Outliving Dad: Reflections on Hitting a Deeply Personal Milestone

What if the man you were trying not to become… is the one who shaped you the most?

In this soul-punch of an episode, I go deep. Like, back to childhood trauma, legacy, addiction, fatherhood, and healing kind of deep. I open up about what it’s been like to outlive my dad—a man who struggled with addiction, who was both a shadow and a mirror in my life. This isn't just about grief. It's about identity, healing, and choosing a new path when the old one feels pre-written.

Whether you had a complicated relationship with a parent or you’re wrestling with your own inner battles—this one’s for you.

🔍 Here’s a taste of what’s inside:

• The surprising emotion I didn’t expect to feel the day I realized I had officially outlived my father
• How addiction isn’t just about substances—and how it quietly shaped my own behaviors and thought patterns
• The legacy we carry vs. the legacy we choose to leave
• Why healing doesn’t mean forgetting—and how you can forgive someone without excusing what they did

 #HealingFromTrauma #FatherhoodJourney #BreakingGenerationalCycles #EmotionalHealing #InnerChildWork #SobrietyStory #MenDoingTheWork #AddictionRecovery #SelfAwarenessMatters #OutlivingMyFather 

Want to connect with me directly? You can find me on all the socials @TheRealJamesDunn. I'd love to hear from you!

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Transcript

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James Dunn: Hello, Hello! And welcome back to the show today is going to be a very personal day, a very personal story day.

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James Dunn: I'm hoping that through the sharing of this story that you'll be able to learn some valuable lessons, some insights from my personal experience, which is really a lot of what this show is about. But today is a very, very specifically personal, important day in my life, and even tomorrow, I guess, would be a more important day. But these 2 days in particular have a very significant meaning in my life

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James Dunn: to just go ahead and jump straight into what this meaning is. My Dad lived 19,662 days on this planet Earth

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James Dunn: today is my 19,660 second day on this Earth. So as long as you are hearing this podcast because I still have to upload it, I have to get it sent out, and all that it means. I've made it through tomorrow

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James Dunn: when you're hearing this. Podcast. That means I have outlived my father now, many people outlive their father. But my dad died. I thought, at a fairly young age, 54 years, or just shy of 54 years old. That's where I'm at just shy 54 years old, and I did not realize this literally until just about an hour before recording this episode, that I now have officially lived longer of my life without my dad than I have lived with, and we're literally just a couple of days beyond that point, like one or 2 days. It's so weird how the fuck that

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James Dunn: timing matched up in life.

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James Dunn: But yeah, I'm at the point where I have now outlived my father and lived more of my life without him than I lived with him.

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James Dunn: My dad and I had a very, very challenging relationship at, you know, certain points of my life I've shared at the end, you know, during the intro of this

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James Dunn: podcast that I that I have right here. You know my dad was an alcoholic, you know he and I had many, many challenging nights, many challenging days. We did not see eye to eye on many things. He was a hunterman. Did you call him Hunterman? Just a hunter, a fisherman, outdoorsy kind of guy he loved. You know, all that kind of stuff working on cars traditional, you know, Guy, kind of things. I was not that traditional guy kind of kid I was not. I don't think

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James Dunn: in my mind I don't feel like I was the kind of kid that he truly hoped that he would have you know, from a son perspective I was more of. I'm into rock and roll music. He wasn't really into music.

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James Dunn: I was more into computers. He he never touched a computer to the best of my knowledge, in his entire life. I love traveling. I love doing all that stuff. He was a homebody.

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James Dunn: so we had very different perspectives on life on what got us excited, and we very rarely crossed over on one another in terms of liking something like even myself. You know, I grew up a huge Pittsburgh steelers fan, which I have to imagine some way somewhere, somehow, came from my dad watching football when I was a kid, but he didn't have a favorite football team. I don't remember him rooting for any specific team whatsoever. It just happened to be something that was on from time to time. I don't remember necessarily

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James Dunn: watching a football game with him, but I had to have had that influence from somewhere. And it wasn't my mom. So there must have been that connection literally as I'm sitting here thinking about the only time I can remember ever my dad and I, even talking about football, was when my Pittsburgh steelers got beat by the Dallas cowboys in Super Bowl 30.

