Lisa Sugarman on Grieving Her Father Twice and Rewriting the Story

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What happens when the story that you've told yourself your entire life suddenly changes?  In this episode, writer and mental health advocate Lisa Sugarman shares how one unexpected revelation reopened an old loss, reshaped her identity, and led her to a new mission of connection, honesty, and healing. This is a story about truth, grief, and what it means to finally speak it out loud. Before I knew it,

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The question was out of my mouth and hitting her directly in the face. asked if he had taken his life and she said yes. And it just in that moment changed everything. It shifted absolutely everything for me.  And  I shut down for a long time. I shut down for a period of years just trying to kind of get my bearings and find balance. I was completely off balance in every way. And I wasn't talking about it with anybody. Nobody knew except my husband and my mom.

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The kids didn't even know. And little by little, I started just, I guess, accepting it in some ways,  in every way. And then it became my story.  I'm Maciel Houli, and this is The Life Shift,  candid conversations about the pivotal moments that have changed lives forever.

01:27

Hello, my friends. Welcome to the LifeShift Podcast. I am here with Lisa. Hello, Lisa. Hello, Matt. Thank you for wanting to be a part of the LifeShift Podcast. This has just been this journey that I never really could have expected to be such like a healing experience. I don't know if you feel that way about any of the shows that you're on or the things that you do. I do.  I feel that way. And it's the best way to express it too, that it is so cathartic and so healing,  even though

01:57

You know, I'm on different podcasts sharing different aspects of my story. It feels like everything that I do get to share is a value. Like there's a nugget within everything. So I love having these kinds of conversations. Yeah. That has been something that I did not expect. The power of telling your own story and then, and the way that you tell it kind of changes. It doesn't change your story, but the, but you kind of like peel back some layers and you're like, Oh,

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I didn't realize I was doing that because of that at the time. And so it's just been such a  joy through these stories, hearing other people's stories, I can start to relate or validate or feel less alone or whatever comes along from these conversations. And it's just like, why can't we do this in real life? I hope people are doing this in real life. I know. And that's the point. mean, and it seems so simplistic and it really is so simple to just go ahead and share.

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what you've been through in your lived experience. And I have to say, honestly, like that  was the  touch point for me. That was like the watershed moment for me when I very, for the very first time shared my story and it was on a podcast. And I  never intended to be talking about my story or this experience  or how my life has changed. I never expected it. And it led to  everything that I've done that I'm sure we'll talk about in bits and pieces.

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today, but  it led  to another world for me, almost completely. That's beautiful. think when you said that, sharing your story for the first time, I think for me too, when I was 16, I first shared like publicly in a paper at school, like in an English class about how I had lost my mom when I was  eight and how that affected me. And it was like the first time that I had kind of cracked open, I think I had pushed everything down for about eight years.

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And it kind of was like a bloodletting, if you will. It was like the first time that  I a little air out of the balloon. I'm just going to go with every metaphor here. And it was, started, it like, it started the healing journey. I think I kept pushing it down a little bit further, but I really look back at that moment of like, oh, I really needed that, that release of that story to get out of me. So then I could start putting it together where it made sense for me. So it sounds like that worked in beautiful ways for you after you shared your story for the first time.

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But did, I mean, it changed everything. I mean, I've always been a content creator, but I never created content around this particular story ever. was in, you and I were talking in the green room about how my professional life really centered around being a mom and parenting perfectly imperfect kids and that work-life balance. And that was my space. That was the work that I did in the world. And all of a sudden I had this

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brand new identity. And for me, it was  a very, very sudden kind of shift because I learned, I guess you could say I learned the secret of how my father died 35 years after I lost him. So not only did I have to grieve him twice fully and completely grieve him twice, which I continue to do,  it just completely changed the trajectory of my work and my life.  And I really never look back.

05:16

Yeah, it's it's we were also talking about this like weird funny Silver lining  type of thing in which these tragic things that we look back on in our life these really traumatic things  have also Brought us  these things. We never could have imagined  being so beautiful But they wouldn't have happened had these other things not had happened to us, you know and so I think there's this weird like hurts coming out of my mouth sometimes just saying like there's like

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I don't want to say silver lining because I don't see it quite as that. But like, I know I would not be able to have these conversations or be having these conversations had I not lost my mom in that way, had all the other things that happened after that not happened. So there is this weird beauty in it. There is. And I know you're kind of cringy when you say it. And I get why, because it is really, really hard to say things like silver lining  in  relation to

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loss.  Those are the hardest of the hard things. And here we are kind of mining  something beautiful out of that. And I think that's  what just fuels me. That's what keeps me going when I have these conversations with people and they say, Oh my God, I never thought of it that way. Or I never tried that  in my healing or  I  never imagined  that talking about what I've been through could lead to

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finding hope again or finding joy again. mean, those,  it's, that's the thing because what you and I have gone through and I, the more you and I talk, the more I realize our stories are so similar. It's that, that coexistence of,  of grief and joy and loss and joy.  And we bring it back and we've brought it back through the work that we're doing through what I do through  you doing this podcast and having these conversations and, therein lies the beauty, right?

07:13

Sure does. No, think I want to get into your story because we keep talking around it. But before we do, tell me who you are. 2025, how does Lisa identify in the world? So first and foremost, mother, wife, daughter. That's how I show up first and foremost. have two daughters. They're grown. My husband and I have been together for a million years. We've been together since we were 17 years old.

07:43

Thank God,  getting up to  millions, close to 40 years now that we've been together.  thanks. That's a feat in itself. It is a feat in itself. Yeah, he's the best guy there is. So  it's easy to be with him. So that's kind of personal life, family life. We live north of Boston.  My husband and I and one of my daughters, the other one lives about as far away as humanly possible in Japan. So that makes our family dynamic a little unusual.

