When Grief Knocks: A Father's Heartfelt Story of Loss and Resilience with Jason Tuttle

What happens when a man's world collapses beneath him? When Jason Tuttle found his 15-year-old son Zachary unresponsive that January morning in 2022, he couldn't have known how completely his life would transform. After twelve years as a stay-at-home father caring for two children with multiple disabilities, including one with an extremely rare condition, Jason was suddenly thrust into a grief journey few men openly discuss.

The silence surrounding male grief is deafening. While racing his son to the hospital that morning, Jason had no way to prepare for what would follow—the medical team's frantic 45-minute resuscitation attempt, the moment he realized his son wouldn't return, and the heartbreaking call to his wife. "I'll never forget the sound that came out of her," Jason recalls, a raw moment that underscores the ripple effects of profound loss.

What makes Jason's story extraordinary isn't just the depth of his loss, but his willingness to shatter conventional masculinity by documenting his grief journey openly. Through "Letters to Zachary," the community he created after reluctantly following his therapist's suggestion to journal, Jason provides something tragically rare: a space where grieving fathers can express vulnerability without judgment. His Facebook page, website, and speaking engagements offer both men and women insight into the unique challenges men face when processing loss.

Key moments in this episode:

02:37 Meet Jason Tuttle: A Father's Story

06:34 The Aftermath and Coping Mechanisms

20:37 The Healing Process: Writing and Community

24:19 Posting the First Letter

29:24 The Male Grief Commandments

36:02 Faith and Grief

42:40 Final Thoughts and Takeaways

How to reach Jason:

Website: www.LettersToZachary.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61552174684952

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/letterstozachary2022/

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@letterstozachary2022

Book: Letters to Zachary

Chapters

• 0:00 A Father's Shattered World
• 6:45 The Day Everything Changed
• 17:51 Finding Zachary Gone
• 27:13 Writing Through Grief
• 31:02 The Male Grief Commandments
• 37:42 Faith and Creating a Legacy
• 43:18 Final Thoughts and Call to Action

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

You know what happens when a man wakes up one day and his world is shattered in an instant, when the life built around love, care, sacrifice for his children is torn apart by an unimaginable loss.

Speaker 1: 0:17

As men, we're taught to be strong, silent and steady, but no one teaches us how to grieve, how to fall apart or how to put ourselves back together. And when grief strikes, it doesn't just knock on the door, kicks it down, exposing every insecurity, every emotion we've hidden deep inside of ourselves. And so in today's episode, we're going to explore a father's real and raw and powerful journey through his grief and the things that he had to face in life. This is not going to be about us talking about signs of weaknesses, but it's an invitation for us to heal, to be vulnerable and to have deep emotional courage. And so if this sounds like a message that's already stirring with something within you, then I'd like you to just take one moment and hit like and subscribe and share this episode with someone who you think is silently carrying the weight of grief, because it's your support that helps us reach more people out there who are facing their pain and trying to find purpose on the other side of it. And with that, let's get on with today's episode.

Speaker 2: 1:22

The average man today is sleepwalking through life. The average man today is sleepwalking through life, many never reaching their true potential, let alone ever crossing the finish line to living a purposeful life. Yet the hunger still exists, albeit buried amidst his cluttered mind, misguided beliefs and values that no longer serve him. It's time to align yourself for greatness. It's time to become a revolutionary man. Stay strong, my brother.

Speaker 1: 1:51

Welcome everyone to the Revolutionary man Podcast. I'm the founder of the Awakened man Movement and your host, alan DeMonso. Before we get started, I'd like to ask you a couple of questions with questions. What if the most courageous thing a man could do is to not hide his pain but to speak it out loud, raw, broken and real? And how would your healing change if you gave yourself permission to stop pretending that you're okay and instead allowed yourself to simply be human? You know, grief doesn't ask for permission, does it? It changes everything. But in the rubble of our loss, some men rise, not with armor, but with honesty, and today's conversation is going to show us what it truly means to grieve like a father and to lead with vulnerability. In order to do that today, allow me to introduce my guest.

Speaker 1: 2:41

Jason Tuttle is a married father of two kids with multiple mental and physical disabilities, and some of them are pretty rare. Jason was a stay-at-home dad for 12 years until his son suddenly and unexpectedly passed away from issues related to his needs in January 28th of 2022. Since that day that his son passed, jason has created a website, facebook page, a blog and a community called Letters to Zachary Grief that details his raw, unfiltered and open grief journey from a father's perspective. It is a place where men can feel vulnerable enough to share their emotion, empower women to help the grieving men in their lives and to see that it's okay for us to be vulnerable through his example. And this is a community that Jason says is open to everyone. And so welcome to the show, jason. How are things, brother?

