#9 | Hope & Healing: A Father’s Journey and Guidance for Suicide Prevention

Welcome to Just Breathe, the podcast focused on transforming the LGBTQ+ conversation and supporting you on your journey with your LGBTQ loved one.

You are not alone.

Welcome to Just Breathe: Parenting Your LGBTQ Teen. My name is Heather Hester, and I am excited to be with you today to transform the conversation around loving and raising an LGBTQ child. Wherever you are on this journey right now, in this moment in time, you are not alone. So today's show is for all parents, really anyone who knows a kid. For all of my parents of LGBTQ youth, this is very important information, and we will explore it much more deeply in the next episode. I'm honored to have Jay Reed with me today on Just Breathe. Jay is an accomplished and multi-talented businessman and devoted husband and father of four. Two years ago in March, his life was turned upside down when he lost his youngest son to suicide. Shocked and devastated, Jay wondered how they had missed the signs. In working through his intense grief, Jay decided to take action. His TEDx talk and documentary are raw, and truly extraordinary. Both open viewers' eyes to the devastation that is the teen suicide epidemic and encourage all parents— actually, anyone who knows a kid— to become better educated and work toward ending this very preventable tragedy. Jay, I want you to know how grateful I am that you are here today and just really thank I'm so grateful that you're willing to share your story with me and with my audience. It is heart-wrenching. It is powerful. And it's really important. So I do just want you to know how much I appreciate your time and your incredible efforts that you are taking to affect change. Since a lot of my listeners have probably not seen your documentary yet or seen all of your TEDx talk or know your story, would you mind sharing your story with us?

I'm a guy who has what I always thought was a wonderful family life. Spent a lot of time with my kids. There was never any signs anybody was struggling. That I ever saw. My wife and I headed out to celebrate her birthday, um, middle of March last— 2 years ago. And on March 21st, it was nighttime, it was 11:03 PM, and we had a text from my youngest, Ryan, who had just turned 14. And text said goodbye. There's a little more to it. He sent individual texts to the whole family, and that night he killed himself. It was not a spontaneous thing. He had planned it. Been thinking about it for over a year. Made sure that Kim and I were out of town. Anywhere to go where he wouldn't be found in time. I'll save you all the pain of trying to get home and get to the hospital, and— but essentially, that was on the 21st of March. On the 26th of March, we took him off life support. You know, I talked about this all the time. I speak different places. And you think it would get easier to say. No, it doesn't. It's always this first couple of minutes. Sorry.

Don't apologize, please. Admire your strength in being able to share this because there are not words. Heartbreaking, heart-wrenching, gut-wrenching. Just thinking about what, you know, what you went through, what your wife went through, what your children, other children went through, and what your baby boy went through. And I thought about this a lot since I first watched your TEDx talk and thinking, oh my goodness, You know, we think 14 is so young and they're not aware of all of the things they really are aware of.

Well, I didn't understand, and my mission has become to help parents understand what I missed. So after this happened, I formed— I went back on that afternoon of the 26th when I got home, and I was going, what can I do? And I'm a guy who's a CEO. I coach CEOs. I've done a lot of stuff in my life. Um, so I'm a guy who takes action. So I did what every other person would want to do, is you start a website, right?

Right, absolutely.

So I, I said, what would I want Ryan to do? I said, I want— I would really like to have— he had chose chose life. So I went on a film—

it's a good story—

chooselife.org. And I'm like, that's great, that's what I want. It was like $10,000. I'm like, why that— why is that $10,000? And I, uh, so I got it and I started building this website I called chooselife.org. And I remember a friend coming to me and saying, 'Jay, you know, that's the old anti-abortion site from the '80s.' I'm like, 'Huh, totally forgot that whole wham-bam thing.' Yeah, so I've kind of just, you know, redid the whole thing, and it's still chooselife.org because I thought, 'No, I still love what I would have wanted Ryan to do.' Absolutely. So, and what do I want other kids to do? And I've— I then went and I did a TED Talk, my first TED Talk, a year ago about a year and a half ago, very raw. It was in September after the event in March. And I started filming a movie called "Tell My Story." It's extraordinary.

It is absolutely extraordinary. Congratulations, by the way. Everyone should know out there, just this documentary called "Tell My Story" just premiered at the Santa Barbara Film Festival. 2 weekends ago and got rave reviews because it is sharing a very important message. And I think part of your message and why it's so powerful is because you are so real and you're so authentic and people can relate to this very raw honesty about you. And about your family's experience. I want to talk about your documentary a little bit. And one of the things that I really liked about your message is that you talk about having a, a new approach to mental health and specifically suicide prevention in young people and teenagers. Can you talk some— a little bit about that?

