Hey Julia Woods
Embracing Suffering for Growth and Resilience
Embark on a journey with me, Julia Woods, and my insightful coach, Dan Tocchini, as we delve into the depths of suffering within the context of marriage and personal development. Through poignant stories and profound reflections, we uncover how confronting adversity with courage can lead to transformative growth, forging stronger connections and deeper resilience in the face of life's trials.
Here is Dan's son's Daniel Tocchini's X where you will find his post about his son from 1/5/24 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9Ih19cB_No
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🎁 Free Gift for you! 100 Prompts and Ideas to Connect with your Spouse!
🎁 FREE GIFT: Turn Defensiveness into Connection! https://beautifuloutcome.com/e-guide
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👉 Take the free communication quiz! What’s YOUR communication type?! https://beautifuloutcome.com/communication-quiz
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Where you can find me:
INSTAGRAM: Connect with me at @HeyJuliaWoods
YOUTUBE: Subscribe to @HeyJuliaWoods
SHOP: Marriage resources in my storefront
RETREATS: Attend a Marriage Workshop
WEBSITE: Find more resources at BeautifulOutcome.com
FACEBOOK: Like me at /HeyJuliaWoods
Embark on a journey with me, Julia Woods, and my insightful coach, Dan Tocchini, as we delve into the depths of suffering within the context of marriage and personal development. Through poignant stories and profound reflections, we uncover how confronting adversity with courage can lead to transformative growth, forging stronger connections and deeper resilience in the face of life's trials.
Here is Dan's son's Daniel Tocchini's X where you will find his post about his son from 1/5/24 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9Ih19cB_No
_______
🎁 Free Gift for you! 100 Prompts and Ideas to Connect with your Spouse!
🎁 FREE GIFT: Turn Defensiveness into Connection! https://beautifuloutcome.com/e-guide
_
👉 Take the free communication quiz! What’s YOUR communication type?! https://beautifuloutcome.com/communication-quiz
_______
Where you can find me:
INSTAGRAM: Connect with me at @HeyJuliaWoods
YOUTUBE: Subscribe to @HeyJuliaWoods
SHOP: Marriage resources in my storefront
RETREATS: Attend a Marriage Workshop
WEBSITE: Find more resources at BeautifulOutcome.com
FACEBOOK: Like me at /HeyJuliaWoods
Welcome to hey Julia Woods podcast. I'm your host, Julia Woods, founder of Beautiful Outcome, a coaching company focused on helping couples learn to see and understand each other, even in the most difficult conversations. On my podcast, I will share with you the real and raw of the messiness and amazingness of marriage. I'll share with you aspects of my relationship and the couples I coach in a way that you can see yourself and find the tools that you need to build the marriage you long for.
Speaker 2:I am so excited to have my coach, dan Tichini, join me today on an interesting topic of suffering, topic of suffering. And, dan, when I first met Dan 12, 13 years ago, I didn't realize that I had grown a very hard heart due to my relationship with suffering and my resistance to suffering, and so I am really excited. He has taught me more about how to develop not how to develop a relationship, but the experience of the beauty of what embracing suffering can do in your life and in your relationships, and so he has walked through some significant suffering in his life overall and some extremely excruciating suffering in the last couple years, and so I ask him to come along and share with you and as we have a conversation about the relationship with suffering. So thank you, dan, for joining us.
Speaker 3:Julia, thanks for having me. I always love sitting with you and it's great to be here with your listeners. I appreciate it. I'm honored. Thank you, and it's great to be here with your listeners. I appreciate it. I'm honored. Thank you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I know you and I could talk for hours.
Speaker 3:We often do.
Speaker 2:We do. I just want to jump right in and really help listeners get a lot in. You know a quick amount of time and so how would you describe the human relationship with suffering?
Speaker 3:Nothing like a small question. You know, suffering is. You know, when I think about it, I think a lot about it. Obviously, I've been through quite a bit of it, and I think we all do, if you're going to come into suffering in this life, if you haven't already. And what does it mean? What is our struggle?
Speaker 3:Well, I, you know personally, suffering is a natural state of living in a temporal world, you know, living in a world where, you know, I'm a person of faith and I feel like there's so much more available than what I actually. You know, I'm bigger than this world, I'm bigger than this body. There's a sense of presence in me that's eternal, and I know I'm going to come to an end. I know that this body's going to come to an end and that in itself is, you know, suffering. You know. The other thing is I don't live a perfect life, and so my mistakes are going to and my misses are going to cause suffering for me and others. And others don't live perfect lives, so they're going to do things and live in ways that hurt me and others around them. So suffering is inevitable and I think, any kind of idea that you're going to reduce it or you're going to stop it in your life or somehow you can escape it.
Speaker 3:I think is foolhardy and I think it's not.
