Excerpt from Life of Dad mini-documentary:
"I want to tell you about a warrior. A warrior named Wyatt Zane. My mentor, hero, cuddle and battle buddy, my son, my king...
Wyatt means small courageous fighter, and courageous in battle.
He lived up to that name. We won many battles, but sadly, we lost our war...
The only thing harder than losing a child is learning to live again.
You have to find a way to forgive yourself.
When we are shattered, we get to choose how we put ourselves back together.
From pain comes power.
In grief, can greatness be born.
it is beautifully tragic. Whoever, where ever you are, if you can hear my voice.
I believe in YOU!!
For all the fathers fighting their own battles, big and small, KNOW THIS…
You are stronger than you realize. Sleep is overrated, you will endure.
If you can learn to still yourself when you are tired, confused and afraid, you will not only find a special beauty in that moment, but in yourself.
For this is the fire in which we are truly forged.
Trust your instincts, live, laugh, and love with ferocity.
Wyatt Zane Shook My Lil Warrior and King My greatest love" ~Zane Shook
Follow Zane Shook at: Twitter @ZaneShook Instagram wzaneshook
If you are grieving the death of your child and would like to get a free copy of Pat Sheveland's book: How Do I Survive? 7 Steps to Living After Child Loss, go to: www.healingfamilygrief.com and order your copy today.
Grief is not meant to be done alone so please reach out if you are feeling isolated or abandoned in your grief.
You can reach Pat at: patsheveland@msn.com.
#griefandlosssupport #griefsupport
Shownotes:
Welcome, everybody. I just feel so blessed to be here today. Number one, July is Bereaved Parents Month, so it's a month that just really is focused on parents who have suffered through the most unimaginable thing possible is the death of their child. And today I'm here with Zane Shook, who is a dad who has been grieving for several years now. And so I'm just so thankful. I met Shane actually through a Facebook group, and we just started connecting and doing some messaging back and forth. And he shared some of his beautiful poetry and things like that. So I just thought this was just really something that would be very important for all of you who hop on and listen to me and are on my various social media platforms. So Shane, welcome or Zane, I'm sorry. Zane, welcome so much. Why don't you tell a little bit about yourself?
Well, as you said, my name.
Is Zane. Zane, yeah.
That's right. I've been called worse. I'm 47 now. I've been married for 26 years to my queen, Julie. We've been together forever through thick and thin. It's been an interesting life, I guess. I'm learning through other people and myself. I guess when I was born, I had tubes and things running through my body. My dad said he couldn't even see me the first time that he came home. He was in the armed forces. I had so many tubes and things in there. And I guess I almost died twice. And then a lot of tragic things have happened in childhood. None of my family died, thankfully. But I witnessed my brother being gulfed in flames. My sister get hit by a car right in front of me when her back in the day when they had back brakes on the bicycles and her chain popped off, I reached out and tried to grab her, but she went right out in front of this car. Some crazy things like that. And a lot of times our life, we just take it as it comes. And you don't realize that things are dramatic, especially when you're a kid.
It's just, well, that was crazy. And then you move on. And it wasn't until later in my life that I had nightmares about those since we're talking about traumas and things. But life went on. Three days before my 16th birthday, I was shot by my best friend since kindergarten with a sawed off 20 gage shotgun at Point Blank range. I had blew out my whole everything here. So that was quite the experience. Changed a lot of things in life. I had planned on going in the military and things like my dad, but they said, well, you got the heart and the mind for it, but the body, if something could happen to the shoulder. And then what I did, used to do for a profession, I did carpet cleaning, fire and water restoration, things like that. And then actually, when I met Julie, it's funny. I walked into this new country bar. We actually met at a bar where people say, Oh, that can't happen. I walked in in my metallic shirt because I was always about metallic. And it was a huge country dance floor. It was a huge country bar. I was like, Look at these weirdos.
And then now it's like, here I got... I learned to dance, line dance, and do all these things, 20 step, two step walls and all that. I was like, we were throwing down out there on that thing. I was doing this modeling type stuff for a store that was in there called the All American Cowboy. And that's where I met Julie. And the first time I noticed her, I'm not sure if she noticed me or not, I was actually dancing with someone else. And my hand slipped a little bit. I almost went right into the dance rail because she caught my attention. I was like, What's going on? Bam. And I was like, Oh, Jesus. I hope no one saw that. A lot of people did see that, though. And then she walked up to me, though, one day and she just said, When are you going to dance with me? And I was like, Right now? And we've been dancing ever since. Life. Like the song, the dance by Garth Brooks. A lot of people think that's actually just about a specific dance, but it's actually about the dance of life. It has a double meaning there.