08:12

We're super close. And the way I show up in the world to make an impact beyond those things  is as an advocate. I've become a mental health advocate. I've become a storyteller. I've become a crisis counselor. I've become a content creator who  is really working  fast and furiously to try and change the narrative on

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things like suicide and mental illness and grief and loss and have these kinds of conversations. Like we should be, you and I talked about this too, that we should be  able to just sit down and have a cup of coffee with someone and talk about suicide if that's the thing that someone needs to talk about or talk about grief and loss if that's what somebody wants  to talk about too. And  so that's what I try to do. And I do that in a lot of different ways and  through a lot of different collaborations and spaces actually founded.

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I founded a mental health resource hub called the Help Hub last year that really is a byproduct of all the work I do on lifelines and facilitating grief groups. And it really has given me so much unbelievable joy to put content out into the world that people can relate to and that it resonates with them and helps shift them from a dark place to a place of hope.

09:33

I do a lot of different things. It's like really hard to pick like, who am I? What is the one thing that I do? I guess just an until health advocate. Yeah, yeah, I guess so.  And  that's what I want to be. I think I've learned in these last several years, just kind of in this transition from what I used to do  in life to what I do now, that all I really want to do is be of service and take the thing that was the hardest thing for me  and  make it so that

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someone else who is dealing with that kind of hard thing doesn't find it quite so hard or has  a clearer path to hope. Yeah, that's beautiful. Well, thank you for what you're doing for the world because I always think of,  yes,  there's a lot of impact for that individual that is seeking the help, but the ripple effect that comes from someone that is able to heal in a productive way and how they

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show up in the world and how they can help others. I mean, you're just creating these beautiful ripples through the work that you're doing. And it all comes from  the experiences that you've had and  probably feeling alone in those experiences and feeling like nobody really understands what you're like. So many of us out here understand that feeling. And to your point, like if we could just talk about the real parts about being a human,  like how much richer would we all be?

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Because for so long, I grew up, it was like, you don't talk about these things. These are the things you could talk about. Absolutely. And it was this very narrow pathway that you had to stay on. And who was having conversations in the 1970s about losing a parent? You and I were talking about you were the only kid who was eight years old who didn't have a mom, and I was the only kid in my grade who didn't have a dad. And it was unbelievably isolating. And I actually.

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have been spending a lot of time now at this point in my life. mean, I'm 50, almost 57 years old.  And I'm really focusing on that a lot more lately than I ever have because I guess it just didn't really dawn on me at the time  how isolating, well, you were just in it.  You were just in it and kids don't know what to say and they don't know what to do and they don't know how to show up for you or for each other or for themselves.  And it was a very complicated time and it made it so much worse that

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all these things that we're trying to talk about now in the open, which is so hidden  and so  taboo that it was painful to have those conversations if you had them at all. Yeah. No, and you tiptoe around it and you didn't probably share the fullness of that feeling. It was like dipping my toe in the water to tell you that I don't feel great right now for whatever reason, but it was never the dire straits that maybe we were in at times through those.

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those really dark valleys, at least the ones that I went through, like I just had to pretend everything was okay. Yeah, that was what we assumed that we had to do.  So  I say all that to say thank you for what you're putting into the world now, because  now others won't have to feel that way. And it's just like, I think of the younger versions of us and going, that would have been nice. But here's what we can do now. Well, that's the thing. That's exactly it. And it's to me, all about making an impact now all about

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giving value to this thing that I went through. Like you're doing this on this podcast, you're doing the same thing. You're giving value to  what you had to deal with as a young child without a roadmap in  the dark. You know what mean? And that's pretty much what we had to deal with. And so now if  some of the resources or the content or the  videos or podcasts that I do  can  touch people, can make people feel less alone, like there's a loneliness epidemic.

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aside from everything that you and I are talking about. I mean, that's just the state of the world right now, unfortunately. And then you add in issues around mental health and wellness or mental illness or loss or grief. And it just compounds that feeling of loss where you just, and loneliness. So you feel like you're just kind of, you know, floating on a little island by yourself and it's sad and scary. And I really want to do whatever I can do in my power to change that for people. Well, it sounds like you are doing it.

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in the interest of the life shift, I know you have many life shifts in your life. I'm sure there are good, bad and different.  It sounds like we're gonna center these around kind of the two related to your father. How far back  does your story go to kind of paint this picture? Well, I can say that for me, it makes sense probably to explain that I've lost my dad twice in my life, which is a  very unusual.

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happening to begin with. mean, there were few quirky parts of my story.  That's one of them.  And  the first time I lost him, I was 10 years old. So that probably makes the most sense to start there. I was 10 years old. My I'm an only child. My dad was absolutely everything to me in my life. He was joyful and  present and loving and  motivated to  to just kind of charge at life. He always he was always that way.  And

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Then he was gone.  And  it was the summer after I turned 10. And the story that I was told by my mother was that he had died of a heart attack. And even though my dad was super active and  fit man, he was  a smoker because everybody smoked and heart disease ran in the family. And so the dots were easy to connect and there was no reason for me to question anything. So that was the story.  And for you were 10, I was 10. What was I going to question at the age of 10 years old? There was nothing was, I wasn't,  I wasn't

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experiencing a father who was depressed or  who was projecting some form of mental illness. Like my father seemed like any other dad. He seemed like a joyful, happy, busy, loving man.  And that was what I lived with for 35 years. And so there are parts of that that are easier than  others  to reconcile with. You know, when you feel like somebody's heart stopped and, and they died, it's something you can

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You can understand it makes sense.  There are no real questions  because it's beyond someone's control. So that's what I lived with. And then you flash my story forward. And this is where the big life shift happened for me.  I was 45 years old, the same  age that my father was when he passed away. And I very, very unexpectedly discovered that my father had actually died by suicide. And it just, it gutted me. It just...