I mean, as I looked at this, and I'm not a doctor, I'm not a professional in this space. I'm just a guy who lost his kid. But I spent a lot of time looking at this and trying to understand how we got here. So the documentary is really all about me trying to share with parents what happened and what I missed. And we go and we interview kids that have attempted, we talk to parents and we talk to professionals. And there's a picture that emerges of a world we live in now that's not the world we used to live in. And it really, it was meant to give you something that you could watch and learn and hopefully go home and make some changes in the relationships you have with your kids and your friends and your loved ones. And that's the, that's what I hear from people all the time is now, is that I went home and I did something different. And that's what I wanted to do with that film. But as I look at the overall situation we're in, and I, in my last TED Talk that I just did in October that just came out, talks about the whole idea that, and so does our website, chooselife.org, the whole idea that, you know what, everybody wants to raise awareness for teen suicide, but everybody's aware. Everybody is aware that it exists. Your kids are aware of it. But it keeps going up every year. It's the number 2 killer of our kids. In 2017, it was 5,000 kids. 2018, it was 5,700 kids. 2019 stats are not out yet, but early words say they'll be higher. It's getting worse and worse and worse. And when I grew up— I'm 53 years of age— 40 years ago, when I was 13 years of age, I didn't this didn't exist to the same level as it does, does today. So how did we get here? We created it. It's a man-made problem. We are not as connected with our kids as we used to be. We're on our cell phones, they're on their cell phones. We're watching TV, we're watching, we're watching whatever it is we're watching. They are doing whatever they're doing. They're in their rooms on their computers. When I grew up, there was a TV and it had two things on it for 5 o'clock when I came home from school. There's only 3 or 4 channels. Grew up in Canada, didn't have a lot, right? And you'd watch the two shows and then you mess around with your brother and sister, and eventually you get in trouble and your mom would kick you outside whether it's snow or not, and you'd figure out something to do and you'd play and you come back in till dinnertime. At dinner time, and then you sit at the dinner table as a family and you hear about each other's days, and you— and then you would go do something together. Maybe you watch a TV show together, you watch Disney, you do something completely different. Now these days, that's not the way the world works. We are disconnected as a family. We are not connected with our kids. We're not connected with each other. And when you— and when you take a look at how we got here, That's how we got here, right? Now there's more to it. I remember being 13, 14 years of age, and I remember— I don't remember anything going on in the world. There were wars, there were problems, I'm sure there was. I can, I can look back in history and go, when I was that age, that's what was going on, right? I didn't know, right? The news was on at 6 o'clock till 6:30, maybe 7. My father watched it. I sure as heck didn't, right? I didn't read the newspaper at 13 years of age. I had no idea what was going on in the world, and I liked it that way.

Yep.

You take a look at kids now, and here we are, it's, it's, um, you know, it's February 7th, 2020. Your kids right now at 12, 13, 14 years of age, if they have a cell phone with access to the internet Here's what they're worried about that you never had to think about. Are they going to die because the coronavirus is going to come over the States and kill them?

Yep, you're exactly right. My 12-year-old asks me that on a daily basis.

Like, the anxiety.

Yeah. Oh yeah.

And then if that's not gonna happen, well, we only have 8 years left to live on this planet because people say it's gonna die in 8 years. Correct.

My oldest was just saying that the other day. There's, there's some countdown app that these kids can get on that tells you this. It's craziness.

So here I'm a 13-year-old kid, and besides my bullies, besides my homework, which is more than it used to be, besides the pressure to have straight A's, which we didn't have that pressure when I grew up, and then I've got to be I'm on the baseball team, but I'm on the travel baseball team because I think I've got a chance of being a baseball legend. All the pressure of just being a kid, which is even more than it ever was. Now I've got to worry if I'm going to die, if the world's going to collapse. The anxiety that kids have today is so much more than it ever was. When we grew up. And that's the message I'm trying to get across to parents, is that we created this problem. Not intentionally. We didn't intentionally create it, but we created a world where everything is accessible and everybody knows everything, and there's fake news and this and that out there, and we don't do a good enough job as parents— I didn't— of having the conversation with our kids about how they really feel. And their anxiety levels are off the charts.

