Faith, Mental Health, and Finding Light in Darkness: A Tribute to Uncle Sammy

In this deeply personal and heartfelt episode of What’s the Word, Jaime opens up about grief, mental health, and the power of faith during life’s toughest moments. 

Dedicated to beloved Uncle Sammy, Jaime shares his story of sensitivity, struggle, and love, and explores how faith and connection can help us navigate pain and loss. With a focus on Mental Health Awareness Month and Men’s Suicide Awareness Month, this episode invites listeners to embrace vulnerability, find hope, and remember: you are never alone. Join Jaime for a walk and a conversation about love, forgiveness, and leaning into faith as a vital form of self-care. And a special bay area Paddle out will be on July 12, 2025. If you are local - please join us!

Here are some resources:

Chat or call: 988 for immediate support

1-800-662-HELP (4357)

https://www.nami.org/

1-800-950-NAMI (6264)

And a recent article I wrote to honor him and those who struggle. Sending my love and support xo 

https://growingupsc.com/local-legend-honored-in-wake-of-mental-health-struggles/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hi, welcome to What's the Word. I'm your host, Jamie McFadden. I'm so excited to have you here. This podcast is all about faith, self-care, and the journey of parenthood. I will be interviewing some of the most inspirational people I know, so join me and let's grow together on What's the Word. Hello, and welcome back to What's the Word. I am your host, Jamie McFadden, and I am very excited to have you here. Today is a very special, sacred episode. This episode is may get me in tears, may hopefully leave you feeling hope and a renewed sense of faith despite life's incredibly tough situations. So real quick trigger warning here, we are going to be talking about mental health and this episode is going to be dedicated to someone that I love dearly who unfortunately I had planned on interviewing and is no longer here with us on this earthly planet and Interestingly enough, I'm going to share with you, I recorded this podcast about a week ago, and I didn't realize as I recorded it that the internet was going in and out. So this is a re-record, which I've never done before, but I look at that as a sign and an indication that maybe that wasn't the time, that wasn't the episode, this is the episode. So we're here now. I encourage you and invite you, if you have a pair of shoes, get them on, get outside, Put your headphones in and let's go for a little walk together. If that's not accessible to you right now, all good. No worries. You can actually do this anywhere. So what's the word? This resurrected version of the podcast, right? We had this podcast going back in 2020 during the pandemic, during another dark kind of phase of life for many people. And the premise of the podcast back then was all about inspiration. And now it is still very much about inspiration, but in a much deeper way, in a much bigger way, I have had the biggest of my life up until this point, the biggest spiritual awakening that occurred in my life about two years ago. And it has made things abundantly clear for me in ways that I never understood fully before. God's in charge. And the element of surrender and also the element of faith in our lives is the greatest form of self-care. So you probably know me through some variation of the self-care and the fitness and all those things that I've done for the last 20 years, which, interestingly enough, came about after losing my own father at a teenage years age. very pivotal time in my life. And when he passed away, it changed everything, changed my entire life. And it made me at some point take the pain from that experience and turn it into my own purpose. So today we're kind of doing that same thing. The word of the day. So what's the word had the premise of, I always used to use a word of the day for my workouts. And as I launched this podcast, it was all about a word of the day to focus on, similar to those workouts. Well, now part of these words are going to be scripture and part of these words are words. And today I feel very compelled to share Proverbs 3, 5, and that is trust in the Lord, with all your heart. Lean not onto your own understanding. In all your ways, submit to him and he will make your path straight. Essentially sharing that we live in a world where so many of us feel the burden, the full responsibility, the pressure, the unshakable weight that might be on our shoulders at any given moment. And society does a great job of making that feel like it is 100% true. And as much as I do believe that, yes, we are responsible for our wellbeing, we are responsible for taking action towards preserving or enhancing our health our entire life, when we think about having faith, that means in the most tough and challenging trying of times, we cannot look to our own understanding, to our society's understanding, to what our parents told, we need to put that faith in god and we need to have unshakable faith for when the hardest of times will come to light so this episode today is is about that it's a solo episode so i'm not going to take up too much of your time today um But it's very important that we talk about this. It is May as I'm recording this, and it is Mental Health Awareness Month. Every year, it falls in May. And surprisingly, but not surprisingly, the following month, which is June, also happens to be Father's Day, also happens to be Men's Suicide Awareness Month. I didn't want to say that incorrectly, and I believe that's the correct verbiage. And men are... more likely than women to act out on suicidal ideation. And this is very difficult for my entire family, for our community, for every person that my Uncle Sammy's life touched. And I'm also very aware that this is one of many times that this situation will happen. And my hope of this