Speaker 3:I don't think it's good for you and I think a lot of our culture is centered around life is good if I'm not suffering, whereas you know if you read Dostoevsky, or you know if you read Dostoevsky or Tolstoy or Berdyev or Solovyov I mean any one of the Russian philosophers or you read Kierkegaard or Plato, or you know any one of the Greek or modern philosophers. They're going to talk about the power of suffering and how we relate to it and how important that is, like, how that either opens up or closes down our life and our ability to engage life in a way that brings more life, orders chaos and releases beauty. Otherwise, you know, we can turn the smallest suffering into hell just by the way we relate to it. I think we've all seen a young child throw a tantrum because they didn't get what they wanted or they were somehow slighted or there was some suffering involved and, rather than you know and resist it and make it even worse, we've seen throwing a tantrum. We've seen that a million times.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I think it's a good metaphor for us as we live life, particularly in relationship.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my first introduction to you was about 12 or 13 years ago at a four-day training you do called Revenant, and I think that training for me was so profound for many reasons. One of the things that I experienced was I came face to face with my own entitlement of my lack of willingness to be in the suffering, and what I've often described what happened for me in that training was that you were willing to just press on the suffering in a way that was so loving that brought me to change so many of the stories I had created in my entitlement about how that suffering shouldn't have happened in my entitlement, about how that suffering shouldn't have happened, about how horrible I was that the suffering had happened, and all of these limiting beliefs that I hadn't realized I developed out of the suffering and your way of like. In that training there were people who had been in prison for quite a long time for quite a lot of suffering that they had caused for people in their lives, and we were all in this training and we have no idea who people were, and yet you got to know people who had done things that in my life I, in my entitlement, had brought me to be like, well, don't hang around those people because you don't want to be around people like that because they're going to cause you suffering. But what I came to experience was people just like me, who had beliefs, who had the same hurt and suffering. It had just gone to another level that I could see I was heading towards. You know, it would have looked a little different, likely, but I was pretty criminal as well.
Speaker 2:Within my own household, as you like to say, we're all criminals. Some are just more arrestable than others, and so you've done a lot of studying of human behavior through three or four decades of the work that you have done, and what do you notice about the commonality of whether you have been a murderer or been a housewife? What do you notice, or some of the similarities?
Speaker 3:Well, I think any. You know we tend to be victimized by the suffering that we encounter and we can be very well be victimized by, in other words, something could occur I had nothing to do with and then I'm suffering because of what happened. But then to relate to it, how I relate to it, is going to determine what emerges from it internally in my own life. And I think entitlement is, you know, I think that's a great word because I think, inevitably, born into a Western society, it's almost as if you were taught to feel entitled to the abundant life that we have inherited from those before us. You know that we cherish and that is easily lost if we don't guard it or stand in it in a way that you know our forefathers did in order for us to have it. So I think, attitude, how like to your point, I think the biggest, you know, the worst part of suffering is that it illuminates or it gets worse with our unwillingness to embrace it.
Speaker 3:A lot of life and, if you, to avoid uncomfortable feelings, avoid suffering rather than enter into the suffering, and use the suffering, the fire of the suffering, to draw us together. And it's so easy to get into patterns where we say such things as well. You know, I don't want to tell Eileen this, it might upset her and I don't want to upset her, and certainly timing is everything. But the fact that most of the time when I'm saying that, it's me, I don't want to be upset, it's me, I don't want to have whatever we're doing disintermediated or interrupted by her upset or her suffering, and often I'll put the face on it.
Speaker 3:Well, I don't want to upset her, but the fact is we don't like it. We are afraid that when it comes up, it's going to destroy us, and so we have a tendency to habitually stay away from it. And what that does in the long run is when we do suffer. When something horrible happens, it tends to drive us apart instead of back together, because we practice so long avoiding it. So when it comes up, we don't know how to engage it with each other, when we most need to be there for each other.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So it's a practice, you know, a daily, daily practice, and it's like being able to talk about the things that Edge the relationship, that that put the relationship on edge where it, where we're going to break rapport for a while to understand where the other person is to really connect, the person is to really connect, and that's a form of suffering in itself, because I'm just you know now I'm kind of floating in the relationship, wondering where you are as I talk about something that's difficult or challenging for us. It's like a liminal space where I've got to continue to act in good faith and extend my trust to you by learning what is happening for you as we talk about this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so there's a lot in what you said and I just want to kind of slow it down and introduce the next question in that, um, ultimately, stuff where you said basically earlier that suffering is what we feel when we when something uncomfortable, when we're wrestling with something uncomfortable, is that what she said yes, and suffering is everything, from those small places of where I'm done something and maybe I don't want to face Jeff's reaction to it, and so I use the excuse that, well, I don't want to upset him, or he's really busy I don't want to talk to him, or we really disagree on something and how, how it ought to be done, and so they're suffering in why can't he just do it my way? Or he's in why can't he just do it my way? Or he's like why can't she just do it my way? We're creating our own suffering because we're unwilling to wrestle with that tension of what's the beauty in our way, if we can just hold a space for understanding what each other's seeing and feeling and that those kind of day-to-day suffering, even if it's, you know, simple things of how the dishwasher is loaded, to how to raise the kids, to how to grow the financial future we want, those are like a training ground, as you will, that you're training the, the relationship, you're training each other how to be in the uncomfortable together, and then, when really hard things happen, like you know, in infertility, or loss of a child, or loss of a job, or loss of a loved one, the training we've done in the small things is what sets up the relationship we'll have with each other when those really big, hard things come.
