Navigating Loss and Rediscovering Self: A Journey of Hope | Jonathan DeYoe

00:00
Three, four weeks in, it was literally survival. Like it was just, like how do I get from moment to moment without losing it? And I remember, like this is five weeks, six weeks later, two months later, I'd be on a call with clients and clients are all very nice and sweet and they mean really well and they want it, they.

00:24
They don't wanna see me suffer, but I would be bawling through client meetings. Like there's just no way around. And then we would sit quietly. And so when I asked my family for help, I said, hey, I'm downstairs crying. It'd be great if one of you would come down and check on me. And they did really well diligently for a little while, but then they stopped. And I think most of the world moves on. And what I learned was it's up to me to...

00:53
to seek out these opportunities. It's up to me to find the places where I can communicate about it. As we go through life, we all experience moments of loss and grief. And these experiences can be incredibly isolating, and they leave us feeling alone and unsure of how to move forward. But as our guest reminds us today, there's hope even in the pain and the loss. Jonathan DeYoe is a financial advisor. He's an author and also a fellow podcaster.

01:22
who's experienced his fair share of loss in life. His journey of grief and healing began when he lost his brother, which turned his world upside down. But through his journey, he learned valuable lessons about the power of community, the importance of gratitude, and the impact that loss can have on our lives. In this episode of the Life Shift podcast, Jonathan shares his personal story of loss and hope. He talks about the experience of navigating grief and the lessons that he learned along the way. We dive deep into the importance of community.

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and the power of gratitude in overcoming loss. His story is a powerful reminder that even in the darkest moments of life, there's always a way forward. Throughout the episode, Jonathan talks about reaching out to others for support and the power of gratitude in finding hope and healing. Jonathan's story is sure to inspire and encourage anyone who's experienced loss in their life. As always, I hope that this episode of the Life Shift Podcast will leave you feeling inspired and encouraged.

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I would like to give a big thank you to Miki, Traci, and Emily for sponsoring two episodes of the show each month on the Patreon. Your support through this Patreon tier allows me to grow the show, continue bringing these important stories to the public, and find new ways to reach new ears. So thank you. Information about the Patreon can be found in the show notes. So without further ado, let's dive into this episode of the LifeShift Podcast with my guest, Jonathan DeYoe.

02:46
I'm Matt Gilhooly, and this is the Life Shift, candid conversations about the pivotal moments that have changed lives forever.

03:03
Hello, my friends. Welcome to the Life Shift Podcast. I am here with Jonathan. Hey, Jonathan. Hey, Matt, how you doing? I am well. And that is going to be my answer today. Before we started recording, we went through this, how are you? And I said good. And then I was like, wait, I'm not really good. And then you were honest, which I appreciate. And then I was honest. You know, I think I talk to a lot of people about this of how, in a lot of ways, so many of us are so conditioned by society to just

03:33
respond with what we think the other person might want to hear. I don't know if you ever encounter this. Or we just have a stock response that we use for every time somebody asks us, how you doing? I'm great. How you doing? I'm great. Without even thinking about it. Right. I don't even think I think about it. I think it's just like a programmed response. That kind of leads into why the Life Shift podcast exists for me. The story starts.

04:03
for me when my mom died when I was a kid, and certainly that changed my life. But after that moment, I felt that no one around me was talking about anything that I needed them to talk about. And I didn't hear that I was gonna be okay, like from other people that had gone through something similar. And so when I had the opportunity to start this podcast and start talking to people, what I'm finding in reviews or behind the scenes messages from listeners is that

04:33
Wow, I really needed to hear what so-and-so said because I thought I was the only person that's ever gone through this experience. And I think it's because like sometimes we're just so isolated in our bubble and we only want other people to know the bright, shiny pieces of us. That's right. You know, and so the opportunity to have conversations like we're going to have today of things that aren't, you know, typically something that we put out there in a big way.

05:03
are probably the most impactful. Totally agree. Yeah, I mean, it's, I guess we'll get to this in a second, but when my brother died, I tried for three weeks to just deal with it, bury it, manage it myself. And I finally said to my family, I need you to check on me, because I'm sitting down in the basement, crying all by myself, and I'm doing it every day, and I'm doing it for hours and hours and hours. And it's just, this won't end well. So I need support and help. And I-

05:32
And I searched the internet. I searched for podcasts. I downloaded books, audible books. And I just found out just anywhere I could go where people were talking about it. And it was almost morbid. Like it was almost, I was like, wow, am I OK? Because I'm really seeking out some dark, dark, dark stuff. But I needed it. That's how I went through it. And I tried to hide it. I tried to not share it. And then shortly thereafter, I started being on podcasts about it.

06:02
and talking about it. And then I got so many messages, just like you're saying. People heard it and they said, Jonathan, I had no idea. I lost my brother 10 years ago. I bottled it up. I didn't, and I was so nice to hear your story and blah, blah, blah. And you just, you never know who you're gonna touch by just being authentic and being honest with this stuff. Because we all go through it. It's just pain exists. Like let's all suffer together. Let's all suffer together. No, I mean, you're right and good for you. We will get into your.

06:31
the details of your story, but good for you for speaking up, for advocating for yourself, because I think that is probably one of the hardest things for people to do, especially in that state. I think, again, we're conditioned to, I don't know if we're supposed to believe that we- Man up. Well, that too. Man up. That's what I would train. Man up, which is bullshit, but sorry. Yeah, great. And, no, you're fine. And also, like,

07:01
I think sometimes we feel like we should be able to solve it all ourselves. Like we're some kind of professional in every aspect of the world and being that we should be able to fix it. So good for you. I think that is really admirable because so many people struggle on that journey to even say it out loud and admit that like, I can't do this on my own. So kudos to you for being able to do that because that is that's big. And that is.