Speaker 3: 3:33

Thank you for having me and I really appreciate the glowing intro.

Speaker 1: 3:37

Jason, as we were getting ready to come on today's show, I was telling you we're going to do our best to keep our crab together, because this is a really heavy topic. It means so much to me to hear and see the work that you're doing to help men, and so let's talk about this hero's journey of yours and about this quest and I know it's deep and deeply personal and, if you don't mind, take us back to that day when your life changed and how that shaped you into the man you are today and the work that you're doing.

Speaker 3: 4:05

It's more or less two days. That kind of changed my life and the first part I'll go a little bit into when my wife and I decided we had gotten married and we'd had our first full year of marriage together because we wanted to at least have the first year where we didn't have kids or that kind of responsibility, and so the second year we decided that we were a little older, in the sense we were in our later twenties versus in our mid twenties when we got married and my wife said she is from the New England States of the U S and they're all cradle Catholics and they all come one of nine up there and, like when we first got to talking, she said I want four kids and my first response was let's have the first one and then we'll talk. And I wanted three. So having a fourth one wasn't a stretch at that point and she got pregnant reasonably quickly and we had no reason to believe that there was going to be any issues up until that week 20 appointment, which is the one where they find out the sex of the child, and I could go on and on about it. But basically what happened in that appointment was they found an issue the ultrasound tech couldn't really talk about it. Honestly, I think for kind of liability reasons, it was something the doctor had to tell us and from that point until my son was born, we had to see what a perinatologist which is basically a high risk OBGYN is, what a perinatologist is, and it actually what we knew that there was going to be some significant issues. We didn't necessarily know which of them and the rare issue we had no idea about until the day he was born and we found out at that point that he had a rare condition. It was one in 40,000 births at that point.

Speaker 3: 6:01

And so when I say that, life changed for me in two different times. I didn't realize it at the time, but I was essentially grieving the life I thought we were going to have versus the life that we were dealt, so to speak, and I dealt with a lot of emotions, not realizing that's what it was in the beginning, although later years down the road, after I finally started going to counseling and therapy, I realized that's what it was. And then, two years later, when my daughter was born, six months after she was born, literally all of the same issues, except for the rare condition she had. So within the first five years of our marriage we had two kids, all with four conditions that were pretty common and one rare issue. And we were in year five of our marriage, fast forward through the next at this point, the next 11, 12 years, my son's in middle school.

Speaker 3: 7:01

He's, I believe it was eighth grade at that point and throughout his time he was susceptible to respiratory related illnesses, that kind of thing, and he had been in and out of the hospital most of his life for those kinds of issues. And about three days before he passed he got sick. That evening and it didn't really strike me. I thought maybe he had a 24 hour bug which he had gotten multiple times in his life. And that evening, when he was normally a really good sleeper, he was up and down all night, which kind of struck me as odd.

Speaker 3: 7:39

And that next day I was a stay at home parent at the time and I looked at my wife and said I'm going to call his teacher because he was in a self-contained special ed classroom and I didn't know if what he had was contagious and I didn't want it to spread. So I let them know and I said, hey, I'm going to keep my son home. I'm not sure what he's got, but I don't know if he's contagious. I'm being saved. Okay, wonderful. That next day I kept telling him all day buddy, you can take a nap, you can fall asleep, I know you're tired. You had to have been up and down all night long. He absolutely refused. He didn't want to eat a whole lot and he didn't really want to drink a whole lot, and at least for that first day. It caught my attention, but it didn't really surprise me. Now, if he'd have gone into that second day and not wanted to drink, I would have gone.

Speaker 3: 8:28

Something's not right here, and so that was Wednesday night. He stayed home Thursday. I decided last minute I said I'm going to keep him home Friday. If he's not better, at least he's got the weekend to recover and then hopefully he'll be better by Monday. Teacher is fine with it. My wife, his mother, was just like okay, cause I was the caregiver. She just whatever you think is best, so that Friday morning I get my daughter up, I get her going, I get her on the bus and I leave my son in his bedroom to wake up, like when he does on the weekend, usually nine, nine, 30.

Speaker 3: 9:11

So in his bedroom to wake up, like when he does on the weekend, usually nine, nine, 30. So he could sleep in some and so I go into his room which I'm in his room, as you can see the Z on the back wall and I walk over to his bed, over where the lamp in the background is, and usually when I would get him up he'd clap and get excited and squeal and giggle and bounce and all that Seeing us getting him get him up. And I opened the door and he opened his eyes and he just kind of looked at me and I wouldn't say he was lethargic, but he just didn't really respond. And so I walk over to where the lamp is behind me and I look at him and there's a dark green streak of fluid coming out of his mouth. And I look at my wife and I instantly says the only thing that I know that is dark green in your body is bile. And why is it coming out of his mouth? And I immediately looked at her and said this is not good. No, so I pick him up and he's floppy, like he can't hold himself up. And that didn't strike me because I'd had a couple of times before where that happened. I just thought maybe this has progressed and I need to take him to the hospital. So I get him out into the living room and I have this medical protocol in my head of these steps that I take when I feel like he's sick to cover my bases.