Speaker 2:Is that what you're saying?
Speaker 3:absolutely, I'm saying it, yeah, the, the. The divorce starts in the little things. We divorce ourselves from each other so we don't have to be uncomfortable, and then that plays out over time, and you know, when you think about suffering, suffering introduces us to divinity, to our spirituality, and when I say divinity, I mean it's the power within us to transcend perceived limitations. And so transcendence is basically not just to survive, but to become more than the worst challenges life brings upon us yeah that's what transcends.
Speaker 3:Transcendence for me is and you know, and I've, you know, kind of I'm a nerd on words, you know that. So you know, uh, it's like what enables us to transcend the fear that binds me in the corner, that binds me from the great adventure that you know. I look at God, I listen to God, beyond the circumstances or the perceived limitations I have in the circumstances that I have that power. But to lay hands on that power, to be able to utilize that power, I've got to be willing to suffer and to suffer. Well, yeah, you know, suffer with some courage and some character.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's interesting because I think you know Jeff and I got pretty near to a divorce and the state of our marriage was a divorce which allowed space for infidelity to happen.
Speaker 2:And I, when you're talking, what's occurring for me is that I felt like we were suffering. When you're talking, what's occurring for me is that I felt like we were suffering. I felt like in our inability to communicate and he would shut down and I would run, and you know, every conversation seems to turn into a defensive conversation. It felt like we were suffering. What I recognize in what you were saying is that my suffering was my own in essence cowardice, to feel a slave to the fear and the doubt that we could find a way through the block in the conversation.
Speaker 2:Yeah the block in the conversation. Yeah, and so we sat in the corner, as you mentioned. We sat in our own little corner of suffering self-made suffering because we weren't allowing it to call us up past our comfort zone into the deep honesty and wrestling and becoming. That happens when you risk being liked, when you risk being isolated or breaking rapport with each other and being in exile, as you and I have talked about different times that I wasn't willing to break before. I wasn't willing to potentially lose relationship by something I would say that he might need to wrestle with or get work through his upset over before we could come back together in agreement.
Speaker 2:While that kind of suffering felt scary, it was a much different type of suffering that felt like life in the suffering, because there was newness being created in it, there was creativity and there was adventure and there was oh wow, he actually can handle me saying the truth. I would have thought he would have gotten, you know, blown up at it, but he didn't blow up at it. He actually, like, could hear it and we could do something with it hear it and we could do something with it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I remember when Eileen I used to blow up a lot and Eileen found very creative ways to bring my attention to what I was doing and the impact of it and that made a huge difference for me. It showed how much she cared for me. It showed how much she trusted our relationship, that she would continue to find ways to get my attention. She must have. You know, I was fairly ignorant to my own, my own strategies and how I was making whatever suffering was there, much worse into into basically pure hell.
Speaker 3:But you know, when you think about suffering it's tumultuous. It's a tumultuous experience marked by confusion, anger and a profound sadness. Usually and it's not neat, you know it's not an orderly process, it's a messy process that's intense and we usually encounter intense pain or loneliness, some sort of psychological or physical pain in it and that's, you know, if people can realize that it's actually, that becomes an opportunity to exercise courage and character and to connect with. I know for me, in my suffering I've connected deepest at those times with God. Even when I feel like he's not there, the awareness of him is high.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean.
Speaker 3:Like I'm looking for it Right and that's a different. I mean, for me that has been profound, and particularly with the loss of Eon.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, profound, and particularly with the loss of eon, yeah, yeah. So you know the thing that has drawn me to you and eileen through the years, um, we had that first introduction at the training and then it's continued on with friendship and coaching and living close to each other, um, and the thing that's profound about the two of you that keeps drawing me to you is I've not known, I hadn't known and I still don't know two people with the level of character development that each of you have, and I've seen that the way I just. When I say that, what I mean it's like the two of you's willingness to face the suffering.
Speaker 2:In your own marriage, your marriage is almost ended multiple times, suffering in your own marriage, your marriage is almost ended multiple times and the two of you just keep, have kept allowing it eventually to turn into extreme character development. And the two of you have gone after your children and, in their suffering, have really shown up with them and allowed it to develop the character within you. Even when they've gone directions you didn't want them to go. And so I've watched through the years as the two of you have really allowed suffering to call you into deeper character development. And then, last January or the January before last, you called me and shared with me what had happened to your grandson the night before. So would you share that story so the listeners can know what happened?
