Episode #31-Jason Stout

In this episode, Jason Stout shares his passion for helping people reconnect with the outdoors and discover the healing power of nature. Jason's own life has been marked by profound loss. At just four years old, he lost his five-year-old sister. Later, his grandmother was murdered, and at the age of fourteen, he lost his father to a sudden heart attack while he slept.

Drawing from both his personal experiences and professional work, Jason has spent years contracting with organizations such as TAPS and Outward Bound, helping individuals and families navigate grief, trauma, and resilience. Through his organization, Stoutreach, he guides people of all ages toward healing and growth through outdoor experiences.

In our conversation, Jason discusses the importance of unplugging from the constant noise of the digital age and embracing the restorative benefits of nature. He shares how time outdoors can provide space for reflection, connection, and healing, allowing the natural world to become a powerful companion on the journey through grief.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to this episode of Turning Grief into Growth, The Journey of Transformation. This is a podcast that's hosted by Greg Jacobs and Don Lipstein. Well, good morning, Don. How are you doing this morning?

SPEAKER_02 0:12

I'm doing super getting ready to head north for uh a week. Going up to Maryland.

SPEAKER_00 0:19

Pennsylvania, Maryland. Nice.

SPEAKER_02 0:20

Maryland.

SPEAKER_00 0:22

Nice, nice. Hopefully it's a little cooler up there. Won't have as many mosquitoes as you probably have down there.

SPEAKER_02 0:27

No, actually the weather's been really nice down here on this tropical island. Oh, I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_00 0:34

Do you have a lighthouse on your island? Oh, yeah. Yeah, with the lighthouse, yes. Yes. You've got like this uh force zone around it where it doesn't have any bad weathers, hurricanes or mosquitoes.

SPEAKER_02 0:44

That's right. And and we have all kinds of natural wildlife like deer and alligators and and uh yeah, life is good. Nice.

SPEAKER_00 0:54

Almost hit a buck yesterday driving.

SPEAKER_02 0:56

Oh well, I'm glad you didn't. Yes. Um the sea turtles are uh coming and and putting their nests on our island as well. Nice. I think I think we're up to like around 20 uh nests on the island right now, and they'll be hatching uh towards the end of the summer.

SPEAKER_00 1:16

Love watching that. I've seen that before in the Banamaw City uh beach area. Well, uh I am super excited uh for today's guest. I know I say that every single time we record a podcast, but I think you are as well. Um it's a rarity that you and I have a commonality of the guest in somebody that we know together. A lot of times it's people you've known in the past, or maybe I've known and you haven't. Um, but this is real exciting uh today to have Jason Stout on here. I'm just gonna kind of introduce him. Um I'm gonna let him talk about maybe some of his accolades and different things that he has accomplished and what he does in the grief field. Uh, but um I will just start off by saying that this guy had a huge impact on my life. Uh in November of 2023, my wife Amy and I had the opportunity to go to Austin, Texas for a TAPS parents retreat. For those that don't know, TAPS is Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors. It's an organization Don and I have had a great part in through the years. And um, Jason is also a contractor uh with them. And he was uh one of the guys that uh helped lead this uh parents retreat. It was a small group of people, I think it might have been only like 15, 20 people max, uh probably closer to the 15 size. And uh I was able to just really establish a good uh relationship and friendship uh with uh Jason whenever we were there. I'll share my screen. This is just a picture for those that are uh actually watching on YouTube of uh Jason and I on a boat out in Austin. There's a little lake down there uh downtown off of uh the main strip. So uh had an incredible time um and uh just really got to uh know him well and thought he'd be an incredible uh guest uh to have on. So welcome, Jason.

SPEAKER_01 3:06

Thank you for having me. I mean, it's an honor. And uh I had a great time at that event as well. Um, Greg, it was great to meet you and keep connected to you. Absolutely. We'll be sitting here with Don, someone I met early on in my TAPS experience and who had a big impact on me.

SPEAKER_00 3:24

Um, Jason, tell us a little bit um about uh your grief journey and uh what what you have experienced with grief in your life.

