Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss

Welcome to Why Not Me the World? Podcast hosted by
Tony Mantor, broadcasting from Music City, USA, Nashville, Tennessee. Join
us as our guests tell us their stories. Some will
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Some will make you cry.
Real life people who will inspire and show that you
are not alone in this world. Hopefully you gain more awareness, acceptance,
and a better understanding for autism around the world. Hi,
I'm Tony Mantor. Welcome to Why Not Me the World?
Humanity over Handcuffs the Silent Crisis. Special Events Today is
Jason Mackenzie. He's here to share a profound moment of reckoning.
After losing his wife to suicide and his daughter to
mental health struggles, he faced a turning point four years later.
A heavy day of drinking led to a heart wrenching
wake up call from his nine year old daughter, who
voiced for disappointment in him. In that moment, he saw
a man consumed by fear, doubt, and insecurity. To become
the strong, courageous and wise father his daughter respected, he
knew he had to overcome and confront his inner demons.
He's here to tell his heart wrenching story with us
and give us insight on his continuous work to overcome
his grief. He has tremendous insights and a lot of
great information. It's the true pleasure to have him join
us today. Thanks for coming on My pleasure, Yes mine
as well. If you could give us an overview on.
What you do.
Yes. I think what got us into contact with each
other was I own a couple of businesses. What is
that leadership and management consulting companies. We do executive coaching
and leadership training, et cetera. And the other one is
we run a mastermind group for dads who owned businesses,
So we teach them how to be skills, to be
better husbands and father and business owners and really fun,
uplifting work. Actually, while we're talking is because I lost
my wife to suicide and my daughter to a car accident.
There's really a result of her mother's suicide. My daughter
was just just shattered her soul and at the end
of her life shoot nineteen. But she was dealing with
this the same trauma induced mental health issues as her
mom and ended up dying just over two years ago
drinking and driving. She was killed. She was driving, show
was killed for other people, just to freaking disasters. So
I've just been talking a lot about grief and writing
a book about grief and yeah.
That's me.
Wow, that must be just so hard to deal with with.
That said, needless to say, it affects the family, affects you.
How did you deal with it? Can you give us
a little bit of insight on what you went through
going through these tragedies? Oh?
Yeah, I mean the mental health aspect. I mean I think,
like I feel like a grief you know, and the
issues that drives I mean I've done that, like I've
been an addict, you know, after my wife's suicide and
very little awareness of you know, the relationship between trauma
and mental health that you know, my wife was really interesting.
Actually she's a police officers. She suffered really bad childhood
sexual abuse. And the interesting thing is a lot of
people who have adverge childhood experiences are called to these
helping professions, right, so they sometimes they didn't really realize it,
you know, but they're makes them more susceptible to trauma.
So so the fighters leading up to my wife's death
were just unbelievable, Like you know, psych words at homeless shelters, rehab,
like just crazy stuff. And you know what was fascinating
in a horrifying way was how our medical system pathologized
her experience to the point of just basically drugging her
into comlients, and no one ever said, hey, what happened
to you. It was a long time afterwards where I
was talking to a therapist friend of mine who has
been working the mental health space forever, and I was
talking about this experience and she goes, Cindy wasn't bipolar
because she had a chemical imbounce. She was having emotionally
driven responses to trauma and invalidating experiences. And she explained
to me how that all worked, and it was like, man,
that's pretty eye opening, pretty eye opening experience. Yeah, I
mean so it was my point to that was, you know,
I'm not like a mental health expert, bidy stretching imagination,
But I used to do a podcast called Mental Health
Warriors around a community for men dealing with mental health issues.
I'm not doing that now, but I've actually been thinking
about doing it again. Interestingly, in that community, there was
a couple hundred guys in there at one point, and
I would always talk to the guys that came in,
and every single one had trauma when they were basically
a kid, something terrible happened to when they were a kid.
Now they're in their forty thirties, forties, fifties, so many
of them don't see the thread that runs through their
whole life because it happened all that time ago. What
does that have to do with me being in my
fifties and being an alcoholic or being like depressed or
being like full of age? You know? Just fascinating.
Yeah, I mean, if you stop and think about it,
we as we grow up, we'll have something happen to us,
and then we'll completely push.
It down in the surface, yep, where it's not seen.
And then five, ten, fifteen, twenty years later, whatever that timeframe.
May be, all of a sudden, it just resurfaces.
It can be from a smell, it can be from
a song or anything that opens that trauma up, and
then you're back into it again.
