Jason McKenzie
Appearances
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
And I decided to keep fighting because of something I saw or something that resonated with them in one of the videos I made. So I'm writing a book about grief for men. I'm publishing on Substack as I write. Just I want to get it in many people's hands. And so that seems to be being called man down. I want to continue to find ways to make an impact in a space.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
But at the same time, I want to be cautious about not being like surrounded by other people's grief all day long.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
Absolutely. Absolutely. And yeah, and some days, I think too, is like, I was talking to somebody about this the other day, and they were saying that people have this idea of what moving forward means, you know, and so I was talking to somebody who lost somebody really close. And he's like, yeah, some days I take it feels like I take two steps forward. And other days, I take three steps back.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
And I'm like, What if you stop looking at it like that? That's not actually taking a step forward, taking a step back. It's just grief, man. Some days are great and some days totally suck. That doesn't mean you're doing something wrong or that you're regressing. It's the process, man.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
Yeah. I think what got us into contact with each other was... So I own a couple of businesses. One is a leadership and management consulting company. So we do executive coaching, leadership training, etc. And the other one is we run a mastermind group for dads who own businesses. So...
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
That's right. And yeah, I think you just said that really, really well. I just wrote a chapter in a book just the other day about this, about like focusing on what you can control. And one of the things you can control is the words that you use to describe your experience. So like the amount of people, man, who have said to me or commented on my TikTok to say things like, you know, I lost my kid.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
I'm permanently broken. Okay. Well, you're speaking that truth into existence, right? So, or like the other things people say like a lot, well intentioned, obviously, but I mean like, oh, you know, no parent should have to lose a child or that's so unfair. Parents lose kids all the time.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
It's a part of the human condition. And it's not about fairness. It's about the fact that to live some semblance of a meaningful and peaceful life, you have to be able to accept that anything can happen to anyone at any time. That's right. But if you start walking around, labeling that happens to you like that is unfair, you're not strengthening yourself, fortifying yourself at all.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
I like what you said. Yeah, I totally agree. So I think we're immensely powerful. So the other thing, too, is You know, one of the things I'm doing right now is somatic experiencing therapy, which is so incredibly helpful and interesting, but it's really about the idea that, so for example, I'm almost too, this is more like, I'm not saying this as an arrogant way.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
It's actually quite the opposite. It's actually a hindrance, but sometimes I feel like I'm too knowledgeable about this for my own good. So when I go to see a therapist or something, Like they're not telling me anything I don't already know, right? So I got to the point where I was, you know, I stopped seeing a therapist and my wife was like, you know, I really think you should see a therapist.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
I'm like, I don't want to talk about this anymore though. Like to a therapist, I understand what's happening, but I know I need to continue healing. Like I know that for sure. Anyways, I went down this rabbit hole and came across podcasts on something called somatic experiencing, which is learning how to, developing your capacity to fully experience being human.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
We teach them how to be skills to be better husbands and fathers and business owners and really fun, uplifting work, actually. Why we're talking is because I lost my wife to suicide and my daughter to a car accident. It was really a result of her mother's suicide. My daughter was just, it just shattered her soul. And at the end of her life, she was 19, but she was dealing with this.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
So the idea is that when you have a, like I said, you get triggered or some kind of trauma response, it starts in your body, right? And so somatic experiencing is really about literally being present.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
They teach you, like they teach you going through this therapy, guide you to how to be fully present and really understand the sensations and what's happening in your body and to be able to describe them, put words to them. It is wild how quickly you,
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
a massive anxiety attack for example can just go away it's freaking nuts and then after that the insights you have are just incredible i think for me like i've been really committed to just turning over every stone on the path to healing so you know i've experimented with psychedelics like all kinds of different things you know because it's a really curious person and i don't do anything in moderation everything i go overboard on everything so i had to actually like after chloe died
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
It was like two months later. I'm like, I'm going to write a book on grief and blah, blah, blah. You know, and then I started to write it and I realized I'm a wreck and I don't know Jack about grief, man. I need to experience this a lot more to be in a position to be able to actually like write about it.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
Yeah, pretty exactly.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
Yeah, I mean, I think what I would tell them is a few things. Like grief is an intensely personal experience. There's no playbook or program for it. That the only way to heal is to face what seems unfaceable, to just sit with the misery, you know, and knowing that it won't kill you, but it's the only way to heal.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
