat and I was in the passenger seat and I was just along for the ride and there to support him however I could and take care of our kids however I could. And after Andrew passed away, life invited me to slide into the driver's seat. And here I am, 29 years old in the driver's seat with these three little boys in the backseat. And I'm looking across the horizon and I'm wondering, "Where in the world am I going?" And I have three boys that are sitting in the backseat asking me too, "Mommy, where are we going next?"

And so it's been an adventure trying to answer that question. It's been an adventure unraveling my identity and asking myself, who am I now? And also asking myself, who do I want to become? And it's taken an awakening of some of the interests and hobbies and passions that I had before I was married. It's been going back to, what are those things that bring me life? What are those things that I like to do? What are those passions and gifts? What's my calling apart from Andrew? What am I called to do? And it's been really fun just to get super curious about the answers to that question. And what I've realized too in this season of life is that to be human is to step in and out of a hundred different versions of self. And the person that I was when I married Andrew was a completely different person than I was leading up to the months when Andrew died.

And the person I am today is a completely different person than I was when Andrew passed away. And the person I'll be in five, 10 years is a completely different person than I am today. And so, what's been super helpful for me in this season of life is to consider that future self, consider that future version of myself and get really curious about who they are, where they are, who's by their side, what do they have in their hands, what is the work that they are pouring their life into, and then working towards those goals and beginning to dream beyond the destruction of my reality and taking action on some of those dreams and making some big moves and pushing through fear. I think a lot of it is fear. I think a lot of us can get in rebuilding journey and our healing journey, I'm sure you experience this too with your loss, we can get stuck in a cycle of fear, and fear can really stop us from being able to move forward, from being able to rebuild a life that's beautiful.

And so, it's taken an embrace of even the fear, an embrace of willing to work through the fear and push through the fear to step into the realized dreams to, for me, an actual physical move has been a huge part of our healing journey. And I physically moved an hour towards the coast. We live just by the beach now, but an hour towards the coast from where we lived before in order to have a fresh start, in order to take back the power of our story. Where we lived, the church was pretty large, the church is about 4,000 people. And my boys were going to a private Christian school. And so a lot of the staff and a lot of the families went to our church and knew my husband and I felt like all they saw when they saw me was the grieving widow.

And I thought for my boys, if we stay here, we had a great home, it's a great school, it would've been fine. But I was really curious, what would life look like if we left? What would life look like if we chose to have a fresh start? And so, we did, we moved. And really what I realized when we moved is that we took back the power of our story and now we get to tell our story on our own terms to who we want, when we want, how we want. And we get to write a whole new story too. We get to make new friends and find new community and discover who we are here in this new city, in this new community, in this new life.




Warwick Fairfax:

So talk about how you took some of those first steps into feeling to use your words that you're worthy of the beautiful gift of love and began to just find a purpose and identity for Kayla.




Kayla Stoecklein:

Yeah. To go from the safety and covering of a marriage and a worn in love that I shared with Andrew. It's like we had been through so much together that we had this worn in comfortable love. And then all of a sudden, overnight becoming a single mom and widow, it's been a journey of answering that question for myself and asking myself, Am I worthy of love? What does love look like here? And knowing that first and foremost, I'm deeply loved by God and that God has taken care of us and continues to take care of us and provide for us, and he has every single step of the way. And then getting curious, what does love look like here? And not just romantic love, it's like how do I find that intimacy and that connection and friendships with others and community has been a huge part and allowing others to love me, allowing others to share in my pain has been huge for my healing.

I'll never forget, there was a moment that I had with one of my best friends just a few weeks after Andrew had passed away. She was over at my house and I had just got done putting the kids to bed and I came out to the living room and I just totally collapsed on the floor. And she came over and she just laid on top of me and wept with me. And I allowed her to love me in that moment. I allowed her to love me without words and to share in my pain without words and just to be with me. And I think sometimes our pain can isolate us from that love if we allow it to. Our pain can totally make us feel like we're left out or we're unworthy or we're less than. And some of us end up in a rebuilding beautiful journey and we feel like it's our fault.

We feel like it was a series of poor life choices or bad decisions or bad business deals or whatever it may be. We may think that we ended up here and it's our fault and we can get stuck in that sinkhole of shame and pain and feeling totally unworthy of even of a new kind of beautiful life. And so, it has taken us to curiosity of what does love look like here and how do I allow God's love in? How do I allow the love of others in? And even for me too, what does romantic love look like here? Do I want that? And getting really curious of do I want that? What does that look like? And I've explored that a bit. I talked about it in the book a bit about going on dates and trying to figure that out and navigate that.

And it's a really strange reality to be 30 years old with three little kids and find myself on dating apps again, what does that even look like here? But I know considering my future self and considering 45, 55, 65 year old Kayla and how proud she would be of I'm 33 today, a 33 year old Kayla, and her willingness to show up and try, her willingness to show up for those dates or show up and try to write the book or show up and try to live in the new city and show up and try to make new friends.

I know that 65, 75, 85 year old Kayla will be so proud of 33 year old Kayla for being willing to show up and try. And I think that's what it takes to rebuild a new beautiful life. It's just being willing to show up and try and try the best that we can to make lemonade out of lemons and to create something that's beautiful again in it's own unique way. It's never going to be the same beautiful that it was before, my life is never going to resemble the exact same beauty as it did before, but beauty is still possible and it just looks completely different than it did. And making peace with that and finding my home here. And what does that look like here? And I'm still answering that question.




Gary Schneeberger:

I'm going to pull a phrase from this prep sheet that you filled out. And it was funny because you sent it to me like 15 minutes before we started and they're like, "Oh, I'm a little late." I'm like, "No, you hit deadline, you're fine. Everything's good." And now we're going to use it. So for sure it's actually good that you filled it out and you hit deadline, but you say this and it sums up a lot of what you've been saying in the last five minutes or so, we ask a question of what advice would you give someone who's gone through a painful loss, what we call a crucible experience. And the first half of what you say is really all you need to say. And you say, "Allow the crucible to be your greatest teacher." And that's really what you've just described there, you allowed that crucible experience and what you learned from it to teach you some things about how you then moved forward beyond that crucible, didn't you?




Kayla Stoecklein:

My pain has been one of the greatest teachers of my life and continues to be one of the greatest teachers of my life. And I would've never asked for it or wanted it or signed up for it. But because I've surrendered to it, it really truly has transformed me into a completely different person than I was before Andrew died, and it's given me eyes to see humanity and eyes to see the world in a completely different way than I could before. And I'm so grateful for the lessons that I've learned from my pain and for the wisdom that I've gained from my pain and for the life experience that I've had and the way that I can love and lean in with other people that are walking through difficult situations in ways that I would've never been able to lean in before. So it truly can, I really truly believe for all of us, no matter what that pain may be, it can be one of greatest teachers of our lives if we allow it in and we allow it to transform us.




Warwick Fairfax:

And I love what you just said about just using your crucible in service of others with now your second book and you speak, and I love that phrase, "Choose your own adventure." So as you talk about the adventure that Kayla Stoecklein is in, a lot of life you didn't choose, but now you're in a place where you didn't choose the past, you didn't choose the loss, but you're choosing your own adventure, what's the adventure that you are choosing?




Kayla Stoecklein:

Yeah, I had this moment when I made that big move to the coast and I was standing in my living room and I had the Christmas tree on in the corner and the fire going in the fireplace, and I had just got done putting the boys to bed, and I had that moment where I realized I was standing in a life that I chose. It was the first time in the last few years that I had been walking through this really intense grief and pain, that for the first time it felt like I was standing in a life I chose. And it was so empowering that it brought me to tears. And I was standing in my living room weeping, I can't believe that this really horrible, terrible thing happened and I can't believe how beautiful and meaningful and wonderful my life is too.

And that's the duality of walking through something like this. It's like you learn to hold the joy in one hand and you learn to hold the sorrow in the other hand and moving forward is embracing both. And so, I think that choosing my own adventure today is making new memories with my boys, spending as much time possible with my boys because they're growing up so fast. My oldest is turning 10 next month and my others are eight and six, and I'm just watching them get taller and their voices get deeper and they're getting so handsome and big and I'm realizing how fleeting it all is. So I think my adventure is right in front of me, it's my kids and this season of life and trying to soak it up as much as I possibly can and leaning into this work that I've been invited into as well, and sharing my story and talking about my pain.

And I'm really excited for this next season because I'm going to be taking a sabbatical that I haven't stopped to rest in the last four years. And so, my next adventure is going to be a sabbatical and truly taking a break and giving myself a bit of respite. Because, for me, I think what I've realized is I can't keep reliving my trauma and I can't keep talking about my pain if I'm going to move forward, and I need to give myself a break from doing that. So I'm really excited. And I think rest is spiritual, rest is talked about all throughout scripture, even God rested when He made the world, and it's such an important rhythm of life. So super excited for that adventure. I'm taking a whole year off next year.




Warwick Fairfax:

As you look at what's happened to you, this terrible, I don't know if it's C.S. Lewis, somebody talked about hard joy. I wish I could think of who said that, but what you've gone through is so unspeakably tough, how could anybody survive it, but you've managed to. I mean, you're living really a life of significance, which we call a life on purpose, dedicated to serving others. You do that every day with your role model and you speak, and even if you take a sabbatical, your books are still out there, it's going to be helping people. So as you just sum up the trajectory of your life from your loss, how would you talk about what we call your life of significance? You've turned that pain to me into a life of significance, a massive life of significance, how would you describe that in your own words?




Kayla Stoecklein:

I think I'm just so grateful to be a part of any of it and to know that I play a small part in a much bigger story and that my life is a life of service and that really my loss has taught me to hold loosely to everything. And so, it's said, "Living with unclenched hands, living in surrender, not clinging too tightly to anything," and just being so grateful for the work that I have in front of me today and knowing that it might be completely different than the work that I have in front of me tomorrow. And just trying to stay as present as possible as I can to the moment, to the calling, to the work, whether it be sitting with my boys at the skate park or sitting at the beach staring at the ocean or going on a walk with a friend or showing up for a conversation like this. I'm just so grateful to be a part of it and to have a small role to play in the much greater story that God is writing.




