Behind The Podcast

His name is Randy Magray he's with Duck, Duck Productions, and he's the genius behind making it sound like Marshall and I are in the same room when we do our recordings, Randy.

And Steve and Stanley, and I met one time for about two and a half or three hours at our office. And the idea about maybe we should be doing a podcast. Let's see where this goes. Well, here we are a couple of months later, and in the meantime, everyone knows the COVID hit and we're like, yeah, let's do, we can do this, you know, USB microphones, technology, little garage band action, and we can make this happen. So just so you know, Steve and Marshall have learned how to do all this on the fly.

And I think you'll agree that the results have been really fantastic to be able to not only get over all the hurdles that we faced with technology, but to pull together not being in the same room. It's hard to have a dialogue when you're not actually sitting in front of somebody like you would around a dinner table or across the living room couch.

So kudos to Marshall and Steve for being able to pull this all together and make something that's really meaningful and really impactful so great job guys.

I think I might know the answer, but I haven't heard the story. So why don't you share that with us?

And of course we never dealt with that before because we never needed to deal with grief and she saw grief share and she goes, I have no idea what this is, but it starting in two weeks. And I said send whoever's running grief share an email and sign us up one or two things are gonna happen either we're going to go and we won't think it's helpful and we'll shake hands with these people, saying thanks for helping us, but it's not for us or we'll find it very helpful and it could help us a lot.

And I will tell you from the day we first went and met Steve and Shelly, they could not have been nicer, more caring, more concerned, more compassion. I've said this before in prior episodes. The thing that really stuck with me is that Steve went up and he started out by saying, how many of the people here have taken courses in grief. In a course, everybody was looking around and nobody raised their hands. Like who in the world would want to take a course on grief if you didn't have to?

It wasn't in Casablanca with, uh, the last line with Humphrey Bogart at the beginning of a beautiful friendship. That's sort of what it was. You know, if you see the last line of Casablanca, I think that was it. But Steve and I have become very good friends.Shelly and debbie have become very good friends.

And they've been a role model for us to see how you survive and thrive grief in general, but also be I'll be blunt here also the loss of a child or an even more specific loss of a son, because we all, we all have that in common. So that's really how I met Steve and how he's really been such a guiding light to me, to Debbie on our journey through grief.

And then one day we're having coffee. We're grilling out where out to eat. We're what are we doing when we say you know, I think we should do. I think we should do a podcast.

And I knew that the first podcast that I did was me just talking about map, but I knew the first guest that I was going to have on the podcast. It was going to be Steve because the podcast specifically dealt with the issue of Matt's passing, but it's obviously a subset of the larger grief journey. And I did 13 different episodes.

And I'll tell you that Steve did such a great job as a guest, as my first guest second episode, that I had many people say boy that Steve guy was a very sharp, very well spoken, very credible guests that gave us a lot of interesting and helpful points.

And when I finished the 13 week podcast, it was time for me to take a break because it was a little bit emotionally draining because I had many wonderful guests that all had lost, loved ones to suicide, and they were wonderful to open up on a podcast that they knew was going around the world. We had people from Brazil, Ireland, Germany, England, China, Laos, Cambodia listening to this.

And these people knew that this was going to be worldwide statements they're making about their lost, loved ones. So I decided to take a break from that podcast. And during that time, Steve and I went to lunch and actually it was his idea to do a podcast together. So I want to throw it back to Steve because actual the actual idea for this podcast was Steve's. So Steve, you can tell about our lunch. I think that'd be the next part of the story.

And I thought about it all the way through December through Christmas holidays. And I said, you know what? I talked to Shelley and I said, I want to ask Marshall to go to lunch and see if he would consider doing a podcast. And so we met, I met him in his office, we talked for a little bit, we walked over and had lunch and I threw the question out and said, what do you think? I'm not sure what he thought right out of the gate, but my idea was it's hard to talk about what Jordan died from.

Cause there's not as large of an audience. And I think eventually run into the same thing when you're looking at suicide. And I thought, what if we did it and focused on grief in general, and there's a lot of different directions and topics that we could get into.

We already have listeners in the few short episodes that we have already from different places in the world. I mean, why do you want to talk about grief? And I want you to answer this from the perspective of, I lost my son. If you've already been through a couple episodes, you've heard those stories in those tragic stories. But what about you now makes you want to talk about grief because for many people, they're just saying, forget this. I don't want to talk about it. I'm already living it.