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absolutely  shattered me. I was so unprepared for it.  It was so impossible to me for so many reasons.  And yet it was the truth.  And  the circumstances around that conversation were very strange for me because  the idea that that could have happened  was never in my brain. It didn't exist in my head. There was no reason for it to.  And then a family member made a comment asking me if our daughters

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had the same mental illness my father had and I had no idea what the hell she was talking about, Matt. I didn't  know what she meant.  And that just caused kind of a little bit of a chain reaction subconsciously. So the next time I was with my mother, I asked if he had been depressed and she said yes, which we had never talked about before. Before I knew it, the question was out of my mouth and hitting her directly in the face, I asked if he had taken his life and she said yes. And it just in that moment changed everything. shifted.

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absolutely everything for me. And I shut down for a long time. I shut down for a period of years just trying to kind of get my bearings and find balance. was completely off balance in every way. And I wasn't talking about it with anybody. Nobody knew except my husband and my mom. The kids didn't even know. And little by little, I started just, I guess, accepting it in some ways in every way. And then it became my story.

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And then  wasn't really sure honestly  what I was supposed to do with it.  I didn't have any intention of doing anything with it. And then  all of a sudden out of the blue, I decided I needed to acknowledge it somehow because I've always been a writer. So I wrote about it and I posted something about it. And someone reached out to me, a podcaster in Canada reached out and said, hey, I found your story really compelling. Do you want to come on my podcast? I had never even considered it.

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What is a podcast? It's called Suicide Zen and Forgiveness. Yeah. And what is a podcast? That was basically it because this was about 11 years ago  and or nine or 10 years ago at least.  And I had  no intention of talking about it like that. And then all of a sudden I did. And the feedback I got from that one single episode, the people reaching out to me, people sliding into my DMs, people

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finding me and connecting with me and  saying how valuable my story was to them. Just that was the life shift. That was the thing that kind of, I guess, flipped the switch for me and made me realize how valuable  our own lived experiences, whatever they are, can be for other people and for ourselves. Like it's you and I talked about this, that it's so cathartic to be able to just talk. Like, you know, to be able to sit here with someone who lost their mom around the same age that I lost my dad.

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Like that's incredibly valuable for both of us.  And so I saw that as being kind of a bigger, wider impact and I just rolled with it. And again, no plan. One thing led to another and  writing about it led to speaking about it and speaking about it led to,  okay, I want to do more. And I trained to become a crisis counselor with the Trevor Project. So now for the last three years, I've been on their crisis lifelines.  Every week I'm taking calls from people who  need help  and

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You need resources. Exactly. And then all these other beautiful things. have my own podcast now called The Survivors.  It's fascinating to me  listening to your story of 35 years of grieving your father in one way of feeling this absence he was taken from you, right? Like, that's kind of probably the maybe the feeling you had as a absolutely. Yeah, this disease took him. The heart disease, I should say took him in that way.

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And then, so you kind of come to terms, maybe, as you're moving through this grieving world. It took me 20 years to grieve my mom, and that was an accident. Not the grieving part, but the how she died. But then I think it's 35 years. So you've done all this grieving. You've kind of moved into this space where you're like, yes, my father died when I was a kid. I feel good. moving into the world. And then all of a sudden, all that unravels. Or does it? Does it create a second timeline? Or does it?

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unravel everything that you've done. And now you got to start from zero again. Both.  And I love the fact that you said it that way, because I've never really been able to articulate that. So I really appreciate you right now for saying it that way, because that is exactly what happened. It most definitely in every way unraveled everything because then all of a sudden,  you start questioning or at least I started questioning every conversation I had with him everything that we did together.

21:06

Was he really happy when he appeared to be happy? Was there something below the surface? What  all of these  memories and it's interesting because for a very long time, initially, I mean, it rewrote everything or at least it felt that way. And for a very long time in those first few years, I remember saying to my husband often, I feel like everything is so different. I feel like everything changed. feel like knowing this now has kind of contaminated everything is the best way I can explain it. And he said, look,

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He died in a way that you didn't realize.  He was unhappy in a lot of ways under the surface, but every memory you have with your dad, everything you shared, every laugh, every walk,  every experience, those were real. Those were what they were. So  in as much as this  new  truth changed things, it did, it also didn't change a thing.

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in a lot of ways. Does that make sense? Because that's how it feels to me. Well, and it makes sense why you've been married for 40 years now because that's how he responded. think that's it's very true. think from someone that has lost someone at that age, the memories before, like I'm trying to put myself in your position. I think what would happen for me is I would have felt like I grieved incorrectly.

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I'm very type A, so everything is right or wrong.  And so I would have felt, I would have looked back and had I found out that my mom had died in a different way, maybe a more shocking way, I think  it would have made me question myself more than it would have made me question the relationship that I had with her. Like, oh, you know, I shouldn't have been feeling happy by this point because this is actually what happened. And I was feeling all the wrong things at the time because I didn't know, did any of that?

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playing  like the after grief part. So for me,  it relates to something a little bit different. For me, it relates to my belief system around suicide. So because my father  ended his own life,  I know myself as well as you say, you know,  eight year old Matt, I know 10 year old Lisa well enough to know that if I had learned when I was 10, that my dad had taken his own life.

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I don't know if I would have survived it, and I'll tell you why.