Gary Schneeberger:

Listeners who have been through the 140 some episodes before this one are accustomed to me being a little bit more of a busy body in a conversation than I've been in this one. But I wanted to make sure, Warwick, that you had a chance to truly ask all your questions, but you did raise the idea of we're getting close to the end. So that's my cue to jump in for you, Kayla, and say, how can listeners who have been impacted, who have been touched by what you've talked about, how can they find out more about you? How can they get your books? How can they learn more about you and your journey?




Kayla Stoecklein:

Yeah. I'm most active on social media on Instagram. My Instagram handle is Kaylasteck and my website is kaylastoecklein.com, and my book is on Amazon, Barnes & Noble. A lot of those places, wherever you like to buy books and also Audible, I was able to record both the audiobooks for both Fear Gone Wild and Rebuilding Beautiful. So, that was such a great joy.




Gary Schneeberger:

And as a guy whose last name is Schneeberger and nobody knows how to spell it, how can people spell Stoecklein so they can find you online?




Kayla Stoecklein:

Yes, it's S-T-O-E-C-K-L-E-I-N.




Gary Schneeberger:

And Kayla with a?




Kayla Stoecklein:

K.




Gary Schneeberger:

There you go. Warwick, I suspect you may have another question or two, and I will leave that to you before I close.




Warwick Fairfax:

So what you're doing in taking a sabbatical, your boys are young, but you could be around the world giving all sorts of talks, having a big impact. And I'm not telling you what to do, maybe I am, but I'm all for, it's like evangelism begins at home as they say. It's like what will it profit the world if you're running around speaking everywhere and ignoring your voice. Not that you ever would, but it could be tempting like, "I could do so much good." But I think God wants us the ministry at home is just as important as the other works. I applaud you for what you're doing and it's all of service, it's all of significance, not just what people see. So I don't know whether that's a question or an admonition or a commendation for what you're doing, but any final thoughts as we close here?




Kayla Stoecklein:

Thank you. No, no, just thank you so much for having me, and it's been such an honor to be here and to chat with you guys. Thank you. And thank you for the encouragement, it means a lot.




Gary Schneeberger:

Well, I will have a final thought, but it's not going to be long, listeners, so don't worry. And it's not going to be me, it's going to be, I like Warwick, have about 150 sheets of paper in which I've taken notes on things that Kayla has written or said. And I'm going to leave you, listener, with one of the things that she's written in her book, and I want you to really listen to it because what we've just talked about for the last hour or so is a very painful and very dramatic loss. The series is called Gaining from Loss, and Kayla has made a, I'll say it, profound case for what she's gained from her loss. But we're aware the losses that the vast majority, we hope, who are listening have experienced, have not been as dramatic. They're still painful and they're still losses and they're still grapefruit to pull from this conversation with Kayla Stoecklein.

And I'm going to leave you with some words that Kayla wrote in her book that you can apply to your own life regardless of the nature of the circumstances of your loss. This is what Kayla wrote, "In the aftermath of a loss, we don't have to stay camped out in the cemetery. A beautiful world waits for us on the other side of a loss, a world so expansive, it has room for our pain." Well, I do have a microphone, but it's an expensive one, I'm not going to drop it. But that is indeed a mic drop moment from our guest, Kayla Stoecklein. So until next time, listeners, thank you for spending time with us and we will see you next week.

Jason Schechterle was a rookie Phoenix police officer in 2001 when his stopped squad car was slammed from behind at more than 100 mph and burst into an inferno. The unimaginable burns he suffered left him in a coma for two and a half months. He woke up unable to see, his appearance dramatically altered by his injuries and the surgeries he underwent to treat them. He struggled emotionally with what had happened to him – but never gave up the fight, or gave up hope that he’d win it.

In this second episode of our special fall series GAINING FROM LOSS, Schechterle takes us on the journey of how he received the emotional and physical scars he still carries – but also how he found hope and healing that underscores a critical truth: the power of the human spirit can never be underestimated or extinguished. The motto that’s guided him through it all? Sometimes the most beautiful, inspirational changes will disguise themselves as utter devastation. Be patient.

Highlights

Transcript

Gary Schneeberger:

Hi friends. Here at Beyond The Crucible, we often get a chance to dive into some of the hardest moments of someone's life. Everything from facing loss to trying to find your purpose in life. This summer we've been working extremely hard to pull together a full e-course, our first, filled with more than three hours of the lessons learned on how you can find and fully embrace Second-Act Significance. To gain access to this course, visit secondactsignificance.com. That's secondactsignificance.com. Now, here's today's podcast episode.




Warwick Fairfax:

Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Crucible Leadership.




Jason Schechterle:

The fire was all consuming. The entire car was engulfed. The danger that they were in was significant and I'm trapped with my seatbelt inside this car. They got me out in 90 seconds. From impact to the time I was out was 90 seconds into an ambulance and I was two and a half miles away from what I would argue as the best burn center in the United States, the Maricopa County Hospital. And I was on their trauma table in less than eight minutes. Having suffered burns to 43% of my body. My neck, head, and face being the worst, they were fourth degree, which that's a term I didn't know existed until after this. I thought third degree was worst you can have, but fourth degree means it's down to the last layers of muscle and to the bone.




Gary Schneeberger:

That chilling description is just a sliver of the story our guest this week, Jason Schechterle recounts in recalling the car crash in 2001 that changed his life in unimaginable ways. The young Phoenix police officer was in a coma for two and a half months. He woke up, unable to see. His appearance dramatically altered by his injuries and the surgeries he underwent to treat them. He struggled emotionally with what had happened to him, but he never gave up the fight or gave up the hope that he'd win it.

Hi, I'm Gary Schneeberger, co-host of the show. In this second episode of our special fall series, Gaining from Loss. Schechterle takes us on a journey of how he received the emotional and physical scars he still carries, but also how he found hope and healing that underscores a critical truth. The power of the human spirit can never be underestimated or extinguished. The motto that's guided him through it all: sometimes the most beautiful inspirational changes will disguise themselves as utter devastation. Be patient.




Warwick Fairfax:

Well, thank you so much Jason for being here. I really appreciate it. It really is truly an honor to have you here and listeners will discover why I'm using that word. But before we get to the loss, which is what this series is about, I'd love to hear a bit of the backstory of Jason Schechterle, what growing up was like, hopes, dreams. So what was life for you kind of growing up.




Jason Schechterle:

It's an honor to be with you and to meet you, Warwick. Thank you for giving me a chance to share with your audience today. When I look back at my childhood, it was just nothing short of perfect. I mean, I grew up in a couple of great decades. I turned eight in 1980 and turned 18 in 1990. You can't get any luckier than that right there to grow up in the eighties. I mean, it was 2the best decade. But yeah, so much freedom out riding horses and dirt bikes and four wheelers and grew up on a little bit of farmland out by Phoenix International Raceway. Great parents, older brother and sister. One set of my grandparents lived with us, which grandparents are the greatest thing in the world and went to good schools, played sports, had great friends.

I describe it as painfully easy and beautiful because it did not do much to prepare me for what life actually will hold down the road. I didn't face anything but good as I grew up. There were no divorces. We grew up with not a lot of money. I would say lower middle class if you had to put a description on it. But yeah, my childhood was absolutely amazing.




Warwick Fairfax:

So what were your hopes and dreams growing up? I mean, every kid growing up kind of typically has things, gosh, when I grow up I'd like to do X. What was that for you?




Jason Schechterle:

Oh, man. I loved sports and I was good at several of them, but I wasn't great at any of them. And I got really into golf and dreamed maybe about playing professional golf. All kids have big dreams, as they should. You should dream very, very big. I remember wanting to be a train conductor. I thought it would be cool to ride the railroad. I wanted to be an over the road trucker. And it's funny because to this day, I'll be 50 years old this year and my favorite thing is still to drive. So I had just all these little back and forths with, oh, I don't know what I'll do.

But I really thought about, I grew up with a family of service members, my brother, my dad, my grandfather, they all served in the military. They all had great experiences, great stories, great attitudes, never heard anything negative even from the older generation who were in several of the wars doing some pretty difficult things. And PTSD as we know it today, I never heard or saw that as a child when I was talking to the older generations. And then when I was a teenager, I thought about being a police officer and just was always enamored by a uniform, wanting to wear a uniform, wanting to serve others. It's a beautiful thing. And when you're overcome with that sense, once it's inside of you, it doesn't go away.




Warwick Fairfax:

Well, that was really the DNA of your family. It was modeled by your father, grandfather, brother, it's we're here to serve. That's the purpose of life, to serve our others, to serve our brothers and sisters and our family. And so it's makes sense. But from what I understand, you didn't go straight into the police force. You had a bit of detour, right?




Jason Schechterle:

I had quite a bit of a detour. I succeeded a little bit at the game of golf, ended up with a college scholarship and then it did not take me very long to figure out, yeah, I'm pretty good, but I can't do what these guys could do. And also at the time I recognized that I'm, you'll hear me say this word a lot because it's just how I live my life is with gratitude. I am grateful that I recognized at a young age that I needed some structure and discipline in my life and college and education was not my path to gain that. And so I decided to follow in the footsteps of the rest of the men of my family serving the military. I wanted to kind of take it easy. So I joined the Air Force.

There was no way-




Gary Schneeberger:

Come on, the Coast Guard is easier, isn't it?




Jason Schechterle:

No, no. I don't know why people give the Coast Guard a hard time and you should actually watch what those fools do out there in the rough seas. They are truly some of the best. But I definitely knew Army and Marines that I needed a nice dorm room, I needed good food and things like that. So went into the Air Force a little bit naive because I knew I like, Oh yeah, I think I might be a police officer someday, so I'll be a police officer in the Air Force. Well, unbeknownst to me, being a police officer in the military is a little different. And here's a guy who grew up in Phoenix, never seen snow in 18 years of life. And all of a sudden I found myself in Grand Forks, North Dakota, walking around nuclear airplanes at 40 below zero.

And that was one of those times in life that quietly to yourself you think, how did I get here? That was the first time I remember thinking, how did I get here? But it was great. I spent two beautiful winters up there. I spent a year in Korea. I got sent to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba for the 1994 Haiti refugee crisis. I did my four years and it was exactly what I wanted and needed. It gave me the structure and discipline, got me outside of my comfort zones, got me outside of my hometown and then I was ready to return and begin my life.




Warwick Fairfax:

So you returned and joined the police force in Arizona, I'm assuming?