You're absolutely right. They are. It is truly extraordinary. And I think until as parents and as adults who, you know, I like your— on your website, if you know a kid, right? If you know a kid, until we wrap our heads around that it isn't— this world is not the world we grew up in. It is so different. And we understand the effect that all this social media, all of the— I mean, you just named every single thing, the incredible amounts of homework, the pressure to be on a sports team and to be the best, to be the best at every single thing you do, right? To never have, you know, a big thing that I've, I've started saying with my kids, you know, that I— they'll come to me occasionally, "I'm bored." Good. That's good. I, you know, I— because it gives them that chance to like decompress, right? Put your phone away, go outside, you know, talk with your friends to their faces and not on their phones, not on your phones, right? Go for a walk with a friend, take the dog for a walk. And you know, for me, this all started with my son, my oldest, and his struggles that we became aware of 3 years ago. And you know, I will not get into that right now. My listeners have an idea of what that is. But you have absolutely hit the nail on the head with, connecting and connecting with our kids and not being afraid to connect. And I think that's another— what are your thoughts on that? Just, I feel like as I talk to people that some parents are afraid to connect, maybe because they don't know how to, or they don't understand what their kids are going to or going through. So, you know, do you have any thoughts on—

I do. I think that first of all, we, I never recognized, and I think most parents didn't recognize all the things we're just talking about right now, the differences. They haven't, we haven't made the connection with all the differences. Right.

Right. Absolutely.

And now we're like going, what do we do about it? Well, it's easy when I go check in on my kid and they say, oh, I'm fine. You go, okay, you're fine, because guess what? I'm not. So thank you, I can work for myself.

Right, exactly.

Right? So the first thing you have to realize is when a kid says, I'm fine, they're not fine. There's a wide range of words they can choose. I'm great, I'm good, I'm awesome. I'm sad, I'm mad, I'm upset. Fine is right in the middle, which means no, you're not.

Absolutely correct.

And it's inconvenient being a parent because you're like, oh crap, yes, I don't have time for this, right? Because yes, our lives are busy too, I guess.

But it is the single most important thing we can do.

It is. And I obviously didn't do a very good job of it. And a lot of parents don't. And just because you're not a perfect parent— because none of us are— doesn't mean you can be in my situation. I just want everybody to pay attention to it because I didn't see it coming. I didn't realize that Ryan spending so much time in his room by himself was a sign of anything. I thought it was how kids are these days. He's younger, he's like about 4. He's just that kid who isn't all that social.

Right.

He's on, but he's on his computer with his friends, so I guess he's doing something, right?

Right.

I didn't recognize all the signs. I didn't, you know, he was grumpy. I thought, well, he's just grumpy.

He's a teenager.

He said he's fine. He must be fine. He does laugh. We had a fun night last night. We had dinner. We sat around the table and we were that family. There's no, there are zero electronics at our dinner table. I wrote a freaking book called Dinner Conversations. Which is all about the funny stories that happen around our dinner table, trying to get parents to understand they should not have their phones at the dinner table. That's how ironic this whole thing is.

And you are the guy that— it blows my mind just knowing, the more I learn about you, that this did happen in your family, because you— I mean, you are connected, you were connected, you just didn't realize because these kids are very good at hiding what they don't want us to know.

Ryan wanted to hide it.

Yes.

But he did that because when you think about why he did it, right? Here I am, I'm that guy. I'm that guy who owns companies, never has a problem. My kids never saw me cry. I'm a black belt. I'm an Ironman guy. I'm— people would say I'm successful. I've written 8 books. Everything in my life goes great according to Ryan. Right? What I show people in my family is that I handle all my stuff and everything gets done, everything's great. And like Ryan and my wife and my kids never knew the fact that I failed at a whole bunch of companies, that I've almost been bankrupt a couple of times. I never told anybody that. It happened around them, they never saw it.

Right.

So I portrayed this vision to Ryan that life is wonderful and great and never has a problem and I can solve all my stuff. So what is Ryan's role model? He looks at his life and goes, my life sucks. There must be something wrong with me. So, go ahead.

No, I was just gonna say, because they don't see, like you just said, they don't see all of the humanness, being human.

I never showed it.

Because we weren't brought up that way either, right? We never knew that's what we were supposed to do. We thought as parents, right? What did you think? I have to be this perfect role model. I have to show my kids. That's right. Exactly. And showing him and showing everyone around you that you're human is not part of that formula.

But unfortunately, then Ryan thought talking about his problems wasn't something he should do. So when you asked earlier, what should parents do? I'm like, you have to talk to your kids more than I did. And you have to, if you see something, that doesn't look right, you have to ask them, have you thought about hurting yourself? And that is a hard conversation for a parent to have because in their mind they're going, I'm not going to say, have you ever thought about suicide, to my kid, right? I'm going to put the idea in their head. Well, let me help you. The idea is in their head. Most of them have thought about it, or at least aware that exists. And if you don't ask, you may not find out. And if you do ask, there— a lot of them want to tell you. They're just like, yes, I've thought about it, what do I do?