And then we had Wyatt, and he was born in 1998. Now, at seven months along, they had brought us back in after the latest ultrasound and had told us that they could not see one of his kidneys at all. It was just not there. It was a void. And then the next one or the other one, they could not see it. They did not know if it was there. So legally, they had to give us the option to abort if we wanted to, because they said if he's born with no kidneys, there's just absolutely no chance. But of course, my mentality and hers, we're thinking, you can't tell us that 100 %. So we're not going to throw in the towel before the bell rings. We're going to give life a chance. And he came out and then the doctors really got a kick out of it when he peed on him because they were like, he's got a kidney. And he did his thing in a major business and then he was born. His name is Wyatt Zane. And technically, my middle name is Zane. My first name is actually Warren. So it's Warren Zane Shook, WZS.
And he's Wyatt Zane Shook, WZS. But Wyatt means a small, courageous fighter and courageous in battle. And sadly, life itself was his battleground every day. But man, what a warrior. Definitely, he had some bad days and things, but he never really cried a lot. It took a lot to make him cry. He was mostly happy and a little nutter. He was a little crazy guy, even though he could never speak. He couldn't speak. And depending on exactly what we would be talking about, he passed when he was just four months shy of his 18th birthday. But he's probably mentally functioning somewhere around between two to four ish. It's really hard to pinpoint it down. I know he had special needs. A lot of people, if they don't know about special needs, they just assume that you're just stationary. But he was actually ambulatory. He could walk. He could go crazy, but he'd just get really tired a lot. That's why you see in a lot of my pictures that the wheelchair, because we had to have that after he outgrew the strollers and things like that. But yeah, so he only had the one kidney.
He had many surgeries. He had to have an ASD and a BSD repaired for his heart. And that was the biggest one. And then he had to have what they call a fundop latication. It's where at the bottom of your esophagus tube, if the muscles are relaxed too much, that's what gives you the gird, the really bad refub. And his was really bad. And so they had to go in there and wrap it, tighten it. And then it came loose. They had to rebose it. And so he fed through a Mickey button in his stomach. It's like a feeding tube, basically. Mickey buttons are really nice though, because you can take the actual tubes off. And then he had the trach placed for many years. So there's a lot of suctioning. And then, of course, there was medications. He did suffer seizures. So he had a lot going on.
You had so much. I'm a nurse by background and just all of the physical challenges that you dealt with. So basically for 18 years, this was your life. This was absolutely your life is caring for this beautiful child.
Yeah. Did you want to ask something?
No, go ahead.
Yeah. Some people say, Oh, wow. That's crazy. You had to sacrifice so much. And it's just like, I didn't sacrifice anything. I was gifted. I was blessed. Not me gifted, but gifted with him and his presence. And so after he was first born, we were both home with him for many months. And then I would work for a while or she would work for a while. And then we got some nursing here and there and it went back and forth like that for a few years. And we lived in Carbondale, Kansas at that time. But we had to make so many trips about 80 miles east to here to Kansas City. And that's where Children's Mercy Hospital is down in Kansas City, Missouri. And so we moved to Oalatha, Kansas, which is just a little bit south of Kansas City to be closer to the hospital because there were many times... His diaper bag was basically a diaper go bag. You had to be ready at any second. I look at a lot like preparing for an imminent tornado all the time. And a lot of people, they use that expression, you see it now.
It's funny to watch all these things change because here I am still a caveman and I'm still using the same terminology. I missed out on a lot of that stuff because I was raising him and I wouldn't have said half of it anyway. I'm with your 24 7, 100. And I'm like, whatever that means. Okay.
But some.