Speaker 3: 10:14

And then I make a decision, like his rare condition when he was younger, I would have to cath and drain his bladder, and so I immediately cathed him, I drained his bladder. I didn't get a whole lot out. Nothing really struck me, except for the fact I felt his like stomach by his belly button, and it was rock hard. And when I say rock hard, I'm like cinder block, wall rock hard. And that caught my attention because I'd never felt that before. Because of his rare condition. His stomach was really pliable and really squishy, almost, and so when I felt that I was just like, I literally looked at my wife and said this is not right. I don't know what's going on. So I paused for a minute and I think what am I going to do? Am I going to call an ambulance or am I going to take him up to the hospital? And I went. You know what, I'm going to take him up to the hospital. So, and I went you know what I'm going to take him up to the hospital. So I get him dressed, get him in his wheelchair, get him in our van and I do 90 miles an hour up to the hospital. I get him up to the hospital and kind of get in the parking deck and I go to get him out of the van to put him in his chair. And he's very floppy at this point and it catches my eyes and in my head I'm thinking something's really wrong. I don't know what's going on here.

Speaker 3: 11:23

So I get in, I get up to the ER and most ERs there's a queue that you have to go through. So I get in there and I skip it. And the security guard comes over to me as if to yell at me to say I need to get in line. And I literally looked at him and go he's not breathing, I need someone's help immediately. And so he snaps his fingers. The nurse comes over. Now understand.

Speaker 3: 11:47

This hospital is the hospital we always went to. I'd been in it a hundred times before. This is the first time that the nurse had ever looked at me and said follow me. And we ran as fast as we could back to the ER. We get in there and we get into one of the trauma rooms and I instinctively get him out of his chair, I put him on the table or gurney, or whatever you want to call it in there and I instinctively back out of the way because he's nonverbal and he can't tell them what's going on and, plus the state he was in, I don't think he would have been able to talk at that point anyways. So it just so happened.

Speaker 3: 12:26

There's another trauma room where the doors are open and I back off in there and they let me stay in there. So they all come in there and it's like ants off an anthill. There had to have been like 30 people that all rushed in there and got in their positions to start doing what they were going to do. I'm watching. They get him in there, they immediately intubate him, which is put the tube down to get air into his lungs. They cut off his clothes and the first thing they do is they go down to his knee and literally drill like a port into his knee, like directly into the bone. And I'm watching this and my son doesn't even flinch.

Speaker 3: 13:04

Now, later on down the road I go, if I was fully aware and someone took a drill and drilled into my knee, I would come off the table because it would be ridiculous, it would be so painful. You would probably pass out because it was so painful. Later I asked I said what was that for? And they said, when a patient comes in like this and we don't know what's going on, it's a way to get antibiotics and something else into him very quickly. And I said, okay, then I understand why he did that. So they're doing that and they almost immediately start chest compressions on him.

Speaker 3: 13:36

Now, granted, I'm watching and it's not dawning on me the severity of what's going on. Head ER doc comes over to me and goes down to the minute how long has he been this way? And I tell her and she goes off, she barks orders, and she comes back to me a second later and she goes explain to me this scenario as to why you brought him up here. And I told her. She then goes off and barks orders and comes back, oh no, and she goes off and barks orders. And I'm watching this. Now, granted, all this is going on and I'm taking it in, but it's still not dawning on me the fact of the direction of where this is going and I watched them after they did that and soon thereafter they get the paddles out and just like a medical drama, I hear him yell clear and he literally lifts off the table. And so I look at the monitor. That's got like the heart rate and the pulse and the and on there and it literally goes up once and goes right back to what it was doing. And in that moment in my head I look at it and go, he's not coming back. Now, granted, I don't react emotionally to it, I just say in my head he's not coming back.

Speaker 3: 14:43

And I go back to watching what they're doing over the next slide. Like they worked on them from start to finish, like 45 minutes. It was the longest time and I later told them. I said I knew y'all would work on them, but the fact that y'all worked on for 45 continues to me. I never thought it would be that long. I said so I really appreciate all y'all did outside of the result of it. So in that whole 45 minutes they shock him probably five more times and none of it really changes anything.