Right. You open that door.

And remember, you know, this is the big thing too, because I was so guilty of this. They come to you and they want to talk. They finally open up and talk to you. And they tell you how they're just so overwhelmed and the world is tough and all this stuff. And what's our natural response as parents, especially as dads? Hey, let me tell you why you should be really happy. Right. Your life is perfect compared to when I grew up. You know what my father was like? Holy crap. You have no idea what it's like to— why are you upset about anything? Because we want to fix it, right? We want to show them, we want to show them that something's better, that their life is great, and we think we're doing the right thing. And what we're doing is we're driving them deeper into a hole because they just came to you and told you, whether it's rational to you or not, they told you they're not feeling right about life. Trying to fix it just makes them go, I shouldn't talk to you about this.

We're all, every, every one of us, every parent is guilty of, because we, we do. We just want to make it better. We want them not to be sad, not to be scared, not to be whatever it is. We want them to, we want them to be happy. We want them to find their passion. We are in, you know, uncharted territory, right? Because there's a huge disconnect. And it seems, it seems very big between what we learned, what we know, and what will help us to be successful parents and help just have that connection with our kids.

And we want to believe that. I mean, when you talk to someone like myself who's never experienced depression, We don't understand. So I can look— I mean, for someone who's depressed, I've learned this now. It can be a sunny day and I look up and it's a sunny day, and what do they see? They see clouds. And you go, there's not a cloud in the sky. No, there's clouds in the sky. There's not a cloud in the sky. No, it's a cloudy day. You can't understand their minds, and so don't try to understand their minds. Accept the fact that they see what they see and they feel what they feel, and just hold them tight and love them. Let them talk about it.

Yep, that is spot on. I'm so glad you brought that up because that was one of the really powerful things that you talked about, um, in one of your talks that I've listened to, um, because I think that is a really— I mean, my husband is a lot like you as well and, um, and has had a very difficult time you know, understanding. My, my eldest has dealt with depression and anxiety. Um, my, my oldest daughter has incredible social anxiety. My, you know, all of my kids to a certain degree have this anxiety. And, um, and my boys, you know, the depression. And it is when you are a person— I have dealt with that. And so I understand a little bit more. But I also, you know, can see it from my husband's point of view and from your point of view where you're like, "I just don't get this. Like, I don't understand where you are." And you are spot on correct. You don't have to understand. What your kid needs is for you to love them and let them know that you hear them. They need to feel heard and they need to feel loved.

That's what they need. And that's how, honestly, my mission is saying that we should end teen suicide as opposed to raise awareness about it. And that's really how we do it. As parents, we take responsibility for the mental health of our kids. The same way as we take responsibility for the, how they feel when they have a flu or a headache. We treat it the same way because this did not exist to the same level as it does now 40 years ago.

Correct.

It just didn't. And that's a different world. And we, if you're waiting for the schools to do something, for your doctors to do something, for the government to legislate it so it'll go away, None of that's going to happen. None of that's going to happen. The only way we get a grip on this is as parents realizing it is our responsibility. And guess what? If we can fix it in our kids, if we can have our kids have better, better emotional health, then they become better adults. So it's not just about ending teen suicide in kids, it's about ending teen— it's about changing this over 50 years for everybody, right?

Right. It's about changing the conversation because— and I think part of that too is changing the conversation around being okay talking about this, taking away that stigma that there's, ooh, there's something wrong with you. You know, if you struggle with depression, you struggle with anxiety, that there's something wrong. Right? It is a mental health struggle. It is not something to be embarrassed about or ashamed of, or that can only be talked about in quiet circles. It is a conversation that needs to be had, just like you would talk about that 30 kids have the flu at the high school.

And, and by the way, for those of you listening to me, well, I, I— what do you want me to do, baby my kids? Every time they're— I'm like, "No, I'm not asking to baby your kids." Because the other big problem we have is that we do baby our kids. We're creating kids that have zero resilience because every time they go out to do something, we're there to solve it for them. When they get a bad grade on a test, we call the teacher. When there's a little problem in the playground, we jump in and solve it for them. We don't let them go outside and skin their knees because 'Oh my gosh, you might skin your knee.' I can't— I can— I don't remember how many times I skinned my knee, but it was a lot. I don't think Ryan ever skinned with me, right?