People say that and it's like, I got your back 24 7, but I'm going to go take a 12 hour nap. You know what I mean? It's like, that's not what that means. When you raise a special needs child like that, you're on 24 7. And it wasn't until probably he passed in 2016, it was probably about 2014 when a lot of things started happening to me health-wise, where things started catching up. And I think a lot of it too was probably from the past traumas of getting shot, things like that. I had to actually put on adrenal support twice because with his suctioning and things, when his seizures got bad or he got sick, you just sometimes didn't sleep for a week at a time. That's just how it was. Or even if you did, I could hear a fly a half a mile away. You could just hear everything. You're in tune with that because he could need suction in the middle of the night. You have to hear that because he's aspirating that. That's going into his lungs. You could drown from it. That has to come out right then and there.
Or it could have a seizure, things like that. So there are many mad dashes at times to either call an ambulance or at times take him to the hospital. And you had to be prepared to be dressed with everything ready to go, him ready to go.
Well, and what I'm hearing from you, too, is for 18 years of your life, you were on high alert. You were like continuously... When people talk about PTSD and post-traumatic stress, it's that constant barrage of being on high alert and the fear that goes down and ready to be able to take a... You got to be able to move quickly on your feet. You have to always be in tuned to that. And you talked about the adrenal support. And interestingly enough, I also work in Chinese medicine with Qigong. And the adrenals, the kidneys, and all of that in ancient Chinese wisdom from thousands and thousands of years ago, fear is the emotion that affects our kidney system. So you think about that. You are in a constant heightened level of fear that something's going to happen and you have to be prepared. So there was always that being of high alert in a constant fear phase. So for me, it's totally reasonable that you ended up needing adrenal support because your body was in this high alert and this fear was affecting your kidney energy for years and years and years. So let's talk a little bit about...
So 18 years, you spent 18 years caring for this beautiful child who gifted you. I mean, you've shared pictures, you've shared poems on Facebook. You are so beautifully able to express in both the photos and in your writings about this beautiful love between father and child that that's what really hit me when I first met you. It was just like, Wow, you are just so beautifully able to express that. Did you know, were you prepared that he was going to pass at a young age? So is that something that you're just always in the back of your mind that this could be my last day, this could be our last time together? I mean, did he live what he was expected to live? Did he live less than what he was expected or longer? What happened there?
Well, I think ultimately from their standpoint and just medically, he lived a lot longer. And they tried to say that was because of the great care that we took of him. But I'm like, I was just being dad. Wyatt did a lot of the hard work, you know what I mean? And it's like we talked about earlier, that constant being stuck in that fight or flight mode, just an overdrive. And it wasn't so much a fear of... Not like how people think, like, terrified, walking on eggshell. You know what I mean? But your system feels like you were saying. Your system, though, even though consciously you're not paying attention to it because you can't feed that wolf. You know what I mean? That'll just tear you down. And to answer your other question, we never thought about it like that, that he was going to pass or anything because there was just no way we were going to let that happen. I actually saved him twice before. So that was what was another thing that was so traumatic about this third time that I couldn't bring him back. But yeah, we just embraced life. And like children do, it made you so happy and things.
And just to see the things that he could go through and still be happy and wandering around and you know what I mean? And the things that we would do together. He probably spent a third of his life on our chest just sitting up with us and patting him and things like that. He loved to go for walks, go to the zoo, things like that. But we never really took on a defeatist type attitude because as soon as that happens, that could spiral real quick. Because I was giving him a bath one day, and I literally just stepped out around the corner to grab his syringe and I heard the water and I thought, Oh, he's standing up. And I looked back in the room as I was walking back in there and I couldn't see him. At that split second, he had a seizure and he went underwater. So it's just like you've got a multitask at this point. It's like I tell people when you're... The worst time to panic is when you're having a panic attack.
You. Got to rein that in, man. Quick, you got to learn how to just do that. So I grabbed him out of the tub and put 911 on speaker. And then as I started suctioning, thankfully, that's a good thing, though, that he had the trick, too. I suctioned him there and actually had to suction down through his nose and things like that. And by the time the EMTs got there, they could see how much fluid had come out of his lungs. And within 10 minutes of them after they were there, he was pretty much like, get off me, man. I want to play. That was his attitude. And they thought, Wow, this is insane. And then that's when people, they say things to you that I guess seemed rational on the outside looking in. But then they'd say, Oh, that was heroic, things like that. And now that's dad, man. His mom would have done the same thing as she'd been here. That's just what you do. There's no limit to what parents do.