SPEAKER_01 3:37

Yeah, um I mean, pretty much like a lot of us that get into this work, it was motivated by my life experience. And uh that that started when I was four years old, and my sister Maria died from a brain disorder from hydrocephalus. And uh that was that changed my life forever, shaped the way that I saw the world. It uh it caused a lot of anxiety, a lot of struggle as a kid. And uh it was a few years later that my grandmother was murdered, and that was overload for my family and really uh broke my parents apart. There was a lot going on, um a divorce after that. And then when I was 14, my dad went to wake him up and he had died in his bed. Likely it was from a heart attack. And I really I I struggled for years into my young adult years. And uh it was just I was just fortunate that I was exposed to some people and some ideas and read some books that really helped me to start to shift and to to move more into at one point I was like, I what does anything matter? Burn my bridges, but something hit me and I was like, you know what, that's not why I'm here. I'm here to build bridges. And that it was a there was a turning point in my 20s for sure.

SPEAKER_02 5:06

At four years old, you lost your sister. Was she older or younger than you?

SPEAKER_01 5:10

She was five. And she was disabled, and um, I have great memories of her, even though I was just so young. I uh she was blind, she couldn't, she was not mobile, and we were caregiving for her. Even at that age, I would hold her and feed her and love on her. She was in a nursing home part of the time. I'll never forget the way she would say my name, and it was Dayson. And it was just so sweet, I just think of it now, and it just melts my heart.

SPEAKER_02 5:42

Yeah. And and so that at four years old, not even probably understanding grief much at all. Um, but within a 10-year period, you lost your grandmother and your father, three significant uh losses within a 10-year period uh by the time you were 14. Um Wow.

SPEAKER_00 6:09

All different relationships.

SPEAKER_02 6:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:13

It was overwhelming. You know, uh something that strikes me, Jason, uh, in hearing that is a lot of times on this podcast, we focus on the adults. Um, and I think this podcast is going to probably take a little different slant in the fact that we definitely still focus on adults, but um there's a lot of trauma and things that happen to kids. Um my grandson is eight years old, but he was three years old when his dad died. My son. Uh so and I'm seeing a lot of you know acting out and reactions and things from him, um, just from his grief that he is unable to really verbalize and talk about because he doesn't know what grief is. Um, but uh did that it would that have a big uh kind of impact in leading you into kind of what you do working with uh kids and the outdoors?

SPEAKER_01 7:08

Yeah, oh yeah. I mean, it was and it's you know, now 54, it's 50 years later, and and I can make sense more of this life I've been in and and some of those struggles, and it really um influences the approach to this work that I do when I'm working with kids and adults. I would say that a lot of times it's easy for me to go back and be that four-year-old Jason. And I and I remember, and and I'll and I'll say this with some of the kids with all the kids I work with, um, five, six-year-olds, I'll I'll ask them, hey, can I talk to you like adults? Oh yeah, they'll say yes, right? They don't know what they're about to get into, and I'll ask the question or I'll make a statement like, um, when my sister Maria died, I had nightmares, and I was scared that other people were gonna die. I was scared my mom was gonna die, my dad, my mom was gonna die. Do any of you feel that way? I asked them that. And those don't matter who I'm working with, they just look me straight in the eyes. I have their attention, and that was something that I walked around with. I remember I I actually was held back in kindergarten it was because of this, but then there's that story when you think five-year-old wouldn't, oh, what's being held back? Does it impact us? But I remember feeling like I was failing, like I was not intelligent, and I was gonna go back. And I became very sensitive to that, to anything in school that happened. I was always like, hey, what's going on here? Am I not smart enough? It was that at that point, and I understand that we we know that grief is a lifelong experience. It's not that I just ache for my sister's return, it's it's really that my nervous system shifted. It was this always worrying about something happening or why did this happen, or if something negative happened to say maybe it's because of something I did. This is and this is why I'm very sensitive with kids. I I remember um that before she died, it was maybe a month before she died, that I had been holding her on our couch and I dropped her on a shag 70s style soft carpet. She cried, she was not injured. But that four-year four-year-old Jason, in my mind, I'm like, I had something to do with hurting her. And then it just was a thought that would pop up. And so a lot of what the work I do is really putting things out up front that tough conversations that people don't talk about, so that we can normalize their experience quicker. Right. So if I say this is what I've seen, and this is how I felt, this is my experience. I also know because I've been doing this work for 25 years, a lot of kids feel the same way. And some there's some way they relate to that story and how they're feeling. And I put it out there right away. Instantly, it's almost removing a burden. It's oh, that's me too. I'm not alone. Now at 54, it's still like, oh, what you know, what's gonna happen now? It's fatalistic. It's always I have to go, oh, wait a minute, there's that four-year-old traumatized Jason that's taking over my thoughts. There's a dialogue in there. Jason, breathe, go outside, touch a tree. Oh, wait, that's not going on. There's no threat right now. And I think that is in the work that I do, uh, that would be my hope that anything that I'm involved with, kids or adults, it will walk away with that awareness.