07:30
Manning up, you know, like personing up. You were just like, hey, I need help. I can't do it myself. So anyway, I think that's fascinating. And you already blew me away in that, just that one statement, because so many people can't do that. I couldn't do it. I mean, I was a kid, but it took me 20 years to be like, someone help me. Because I thought I was fixing it and I was just pushing it down. So, thank you for sharing that.

07:57
So maybe you can just tell us a little bit about who you are, just so we get an understanding of where you are now. But then paint the picture of what your life was like leading up to this moment that you just mentioned a little bit of. I've been a financial advisor for 25 years. Today I'm still a financial advisor, but I'm not running my own company. So two years ago, within six months after Dave died, I had merged my firm into a larger firm. And leading up to...

08:24
Dave's death, June 17th of 2021, the day before his 45th birthday. We had lots of plans that we were gonna do things together. Like I've been running a financial planning practice for 20 years, it was an independent practice, I had eight employees. It had grown to the point where like, I was no longer doing the thing that I was good at, I was managing an enterprise and managing people and,

08:49
thinking about tech stacks and things I didn't want to do. And so my brother and I were working on a way to bring him on to manage all that stuff. He has an MBA from Cal. He's the smartest guy I've literally ever known in my life. And so we had all these plans and we had planned that in January of 22, he was gonna come on and be the CEO of the firm. And we had gone down this road before, I think it was in 2004, we started a separate company. We called it Workers Financial. The whole point was to be.

09:17
provide an educational resource and sort of a planning resource for people that didn't have access to what I did. And he's worked in that space his entire career. He's worked at lending, digital lending, digital credit cards, digital debit cards, digital education platforms his whole career. And so it made a lot of sense for us to come together. We're working on how to do it. We made the decision. We're all happy. Hey, when your last set of stock vests, you're going to come on board and you're going to run this.

09:45
run the show and I'm just gonna go back to being an advisor. And that was gonna be, you know, just awesome. In 2019, late 2019, we all know that the pandemic hit. And, you know, I've had friends, I've had lots of clients, I've been active in my community. So, you know, I know a lot of people. But when the pandemic hit, my entire circle collapsed. Like everyone said, I mean, this isn't unique. It collapsed to the clients I saw on Zoom, my immediate family.

10:14
and my brother and his family. And my brother and his two kids, and myself and my two kids, we would go and meet at a park and we'd kick a soccer ball back and forth. We'd keep our distance, you know, in the early days, we'd wear masks, we'd keep our distance, we'd be safe, all that kind of stuff. And he was the only contact outside of my immediate family that I had during the pandemic. Even before that, he was my most contacted person outside my family. He was my best friend, he was my greatest support.

10:45
everything in my life. And when COVID hit, you know, everything kind of coalesced around he and his family and his boys. So lots of very, very, very close relationship, my best friend in the world, lots of plans for the future.

11:03
June of 2021, I go back to South Dakota to see where I'm from. My dad's turning 80. And so I'm like, hey, Dave, let's come on back to South Dakota with us. Let's celebrate my dad's 80th birthday. Let's do it together. He's like, yeah, that's a great idea. He's gonna do it. And then at the last minute, he decides not to. He decides he's gonna stay. And he stays here. He goes to the beach. And when he goes to the beach, he drowns. He gets caught in a riptide and he doesn't make it out.

11:32
I get a call from his wife and there's a song, there's a song that I really love by the by the girly men that's called Nothing Left. And it's about receiving the phone call. And I loved it before Dave died, but it's receiving the phone call and what goes on internally when you get the negative news, or you're starting to anticipate the negative news. I got a call from Judy and she said, hey, something's wrong, Dave, water, beach.

12:02
Hold on, I gotta go. They're pulling him out now. And so I was like, oh shit. Like I was, I hung up the phone. I had no idea what was happening. I literally, when I, do you see the door right there? I walked out the door and I just screamed in the hallway, just knowing that something bad was gonna come out of this. And I came back and I sat down and I got a call from Judy and I'm like, okay, tell me what's up. And we're taking him to the hospital.

12:30
You know, life support is there. We're trying to revive these words popping in my head. And then like 20 minutes later, I get a call from the hospital. Dave didn't make it. The boys are suffering this, that, the other thing. Next step, you know, she's crushed. What's gonna happen next? And that's, for me, that's the shift. That's the moment where...

12:56
all the stuff that you were afraid of and all the stuff that you had hoped for and all the stuff that was pending or that was there in front of you just disappears and like you just lose all ground you know I just don't know what's up and what's down.

13:16
Within a month, we already mentioned, it took me three weeks to sort of begin to deal with it, with people and the support. Within about a month, I had made the decision that by the end of the year, I wasn't going to be managing my own firm anymore. I wasn't going to be driving, driving, driving. One of the big differences between Dave and I, I'm the older sibling. I am.

13:45
Left brain, list oriented, driven, always on time, three minutes early is late, you know, I'm that guy. You know, great morning routine. You know, I bought into, you know, how do I optimize and do everything right, right? My brother wasn't that way at all. He showed up late to his own wedding. He showed up late to every soccer game. He was just late all the time. Brilliant guy, managed people really well. Love him to death, but not left brain, not list oriented, not.

14:14
He just kind of took life as it came. And so I started adopting some of these behaviors, some of these, I want to be less stressed, I want to be less worried, I want to be less, I want to be more available, I want to be more open to changes, to things that are outside my control, I want to be more present for the people in my life. And so that started for me with being present with my own.