I would imagine, though, if we could ask Wyatt today, were you his hero? Was his mom his hero? He would say absolutely yes. You may not see it that way because that is unconditional love. You are the epitome of unconditional love and love for a parent and a child. And so you may say, that's just what a parent does. But I know that if the tales were turned and I was sitting here interviewing Wyatt right now, he'd be saying, Yeah, my dad, he is my hero. He is my hero. As much as I was his hero, he's my hero.
I'd like to hear that.
Yeah. I believe that that's what he would be saying. Absolutely. So, Zane, you guys, you were so on high alert. You weren't thinking that anything would happen. Then all of a sudden, that third time, he wasn't able to come back. And then you stepped on to this very tumultuous, absolutely soul crushing grief journey that parents who have a child who has passed step on. So can you talk to me a little bit about what's the last four years been like for you? We know that when you first are in grief, you're just in zombie mode, right? Totally can't think, can't do any of that. But you started stepping forward in a way. But what were some of the things that you did to help you in being able to take one foot at a time to move forward in a life without a physical quiet with you, knowing that his spirit is always here?
Right. Well, and just before he had passed to for that last year, his one kidney was actually going into failure. So that ultimately was one of the causes. And then he got a really bad infection on top of that. But even though we knew that, it still came, like you said, just out of the blue, really. We weren't expecting that at all. No one is. But like you said after that, people say it feels like a dream, but dreams are hard to recall. You get them in bits and pieces. Night nightmares, you can vividly remember over and over and over. So this is more like a nightmare than it is a dream of any kind. But you're in such a dark place and even actually the trauma of it. And like I say, comparing it, say, to the bodily trauma I have with a shotgun, that'll put some hurt on you. A shotgun will. And it'll mess with your whole system. But I can tell you that that is nothing compared to the physical trauma of losing a child. And I mean, because it decimates your entire body, your soul, your spirit, everything that you are.
It literally physically hurts. And I can tell you, it hurts a lot more than getting shot or having a kidney stone or any of that nonsense. That's all pretty easy. But I was in such a dark place. And for the last four years or eight years of his life, I was the one that would stay at home with him. And so, you know, Julie had taken a little extra time off of work, of course. And then she went back to work and has been doing that ever since. And I'm still a stay at home person now trying to get my health back together. But I think one of the things it, and you still go back, it's like, I still have obviously very, very hard days where you just can't even move and it's paralyzing. But my health was just so bad. And she got us these two German shepherds. And there was a day out here that they wanted to play. And I was just such a mess and crying. And I thought back to right before when I was born, we said, we're not going to throw on the towel before the bell rings.
And so it was like, that's what I've done, actually. And I felt like I never really let him down in life, but I was letting him down in spirit in passing, because at that moment, that's the day that I was actually sitting there with a bottle of sleeping pills in one hand and a bottle of painkillers in the other. And I thought, Screw this world. I'm out of here. And then I just thought of him. And that's why, like I wrote, Epiphany came calling. And it's like, this can't happen. This isn't the way that life is supposed to be. And nor is it supposed to be that we're supposed to grieve our children or not. But for me, the thing that helped me was to try to just carry on his legacy for him and talk about him. And when I started writing, there's probably some of the things I haven't shared yet, but I actually started writing to him instead of about him. Started writing to him, things, because you're always talking to your child when they're not here, things like that. But actually writing it down, it's really therapeutic. It's not easy. But that was one of the things that started to give me a little bit of hope.
And then I was walking outside that day too, and I saw this little bird sitting there and I just started watching it. And I thought, I think it's really beautiful. And you start noticing all these things. And it was a few days later, this butterfly landed on my hand and it just felt like... And I think a lot of people after something tragic, you want to see signs and things like that. But at the same time, I never had anything happen like that before. And all of a sudden that came in and it was just like, that butterfly, it's a lost light as a butterfly, but it hit me like an anvil. And it was like, you need to wake up. So I started writing more, doing things like that. And I did. It's like you're saying earlier about the unconditional love. I think that's just what you do. People ask me sometimes about my writing and I don't know. That's just how I express myself. I thought everybody did it like that. You just lay it out there. You have to be brutally honest and open. But I'm finding out that's not the case because I actually I commented one time there was a question that was in a group of dads and I really joined some of the dad groups.
I never joined them until after he passed. But I just wanted a place to share it.