SPEAKER_02 10:51

It's amazing how the connection can be so powerful when that other person has experienced what you've experienced too. Um, and so here you are, you know, as an adult, have and you've learned a lot about grief. And it seems like you can put that together for kids, um, and they're gonna connect with you right away, just like Greg and I have connected with you, um, you know, in a different uh fashion than the kids do. But uh it's pretty amazing to me um to think about that's turning your grief into growth.

SPEAKER_01 11:35

Right. So we don't we know that when kids if we don't give kids the information, they will make something. It will be far worse usually. So adults, that's how we are. If we don't have information, we start to fill in that, oh, something's happening, oh it's the bad thing, and and 80%, 90% could be negative, something that's not serving, something that's not that not that's not accurate. Right? There's a great book, Blue Mind, um, and it is about the power of water and healing us, and it's it really goes into a lot of like what are the benefits of being around water and why humans are drawn to it. Talks about we're in this blue mind where that we're peaceful and relaxed, and and then there's the red mind where we're stressed out, too much stimulus, we're moving fast, we're not relaxed, and if we're in that zone too long, we get into the gray zone, total burnout, total beat up. And then it's um just thinking about what do we do to maintain and be in that blue mind, and then that sometimes the dolphins he uses this, like there's dolphins in the water that you're out there swimming with. But for some reason, when we're in that really tense, like we're afraid, we're in that red zone going into that gray zone, that those dolphins look like sharks to us, right? So even the beautiful sweet dolphin looks threatening because of that story we've been roaming around with in our heads, and it's really hard on our nervous systems, and we go to that, oh, it's fear, fear, fear.

SPEAKER_00 13:16

You know, I I was reading a quote from Dr. Alan Woodfeld this morning, and and he says, our brains are wired to look for patterns and make sense of things. That's why we're often uncomfortable about things that can't be logically explained. And I was thinking about what you said about bringing a normalcy to grief. Um, I I say that quote all the time on this podcast in in everyday life. Probably got it from you, truth be told, back in 23. But you know, there's such a excuse me, there's such a um fear and an anxiety of one, talking to somebody that's grieving, um, and you know, afraid that you're gonna quote unquote trigger them. Uh, or two, if you're a grieving person, to talk to other people in fear that they're not gonna understand and reject you. Um, so talk to us just a little bit about the normalcy aspect.