Absolutely absolutely right, you know what? For me, like, so,
I had a during my wife's you know, I mean
trying to like that whole situation was just a freaking nightmare,
try to raise two kids and all this stuff and
keep her alive. And so during that time I developed
a huge drinking problem, not even intentionally, but for me,
being a typical guy, all I wanted people to see,
like what was important for me to project to the
world was that I had my shit together. No one
can have their shit together suation like that. It was
a complete disaster. Every day, I'm not going to talk
about all the terrible things that are going on in
my head and heart, so I drank to make them
go away without even thinking about it. Like it wasn't
like that was not an intentional strategy. And then afterwards,
after my wife died, I drank every day a lot,
every day for four and a half years, and I
got remarried and everything, and you know, and finally had
like my quote rock bottom moment or whatever. And about
six months later I started to grieve my wife's death.
So it was like five years after she died. Now
that process, I didn't even know it was happening to you.
I thought I was going crazy, actually, and my wife said,
you're grieving, you freaking idiot, Like, oh god, maybe I am.
But what I realized afterwards is it never occurred to me, like,
not even a single time that I was drinking to
numb the pain for my wife's death because I thought
I had put it behind me whatever that even means,
Like it never crossed my mind, and I was like afterwards,
I was like, oh my god, Like I'm not a
total idiot, you know, Like God, there must be so
many other people that are in this same situation.
You know, So how did you get away from that?
What did you use from motivation to change your path?
Did you have an idea or a plan to get
away from that so that you could actually finish your
grieving and then get into living your life.
So what was interesting was for whatever reason, and I
am super grateful about this because I don't really understand
the reason. But you know, as I was drinking and like,
I was absolutely hating myself for what I was doing,
because you're so caught up in this web of like
you're rationalizing it to yourself to try to make it
make sense, but you know you're bullshitting yourself at the
same time, and you're like, it's just this jumble of
terrible thoughts and so all the while pretending I got
it all out of control. And as I was getting
close to the day that I quit, like I knew
I was lying to myself becoming more and more obvious.
But the problem was I couldn't stop, and I realized
So what happened was my wife was starting My new
wife was starting to get me, like I would say
a hard time, but her like, you know, she's like,
I'm not gonna divorce you right now, like and I'm
not close to that, but I need you to know
that this is not going to be my life. I
remember thinking at the time, I don't know who I'm
gonna choose because I can't stop. So like if she
decides he's gonna leave me, like I can't stop drinking,
I've tried a million times, and which was also a
horrible feeling. And then what ended up happening. So the
last kind of thing I was clinging onto was that
I'm a great dad, you know, because I supervolved with
my kids and like, you know, always like Erry President,
I was never earn like a you know, barfing my
gouts drunk around them. But you know, anyways, last sort
of branch of rationalization that I was clinging onto with
the death grip because I'm a great dad. So on
the day I quit my I was supposed to take
my daughter to We're going to do a daddy daughter date.
My wife took my other daughter out of town, didn't
do any any of the things I promised her. And
she said afterwards, you know, I'm sitting there drunk on
the couch and she said, afterwards, I'm disappointed in you.
It doesn't happen to great parents, right, like, like your
your nine year old doesn't tell your drug ass that
they're disappointed in you if you're a great parent, Like
that's not how it works. And so, for whatever reason,
that just shattered the I just had this like moment
of clarity for some reason, and I've never wanted to
have a drink since. So thank god. Now the grief play,
you know, manifested in other ways and stuff, but like
we wouldn't need to go down that litt rabbit hole.
But but yeah, so that creating that space just man,
it allowed again, It allowed me to grieve, It allowed
me to start exploring like personally, like listening to podcasts
exploring personal development, and I don't know, just went down
this and really that whole experience just altered the trajectory
of my life, you know, in a pretty significant way.
And the bigger question is how did it affect your kids.
You were going back and forth with what you was
processing while your kids had to go through that same
grief and moving on. So how did that dynamic work?