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James Dunn: I was living outside the house. At that point I was living on my own, and he called me to rub it in, basically that the steelers got beat by the Dallas cowboys, and that's really the only connection I had there.

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James Dunn: But what I'm trying to get to is he? And I had this crazy.

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James Dunn: I don't use the word unloving. But we didn't have a great bond as a father and a son, but yet there are so many things that he did in his life that have shaped me into the person that I am today. I would not be here on this podcast today if he had not been so disconnected from me if I had not been so disconnected from him on many levels, and if he had not gone through his alcoholism and fought, you know that battle that he fought. If he had not been a certain disciplinarian that he was.

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James Dunn: and just even the way he carried himself around a lot of different things. I would not be the person I am today without him and his influence. And so it's really weird

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James Dunn: for me to sit here today and say, wow! You know I have now officially lived longer, or will have by the time again. This comes out as long as I make it tomorrow. Make it until tomorrow, and I wake up tomorrow. I will have officially lived longer than he has. As I'm sitting here today, you know, on the day basically, that he got to live his final life or day of life.

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James Dunn: I'm trying to compare our lives in a way, and it just boggles my mind. I'm having such a hard time wrapping my head around this concept because I feel so alive. I feel like life is just beginning. Obviously, I know I've lived many years I've had so many crazy and amazing, incredible experiences, and then some not so great experiences, but on so many levels. I still believe that life is just beginning. I mean, there are things that I'm just now starting to kick off that I'm looking forward to over the next 1015, 2030, 40, 50 potentially years.

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James Dunn: So it's really insane for me to sit here and think. Wow! This was his final day of life, and.

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James Dunn: as you know, I sit here and try and compare which we don't really want to compare. But as I try and compare my life to his life, thinking about where I'm at versus where he was at. It's it's night and day. In some areas, you know, there's some areas where he outperformed me or did better at certain things than I currently do or have done in my life. But there are other areas where I feel like I have so outperformed him.

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James Dunn: And and I could look at this and say it's because I'm just a better man than him, or that I am so much smarter than him.

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James Dunn: But if he hadn't done the things that he had done, I would not have had that basis to form my opinions on, and to maybe make some different decisions, because there were absolutely decisions that he made, that I can look back on. Say, Dude, that what were you thinking? Why did you do this? Why did you do that? Why didn't you do this, or why didn't you do that? And I have that expertise, or I have that hindsight because of the decisions he did or did not make.

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James Dunn: So

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James Dunn: I think you know what I want to try and get across in today's episode is you may have a great relationship with your parents, you may not. But whatever the case may be, as you look at your life.

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James Dunn: and you're trying to sort things out.

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James Dunn: I mean, this is a very common, very simple, very basic understanding of life. But use your parents as examples, understand that even if they weren't what you felt was like the best example, they were showing you what not to do, and so I'm not going to rag on my dad here. But

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James Dunn: let's just kind of go down that path a little bit for me. My dad was an alcoholic, and trust me, I had my fair share of drinking. When I was much younger I drank like a fish all the way, probably up through my mid twenties, maybe even early late thirties, and I've had little bouts of it since then, but I've always been extremely careful of when it got to a certain point. I never allowed it to control my life. My dad allowed alcohol to control his life.

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James Dunn: me being able to control my drinking to a certain level was because I saw him not be able to control his drinking

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James Dunn: me and my physical fitness that I have right now. I exercise 5 days a week. Exercise is an extremely important part of my life, not just for the physical part of it, but for the mental part of it, for so many things, for so many reasons, that I am very, very consistent with my exercise routine. But I can look back at my dad and say, You know, some of this comes from seeing how he lived his life on his 54.th But on this day in his life.