SPEAKER_01 14:09

I mean, I love that. And I and I Dr. Wolfeld has had a huge impact on my life and career, and he's also from Colorado. And uh part of the work that I've done is to when I started out, was taking local teenagers that are grieving into the wilderness for a week. Right. And and I love that too, because we're out in the wilderness and we're away from everything. And here we are, a group of grieving teenagers, and myself and some of the adults, and there's no distraction, there's only us. And what's beautiful about that is you can't really hide yourself for too long. You can't go hide in some room. You're with a group of people, just like we used to be, small groups of people, deeply connected, shared sense of purpose, conversations happening, being physical and being outdoors. You start to see those conversations that come out, and just kids sitting in a group after they've hiked all day. Now they're feeling good, they're feeling connected, they're feeling safe. And it's you know, I've been holding this in my head, and I it's too painful to think about, and I keep on pushing it down, this thought. And it just keeps coming up, and that's this kind of this is the tension, right? And it's I've seen kids in the wilderness, one kid, his uh his mom and dad were alcoholics, severe and abusive. And he he got in an argument with his mom one night and she had killed herself. And the next day, dad says, Look what you did to your mom. Oh wow. Now he's not sharing that with anyone, yeah, he never shared it before. He's in our group in the wilderness. I'm like, I don't know if this kid is gonna make it out here because he won't stand in our circle. He won't even, he has like one foot in. And and what he ends up saying, because we we get to know him and he does share a story, and the other kids are talking about their affairs, and he's connecting and they're pulling him out a little bit at a time. He said he didn't feel good enough, he didn't deserve to be in that group because what he did to his mom. Right? That is we I'm so glad that he got to share that with us. And you know what? We don't in a peer support model, I don't really need to say anything. It's what the kids next to him start saying, No, that's not true. I can't say that. That's not the the our approach, right? It's to create that space and that peer support piece of it. When the other teen starts saying that, that has a profound impact. There's there's actually some research out there showing that if you want to make a difference in a in a teenager's life, peer support over counseling. I mean, counseling is great too. We're all different, we all respond to different things, but how many teenagers say, I don't ever want to go to counseling? Because they they see that there's a stigma. I might I don't want to go there, I might not like the person, but you get around a group of kids, and and I think you'll like this because we're talking about transformation. And it's one is what we share with kids, even five-year-olds. I say that because we don't we can't be afraid to have those tough conversations. It's education, but we can't be passive in our own healing.

SPEAKER_00 17:28

Well, and you talked about stigma. I mean, the stigma is that oh, something's wrong with me. Right. And it's like, man, there's something wrong with all of us, but we don't put the label of wrong on it. We just need to heal, we need to adjust, we need to, you know, focus on you know this area. And you're exactly right. We've we've put a lot of emphasis, Don and I, on this podcast on pure support.

SPEAKER_02 17:50

Yeah. And yeah, there's definitely uh, I think again, that connection, being able to make that connection based on the fact that you have a shared experience. Um, that and and a shared understanding of what you know it is that you're feeling, what what they're feeling. Um and that's what these kids are doing for the for each other, that a therapist may not be able to do, may not be able to make that same kind of connection.

SPEAKER_01 18:23

Normalizing's huge. Yeah, right. Yeah, and it happens in so many different ways. I mean, that's why we're all drawn to music, a lot of us. You hear someone sing something that you feel that you can't express, and all of a sudden everything opens up. And when we're talking about like what is what is the um at the Wilderness Therapy Symposium, a great event that I that I've attended for many years, not recently, it was in a workshop and uh or presentation, and and it was the the question was what creates transformation as far as programming is that and and it was two things novel situation and create an enriched environment. So we get kids out in the wilderness, we get kids outdoors somewhere, we get kids to come to an event for taps when there's a lot of things going on, a lot of community. That right there, they're out of their normal routine. Now they're in a place, and they're also nervous too. That's part of it. Like, I don't know if uh I'm gonna like the kids, even scarier, I don't know if they'll like me. I'm sitting here, I don't know what's gonna happen. So all of a sudden your brain starts to open up to be to you know to anything to your surroundings, to taking in information. So that's a novel situation. Enriched environment is us as facilitators what we want. Like, how do we come with this? We bring we bring an unconditional positive regard for the human being in front of us, right? They sense that, that's that safety. We're we're emotionally available, we're connecting, right? We're laying the groundwork, it's coming from compassion. Facilitators, we're creating that culture of compassion and and tough conversations. We're not afraid of tough conversations here, and when we do that right there, there's transformation can happen in a in a weekend.