Speaker 3: 15:16

And she finally comes over to me and she goes. I'm sorry but and she pronounces Soably I turn over to the other room and literally for 30 seconds I have a moment, I regain composure and I turn back around because as a man I'm taught that I've got to compartmentalize things. So at that point I call his mother, who's working from home at that point, and tell her Now she was under the assumption that we were going to the hospital, I was probably going to get admitted, we were going to be there our typical seven to 10 days and we would come home. I had to tell her that her son was dead on a table and I will never forget the sound that came out of her. She regained her composure, I said because she was working from home. I said message your boss, tell them what's going on, leave work. Call your parents because they live close. I said have them drive you up here. This is the room we're in, do not drive.

Speaker 3: 16:18

And so she did that. I then called my mother, who'd watched both of my kids many times over the years, and told her and I'll never forget her response as a side note, a couple of weeks later my mother goes how soon after Zachary passed did you call me? And I said about 10 minutes. And she said you were eerily and almost stoically calm, like nothing had ever happened, and he'd only passed 10 minutes before that. And my response was yes, I was going to be emotional about it. I said but if I were a blubbering idiot, if you will, I wouldn't have been able to inform y'all what had happened and I knew that I had to at least get that out so you understood what was going on, versus me calling and not being able to talk and all that kind of stuff. And I do that. And then the next, the next probably 10 minutes or 20 minutes I'm talking to the care team and what, what happens now? Where is he going to go? Who do I need to call for my funeral home, that kind of stuff. I'm waiting on my wife and her parents to come up and I'm sitting there alone with my son in this trauma room and I'm just sitting there holding his hand the whole time and I'm just, I'm just, I'm staring at him and I tell people cause people always say is outside of the actual passing is there anything that stood out to you? I said yes, I was shocked at how cold he got as quickly as he did Like no, I knew it wasn't going to be like a long time, but like the last time I touched him, put on the table, he was warm because he was live and then when I came back to touch him, like he was ice cold, it was shockingly fast. And that struck my attention. My, his mother came up and her parents came up and we were there for a while. And the other thing I tell people I go the hardest thing that I have ever had to do, and this even includes cremating my son. I said after he had passed and we knew we were going to leave him there for the corner for them to keep him till the funeral home, to get them, I had to take all this, cut off clothes, put it in his empty wheelchair and roll it through that hospital. And I tell people I said that is the hardest thing I've ever had to do. And I said and then, on top of that. I had to put it in the van and we're 60 miles from that hospital, so we had to ride 60 miles literally in dead silence all the way home. Is how that day went. Now, later that day I went over to a family and tried to tell them and we did funeral home stuff, that kind of stuff. But yeah, that was that day.

Speaker 3: 19:09

It didn't really hit me until, like I said, I'm in my son's room. When I walked into his room cause the doors on the other side of this screen I put his wheelchair in the other corner. In fact his wheelchair is not, it hasn't moved from that corner since I put it there. But I came in here, I put his wheelchair there and then I stood by the railing over work where I'm sitting and it was at that point. It was like a Mack truck of emotion and I like doubled over. At that point is when it finally hit me and that's how it started all of this journey.

Speaker 1: 19:43

Man, jason, what a powerful story to share with us, and my heart goes out to you and to have had to experience that and hear you what you went through and the one you know.

Speaker 1: 19:55

It really impactful and powerful note that I wrote down here is you talked about you were grieving the life that you thought you were going to have versus the life that you thought you were going to have, versus the life that you had in the beginning, and isn't that?

Speaker 1: 20:09

And I think about that and I think about how true that is for all of us that, especially at such a young age now, zachary was what around 13, 14, I guess, maybe he passed when he was 15 yeah, 15, he's still the runway should have been a lot longer than what it ended up by being, and I think you handled yourself fabulously, considering what you're in, the state of shock, and it really started to change. I could see that. This why this message is so powerful for you. And then I want to dive into a little bit about the book that you wrote, the letters to Zachary, and you talk about it really being a space for rawness and unfiltered grief. And so why was it so important for you to start writing, and how has the book started to help you heal as?

Speaker 3: 20:58

well, I'm one of those people that if I can't find a way to get it off my chest, it'll sit on me and, like it, stress in general hits me in my shoulders. If it gets bad enough, like my neck will hurt, my whole upper shoulders and back will hurt, and unfortunately I'm the type of person that I hold on to stress quite well. And so after everything had happened, I grieved, probably pretty intensely, for a year and a half. In the community some are shorter, some are longer, but I was about a year and a half and it was actually at the time. It was the suggestion of a counselor I was seeing about journaling and I laughed because she initially suggested it to me and my first response was I don't know how good of a writer I am, I don't know if that's my thing, and it's ironic that I say that, because the initial responses of the first thing I ever posted were so overwhelmingly positive about how I wrote. I was just like, where did this come from? And so she suggested that to me and honestly I fought it for cause. Like my son had passed and I had scheduled a therapy session, like the next week is when I had. So she she told me at about two weeks after that and I held onto that idea for probably nine months. I didn't want to do it, I didn't want to deal with it. I want it was going to sit over on the proverbial side table. And, you know, one night I got.