14:41
grief and pain and managing it and just being public with it and being open with it. And when people have questions, just answering that question as directly as it possibly could, you know, John, what's going on with you and just being, you know, this is what's going on with me. Were you not like that before? No, I would never rely. I was very self, I'm from South Dakota. I'm a business owner. Self-reliance is a thing for me.

15:07
And I was raised to be self-reliant. I was raised to support others when they needed help. I was never shown how to ask for help. And I had no idea how to do it. I just knew, you know, it took me a few weeks to realize that this was, I mean, unsustainable doesn't begin to cover what I was attempting to do on my own. There's just no way I would dig out of the hole that I was digging for myself if I kept trying to do it this way. And some of that is...

15:35
You know, I've got 25 years of meditation and 25 years of Buddhist training. And that's, you know, my grad school work was in. I understand that we all sick and we all die and we all age. I understand that. That's a great intellectual thing. And I've always I've I think I've been present for people when it's happened to them. But I, you know, after it's happened to me, I know that I was never present enough. I was never. I never got it. It was like a checklist. You you knew the order of things that you were supposed to do.

16:05
I get it. I often talk to people about how so many of us grew up understanding that there was some kind of checklist for us. We were supposed to do this, then this, then this, then this, then this. It was always go, go, go. I need to achieve the next promotion. It's probably how you got into running your own company and getting away from all the things you like to do because you felt like, I have to have a company and it has to be bigger and it has to be better and I have to keep doing these things.

16:34
and something as tragic as losing someone so close to you. I had a similar experience when I watched my grandmother pass away. It was like, wait, why am I doing all of this? Like, is it actually bringing me to happiness, success? Sure, I have all these things. Sure, I am checklist happy, but am I really? Right. You know, did you have a very similar feeling? It sounds like.

17:02
You kind of have this like access shift, if you will, of where your life kind of was like, wait, hold on a second. For me, I mean, I still, I'm still, it's two years later, like we just had the two year anniversary this last June 17th and I've been trying to rebuild those morning routines. So I do think that there's value in structure. I do think there's value in achievement. It's just no longer

17:32
I would actually do this thing every year where I would say, these are my six most important values. And achievement was always number one on the list. Now it's like not on the list. Now it's number six. Now it falls off the list pretty easily. But it was always number one. And it was number one because that's what I thought it had to be. Like I thought in order for me to be successful, I had to have achievement on my list. Success for me was, and this goes way back to like when I'm growing up as a kid.

18:02
We didn't have anything, so success for me was having things. Success was not having to say no to a purchase, not having to say no to an experience, not having to say no for financial reasons. And maybe even for other people to see that. No, of course. Because, yeah, a performative, like, look, guys. I'm successful. I'm no longer that person because we're introduced to that shame through other people as well. But 100% relate to that experience. But.

18:31
You said your brother was the opposite of that. Did you guys grow up? I mean, I'm assuming you guys grew up together in the same place, but you were conditioned one way and he was like, no way, I'm not doing that. So this is where you get to that nature nurture. I think he is just, I think we both had the same conditioning. We're both South Dakota. We're both, you know, we both worked when we were kids and stuff. I think I was the oldest. So when my dad had a project that needed doing at 6 a.m., he didn't wake.

19:00
Dave up, he awakened me and I went out with him and we did the project. When it was time to mow the yard, maybe this time I would do it and the next time Dave would do it, but it was something additional, it would fall to me. And so I was the one that got up and did a lot of that. My dad owned some apartments and so when the basement flooded, it was me at 5 a.m. out there with a bucket and not my brother. So there's a lot of that is learned.

19:27
But I think just baseline, and I can see this in my own kids. Like I have one kid who is driven, list boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, executive functioning, all that kind of stuff, and one kid that's less that. And so there is some natural tendencies, and I think Dave's natural tendency was just to be relaxed about everything. And he just, he wasn't afraid. Like he wasn't, I was afraid. Like I was afraid of not having enough and not being successful and running out of money. And I was always afraid of that. Did it stress you out?

19:57
when he did the things that were not like how you would do it? You know, it didn't it didn't stress me out until he died because he didn't leave the family the most well prepared like the reality is and and part of my own thinking with merging my firm into a larger firm is is wow what if this happens to me this can happen what if this happens to me

20:22
my team, my clients, my family, they all rely on me showing up every day healthy and strong to do these things. And so I need to, I couldn't deal with that stress anymore. Like I needed to have a larger package. I needed to have something that would take that off of my plate and super happy with that result. Super happy with that result. It would have been a lot more fun to have him here and, you know, do this thing together that we were embarking upon. I've sort of tried to.

20:51
take some of the things we were gonna do together and do them myself, but I just don't have the expertise. I don't have the same strong suits that he does. His strengths were, I mean, he was just brilliant. He was just brilliant. Well, I think we also try to, you're very early in the grief journey itself, right? And I think we try to pull in those things to, I think it's part of healing. I think we want to, you know,

21:20
honor the people around us or do certain things because so-and-so would have done that or would have wanted us to do that. And I think that's a normal part of that. But we are who we are. But it sounds like this moment in your life, knowing him, one, for so long, but also losing him so suddenly triggered a change in you nearly overnight. I mean, you said it was a couple of weeks before you started asking for help. What did that...

21:50
Once you started asking people for help, how did that journey unfold for you?

21:58
Well, it's, this ties in something you just said actually. And it's, I think this is really, really important. You said you're early in your journey with grief now. And I'm so, so glad you said it that way, because I mean, I seek out these opportunities because I love to talk about it. Like it is fulfilling to me.

22:24
to have a tear, to have a memory, to have a conversation, to do, it means so much to me.

22:31
Three, four weeks in, it was literally survival. Like it was just, like how do I get from moment to moment without losing it? And I remember, like this is five weeks, six weeks later, two months later, I'd be on a call with clients and clients are all very nice and sweet and they mean really well and they want it, they.