Jason Schechterle:

Actually that was the plan, but I failed at it a couple of times. I think it was a combination of a lack of maturity, just not being ready for it and life, of course, changes on us very quickly. I met and married my beautiful wife, Susie. We had a couple of kids, a daughter and a son. And I actually ended up with a really great job with one of the main power companies here in the state, Arizona Public Service. And I started out at the Palo Verde Nuclear Plant and then I got into an apprenticeship program to be a lineman working on the overhead and underground power lines. Really great job. Outside every day, different locations. I was making a lot of money for my age in the nineties and having no college degree or anything.

And I really thought life was set. So that was just kind of the daily life. I was a dad, a husband, and just that good old fashioned blue collar work that I still love that term. And that all changed when I was actually 26 years old. So I had been home for four years. On March 26th, 1999, there was a Phoenix police officer named Marc Atkinson that was shot and killed in the line of duty and Warwick, I can't explain to you why it was Marc or why it was his critical incident, but it changed my life in that moment. I just knew I had to be doing that job. I had to be wearing that uniform that he was wearing and that set my new path.




Warwick Fairfax:

So it's '99, you joined the police force and then time goes on until the event that changed your life. So how long had you been in the police force before the event that you're about to tell us about?




Jason Schechterle:

Well, I graduated the academy in January of 2000. First graduated class of the new millennium. And like I think most people, I was so full of excitement and enthusiasm as well as the comfort of my career is going to be what I make it. I'm going to have a 25, 30 year career. I want to be a homicide detective someday. I might want to work in these other areas, but then at the end, I'm going to collect my pension and ride off into the sunset. I remember having that comfort and confidence that that's how life would go and my career would go. But yeah, I loved every minute of going to work. This job, I still talk in the present tense. It's kind of funny.

Being a police officer, especially for me in the city I grew up in, and to be doing it with the calling and the reasons that I was doing it, that kind of honor, humility, pride, when you put the uniform on, it really opens up your ability to do the job in the right way and for the right reasons. And so for that I enjoyed it. I mean, I absolutely could not wait to go to work, but as it turns out, I only got to do it for 14 short months.




Warwick Fairfax:

So just before we go to what happened after those 14 months, just so listeners can kind of get a sense of the life of Jason Schechterle, it just seemed like almost a perfect life. You had wonderful parents, you had a history of service, of serving in the military, you had a stint in the Air Force. Now you're being in the police force, which is something you'd been thinking about for a long time. You had a wonderful wife, two great kids. It would seem like life for Jason Schechterle couldn't be much better. You knew what you were going to be doing for the next 25, 30 years until you got your pension, maybe get into homicide. It seemed like you were just blessed. But tell us, because the audience, the listeners may not know. Tell us what happened on that fateful day and I guess it was March 26th, 2001. So tell us about that day.




Jason Schechterle:

Yes, and I hope that the listeners are paying attention to the date you just said because ironically two years to the day after Marc Atkinson was killed and the reason I became a police officer. It was on the anniversary of his death. And I went to work that day with that emotion in mind. And you're also right in saying my life was pretty perfect and blessed. I mean, to have my parents healthy and married, all four of my grandparents at the time were still alive and married. I hadn't even experienced death in my family at 28 years of age. That's pretty remarkable. So blessed is a good way to say it, but also doesn't prepare you for things that as life unfolds, adversity's coming and it comes in different forms and puts you on different paths.

But I went to work that day and it was a routine Monday night and I'm going to work my 10 hour shift and go home and crawl in bed and went through about eight and a half hours of my shift and then I answered up for a call that I didn't need to answer up for. It wasn't in my area of responsibility, but the officers there were busy at the time. It was an emergency call. So of course, I grabbed the radio and I said, "I'll head that direction."

And as I was responding to that call, because it was an emergency call, I had my lights and siren on, I was going pretty quick. But I came to a red light in downtown Phoenix, a very busy part of Phoenix. And you still have to come to a complete stop as a first responder when you have your lights or siren on, you stop for red lights. So you're just not flying through intersections and causing accidents. And it only takes a second and a half to clear an intersection. And just as I was going to proceed, my patrol car was struck from behind by a taxi cab. The driver was suffering an epileptic seizure at the time and according to the investigation, he was doing 115 miles an hour when he ran into me.




Warwick Fairfax:

So what happened next?




Jason Schechterle:

Well, what happened, the sequence events after that is something that I was fortunate enough in time to put together through the use of the listening to the police and fire dispatch tapes, personally talking to everybody on scene because at that speed, that violent of collision, of course, I was knocked unconscious. Thankfully, I was knocked unconscious. It is one of many reasons that saved my life because I wasn't yelling and screaming and sucking in all that incredibly hot air that would have killed me very quickly.

But my car burst into flames, traveled 270 feet through the intersection and came to stop 50 feet from a fire truck that was sitting right there. I mean, you talk about miracles, timing, twists of fate so much went into those two cars being in that position at that moment and never want to lose touch with the human side of what we go through. It doesn't matter what we're doing. Doesn't matter our background or what clothes we put on every day to go to work. We're human beings and we are designed to feel an amazing range of emotions. And as first responders, a lot of times you have a little bit of information. You have a little bit of time to prepare for how you're going to approach something or think about your training or whatever. Very rarely does the world literally blow up right in front of you. And for these four firefighters, that's what happened.

And it was a police car and there's a pretty serious camaraderie in the first responder community and I know that heightened their senses of the importance of what was going on and they were able to drive their truck, that 50 feet pull up right next to me and all four of them had their own individual specific jobs and they did just some amazing things in a short amount of time. A couple of police officers arrived on scene not knowing what they were facing and thinking that it was one of their friends who was dying inside of a fire and the fire was all consuming. The entire car was engulfed. The danger that they were in was significant.

And I'm trapped in my seatbelt inside this car. They got me out in 90 seconds from impact to the time I was out was 90 seconds into an ambulance and I was two and a half miles away from what I would argue is the best burn center in the United States, the Maricopa County Hospital. And I was on their trauma table in less than eight minutes. Having suffered burns to 43% of my body, my neck, head, and face being the worst. They were fourth degree, which that's a term I didn't know existed until after this. I thought third degree was the worst you can have. But fourth degree means it's down to the last layers of muscle and to the bone. My shoulders, my hands were third degree. The tops of my thighs, my chest, my stomach, my back were not burned.

Again, another thing that helped save my life was my bulletproof vest protecting me. Burns are a unique injury. They will keep on burning. So if your chest gets burned to the extent that my arms and face were the way it becomes constricted, your lungs can't expand and you will succumb to that injury very, very quickly. So I was very lucky in that regard. And outside of the burns, I had two cracked ribs and a mild concussion. I would've gone home just a couple of hours after the accident, had the car not caught on fire.




Warwick Fairfax:

How do you get your arms around the combination of the tragedy and the horror and the miracles? I mean, it's just a strange combination of emotions and circumstances.




Jason Schechterle:

It is a strange combination and it's difficult in its beauty, if that makes sense. So I was in a coma for two and a half months. For me, it was a blink of an eye because medically induced coma. So a lot of medication and one of them is kind of an amnesia drug. So for me, it was a blink of an eye and I wake up. Now I'm completely blind, obviously I'm incredibly sick, I'm still in danger of not surviving these injuries. But I wake up to this harsh reality of you've been in a car accident, your car caught on fire. It was slow learning of getting answers.

But what you were saying, I was constantly on one side was wow, this is the most devastating thing I could have ever predicted to be involved in a fire. And what is life going to be like now? I'm blind. I can only imagine. At the time, I had no idea, but my appearance is forever changed and it's probably horrific. It's disfiguring, it's disgusting. What are my kids going to think of me? How am I ever going to be a public? And I've lost my job. But then it was the why am I the one that got a firetruck in their intersection? What about all these other people who deserve that same thing? What has my wife gone through for the two and a months I was in a comma and she's still here by my side? What have the doctors done to fight for me? What did those firefighters go through? Yes, the miracles and the timing, but for the actual collision, every single thing went in my favor. And if you remove just one second of one part of that sequence of events, I'm not sitting here sharing the story with you.

So the contradiction, the force of that, it's just a interesting thing to go through because you're so elevated with gratitude and thankfulness and happiness like, okay, I'm alive no matter how bad things are. I survived, I'm alive. And what has my family gone through and I got to fight for them, but also the miracles and how do you even try to process that? And I'm a spiritual man. I wouldn't consider myself real religious. I think spirituality is very personal. I never questioned God. I wasn't angry at God. I recognized a lot of this stuff is way too big for me to answer. What I have to embrace is what I can control. And all I can do is live my life starting right now to the best of my ability. What that means, I have no idea.

Obviously, there were a ton of dark days. I mean, I cried so much every day with thoughts of what are my children going to think of me? I have lost my job. I am facing so many years of reconstructive surgeries, therapy, burn injury is a pain that all these years later, it's hard for me to even try to put it into words because thankfully, our minds and our bodies tend to forget the negatives and hang onto the positives. And I really have to dig deep to go back and think about the actual physical pain. But the mental and emotional pain, it's always right here.

I would cuss and yell at people who were there to love and support me. I would not talk. And I don't want to say I was depressed, I didn't have the energy. I was incredibly frail. I was incredibly sick, I was incredibly tired and there just was no clear path to what the future was going to hold. But I was very grounded from the beginning that you're here, a lot of people fought for you when you couldn't fight for yourself, and there is beauty and strength in vulnerability. It's not something we want to talk about or that we like. But there is. And I just had to get to a point and thankfully I did where I accepted what happened and then I accepted the challenge of making the most of my new life.




Warwick Fairfax:

So Jason, as I'm listening to this, I'm wondering, I can imagine for weeks or months there was excruciating pain. There might have been guilt almost that gosh, I'm not going to be able to play ball with my son and he's not going to remember how I was. I mean, all lots of human emotions, I don't know how will this affect my marriage? And maybe there might have even been a little survivor's guilt. The person two years before who inspired me to join the police force, he wasn't so lucky. How come I survived? I mean, survived in pretty tough shape but survived nonetheless.