So why would I talk about it? And I think it's important for people to know what's behind your desire or both of your desires to, to want to talk about this?

My mother's grave site was going to be next to him and we got Matt's grave site very close to them. And Debbie and I, you can't believe that you're looking at your son's final resting place. And I, I was very blunt about this and I said, we got three options here. Number one, and I wasn't being funny, I said, some people will say, I'm good. I'm going to join my son and that happens. And I never wanted to do that, but I know that has happened to other people throughout history.

And I said, I vote no on that one. The second option was to live, but I said being the walking dead. It's not what I wanted to do. By that,I mean, people are unable to lead a productive, meaningful life due to the grief that just freezes them forever. I didn't want to do that. The third option was to lead the best productive most meaningful life we could. To honor Matt, because he'd want us to do that.

But the absolute key to that was helping other people deal with their grief because we knew we had to deal with grief head-on and we felt that not only helping us deal with grief by helping others. We would also hopefully actually help others. And I obviously that's for the listening artist audience to decide whether we're successful at it, but it won't be for lack of effort on our part. So it's a double edged sword.

I want to help myself through my own grief process by making Matt proud, but the end goal is helping others. Through their grief process and again, that is to be determined whether we're successful or not. And hopefully, people that maybe I'll never, I'll never meet. Maybe people I'll never hear of will have gotten something out of this podcast that helps them. You know, there's an old Jewish saying that for a person to save one other person, it's like they say the whole world.

Itt's almost, it's not the quantity. It's the quality. If you can say one life in the Jewish religion, it's comparable to saving the whole world. So if I can save one person's journey through grief with this podcast, I'll be a happy camper.

Cause that's as bad as it gets, you can't figure out how to even get back to where you were. I couldn't do anything. We were ....sigh, it was horrible. We cried all the time or we didn't want to eat, or we didn't want to sleep or you couldn't slee or you woke up in the middle of the night, you woke up early and then it's like, what do I do now? It was, it was horrible.

And we were blessed to have a few people lead us through a grief class that grief share like, well, Marshall mentioned Shelley and I leading, well, we had leaders when we went the first time and it felt better and we went back again and it felt better. And we wanted to go back again. And after the third time, We were going to sign up for a fourth time and they said, no, if you're going to sign up again, you're going to have to help. And we're like, we can't help anybody.

And they're like, we think he can. And so that's how it started. We had people that we mirrored them. We went into the different groups with them. They taught us, we listened we started to heal and I can't describe. So we, we weren't leading. We were just first time facilitators. And when we finished that first group, when we saw those people walk out and we remember what they look like when they came in that first week.

How horrible they looked, how awful they felt, some of them cried all the way through that first session and then how they walked out of there. That was helpful. It helped us because we weren't, it wasn't because of us, but we were there and we'd like seeing that. And then we did that three or four times more. And we realize you do get help in your grief by helping others, because you remember what it was like to be like that.

It might be the last thing you want to think about that maybe I'm strong enough to do this because, Hey, we've all had that feeling before. We're, wouldn't it just be easier to just give up and say the heck with this and just not meet this head-on just ignore it. And we know what happens then it's, you know, it's your, your vice of choice, whether it's pills or booze or other things, or just deep, dark depression.

But you're saying that you have hope that others find that same confidence in themselves that you see in them, right?

And we're all trying to figure out what that is. And none of us think we're strong enough to get through it. And it is a step by step a day by day, some days it's a breath by breath moment. Because you just have to remember to breathe. It is that is that difficult.

You've been through the grief and she's 10 years old now and people will still come up and ask you the most horrifically ignorant questions that you could possibly imagine. And the first part of you, at least as a dad, I'm not going to speak for my wife because she's not in, she's not a violent person, but you know, I just want to punch him in the throat and go, where have you been living? Right?

This isn't an appropriate question to ask, but in grief and all these things that we feel that way to get through to the other side, where you can just say, if I don't make a change, In myself that I can help somebody else understand this. Then this just perpetuates, right? When none of us get better, none of us grow. None of us do anything positive with this. And what's the point in that? So, I can't imagine Steve and Marshall to get to that point.

With losing, you know, if I lost one of my girls, I can't even imagine working through what you guys have worked through to get to where you are. And that's, I mean, that gives me hope that there are people like you that have made it through this process. You've realized what it takes and now you're wanting to give back. I think that's, I think that's amazing. Marshall, did you have something with like you were....