And I think too, like, I'm really passionate about this idea of like understanding what's in your control and using words to the incredible power of the words we use. The words, languages, metaphor we use, they don't describe our reality. They define it. So be really intentional about the things that you say. Like, again, I'm permanently broken.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
I'm this, I'm that, you know, like, so those are some of the things I think are really important to get across to people.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
The same trauma-induced mental health issues as her mom and ended up dying just over two years ago, drinking and driving. She almost killed. She was driving. She almost killed four other people. Just a freaking disaster. So I just been talking a lot about grief and writing a book about grief.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's also important. I always tell people that one of the things that's in our control is how we choose to look at things. So I'm very typically quite good at positively reframing things. Like I could say, okay, you know what? I could feel ripped off for the rest of my life that I didn't get to spend 70 years on this earth with Chloe.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
Or I could be grateful that I had 19 years with her because it's better than zero. I can do that a lot of the time. But when I'm crushed by a wave of grief, I can't do that in that moment. It's too painful. I miss her too badly. The thing is, I know that when it passes, I will be able to do it again. like to reframe it and feel grateful again.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
So, you know, even the knowledge that it's possible for me to own how I think about it gets me through the moments when I can't. You know, it's almost like an anchor of some sort or a life, like a life buoy to hold on to, you know?
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Enjoyed being here.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
Oh, yeah. I mean, the mental health issues I mean, I think like, I feel like a grief, you know, and that the issues that drives, I mean, I've been like, I've been an addict, you know, after my wife's suicide and very little awareness of, you know, the relationship between trauma and mental health. You know, my wife was really interesting, actually. She was a police officer.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
She suffered really bad childhood sexual abuse. And the interesting thing is a lot of people who, have adverse childhood experiences are called to these helping professions, right? So sometimes they don't even really realize it, you know, but that makes them more susceptible to trauma. So the five years leading up to my wife's death were just unbelievable.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
Like, you know, psych wards, homeless shelters, rehab, like just crazy stuff. And, you know, what was fascinating in a horrifying way was how our medical system pathologized her experience to the point of just basically drugging her into compliance. And no one ever said, hey, what happened to you?
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
It was a long time afterwards where I was talking to a therapist friend of mine who has been working the mental health space forever. And I was talking about this experience and she goes, Cindy wasn't bipolar because she had a chemical imbalance. She was having emotionally driven responses to trauma and invalidating experiences. And she explained to me how that all worked.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
And it was like, man, that's pretty eyeopening, pretty eyeopening experience. Yeah, I mean, so anyways, my point to that was, you know, I'm not like a mental health expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I used to do a podcast called Mental Health Warriors. I run a community for men dealing with mental health issues.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
I'm not doing that now, but I've actually been thinking about doing it again. Interestingly, in that community, there was a couple hundred guys in there at one point, and I would always talk to the guys that came in, and every single one had trauma when they were basically a kid. Something terrible happened to them when they were a kid. Now they're in their 40s, 30s, 40s, 50s.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
So many of them don't see the thread that runs through their whole life because it happened all that time ago. What does that have to do with me being in my 50s and being an alcoholic or being like depressed or being like full of rage? You know, just fascinating.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
absolutely absolutely right you know what for me like so i i had a what am i during my wife's you know i mean trying to like that whole situation was just a freaking nightmare trying to raise two kids and all this stuff and keep her alive and so during that time i developed a huge drinking problem not even intentionally but for me being a typical guy all i wanted people to see like what was important for me to to project to the world was that i had my shit together
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
No one can have their shit together in a situation like that. It was a complete disaster every day. I'm not going to talk about all the terrible things that are going on in my head and heart. So I drank to make them go away without even thinking about it. Like, it wasn't like that was not an intentional strategy.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
And then afterwards, after my wife died, I drank every day, a lot every day for four and a half years. And I got remarried and everything and, you know, and finally had like my, you know, quote, rock bottom moment or whatever. And about six months later, I started to grieve my wife's death. So it was like five years after she died now. That process, I didn't even know it was happening to me.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
I thought I was going crazy, actually. And my wife said, You're grieving, you freaking idiot. Like, oh God, maybe I am. But what I realized afterwards is it never occurred to me, like not even a single time that I was drinking to numb the pain for my wife's death. Because I thought I had put it behind me, whatever that even means. Like, it never crossed my mind.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
And I was like, afterwards, I was like, oh my God. Like, I'm not a total idiot, you know? Like, God, there must be so many other people that are in this same situation, you know?