I am. Sorry, someone. I apologize. Faith, I don't have you on the... She accidentally. Sorry about that.
That's all right. It's a party line.
Yeah, apparently. Yeah, accidentally. Okay, so you went to this group of dads.
And this one was called a life of dad. And they had put a question out there on their Facebook wall, I guess you call it. And it just said, what is one thing you wish you could quit doing as a dad? And there was a lot of just pretty much typical answers. Oh, stop doing this. Do more of this. And mine was more about quit sabotaging myself and the self anihilation with the guilt, getting over the guilt of not being able to save him because the guilt is the thing that just... It's like a dagger to the heart. I mean, it's the ultimate. I don't care if you want to talk about a 10,000 pound boulder. Grief is heavier. Grief is the heaviest thing that we can carry ever. And it got quite a few comments and things, and I just didn't think about it much longer. But then they contacted me about four months later, and they said that one comment just blew up the whole team there at that life of Dad. And so they asked me if I wanted to do a mini documentary for their Real Dad series. And I went, oh, yeah, I can do that to honor him.
That was the first time I'd ever put my ugly face on a computer. But it was really hard. But at the same time, it was something that I had to do. I wrote his obituary and everything and read his eulogy and wrote that, too. I wasn't about to let anybody else do that. That's my job. It wasn't easy, but the most interesting things that happen aren't.
And listening to you, as you know, I've written a book and it is to help grieving parents, different tools and things that they can do as they're walking this grief path. And grieving is a form of healing. We have to go through that grief when we experience a deep loss because that's part of the healing process. If we don't, I coin the phrase, it can be failed grief. It's like having a surgery. You might have a surgery and if it doesn't do what it's supposed to do, you can have a failed surgery, right? And then go on and actually maybe be worse off than what you were before or definitely not being able to regain your health. And healing in grief is that same thing. It's a healing place, but we need to be able to take certain actions. And so what I'm hearing from you is a lot that I number one, I don't know a grieving parent who did not say that they were ready to die. And I don't take it as it's suicidal ideation. The fact is you don't want to live without your child. So that's totally normal, what you just said, having each of the pills in each hand, it's like, but then you make a choice and say, this isn't what Wyatt would want.
I mean, I need to honor his life. And that's why I found is the main thing to help in the healing process is remembering to honor. When you honor your child, you're honoring your own grief, which is important. It's important to be able to honor where you're at. And the fact that you're writing, other people may not write and do other things, but you're writing, I really encourage the people that I work with in my grief coaching that they do write letters to their children, to their loved one, not about them, but to them, because that is that way to keep that connection and to keep their spirit alive. In my circumstance, it was my brother who died before I was born. My parents never talked about him. Back at that time, you just buried it, right? And you didn't say anything. And so 60 years later is when my mom finally was able to talk about it. And we talked about Greg, and we brought his spirit alive. We had his name. We brought out a couple of pictures she had because she had buried it, but it stayed within her. It always was within her.
You know that. I mean, like you said, this crushing boulders of pain. There's no pain that is the pain of having a child die before you do. That's just not the natural order of life. So you spoke so eloquently about this is the facts. This is absolutely the facts. Now I'd like to ask you, so between you and Julie, what were some of the differences that you saw in how you have been walking your grief path? And for Julie, as a woman, because I see that there's a lot of differences between guys and girls a lot of times because guys are doers and may not talk as much about their grief in the way that a woman might. So what are some of the differences that you even notice in your own marriage as far as processing with this grief?
The roles are reversed. She really doesn't talk about it that much. And neither one of us, we really don't sit down and have conversations about it. We talk about why and things like that, but we're pretty much on the same level as far as where we're at grieving. I mean, we both still just have fantastically horrible days. And lately I've been having even going backwards as far as that. And that's just going to happen. But I had mentioned to her, like I said, when she went back to work, and I thought, I don't know how you can go back to work. That takes strength to me. She's like, I don't know how you can sit here in this apartment because we were still in that apartment at that time. And I think that's one of the things that, like you said about doers, is a lot of people tend to do is just whatever they do for a career, for a hobby or whatever, they just busy up their time and just get their hands working. Like they say, the idle hands are the devil's work. And part of my issues on top of everything else was I was diagnosed with a Hashemoto's thyroid disease, which is an autoimmune disorder, and psoriatic arthritis.