22:55
They don't wanna see me suffer, but I would be bawling through client meetings. Like there's just no way around. And then we would sit quietly. And so when I asked my family for help, I said, hey, I'm downstairs crying. It'd be great if one of you would come down and check on me. And they did really well diligently for a little while, but then they stopped. And I think most of the world moves on. And what I learned was it's up to me to...

23:24
to seek out these opportunities. It's up to me to find the places where I can communicate about it. I have a good friend from college and she lost her daughter six, seven years ago to a drunk driver. And we reconnect, you know, she's always been really good at staying connected. I'm not very good at staying connected. And so she reached out, she reached out, she reached out. And I finally said, hey, let's talk about this. Like, I'm sorry I wasn't there when this happened for you. And this is...

23:52
I'm learning how big a deal this really was. And we just had this great conversation. And anytime one of us is feeling sad and need to talk about something, we just call the other one up and chat these things through. But the journey, you know, it's ongoing. You keep having to ask for help. And then at the same time, like my daughter's 15, I don't wanna ask her for help. She knows, she's very empathetic. She knows, but it's like, I want her to.

24:21
live her life and not worry about her dad's grief. Part of me is like, yeah, two and a half years later, two years later, it's not that I should be over it, over it's not the goal, but it's incorporated into my life now, so I fall apart a lot less. And I have a lot less people checking on me on a regular basis, and they don't need to check on me, but it's good to check in, and it's good to have this opportunity, and it's good to seek out other things like this, and that's it.

24:50
I keep doing it.

24:53
I mean, I think that, like I said earlier, I think just the fact that you told people you need that, because I think a lot of us, when we're in our grief journeys, we kind of have this expectation. I don't know if you did, but I definitely had this expectation that other people were just going to do it because they innately knew that I needed something. They knew that I was performing. They knew that I was faking.

25:22
this journey of my life because I was eight when my mom died and everyone around me, no one had the tools. It was the late eighties. No one really talked about this. No one really knew how to help an eight-year-old that just lost his primary parent and then suddenly had to move states and live with the other parent that was present in his life but not, I don't know why I'm talking about myself in third person, but as an eight-year-old, I felt that I was the one that needed

25:52
to everyone that I was gonna be okay. And a lot of that was pulling in, and this is probably way different for someone as an adult, but part of that was pulling in, if I don't do that, someone else is going to abandon me because that's what my mom did in my mind, right? Like she died. That was abandonment to me as that young kid who didn't understand things. And so most of my life was performative and going back to this idea that

26:21
I just expected, I think I expected people to fix it for me, or at least ask me about it, or talk to me about her, or how do you feel, or, but instead it was like, let's make him happy, take him to Disney, buy him presents, you know, like it was very much that, we don't wanna see him sad, so if he's happy, he's not sad, kind of thing. And so, for you to tell people, look, I'm barely holding it together right here.

26:49
Or today's good, but check on me tomorrow. That's big. And I hope if nothing else, someone listening to this is like, oh, I can do that, and realize that they should feel comfortable asking the people around them to check in on them and make sure they're OK. I have this. And this is something I talk about this all the time, because there's this woman who I knew her husband for many, many years. And then I knew them when they got married. And she, like day two.

27:19
right after Dave died, she sent me via text, just a heart, just a picture of a heart. And she said, no need to respond, I just want you to know I'm thinking of you. Like, and two days later, another heart. Day later, another heart. Five days later, another heart. It's two years later, I got a heart last week. Like it's, she has never let up. And every time I think of it, just like being held in somebody's mind.

27:48
is so powerful knowing that someone is remembering right alongside you. Like the two year anniversary came and I got like multiple hearts for three days in a row. Hey, I know this is a tough time for you.

28:07
I want you to know that we're thinking of you. And meanwhile, by the way, anybody can do that. Like if you know somebody that's going through a loss or pain or difficulty, just sending them a photo of a heart and saying something like that, it meant everything to me. It meant everything to me.

28:34
I think as someone that is not currently, like if we're in a space where we're not currently actively grieving someone else, I think we're in this or of this feeling that the other person wants us to give them some advice or some way to fix it. When we know that there really isn't anything that someone could say to you in your moment beyond, hey, I'm here. If you need anything,

29:04
a roll of toilet paper, you need like, whatever you need, let me know I'm here. I'm here to hold a space for you. And I think that's all we need, but I think there's something where people, we like wanna fix it in some way, because we, it makes us anxious. Like we're like, huh, someone's not feeling their, their self today because of this, how do I fix it? But really the best thing is what this person did for you. It's just like, hey, I'm over here.

29:32
And that allowed you, that opened the door. If you ever needed anything, I'm sure you could have called or sent another text back. It reminds me of that. There's that cartoon, Winnie the Pooh and Piglet, right? And they're talking about pain and grief. And I think Pooh is asking him, so what's up? And he's like, I'm just here with you. I'll just be here. We'll sit together. And that was it. Just that whole sitting together. I think as kids, when we have kids, we raise kids.

30:01
to say, oh, there's this negative emotion, we'll distract with this other emotion. You're throwing a fit on the floor of the grocery store. We're going to distract you with something else. And that's actually a distracting as a parenting method. Like it's something we learn how to do. It distract people from their pain, distract people from acting out, right? And I think that because of that and so many other things of the way we live our lives here, Western world, it happens to all of us.

30:29
but we sweep it under the rug so quickly. And if we just, and there's tons of books and tons of research on the benefits of the community and of support systems and of just showing up for people that are, there's so much out there about it that I had never read or looked at until Dave died. And then I started digging into it and reading it. I'm like, how come none of this is more well known? Like we don't wanna practice this, but we need to practice this because this is coming. It's coming for every single.