Speaker 3:So this is Ian, right here, see him. And Ian was two and a half years old. I called him the mini-me. He had the bald head, we looked like mini-me and he's sweet. My son's two-and-a-me. He had the ball. We looked like mini-me and he's sweet.
Speaker 3:My son's a two-year-and-a-half-year-old son, just a lot of fun to be with and very connected to him. It was a special relationship I think that kids have if their grandfathers will hang around. And he called me Papa. I always wanted to know what I was up to and he would. I, every time I'd see him he'd greet me with a hug, but it wasn't just a hug, it was 15 minutes of headache in the chest and then he'd look back and say, papa, what doing? And and I'd tell him what I'm doing and we'd be off and, you know, play.
Speaker 3:Anyway, my son had been up in Idaho for a week with his other two children. We were skiing and playing in the snow and then there was going to be a big storm here and my son was concerned because they said there would be loss of life. And so he really he called his landlord and wanted to know about these redwoods that were there and were they safe, because they lived inside this redwood grove in a thousand square foot little place, and the landlord said, no, they don't fall, and they were nervous about it. And anyway, the storm hit. It was a horrible storm and Aisha was up his wife feeding the horses and she's walking back down and the Redwood a 70-foot top part of the Redwood, just broke and fell flat on the house. She thought she lost both of them. It just crushed the house and it crushed Eon.
Speaker 3:He was on the on the couch and it blew my son out. My son was two steps away. He'd be dead too and it blew him out of the house. He was outside on his butt looking in. Of course, he couldn't find Eon and so he went and couldn't get the tree off him. So they ended up getting the chainsaw cutting both sides of the tree, rolling it off him, and Eon's body was. There was no blood, he was just dead and he carried him to the EMT that had finally arrived and they, you know, needless to say, it was a horrible, you know it's excruciating, and we, immediately, you know it's excruciating, and, um, we, immediately, you know immediately, I, I just I rented an airbnb and got my family down there and we spent two months together and I say family I mean everybody my, my daughter, her husband, her kids, my son, his ex-wife, her kid, the kids they had and her, her fiance would come in as well good friends with dan and and his wife isha, and we basically hung out for two months together and just looked into what we didn't want to see.
Speaker 3:And, um, I'm a philosopher and so I believe that you know. I believe what Nietzsche said if you look into the abyss, the abyss will look back. But Kierkegaard said if you look into the abyss, sooner or later you'll see the Savior, and you know. So, the things that were most difficult we looked into and you know my son, in dealing with his trauma afterwards, has done very, very courageously, looked into and has been keeping an evergreen on his ex account of his transformation since Eon's death. And you know it transformed our whole family, each of us individually and then us collectively. But that came because you mentioned it.
Speaker 3:People get hurt and they tend to silo, and I knew that because I've been doing this a long time. I watched how my family siloed. My mother was a schizophrenic, manic, depressive schizophrenic, and she was at 12. It was the first time she had to go to the hospital. She had a major attack and, you know, went catatonic. But in my family everybody scattered and I just didn't. You know I was like no, no, if we're going to be alone, we're going to be alone together and we're going to make room for us to talk when we're ready and be there for each other. And there was no resistance, everybody got together. But I think that's partly because, as a family, we've always been very committed to dealing with the issue when it comes up, as best we can, and so we were there for each other and what came out of it is pretty hard to. I mean, it was when I say suffering introduces you to the divine. We started to get in touch. You know, I saw divine nature come out of my son and Aisha and my wife and my daughter and our children, our grandchildren and their spouses. You know I, you know it just was beautiful to see who people became in the face of this suffering for each other. And I think the focus on each other and consideration, authentic consideration for each other, made what was horrible something that, while we didn't like it, it was beneficial for us to be together. And there's something that's eternally shifted in our family that I know will go on for generations and you know it just bonded us and it continues to.
Speaker 3:We don't shy away from hard conversations. My son and I are going to be doing some, some vlogging. We're going to talk about this eventually. Um, you know, when he's ready and he's he's about ready you can read about his journey on x on his account. But, um, you know, a lot of people are like we don't know how you did this.
Speaker 3:I can honestly say, you know, we met God and when you're, you know it was like immediately we were angry, we're upset, we're sad, we were very sad, torn up, and God is big enough to deal with all that. I mean, I went into a deep, you know, faith crisis for a while, for you know, a few days where, like how could this happen? But I knew God had room for me to be human with him and it was a very powerful doubt. If you don't have faith enough to doubt, then you really have no faith at all. Doubt. If you don't have faith enough to doubt, then you really have no faith at all. So, you know, it was good for me to have that time with God and I still do.