Speaker 3: 22:32

I'm big about being on social media. I always have. I like being on social media. I'm probably addicted to it, and I was watching a reel or a video on Facebook and honestly, I don't remember what it was about, but there was something in that video that maybe a sentiment or something reminded me of my son and I'll never forget. I was sitting on my couch next to my wife and it just doubled me over, like I was bawling, crying, just uncontrollably, and I finally regained my composure and I opened up a Word document and in proper, like Oxford English style, I date dear Zachary and I just verbally vomited on a page Like if it would have been a letter, it would probably been two pages.

Speaker 3: 23:19

I just filled, like it just kept coming and coming and I did that several times a day for weeks and in that time, as we all know, on Facebook and social media there's a group for everything, and so I was looking for grief groups and I happened to find a parents who lost a special needs child group which I'm shocked that I found because grief is already a small topic area which I'm shocked that I found because grief is already a small topic area. And to find an even more niche area in that topic, I'm shocked that I found it. So I get in there and I get to know the admin very well and finally one day I said I messaged her and said do you mind if I post one of my journal entries? And almost before I could finish the direct message she went yes, we either get no men willing to share that or very few men willing to share that. We would look because a lot of these groups, especially emotion related it's 99% women in these groups and there's very and if there are men in there, they're lurkers. They'll read everything but they're not active, they don't post that kind of thing. So I said okay, I said I don't know if it'll be today, but in the next couple of days.

Speaker 3: 24:29

And so I found one of my letters and I copied and pasted it and right before I hit enter to like to post it, I went am I in the mental space to post this Because at the time it was probably nine months, 10 months after the fact, in that first year, right as noble as this is to share with these women most likely all women that are going to read this it's still the internet, and am I in a mental space to where, if someone negatively comments on it, am I going to be able to handle it Right, or am I going to jump down their throat? Because I'm just in the mental state that I'm in and in my fashion, I went screw it, I'm going to do it anyway. And so I posted it and I didn't say anything most of the day and then that evening I got a massively positive response. It stunned me. I had a woman that said we've never met, we've never crossed paths, you don't know me. I've never told anybody my feelings about losing my child that are deep down inside. And she said I just read your letter. And she said this is exactly how I feel, word for word. She said you could have not said it any better than how I feel. And I said I really appreciate it and I'm glad it resonates with you. I said this was inspired by my son and I said I'm just glad I could do something that you could connect with. And every time I posted it I would get kind of those responses and finally after a couple of weeks I went I might have something here.

Speaker 3: 25:57

I need to try to either expand this or grow this somehow, and whenever you do something that everybody likes, you start getting that well, have you ever thought about writing a book? Have you thought about doing a podcast? And at the time I wasn't in the mental state is space to take those on. And so finally someone says have you ever thought about doing a Facebook page? And I was just like what's that? And they said go to your favorite like business. The page you pull up on that's a Facebook page. And I said okay. And they said go to your favorite business the page you pull up, that's a Facebook page. And I said okay. And they said you don't really have to create more material, you just got to copy and paste what you've already done. At this point you could make it a blog or a journal. And so I started doing that and I got a small following.

Speaker 3: 26:37

And then one day I just got this idea I just started reaching out to some of the people I consider big names in the grief kind of content community. And I said, hey, my name is so-and-so, I think I have something here. Can you just give me pointers on what worked well for you and what you did? And you thought, eh, that didn't work so well. I said, because I don't know what direction I'm going, but I'd at least like to know what the ins and outs are. And literally all of them and people with a hundred followers. I had one with like 10,000 followers.

Speaker 3: 27:06

I had one woman with 1.6 million followers that said, sure, if you're going to do a book, you're going to need a website and you're going to need to do a, b and C. If you're going to go to the podcast, right, you're going to need D, e and F. And I went thank you, I really appreciate it. And from that point it just started. I appreciate it. And from that point it just started. I was getting like 20 and 30 followers a day and it's really started working out. So, long story short, I made letters to Zachary, one because it resonated with people, but other because I was initially trying to find men that were experiencing maybe not exactly the same thing I was, but in the ballpark, if you will and I couldn't find anybody, and it was just. It was irritating me to no end, and so I thought, instead of me complaining about it, let me make something and promote it to people that maybe they'll start coming. And that's really how all of this started.