You know, it's interesting cause Debbie said something about a year or so after Matt passed away. And she said that she realized that grief was going to be a permanent resident in our house who was never going to leave and that she decided to make friends with it. By that you can try to avoid it as you mentioned, by doing self destructive things, or you can realize, you know, people ask when it's grief?

And, for me, the answer is never it'll end when I take my last breath, but I'll grieve Matt for the rest of my life, but that doesn't mean I can't live a productive, meaningful, significant life, helping other people.

I just think it's great that the outpouring of that realization has become grief share that you guys are working with and helping people with. And now another outpouring of this, of your friendship is this podcast and I think it can be a way that if you're listening today and you know someone, if you're going through grief and you know, someone that's going through grief, this is a great place where people can just tune into the conversation.

They don't have to take that first step into the room to grief share. Not everyone might be strong enough to make, I'm going to pull that door knob. I'm going to open up and I'm going to expose myself to everybody, but maybe this is a good starting point. Let these ideas and let someone who's been there before you. And who's gone through all that darkness and then is now using it to help you. This is a good place to, as a kind of a step in the right direction.

And so I hope that, you know, for someone that's listening now, Definitely share this with someone that needs it desperately, because this is a lifeline that is not so much in your face. It can just be an easy, Hey, I found this great podcast and I was really blessed by it. And I think you might be too. It can be totally not a, you know, it can totally be a little sly if it has to be, but they'll thank you for it later. I am sure of that.

So when you guys started the podcast, you know, you always start something with it. Like, who am I going to help? Or what am I going to talk about? Who's going to listen and why are they going to listen? So we've got a couple episodes and, you know, we have, we have analytics, we have different things that we can see behind the scenes as to who's listening. When they're listening, how they're listening. Are you a computer listener or do you listen on your mobile device or are you.

I know we have people that listen on their watch. I'm sure that might be Steve while he's out running and the oppressive Florida heat. So we're getting your numbers counted there, Steve. So keep, keep that going. But who did you have in mind as your target audience, people that you really felt you wanted to reach out to, to make an impact, to change a life, to provide support, or just provide a resource for someone who again, could share it with somebody else?

Who are those people that you were, that you were looking at when you were thinking about the body?

At the time we were talking about the podcast, they had lunch that they would be our audience because they have not had their loss. And you live on this planet long enough one of two things are gonna happen. Either you're going to die and people will grieve you or you're going to live and people you love are going to die and you're going to grief them guaranteed...guaranteed. We're all here a short time and the idea is to make it the best time to help other people.

So from my standpoint, the target audience was people that don't even know that the target audience, because they haven't had the loss they would then make them the target audience in the sense that they don't need to deal with grief who in the world would want to listen to a podcast about grief, unless you lost somebody. It's just not going to happen, but look at the world. The one certainty that I learned after Matt's passing is the world's uncertain.

I'm certain that the world is uncertain because I lost my son. So when we talked about our target audience, we had no idea we'd be here five months later with a worldwide pandemic taking lives, where people are socially isolated and cannot grieve with loved ones as has been done by the human spirit. For thousands of years. So we didn't plan this out, but if ever the world needs a podcast about grief, unfortunately it would be in today's society.

And he said, but had I known that the last time I went to the facility to see her. He said, I gave her a hug and I told her I loved her and that I'd see her again soon. And I'd come back to Florida and then go back up. She lived in Indiana and we're making another trip up to see her in a couple of weeks. The next couple of weeks, when that opportunity came up, well, guess what? Now you can't go see her and her husband of nearly 60 years or it was 65.

I'm not sure, but law life long, they got married young. He watched her pass away on FaceTime. If that's not a, the biggest kick to your emotions in your gut and your as a man or a womanI don't think it matters, but to your ego, like that's men, we're supposed to be protective. We're supposed to take care of our wives. And then, and he said, it's the most heartbreaking thing I've ever seen in my life.

He said, I cried like a baby and yet, you know, and he's like, and I can't even imagine what my dad dealt with going through that. So Marshall, I think you're, I think you're spot on there. I think that through this, there's so many, it's not just the pandemic.

It's all the ramifications of that you mentioned that are driving this distance between even family at a time when the only thing you want to do is be there to, to care for and comfort and just let them know you're there a touch, a touch means so much and that's out of the question in many cases now,. What do you think, Steve?