Speaker 3:I still talk a lot. You know, I still pray quite a bit about it and we talk about it. The rule in the family is if you want to talk about it, bring it up, let's go. I'll ask Danny if he wants to talk about it, bring it up, let's go. I'll ask Dan if he wants to talk about it. Many times he says, sure, let's do it. Otherwise he'll say can we wait? Can we wait? I've got to do something here.
Speaker 2:I want to give some context to the listeners because on the outside I've gotten to witness what you're describing. So I get it in a lot of ways, and yet there's still more that I know I don't get For the listeners. They don't get to. I would imagine they haven't gotten to be with you and know just the power of what you've said, to actually get to witness it. First I want to describe that you and your business partner, simon, just asked a few years ago. You guys, you travel a lot when you work for Fortune 500, you are making these things happen and it wasn't a question as to whether you were going to take the time away.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, no, there was no question.
Speaker 2:And yet I think most people, especially my audience, that are big entrepreneurs with big companies would be like you know well, you take a week and breathe, and so that was the first thing that intrigued me is that you know your family is spread across three, four states from each other and everyone has busy lives, and you guys are really busy, and yet every single one of you that you know we're going to face these measurements, we're going to look at what we don't want to look at. So that's one of the things that I want to um put in in the story. In addition, and then you lost your sister within a week of eon passing she died, yeah, yeah so there was suffering upon suffering, upon suffering, and it wasn't an easy choice.
Speaker 2:It sounds. When you talk about it, it's easy to say you know, our lives have been easy since two months away. No, that was a major choice, a major commitment, and yet everyone is for it and I'd love to just have you share, if you are open to sharing, some of the specifics, like I got to talk to you all the time throughout the initial part of that suffering, and just, you know, there were moments where you shared. You know, one family member was starting to make this up right about themselves and you all just pressed into that and said, no, we're not, you know, and so like, when you think about losing someone, especially that close to you, that especially that close to you, especially in your italian family, there's just another level of closeness that I admire them deeply. Um, like, what does that look like? When you like, when you're so hurt and so angry, you just want to go in your room and cry and not be around people, and yet you're trying to be together. What is the messy and the reality of that?
Speaker 3:You've got to listen really closely to people and you know I watch people and you know people do need time alone, but you know that's legit. Come back and let's talk. What did you discover? What came up? We there's, there's a, there's a paradox there. You know there's you.
Speaker 3:I remember the temptation is to make the death of the people you love about you and that would dishonor them. It's really to honor them and certainly we're sad because we lose them in our lives. Their presence is gone and we all share in that loss. So we were very diligent to be conscious about who am I suffering for? Like I could turn the death of Eon into something. That's a badge, you know, and we just weren't up for that. It would dishonor his life. I think the same my son was very conscious about that. My daughter and her kids were just there was a real reverence around and honor around the life that we were mourning. And same with my sister, alicia. Alisa is that you know, my daughter and I both went to see her when she was extremely ill because it was the last time we were going to see her, she was going to die and a lot of that was frightening for a lot of people. The thing we think about at least I think about and I've taught my children is when I'm dying. If you're there, you get to walk through it with me and I love to have your presence as long as I can, if that's possible Now. If they don't want to, that's okay too. But the point is I know I would want them near me and so we just did our best to be there. For people not even like just be there and I went to see my sister was great to see my family there, just being with her. Right, there's not much you can do but be, and I think a lot of people are uncomfortable with that, because we want to do something to relieve the suffering we don't realize. Our presence itself makes the suffering we don't realize. Our presence itself makes the suffering bearable and valuable, and a lot of good conversations come out of those moments. You know later on.
Speaker 3:Now, if you resist the suffering, if you resist the grief and the mourning, then you're probably going to get edgy and you're probably going to find yourself judging people who aren't resisting it and you may find yourself reacting in ways that alienate you from the process and you may think it's other people. But you know, your upset is what's most revealing, like why? Why upset? Why not solve? Why not? You know why not?
Speaker 3:Brokenness, uh, I think the anger and the upset that people tend that can tend to manifest is more about doing. It's like staying in control somehow and doing something about what you can't do anything about and all it does is alienate people further. So I was blessed and honored by my family's willingness to keep an open hand that way and to invite each other into it. But we spent a lot of time just letting people say what they need to say, like go for it. And it was really and it triggered what it did. Is it siphoned, suffering up in us that we needed to?
Speaker 3:You know, it's not an accident that if you go to a Jewish funeral, they'll hire traditionally will hire mourners. You think that's silly, but it's not Because the mourners will mourn and that will help others mourn as well, because the brain literally needs to learn to mourn. It's not a natural state, because you're most vulnerable when you mourn and your brain's job is to keep you alive, so it doesn't want to go to vulnerable states. But the problem is it's not dangerous to mourn if you've got a good, you know you're not being attacked from the outside.