And then on top of that, they found out I had a Mercury, Cobalt, and Uranium in my system, which they're not sure what. And you can look up any of the side effects from those. So there were literally many days. And then on top of that, the depression that came with it, I probably sat on the couch literally every single day for two years. I mean, I don't think the longest I went without showering or even taking a shower or changing my clothes at all was three months. And I was pretty much awake that whole time, too. They diagnosed me with some crazy sleep disorder. And quite literally, I would be awake for up to a month or two at a time, sometimes longer. And the sleep doctor said it was probably most likely due to just the accumulated traumas. And that's a challenge in itself because a lot of life is mental, it's not physical. And so I let the lessons of Wyatt, I call it Wyatt's way. He just always has a way of making people happy, making people smile, things like that. And there's times when, like I said, you can feel your whole system crashing.
And so for me, it's... And it's easy to say, I'll try to remember the good days. But it's oftentimes, well, like I wrote in that last post I just put up the adrift that a few memories, they're so horrible there at the end. They can overshadow everything else. You just don't want to let it wash it away, which is where it can get to. That's what you're pinpointed on. You're focused on. And that was another thing is I was just such poor health that I'm sitting here on the sofa, she's working every day. And then she's the one that's out in the yard doing the mowing and things like that, which she doesn't mind. She loves to do it. So she is more of the busier do it up thing. But I'm starting to finally get some part of that back because I'm only running at probably 20 % really, to be honest with you, compared to what I used to be. And a lot of that is, there's no doubt that his passing just accelerated all of those health issues. And then I ignored him for so long, too, because I thought, well, if I couldn't save him, why should I take this medicine to help me?
Punishing me. But then you wake up to the fact it's like, I'm not just punishing me, I'm punishing Julie, Wyatt, memory. And that's just something that just can't have that. That's the one thing that I think every parent wants to do is to have their child's memory honored, to just have someone say, You existed. You mattered. And so many people feel alone because nobody wants to talk about, like you said, child grief, nobody. But I've known people that have lost children in the past. And so I see it from both ways. I thought, Well, what can I possibly even... I'm not going to walk up to them and say, How are you doing? They might kick me in the face because how do you think they're doing? This is something that, like you said, this is a lifelong battle. It just will be forever. This is completely different than any other type of grief on the planet.
Absolutely. And when you talk about for two years, and that's what I want people to understand is there is no timetable. There's no cookie cutter process of how you're going to move in your grief. And I'm not going to say move through it because the grief is always there. But it's going to have sometimes it's at a cresendo. It's so high and so heavy. And then other times it comes down and it settles down a little bit. But it doesn't go away because grief is love. I mean, had we never loved, we would not grieve. Right. So that's immense love and trying to have all this love in your heart. And where do you give it when the physical person is not here? But what I really want to let everybody know is don't beat yourself up if it's taking time. And people may say things like, come on, it's time to get moving, or it's been too long, you need to do this or that. But knowing what it is for yourself, every individual, just like you and Julie, you each grieve differently. Now, she's the one that's the doer, she keeps busy. And that's what I've noticed in this whole COVID environment, too, is people who are so used to being busy and not being their heads all the time, thinking, thinking, thinking about their loved one.
And then all of a sudden they had to be home and they couldn't get out. And then all of a sudden that it's like, I'm in my head way too much. So I appreciate that you're being so open and sharing about this. And the honoring your child is so important. And I see that you're starting to take a few more steps. You were just on a podcast, I believe, or on a radio show or something like that. You're sharing your story more. And what I know about grief is that truly where the deep healing comes from is when we start sharing with others and find a purpose on being able to help others. And I see that with you, Zane, with your writing, with your sharing your deep wisdom. You do. You have a depth of wisdom and a way to express it so that everybody gets it. And it doesn't make anybody bad or wrong. And the other thing that you talked about early on, too, is what I know is that there's two emotions that really are important to work through. Well, actually, three. I'm going to say three. Emotions that I think are really important to work through as far as how do you frame it in your mind.