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
So what was interesting was for whatever reason, and I am super grateful about this because I don't really understand the reason, but you know, as I was drinking and like, I was absolutely hating myself for what I was doing because you're so caught up in this like web of like, you're rationalizing it to yourself to try to make it make sense, but you know, you're bullshitting yourself at the same time.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
And you're like, it's just this jumble of terrible thoughts. And so all the while pretending I got it all under control, And as I was getting close to the day that I quit, like I knew I was lying to myself becoming more and more obvious. But the problem was I couldn't stop.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
And I realized, so what happened was, so my wife was starting, my new wife was starting to give me, like, I would say a hard time about her. Like, you know, she's like, I'm not going to divorce you right now. Like, and I'm not close to that, but I need you to know that this is not going to be my life. I remember thinking at the time, I don't know who I'm going to choose. Cause I, I can't stop.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
So like, If she decides she's going to leave me, like, I can't stop drinking. I've tried a million times, which was also a horrible feeling. And then what ended up happening, so the last kind of thing I was clinging on to was that I'm a great dad. You know, because I was super involved with my kids and, like, you know, I was, like, very present.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
I was never in, like, a, you know, barfing my guts out drunk all around them. But, you know, anyways, last sort of thing. branch of rationalization that I was clinging on to at the death grip because I'm a great dad. So on the day I quit, I was supposed to take my daughter to, we're going to do a daddy-daughter date.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
My wife took my other daughter out of town, didn't do any of the things I promised her. And she said afterwards, you know, I'm sitting there drunk on the couch and she said afterwards, I'm disappointed in you. It doesn't happen to great parents, right? Like, Like your nine-year-old doesn't tell your drunk ass that they're disappointed in you if you're a great parent. Like that's not how it works.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
And so for whatever reason, that just shattered the, I just had this like moment of clarity for some reason. And I've never wanted to have a drink since. So thank God. Now, the grief manifested in other ways and stuff, but we don't need to go down that little rabbit hole. But yeah, so creating that space, just, man, it allowed me to grieve.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
It allowed me to start exploring, like listening to some podcasts, exploring personal development. And I don't know, just went down this. And really, that whole experience just altered the trajectory of my life in a pretty significant way.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
Yeah, that's a great question. So for me, I think this is something I talk about a lot. When my wife killed herself, my kids were six and five, six and just turned five. And I actually thought if she had to die, it's better that it happened when they were young. You know, it's the least worst option is that it happened when they're young.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
Cause dude, I had no idea about the devastating impact of childhood trauma at that age. Like I just, I thought I can love them to heal it. Honestly, it was what I thought. It turns out, of course I found out, I don't know. It was basically the worst time. Like it could happen because that's the age where you're forming all your ideas of like safe attachment and like all this kind of stuff. Right.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
And so, you know, so I did not appreciate the impact that it had on them. And I don't think they did either. And then with my daughter, that's what happened.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
played up in her life, man, is just like this, again, emotionally different responses to trauma, you know, of her feeling like, you know, I'm not good enough or worthy because I was not worthy, like I was not good enough for my mom to stick around and keep fighting for. And now for my other daughter, who's still with us, I mean, I've had to tell her their mother is dead and their sister is dead.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
she is doing the work for sure but she's just about to turn 20 like she can't even like wrap her head around for her the trauma plays out in her life in a lot of ways but she's not ready to address it yet so she's doing great she's going to school but she's always in like fight or flight she's got like she's got some like anxiety and it's obviously related to the horrible trauma she's experienced twice and we talk about that regularly but right now she's I'm not opening that can of worms right now I can't do it you know and
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