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James Dunn: He was basically in a wheelchair. He I don't even know for sure how much he could walk. At this point he was extremely

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James Dunn: What's the word I'm looking for? Bloated, bloated. He was extremely bloated in multiple areas. His life, I mean. His legs were swollen, his stomach, I mean. It looked like he was pregnant, I mean, he used to joke about it, and it was funny, but it wasn't funny.

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James Dunn: but he was extremely bloated, and just had such a hard time in life, and just physically couldn't do anything. He'd had multiple back surgeries.

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James Dunn: So, looking at so many things that he did or didn't do to take care of his body. That's why I take such good care of my body. I want to be a better father for my kids than he was for me in terms of the physical ability and the ability to be there for his grandkids. You know he literally died on my son's 5th birthday

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James Dunn: I made the vow that I want to be around for my grandkids is graduations, weddings, things like that. I want to be

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James Dunn: a father, a grandfather, somebody who is living a long, happy, healthy life, and not getting to be 100, but sitting in a wheelchair or being in a nursing home where people have to spoon. Feed me, and you know all that stuff, and I've joked about this before, you know. Sure I'll take the sponge bath from the hot nurses, but

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James Dunn: in terms of not being able to physically do anything else. For myself. I don't want to live that life. I want to be the active grandpa. I want to be the active father. I want to be that person that's around, and truly contributing to the joy and happiness of other people's lives for many, many years to come.

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James Dunn: and a lot of that comes from seeing what my dad did or did not do, and making choices different than him. He gave me those gifts.

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James Dunn: And again, so to be sitting here today saying, Wow, okay, this is where it all ended for him. Literally. He went to bed tonight and didn't wake up tomorrow. He died of congestive heart failure. It was 6, 7, 8. Something like that o'clock in the morning when I got the call from my mom and said, Hey, we're taking your dad to the hospital. And I, sadly, he had gone through situations like this before. I felt like it was probably a false alarm. I didn't even get in a rush. I took time to brush my teeth.

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James Dunn: got up to the hospital, and by the time I got there he was gone. You know they they gave me the opportunity to go into the emergency room and say my final goodbyes because he was going to be cremated and

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James Dunn: just have that moment of presence with him. But he was gone by the time I got there.

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James Dunn: but, as I said, I took my time.

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James Dunn: and not like taking forever. But it took my time because he had been through so many of these episodes where we'd had to take him to the hospital, or we thought maybe he was going to die. And so it wasn't a complete shock. And obviously, anytime your parent dies.

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James Dunn: It's surprising a little bit, but it wasn't a complete shock.

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James Dunn: but it still sucked, you know. Here my dad was just shy of 54 years of age, and he's dead.

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James Dunn: you know.

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James Dunn: Average life expectancy in the United States is somewhere in the mid seventies. Now, maybe when it was, you know he was around. It was low seventies, but he still got shorted out of 10 to 15 years of life. If he had made different decisions in his life.

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James Dunn: So look at your life. Look at how you're living your life. Are you looking at your parents or anybody else in your life? You know parental figure and

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James Dunn: living it based on what they taught you, either good or bad. You may look at them and say, Man, they're terrible. They're horrible, and I hate the fact that I had this person as a parent, or I despise them. I don't connect with them. I know people in my life that don't have any connection with their parents whatsoever, because of the terrible childhood that they had hopefully. That's not the situation for you. But if that is the situation for you. How can you look at that and actually see that it was truly a blessing?