SPEAKER_00 20:16

Just by creating the space. I mean, it's that's what's amazing is availability in the space. If you show up, you create the space, it'll happen. Yes. You know, I had a phone conversation yesterday. I was looking at my calendar and realized that uh a guy had been mentoring for the last couple of years. Um, his deceased son's birthday was coming up uh soon. And and I called him, I said, Man, I'd love to get together and have coffee with you. Uh, hopefully the day before, because I know he goes out to cemetery and it's hard for him. And he was sharing with me how they have a newborn uh son who's a month and a half old, and their oldest son is getting married in September, and how it's just been a whirlwind of you know, this whole aspect of joy around this new baby. Um, and then, you know, this whole aspect of the marriage coming up and all this change. And he took my phone call on the first ring, which he never does, usually he calls me back, and I thought, well, that's strange, that's interesting. And he's like, Greg, he's like, you are still the only person I can talk to about this because everybody feels like we're over it because we've got a new baby and life changes, a wedding coming up. And he said, I'm not over it. And and you know, I had to really just kind of listen to him and just provide this space uh for him to share. And then, of course, we're gonna reconvene over coffee here in a few weeks. But um, it's it's just interesting to me. We talk about the the children, the adults, it's not respective of person or age, just like you were saying, even a four or five year old might have this fear and anxiety of losing another person in their life. I still deal with that every single day, just for our listeners to understand. I'm 52 years old, and every day I struggle with losing. Another child or losing my wife. And it's a fear that I have to, for me, turn over to the Lord every single day. I have to surrender. I have to work through that. And I want people to understand that letting go doesn't mean that you're abandoning, you know, that loved one. If you let go of that, you know, thing that's holding you down or you know, whatever. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_01 22:27

Yes. I mean, I think it goes back to the difference between pain and suffering. You have someone that has just died in your life that you love, there's nothing. I mean, it's going to be painful. It just and it's tough. Like what Woolfeld says a lot is we're living in a pain-avoidant, grief-avoidant, mourning-avoidant culture. But then there's suffering. And the suffering could come on as far as now I'm obsessing about something that I can't control. And now that obsessing about it is really taking over my thoughts and my health. It's disconnecting me for other from other human beings. I'm making choices that are negative, that's negatively impacting my life. The the uh uh gaber mate uh on trauma, I don't uh I I really like his stuff, but he he says there's no such thing as addiction, there's only trauma. And and you think about that, like how much time to do we spend avoiding, and we go down a path that's not healthy, and we end up in much deeper emotional uh distress and there's much more of a mountain to climb out of or a hill to climb up. And um and I and I think it's what's so great about this is here we are, the most frightening thing we can experience is the death of someone we love, the death of a child, the death of you know, just so in our life as a child, the death of your parent or your sibling. And then our culture doesn't talk about it. The the challenge we have, like we do when our we do our camps, like we have volunteers that come in. And and if you are if you haven't done this much, you could say, oh, these kids are grieving so much, they're coming out here to have fun with us. They're not coming out for fun, they're back at home, they don't have anyone they can share their story with that will just listen to them. They don't have most of them don't have that adult that'll just sit there and is okay with the pain that comes out. So, really, they're coming out because they're hoping to meet some adults that aren't afraid of that tough conversation. And I think it's so much deeper than that because here we are, we live in this community, we're we are having tough conversations. Then you think about how much it improves our lives, how much it improves my life with Joel, my girlfriend, or my daughter, like to say, hey, they're walking in the door, what space am I creating? Is if there's a tough conversation, am I shutting it down? Now I'm emotionally not, they don't have me to talk to, and I'm very conscious of that now. And I really breathe, ground myself, what's going on?

SPEAKER_00 25:15

And if you shut them down that time, will they think twice the next time they come to you?