specific podcast is to continue to take a step, take a stand, to raise more awareness towards mental self-care, towards, as my daughter would say, emotional wellness, and to pay tribute to one of my very favorite humans of all time who inspired me to do what I'm doing right now, who inspired me to be who I am today, who was the man that literally would come and take my yoga classes, even if he had never taken yoga before, and he would just embrace every moment of the journey with whoever he was with in that present time. And there's something to be said about that. So my Uncle Sammy, was definitely one of the most sensitive men I've ever met. And I say that, and I hope that you can hear it in my voice, with the most loving way. I, too, am a very sensitive being, and I at times wish more humans could feel more compassion and empathy and sensitivity towards one another, animals, even bugs, even spiders, whatever we want to say. And comes with that you feel a lot and you feel deeply. And a long, long time ago in my life and my journey, I went through a very dark and deep depression as a child. And my Uncle Sammy was one of the very few people that stood by me with love and compassion and actually is somebody who, without really knowing it, was a huge pivotal reason for how I was able to get through that very dark time in my life and for me that's what makes this experience so difficult so the people who have so much sensitivity and light and love and wear their heart on their sleeves also sometimes are met with People pleasing and lack of boundaries and having a difficulty asking for what they need. And this is imperative right now that I hope this will resonate with at least one person today to know that number one, we are not alone. You are not alone. I am not alone. We are eternally connected. I believe that with every part of my heart, my soul, my body, my ethos, everything. I believe that we are all connected. And I have always believed that from a very young age. I feel a knowingness of that. With that being said, life happens. Things get tough. We go through dark times. we get hurt, our heart might break or ache. And sometimes the dark stuff in life can weigh us down so much that people go into different states that they may have never experienced before. And in addition to that, you can feel very isolated and alone in those moments. And so my uncle, who reminds me very much of the story of Robin Williams, who What an incredible, magnificent comedian who made every single person in the room basically pee their pants because they were laughing so much at the things that he would say and share and do and embody. And at the same time, he was struggling with his own mental health so deeply. And it's almost this classic case that I hope through this experience that my family, unfortunately, is enduring right now i hope that the light and the darkness is that we can raise awareness to these types of conversations and so if you're hearing this right now number one the biggest takeaway i hope you get from this is that you are not alone you are not alone and that also means neither is the person next door neither is your brother your sister we are all connected so therefore if you are in a position right now in your life where you are feeling good strong stable Like you're riding the waves in a good way. Well, then that means that this is your opportunity and your calling. I, God, we are calling you right now. Go be there for somebody else. Pay it forward. Because I think you and I both know there's a lot of people right now that are hurting. And I do believe it is part of our human kindness to be there for each other. So we're not alone, number one. And if you feel alone, I'm going to put any and all resources that I can come up with in the show notes. So please make sure that you check those. I also want to continue to be a beacon of light in any and all ways that I possibly can. So if you're hearing this right now and you feel compelled to reach out to me personally, please do. I will do my best to respond to you, to show up for you in the way that I can with the capacity that I have now. Mental health is a very complex and layered situation. I'm not a clinical psychologist. I have had worked with many therapists and I have been in all sorts of systems for mental health for many different times and spaces and years in my life. And at the same time, I also believe that the deepest root that we can lean into is like it said in Proverbs 3, 5. not our own understanding. Some things in life are literally not going to make sense. And when we can understand and acknowledge that, and when we can actually believe and put our faith in that, that there's going to be terrible things that happen. There's going to be pain and suffering. And it is our responsibility to continue to have faith, to continue to show up, and to take one step at a time to pick up the pieces and be there for each other through it all. So my uncle Sammy was that person for everybody. And that's also what makes this so difficult is he was the ray of sunshine. He was the guy at the grocery store that would compliment anyone around him. He would be telling the best, funniest jokes, one-liners. He would be playing funny, goofy pranks on people. Like the one time when my grandma has a room, Yaya has a room that is completely white. We call it like the set of the Golden Girls. It's like white carpet, white, you know, 1950s sofas. They're not covered with plastic. She said she would never do that. But anyways, my Uncle Sammy one time put... He goes, oh my goodness, look what happened in here. And he had put these ketchup and mustard bottles on the white carpet that were spilled everywhere. But they were fake. And it was hysterical because, of course, my grandmother was like having a conniption and goes in and everybody's laughing, right? So that was... so much of