Yeah, that's a great question. So, you know, for me,
I think this is this is something I talked about
a lot. But when my wife killed herself, my kids
were six and five, six and just turned five, and
I actually thought, if she had to die, it's better
that it happened when they were young. You know, It's
the least worst option is that it happen when they're young,
because dude, I had no idea about the devastating impact
of childhood trauma at that age. Like I just I
thought I can love them to heal it, honestly was
what I thought. It turns out, for so I found out,
I know now it was basically the worst time like
it could happened, because that's the age where you're forming
all your ideas of like safe attachment and like all
this kind of stuff, right, and so you know, so
I did not appreciate the impact that it had on them,
and I don't think they did either. And then with
my daughter that's what played ob in her life. Man,
is just like this again, emotionally different responses to trauma,
you know, of her feeling like, you know, I'm not
good enough or worthy because I was not worthy. I
was not good enough for my mom to stick around
and keep fighting for and now for my other daughter
who's still with us. I mean, I've had to tell
her that their mother is dead and their sister is dead.
She is doing the work, for sure, but she's just
about to turn twenty. Like she can't even like wrap
her head around. For her, the trauba plays out her
life in a lot of ways, but she's not ready
to address it yet. So she's doing gudes, going to school,
but she's always in like fight or flight. She got
like she's got some like anxiety and it's obviously related
to the horrible trauma she's experienced twice. And we talk
about that regularly. But right now she's I'm not opening
that cand of words right now. I can't do it,
you know, I mean it's her journey, man, you know,
like she's she knows we're here.
Now.
How old were your daughters? Again?
They were six and five?
Six and five, Okay, So my daughter who.
Passed away was the older one, so she was six.
My younger daughter just turned five.
Okay, So now your daughter, the one that unfortunately passed away,
how old was she when that happened.
She's nineteen. She's nineteen actually, she's going to turn twenty
next next month.
Wow.
So that was another tragedy that you had to go through.
Then add to it that your daughter had to go
through it as well. So how did the both of
you get through that?
Yeah? I mean just with communication and love and compassion,
and I mean, like the thing that's such a vastly
different experience for both of us, right, Like she doesn't
even remember her biological job. The trauma still lives within her,
like the loss, but she doesn't actually have any real
memories of her mom, which is like traumatic in and
of itself. And then with her sister, I think for
both of us, like, losing my wife was brutal, but
it does not even compare honestly losing my daughter. You know,
my wife's mental health issues are so bad that for
so long that I had sort of like I don't know,
like I mentally prepared myself as much
as one can that it might end this way in suicide.
Like it was so bad. I mean, it's still when
that cops she was a police officer too, and with
the cops showed up though, you know, it's a freaking
huge shock, obviously, but in a way it was almost
like a relief in some ways, because number one, her
pain was over. Her pain was so inconsolable, like it
was just mental anguish. But also it was kind of
like a relief for me, or would seem like a
relieved time, because oh my god, that's what I thought
at the time. I gotta have a normal life again,
like this is I'd learned a lot since then. But
and then you know, from my daughter, and the pain
is way worse. It's just so visceral because she's like
of me, I let my daughter. I mean, so I
try to be very in an age appropriate way without
placing an undue burden. And my daughter, you know, I'm
very open and communicative with intention. I would say about
like my the grieving experience and putting words to it
and stuff, and you know, and I invite her to
talk about it. We have a wonderful relationship. But it's
very hard for her too. She's afraid that if she
opens the vault, everything's going to just blow up, you know. Like,
and that's a real fear of a lot of people
who have dealt drummer or grieving. Is like, if I
give into this like wave of really intense emotions, I'm
falling into a pit and I'm never getting out.
But sometimes you just have to let it all out. Yeah,
sometimes you have to let it all out just so
that you can get that opportunity to start over.
Yeah, and it always the thing is it always passless, right, like,
so you don't fall into a it never come out,
but it feels like you are going to and when
you're barely hanging on, like for me, like and just
the phrase an example like the I'm the breadwinner in
the family, you know, and so I can't fall apartment
like you know, I got to keep moving forward somehow,
even when I don't care about any of it, and
you know, like and I can barely function. Everybody's experiences
is h super unique. But my point is is that
you know you have to face it or else you'll
never ever move through it.
Well, everyone grieves differently, and there is no right or
wrong way. It's just how you deal with it, and
then of course how you deal with it as a family,
So that you can move forward in life.
Yeah, that's right.
So now I think you said she's going to college,
Is that correct?
Yeah, she's in her first year of college.
So with the pressure that comes with the first year
of college, then you add the pressure that she's going
through because of the loss of her sister. How is
she handling that?
I think she's doing all right. Yeah, I mean she
took a year off of college because there's no way
she could have gone back like last year, Like, no way.
But yeah, she did okay, like pretty normal college experience.
I think.
So, now that.
You've gone through some of the healing that you've processed,
what are your plans now moving forward? Do you have
any particular ones etched in stone? So what's going through
your mind in deciphering what you need to do so
that you can move forward in life?