SPEAKER_01 25:19

Yeah, we're all doing that. I mean, that's our culture now. That's why we're so fragmented and we're reaching for this tech. And and in in my mind, um the the nature piece of it that I have been involved with for so long is like um the the workshops I do are healing and nature foundations of well-being. Being that one is we have to have the basics, like we could go to counseling, we could go to there, we could go to a big event, but if we're not drinking enough water, we're not gonna feel better. If we're eating a bunch of crappy food, we're not feeling better. If we're just spending too much time on our tech, we're not gonna feel better if we're not moving, if we're not getting sunlight. So get that taken care of. And then also, are we getting connection to other people? Are we have do we have friends where we can have those real, you know, those tough conversations and say, hey, I'm not, this is going on up here? That right there, because there's more than just grief, there's all the other things going on. I mean, when you're when we have someone die, there's bills, there's our relationships, there's our other children, there's our other, there's work, and it just in the words of the old soap opera, as the world turns, it never stops, there's always something going on, right?

SPEAKER_02 26:35

You know, Jason, as I think about the safe space that you help create in nature, uh, I have to wonder, and and maybe you've uh you can uh expound on this a little bit, but there's a lot of people I know that that don't feel very safe in the woods, um uh that wouldn't feel safe uh going with a group of grievers uh to you know open up and talk about uh themselves and and to listen. And uh and how how does that work uh for them? Because I'm sure that there are people that that do that, that that join you completely afraid. Um but somehow or another uh the nature is allows them for this safe space to open up.

SPEAKER_01 27:37

It's a game changer. It's uh nothing's more healing in my experience, the shift in the eyes and the in the body language um when you go out. And and I guess when I first started out this career, I was doing wilderness programs at Outrebound Um that were three weeks long, and then one week long for grief. And then it's like, what well, how is this piece of nature? How is it accessible to everyone? And and and now the focus is all of those are great programs. Like I'll work with kids and we'll be an hour out in the wilderness or out in nature in a park, right? And it's really focusing on what you have in front of what's accessible to you. It's not as scary when it's in your neighborhood, but then it's focusing on that one is realizing that kids right now are spending about five minutes a day doing unstructured play out in wilderness, out indoors, outdoors in 1980, nine years old, it was four to six hours. Now we see a decline in in well-being 2011, 2012, decline, increase in tech. Is it the increase in tech? Maybe. Is it the decrease in being outdoors? I think it is. I think we belong there and we've removed ourselves and put ourselves in. Um, but what happens is there is a perceived risk in the in nature, and then there's the actual risk. Now, what I'm saying is that just learn to spend time where you have access, that nature is around us, and we need to tune in. And so, what we'll do, like an example, and again, going back, this is for teens, and this is also for the veterans that we've been working with, that they're finding this effective. Uh, so much so that I was invited down to Fort Carson a couple years ago by someone that was um an explosives ordnance disposal saying, Hey, this is helping me. This this little accessible nature practice, and our and I'm using it with my men, which was fantastic. But just thinking about trees. Now, here I am, and I can go back to being that kid who was frightened and I'm ruminating. Negative loops, I'm afraid, I'm afraid, right? The world has become hostile. So that shouldn't work, that shouldn't be how it works for a four-year-old. World should be safe, so we could focus on other things. But now hostility is there. Like now I'm threatened, and everything's kind of triggering me. Then what we're doing is we say, Okay, let's walk outside. Look at this tree. Now you have this big beautiful tree. We always find one. Now, one workshop is all about one tree. So that tree is the world now, it grows. So we talk about, we ask the kids, well, what does this do? Well, it provides us oxygen, it provides us shade. And usually you don't think about like, okay, it also a lot of trees provide us food, fruit, nuts, right? There's vitamin C and pine trees. If we were really desperate and we needed something, they um the trees provide housing for animals, so habitat. They provide housing for us. Trees are getting friendlier and friendlier, like they take care of us, really. They are they are our guardians. And then then we dive in. They also produce something called phyton sides. This goes back to like forest bathing, which is in Japanese, it's Shinrin Yoku. Came out of the 90s in Japan, where they started using it as actually a medical treatment. The blood pressure highlights walk out into the forest with the nurse and measure. Okay. So, but the phyton sides, we're walking out, we're breathing it in, we're soaking it in. There's research showing that if we us three, we go out for a hike in the pine forest for half a day, we'd have a pro improved sense of well-being psychologically and physically for up to 30 days. Wow. Now, grief is disruptive, nature is healing. You don't have to be passive in your healing. You can walk outside, touch a tree. Now the kids walk outside and they see these trees and they go, Oh my gosh, I'm surrounded by something that's safe and cares for me. There's a sense of on it. So it's by association. We're flipping a switch.