who he was. He also, and I have to share, this was the biggest thing that he had taught me my entire life about us all being connected eternally is he believed that there are two types of people. He would share this with me anytime I was with him, but also it would come up in conversation. Anytime I brought a friend around or a boyfriend or anybody, he would always say, there's two types of people. There are eagles and there are seagulls. And he'd say, now eagles are They're a very majestic bird. They're an independent bird. They live alone. They hunt alone. They are incredibly intelligent. They're intellectual birds. They have a beautiful big wingspan. They can travel for miles and miles alone. They like to stick in their nest and da-da-da, whatever else, right? Very amazing birds. And then there are seagulls. And the seagulls are loud and yappy and scraping off food off the ground and they're, you know, arguing and fighting but then they're together and you don't really see seagulls by themselves you see seagulls in a flock with a group and a whole bunch of them and sometimes the seagulls actually irritate and can bother the birds like the eagles and at the same time they're always together and he would follow up by saying we in our family this big Greek family that I come from we are seagulls And we all survive and thrive in this world by understanding that no matter what, we're all connected. The eagles and the seagulls are connected. We're all connected. So how can we learn to best love and embrace the seagulls and the eagles? And interestingly enough, I just have to share this because I do believe that this has to do with faith and believing in the signs that God may bring to us. Shortly after Uncle Sammy passed away, well, actually, the day after he passed away, we all go to my grandmother's house, Yaya's house. A bird flies into her house. Now, his theory was about birds. He also was the person that any time he was around a young child, so one of my kids, anybody's kid I know, he would pick up the kid and go, look at the birdie, look at the birdie. Even if there was no bird or not, he would That would be kind of his thing was like, look up, look up, always look up, right? Look around. And he also did the most incredible Donald Duck voice of anyone that I knew. And so birds, right, have been something for me with him. And so after he passed, that next morning, a bird flew into my grandma's house, and then my cousin was able to get the bird. in her hands and bring the bird out. And then we realized that bird was a mama bird that had three eggs in a nest, nesting inside of my grandmother's wreath on her front door. Immediately, I felt the spiritual presence of my uncle Sammy in the bird situation. And then one week later, after his service, we went back to my grandmother's house. And I went to the front door because I kept checking the birdies, the baby birdies. They were so tiny, these little tiny baby birdies. And that day, all three of those birds, I got to watch two of them actually fly. They all flew out of the nest that day. The day after the burial, they flew out of the nest. And then, a couple weeks later, a new pope takes position. Guess what's all over the news articles? All over. Globally. there was a couple seagulls in the image of when the white smoke was coming out, there were two seagulls there. And I'm sorry, but I've never seen seagulls in the news like this before, talking about the Pope and seagulls. And the spiritual connection of freedom and flying and reverence for this experience and our soul and this journey. So once again, today, I hope that you can think about your mental health, your wellbeing, and the people in your life that have been there to support you and the people that you too can support. My uncle, like I said in the beginning, was very sensitive. And towards the end of his life, when he developed some mental health struggles in the last few years, wasn't his whole life in the last few years where it got really hard and really dark, he would say things to me in confidence about feeling so alone and understanding that he, you know, doesn't know or doesn't see the faith that he once did. And it's very sad. It's very sad to know that so many people in this world, like my Uncle Sammy, who are lights and rays of sunshine, will get to a point at some point in their life, potentially, where their mind is convincing them and we can look at this in many different ways, I do believe that it is the dark side. I do believe in light and dark. I do believe that when we allow those things to happen over time, like any sort of compound effect that can happen, we start to believe in the dark side. We start to believe, let's say there's two voices, you know, one on each shoulder. We start to believe those negative voices and those negative things. And I wish so bad that there was something that I or any of us could have done. I know we're all when you go through an experience like this, you reflect upon it and wonder what else you could have done or what could have been done differently. And I know that's bargaining in the line of grief. And by the way, if you're going through any kind of grief in your life, please reach out and also know that in that you are not alone as well. We are not alone in this journey, and we need to remember we are interdependent beings, meaning we work together like the eagles and seagulls. We are here to support one another instead of tearing each other apart, and we do live in a world where so many of us are feeling torn apart. So what my uncle instilled in me that I will pay forward for the rest of my life in tribute and honoring of him is is no matter how hard things get, we have to have faith. In fact, he came to me in a dream. I'm going to read what he said because I think this is what I could leave you with. Shortly after he passed away, he came to me in a dream