30:59
one of us. And if you can go through the, you can never manufacture it. You can never create the feelings. You can't do that. But you can imagine, you know, what would it be like if this person close to me, something happened? You can imagine and you can imagine what would be supportive in that space. And it's never being alone. It's never alone.

31:28
It's always being with other people. It's always those relationships. And that's the thing that Dave did really well was relationships. Like he hosted things at his house all the time. He had people there all the time. At his services, there were 400 people there. Everyone was there. The soccer club was there. The suicide hotline was there. I mean, the...

31:52
All the kids' friends were there. The parents that he coached were there. Everyone was there. And it was just his company was there. Many companies in a row were there. Employees were there. And it's because he built these relationships and he didn't show up on time and he didn't. And I learned, I learned that that's, those relationships really, really, really important by losing that one relationship, right? I had one tight, warm, supportive, great relationship.

32:22
and that's gone.

32:25
I have to identify, oh my God, there's other relationships that are languishing, that I can care for and I can build on. And that's been, for me, that's been the biggest struggle. Feeling like I'm not replacing him. I'm actually just building new relationships and holding space for them and their stuff. And they're holding space for me and my stuff. And we come together and it's just, it's.

32:53
I have a lot more close friends now than I did before.

32:58
Sounds like he left a legacy of this idea that mostly all that matters is these relationships that you have with people around you. Yes, the structure, yes, the list, those things matter in a lot of areas, whether that is like, this end is gonna come for all of us. So there is a list of things that we need to do and make sure that we're doing. But usually what's not on the list is curating these relationships as you talk about.

33:28
you know, beyond whatever the checkmark is. Like, I know this person, I know this person, we can all do these things. But actually, these heartfelt show up for people in any kind of moment relationships seem to be important. But I think going back to your point about there's, like, so much research out there. There's so many books. There's so many memoirs. There's so many things that we can go to. I think intellectually, all the stuff in those books make sense. Like, you mentioned.

33:56
early in our conversation, like going through 25 years of lessons of meditation and doing all this stuff, like, it all intellectually makes sense. But I think until you're in, I don't even know if I could imagine what that feeling would be like losing someone, like until you're until you go through it. You know, in my, my circumstance, I was blessed for such a shitty grief journey. Hear me out.

34:25
But my mom died when I was eight, so it took me 20 years to find the strength, if we want to call it that, that you had to ask other people like, all right, I've tried, I can't, I need some help here, I need to do these things. And so 20 years, maybe even more, early 30s, finally got this grasp on, and people hate that I say this, but I kind of closed the door on the grief of losing my mother.

34:51
because I lost her so early that at this point in my life, she's more of just like an idea, like an idea of a person, because I don't really remember her. But failing through that journey for me, when my grandmother who kind of took over the role of mother for me, when she was diagnosed with lung cancer, I felt like super prepared. Like I knew time was limited. I knew exactly what I needed to do that I wasn't able to do the first time.

35:20
And so that really terrible journey gave me such unbelievably beautiful moments at the end of my grandmother's life. So it's like, sometimes you can't imagine, if my mom had not died and then my grandmother died, I don't know that I would have been able to have that final conversation of where nothing was left unsaid. Where people are just usually saved for the funeral. Or saved for like...

35:50
the eulogy kind of moment. And it was like, we had the eulogy face to face. And we shared everything that mattered about our lives together face to face. I spent the last 96 hours of her life by her bed at Hospice House, like waiting for her to be ready to move on to whatever the next place is for her. And had I had the tools as an eight-year-old to like grieve my mom properly, I don't know that.

36:20
I would have done that, you know, this later in life. And so for me, I feel super grateful, I guess, now for that journey and understanding. And maybe there's a part of you that, like, having the life that you had with Dave for so long in the way that it was served its purpose so that, you know, in this tragedy, you're able to reflect on that and the things that you might want to do differently.

36:48
I know that was a really long way to get to this point, but I kind of look at it that way. There's a, I'm not going to be able to pull the, I think it's a Tom Stoppard play. I'm not sure. But after Dave died and probably six months after Dave died, I have a close friend who's the director of Shotgun Players in Berkeley. And he sent me this piece and it's about a couple who loses a child.

37:13
And it's the dialogue around the loss of the child. And there's this phrase that's like, the child's purpose is not to stay. The child's purpose is to be until it's not, and to be everything it's supposed to be until it can't be that anymore. And the child's purpose isn't to be here forever. No one's purpose is to be permanent. And in this dialogue, it's this.

37:42
and mission of the beauty and wonder of the child's life, and also the acceptance and the allowing of the child's death. It is, this is how it goes sometimes. It is not strange. To this day, I write about, I have this weekly newsletter, and I write about what I'm going through.

38:08
And and and the kinds of emotions that I'm feeling around the loss of Dave and I wrote about it two weeks ago with anniversary writing and I write about the the regaining of the meditation practice because I lost it entirely after he died and I mean I write about you know where I am and the in sort of the recovery phase of this whole process, but it's At some point there's an admission of

38:36
It's hard to say this, but there's an admission of it's beautiful.

38:42
Just as it was, three of my really close friends all knew Dave well. We played D&D together way back in the day. We've come together kind of as a men's group. After the fact, there's been four of us that have just, you know, gone deep with our emotions about brothers and siblings and parents and who loved us and who didn't when we were young and all this kind of stuff.

39:06
All three of them have, you know, distant relationships with their brothers. One of them hates their brothers. One of them was beaten up incessantly by their brothers and the other one just kind of hasn't met. So I have this just deep bond that none of them even had.