So you probably had all sorts of series of guilt, not that any of it was your fault, it just bad things happen for whatever reason. But whether it's survivor's guilt or what's this going to do to my family? And obviously the pain, I've heard this is from burn victims is probably as tough a pain as exists that any human can possibly experience that none of us who haven't been through can understand. But I mean, how did you get through those weeks and months? Clearly you're in a good place now, which you're going to get to, but how did you get through those weeks and months with the physical pain, the emotional pain, the guilt, the sea of negative emotions? How in the world did you get through those first few weeks and months?




Jason Schechterle:

Well, thankfully it came pretty quickly when you're talking about the timeframe involved here. It was only about three weeks after I woke up that I had two profound realizations that to this day I still am grateful for and live my life by. And first and foremost, I wasn't targeted by this individual. He made a lot of mistakes and caused a lot of damage. But he wasn't trying to hurt a police officer. He certainly wasn't trying to hurt Jason. So I didn't have to deal with, or I chose not to be angry at him. I chose not to look at it that way. And the most important thing that occurred to me was no matter what happens in this life, I think we have to have accountability. It's very easy to say, why me? It's very easy to be angry at whatever faith you have, whatever you believe in, it's very easy to take out your personal struggles on people who love you or to just give up.

But no matter what happens, you have to realize, well, everybody has their own story. I'll tell you what it was for me. Here's this tragic moment in time that happened when two cars collided and one caught on fire. I did not catch on fire, get burned, be in that hospital or have my life completely changed because of that moment. If you go back to me giving up a college golf scholarship to join the military, only spending the required four years in the military, failing at becoming a police officer several times and then postponing becoming one until I was truly moved to do so by the calling of another officer dying, you can go back a solid 10 years of my life and see that every choice that I made is what led me to that intersection, to that fire and into that hospital bed. And therefore, every decision I make starting right now will take me where I need to go.

And that really laid the foundation for me to say, okay, I'm at least going to put in the effort and I had no idea what I could accomplish. And I'm still in the midst of, yes, a lot of sadness, anger, frustration, fear, anxiety, all the things that you have to go on a journey within yourself. It is not possible to overcome anything in life by thinking that we are designed to simply say, okay, and then just move on. There's not one setback, not anything that just says, okay, I'll just move on. That's not possible. You have to go on a journey within yourself. And I allowed myself to do that. Sometimes by, I didn't really have a choice. If I went to therapy because I wanted something to get better, I'm going to have to suffer the pain that is involved in that therapy. But I still just had that foundation of I'm going to continue to strive for the next hour.

I didn't have to get through a whole day, I had to get through the next hour and see what I could see from there. I did have to get to tomorrow. And I'm a big fan of cliches and sayings and I think they are powerful. And when they mean something to you, so you'll often hear me saying little quotes, but it's true that the sun comes up tomorrow and the world does not care about your broken heart. So you just got to keep going. And that turned into at least the start of some positive momentum. While I could also continue every day, no matter how I felt when I was at home, when I was in the midst of the fear and the tears and the anger and the pain, I was still surrounded by the sound of my children's voices, the blanket of gratitude that I was alive, the love and support of my wife and family, my friends that had fought so hard to help me get through this. I was constantly being lifted up and propped up.

And I often say that I was, even though I was the least prepared person for this, because I had led such a blessed easy life, I was also completely set up to not fail. I was still getting a paycheck from the department because I was injured in the line of duty. So we didn't have to worry about that. And I was able to go to any doctor I wanted to across the country once I got to a point where I could choose what kind of plastic surgeries I wanted to have, what kind of things I wanted to make better. I moved on to having really big events happen in life like carrying the Olympic torch, meeting the President of the United States, throwing out the first pitch at a DBacks game. And a lot of people might think, well, what do those things matter with what you're going through? And in a lot of ways that's true. They were inconsequential except in the moment that kind of inspiration is incredible even if it's for five minutes. And then the memories of it last forever.

And then most importantly, the day that I finally got the perspective that I truly needed and I could truly understand the why of this was on October 29th of '02 when our third child was born. And now to have an entire life that shouldn't even exist, I was able to say, you know what? This wasn't about getting me out of a car or getting me through one or two surgeries, but everything that I'm doing, everything that my wife is doing, everything that my entire support system is doing helped to bring this life into this world. And now we are talking about something that is easy to say it was this horrible, tragic accident, but it can end up having endless generations of positivity on the world. And that is, that's an incredible thing to be able to look at and have perspective on.




Gary Schneeberger:

And when I heard you speak the first time, Jason, I whipped out my camera and snapped a slide that you put up because you said this, which fits in exactly with what you just said. Sometimes the most beautiful inspirational changes will disguise themselves as devastation. And your last line was beautiful, Be patient. That's what you just described. Everything that you just talked about was you being patient through each of those valleys because at the other side of the valley was a peak and you found that. You were patient and you worked through it. I think the inspiration I hope listeners take away from this part of the conversation for sure.




Jason Schechterle:

Well I'm glad you bring that up because I want to point out, for as much as I love cliches and things like that, I did get tired of stealing from everybody else. And that quote, I actually came up with myself. It could be attributed to me. And I loved it when people like you, snapping a picture of it or somebody writes it down because it is word for word very true. And yes, it's how I lived until it finally dawned on me that every time something got better, it was like, oh, if I'd have known this a year ago, if I'd have known this five years ago, it would've made it easier to be patient. Being patient, that's not one of our strong suits. None of us. None of us. We want it right now. But it's very true. You got to be patient in your grief, you got to be patient in your struggle. But it's going to work out. And I'm living proof of that today.




Warwick Fairfax:

Wow. I mean, that's such a great quote. I want to talk about gains and what you do now, but one of the things I don't want listeners to miss is when you go through a crucible or a tragedy, rarely can you undo what happened. You couldn't undo the car crash and the consequences of what happened. That was life altering. You couldn't control the, I think it's what? 56 plus surgeries or something, some massive number.




Jason Schechterle:

Yes.




Warwick Fairfax:

The pain, the therapy, you know it's going to help, it's going to hurt, I don't know, something unimaginably. But you had a choice. You could choose to live, you could choose to say, I'm going to press on for the sake of my kids and now my three kids, my wife, and try to find purpose amidst the pain or I can choose not to live. So there's one thing listeners are probably wondering. When you go through something like what you've gone through, there's typically immense anger, whether it's at God, some higher power. Obviously, you had every right to be angry from what I understand about. The Ford Motor company and Ford, Crown Victoria, which understand it has a history of police cruisers getting on fire and obviously accountability is important, but you clearly didn't wallow in the sea of bitterness, you forgave. Again, forgiving doesn't mean condoning. Doesn't mean the guy that had the epileptic fit, from what I understand, it wasn't the first time he had it. So you had a list of things, again, not to condone, but to forgive, you clearly must have made that choice. If you get the difference I'm trying to make between condoning and forgiving, but you couldn't be where you are now if you hadn't dealt with that anger and bitterness at some level.




Jason Schechterle:

Certainly not. And you keep saying the right word, it is a choice. And just as I described, I made so many choices over so many years of my life that got me into this situation. Not knowing, I mean, you make choices every day, dozens or hundreds. And very rarely do we think about the consequences, the ripple effect that it might have across the rest of your life. But having that foundation gave me the freedom and the permission to know that my choices now will completely dictate where I'm going to go. And you make the best choices that you can with the information you have at hand.

And I would make choices in the midst of anger. I would make some choices. It could have been, you know what? I'm not going to therapy today. I don't feel like being in pain today. I want to sit here and I'm not giving up. I'm not quitting, but this is what I need today and it's okay to not be okay. You just cannot be strong and successful and perfect every single minute of every day. You talk about a recipe for failure, but it is my choice. And I see examples of that all the time.

So when I learned to deal with the survivor's guilt and you brought up Ford Motor Company, yes, 33 officers and countless civilians across this country have burned to death in these rear end fueled fires because of the Ford Crown Victoria. So do I have survivor's guilt? Sure. Do I ask why me in that regard? Of course, I do. But then I have the choice to be grateful that you know what? This is a pretty strong appearance and a pretty strong voice to speak for those people.

I don't know why it was me. I don't know if I was chosen. These are questions too big for me to answer. All I can do is live my life the best way that I can. And I did go out and become a voice for them and a face for them. That's what got me. If it wasn't for them, I don't know if I would've ever stuck my face in front of a camera. I don't know if I would've ever given interviews. But because of the people who had gone before me, because of the potential of people who would go after me, I had a role to play and that gave me a lot of strength. Still being a husband, still being a father, still being a son. For people who didn't give up on me, who am I to give up on them? That's a choice that is easy to make when you look at it in the right sense.

So often in life people say, Oh, I was standing at the crossroads of life. You're standing at a crossroad 15 times a day. I mean, at a minimum. If you choose this path, you don't get to know what's down the other road because you can't go that way. But whatever road you go down, you have to accept whatever's coming. All the roadblocks, all the speed bumps, all the detours and accidents and everything. And so I think it's the perspective of the power of choice and what a blessing that no matter what you believe in, that is how we are allowed to live our lives, our own free will and our own free choices.

You have both been through plenty in your life and I think if you go back and look at choices that you made that you thought were good at the time, they might not have worked out. Is there any point in saying, Oh, I made a bad choice, or I wish I wouldn't have made that choice? No, I made that choice. Here's the consequences and here's the choices I'm going to make starting right now. And that momentum just keeps you going forward.




Warwick Fairfax:

And that's powerful what you just said, Jason. Talk a bit about what you do now and just some of the gains that you've experienced. And you've touched on some of the gains already, but the series is called Gaining from Loss. So talk about what you see as the gains and how you've really turned those gains into a mission, a purpose that you have beyond yourself.




Jason Schechterle:

Yeah, it is, going back to that statement that the last two words are be patient. I have the incredible fortune now to say, and I mean this, I have gained everything and lost nothing because even though I still have limited eyesight, even though I lost half my fingers, even though my appearance is not as attractive as maybe it would've been had I still had the look that I had before, but I gained a bigger family with my child. I see what my children now that they're grown, what these three kids are doing in life, the way they lived their life, the compassion they have toward other people, the kindness, it's just perfection. So it's all gain and no loss. I did for a time return to work. I did achieve my dream of becoming a homicide detective. I did it for almost three years. That can never be taken away from me. I gained something, I didn't lose it.