They don't like to speak on a microphone. They don't like to share their personal thoughts and stories. And when you lose your loved one, you can't even say their name. So while we could serve the people that did come in. I also knew there are a lot of people that didn't come in it I'd like to try and reach. And my thought was, how do we, how do we reach it? But if you look at the results of over the weekend, we actually had 82 to 85% women on Facebook that checked into our posts.

So where I was thinking it was the men that I wanted to help .The feedback from the women was awesome. So maybe there really is a larger audience who. First of all isolation is not normal. That's the first thing we tell everybody that comes in don't isolate. And yet you don't have a choice ,we have to. So I think there's a lot of men and women who would like to participate. Some, like you said, opening that door. That first time is one of the most difficult things I've ever did.

And it probably saved our lives that we did. So if I had known then what I know now I should have run through that door. You know, in hindsight everybody's a Monday morning quarterback, but when you're in it, you can't see to the other side. In fact, you're not sure you're going to make it. So I think there's a lot of people, men and women to fall in that quarter yet and now you can't meet him in person.

So maybe listening to people talk through some of the issues is the best way to reach people right now. And like Marshall said, we had no idea that this was in her future,

That were interacting with the posts and leaving comments. I mean, I think that was at least 2 to 1, uh, females versus men which probably isn't super surprising. But. You can join the conversation a lot of people don't realize that yeah, the podcast is something I listened to, but if there's something that strikes a chord, or if there's a question that comes up by something that's mentioned, and I would look to both of you, as experts.

Maybe not medical professionals, but Marshall, I mean, you're an attorney and Steve, you have the foundation, you've been a sales person, very successful. So you both have had, I mean, you're definitely experts in your fields and then you're an expert, both, I would say in grief. You don't have to have a medical diagnosis for someone to know that they're in grief or that they're grieving somebody or that they feel like the world is coming to an end because they lost their loved one.

We don't need medical people for that, maybe to do some treatments. And if that's you please, you know, get medical attention as often, and as early as you possibly can. We want you to be healthy and seek all options. But like you said Steve , to have someone listen, but we'd also would love to have your feedback. The feedback that we got on the Facebook videos. People that were saying how powerful it was and they just, it resonated with them.

So ,that is something that if something you want to talk about, if you want to share your story, if you want to ask Steve or Marshall a question, whether it's about how you deal with suicide or how you deal with something like PAM, that Jordan passed from. We would welcome those comments. You can send those to Hope Thru Grief [email protected] and we can discuss those on a podcast episode. If it gets to be where we get a lot of them, we can do actual episode just answering questions.

That would actually be, I think, part of the outreach and part of the mission to help people is to share the stories because if there's one thing that we've learned, I think through this pandemic and through the racial tensions and all the built up frustration that has all seemingly come to this perfect storm and explosion is when we have conversations, honest, transparent, open dialogue kind of conversations, the uncomfortable ones, the ones we try to avoid a lot

of times, that's when we make progress. And that's when we learn about each other. That's when we become friends, even if it's across a WebEx call, or a zoom call, or a FaceTime ,or a even a text message. If we're open and honest and we're willing to share, it's a little vulnerable, it's a little well, it's not a little vulnerable, it's a lot vulnerable and it's uncomfortable, but really moving forward and trying to improve ourselves that's really what's needed.

So we would encourage feedback, good or bad, any kind of we're we're thick skin. we're grown men, we can handle it. We promise and, you know, be gentle if you can be. But, you know, we would love to hear what you really think, because sometimes it's the underlying themes that come through those comments that you really find out about it learn and we can have a civil discourse because we're grown adults.

And I haven't taken a grief course because who wants to we've established that. I didn't think of it that way, but a lot of people struggle. The dads that are missing daughters and sons or parents, people that sons and daughters that are missing parents and fathers. I mean, these are bad days. Like when you said I don't go on social media, Randy. You told me on the phone. He said, I don't go on there.

I post something about myself and Jordan, maybe a memory or a picture that I love him, that I miss him. I rip my heart out really did. Cause I'm thinking to myself, what would I post or what would I do on that day if one of my girls was missing and I have that, I mean, that's, that's heavy. What do you feel like through those conversations that we had on social media right out of the gate. W hat did you feel like the overall theme of the feedback and the support was like?