Speaker 3:It's dangerous not to mourn, and that's what's dangerous, because you're later on going to take that out on those around you and in your life. You're going to make your life a living hell because you're not going to want to touch it. Anytime somebody brings it up, you're going to be reactive. You know it's none of their business. Blah, blah, blah. And you're going to alienate yourself and you're going to make what is already difficult a pure hell. And when I say make it about oneself, it isn't like people go I'm going to make this suffering about me. It's more like look what's happened to me, somebody take care of me. That's what I mean. Like you know you should do this because I'm hurting. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So how we make it about ourselves is now we are almost entitled to certain things because this is how we take it.
Speaker 3:That's right, and if somebody doesn't get up to our entitlement, we remind them how we, that it's our right. Are you owe me this, or you know if you were suffering, you would want me, as if we know what they would want, right? So that's that's what I mean by make it about another person. Right, it takes humility, because I learned in the suffering. I learned a lot about myself, about my children, about their children, about who we are together as a family and individually. And you know, one of the things I know I wrestle with and I know Danny does and I'm sure Isha does is how do we keep the, you know, and my dad and his wife, with Elisa and my brother and my brothers and sisters, how do we keep their memory alive in a way that's vital for us? Like that's one of the things I've struggled with, wrestled with, and you know that's a like.
Speaker 3:I always want to remember him. I want him in my, I want that his presence, and I want Elise's presence to be there, you know, in me. I don't want to be afraid of it and I think that's, and I want to remember the beauty and the times that we shared. I want their presence in my life so, but that takes courage. If you can't think about it, then you'll push those memories away, which they'll disappear, right. So the suffering enables you to continue, like your willingness to revisit that pain, but they're there in that pain. That's a connection to them. So it makes you and really the suffering, if suffering's an enemy of yours, if it becomes an ally, all of a sudden it makes you grateful for everything you have and who you're connected to, and you'll probably be more apt to think about the impact of your behavior on other people than you would if you didn't have the suffering.
Speaker 2:As you're talking. I know that my experience with coaching people that come with my own suffering. The immediate question that wants to come up is why? Why does it happen? Why do I have to walk through this? And yet you're the one who's taught me so much about why. It's just to get rid of shame. It doesn't really seduce much it's like gravity.
Speaker 3:Why is there gravity? Answering that question makes no difference. Suffering is the gravity of life. And when people say, oh, there is no suffering, no, no, there is suffering. Believe me Now. There's unnecessary suffering. It doesn't have to be. But you're going to suffer and how you relate to it is going to determine who you become on the other end of it, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, relate to. It's going to determine who you become on the other end of it, right? Yeah, so, as you mentioned, you know that as a family, you really just looked at what you didn't want to look at. Did the why come up and, if so, how did you pass it? What did you need to, instead of why?
Speaker 3:well, my response to why is because you'll is. You'll discover why as life goes on if you embrace the process. You know there are things that have come out of this. My son would testify. What happened between he and his wife saved their marriage, whereas most people losing a child lose their marriage, and the only reason it saved their marriage is because they didn't run from it. They sat down and I guess you know, between them, on their own volition, they ended up confessing a lot of you know, just attitudes and thoughts and things between them that previously they'd not done. And that inventory, that willingness to be that raw, cleansed the relationship, kind of bonded them in the fire. And because you know they lost Eon and all they really had was each other, they lost Eon and all they really had was each other. And I believe, rather than blame each other, they just offloaded where they were and what was missing for them with each other. And Dan said they stayed up all night the first night he was gone and it was really holy for them. His testimony is quite profound but if you think about it suffering, when you let it penetrate you and you let it be with you, like let it stir you, it'll call something out of you you never knew was there. You know something divine, right? That's where, like, it literally calls the divine out of you. If you're willing to hold in and and trust you, you I, when I was in a head-on car accident at 23 and um died three times and spent three weeks in the hospital and a lot of pain, and it was amazing because I was in so much pain.
Speaker 3:I didn't you know, I tried to. I wanted if I could have reached the plug, I would have unplugged myself. It was that painful and I remember thinking during the time I transcended the pain by breathing and meditation and I was able to be present with the people that were there and the doctors. And I remember thinking to myself man, I can handle more pain than I ever thought I could.
Speaker 3:And I discovered that with Eon, that, as I embraced, as I let it wash over me, as I just let it be and not try to control it, all kinds of new ways of being showed up that I, if I was trying to control it, would have never been. I wouldn't have seen them, wouldn't have occurred to me. So how to be with my wife, how to be with my son and his wife, how to listen, how to stand with them, how to take hold of things so they wouldn't have to worry about them. I found myself, you know, just enthralled in taking care of them in a way that would open up a future worth having. Right Like I was, like we had conversations along those lines, it was really good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I got to be with you and I knew your wife and your daughter just a little over a year after we got this vaccine, just a little over a year after we got this. You know, I'm just talking about the vaccine and you know my experience with people who have lost someone very close to them, like a grandchild or a child. My experience is that they're different moving forward, like they tend to be a bit more sober, they tend to be a bit more sensitive. They they tend to be a bit more sensitive, they tend to be a little bit more cautious around them. And yet my experience with the three of you was something quite profound.