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Back then, and we're talking in the late 1970s, and today, a lot has changed, but a lot hasn't. The belief system a lot of people have around suicide is that it's selfish, and it's  very common. I was one of those people for no other reason than it was the way my little girl brain processed this notion of someone ending their own life. And the year before my father died,

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So I'm a multiple suicide loss survivor. I lost my cousin who lived right around the corner from me. He was 18, I was nine. He took his life the year before my father passed away. And I was  aware that it was a suicide. was told. They told me in as much as they could tell me in a very tender and loving way and certainly did not give me any push toward feeling that it was selfish. They just told me. So the way that I internalized that was all on my  own.

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my own little brain. So then my father passes away of what I think is a heart attack. And then I learned that my father,  of course, did take his life. And then  four years ago, one of our best friends  took his life very suddenly. So I've been dealing with this kind of grief my entire life in one way or another. And for the first part of my life, I always believed that it was selfish.

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And it was only after I learned about my father taking his life and really started digging into the way depression distorts your thinking and mental illness can  corrupt your, the way you move around in the world and  the way that you respond to the world. I had a shift and I recognized very, very suddenly that mental illness is an illness. It's an illness, cancer's an illness,  heart disease.

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any of those things  that are beyond our control that you would never,  if someone died and  had been in an accident, you would never hold anything against them for that. You would never hold something against someone who  had cancer and passed away. So why were we holding things against the people who were in so much emotional pain that they felt they couldn't continue? We shouldn't be. And it just clicked. That was another life shift moment for me that really was

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equally in some ways as powerful as even just learning that my dad took his life. So I know that if I had known then that it was a suicide, I may not have made it through that. say that not really knowing. don't know. I don't know. I don't know if it would have been a breakdown. don't know if it's just, I would never have been the same. I debilitating. yeah.

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it would have just had such an incredibly profound impact on me and how I saw the world and how I lived in the world and how I engaged with it. I think it would have just been a profoundly different life if I had grown up knowing that. because I think maybe too at that age, you'd also like you did at 45, you start to like, is there something I did? Because you're a kid, right? You're just like,

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everything you think revolves around your little tiny world. Like, did I say something wrong? You know, I feel like a lot of those would have come in.  I think it makes sense, though, because my question coming from like, did it feel like you grieved wrong? No, because when that clicked, your father died of an illness.  Like, you know, and so it's like those two are congruent. I think in my mind, my mom dying in a motorcycle accident, had I found out something different, I  don't.

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I mean, I guess I don't know and I will never know.  But I think it would, I would have looked back of like, say she had died of an illness, my tiny brain now, my tiny brain then  would think it was okay because that was  the cycle that was happening, you know, because it's health related or something. And I feel like  if I look back, that feels like it's easier to contend with. It's probably not. But as a kid, a shock pull apart in a way like that it was not an illness, felt.

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very different. I don't know where I'm going with that. But just saying like, I think I would have been mad at myself for my wasted grief. And that seems like really silly to say out loud, but I think it's true. No, I don't think it's, I don't think it's silly at all. I actually really understand why you say that. And I think I say with the same kind of certainty, how debilitating it would have been if I

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had learned about my dad's any earlier in my life. So no, I I absolutely get why you say that. And it's not silly at all. Well, thank you. When you said that you discovered this new information of how your father passed, it put you in a zone of a couple of years of which you were struggling. How did that manifest or what did that look like for you? Was it like a

28:48

true depression, was this a denial? What was that phase like? Because I think as adults, we  sometimes don't acknowledge these things and we think we need to get past it or whatever. And it sounds like you really kind of embraced it in a way to get yourself through. I  think the way that I  really  handled it was the only way that I could handle it, which was just to sit in it.

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in whatever it was at the time. And I continue to do that. And I tried very intentionally to do that with anything that I have to deal with that is challenging. It's just to accept it for what  the thing is  and try and move through it because you really can't skirt it.  You have to. We We think we can. We absolutely do.  So for me at that time, there was such a deep sense

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of surrealness.  That's the best way that I can explain it. It just was so impossible for me to believe that this was  the truth for a very, very long time. And so the way that I showed up, keeping in mind that my mother and my husband and I were the only people who knew about this. I had two teenage kids at the time. I was working in the school system at the time. So I had to put on, you know,

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the happy Mrs. Sugarman face every day.  And  I was  living two very distinctly different lives is the best way for me to say it. I was one way in that outward facing part of my life that was with my friends who didn't know  or my extended family who didn't know or my kids  or at work, you know,  nobody knew. And then I would come home  and

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It was rough. It was rough for a good solid few years.  I would cry myself to sleep to Dave almost every night for a very, very long time. Things would,  crazy things, crazy things would trigger me.  I couldn't,  I also in the very beginning, I was very angry with my dad, but probably not for the reason you would think.  I was angry not because my father left me.  I was absolutely furious with him.

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that he left my mother as a single mom who worked up the street part-time as a secretary in the nursing home. What in the hell was she supposed to do?  And  I was just so angry with him. My  kids didn't even realize this. I shared it with them later on and they didn't really pick up on it.  I hard stop did not talk about my father anymore. And I was someone who

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It was always so important to me to make my children feel my father's presence. There were pictures everywhere,  any place we went.  We happened to live in my hometown, so  everything had a memory attached to my dad. And I would share everything all the time, even though they'd heard it 75 times  each. I would do that because I always wanted them to feel like they had a sense of him and that they knew him. And it was more than just their mom talking about their grandfather. I wanted them to feel his presence.

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I couldn't look at his pictures. I couldn't talk about him. And I really just, I lost him. I lost him for a while. And it wasn't until I realized that there was absolutely nothing to forgive. My mother never harbored a second's worth of resentment toward my father. She never, never saw a therapist, never went to a grief group, never...