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James Dunn: You know I I've shared this many times, you know I don't look back at some of the things that my dad and I went through together on the negative side. And

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James Dunn: and it's not like I'm excited about them. It's not that I would wish them on anybody else, but I can look back now and say, man, I'm thankful for those experiences because it shaped me. It made me the person that I am. It's helped me to become a better person. I would not be the person I am today, if not him, having done the things that he did. So we don't have to love the fact that we went through these things. You don't have to love the fact that somebody mistreated you. Somebody

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James Dunn: did certain things to you that were very uncool or just ignored you, or whatever it happened to be. We don't have to love those facts, but let's at least take some time to appreciate them, because if we spend all of our time sitting here being hateful, being angry being upset and focusing on how much that hurt us and how much that's damaged us. You can stay stuck in that loop, because that's the other thing I've seen too many times in my life. Too many people that I know

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James Dunn: have been stuck in that cycle for years, or even decades of their life, because all they can do is focus on what happened 10 years ago, 15 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, those things happened.

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James Dunn: Yes, we don't want to deny them. We don't want to belittle them. We don't want to ignore them, but they did not define you. They do not define who you get to choose to become. They were just events that happened in your life. They have no meaning except the meaning that you choose to give them today, now, maybe years ago, you chose a meaning and said, Well, this is what that means.

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James Dunn: You know. I looked back at those situations and said, Well, maybe it means I'm a piece of shit, because my dad literally called me a piece of shit before

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James Dunn: that. Mean I was a piece of shit. No, but in my mind, that's the story that I made up at that time. Now I can look back and say, Oh, man, I was living in a very hurt space. At that time I was living in a place of UN

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James Dunn: unhealing. I had not healed. I don't know how you'd say that, but I mean I had not healed. And so that's why I saw myself through that lens of that word that my dad said to me that day, even though he. Probably I honestly don't believe he truly meant it in as harmful a way as I took it.

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James Dunn: because of the the tone of the moment when it happened, it was more in a joking manner, but I still allowed that to seep into my being, because to me and everything that you say, there's some truth to it.

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James Dunn: but

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James Dunn: I can look now and say, You know, hey! He was hurt. He was hurting. He had never healed himself. He had never gone through his own thing. So, even if he did say it in a way that he truly meant it, I didn't have to accept it. I did not have to believe that I didn't have to take that in and absorb that as my truth.

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James Dunn: And I have now gone back and reevaluated that situation, and said, Hey.

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James Dunn: this may be even what he said and how he said it, but it's not how I'm taking it anymore. I'm taking it as it was a joke, but it wasn't. Doesn't fucking matter. I get to choose my reality. I get to choose how I want this to be

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James Dunn: stored in my memories, and how I want it to be stored in my body, and how I want to choose to use it moving forward in my life. And this is how I'm choosing to use it. So look at your situation. Look at your life, look back and ask yourself, is there a place where I'm

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James Dunn: holding on to these old negative feelings, and they're controlling me. They're dictating my actions.

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James Dunn: you know. I also used to feel like I had to have accomplished certain things by this point in my life

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James Dunn: there was a goal that I had set at one time of climbing count. I always want to call it count, because I loved Count Chocula. But Mount Kilimanjaro, I still want to climb it. But I felt this push, this need

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James Dunn: to climb it, or actually literally be on the mountain today when it happened so I could flip the script on what happened with my life versus what happened with my dad's life. I felt like it meant something to somebody somewhere, that if I'm on Kilimanjaro on the day that my dad and I crossed that path of how many days we lived.

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James Dunn: Then it means I'm a better person. I've accomplished more. I'm so much more awesome than him. Doesn't mean shit. Man doesn't mean shit to anybody. I'm the only person that was ever holding that judgment, holding that belief that if by this day that I have done this thing, that I'm a better man than him, or that I'm a different man than him, or I'm what the fuck ever I thought maybe there was in my brain

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James Dunn: doesn't mean anything

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James Dunn: means nothing whatsoever. So also look and see if you're holding on to any one of those type of

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James Dunn: feelings or beliefs that this is who I have to be to live up to some standard that my parents had for me, living or dead, even if they're alive right now, and they're holding a standard for you. You don't have to live up to any standard that they hold for you. The truth of the matter is, no matter if they show it, or if they don't show it, or how they try to show it, they love you just the way you are.