Oh? I haven't come to grips with I mean, I
don't know how one can. I don't know if I
would frame it like that. I mean, I think it's
that I'm moving through the experience with as much intention
and purpose as I can. But having said that, like
myke in this really bizarre way, the experience with this
of my wife in the aftermath of that, like I
was saying, set my life out a very different path,
which actually led to me developing a whole hell lot
of tools, you know, skills like a network for people
around me, a vocabulary to talk about navigate this in
a way different way than I did with my wife,
for sure. So it's not that sometimes I think it's
like on the really difficult days, I think the best
a lot of times, the best you can do is
just not do things to make it worse. And there's
an infinite number of things you can do to make
it worse, and they can all seem incredibly tempting right
in that in that moment. So but for me, plans wise,
I mean, you know again, I'm writing a book about
grief for men. A couple of years ago I started.
I never got on TikTok before, but I started TikTok
because I've been in front of a camera fair amount. No,
But I'm just going to make some videos and about
grief and stuff, and it's crazy what's happened to me.
They've got like forty million views. I've had five people
actually reach out to me saying I was about to
kill myself and I decided to keep fighting because it
was something I saw or something I resonated with him
in one of the videos I made. I'm writing a
book about grief for men. I'm publishing on substack. As
I write, just I want to get it in many people,
and so that seems to be being called man down.
I want to continue to find ways to make an
impact in a space, but at the same time, I
want to be cautious about not being like surrounded by
other people's grief all day long.
Yeah.
One of the good things that you are doing right
now is that you are talking about it. Sometimes just
having that ability to talk about it can relieve some
of that stress so that you.
Can cope some oh kay. And then you add to it.
That you're writing a book to help people, so that's
at least getting some of that emotions out for you.
There's no instant graphication on writing a book and doing
a blog, but the one thing that you can know
is that you are helping people in many different ways.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
Yeah, that's a good thing you're doing.
So you just got to keep you go to keep
as they say, one foot in front of the other
and keep moving forward.
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, And yeah. And some days. The thing too,
is like I was talking to somebody about this the
other day and they were saying that people have this
idea of what moving forward means, you know, and so
I was talking some day he's like, who lost somebody
really close? And he's like, Yeah, some days I take
it feels like I take two steps forward. In other
days I take three steps back and are like, what
if you stop looking at it like that, that's not
actually taking a step forward, taking a step back. It's
just grief.
Man.
Some days are great and some days totally suck. Like
that's you know, that doesn't mean you're doing something wrong
or that you're regressing. It's the process, man.
Yeah, so many people do not get the process. They
just think that if they don't have a good day
every day, they think that they're falling backwards, and they're not.
It's just getting through that emotional crisis at that point
in time, so that way they can move forward. It's
just to have to take it day by day, step
by step, so that each day hopefully gets better.
You know. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
The main thing is to try and be as positive
as we can, because when it comes to mental health,
we can talk ourselves into having a very bad day.
Yes, absolutely, absolutely.
When that happens, you just have to find a way
to talk yourself out of that bad day so that
you can turn it around, so that at least you're
having a better day by digging yourself out of what
could have been a whole lot worse.
That's right, And yeah, I think you just said that
really really well. I just wrote a chapter in the
book just the other day about this about like, folks,
you know what you can control, and one of the things
you can control is the words that you use to
describe your experience. So like the amount of people men
who have said to me or come with them a
TikTok to say things like you know, I lost my kid,
I'm permanently broken. Okay, well you're speaking that truth into existence, right, So,
or like the other things people say like a lot
well intentioned obviously, but I mean like, oh, you know,
no parent should have to lose a child, or that's
so unfair parents kid all the time.
Unfortunately, that's so true.
It's a part of the human condition, and it's not
about fairness. It's about the fact that to live like
a some kind of some semblance of a meaningful and
peaceful life. You have to be able to accept that
anything can happen to anyone at any time.
That's right.
But if you start walking around labeling that happens to
you like that is unfair, you're not strengthening yourself, you know,
fortifying yourself at all.
Yeah, that's so true. Unfortunately, life is sometimes just not.
Fair to us.
Yeah, so what we have to do is find a
way to justify things so that we can keep moving
forward and taking steps to a better path to feeling
better about yourself and the situation that you find yourself in.