Guilt. I don't know one mother or father who doesn't carry a tremendous amount of guilt because we're here to take care of our children. And even though there may have been nothing that you could do, most likely nothing you could do, that weighs so heavily. Another one is anger. A lot of people experience anger. And I almost feel like guilt is anger turned inwards. It's like we're angry at ourselves with our guilt. And then the other one is abandonment. And I believe that all of our past... So you had so many traumatic events as a child. And like you said, we just move on. We think everything's fine. But when we are stricken with this deep of grief, all of the traumas that we had in the past, all our beliefs, everything comes to this table of grief. And then it can be just like a mountain crushing you. And to try to sift through that takes time. And you're sifting through your writing. And you're sifting by getting the medical attention that you need and working on your own health, which is so important. So I just really appreciate that. Now, if there is one piece of advice, piece of wisdom that you may be able to give, especially other dads, but any grieving parents, what would that be?
I don't know. don't know. I think to me, that's the hardest question because there's no magic answer. There's no magic bullet. The only thing that I could say is you've already been through the worst that could possibly happen and you're still here. You're still here for a reason. And it's tragic because you also only have guilt of not being able to save our children. But you feel guilty because I'm still breathing and they're not. But you almost have to create a mission statement in your head. And mine was basically plant a flag with Wyatt's name on it and let the world know that he was a beacon of hope. He always was when he lived. And he still lives through the words. The only way that our ancestors or our children truly die is if we stop speaking about them or writing about them. They live on through us, through our words, through our stories. And I've had people message me and say, hey, I was just thinking about you and our family. We were talking about Wyatt. My grandpa feels like part of the family. And that's the part that finally felt like I got kicked in the head with some reality.
It was like, oh, wow, that's amazing. And that's what you want. And like I said, I just called out, why it's way. And he said, well, it's because of the way you write about it. And I'm like, no, he's the one that gives me strength. You know what I mean? He's the one that puts the wisdom in there. It just flows through my pen. That's just how it is. But that's really all I can say about that, at least at this point, because you almost... Some questions you don't answer because you almost feel like a hypocrite because I'm not always able to do that. But yeah, I mean, that's the darkest thing that we could possibly go through, and we're still here. So now that's the question is, what do we do? How do you move forward when all you want to do is lay down and die? And that's what you feel a lot. And that's how I try to look at things and what gets me to do that. And then, like you said, the one thing that I have as far as advice is tell people the same thing you did is just write.
Start writing. Because a lot of people would say, and especially men, and even a lot of the women would say, I wish I could express myself the way you do. And like I said, in my head, what I was thinking is, well, you can. It's easy. Just start writing. Even think of a word like, say for a while, it would be warrior. And then just start going with that. Or like you said, write. What I did, the same as what you're talking about, write to him first. I just wanted to communicate with him. It's like a message in a bottle. You throw it in the sea. You don't know if anybody's ever going to get it. That's not really the point. The point is that expression of it. Because even the unspoken words and I never got a chance to do this or that, all those things that go through your head, well, you have a chance now. You have nothing but time now to do that.
Otherwise. That builds up, too. And that's what really tears you down, like I said, and it builds into rage. And we have to deal with that, or it will eat us from the inside out.
I so love your honesty and authenticity, Zane. Always have. I think that's what just connected me when I would see things that you posted on Facebook. And I have one piece of advice that I give people, and it's a pretty simple one. Be kind to yourself. Be kind to yourself. Just be kind. Our children want us to be kind. It is a very hard one. So this is the other thing is I did write this book last year. It came out last year. And if anybody here wants a copy of the book, all you have to do is just I'm going to put my website, it's www.healingfamilygrief. Com. Reach out to me, tell me that you want the book. I will send it for free. Zane, if you can private message me your physical address, I'll send you a copy of the paper back copy here because I think this was written because I've had so many grieving parents share their wisdom with me. And I found there are commonalities that you do as grieving parents who are able to step forward and may take steps back. And it's a roller coaster. Even 10 years down the road, 15 years, 20 years, 30 years, 60 years like my mom.
This is not something that just goes away. But the people who are able to successfully continue to live and honor their children and to serve others in their healing process, I took all that wisdom and then I just put it together in a book. I'm the one that you all are my wisdom keepers. I'm the scribe. I took it all. I put it in a book so that we can give steps for people who are who are just... It's a struggle. It's a struggle to get out of bed. Like you said, two years, two years, or you want three months, three months without shaving and changing clothes because you're awake but you're really not mentally. And we know that, again, I'm a nurse. I also work with energy healing with the Qigong, but we know that the emotional stuff that we're going through affects our body. And you talked about the psoriatic arthritis and the immune, all of that thing, that all is affected because of energy in your lungs. And it's energy. So what happens when we're grieving, that's the emotion. It settles in our lungs and it can create blockages when it's been there for a long time.