Speaker 2:Like all three of you I experienced similar things with. I talked to you specifically. There's just a new groundedness, a new strength and so many and so many things used to bother her, don't you know? Like she's just steady and there's a newer sense of life and energy and so like I need just like more alive than I've seen in years, known her and she's light, lighthearted in her experience in life and like she is, like I think she's good.
Speaker 3:That has to do. I think that really has to do with AIM. We work a lot with AIM, like in our family, like what are you trying to do here? What do you want to get done? What do you want to make of this? Because we're going to live with it whatever you're up to. So what do you really want to happen with each other?
Speaker 3:And I think all of us were very conscious that this could either make us or break us. And those moments come up in life and I think we've practiced enough of that that when it was time we could bring it right. And I think that's crucial is you prepare yourself by the small upsets in life and how do you deal with them. And you know I've killed some Egyptians in my life. You know it's a metaphor from the Bible when Moses kills the Egyptian, he gets 40 years in the desert, and you know so. That's why, when something happens like this, we'll say don't kill. First thing I said to my son don't kill an Egyptian. Like, don't react in a way that's selfish or self-protective that you're going to pay for for many years after this, with Isha, with your children, with Roya, with mom, me like, let's like he was already there. He was relaxed and fully embracing the process.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've read so much stuff on that, I can't wait for it. You know there's guilt that I feel in saying that, but it's not like like I want to hear more suffering. I resonate with suffering. It helps call me up with my own suffering and, in the capacity of what's available, I've not dealt anywhere close with the suffering that Danny has lost, and yet his words and his descriptions of it give me hope that, no matter what suffering I could face, there's a possibility, and I've never known that.
Speaker 3:I think if you connect to the one that died, if you're connected like Elisa or my sister and Eon, it's like I want to live to honor them. I don't, you know, it's like, particularly in particular my grandson. I want to live in a way that would honor his life, you know, and and honor his. You know his family that he never will have, and honor you know his, his sister, who's now here, anything any I, just because he meant so much to us and he'll only mean as much as we stand like. We've got the standard. You know, like he did.
Speaker 3:He, his way of being with us was so like an angel and and we want to pass that on. You know we've got. You know, the interesting thing is he's really he's on a lot of video. You know Gordon is a good friend with Dan and he would just bring out his video and follow Dan around the farm and so we've got hours and hours of Eon on video and you can really just see how beautiful he is, his little boy. I mean, he never left that farm, he's never. He never went to a doctor, he never. You know, he's two and a half years old, healthy kid, spoke German and English, lived on a farm wrestled with the goats. You know the guy was. You know he lived a very beautiful life and his spirit is what we just love them. You know I just love them to death. So we want that to live on in our family and that comes from honoring and cherishing each other and holding each other up and fighting for each other. There's a lot of that in our family.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and as I've walked with many clients and stuff like this, I had asked them if they would consider writing a book and sharing their experience. So has that happened?
Speaker 3:No, it hasn't happened, but I've written a lot of notes on it and I'm talking to Danny about it. I want him involved in it, and it actually prompted us to want to start doing some podcast, you know, actually vlogs. We're going to do it and we're not going to do it on YouTube, we're doing it on our own app and we're going to be passing it around to people and people will be able to, through reference, get a hold of it. But it inspired a whole bunch of stuff and I'm going to write a book on it. I've got a ton of notes from you know. I've probably added to them four or five times since we talked and it's you know, it's one of those things where I'm not ready to write about it yet, because I know there's more, and so we're we're just, you know, punching away at it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I will put in the show notes.
Speaker 3:You're breaking up a little bit, I'm missing.
Speaker 2:You Say again I said in the show notes, I'll put the link to Dan's X channel so people can get that and anything else that they want. I just I could sit and continue to have this conversation. There's just so much life. There's so much I would love for the listeners to know. In regards to like, just the beauty, it was within like weeks, wasn't it just weeks, that Aisha, who lost her son, was like yes, I want another baby. Yeah, we have.
Speaker 3:Anna.
Speaker 3:And we have Anna. We've got Anna. Anna came in December. Ian died the year before, in January, so less than a year. And we have Anna and you know Danny and Aisha five days after Ian had died, they stood up in church and testified to their grief and what God was doing in the midst of them and it moved, you could. The church just moved. It was amazing, but they were so authentic and real about it and they received the love and I, you know, I know it. It was like um, it was healing for them. It was really healing to have a body of people who cared for them, who knew them and who they were able to share. Their journey, the struggle through that with just after five days, and what they were learning. There were some really miraculous things that opened up and their story is phenomenal.