39:24
You know, I had, I was so lucky to have that. You still are. I still am, yeah. I mean, it's still part of your life. Yeah, people ask the question, like if you could go back and change time or change events in time, for me, 30 plus years, 34 years later, I wouldn't, you know? And that's like so crappy to say because...

39:55
I wouldn't be me. I wouldn't be this version of me. And there are things that have existed in my life that wouldn't have existed had she not passed away. And as you were saying that, I was thinking one of the worst things that people tried to make me feel better after she died was they would say, well, she completed what she needed to on earth. And so she moved on. And I was like, I'm eight, first of all. Yeah, not completed.

40:24
Not complete. She was 32. You know, she was not, you know, and it's like, and then when I turned 32, I was like, well, this is young, you know, so, you know, that's really not helpful. So if anyone's listening, please don't tell, please don't tell kids that at least. I don't think that's a very helpful thing for kids to go through. Did you hear a lot of that? Did you hear a lot of those other kind of phrases that just, just to help? I was astounded at how bad.

40:51
People don't know what to say. Saying nothing about the person trying. Like it's just, they're just trying and it's just awful. Like what do you say? What do you say? Oh my God. But so many people said just dumb things, but they don't, they just don't know. They don't. And it's, it goes back to that thing. I don't know if I get a picture. I don't think I could muster up enough fake feeling of like empathy unless I went through it. Right.

41:19
And now that I've gone through a sudden death and a prolonged one, I feel like I could sit and hold space for someone. I feel like I could be there and not say dumb things. I might say some dumb things, but I think there's a time and place for that. But yeah, I got a lot of weird things and I was just like, hmm. I didn't, and you don't know that they're trying. You don't know that they're just trying to do their best. You're just like, what? That doesn't make any sense to me.

41:48
One of the, and this, I can't believe this, I didn't bring this up already, but one of the biggest shifts that's occurred for me is about a year ago, this is about a year after he died, I decided that I was gonna become a meditation teacher. And so I joined this program, Jack Kornfield, Tara Brock's meditation teacher training program, a two-year program. And I'm just, my practice is now deeper than it's been in a long, long, long time. I actually sat with my first

42:18
you know, seven day silent retreat. Wow. And I've embraced this and that the chapter or the section we're going through right now is dealing with pain. You know, it's the tools I didn't have when Dave died. And so I couldn't, I'd sit down and I'd cry. I'd sit down and I'd cry. I tried to meditate, I couldn't meditate. I just, constant overwhelm all the time. And...

42:43
I'm now today, two years learning the tools that enable me to hold my own space for this kind of nutty thing that comes up and recognize where it is in the body and recognize and then only take a bit of it. Avoid overwhelm. Take a bit of it and then shift off to something that's lighter. You can do this in your own head and I'm learning how to do this with other people, how to work with people through the pain. It's...

43:12
Not that I hope any pain on anybody, but I'm really looking forward to the ability to hold that space when somebody needs that space held. Because I think that we need more people like that. That just, they're just there. Hey, how can I get it? This sucks. This is awful. It's nothing I can say. I can just sit here with you for a while. Do you think that if you had read that or done that segment of the trading before he had passed that you would have been able to? Or do you think that you just...

43:41
just kind of needed that experience and that part of your journey? It's a good question and I think about it, but I think probably it would have been because I think it's a practice. It's a practice and it gets better over time and had I done it for 20 years, then I would have the practice, I would have those tools and I might be able to use them to take off little bits of the pain. I might be able to, probably not right away.

44:11
probably not with any kind of speed. Because it's a practice, and because you do it on a daily basis, yeah, you would have the tools, and they would be muscle memory or mental memory would exist in that space. It still would have obliterated me. Maybe I would have needed less help, but we'll never know. Yeah, I just think like, you know, you can never prepare yourself for that much pain. And so,

44:39
even if we have the tools, I don't know, that's the most immense amount of pain that you've ever had. So even a practice like you point out, it's still gonna debilitate you in some kind of way. I don't think there's like a, it's not like an instant bandaid. I don't think there is one. And here's a negative part about being a human, but I think we're all gonna have to go through this and we're all gonna have to go through this immense pain in some capacity and then learn about ourselves after the fact, if we're lucky,

45:09
be able to do, like you said, to be able to hold that space or knock away at the pain a little at a time. But we're all gonna, I mean, I hate saying these words out loud, but if we're lucky, we're gonna go through all of these experiences to learn more about ourselves. Yeah. And that sounds terrible, right? I don't know that we're lucky to be in a lot of pain. I don't know that we're lucky to face a lot of tragedy, but it sure does add a lot of layers to us as humans, and it sure does create.

45:39
a different version of us that if we do it right, then maybe it's all worth it in the end. I hate saying that though out loud. But here we are on a podcast for everyone to hear. Right? The reality is we do all go through it. And I remember when I did my first, this is when I just signed up for the program, I did my first retreat. It wasn't a silent retreat, it was an educational retreat.

46:09
And the number of people in the program that had experienced massive loss, it was 70% plus. Everyone there was there because they had gone through something and they were trying to find a way to manage the thing that they went through. I was in good company. I remember one woman's husband was an ER doc during COVID. And he just was 24 hours a day.

46:38
you know, seven days a week, 365 days a year, just constantly on, on, on, on, on. And he said that he committed suicide. He like, I can't deal with this, committed suicide. And she's like, I didn't, she didn't know what to do with that, you know, emotion that came out of that. And so she's like, all right, I'm gonna, I'm not a meditator, I'm gonna become a meditator to see if there's a way to manage the stuff inside my own head. But so many people, we have to go through it, you know? And the...