When I changed careers and then found my new calling of being a public speaker and having no idea how to do that, I was not a good speaker 12 years ago when I started doing it professionally for a living, getting paid for it, for the lack of a better word. But I worked at it and it was choices to learn and to get better and to tell my story. And then people along the way helped me. I gained the perspective of other people's stories, of their kindness, of their compliments, of their criticisms and knowing that I get to help other people. And if you leave somebody better than you found them, you can never be a failure. You can never say you've lost anything. I wouldn't trade a day of my life, I would not take away a single moment of anything I've gone through because you erase one thing and it ends up erasing so many things that are good. So yeah, it's amazing. But I'm very proud and it makes me smile. I've gained everything and lost nothing.




Gary Schneeberger:

That sound that you just heard in case you didn't know it, listener, that's the captain turning on the fasten seatbelt sign indicating that we're going to begin our descent into wrapping up this conversation. We're not there yet, we're just starting it. Before we do that, I want to ask you one question, Jason, and then give you a chance to tell listeners a little something. But at the start of this conversation, based on what you just said about all the gains that you've had through your journey, you indicated when Warwick was asking you about your childhood and then your young adulthood that you had lived in your words, a perfect life, different circumstances, different perspective, maybe different definition of that word perfect. But would you say, can you say you've regained a life that in some ways is perfect now?




Jason Schechterle:

For sure. I have gained, I don't know that I would use the word perfect. We always put adjectives on different things. When I talk about my childhood and I say it was perfect, that's more of my choice and my hindsight being 20/20 to say, you know what? It was that good. And I am so thankful for how I grew up, who I grew up with, where I grew up, everything about it. So that's what the word perfect means. Is my life perfect now? No in the sense that I do have physical limitations, I do have struggles. I am getting older, I have my worries, I have my anxieties, but what I have now is just the peace and serenity of I am right where I want to be and I'm right where I need to be. I don't know if it was destiny, I don't know if it was fate. Again, great words that we can use. I can't answer those questions, but I don't want to be anywhere else than where I am.




Gary Schneeberger:

And before I let Warwick ask you the last question or the last couple questions, I want to give you the chance to let people know how they can find out exactly where you are and they can find out maybe how to hire you to speak. They can find out more about your story. How can they find you online, Jason?




Jason Schechterle:

Yes, I am incredibly easy to find and I'm the only one. I don't have a team. I'm the only one who answers my emails, my social media. I'm very active on Instagram and LinkedIn and I've got a pretty unique last name. So once you figure out how to spell it and you look it up, my website is burningshield.com. I have a book titled Burning Shield that you can get on Amazon, Barnes and Noble. My email is jason@burningshield. There it is right there.




Gary Schneeberger:

There it is right there.




Jason Schechterle:

My email is jason@burningshield.com. Again, I'm the only one who gets those emails and I will answer you right away. If you just want to ask a question or inquire about my speaking. I am very easy to find. If you type my name into Google, it's humbling and kind of comical at how much comes up.




Warwick Fairfax:

Wow. So Jason, as I'm kind of listening to you, I'm almost hearing you say that you feel blessed. I don't know if we've used that word. It doesn't mean what happened to you wasn't horrific, but yet you're with your family, and which I'll ask you about here in terms of what you do now, one of the things you wrote, I think is just pretty profound stuff in terms of blessing is something that your wife said, Susie. And she said, "I can't tell you why Jason's appearance never bothered me, but I've never missed how he looked before the night of March 26th, 2001. I didn't marry the face. I married the man. He's the same human being." I don't know if everybody's wife would've said that, but to have somebody that says it's not about the face, it's about the man, his character, who he is, that's pretty amazing stuff. I mean, that alone is a reason to feel pretty blessed, don't you think?




Jason Schechterle:

Oh, feeling blessed is constantly I'm covered in it. I think about that all the time. And when you talk about my wife and when she made that statement, we got married very young, and regardless of my life changing event, accident, appearance, whatever, we change and our significant other is going to change as they age, and we are different people. Marriage is very difficult. And for her to have that foresight back then and that commitment to the, for better or worse, the part of the vow, most people take for... like I did in the police academy, that's going to be a 25 year career. It's going to be easy. I'm going to have fun, I'm going to collect a nice retirement. I think that's how a lot of people go into marriage is they just say the words not realizing those words are in there because they mean something.

And yeah, I could never have done this alone. I know I said on stage Gary, when you heard me, I'm 2% of who I am today, barely 2%. The other 98% is my wife, my children, my parents. I lost my dad five years ago to cancer. My doctors, those firefighters who I still keep in touch with because I want them to see, look at what you did that night, look at what it turned into. Not often do we get to see the fruits of our labor and I am going to always go out of my way to make sure that people who helped me in the beginning see that it was worth it. I want them to have some peace and serenity over that like I have. So yeah, I am incredibly blessed. Beyond words.




Warwick Fairfax:

So as we close out here, and that is profound what you just shared, Jason. Talk about what you do. I think you have a scholarship fund for kids of officers who've been severely injured and you speak and just an advocate. So just talk about what are the things you do that you're pouring your life into, at least vocationally and your calling.




Jason Schechterle:

Yeah, my new calling for sure was being a public speaker. And I'm a very lucky individual that I had two aha moments. The first was when Marc Atkinson was killed and the second came about when New York City firefighter who had been at 9/11 and then was going through a divorce. He heard me speak and he told me that I changed his life and I owned a business at the time. I was just being Jason and I walked out of that room, got on the phone, put my business up for sale and said, "I know what I need to be doing."

And to be able to touch other people's lives, to be able to maybe shape their perspective. Of course, I love talking to law enforcement and first responders, but I love talking to Fortune 500 companies and people in real estate. We're all human beings and we all have life happening to us. I don't think we should compare adversities. Whatever we're going through, we have to embrace it. And I am very blessed that I have an opportunity to have that platform. Not everybody does. I don't take that lightly. I don't take it for granted. It's something that I can't... I'm leaving on an airplane tomorrow to go speak to the Washington State Fire Chiefs Association. And I can't wait to share this story with them. I can't wait to say thank you for what you do every day and speak for all the people that you dealt with who I bet would say thank you for that call you went on 15 years ago or 20 years ago. And give them a little bit of perspective.

So I just remain so inspired and so excited about the future. And I love what my kids are doing. I'm so proud of them, blessed to have those three individuals in my life. So it's just a constan, every day I wake up and I'm inspired. I'll go to bed at night like you should, and I'll let the weight of the world come down. I will think about my adversity. I will think about, and it's not the 20 year ago adversity, it's not the burns, it's what I'm going through now at my age and worrying about my kids and their future or worrying about my speaking and how I'm going about that. But I do let the weight of the world come down on me. But I wake up every day, two goals.

Number one, I'm going to leave this day better than I found it. And it's simple. Put a shopping cart away, smile at somebody at the gas station, leave a meeting positively beaming. It's amazing how you can live your life when you can leave the day better than you found it. And the other thing I dedicate myself to every morning is whatever moves me today, I'm going in that direction, I can tell you very honestly, I woke up this morning and I was excited to do this podcast. I mean, Warwick, I'm incredibly honored to meet you and the life that you have lived for you to give me a chance to be on your show, that's very humbling and it means a lot to me. So I was very excited.

When I wake up tomorrow, I don't get to do this show. So I have to find something else and that will be my motivation. What is tomorrow? What does it hold? What can I find? You can always find something to be grateful for. You can always find something to be inspired by and then just go in that direction each and every day and the days start clicking by and it gets really, really good.




Gary Schneeberger:

It's interesting that you mentioned Jason that soon you're going to be getting on a plane because our plane in this conversation has just landed. Perfect landing on your part, four point landing. I think that's actually a term that works. As I close, you said in the show, Jason, you said that you like to use and maybe sometimes you appropriate other people's quotes, not that you steal them, but you use other people's quotes and you're very proud of the fact that the one I sent back to you that I took the picture of at your speech was one that you came up with. That was in fact original from you. Well, I'm now going to appropriate that quote in closing the show, and I'm going to tweak it just a bit for Crucible Leadership and that is this: Listener, remember this as we close this episode of our series Gaining From Loss. Sometimes the most beautiful inspirational changes will disguise themselves, we'll say it our way, as crucibles. Be patient. As you're being patient, next week we'll be back with another episode of our special series Gaining from Loss. See you then.

We kick off our fall series GAINING FROM LOSS with Shelley Klingerman’s story of grit in the face of grief after her brother, Greg, a 30-year veteran law enforcement officer, was shot to death in an ambush while leaving a government building – a senseless and evil act.

From that tortuous crucible, Klingerman has dedicated herself to celebrating the essence of Greg and helping his fellow officers via the nonprofit she founded not long after his killing: Project Never Broken. Her organization extends hope and healing through stressing resiliency to other law enforcement officers and their families struggling through the aftermath of trauma. Through every step, she is committed to no longer accepting the things she cannot change, but changing the things she cannot accept. 

Highlights

Transcript

Warwick Fairfax:

Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Crucible Leadership.




Shelley Klingerman:

I will not let this take more than one life, and I have a family and I did find myself... My family did suffer early on until I was just able... Those waves come further. But make no mistake, my kids walked in on me just crying and I'm like, I can't do this. If I do this and I'm not here for them, then again, more than one life is lost. And if I go, then how does that affect my kids? And I just was not willing to make that an option.




Gary Schneeberger:

Not willing to give up, to give into the pain, to give into the loss. Shelley Klingerman determined early on after her brother was slain that those options were not on the table, not just to protect her family, but to honor the life and legacy of the loved one she lost.

Hi, I'm Gary Schneeberger, co-host of the show. This week, Warwick and I kick off our fall series Gaining From Loss with Klingerman's story of grit in the face of grief after her brother Greg, a 30-year veteran law enforcement officer, was shot to death in an ambush, a senseless and evil act. From that torturous crucible, Klingerman has dedicated herself to celebrating the essence of Greg and helping his fellow officers via the nonprofit she founded not long after his killing - Project Never Broken. Her organization extends hope and healing through stressing resiliency to other law enforcement officers and their families struggling through the aftermath of trauma. Through every step, she is committed to no longer accepting the things she cannot change, but changing the things she cannot accept.




Warwick Fairfax:

Well, Shelley, again, thank you so much for being here. We really appreciate it. Before we get to I guess the event that changed your life and your family's life, I'd love to hear a little bit about the backstory of you and your brother and growing up and just a little bit of the kind of backstory of you, your family, your journey before kind of the main event that we'll talk about.