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spoke about my father's suicide with a living soul until the day she told me that he had taken his life. So for 35 years, my mother internalized all of it.  And  I'll tell you,  it was  ultimately a gift to me to find out. This is one of those weird times where we say something like really super positive came out of this really terrible thing, but it's true  because when  I  found out the truth,

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Number one, I was never resentful of my mother in any way. I was nothing but grateful that she spared me from that. But I was so incredibly grateful that now I could hold space for my mother. Now  I could let her share with me what she went through and  what did it feel like and where was your head at and your heart at and all those things that she had kept quiet. So that's how it was for me in  the beginning for a very long time. And then

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I feel like I kind of  moved through it and I guess it must've been the right way for me because ultimately I found peace  and  you know,  there's things that you're always left with like the why.  I'll never know the full extent of that.  and  you know, I struggle with that sometimes.  I really do. But  that's just, that's part of my type A personality. I need to know how things line up  and sometimes you can't. And that's been a good exercise for me in realizing that

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Sometimes you just don't have the answers. Most of time.  Yeah. Right. Especially with life. I mean, it's really hard. Sometimes we think we're making decisions for a particular reason when the deep seated reason is totally different, you know? And so we convince ourselves of all these things. And it  sounds like this journey was definitely needed, not something I knew how to do until I was  probably late thirties of just understanding that like, I got to sit with it. Like, it's not something I've been brushing it under the rug for.

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20 something years,  that wasn't working,  because it's still here.  So, you know, it's like you have to sit with it and feel it and understand it and understand that it's okay to feel however you're feeling. Like if you're mad at your father, like,  I guess on the surface, we could say you shouldn't be mad at him. But it's okay if you are. I need it to be you needed to be you needed that part of your process. And it was justified. Like it was a justified thought. was absolutely.

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Right, knowing you had to work through these things.  Where on that journey did you find your way to, like, was  it when  you  understood that suicide, I mean, it was like a mental illness, it was a result of a mental illness, was that the clique where you started feeling differently towards your father again? Was that like the thing that pushed you back towards the love? Not that you didn't, not that you stopped loving him, but you were angry.

35:30

Right, exactly. No, you can absolutely love someone and be angry at them. That was definitely the moment. can't tell you the time stamp. don't remember. the day? I know you don't. Day, hour, minute.  I just remember that it was  a few years after.  I remember just being, because suicide is such a wild animal. It's such a nuanced kind of experience. And there are so many parts of it.

36:00

that just don't exist with any other kind of loss. They just don't exist. That's just the reality of it. You don't have the why. If somebody dies of a heart attack,  you don't get stuck on the why because you understand their heart stopped. If someone has cancer,  you don't have lots of unanswered questions. You don't necessarily feel guilt. You don't feel shame. It's things like that.  So I spent a lot of time dealing with those  feelings  and it sucked.  It absolutely sucked.

36:30

Did you research? you  get you? OK, that's I'm glad you said that because that's what I was coming around to was to say that all of a sudden I remember  I was not like a big YouTube person. I think that's actually what kind of got me into YouTube, to be honest with you,  because all of a sudden. Yeah,  all of a sudden I was,  guess, a little obsessed with understanding  where someone's head is  when they're in that state.  What is  what is someone thinking?

36:59

What is someone feeling? I ended up, I remember I was watching video after video of people who  had, you know, they were attempt survivors, to be honest with you. And a lot of them were,  were lost survivors as well, because now all of a sudden I had this new distinction. I had this new label.  I was not just who I was. I was this other thing and I didn't know how to be that thing.

37:23

And I didn't know what being a survivor was. I didn't know what being a survivor meant. I didn't know what I was supposed to do, how I was supposed to behave, how do you talk about it?  And so it was this total organic process, but what was really helpful was kind of immersing myself in this  world of people who had experienced what I experienced. And then all of a sudden I was like,  holy God, I'm in a  world.

37:46

that, and I'm not a mathematically inclined person, so please don't ever think that I am, but what I will say is that numbers do amaze me at times in the context of for every person who dies by suicide, 135 people are affected and over 700,000 people a year die by suicide around the world.

38:11

So you do the simple math and now you're talking over 94 million people a year are in some way. It's totally simple math. It's the most advanced math that I have the capacity to do. So it's all you got. But you're talking like 94 million people around the world have been impacted by this one specific kind of loss. So this community is massive and no one is talking about it or very few people are actually talking about it. But then when you start looking for people,

38:41

You're like, oh hell, there are  millions of people out there. So that's what I did.  And I found incredible comfort in that.  And that's- alone. I didn't, I didn't. And then I understood, I think it was the survivors who were like, you know, the survivors of attempts  who were like,  I just needed this pain to stop. That was the theme, that that was kind of the...

39:05

the one thing that carried from person to person to person. And once I internalized that and said, oh my God, my father was in so much pain.  And you know, there are two different kinds of people. There are two different cohorts of people in this world where mental illness is usually concerned.  One  set of people,  everything is very, very concealed. Everything is on the inside. They're not expressing it. They're not sharing it. You don't know what's happening. You don't know that they're affected.

39:33

And then you have the other people who are  maybe vocal and they're turning to social media. And if you ask them how they are, say, I'm terrible.  I'm really not good. So you've got two different types of people. My dad was the extrovert who was great, who you would never have suspected. And so  once I realized how much pain he must have been into, I've made that decision. That was it. That was it. Once  I had that, I guess we can call it an epiphany, a moment, that was it.

40:02

And I never  felt differently after that. Did you start talking about him again? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.  I remember, I do have this one memory of,  I'm a big journal person. I've had a journaling practice my entire life, ever since I was a little kid. And I remember shortly after kind of having that revelation, being in a moment in my journal where I  was sharing that, I was putting  words to that feeling.