47:07
The thing that worries me, and maybe you can actually comment on this, is I worry, one of the things I lost, when I lost my brother, was a partner to go through the loss of my parents. A partner with whom I would be going through the loss of my parents, because we're, just he's my only sibling. My dad's 82, and so I know that that's coming. And I don't think the loss of my brother...

47:35
is going to prepare me for the loss of my father. I just think they're going to be different. I think the emotions are going to be different. And maybe I'll have some kind of ability to manage that I didn't have before. But I think I'm going to be crushed by it. I mean, rightfully so. I think a loss is a loss. I think I don't, you know, we can scale them however we want, but every relationship is different. And I don't know, I went.

48:02
I can comment on it from the aspect of losing my mom so early and just like struggling so much. I felt very prepared to grieve my grandmother when she died. Now, I don't think my family members that were also there were prepared because they also lost my mom. My parents were divorced, but they also lost someone that they loved. My grandmother was my dad's mom, but she was really close with my mother to the day she died she never talked about.

48:30
losing my mom. She never grieved that. She never went through that. My dad, I don't know, maybe he's gone through his own journey, but his response to my grandmother dying, she died in 2015, has been significantly different than mine. I really feel that after my grandmother died, I took some time off of work because I knew that's what I needed. I jumped into it. I did, you know, whatever I needed to do using the tools that I had.

49:00
couple months later, the only thing I was remembering were the good times. And it sounds really cheesy and whatnot, but the people around me were reminding me, like, remember in Hospice House when this happened? Or do you remember when she got really bad or when she fell? And I'm like, not really. I don't really think about those times anymore because I was able to process that. So, I don't know. I think you can feel like you're going through a grieving process with someone, but you know. I mean,

49:30
How you felt after you lost your brother was probably different than how other people felt. Even your immediate family members probably grieved differently than you did, right? So it would be nice to have someone by your side though, to know that they were maybe feeling something at the same time. But I think if you have this feeling that he's inside you now, I mean, you probably carry a lot of Dave in you and with you and honor him in ways of even merging your company.

49:59
stepping into your purpose again, right, with your company and the thing, or what you do for your company and your podcasts and the things that bring you joy would probably make Dave very happy, I think. I mean, I don't know him, but you know, it feels like you, at that tragic moment, you did what you could to absorb some of the pieces that you loved so much about him and carried that with you.

50:27
It's absolutely the case, and to the point where people are like, why are you, John, you're changing. What is this about? I'm like, well, I thought I was right. And now I think that maybe Dave had some good points with how to live. It's changing, but it's adopting maybe a more middle of the way part of the path.

50:51
Or maybe it was always there, and maybe you were just so focused on the other things. You know, like you were so focused on... You probably had it all along. You both come from the same, you know, space. But you had your type A checklists, you know, like you had to do it. And once in a while you get rid of them and you're like, oh, everything's still working. Everything's still functioning just fine. So maybe I don't need as many. Yep. Yep. That's a nice lesson to learn, actually. Yeah.

51:21
Have you learned anything about Dave since his passing that you didn't know before? There was actually something. It wasn't, I mean... I don't mean to give out all of his dirty laundry. I meant just like anything in a good way. Yeah, there was more of a...

51:45
I actually don't remember the, there was something I noted. This is like three weeks ago. I was like, oh, there's this thing. And I don't, I'm right now, I'm not actually recollecting what the thing was, but yeah, there was, it was just, it was a thing about like.

52:02
the amount of stuff he did at the house, for them, for the family. Like he was everything. Like, and there's people who do it all, right? And, but he would, literally everything, plan the vacations, he would, I mean, which means he had to have lists somewhere, like he had to, right? Maybe in his head. He kept them in his head, probably, he was a smart dude.

52:29
But yeah, I have learned some little things here and there about him, some things that he was active in that I didn't know about. But just the volume of stuff that he was engaged in all the time was pretty impressive. And I didn't know about that.

52:41
What have you learned about yourself since Dave died?

52:47
I don't need the lists as much. I can let some of the emails go. I don't have to respond to everything. I can just be more relaxed about a lot of stuff. And things are OK. I've also learned that I already knew I was Uber responsible, but now I'm like Uber responsible plus, because I feel like the family now relies a little bit on

53:17
you know, we're close, so we get together on a regular basis. And I sort of have to stimulate birthday celebrations for the boys and sort of, hey, let's go do this thing, or, you know, come on, let's, so there's like more responsibility. And I thought I was gonna crumble, and I figured out that I'm not gonna crumble. Like I can maintain that, I can manage that. Because you know, Dave would want you to do that. And I think there's a piece of that that comes along. What's the, I mean, I guess you just kind of said it, but I was gonna say, what do you think

53:47
biggest difference between you now and previous version. Not something you learned about yourself, but just like the biggest thing that's different about you. It sounds like you really like, I mean, not to answer the question I just asked you, but it sounds like you really are in touch with yourself. You know, you're in touch with like that inner heart centered part of you, maybe more than you used to be. Yeah, I think, and sort of as a summary of that, it's like I...

54:18
I can ask for help and not be afraid that people run away from me asking for help. I think that's the thing that I, and maybe this is a thing that I learned, maybe it's a thing that I am, but I can ask for help now. Will I? That's huge. A lot? Probably not, but I can if I need it. You're not as afraid maybe as before, or maybe it just didn't ever happen before and now it's like this is a possibility and nothing bad has happened.

54:47
when I've asked for help. So I think it's okay. There's a, actually there's another thing that's actually I think equally important is having gone through that, I learned that I can go through pretty much anything. Like there's a, there is a reserve of, it's not strength, it's like survival. There's a reserve in there that.