I mean, it's her journey, man. You know, like, she knows we're here.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
So my daughter who passed away was the older one, so she was six, and my younger daughter just turned five.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
She's 19, actually. She's going to turn 20 next month.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
Yeah, I mean... just with communication and love and compassion. And I mean, like the thing is such a vastly different experience for both of us, right? Like she doesn't even remember her biological mom. The trauma still lives within her, like the loss, but she doesn't actually have any real memories of her mom, which is like traumatic in and of itself.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
And then with her sister, I think for both of us, like losing my wife was brutal, but it does not even compare, honestly, to losing my daughter. You know, my wife's mental health issues were so bad that for so long that I had sort of like, I don't know, like I had mentally prepared myself as much as one can that it might end this way in suicide. Like it was so bad.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
I mean, it's still when the cops, she was a police officer too, but the cops showed up though. you know, it's a freaking huge shock, obviously. But in a way, it was almost like a relief in some ways because, number one, her pain was over. Her pain was so inconsolable. Like, it was just mental anguish. But also, it was kind of like a relief for me.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
It seemed like a relief at the time because I'm like, oh my God, this is what I thought at the time. I could have a normal life again. Like, this is, I'd learned a lot since then. And then, you know, from Madara, the pain is way worse. It's just so visceral because she's like of me.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
I let my daughter, I mean, so I try to be very in an age appropriate way without placing undue burden on my daughter. You know, I'm very open and communicative with intention, I would say, about like my grieving experience and putting words to it and stuff. And, you know, and I invite her to talk about it. We have a wonderful relationship, but it's very hard for her too.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
She's afraid that if she opens the vault, everything's going to just blow up. You know, and that's a real fear of a lot of people who have dealt with trauma or grieving is like, if I give into this like wave of really intense emotions, I'm falling into a pit and I'm never getting out.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
And it always, the thing is it always passes, right? Like, so you don't fall into a pit and never come out, but it feels like you are going to. And when you're barely hanging on, like for me, like, and just to raise an example, like me, I'm the breadwinner in the family. And so I can't fall apart, man. Like, you know, I got to keep moving forward somehow, even when I don't care about any of it.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
And, you know, like, and I can barely function. Everybody's experience is super unique. But my point is, is that, you know, you have to face it or else you'll never, ever move through it.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
Yeah, she's in her first year of college.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
I think she's doing all right. Yeah, I mean, she took a year off of college because there's no way she could have gone back like last year. Like, no way. But yeah, she's doing okay. Like pretty normal college experience, I think.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
Oh, I haven't come to grips with it. I mean, I don't know how one can... I don't know if I would frame it like that. I mean, I think it's that I'm moving through the experience with as much intention and purpose as I can. But having said that, in this really bizarre way, my...
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
The experience of losing my wife and the aftermath of that, like I was saying, set my life on a very different path, which actually led to me developing a whole hell of a lot of tools, you know, skills, like a network of people around me, a vocabulary to talk about and navigate this in a way different way than I did with my wife, for sure. So it's not that the...
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
Now, sometimes I think it's like on the really difficult days, I think the best, a lot of times the best you can do is just not do things to make it worse. And there's an infinite number of things you can do to make it worse. And they can all seem incredibly tempting right in that moment. So, but for me, plans wise, I mean, yeah, again, I'm writing a book about grief for men.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Jason MacKenzie:Healing After Unimaginable Loss
A couple of years ago, I started, I've never been on TikTok before, but I started TikTok because I've been in front of a camera a fair amount. You know what, I'm just going to make some videos about grief and stuff and It's crazy what's happened. I mean, they've got like 40 million views. I've had five people actually reach out to me saying I was about to kill myself.