SPEAKER_00 32:00

You know, as a as a product of the 70s that you and I are and Don't 60s, I think there's uh this whole aspect of you would think that we were used to being out in nature and we were used to getting on our swin bikes and you know, going down the road, and you know, maybe there would be a cowbell rung, you know, before at dinner time or something, and um, you know, whatever circumstance. But uh we were out for hours on end. And then I had horses when I was a teenager and we'd go trail riding and all this stuff. Um, you would think that that would be ingrained in people our age still, but I think that culture takes over and society takes over. And I still get out, like I know Don does as well, but I still get out and I walk a minimum of a mile and a half, two miles, if not three to four, a day. Um, I go down to the park, which happens to have gravestones in it. It's a cemetery, but it's a park to me. And I walk down there because it's hilly and it's got all different terrain, and and it uh it takes the ominous aspect of death uh out of the equation for me, because it's where my son's buried. Um, but I do find this whole aspect when you mention tech that it is becoming few and far between. And even when you talk about being grounded, like I talk a lot about that with uh my dads uh who are grieving uh about being grounded. Put your sit in a chair, put your feet on the floor, do breathing exercises. Um, it's amazing how much that has helped me with anxiety in my grief journey. Uh, but it's not anything that's common knowledge or taught or really expressed nowadays. It's just like you said, I mean, it's the tech. And um, hey, have you seen this Netflix show and that and all this stuff?

SPEAKER_01 33:41

Yeah, there's we I mean, we have wisdom. We know what's better for us, and we know it inside. And I and I think that there will be the pendulum will swing the other way. I mean, there is a movement, and there's hundreds, if not thousands, of studies coming out showing the benefits of of being in nature. And and I also say, Don, just to the the question you had when we go in the wilderness too, there is fear, and usually it disappears right away. It disappears, it's the fear of the unknown. But what replaces it is a sense of belonging, like you're a return home. Like I really think about nature is our home. Nature is our home. And right now we are homesick. We have a collective homesickness, we are collective grief, collective trauma. We have so much going on right now, so much we're being introduced to, and and what we don't want to lose is the things that make us human, and that is connection to each other, that's having tough conversations, not hiding everything inside your head like you've done something wrong, and to go out and breathe in the fresh air. It's power.

SPEAKER_02 34:51

Absolutely. And you know, Greg, you mentioned growing up in the 60s when you, Jason, said that it was four to five hours in the uh in the 70s or 80s uh that you were outside. I don't remember spending any time inside. I mean even in the winter, um, we our house backed up to woods. Um, and there are acres and acres. To me, it was like a playground. It was a magical uh playground that you know, in the winter we would ice skate on the creek that ran ran through the woods. Um but during the summer, I mean, it was just constantly being there, and and that's where I found my peace.