40:31

And I just remember all of a sudden I just looked down and the page is covered in tears. And I was  sobbing because I felt so guilty for  holding something against him for so long. And then, you know, then I really did kind of snap out of that quickly thinking, okay, give yourself a little bit of grace here.  This is all brand new to you. You just, you didn't know. It also gets protection. It was.

41:00

You're right. Self-protection. You're absolutely right. It was.  And so it was in that moment that everything began to shift for me. And then I was like a runaway train. Then I was like, okay, what can I do?  What, what orgs can I get involved with? What platforms can I be part of? What work can I do? How can I, how can I make  a bigger impact? And so it was just a domino effect. Just

41:27

one thing led to another and another and another. And it continues to  be that way. And I just, mean, I have a terrible, terrible problem with saying  no  to people and things and requests. I've been really been better really in the last couple of years I've worked in with my therapist very intentionally. She laughs at me because she knows how committed I am now to actually having boundaries and not just saying I have boundaries, but actually, you know, executing.

41:56

And  I think it served me well though in the beginning when I was just like, yep, I'll come on your podcast. Yep, I'll write that article. Yep, I'm gonna do this thing. I needed it.  I needed it. And I continued to need it because,  know, when you find the thing that you believe you're supposed to do,  you just wanna do the thing. Yeah, I think that the part of your story is like,

42:22

the community that you found in this terrible space. Like  it's not a community anyone wants to be a part of, right? But when you do find it, it's not that other people have gone through the same thing, but they understand how you're feeling. They understand that you were mad at your dad. They understand, and other people that haven't had these experiences can probably easily go, well, why would you be, you know, like they would just question the way that you're feeling. And sometimes we can't explain.

42:53

why we feel a certain way of like  about the loss or about how things have happened unless they've experienced it themselves. And so the power of community and kind of the  whole reason that the life shift exists is like,  I think of the eight year old mad if he had been able to hear people have conversations, grownups have conversations about losing their parents at a young age and here they are.

43:19

successful or talking about their feelings or, you know, like things were okay. I think of that eight-year-old and go, oh, I wouldn't have been so scared of life because  I, I don't know if this happened to you, but my mom was  ripped from me suddenly, right? And this, she died in an accident. And at that moment,  I looked around and all the adults in my life wanted to see if I was okay. So I assumed I had to be perfect.

43:47

Because if I wasn't perfect and they saw that I wasn't OK, they might leave because my mom left. And it didn't make any sense to me until I was older and I look back on it. But everything I did was for them.  It was like I turned into a person that I was no longer going to be because now I was serving my father, my grandmother,  to make sure that they understood that I was going to be OK. And nobody understands that unless they I understand it, Matt.

44:16

I understand. want to hug you right now so badly because I understand it. And I have to tell you that  you and I had very, very similar experiences. We both lost our parents really suddenly. We both lost our parents within  a two year age range of each other.  And what I've learned  is that  when you just something you said just really struck me in a way I haven't been struck in a long time when you said I ended up not being the person I might've been  or

44:45

could have been or should have been, who knows?  Apparently we are the people we're supposed to be  if you think of it in those terms. But that being said,  I  shifted into this person again, I said, I'm an only child. So there were no other siblings. It was all me. Oh, I didn't know you're an only child. Okay. So I connect with you on that one too.  So  I  developed what my therapist and I, again, we joke about it. I have this side of me that she calls

45:14

my hyper vigilant side, because I'm always  running around and I've always done this. did this when I was a teenager with my friends. I did it with  Dave when we first got married with my children still do it today.  I'm always kind of running around like, Oh, are you good? Everything good? Everyone good? What do you need? Can I help? Can I be there?  Tell me is everything okay?  And that, and I, to the point where I'm an empath by nature, I am a very highly sensitive person. I have

45:44

every assurance that you are too. I feel everything from everybody all the time. And it can be extremely  cumbersome and heavy and overwhelming at times because I just want to shut my brain off and not worry about, care about, consider other things to the degree that I always, that my little brain has always considered them. And I realized, I traced it back. I realized that

46:13

it happened almost immediately. I woke up one morning, I used to have two parents and now I only had one and holy shit, if something happens,  I don't have any extras. All of a sudden, if my mom is gone, I'm alone. And so I needed to take care of my people. Like you're the way you internalized it, you needed to be, you know, kind of always on point.

46:38

And there was, and I definitely, I'm a perfectionist too, and I've always been that way. And I definitely have that type A side.  But for me, I think it was more like, I need to make sure  I keep my people safe and I need to always put everybody before  myself.  And man, does it just manifest, huh? Yeah, it sure does. And what you say, I think I probably absorb some of that too. I even think of now, if I have a party or something at my house, I have a gathering and it stresses me out because I want to make sure that everyone

47:08

is having a good time or  no one feels left out. I have to bounce around to everyone with equal amount of time. So I would imagine that some of  that came from feelings. But, I think it's so if people like us don't have these conversations, other people out there think they're weird. Yeah, like they think that like,  oh, I'm the only one that does this. I'm so crazy. But now the more conversations I have, I'm like, oh, wow.

47:36

So all the things that I've thought over the last 40 something years of being crazy were just me being human. That's right. Just  showing up  as this flawed human because of the experiences that I've had that some out of my control. Exactly. And  every single one of us is flawed in some way. Every single one of us has some  lived experience  that can connect us  to the millions of other people out there living side by side us.

48:05

who are having the same things too, but because you go back to the whole isolation factor  that we exist with now  and people  keep that internalized.  Whether it's out of fear or shame  or  whether  they just  don't want to attach themselves to it, whatever the reason is,  people just aren't talking about it. And that's why  I'm done. I'm done with that mentality because it's not serving us as a

48:35

It's not serving us. We are flawed to begin with.  And we are all going through the same things just in a different headspace. That's all. I agree. And I also, I say this out loud many times now, especially with this podcast, is I connect with people far more in their valleys than in their mountain peaks. I love that. You know, because I grew up in a time period, my mom died in 89.