Right.

So we're creating kids that lack resilience, that don't know how to deal with problems. So what happens, you know, they become 14, 15, 16 years of age and some girl or guy dumps them and they've never had any problems in their life, and now it's the end of the world. They don't have coping skills. Because as we, as the parents that wanted to grow up and take care of our kids differently than our parents did, who left us to our own devices— well, they might have done better for us by leaving us to our own devices, right? We had to solve our problems ourselves. And I likely overprotected Ryan, being my youngest.

All right, yeah, that's what we do.

My oldest For some reason, no, I didn't. But my youngest, I did. So it's not about babying your kids. It's about talking to your kids, but understanding your kids, not about babying your kids.

It's about being real with them, having these conversations and listening to what they have to say about it as well.

It's about a lot of listening.

Yeah, a lot of listening. And that is hard. That's really hard. I know you know that. I know that so many times I've sitting and talking, you know, again, especially with my oldest, just biting my tongue because I know, just keep it quiet, you know, don't jump in there, Heather, let him just go. And that is the best thing we can do because you can— I mean, there have been times where I've started talking and you can literally, you can visually watch them shut down on you. So what they need is to talk and be heard. What we need to do is talk about the tough stuff and allow them to fail. And that's hard because, you know, we both know that there are fine lines there, right?

Well, and I'm— again, I can't tell you that here's the perfect formula to go do this, and I'm not sure there is a perfect formula. There's— I mean, there's not a perfect way to do any of those. But we can all probably do it a little differently than we're doing it today. Absolutely. We'll find our ways. Our parents found their way. Our parents figured it out in their way so that this problem did not exist 40 years ago.

Our, our job in our generation is to make sure this is not happening 40 years from now.

Yeah. It's not going to happen overnight. No. But I— and when I say I want to end things, just like, yeah, of course I do. But we make a huge dent in it. We can make a huge dent. We can reverse this track, the way this is going in the next couple years, if we all get on board and say we need to do it.

Absolutely.

If we don't give 12-year-old kids cell phones with unlimited access to the internet, which I did, and I regret. So that's why I've done all the content I've done. There's a Goldcast that comes out here in the next couple of weeks. Been working on for about a year. The film went and premiered. Um, we're working on how we're going to distribute the film. I believe the way that we're going to end up distributing the film is have it so that— it's not the kind of thing I want parents to watch by themselves. It's kind of thing that's more of a community event, so brought in by PTAs and churches to where you can come in and watch it together and have an event around it where we— you bring in a psychologist after the event to talk about the local resources for parents. Um, I know there's a big demand for this. I spoke in Seattle a couple of weeks ago. It was all elementary school and middle school parents, and they sold out the event weeks before I got there, and there was no screening of the movie. It was just, Jay's going to come up and talk about this. And that's how scared they are. They're 7, 8, 9, 10-year-old kids, parents. It's all in the audience. And they were all crowded in this room. I'm going, wow, wow. And we were supposed to end at 8:30, went at 9:15. When I finally said they're going to kick us out of here, I have to stop the class. Like, that, that is the, the angst out there. That is the what's going on. So this movie, if you keep, um, we're redoing the chooselife.org website, so it's So we'll have all the information about the film. But if you pay attention to that, put in your email address, we'll be able to get you information on when that's all coming out. But it'll be available hopefully by April. And we'll be hopefully having a whole bunch of screening parties, parties if you wanna call it that, events.

Yes.

For the foreseeable future.

Well, on your website right now, there is a trailer for it.

Yes.

So everyone can definitely watch the trailer, watch, uh, Jay's TED Talks, TEDx Talks. They are phenomenal. Um, get your email in there. I know that I'm gonna do some work on, on getting you to our high school here. We have just in a year lost 2 kids, and that's— sorry, 2 too many. People are wanting to know what to do. We will have to talk about that. I am so beyond grateful to you for what you're doing and for your voice in this and, and just you being so very human. So thank you. Thank you very, very much.

Thank you, Heather.

And thank you so much for being here today.

Thank you for having me.

You are welcome. So my lovely listeners, I know this was a lot to take in. Like I said at the beginning, Jay's story is absolutely heartbreaking, and the sad reality is that it is happening all around us. So what can we do? Two things to start. One, really click in and connect with our kids. And 2, become a part of Jay's powerful mission to end teenage suicide. My show notes will have links to his website and TED Talks. And for all my parents of LGBTQ kids, the next episode will take a deep look at their specific struggles with mental health in general. Remember, you are not alone. Until next time.