Speaker 2:Just a couple of things I'd like to just share, invite you to share before we end. I've learned so much about mourning from you and through your getting to walk with your experience. Will you just describe when you're mourning, that you're mourning what was and what won't be? Will you explain that to us?
Speaker 3:Yeah Well, grief is what we experience, is how we discern it. Grief is what we experience when we lose something we've always had. So I grieve over the loss of Eon and the relationship we shared, and how much you know his presence and like that we shared, and how much you know his presence and like that mourning is when we grieve for what we will never have. That should have been so. I'll never know Eon as a man. I'll never know his girlfriend or wife. I'll never see his children. We won't share baseball, football or whatever he would do, whatever soccer, whatever he chose. Those things won't happen. He won't go to school. I won't get to read stories to him. You know there's a lot. I won't be able to teach him italian. He already knew german, you know. And then you know that's what morning is. And we, we.
Speaker 3:It's important to look into those things and let them, in my experience, let them cut me so that I value them with the ones I have now, because if I don't let them cut me, if I have to push them away, I'll be afraid to connect with the people I'm with now, because I'll protect myself from the potential of loss again, and and so it's courage and character come out of the willingness it kind of comes out in my mind. Here's what I say I love my children so much that I'm willing to suffer their loss, because if I'm not willing to suffer their loss I will forever be protecting myself from it, which will keep me from them, if that makes any sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, can you put words to letting it touch you? I could try.
Speaker 3:Yeah, like with the loss of Eon, the things I think about that hurt me. I want them to hurt me. So when I'm with Didi, I want Didi's, my other grandson, he's this guy over here, this side here, right there, he's 12. And if I run from the suffering of the loss of neon, I'll be afraid to get too connected to DD. That's mammalian, that's how the mammal is. Now we happen to be a spiritual, we have divinity, we have language and we have relationship in a way that animals don't, and so I can decide that I'm not going to. I'm going to, I'm going to override, I'm going to transcend my natural mammalian response to protect my body and I'm going to expose myself to that suffering. So when I'm with him, when I, like when I suffer about Eon, I am, I'm much more appreciative of being with Didi, and I'm and I'm yeah, could I lose him? Yes, and then I'll suffer for Didi too, and then that'll drive me towards the people I'm with when I'm there, or vice versa.
Speaker 3:And I don't want my suffering to destroy me. I want it to have me become greater than I could ever imagine. You know, and when you lose somebody that's close to you, you know there are parts of you that will never come alive because they were meant to bring them alive, and so, by your willingness to feel the suffering, though it's like, nurtures your soul to be to let, to allow other people to draw greatness out of you or draw beauty out of you. Other people to draw greatness out of you or draw beauty out of you, right, and Didi does that for me, and Eden and Elle and Ava, and you know, now I got little Anna. So you know, to me that's everything, that's worth everything, and so I want to be connected to them.
Speaker 3:And you won't be. If you try to hide from suffering in one area, you will not allow that suffering in any other area either, because you don't want it, and that'll cut you off from the world and isolate you. I think that's what CS Lewis is. His writings are so powerful that he you know, particularly in both the problem of pain and a grief observed, was he knew that if he got bitter over a loss of joy, it would destroy him with other people, it would destroy his presence in connection with those that he loved. So that's a dance man.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was able to come to Florida Training again and it just blew my mind yeah, I was able to come to Florida Training and introduce myself to Florida Training again. It just blew my mind at how much suffering I was letting.
Speaker 2:It was really just a sense of hopelessness and certain desires and certain problems I had in marriage that I was resisting my own suffering. I wasn't willing to risk myself and in the two months or six weeks or so since then, the life that's come in our relationship you know Warren Ehrhardt who struggled with the name Warner Warner, there we go, says to be alive in any relationship is to be at risk, yes, of visioning. And the suffering of aiming at the intimacy that I long for has brought so much life in my marriage, in my own personal life in the last six weeks, in just getting really honest about the emotional connection I was longing for in my marriage. And it's coming alive, it's happening, and it was just shocking to me how I do this work, love this work, live this work.
Speaker 3:And yet we all I won't be bringing up how easy it is to pull away from suffering, that's why we need each other.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. If someone's listening and they're facing a different law, what?
Speaker 3:would be your words of encouragement. Let the law speak to you and find people you trust, have your best in mind and be with them Like, invite them into the process with you. Help the other. Other eyes and ears can help you discern and frame it in a way that it opens up life right. So that's what I would do I would let it speak to me and I would find people I trust that I could put confidence in.
Speaker 2:Well, Dan, thank you. Thank you for the way you've chosen to live the pain that you have in the life of your family, my life and my legacy in the family's life. I'm just thankful for you and how you've been showing up in the journey of life. Thank you so much for sharing and inviting us into what we don't want to look at.
Speaker 3:Julia, I love you very much. You know that it's such a blessing to do life with you, and Jeff and I love you as family. We've walked through a lot together. I always appreciate any opportunity to work with you, so thanks for including me.