49:03

I grew up in this period of we could only talk about like, you know, like, how's your son? Oh, he got all A's.  Oh, he won, you know, what? I wasn't in sports, so I was going to give a sports reference, but I didn't do that. But, know, like he he did all these great things. It was never the challenging times or he's having a rough time thinking about it. It was never that we didn't talk about that. It was only the good things. And now the more the older I get, I get to talk to people about like the hard things, because at the end of the day, those hard things

49:33

show our resilience. you're like, some of the things you're like, like even you said this, I was like, as a kid, had you known your father had died in the way that he did, it would have debilitated you. It might have in the moment. But with all these stories that I've heard, you probably would have moved through that like a champion, you know, like eventually somehow as humans, most of us, if we're lucky, we move through these moments and we find the other side, you know, in a positive way.

50:01

And I want to be sensitive to the topic that we're talking to today. I understand that some aren't able to, but if we keep taking those steps, we get through. Like, I didn't think I was going to make it past 32. That's how old my mom was when she died. You know, like I thought, well, I'm going out at 32. And then when I turned 33, I was like, now what? Like, I didn't plan for this part of my life. Yeah. Yeah. I totally get why you would say that. And it's an interesting mindset.

50:31

to be in, but you're not alone. Like you're absolutely not alone. I I definitely  have felt all of those things before. And the only thing that I know for certain has worked for me, and I only speak for what works for me, is sitting in it, because that's how you move through it. Because if you're trying to avoid it, whatever the it is, it's gonna find you. You can't outrun it. Did you know that all along growing up?

51:02

for yourself? Did I know that? That's a really good question.  I think on some  instinctual  subliminal.  So you weren't a push or downer?  Um,  no, I wasn't. I mean, I  came from,  I was the product of two people who were my parents are very progressive in good ways, beautiful ways in terms of conversation, like they always included me in things.  And

51:30

I felt like they talked to me like a human, not like a little kid, which I always loved. And I remember at the time when I was a kid thinking how special I felt that I seemed to have a different kind of connection with my parents, that they somehow trusted me to talk to me like a normal person. And I really valued that and I loved that. So I think that I always had a brain that was  just wired a little different than everybody else's. I always related more with adults than I did with kids when I was a kid.

52:00

I just did.  I just was always thinking the deep thoughts when I was a kid. I mean, I don't know if I was really  super conscious  of  the power of sitting in it or moving through it or talking about things. But I think maybe  in some unconscious way, it was hardwired into me. So it served me in that way. I only asked that because I didn't learn that until like my  30s. I think I was running  from

52:26

grieving my mom properly, whatever that looks like for any person. But  it really took me to like early  30s to, to like start sitting in it and start acknowledging it and acknowledging my part in that grieving process and not that it's like one and done kind of where everything before that felt like I should be able to flip this switch  and it should be done.  And it was like  in my  30s where I was like, no,  my mantra is very similar to yours. Now is like,

52:57

However you're feeling at any point in time is okay  because that's the human experience. And so if I'm mad,  I'm gonna acknowledge it and that's gonna pass eventually or I have the tools or if I'm sad,  I have the tools. I know it's gonna take X amount of time to get through it, but I have to acknowledge it and not mask it or push it away or pretend it's not there. So it's very similar to kind of sitting in it, if you will.

53:22

Very much so, yeah. I think it's very similar. And  these are the things that people need to understand and  need to recognize. And that's why the more of us who are out here talking about these things so openly  and sharing these hard parts  so willingly, that's how we change. It's a grassroots effort. That's how we change the narrative and the dialogue  and the mindset.

53:50

and make it easier for everyone else who has to go through these hard bits because  there is never a time when everything just levels out  and  we're just, okay, we're good now  forever. It doesn't happen that way. I'm sorry, I wrecked that for you. It seems like you're pretty evolved in the way that you're feeling now about

54:19

this experience and losing your father twice in your experience. Knowing all the things you know now and the people you help now,  what would you say to Lisa who just found out  the second time,  found out how your father really died? Would you tell her anything? Yeah, I would. And I've actually written about this. I've written just privately in journals about this.  would just, it's funny, I have a picture, I'm looking at it off camera. It's a picture of me and my dad.

54:49

It's one of the only ones that was ever taken of just the two of us.  And  I sit down and say good morning to both of them every day when I sit down and kind of give them a little kiss.  And there are times when I'll actually have a full on conversation with that little girl with the crazy ass hair. I don't really know what that was all about, but  I have had conversations  and I've written about it and said, you know,  you didn't know what you didn't know.

55:18

And it is as simple as that. There's no blame.  Dad wasn't leaving you and he wasn't leaving mom. He was just a guy who was really in pain and he didn't want to be in pain anymore. And I can't fault anybody for that.  So  I think I would just tell her,  I would have said to her,  start talking sooner, start reaching out sooner. But I'm just grateful that I did,  even though it happened a little bit later in life.

55:48

For me, I am grateful that I know. And that might seem weird to some people.  Like how could you possibly be grateful to find out that your dad actually took his life?  I just always had some kind of weird sense that I had  some  wiring that was so different than other people. I didn't think I was depressed. I didn't want to end my life. It wasn't like that, but there was something about.

56:16

the way that I carry the weight of the world that just, I just had a knowing about myself that I was wired differently. And I can't explain it. This is one of the things you talk about, like just a feeling that you can't possibly express so that other people understand. Here's mine. I learned that my father was mentally ill.  I don't really know what that means because there was no conversation about it. It was discovered after he was gone. So I don't know what that really meant, but I knew what I was  and I knew what I wasn't.