So energy blockages, so our skin, psoriasis, our immune system, all of that is in our breathing energy system. So you're just absolutely a, I don't want to say poster child, but you are the poster child of this is what happens. And because of the emotions, so when you can start moving into bringing in some positive emotions. And for grieving, the positive emotion of deep grief and that, and that where we can open up our long energy systems, our breathing energy systems, is the emotion of contentment. So being okay where I'm at today. I am content with where I'm at today. And some days you may not, some minutes you may not. But the more that we tell ourselves, and through your writing, that is bringing forth that contentment within you. You are able to get content when you're writing because you're expressing yourself. And I appreciate that wisdom of even if you're listening to us and you don't like to write, I love it. Take one word, one word and put that on a sticky note around your house and just remember. And all of our phones now have voice recorders, record into the recorder and just talk to your beloved child, your beloved spouse, whoever it is that you're grieving, and just talk to them.
Because again, it's that connection. And you talked about the butterfly. You talked about the bird, but then the butterfly that landed. Now, I believe that energy transforms. Why it isn't gone? His energy has transformed. So what a beautiful gesture to have a butterfly, a true symbol of transformation, to land on you and help you to awaken that spiritual beingness that you express so beautifully. So I'm so appreciative of you saying I always have been. If you don't mind, if you can send me the one piece of work that you would like me to share, you've written a lot, but if there's one particular one, why don't you send it to me? And then I will put that in with the post that we send out to everybody so that people can really get a taste of your beautiful expression of love for Wyatt. And it's very powerful. And is there anything else that you would just in our final minute here that you would like to share or point people to, whatever?
Well, we always look to outside sources for inspiration. And like I say, you've already been through the darkest moment. And just like the thing that I had to realize is that people are watching and they pay attention to things. So whoever you are, you're probably inspiring someone else, too. And there's nothing more powerful than service to others, too. The smallest gesture could go a long way. So just take a deep breath and there's still plenty of work for us to do for those of us like us here. Actually, I shared a memory today of a poem called Sleep Living, and it actually has ironically, that picture of the butterfly from a few years ago on it. And what you said earlier about sifting through everything, I actually did write a poem called Sifting Me. I might send you that, too.
Okay. Beautiful. Beautiful. So are you good with people connecting with you through Facebook or?
Yeah. Facebook, Zane Shook. I'm on Twitter, too. I don't really understand all that. I think I have an Instagram account with three pictures on it. I do a lot of it. But I think I'm going to try to figure out Instagram a little more just because I do have the pictures. And I've taken some of Wyatt's pictures and some of the shorter writings. I've put on them, I guess. I don't know if that's called a meme or whatever, but I've done some of that. And I think I'll figure out how to link that on my Facebook page. I don't even know what my username is. I think it's just my name on Instagram. I told you, I'm a tech cave man.
Well, I think for anybody, I'm a tech cave girl, I guess. I'm learning because it's part of my business. But see if you can find Zane on Instagram. Zane, when you figure out what your username or whatever, send it to me, I'll put it out and I'll make sure that I'm getting that out to people, too. This will go out on Facebook. I will be tagging Zane in on this. And so then you'll have Zane so that you can reach out to him and friend him with that. And I just am so appreciative of you taking the time here. Your puppies are ready to go do their thing. I can tell they're like, you've been in there way too long. Time to get us out in the yard and play. But I am so appreciative. Well, hopefully this video is good. I think there was one little spot where we may have lost a connection, but that's okay. I believe that this is the world of what gets out there, gets out there. We do the best that we can. That's part of that grieving process. You just do the best that you can. One minute, one hour, one day at a time, whatever that is.
So many blessings to you. Just a stutter step.
And much love to Julie. And private message me your address. I'll get a book up into the mail too. I look forward to continuing our connection because we are on Facebook. So thank you, everybody. Thank you, Zane. You're a very precious person. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Contact us:
Cami Thelander: www.bearfootyogi.com
The Confident Grief Coach School: www.healingfamilygrief.com