Speaker 1: 28:01

Amen, brother, I was just listening to you about describing the book journey and it was really grief, was one of the things that got me into really starting to do men's work that I've been doing now, and when my father-in-law passed, I was the one who found him and he had had an accident in the washroom and it wasn't pleasant to see. And, looking to your point, you have all these communities and most of the time it's filled with women, not very many men, and I just thought to myself there's got to be a space for guys to be able to come to deal with life, whatever it is that they're confronting, whether it's grief, whether it's a major emotional event in their professional life or personal life, major emotional event from their in their professional life or personal life.

Speaker 1: 28:46

But you need to have space, and so I love the idea that you decided to to change the paradigm of hey, I'm not sure I'm a writer to becoming a writer and being a published author and leaning into that, because we all find different ways to teach and to lead, and then you've done a beautiful job with this and just think that's great, and so I also want to talk a little bit about this grief journey also is really shape what masculinity is all about, and so you've already talked a little bit about that in the in your initial story, but let's unpack that a little bit. And what does it really mean to you today to be a strong man?

Speaker 3: 29:28

mean to you today to be a strong man. You read in the intro that part of my goal is to explain to women the process that men go through just to grieve, and I actually one day came up with what I call the male grief commandment. I came up with 10 different points that I'm open with my wife and she's very receptive of it. But I thought if I had a significant other that wasn't open to it, what could I give her? To give her kind of like an outline to maybe not make me open up right then there, but through time get me to be able more susceptible to be be opening up. And so a lot, a lot of the things are directed towards women. But I tell women all the time when I say this to you, I'm talking about both sides, but because I'm a man and this is what I've experienced, it's directed at women because this is what I've gotten from women most of my life. And so when I say a lot of things, I always preface it with look, this is not a personal attack, I'm not coming after you, this is what I've experienced. And so, like I tell women all the time, I said here's what you have to understand. I said, when it comes to men, opening up a lot of it's a generational issue. I said I'm 48 years old, I'm generation X, I'm the. Rub some dirt on it and walk it off. Kind of generation. I'm the. You've got something to cry. Are you crying? I'm going to give you something to cry about. Kind of generation. And I said that's what I grew up. I was taught that if you're upset about something, it's short, sweetened to the point and it's definitely not out in public and you're not open about it and you basically, if something were to happen like at work, I've got three days bereavement. I need to get it out in those three days and then I go back to work. I said that's what I grew up with. I said now generations, the younger now, are getting better about it. Is it where I think it needs to be? No, but it's better than what I dealt with.

Speaker 3: 31:25

And so, like I tell them, I go here's some of the key things I try to tell you, you guys, as in women, I go look, when you sit there and get upset and talk to your husband or significant other, you expect them to sit there and listen to your whole thought. Let you get it completely out and sometimes you want us just to listen or sometimes you do want our help to solve. I said first of all you have to understand we're problem solvers. So if you don't want that, tell us up front, otherwise in our brains we're going to go. That's simple. You can go A, b and C and then there it's solved. If you'd want to vent, tell me you're venting and I'll be quiet. And I tell women.

Speaker 3: 32:18

I said the first thing that y'all have to do and it's going to sound a personal attack and it's not you have to listen and not listen to respond. For that one moment that I take a breath for you to interject how my hurt feelings are hurting you. All you've done is subconsciously told me that my feelings don't matter and you will always come first period. And I said you're trying to get me to open up. I said so. If you expect me to listen to the whole thing, I expect you to do the same. And I said I'm not going to do it all the time, but if I feel like it's important enough to bring to you not to be harsh, you bet to listen. Because if I'm one of those people that doesn't open up much and I do and you like.

Speaker 3: 32:58

The other thing I say is if they, if a man feels like it's important enough to come up to you and your first response when he's done is I can't believe you're complaining about that. Is that what you're really bothered about, or something along those lines? I said, yes, men are simple creatures. I said, but things like that we don't forget about. And I said men use sports analogies for everything. I said for men, it's three strikes and you're out. We'll give you several chances, but once you cross that threshold where you're out, we're done. And I said so it's not a threat, it's not. I'm just saying here's what we're looking for. All we really want you to do, men or men for the most part are about respect, whatever respect means to that man. And if my respect is, I want you to listen and take my concerns seriously the few times I have them. If you disrespect that, then I'm not going to keep opening up to you as I tell them that, and then the last thing I'll say about that I won't go through all 10.

Speaker 3: 34:05

One of the things I've actually seen recently and which kind of bothers me is a lot of women these days, especially the younger generation.