and he said, he made it so clear in this lifetime, we all, all of us need to work on really loving, understanding what love is and forgiving. On supporting one another through love. How difficult is that sometimes in life when you've got some people in your life that are difficult or you're in a tough situation? It's very difficult. But it reminds me very much of the teachings of Jesus. Of being careful. Once again, going back to what he said. Being careful with our words. I wrote this at like three in the morning. I'm reading it from my phone right now because I don't want to forget it. Of being careful with our words sometimes. Be careful with your words. Be careful with your temptations. They are everywhere. Learn to love a simple life. Love a simple life. God, nature, family. Those are the three things. God, nature, family. That. Be honest. I put honest in all caps because he made it very clear, very, very clear that he had struggled with being honest with himself sometimes about the things that he actually needed and the things that were very difficult for him to face. Being honest with ourselves, being honest with others about our feelings, our needs, our dreams, and having a deepened faith. He also did express in the dream, and I remember waking up hysterically crying, he expressed in the dream that he held onto so much pain and he had hopes that those around him and in this world from this experience will forgive and also find the faith that he lost when i woke up and i wrote this down too i woke up crying hysterically and i asked him to keep giving signs that he is here i promise him that i will be here for and this is something i wrote to his sons and we will serve his mission And so the overarching theme, this is very interesting because it's such a dark thing that our family is going through right now. And I also want to be respectful to everyone in my family. We all deal with grief differently. So I really hope that this episode brings light to something that is dark, but also the reminder that these are real things that are happening in our world, in lives that maybe look from the outside like everything's okay. I can't tell you how many people Thousands of people came to his service and so many of them came to me and said, I had no idea he was struggling so bad. And that is a common theme we hear with mental health. Why? Because it still has a big shameful stigma around it that toughen up, be stronger, all of these things. That is not how this works. So please, if you're hearing this right now, if this is resonating with you, number one, in this lifetime, he said, work on really loving things. He said love numerous times in this. Love. How can we love? How can we support? Give yourself some love today and then go share that love with someone else. Forgiveness. Be it for you or for someone else. Both. But where can we work on forgiveness and how can we do that? Through prayer, through meditation, through actively saying to someone, I'm sorry. Will you forgive me for saying I forgive you? I am here showing up. Be the change. It's not about us pointing fingers at what could have done or what should have this and da da da da da. But it's literally about taking in life experience and you can use this hopefully in your own way in some way, shape or form. My Uncle Sammy was the definition of light and love and joy and someone that I just I had one of the greatest relationships with for my entire life. And he is no longer here in this form as a human and it's tragic and I'm heartbroken in many ways that will be a change in my life forever and at the same time I know the love that he shared and gave was real I know and it was not just with me it was with so many people the way he loves his children the way he loved my grandma my mom his sisters his brothers he showed up in love and he also struggled with his mental wellness. And then sometimes the systems are broken. Sometimes we need to go outside of the box. Sometimes we need to think about things differently. So when it comes to your own mental health and wellness, please today, check in. Check in with yourself. Remember when things are tough, you may not be able to understand the hows and the whys of something that's happening the way that it is. And maybe it's not for you to understand fully, but it is for you to still continue to have faith and to take a step forward and to show up in love and do the best that you can. So I am your host, Jamie McFadden. I am so grateful for you being here. Thank you for listening. I hope that everyone... I wrote an article about my Uncle Sammy that just came out in the magazine that I write, and it was hard for me to read. You know, right now I'm in a strong day, right? But I also have experienced... grief and darkness and i also know that this is part of the process in life to remind us again that we're not alone and we also it's really important to be vulnerable and to open up and to share and to find safe spaces where you can do that so this is a reminder you are enough you are a child of god you are a beautiful being And I'm honored and thankful to be here with you. about forgiveness, about love. So I hope this gives you a little bit of inspiration through the darkness and also the reminder of having these kind of conversations. Check in with yourself, check in with people. There is support all over the place when you ask for it. And the greatest of all is through our faith. Thank you so much. And I look forward to seeing you in our next episode. Please be sure if you If there's anybody that you would want to share this with, please do. If there is comments or something that you want to share, questions you have, please reach out to me. And yeah, just keep taking care of yourself. Thank you so much and have a beautiful day.

UNKNOWN: 27:14

Bye.

SPEAKER_00: 27:14

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