SPEAKER_01 35:36

Um you you it was right after you left. We went to Montana for the men's retreat. I think you've probably done one of those two. I haven't, yeah. Arthur Blink's Ranch, but it was it was and it was the crew that was out there, and you you know the military community mean there, there's some tough guys that have been in there, and right, and you and you know, I see them like, oh wow, you know, a lot of respect. This person's been through so much, they they seem tough as nails. And we we go out and we're at the edge of this wooded area, and there are grizzly bears in the area, and that's what's makes it so much fun. So we do have someone with us that has bear spray, but we we ended up doing some forest bathing with the these guys, and they're forest bathing, you know. And um, but we walk in, and the whole thing is hey, we're doing this in silence. It's kind of like the book uh The Lion, the Witch in the Wardrobe. I like to I love that book. Yeah, walk through the the wooded, you know, civilization, the house, the humans, and you walk out into Narnia. So I see this like here's a stick. In my mind, I'm creating kind of a Narnia visual. Like once you pass this, you're really in it. Once we walk past this stick, then we go silent. No one can talk, and we're gonna walk up this little valley, and I'm gonna point to a place and you're gonna sit down. So we're doing like a mini solo, mini time alone. They have their journals. Um, and we've already kind of gone through like really dig into your surroundings, what's around you, vision, smell, sight, or I'm sorry, uh hearing, um, touch. So we're walking up, and this is really like it's an hour and a half activity. It's like a half hour up, half hour sitting down and by this creek split up, 30 guys. And then after that half hour, we walk down in silence, and then we get down after this. This the look has shifted, the relaxation is there. Sit there in silence because no one wants to break it. And then all of a sudden, these guys they start crying. They start crying, and it's because they're like they're nostalgic. Like, this is where I used to go for feeling better, this is what it was. I'm back to being a kid again. So, what I found, what I've seen right now is like I'll have uh the adults in this presentation with the kids in these healing in nature breakouts. The adults are the veterans and volunteers, all ages, and then here's the kids. The adults that are a certain age group that have spent a lot of time in nature as kids, like we did, they're crying and tearing up because they know it's the truth and we were losing it. The kids are like fascinated because their DNA, they know we haven't taken out of their DNA that they belong out there. And and then you're just seeing this, but we're we know we we're we're the generation that put the tech in their hands, yeah. Right? People say, Hell, these kids these days, so it's our fault. We are also probably the last generation that spent our days all day long outdoors, no matter what the weather was.

SPEAKER_00 38:47

Yeah, it's like a reprogramming, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:49

And that's our responsibility to make sure that we don't lose that as part of who we are.

SPEAKER_00 38:59

I agree. Yeah, yeah. You know, in summation, folks, get out and let nature rub on you. That's uh that's what I like to say. Um, the thing that kept me alive a couple months after David died was uh a pair of binoculars and sitting on my back deck, it was cold outside. And there was a mother and a father barn owl that had two hatchlings, and I just sat there for hours on end just watching them in the nest and watching the the mother and the father fly back and forth, and it was just so mesmerizing. And I owe a lot to those owls, believe it or not, is crazy. Uh, but uh it was all about getting outside and just uh focusing on something else other than my problems. Say later.

SPEAKER_02 39:41

They imparted their wisdom on you.

SPEAKER_00 39:43

That's right. That's right. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 39:46

Well, we're done.

SPEAKER_00 39:46

Look up inner species loneliness, inner species loneliness, our disconnection from the the the the wild animals, and then that's grief.

SPEAKER_02 39:58

Jason, um, is there a any kind of pearl of wisdom that you would love to leave our listeners with?

SPEAKER_01 40:17

Don't be passive in your own human. Don't run away from tough conversations. Like Brandy Carlisle's one of her lines in one of her songs was the path of least resistance is catching up with me. And what I mean by that is grab on to what you need to do. Create healthy habits and healthy connections in your life. That's the foundation. Get outdoors, walk, take care of the basics first, because you can. That's it.

SPEAKER_00 40:53

That's good.

SPEAKER_01 40:54

Great.

SPEAKER_02 40:55

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 40:55

Very good. Well, Jason, thank you so much for uh coming on our podcast. We really appreciate it. I know our guests also appreciate it. There's a lot to glean uh from that today. So thank you, Don, as usual. And until next time. Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to listen. We hope turning grief into growth spoke to your heart and becomes a part of your own journey of healing and transformation. If you know someone who could use a little hope, please share this episode with them. And don't forget to follow, like, or subscribe on your favorite platform so you don't miss what's coming next. Don and I can't wait to share more conversations to help you keep turning your grief into growth. Until next time.