55:10
You know, I'm not unflappable, but nothing matters really that much anymore. Like it's, and that's not a negative. Like that's a, that's a, that's a positive. Things that I would have been worried about in the past. I just don't worry about it. Like it just slides off. Like I, it doesn't affect me. Um, things that I might have, Oh, what about that? Like I'm like, what about that? It doesn't, it doesn't matter. Yeah.

55:36
Yeah, close to my grandmother's final day, she told us, she said, because it was like, we were able to move her into like this, it's almost like a hospice hotel, if you will. And it was mostly like my father, his brother, and their wives, and me. And we were all standing around. And pretty much right before she kind of lost the ability to have conversations, she was like, I wish I hadn't worried so much.

56:04
because all that matters is love in the end. And she was just indicating that like, at the very end, all that matters is the people that are around you. And that was a trigger for me that was definitely like, oh, yeah, to your point, like, why am I worrying about where I'm gonna park? Why am I worrying about, if it rains, what am I gonna do? Like, these things don't really matter in the end. And so it was a really important lesson and it stinks that like that was.

56:35
the lesson she realized later in life, but it benefits the rest of us around her if we listen and if we're willing to listen. If you can listen. Which kind of brings us to like why you go on these podcasts and share this story is that like someone out there might be feeling a certain way and they listen to your story and they're like, oh, he's adjusted this and he's okay. You know, like he survived this. He had terrible days.

57:04
but he's still okay, you know? And so that's why I think it's so important for people to share their stories, because you never know what sentence is gonna stick out to them. And by the way, those people that have that experience and say, oh wow, he did survive this, and they wanna talk about it, like I'm open. Like I think it's, we're all gonna go through it, we all need to go through it together, and I'm open to have the conversations. It's so important, I think, I don't know, maybe you found this as well.

57:33
that sharing your story is selfishly even more impactful for yourself because you're able to kind of process some of those things, or at least get them out of your head. They quickly come back. I just, it's an opportunity to remember. It's an opportunity to talk about it. And people ask different questions. And so I get to think about it a different way every time I talk about it. So it's, I mean, it's a blessing. It's a blessing to be able to have more conversations about Dave, because frankly.

58:03
the people that have been the closest to me, it's not that they aren't thoughtful or don't care, it's just they have heard it all. They've asked all the questions that they're gonna ask. So for me to have a new memory or a new experience, or a new, I have to have the conversation with new people. And I love that, I love this, it's fantastic. What you're doing is important. I...

58:30
tell others that sometimes I feel that these conversations help to heal a little bit of that eight-year-old that I didn't know still needed some healing. That's a lot to admit because earlier, I said, I close the door on that, but I think there's still broken pieces of that child that, at 42 now, I'm like, oh, God, those things are creeping up. I think these conversations, like you said, are super important.

58:59
If you could go back to Jonathan receiving that call from your sister-in-law, is there anything that you could, when he hung up that phone, is there anything that you could tell or do for him that might help him in his journey forward?

59:18
in the moment of not knowing.

59:24
I think the main lesson here is...

59:30
no matter what happens, you can be okay. Like it'll take work, it'll take effort. You don't know where you're gonna be pulled or what roads you'll go down, but you'll be okay. And I don't know that I would have believed that one week in, but two years in, I believe that.

59:55
He probably just needed someone to be there, to understand that everything was going to be quite messy. And there was someone there that if you needed help putting the pieces back together again, that they would be there. And I think that's a good... If other people are facing something, or if you know someone that's facing something like that, it's to just...

01:00:24
Hold the space for them. Just be there. Don't give them advice. Don't give them any kind of like anything really besides that you're there and that you will be there if they need anything. And just keep that door open because I think that's the best thing for people that have gone through this. I think that's the best thing that we could have heard. That's the best thing from your friend that sends you text message hearts. I think...

01:00:51
Just knowing that there is something and someone that is holding that space for you is just so helpful. Yeah, it's giant. If people want to talk to you about Dave or connect with you in any kind of way, or even see what kind of financial advising advice that you have or listen to your podcast, what's the best way to get into your sphere of influence? Yeah, the website has everything, so that's just mindful.money.

01:01:19
It's not mindfulmoney.com, it's mindful.money. And that's got all my socials. You can connect with me via email there. It's all there, but that's the best place to find me. And I'm happy to have conversations of all those types. Yeah, I feel like you would love to talk about money at this point, but I feel like if we brought that up, it might get a little weird. But...

01:01:39
We will share all that information in the show notes. We'll share a little bit of information, whatever fits in the characters that they give us. But we will definitely link them to your website so that they can connect with you and find you on social or just see what you're up to. And maybe even just chat with you, because they may have lost someone and they want to have a real conversation. I know I'm the same way as you are, like anyone. If you ever want to just like, if you need us to hold space for you.

01:02:08
I think either of us would be available for you. Absolutely. Yeah. Thanks, Matt. Well, thank you for being a part of the LifeShift Podcast. I really appreciate it. Like I've said throughout this whole thing, I think sharing these stories is just so helpful to people listening, even if they're not going through the same exact experience, right? Something you said might trigger something else that might be really helpful for them. So thank you for being a part of it. It's meaningful for us as well who are being interviewed. It's very meaningful and I appreciate it very much. Thanks, Matt.

01:02:39
All right. Well, I appreciate that. I'm terrible at compliments. So I'm just going to be like, yeah, thanks. But if but I will ask for compliments now, if you are enjoying this episode and you want to take a moment to rate the show and review the show, I would love it. I say this every time. I don't really know what it does, but it makes me feel good when I get them. So if you're listening and you enjoy it, please take a little time to do that. And we will be back next week with a brand new episode of the Lifeshift Podcast. Thanks again, Jonathan. Thanks, Matt.

01:03:19
For more information, please visit www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com