56:45

day that I found out that my dad took his life. knew that maybe I, know, look, trauma is inherited, DNA is inherited, mental illness is inherited, all those things trickle down. And I knew that there was some part of him that was in me, but it wasn't that part. And so if it makes any sense,  there was this weird peacefulness  about  learning, okay, so

57:13

That is what he was dealing with and that is what really happened.  And  you're okay. He wasn't and that sucks that he wasn't. And I wish that  he could have been. I wish he could have found the help. I wish the lifelines were  running when  he needed it, which is why I'm on Lifelines today. But it was clarifying in a lot of ways. And I was just grateful, like I said, and I mentioned this a while ago.

57:40

that I'm just grateful that I can be there and my mom can kind of walk the walk together now. And we've been in this absolutely beautiful  11 year long conversation.  Oh, I bet that I can't imagine what it feels like for her. Yeah, it was hard for her in the very beginning, knowing that  I'll never forget that that first day when it really came out, she was never going to tell me. She was never going to tell me she didn't want to hurt me.  And when it came out, she also didn't want to lie to me. So she really kind of kept both promises  and

58:10

It was hard on her in the beginning because she knew how  much pain it was causing me. But it was  a gift, a weird kind of a gift that I cannot explain that I now get to be there to support her  and we get to do this together. Yeah,  and take that, take a little bit of that heaviness away from her that I'm sure someone that's holding in something for that long feels, I sure felt it for 20 years.

58:39

I know  the clouds part and you're like, wow, this is what air feels like. Exactly. Exactly. And my mother,  my mother is so cute. She  lives in Florida. She's probably right next door to you right now.  And  she  has actually been on podcasts with me. She's been invited on podcasts with me.  So I have another book that's coming out  next year  and it's the kind of a memoir. a part memoir,  part...

59:08

mental health resources, hub, toolkit, box. It's a lot of different things.  And my mother is actually contributing to that book. So we're working on that little bits and pieces together.  So  it's been incredibly healing for her too. So I know she's as grateful to have me to support her as I am to have her support me. Yeah, that's so important. I mean, again, it's just the power of story and the ability to

59:35

to share it and hear it and hear your own story out of your own mouth and hear different versions of your story from other people that have also lived that. There's something about every story that I've been able to have on this show that has been like this little healing moment of things that I  didn't know still needed to be healed. Like, it's just like  things emerge and you're like,  oh,  you know, and it just.

01:00:02

proves like this power of connection, like we just need  to talk to each other and share these things because we're all trying to do the same thing here, right? We're all trying to exist in this space that  we are occupying right now. And how much better is it when we connect with other humans who have similar feelings? So thank you for just coming on this journey in the way that we did it today. It is  absolutely  my pleasure in every way. It was just a  beautiful conversation and

01:00:31

I thank you for that, for just asking such intentional questions and being so open and so safe. So I thank you right back. Well, thank you for allowing that.  Sometimes you never know how if people are ready, and I knew you were when we first started. So  thank you for that. If people want to check out your books, check out your  resources, they know someone in their life that needs your resources, or they want to point you there, what's the best way to find you, get in your orbit?

01:01:00

So the very best place to go is my website. It's called the help hub. You can find it at the help hub.co and that's  everything. That's everything I do. Everything I am. That's the way to get in touch with me. It's where you can listen to my podcast. It's where  you can  take a peek at my YouTube channel. I have a lot, a lot of short form.

01:01:22

video content relating to mental health, in particular suicide and  mental illness, where I just kind of share my own experience  around things that I know are very common things.  And then all my columns, I wrote a column for God, probably a dozen years, all my archives are there, all my books are there,  and my story is there. And then a  humongous platform of mental health resources and tools. That's what the Help Hub is. It's a place for people to find the help that they need.

01:01:51

when they need it most, no matter what community you're in, it's kind of the one stop shop for anyone, whether you're  part of  the BIPOC community or the Latinx community, or you're a parent with a teen, or you're in the elderly community or the queer community, like that, that's  by design, a place that has something that fits everyone's unique needs. So you can find me there and all the socials are there.

01:02:19

I it. Well, I will certainly link that in the episode description.  If people just want to tell you their story, are you open to people reaching out to you and saying, Hey, what you said was like, right on the money for something I've experienced. Are you open to that? I am not only open to that I would be ecstatic if that happened.  And there is  there is a feature on the help hub where you can reach out. It's a

01:02:47

simple,  super easy little form. just throw your email in and  you can  tell me whatever it is that you want to tell me. And I  am very fortunate that  I have had  so many beautiful messages from people coming through all different ways, but coming through my website in particular, just sharing stories or sharing something that resonated, whether it was a video or it was a book or it was a conversation. And that means more to me than you will ever know. I

01:03:15

have responded to every single person in all these years who has ever taken the time to reach out to me. So  I consider that a gift, and I would love that.  I  encourage anyone listening now, if something resonated with you,  please drop Lisa a note, even if it's just something that you connected with.  The biggest gift you could give us, though, is if you know someone in your life that might need to hear this conversation or  the Help Hub resources or whatever it may be, please share with them. I think, you know,

01:03:45

We're here to share our story with each other, to connect in this way, but also in hopes that other people,  the young Matt, the young Lisa, are hearing this and know that they're not alone in their circumstances. It might be a different circumstance, but they're not alone in it. So  thank you for being listeners and being a part of this journey with me. And thank you, Lisa, for  coming down this road today with me.  This is the only road that  I wanted to be on today. Well, I appreciate that.

01:04:15

And I never know how to end these things, so I'm just going to say goodbye, and I'll be back next week with a brand new episode.

01:04:32

For more information, please visit  www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com