Shelley Klingerman:

Yeah. Well, thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure and a privilege to be here and share my story, which I will be very honest with you, I have not done much since it happened. So I promise you there will be weak moments as I tell you, just because it's new for me, and I will get through it.

But to answer your question, I was brought up in a very traditional, what I will say is an all American family. I equated us to the Cleavers. My mom was a teacher. My dad was a fireman, and it was just Greg and I, and they were incredibly present parents. We were very middle class, never wanted for anything and just absolutely knew that we were the center of our parents' world without being completely self-absorbed about it. But I had an amazing upbringing. There's nothing that I could say that was traumatic in my childhood.




Warwick Fairfax:

Do you ever look back and obviously you know a lot of other people now and think in some sense we were privileged, not in terms of money but unconditional love, a brother and a sister that love each other, parents that loved you? You probably have friends that go, "Shelley, that wasn't my upbringing." I mean, you don't know what you don't know when you were a kid. As you look back, you think, gosh, we were pretty blessed growing up.




Shelley Klingerman:

Oh absolutely. My dad especially, I didn't know that everybody's dad didn't start their car in the winter and have their windshields cleared off and had the car warm. I honestly just thought that's what dads did. So very much so, I had grown to greatly appreciate the solid loving background and upbringing that I had.

And you talk about Greg and I, we were very different. Greg was quiet. He was introverted. He was incredibly smart. We weren't close where we really hung out, but the way that we were brought up there was absolutely a loyalty and a dedication to family. So again, just to put a point on that, I also didn't know that it wasn't normal for my dad to go visit his uncle who had never had kids or been married, and he would go sit with him every evening at the nursing home. And again, I just thought that's what you did. I thought that's how every parent treated their... It was his uncle.

My mom's mom lived across the street from us because her dad passed away shortly after he retired. So my grandma moved in across the street, and I didn't know that everyone's grandma didn't come over for dinner every night or you went across the street to their house at five o'clock every evening for dinner. So yeah, just to bring it back around, I'm very grateful and absolutely do now see what an amazing upbringing I had. And I would say that my mom, dad, Greg and I were like a tent. We were the four poles in a tent. So when we talk about what happened recently, when you pull one of those four poles out that you make up that tent, it collapses, and that's kind of what happened.




Warwick Fairfax:

Just before we get to that, so you grow up, go to college and obviously you went one direction. I mean every person has their own direction, career, life. So just talk about what you did after college and before the event, which we'll get to in a second. What were you pursuing career-wise and purpose-wise? What was your direction in life, if you will?




Shelley Klingerman:

Yeah. Again, I said that Greg and I were different. So Greg went in law enforcement. Again, he took a path of public service like my mom, teacher, dad, fireman. I kind of went in a different direction because as I said, we were opposite. So I was more extrovert. I was very social. I was very involved. My career path took me... I started working. My first job out of school was a corporate job in a Fortune 500 company. And while I was there, many of my experiences are what brought me to write the book that I wrote based on a lot of the actual things that happened to me. But I also was an entrepreneur at heart and I really didn't know what that meant. I really didn't know what an entrepreneur was. To be honest, back in the, I'll date myself, early '90s, that wasn't so much a thing, and I remember getting on-




Gary Schneeberger:

Oh, Shark Tank. It's before Shark Tank so nobody knew.




Shelley Klingerman:

I remember getting a magazine called Entrepreneur Magazine. I don't know how I got on the subscription, but it would show up on my desk and I'm like, "What is an entrepreneur? How is it that you could literally be your own boss?" Because I was so just all I had been exposed to was a corporate environment. But what I do know now is that burning desire to do something that was mine and I was willing for it to be my success or my failure. But I always had that and I just didn't know what it was, and it was that entrepreneurial flame and fire. And I ended up doing some things entrepreneurial while I was still at Sony. So if we were to look at my past, I did multiple things while I was working full time and that was me I think pursuing that entrepreneurial thread that I had.




Warwick Fairfax:

So you work your way up the corporate ladder and you wrote this fascinating book, Vigilance: The Savvy Woman's Guide to Personal Safety, Self-Protection Measures and Countermeasures. I love the name of your company, the Stiletto Agency. I mean, maybe it's kind of obvious I guess, but why the Stiletto Agency? Because you could pick a hundred different names.




Shelley Klingerman:

I wanted something to be bold. I wanted it to be somewhat feminine. And if you look at the logo and you look pretty closely, it was a play on words of a stiletto heel, and then the heel is actually a knife. It's not a true stiletto knife, but it's a form. So it was kind of like bold, edgy. It had to do with the empowerment, the safety. So that's where that came from.




Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah. I get that. One last question on this before we get to the main event. Why the sort of passion around helping women learn safety and empowerment and protection, what led you to going down that track?




Shelley Klingerman:

As I had touched on before, it was my personal experience traveling young as a young professional in the early '90s. And I really quite frankly wasn't prepared, and I found myself in some situations that I should have recognized to avoid altogether. Once I was in what I would call cringey situations, I didn't necessarily know how to get myself out of them. Potentially, sometimes I would go to close business because I had a quota that I had to meet and the person on the other side of the table was more interested in asking me what I was doing after my day was over rather than talking about the business at hand. And I just really was left with not knowing what to do and had to kind of think on my feet in some situations. And there's again, I found myself in a few that I shouldn't have been in because I should have recognized how to avoid them, which is what led me to write the book.

I have three kids, two girls, and I quite frankly wanted them to be more prepared to go out into the world than I was. My company was an awesome company, but they did nothing to teach me how to travel on my own, again, as a young professional. So I started when I was 23. I wasn't even old enough to rent a car yet, so they would have to sign waivers. So I was certainly not necessarily prepared to know how to handle some of these professional situations.




Gary Schneeberger:

I'll jump in and say one thing about the book, or two things about the book. One, it was featured in the New York Times, which is kind of awesome so that your insights into how women can be vigilant and protect themselves was featured in there. But also Shelley, after you and I worked together for a little bit, I still can't be on an airplane and overhear a conversation where a young woman is talking to a young man and it's probably innocuous, I don't know. And she talks about, "Well yeah, I live here." And I remember one time, the first time that happened after I had read your book, I texted you after I got off the plane going, "You wouldn't believe what just happened on this..." I mean truly, it makes all of your radar go up, not in a bad way where you see bad people around every corner, but to keep you vigilant, to keep you aware of your surroundings and aware of how you're interacted. So I wholeheartedly endorse your book for that reason.




Shelley Klingerman:

Thank you.




Warwick Fairfax:

So let's talk about kind of the event that changed your life, because listeners are probably wondering, "I wonder what that was." So just talk a bit about that event that day and-




Shelley Klingerman:

Yeah. So Greg was a 30-year law enforcement FBI task force officer, and he was just exiting his office one day and walking to his car and was ambushed and murdered. It was not a targeted event. The suspect was really there, I believe, to kill everybody in the building, but it was Greg's heroic actions in his last moments that alerted them to what was going on, and they were able to come out and engage. So he fought to the last seconds.




Warwick Fairfax:

That obviously changed your life, your family's life, parents. He had, from what I've read, two kids, didn't he? A son and a daughter.




Shelley Klingerman:

He did. He had twins that were 18.




Warwick Fairfax:

So talk about just the... You've obviously set up some things since, but just talk about those days, weeks, months. Just you mentioned before that event changed your whole life, the four tent poles, one was gone. Just talk about, I know it's an obvious question but forgive me, but just talk about how that changed your life and your family's life, that event.




Shelley Klingerman:

Yeah. So I mean I can kind of go down a couple paths. I noticed early on that the emotions that I was experiencing were absolutely of course deep sadness and just strong anger, and anger is a very effective emotion that comes with a lot of energy. I, again, recognized early because I know myself and that energy needed to go to something that was productive and not destructive. I and my family had committed that this act would not be left where it was.

So just a story. As we were talking about the services for Greg, my mom, we grew up Catholic. My dad went to a Catholic school. My kids go to a Catholic school. We were raised Catholic. She still goes to church, God-loving. And before when we sat down to talk about the services with the priest, my mom just stopped and it's kind of out of her character, and she said, "Before I talk about anything, I need to know why. Why would God let this happen?" And our priest said very matter of factly, my mom's name is Dottie, he said, "Dottie, make no mistake, God had nothing to do with this. This was an act of pure evil. The way God responds is he will give the strength to make something good come of this."

And it was honestly in those moments of hearing that where I committed that I would do something. I didn't really know what at the time, but I was determined to make something good come of this evil, and it would not end at that evil act and evil would not win. And that is really where my conviction came. The nonprofit came a little bit after. I mean that conversation happened within two days. So that was the first thing, that conviction, and then the noticing of these emotions and the energy that comes with that. And it just kind of naturally came that I would... Again, I didn't do this alone. My family was part of it, but we committed to honoring, memorializing Greg's life and legacy because Greg was one of the good guys. Greg was actually making a difference on this earth, and we cannot glorify evil and not raise the stories and the lives and the legacies of those who truly are doing good. So that's really what the mission.

I called Mary Siller, who is with the Tunnels to Towers Foundation, just out of the blue, and I reached out to them just through their website and ended up getting on the phone with her and I said, "I think I'm getting ready to embark on something real similar to what you did to memorialize your brother in the sacrifice he made on 9/11. What do I need to know? What are the avoidable things as I start out?" And she gave me the most sound advice that I have gone back to over and over. And she just said, "Whatever you do, make sure his essence is seen in what you do. Just whatever he would still be doing if he were here, let that drive your organization." And that's absolutely what we have gone back to. What would he want, what would he do? He was very much a mentor. He was very much a trainer, a leader. So that's where the hope, help and healing comes from. He would not want any of his brothers to be sad or to be struggling at his loss.

A little side note though is that the community that I'm from, Terre Haute, is a community about the size of 60,000. Our police force is about 130. We have lost three officers in the line of duty in the last 10 years. There are officers that are serving that have lost three of their brothers in the last 10 years. Then to ask them to put the uniform on the day after they've lost one of their own knowing that right now, and you mentioned it earlier, this environment is not necessarily an easy environment to operate in. They feel it. They see it. Then you add on that their wives are concerned every time they walk out the door. Their kids see what's going on. So they have all of that to contend with. This organization exists through him to make sure that his brothers have the resources, the backing, the support that they need to continue to do their job because that's what he would want.