We watched our church service online, and then we went out into the patio and I, um, hadn't touched Facebook since I did the post in the morning and I was done and Shelly said, wow, you guys are getting a lot of comments. And it was because of the personal page. It was because of Hope Thru Grief page and I did something I've never done. And this is six years for me, since Jordan died still a tough weekend, still a tough holiday to try and get through. And I started answering their comments.

I went back through and answered every single comment, thank them, or made a comment back. And I think I had 150 between Shelley's post and my post. And then we had another 80 or 90 on the different Hope Thru Grief ones. And I actually felt better doing it. I was still, you know, it, wasn't a great father's day, but they won't be without Jordan. So until I see him again, it's not going to be the same, but I felt better commenting and I was amazed at how many different people had reached out.

And I'm saying, well, apparently this technology does work, which surprises the heck out of me. So I'm very optimistic. In the sense that my expectations of technology actually working are always low. And I said, well, apparently the technology's working where people are getting the podcast and they are getting things out of it that are helping them. And for those two things, I'm very grateful that we're able to figure out the technology successfully. But also we're giving people tools that.

We have found helpful in our own grief journey, they can hopefully help them on theirs.

What does the future look like at least now, now, I mean, we, when we decided to start the podcast where there was no COVID, we, we didn't know that. And obviously we don't know what the future holds, but. just a quick look forward. What do you think about the shows moving forward? Are we going to have guests, multiple guests? Are we going to talk about different kinds of grief? I know Matt are Marshall.

You lost Matt to suicide and Steve, you lost Jordan to PAM and of course there will probably be an abundance of COVID-19 stories. Is there anything we're not going to talk about when it comes to grief?

Anybody that's on a grief journey that wants to talk about any aspect of grief by shooting us an email or however, technologically they can contact us, I'd be all ears because that's their journey and their journey is as important to them as my journey is to me. So again, from my standpoint, the first rule of this podcast would be, there are no rules. I'm going to talk about anything.

When you think about what Marshall and I have gone through that loss was immediate. Hmm...yeah.

And I know from a social media perspective that, you know, none of that kind of thing, and I know that this is something that is pervasive on social media, there's bullying, and there's all these different kinds of people try to shame people for feeling a certain way or for having what they perceive to be a weakness, because they may have grief or they may have some mental instability while they try to process, all these kinds of things and just know that those are social

media outlets will be a very safe place. It's something that we monitor and something that we watch out for. And that's something that certainly will never, ever be allowed. But I think part of the discussion. Will be driven by what listeners want to talk about what listeners want to engage with and the stories that they want to tell the questions they might have things that might be going on in our world, like COVID and you know, who knows what else?

And I think just being open to that, so please don't be shy if you're listening and you think, Oh, that's dumb. I, I'm not going to send them an email about that. I mean, then they're not going to talk about that. Don't be so sure. Don't be so sure. Send us an email, send us a, a note on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, if you swipe up in today's show notes, you will find links to all of those.

So please just go ahead and like, and share and get the word out and we would be happy to you take questions, take comments. And even if it's just hey, we'd love to celebrate a milestone with you. If today is an anniversary of something and today's the first day that you felt normal in a long time, whatever that normal is, we'd love to celebrate it. We'd love to call you out by name and say, good job, Sally. Good job, Joe. We're here.

We're supporting you and we're celebrating your victory with you. So this really is designed to be a community that's about inclusion and about finding this journey together and in learning, just because Marshall and Steve and I've losted people close to me, not to like they have, but we've all been part of grief in our lives. We've all had that. And it's, it feels good when people are there to be with you in those times.

So I think that's at least from my perspective, that's one thing I think this show can excel at.

As I mentioned before, to not only help, talked to him personally helped my grief journey, but help others too.

You'll notice some of our hashtags in our social media posts have been #bettertogether because I honestly believe that that's the power of this show is going to be that we're better together. We learn together and our lives will be better when we do it together. So. I would just encourage you to share, subscribe, listen, and invite others.

And if you know, someone you think would be a must have guest that has a great story, send us some information and if we can make a contact and we can work something out, maybe who knows, maybe we'd have them on the show. Maybe we'd have you on the show. Do you have a good story? So like Steve said, You never know what might be the piece that makes the whole puzzle fit together. So don't be silent and let us hear from you and that will tjhat will make this all better together.

All right guys, anything else? Did we cover everything? Did we miss something? Anything you guys can think of that we should have said? Didn't say, could have said better?