Speaker 3: 34:13

They all say we want a man that's sensitive, that can open up. That's great and wonderful. But on the other side, on social media, I've seen women ridicule bel, belittle, talk down to men that actually do open up to them, and so I look at them and go you cannot have it both ways. I said 99% of men are not going to be sitting there sobbing, crying all the time. We're not going to be crying on your shoulders, but when we do it, I said you want us to be this way, but then you ridicule us for doing that. And on the male side of it, I said one of the reasons why men don't open it up especially around your more macho alpha males, if you will is the moment we do it. We're called weak, specific male parts are joked about, our manhood's joked about All those type things, and I'm just like you want us to do this, but we've got 50 hurdles around us to get over to get to that point. And those are my big points to women, men that want to listen to them.

Speaker 1: 35:13

Yeah, I completely agree with you on all of that, especially the end part there.

Speaker 1: 35:17

I think it's a journey for us in terms of being able to really walk that tightrope of how and when to be vulnerable and how to do that I talked about. I did an episode I talked about, changed the word, instead of saying being vulnerable, about surrendering. If you're willing to surrender, will you take the knee to your ego right To stop trying to be the lone wolf, stop trying to do things outside of what you can or try to control things outside of your own personal life. Then things start to happen for you, and so you're giving great advice there, jason, because I think it's important that we understand, men and women, what we are asking for. What does that? What's that going to look like? Because we may not be prepared for what that looks like, and if we truly want it, then we need to be willing to work through those things. You talked earlier tonight about your wife, raised up in New England area, so strong Catholic background. How has faith played a role in your journey through this trauma and the healing and the work that you're doing?

Speaker 3: 36:21

As a funny side note, my wife would now call herself a recovering Catholic. Honestly, the church we go to, she says to me all the time we now go to a Baptist church. And she said, literally the other day, I still can't believe we go to a Baptist church. I said I bet you never thought as a Catholic you'd be coming to a Baptist church. But then again, then again, in our family I'm the outlaw anyways because we got married in the Catholic church, because that's what they did, and then afterwards we both decided we didn't want to be in the Catholic church and so the family took their brunt out on me. So it's okay. It's a title that I take with pride, honestly. Another side note the first time I went to school I went for religion and philosophy, so I can get preachy if I need to be.

Speaker 3: 37:06

Faith has really helped out in the sense of being able to talk to God, creator, whatever you want to call the higher power that you believe in, if anything, just to have an ear to listen to, if anything, just to have an ear to listen to.

Speaker 3: 37:23

And, as crazy as it sounds, the number one thing. It comes into either Catholicism or Protestant churches that. It took me a while to. It finally dawned on me in my head is who better to understand the loss of a son than God giving his only begotten son? And it took me a long time for that to hit me and when it hit me it's like it punched me in the chest.

Speaker 3: 37:54

So that really helped out outside of just general prayer, when it comes to just more difficult times and how are we going to get through this and through all of that it's led me to Letters to Zachary and just all the different podcasts. It's just it's been a slow and methodical process but in all reality I've only been doing this 17 months at this point and I've done podcasts in six different countries around the world and I'm heading upwards to a hundred podcasts in 17 months. I've got six this week alone. So, as a person of faith, that lead that would lead me to say that the Lord works in mysterious ways and ask, and ye shall receive your kind of cliched lines.

Speaker 1: 38:39

Yeah, love that, jason, love that. What's next for lettersters to Zachary and your mission? Are you looking to do a program, anything else? What's the next step here to really help grieving fathers speak out?

Speaker 3: 38:56

And I love doing all the media. Podcasting is a new standing on stage, if you will, although I'm old school enough where I want to find a way to get actually on a stage where people are staring at me to feel that, because I'm a visual person, I read nonverbal cues and all that and I play off that and so, like the TED Talk, if you will, and I have tried to do the TEDx stuff, although I can't get their attention right now. So that's one of my big goals to be able to do that. I still want to keep doing the media and I would love to do bigger and bigger media if I can get that attention. And I say that more for the fact that the bigger the media I can get, the more eyes can get on the concept of what I'm trying to come across.

Speaker 3: 39:43

Not so much for selfish reasons Sure, anybody that gets there, if they said that they weren't slightly impressed with it, they'd be lying to you but it's more for the fact of getting the message out and, at the end of the day, outside of helping men and women. The initial goal for me was because my son had passed so young in life. I wanted to create a legacy bigger than just his medically hard life is what I wanted to do, and at this point I have continued to achieve that. I'm wanting to do that and I'm working with several other collaborators that we've got some pretty big things in the works that I can't really talk about. I wish I could. That, I hope, go through. It's only upward from here, right on, Absolutely, Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 40:32

I'm thinking, Jason, through this journey and maybe even prior to it, but that helped you in the journey. I'm not sure where this might've come for you, but at some point you may have had a mentor or you read something in a book or something that has really been I'll mentor. Or you read something in a book or something that has really been. I'll say it's like a piece of advice or something that has really stayed with you and how has that helped serve you today and continues to do that.