Warwick Fairfax:

I want to talk a bit about the organization, but just before we get there, there're going to be listeners hearing this who've been through loss. They've lost a loved one or they've gone through some tragedy. And one of the things we say at Beyond The Crucible is when you go through a crucible experience, you have a choice. You can't undo what happened, whether it was a mistake you made or something horrific that was done to you, which is this case. And obviously you know this unfortunately too well, there's one path that leads to anger, bitterness, proverbially hide under the covers and say, "I'm going to be angry, bitter and sad for the next 30, 40, 50 years," and eventually life ends and the pain stops. Some obviously cut that short by sadly taking their own life. They just cannot take the grief, the anger, the whatever.

And another path is one that you've taken, which is, this was wrong, this is awful, but how do I get beyond this? How do I not just be a pool of grief for the next 50 years? I mean, how did you make that choice? Because not everybody makes the choice that you did who's been through your circumstances. And I'm not here to judge. I'm just saying one maybe is hopeful and leaves a legacy perhaps, and one is not very helpful. So how did you make that choice to go the direction that you did?




Shelley Klingerman:

Well, I think I'm a bit stubborn. I'm a bit feisty and-




Gary Schneeberger:

Really?




Shelley Klingerman:

I know. And to be quite honest, it's kind of what I said before, evil will not win. So if I gave up and my family gave up, we would've lost more than one life out of this family because to your point, you stop living and that was not an option because then evil would win. So I truly believe that we are being given God's strength to just look evil in the face dead on and be, we will be way bigger. This act will not end the way you hoped. We will outshine it, and we will take your evil act and we will compound it a hundred times for good. So it is just an attitude and a mindset and just a grit and a fight mentality.




Gary Schneeberger:

I know he's going to ask you about the foundation in particular, but I want to ask you, because you're the first guest we've had on this series and we've wrestled a bit, believe it or not, with what we were going to call this. It occurred to me earlier in the week, we're going to record Shelley at the end of the week and we don't have a name. And so we started kicking around names, and there was concern on our parts that what we ended up calling it Gaining From Loss might be misinterpreted, right? The idea that how can anything good come out of loss. But what you've just described, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but would you say that you have indeed, as much as you lost and it was great, you have gained something through that process as well that you are putting toward memorializing and carrying forth Greg's legacy? Is that a fair statement?




Shelley Klingerman:

Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I think so. And I think that at the end of the day, more people will know who he was and the good that he did maybe than otherwise. I mean, he was an incredibly humble person. So we are learning things about him that we didn't even know. I mean important work that he was doing that was truly making a difference for local and honestly at a bigger level national security just because of the jobs that he was working on. So yeah, I think it would be fair to say that I've gained.

What I'm talking about today, this organization was not on my radar 16 months ago. I mean I, to your point earlier, was kind of doing my own thing. You deal with the cards you're dealt and we were dealt this card, and I've had people say, "Well, is this the way that he was supposed to go out?" And at first I was like, "Absolutely not." This was again evil, pure evil that appeared on this earth. But I will say that he was a badass, to be honest. He was a warrior and more people know that now because of this. And I truly think that people have been inspired by his story, and the good guys, which he was, do make a difference. It's a kind of long roundabout way to answer, but it is the circumstance you're given, so you find the good. And yes, I've gained. I have gained so many friends that I would've never met through this loss. And Gary, we worked together on a conference for law enforcement and at the end of that conference what I have surmised is that we lost one, we will help many.




Warwick Fairfax:

There's something that you said to us before in preparation for this, something that you wrote to us, which I found very profound. You said that you should basically do something that makes you feel like you're affecting the situation. And you mentioned the saying, "I'm no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I'm changing the things I cannot accept." I mean that's a profound thought you had. Just tell us a bit about what you meant by that.




Shelley Klingerman:

Yeah. And again, I have to say those are not my words. I've seen that quote, but I have adopted that. And yeah, doing something has been the most transforming thing that I could possibly do because again, if I did nothing, if we did nothing, evil would win, and it is not going to win. So by doing something, you're processing grief, you're taking action, that is the most therapeutic thing that I have found that has worked for me. To your point, completely respect that's not how everybody processes grief. Sometimes they need to go and be secluded and be quiet. That's just not how I'm made up. I mean I am more of an extrovert. So by me feeling like I am doing something and taking action is how I am working through this grief.




Gary Schneeberger:

I go back to what you said at the very start of our conversation when you said, "And then I got subscribed to Entrepreneur Magazine and I had no idea how that happened." I think as you've told this story and we see the arc of your life, I think we have an idea why that happened because that entrepreneurial spirit that was birthed in you helped you birth this organization, Project Never Broken.




Shelley Klingerman:

Yeah. No, I would agree. And again, truly, I did not register. So to your point, maybe somebody knew something more than I did at a time and I was meant to have that magazine because I didn't subscribe to it because I didn't even know what it was.




Warwick Fairfax:

Well, I want to ask about Project Never Broken, but just before we do, let me make a comment that obviously we're all wired differently. Some are extroverts, introverts, artistic, mathematical. So how we process grief is different, but yet I think there are some lessons for all of us that however you're wired, to your point, to me, evil wins if you are just never get out of bed and are angry, bitter, and if you let evil defeat you, then evil does win. So no matter how you are wired, there are some lessons for everybody. And your attitude is evil won't win, I'm going to turn this evil for good. So that might mean different things for different people, but I feel like there's some overarching lessons from your response that's true for everybody. Is that fair?




Shelley Klingerman:

Oh, I hope so. I hope so. Yes, evil should never have the last say.




Warwick Fairfax:

So let's talk about Project Never Broken because you could have supported the legacy of your brother in many ways. Why this way? I mean tell us about Project Never Broken and what led you to set up this nonprofit and just honor him and his legacy this particular way.




Shelley Klingerman:

Again, I think it's that essence. He was very much a trainer. Everyone wanted to be mentored by him. He always stepped up. He would have wanted people to move on in a productive way. So this hope, help and healing represented what he would still be doing if he were here. The honoring resiliency is the second part of that and it's kind of what we're talking about here. How do you come back? You need to recognize people who do get back up on their feet. I heard something recently, fall seven, stand eight. No matter how many times you get knocked down, you got to get back up, and that's the resiliency and we need to honor that because that's what we're asking everybody to be in this day and age.

As far as the name of the organization, that's actually got a deep meaning too. My dad was in Vietnam and he was in infantry, and the logo or the motto on his uniform, which I actually have his patch. I'm going to grab it right here. This was his patch that he wore on his uniform, and it says Nunquam Fractum, which translates directly to "never broken". So that's where the name of the organization came from. My dad fought in Vietnam and it didn't break him. Greg fought to the bitter last moment, it didn't break him. And so this will not break me, my family or my community. So Nunquam Fractum translates directly to "never broken". If you look at the logo, if you go and search it, you'll see three stitches that connect Nunquam and Fractum, and that represents the hope, help and healing. Then there's a little flag on the logo that's 129. That was Greg's badge number. And then the logo appears worn, and that represents the 30 years of service. So there's deep meaning behind the name of the organization and it's very intentional as to why it's called that.




Warwick Fairfax:

So what's your vision for your organization? I mean, what is your hope that this will do?




Shelley Klingerman:

Never Broken, so that we will provide those resources to our law enforcement and first responder community. Mental health is a big factor for them. There's compound trauma and stress that sometimes doesn't get recognized because they are who we look to for help, but who's helping them? And Greg absolutely would want his brothers and sisters to be supported. So that's what the mission of the organization is doing.

And we're having a little fun too, again, pulling in his personality. So for the one year anniversary date of the loss, we collaborated with a local brewery and we brewed a custom brew. They called it Nunquam Fractum, and it released on July 7th. And so we intentionally did not want that day to be heavy. We didn't want it to be sad. He would not have wanted that. So we had a kind of, if you would say, a party at the brewery and everyone came and toasted Nunquam Fractum. And I would say that be the person, live the life that hundreds of people come back to honor and memorialize you, and that's exactly what happened. That speaks a lot when that many people will come back and celebrate you.

And then we had a concert. Greg was in a band in high school. It was called Overland. We put together a concert called Overland Over Time. That was something that I was always joking with he and some of his band mates that they should do a reunion concert. And then I had been just joking that for a few years, and when this happened, we made it happen. We did a kind of tribute concert called Overland Over Time, and they had hand-drawn their logo, was literally hand-drawn and then they filled it in with markers really. They were just fabric markers. So we took that and we digitized because we had the original... One of the band guys had his original. They literally hand drew it. And we digitized it and we produced shirts that said Overland, just like 1985 when they played.

Another fun thing we did is when Greg would go visit somebody and they weren't in their office, he would leave drawings and we turned all of the drawings that we had into T-shirts. So again, the essence that Mary had suggested, when anybody would see those shirts he drew himself the same way every time, it just makes you smile because that's him. And it was always him in some kind of a battle and he was always winning. It was either a shark eating a little small swimmer or it was like he was blowing up a little person. So we've had fun with it too. But again, that's his essence and that's just who he was. I said he was really humble, and I always define that by he didn't think less about himself, he just thought about himself less. He was always about the person he was with.

And then Greg did some undercover work in his early years. He was on a drug task force and did undercover work and he was really, really good at it because he could blend in. He could blend in to any crowd that he was in. Unlike me, I stand out because I talk loud and I'm very social. He could stand back and observe and be a bit of a chameleon and a wallflower. He's really, really good at his craft.




Warwick Fairfax:

So talk about how, maybe it's again obvious that they might always feel supported because they're thinking of others, but you are here to try and think of them more, right?




Shelley Klingerman:

Yeah, absolutely.




Warwick Fairfax:

Talk a bit about that.




Shelley Klingerman:

Yeah. And to that point, we literally just partnered with a national organization called The Wounded Blue last week and Project Never Broken and another non-profit organization that was created for much of the same reason that Project Never Broken was it's called Peacemaker Project 703. That family's officer was responding to a domestic violence call and was shot and killed within seven seconds of being on scene.