Absolutely, look you sir, Yeah, yeah, I totally agree. So
I think we're like there's we're immensely powerful like in
and so the other thing too is, you know, one
of the things I'm doing right now is sematic experiencing therapy,
which is so incredibly helpful and interesting, but it's really
about the idea that so, for example, I'm almost too
this is more like I'm not saying this as an
arrogant way. It's actually quite the opposite. It's actually a hindrance.
But sometimes actually like I'm too knowledgeable about this for
my own good. So when I go to see a
therapist or something like, they're not telling me anything I
don't already know, right, So I got to the point
where I was, you know, I stopped seeing a therapist,
and my wife was like, you know, I really think
you should see a therapist. And I'm like, I will
talk about this anymore though, like to a therapist, I
understand what's happening, but I know I need to continue healing,
like I know that for sure. Anyways, I went down
this rabbit hole and came a podcasts on something called
sematic experiencing, which is learning how to developing your capacity
to fully experience being human. So the idea is that
when you have a like I said, you trigger just
some kind of trauma response, it starts in your body, right,
and so sematic experiencing is really about literally being present.
They teach you, like they teach you going through the therapy,
guide you to how to how to be fully present
and really understand the sensations and what's happening in your
body and to be able to describe them, put words them.
It is wild how quickly a massive anxiety attack, for example,
can just go away. It's freaking nuts. And then after
that the insights you have are just incredible. I think
for me, like, I've been really committed to just turning
over every stone on the path that he like. So
I've you know, I've experimented with psychedelics, like all kinds
of different things, you know, because it's a really curious person.
And I don't do anything in moderation. Everything. I go
overboard on everything. So I had to actually, like after
Chloe died, it was like two months later, I'm like, oh,
gotta write a book on grief, and blah blah blah,
you know, And then I started to write it and
I realized I'm a wreck and I don't know jack
about grief. Then I need to experience this a lot
more like to be in a position to be able
to actually like write about it.
So yeah, it's it's a situation of where sometimes you
think you know everything but you don't, yeah, exactly, and
then sometimes you don't think you know but you do.
Yeah, it's just living.
It's just embracing what you can, kicking out the trash
that you don't need around you, and hopefully building a
situation to where it's tolerable and you can keep moving forward.
Yeah.
Absolutely, absolutely, So in closing, what would you like to
tell people that might be going through some similar situations
or have been it but still haven't coped yet. What
would you tell them just so that they can kind
of understand that it's not the end of the world,
if they can still survive and thrive and have a
good life.
Yeah, I mean, I think what I would tell them
is a few things, like it's freef as an intensely
personal experience. There's no a playbook or program for it.
That the only way to heal is to face what
seems unfaceable, to just sit with the isery, you know,
and knowing that it won't kill you, but it's the
only way to heal. And I think too, like I'm
really passionate about this idea of like understanding what's in
your control and using words to the incredible power of
the words we use. The words and language is metaphor
and we use They don't describe our reality, they define it.
So be really intentional about the things that you say.
Like again, I'm permanently broken on this on that, you know,
Like those are some other things I think of really
important across the people.
Yeah, I agree, because you can talk yourself into being
as depressed or as happy as you want to be.
You've just got to get that correct mindset.
It's like the guy that goes out every day and
if he's constantly complaining, he's constantly talking, he's actually just
talking himself into worse things. Whereas if he looks at
things realizes that stuff happens in this world, you just
deal with it. Then the next day hopefully is a
little bit better, and you just keep moving upward and
just keep building to what you hopefully can be down
the road.
Yeah.
Absolutely, And you know, and I think it's also important,
Like right, I always tell people that one of the
things that's in our control is how we choose to
look at things. So I can I'm very typically quite
good at positively reframing things, Like I could say, Okay,
you know what, I could feel ripped off for the
rest of my life that I didn't get to spend
seventy years on this earth with Chloe, or I could
be grateful that I had nineteen years with her because
it's better than zero. I can do that a lot
of the time, but when I'm crushed by a wave
of grief, I can't do that at that moment it's
too painful. I miss her too badly. The thing is,
I know that when it passes, I will be able
to do it again, like to reframe it and feel
grateful again. So, you know, even the knowledge that it's
possible for me to own how I think about it
gets me through the moments when I can't. You know,
it's almost like an anchor or some sort or a life,
like a life the way to hold on to you know.
Absolutely, great thoughts. Well, this has been a great, great conversation,
great information. I really appreciate you taking the time to
come on today.
Yeah. Absolutely absolutely enjoyed being here. Bye to meet you,
and thanks so much.
The pleasure is all mine.
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