Speaker 3: 40:58

I'm going to make the same statement and honestly I think it's going to sound egotistical and I don't mean it to be. I honestly believe, as a person of faith, everything that I've done has been inspired by my faith. It has not been me, it has been through my faith, 100%. So when I say that, when I write and all that, and the things that come to me to write yes, some of it's mine, but most of it's not that come to me to write yes, some of it's mine, but most of it's not and I say that because one of the quotes I came up with that I 100% believe that I tell people all the time I go.

Speaker 3: 41:34

The quote that I came up with that I live by now is, though I strive for the mountaintop.

Speaker 3: 41:39

It is the valley in which I live, and what I mean by that is we all want to be on the top of the mountain to be able to see the wonderful views and have the great moments and the sunsets and the sunrises. But the reality is is on a day-to-day basis, we live in the valley and a lot of times in those valleys are hard moments, are dark moments, are difficult moments, but it's those difficult moments that we deal with, that, give us the strength to be able to climb that mountain again, is what I tell people, and that's what I mean by that. And for those of us in the grief community that have lost whether it be a child or a parent or a spouse, that kind of thing we all know about the difficult times and be able to trying to claw tooth and nail, climbing back up that mountain to be able to get to, at least even if it's for a brief moment. I get to the top, and then I fall off of it. We're still there. So that's how I live life at this point.

Speaker 1: 42:39

Love that, jason, everything that we spoke about today, and maybe there was something that we didn't get a chance to touch on. What would be a takeaway you'd like our listeners to have?

Speaker 3: 42:48

Two things. The one thing I'd like to tell men and I say this jokingly, but I'm serious about it when I say it Men are interesting creatures and I know, I've been one all my life. Men are the one gender that does not like being told what to do. 99.9% of us do not like being told what to do. So, with that being said, I go.

Speaker 3: 43:13

You don't being told what to do, but when it comes to your motion, you let everybody and their brother tell you exactly what to do, when to do and how to do it, so you can't tell me. If you come up to me and say nobody's going to tell me what to do, yeah, they are, because they're telling you what to do. On how you express yourself, and especially when it comes to online, I tell guys all the time. I said if you don't want to be known, hide behind a profile picture. You want to know how many millions of people do that every day? And I said even if you post something and someone says something negative, I said do you know how many idiotic things are posted on the internet every day and you're worried about someone, that you have no idea who they are making comments about an experience that you are dealing with. Really. That's the oxymoron, if you will, that I try to tell most guys.

Speaker 3: 44:05

Don't tell me that you don't like being told what to do when in other areas of your life they tell you exactly what you're do. Then the other thing is, just for those that are interested, that if they would like to connect with me, my website is letters to Zacharycom and Zachary is spelled Z A, c, hc-h-a-r-y, and I say that because some people in the States spell it E-R-Y. And I've got all my social media connections on there. I've got the coloring book I've produced, I've got my media experience just all a ton of stuff on there for people that are interested in, those that may want to contact me, you can contact me through there or any of my social media sites. For those that might want to talk, I'm typically unless I'm asleep at night, I'm generally probably a five, anything between 30 seconds and a five minute response time any time of the day.

Speaker 1: 44:58

Right on, excellent. I just want to say, jason, thank you so much for spending time with us today and sharing your truth. You're very raw, you're compassionate, love. That and your willingness really to step into pain and to speak from this, I think, is really going to help a lot of men everywhere feel less alone. We're going to feel less ashamed and much more empowered because of this conversation today, and I'm going to make sure all the information on where you are on social media your website's going to be in today's episode.

Speaker 1: 45:25

So, as we close today, I just want to leave everyone with this thought that grief isn't something that we fix. It's something that we carry, but you don't have to carry this alone, and if you're a man struggling to process loss, trauma or a life altering change, don't stay silent. We have an offer for you here Visit memberstheawakenmancomnet and start today by taking our free integrity challenge. It's going to be your opportunity to rebuild yourself with honesty, strength and the support of a brotherhood that's going to see you. So live with courage, lead with heart and let's get started to now. Thank you so much, jason, for being on the show. I really love today's conversation.

Speaker 2: 46:10

Thank you so much. Thank you for listening to the Revolutionary man podcast. Are you ready to own your destiny, to become more of the man you are destined to be? Join the brotherhood that is the Awakened man at theawakendmannet and start forging a new destiny today.