To your point, they're doing the job that we ask them to do and that we call them to do and they do it very selflessly. They literally put their life on the line for complete strangers. So they have to know in order to continue to do that job that somebody has their back because we are making their operating environment very difficult with all the things that are at play right now that we don't have to run through. We know what the environment looks like. I want them to know, Project Never Broken wants them to know that we have your six, that we are here for you and we know that you are human and we cannot expect you to do these things that we are asking you to do without having some kind of consequence because it's a consequence of the job. They still will sign up to do it. They don't really ask for anything, but we just need to offer it. And they need to know that there is help and resources there.

I've had one traumatic event. I've had one big T trauma that it knocked me on my butt. I cannot imagine day in, day out having what is called small t trauma, which adds up and compounds to even bigger effects and not having some way to ask for help. So we are here to be on scene to offer that help and let them know if you need to go talk to someone and you want to do it in a very confidential way, we will help make that happen, and we will also be very public in our support as well.




Gary Schneeberger:

And that event that you spoke about that you had, which is last week when we're taping this, it's in October for those who were listening to this, was called the Law Enforcement Survival Summit. I'll thank you publicly. I was honored that you asked me to come down and capture some of the stories of the folks, the speakers who were there and some of the attendees who were there. But one of the things that really struck me about that, that goes to the point that you just made, that in that event, one of the really strongest aspects of that event was the peer teams. Right? Those people, those officers who had gone through sometimes small t trauma, sometimes large T trauma, but they were there to watch the attendees, not in a creepy way, but to watch people who were listening to the speakers to see if they were triggered by anything, see if something made them sort of feel bad under assault again in some way, and they were there to talk them through that. That's part of the mission of what this summit was about, right?




Shelley Klingerman:

Correct. And it's interesting, I've never sat at a table with so many individuals, so many humans who have been physically shot. I mean it was nothing for me to be the only person at the table that had not been shot. And it was interesting to me that I heard stories all through the week, probably much like you did, Gary, but it's interesting that officers that were involved in some of those shootings and they were not the ones to be shot, they literally would have preferred to have been physically wounded as opposed to the emotional wounds that they were healing from because people cannot see those emotional wounds, and we know how that happens with trauma, and we know that's kind of what the mental injuries are. They would prefer to be physically shot because they can see that heal. Everyone knows that they were hurt. And so they expect certain behaviors.

When you can't see their wounds, and it's much like some of the illnesses that people have that are not outward facing, those are the harder ones for them to get over, and it's mental for them. If they were shot, they could see that wound healing and they kind of healed along with it. When you don't have something to heal, how do you know that you're getting better? It was very interesting. Again, this was all new to me. I mean I've only been in this space for 16 months, but what I am learning is shocking.




Warwick Fairfax:

What you're saying, Shelley, is so profound that if you're not in law enforcement, which I'm not certainly, it's tough to understand, but you have to make, same in probably Afghanistan, Iraq, or Vietnam at times, you have to make split second decisions and you hope that your training allows you to make the right one. I'm sure in the vast majority of ones, you do. But even if you make the right one and you're told, as they say on the police shows, it was a good shoot, right? They analyze. You did everything right. You followed the book. There's still this, I'm sure, sense of trauma. Could I have done something different? Could I have deescalated it without shooting? Even when every expert says, "Nope, you followed the book, you did everything right," it's just traumatic. So maybe 30, 40 years ago, people I guess were probably told, "Suck it up. Be tough," which is a common thing, especially to say to men.

But now hopefully we're in a different place where people realize it's tough. It's not weakness to seek strength. I think a strong person says, "I can't do it all. I need counseling. I need help. I need somebody to help heal me, and it takes time." So do you feel like we're in a place where a lot of the officers you know are willing to say, "You know what? It's not weak to ask for help. It's just smart. And if I don't seek help, it's going to affect my family and those I love?" Because you know what they say hurt people hurt people, and you don't want to hurt the people you love, but you will unless you seek help. So talk a bit about, because I'm sure that's probably part of what you do at Project Never Broken, do you feel like the message is getting out that officers in the line of duty are realizing they have to seek help, it's not a sign of weakness, it's a sign of courage?




Shelley Klingerman:

I do. And I think the program that was put on last week was a great example of that because these officers who have been in lots of different situations, when they tell their story, the officers in the audience, you would just see heads nodding. They're not ever situations that I've been in because I'm not even brave enough to do the job, I'll be honest. I am not wired that way to run to danger. They all are. And when these presenters who had been through horrific situations would tell their story, it's kind of like military likes to talk to military peers, law enforcement likes to talk to law enforcement. So you would see heads nodding, yes. I think that there's a long way to go because that culture is just kind of that brave, strong culture. However, I do think that by talking about it and putting people up there who are brave enough to share their stories and be vulnerable have more impact than we could ever know.

So to answer your question, yes, we will continue to do that. We do that on those conference fields. And then we do kind of mini workshops where I've already in conversations to bring a couple of those speakers who were on stage to come back and do a more intimate workshop with a smaller group of people because that's where the conversation happens. But yes, by those who have been through situations, they're willing to be vulnerable and share it. You can absolutely see heads start to nod, and I think you just have to keep doing it and doing it and doing it until more understand than don't, that what you just said, being weak is actually a sign of strength.

And to that fact, if these things didn't bother these guys and women, that wouldn't be human. They're humans, and they absolutely respond to calls of child abuse, of child fatalities. And if they have a child, I've heard this in separate occasions more than 10 times, when they respond, they see their child's face on that child who didn't survive. So if that ever gets to not affecting them, that's where we need to be concerned. They're human, and they have human emotions. And for so long, I think there was just this perception and this culture that they cannot be bothered by that, and we do not want that. As officers on the street, we don't want them feeling like that's how they have to behave. We want them to be able to process this.

Just like I said, working on this nonprofit is processing grief for me. They need to be able to talk about what they've seen so that they can process it, work through it, and it does not carry with them as they go back out on the street. And again, it's a very different environment for them now. So they need to go out there present in the moment, not carrying a lot of this with them as they clock in. It's safer for them and it's safer for the community.




Gary Schneeberger:

That is a good time for the captain to turn on the fasten seat belt sign indicating that we will begin our descent into closing up our conversation. Before we do that, couple things. One, I just want to amplify what you said. My father was a cop as you know. That's the reason you asked me to come out there. I wanted to come out there to honor him. And he died last year at 93. I didn't know much about... He's one of those guys from that era in the '50s and '60s who just didn't talk about those things that happened. I'm his youngest son. I didn't hear any of those stories of things that happened. I know that he went to his grave not telling many people that.

And the great thing about living to be 93 is that you're around a long time. The bad thing is a lot of your friends and all the people that you shared the front lines with have gone, and he had no one he could share those things with. And I could see that he just avoided it, and I think his life was less rich because of it. When I was at the event, what I came away with, one of the things I came away with was that my dad could have used that, even though he did not as far as I know, he'd never talked about he'd ever shot anybody. Some of those small t traumas were truly small t, but I know he went through some things that he did not feel comfortable talking about.

Before I let Warwick ask you the final question, Shelley, however, I would be remiss if I did not give you the chance to let our listeners know where they can learn more about Project Never Broken.




Shelley Klingerman:

Yeah. You can visit projectneverbroken.org or follow us on social on Facebook at Project Never Broken.




Warwick Fairfax:

Well, thank you again, Shelley. I mean, probably a lot of questions, but a couple questions occur to me. When you go through a loss like this, it would be normal if anger overwhelmed you. Not that you weren't angry, of course, you were angry. But sometimes anger and bitterness, at least from my perspective, can be like poison. The people that do the evil typically could care less, which is galling about they often don't have remorse. They're just maybe too messed up or evil or what have you. But at least from my perspective, there's a sense of forgiveness. Forgiveness doesn't mean condoning evil, but I often think if you don't forgive, it's like drinking poison.

So I'm assuming that you did, again, not condoning evil, but how did you manage to sort of or did you forgive? If you get kind of what I'm asking, because I'm not saying condoning evil, but how did you manage to avoid anger and bitterness just overwhelming you, so to speak?




Shelley Klingerman:

Oh, I don't know that I can say I've forgiven. I just don't know that I've even come to that. This is still an open case. I mean, the trial starts in federal court in May.




Warwick Fairfax:

Oh my gosh.




Shelley Klingerman:

So I'm not sure I've just even gotten to that yet. I will just say I redirected and I took control of what I could affect and the change that I could affect, and that's how I have moved forward. So I don't have to forget or forgive or anything at this point. I am just not letting you control anything. You are a non-factor, and I am marching forward doing my thing. So I don't know. That's a good question. It's still open, so I don't know how I will be. I don't know. Forgive, to me, is a... I don't know. That's something I'll have to really pray about.




Warwick Fairfax:

It's a tough thing. I mean, certainly what I went through is nothing like what you went through. But yeah, for me, losing a family business, it was more forgiving myself, my own mistakes. Again, it's not even in the same league as what you're going through. It's very different. But just as we finish, there are other people that are listening that are going to go through loss or tragedy, some may be similar, some may be extremely different. What would a word of hope you would offer listeners who've gone through profound tragedy and loss?




Shelley Klingerman:

Again, it's going to be different, but what worked for me was taking control of the situation. Again, it wasn't a situation I wanted to be in, but I was not going to let anything other than my own objective and mission drive my action. So I spend my energy being very intentional about the outcomes that I want, and I just do not have time. And again, I will not let this take more than one life. And I have a family and I did find myself... My family did suffer early on until I was just able... Those waves come further.

But make no mistake, my kids walked in on me just crying and I'm like, I can't do this. If I do this and I'm not here for them, then again, more than one life is lost. And if I go, then how does that affect my kids? And I just was not willing to make that an option. So take control, turn away from whatever that is and do good, affect change, be the change, take action on something you're no longer willing to accept. Again, that phrase that I borrowed from someone else, but it fit for me.




Gary Schneeberger:

And listener, that is a great phrase on which to land the plane - do good. That's been the focus of what Warwick's tried to do with Beyond The Crucible since its start, which Facebook told me through its memories function, this podcast started just over three years ago. So look at that. I had hair when it started. Kidding.

But until the next time we are together, listener. We do know that crucible experiences are painful. We're in this season right now, this series right now where we're talking about loss, which is a crucible experience, truly devastatingly, traumatically with a capital T, to Shelly's point, painful. But as we believe just occurred on this show, there is hope in that there is still gains that can come from loss. Do good. Don't give up hope. Keep moving forward. We'll see you next week.