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James Dunn: Anytime they disagree with you anytime they try and point you in a different direction, or say something negative about what you're doing. It's because they love you, and they only want to see the best for you. They're trying to tell you, hey? I've been down this path, or I've seen this before. And this was my experience and based on what I've seen. This is what's going to happen if you try this thing, so don't go down that path

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James Dunn: now. You haven't grown up and having had a different experience. You're not necessarily going to have that specific outcome that they fear. Maybe you will. Maybe you won't.

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James Dunn: But that's why you're willing to try something.

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James Dunn: and it doesn't hurt to listen to their opinion.

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James Dunn: But if

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James Dunn: you truly believe in your heart of hearts, what you're trying to do is correct. Just go do that. They're still going to love you. You don't have to live up to their standard. You don't have to hold on to anything that they have set for you in your life, your path, your direction, especially as you get older and older and older.

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James Dunn: You know, if you're young and you're a teenager. Obviously, there's going to be a little bit more influence in there. If you're, you know, young and listen to this, podcast thank you so much, I love that. But as you get older and older older in life, their influence on you gets less and less and less, but again.

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James Dunn: take their take their information and see if it works for you because they love you.

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James Dunn: and that's really all that matters. I know my dad loved me. He had a fucked up way of showing it so many times. But having experienced life myself, having get getting to this point now in my life

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James Dunn: and experience it, I feel

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James Dunn: I don't say I've lived a better life than my dad, because there were definitely things he accomplished that were

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James Dunn: more substantial than me in certain areas. But there are absolutely areas that I've accomplished more substantial things than him.

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James Dunn: And I don't know where I was really gonna go with that whole thing. But

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James Dunn: just knowing that we don't have to live our lives based on somebody else's opinion, feeling like we have to outlive somebody, outperform somebody, outdo anything for anybody, especially our parents.

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James Dunn: But

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James Dunn: this was just conversation that I wanted to wanted to share with you some feelings. I wanted to get out there.

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James Dunn: because I know it had had a pretty heavy control over my life

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James Dunn: for many, many years, and it's only been in the last year or so that I've really started to let go of those feelings like I had to perform a certain way again, especially by this point in my life. I kind of went through it a little bit when my son hit 27, because again, that's when I told I was when my dad died.

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James Dunn: and so I felt like, well, when he turns 27. I want this to happen.

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James Dunn: None of that fucking shit matters, man.

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James Dunn: The only thing that really matters is right here right now, today, you know we talk about this.

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James Dunn: that the only true, the only real moment in life is now. There is no past, there is no future. There's only now there's always this constant and ever

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James Dunn: ever existing now. And so if you're focused too much on the past, and what happened in the past, and why you need to live up to some past expectation of somebody, especially if they're no longer here. You're wasting your time. If you're living up to this idea of what you have to be in the future, what somebody is going to expect of you in the future. You're wasting your time there as well. Just live your life for here, for now, for today, yes, plan for tomorrow and yes, learn from yesterday. But live your life for here now today. Focus on being happy today, because the more time that you spend being happy today.

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James Dunn: the more tomorrows that you are hopefully getting to experience, the more of those are going to be happy, and the more happy your life's going to be. It's going to be a much better experience for you.

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James Dunn: So

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James Dunn: yeah, I don't know what the fuck else to say. Man, I I just I just want to share this message. Would you hope it resonates with you? I hope that whatever situation you've had with your parents, that

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James Dunn: it's it's a good one, and that

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James Dunn: you can learn from their mistakes. But live your own life, be happy on your own terms, and not allow anything that they've said or they've done, or expectations they've had. Dictate your life because it's yours and yours alone. I'm gonna shut the fuck up now, but get out there. Have an amazing fucking day, and I'll see you next time.