A Father’s Journey Navigating Grief with Jason Tuttle

When Not Yet Becomes Right Now (00:00)
Welcome to When Not Yet Becomes Right Now, the podcast where we dive deep into the moments of transformation, the times when not yet shifts into right now and everything changes. I'm your host, Jen Ginty and this podcast is all about those pivotal moments in our life journeys. You know the ones when the hesitation fades, when we take that first step, even if it feels like a leap. It's in these moments that growth and healing begins. Each episode will explore stories of resilience,

moments of clarity, and the sparks that ignite real change. From personal experiences to expert insights, we'll uncover how people navigate the complex journey we call life and come out stronger on the other side. Whether you're searching for that spark in your own life or just curious about how change unfolds for others, you're in the right place. We'll discuss the ups and downs, the breakthroughs and setbacks, and how to embrace the right now, even when it feels out of reach. Because sometimes,

The hardest part of the journey is realizing that the moment you've been waiting for has already arrived. So take a deep breath, settle in, and let's get started.

When Not Yet Becomes Right Now (01:14)
Hello and welcome to When Not Yet Becomes Right Now. I'm here today with a wonderful guest. His name is Jason and I'm gonna introduce him. Jason Tuttle is a married father of two kids with multiple mental and physical disabilities. Jason was a stay at home dad for 12 years until his son suddenly and unexpectedly passed away from issues related to his needs in the beginning of 2022. Since the day his son passed, Jason created a website

a Facebook page, a blog, and a community called Letters to Zachary that details his raw, unfiltered, and open grief journey from his perspective as a father. It is a place where men can feel vulnerable enough to share their emotions, to empower women to help the grieving men in their lives, and show that it is okay to share vulnerability through Jason's example. Welcome, Jason. Thank you for having me on. Yeah.

Thanks so much for being on. So why don't we get right into it? Could you tell us a little bit about your origin story? Sure. Like you said, I'm a married father of two kids. I've been married at this year, 21 years. My field of like my career field is education. I originally started out teaching elementary school physical education. I did that for nine years.

After that point, when I started having some medical issues with my son, who is the more medically fragile of my two kids, I decided at that point, or at least my wife and I decided at that point, that I was going to be the one that was going to stay at home and do all the physical medical stuff. And when the hospital stays came up and doctors visits, that kind of thing, it was always kind of agreed upon that I was going to be the one to stay at home just because

My wife, between the two of us, not that I'm not career oriented, but my wife was generally a little more career oriented and she, you know, she tried to stay at home parenting for a little while. And I mean, she's a great mother, but she was just like, I've got to get out of the house. And so I told her, said, I have no problem with that. I can do that all day, every day. So that wasn't an issue. And I did that for approximately 12 years.

up until my son passed away, like you stated in the beginning of January of 2022. I'm so sorry. Thank you. So when this all hit, you made a decision to share your grief with others. Sure. I did. It wasn't immediately that I did it for anybody who's lost a loved one, especially a child like in my case.

when you talk to people that have been on the grief journey for awhile, a lot of them will say, yes, the first year is difficult, but it's actually that second year that really hits people just because that first year you're kind of, it's almost like you're in shock that first year, especially that first six months right afterwards. And so for that first year, I didn't really do a whole lot. You know, I did all your classic symptoms of grief, you know,

As anybody, but typically more in men, our first of the grief scale that we hit is anger. That's big amongst men, because we're always the breadwinner, we've solved problems, we're the ones that when everything's crashing down around us and they ask if we need any help, our standard response is, it's okay, I've got it.

that kind of thing. So I dealt with a lot of anger with that. And since I was the physical medical caregiver, I dealt with a lot of

How should I say it? There were several times in the past where he got really sick and I was able to help get him the help he needed and kind of help him to recover. in this time when that kind of the same scenario happened, dealing with the feelings of why wasn't able to save him this time. And so that was really difficult. And for a long time, I dealt with what a lot of us call

imposter syndrome in the grief community. a lot of your characteristic things that people dealt with, did specifically that first year, year and a half. Now in that time, I'm a big proponent of therapy and I was seeing my counselor throughout that. honestly, probably about the fifth or sixth session after my son had passed,

Uh, she goes, have you ever thought about journaling? And, know, I jokingly say to people when they ask me, go, my, my real response was, you know, I don't know how great of a writer I am. I don't know if that's really the thing I want to do. so she looks at me and goes, well, you don't necessarily have to do it right now, but kind of put it on the back burner or put it on the side table and you can come back to it at any point. And even when you do.

It's not like you have to share with anybody. can, you can physically write it and burn it or shred it or, you know, put it in a word document and delete it. Or, I mean, you don't have to share it. It's more to get it out versus just sitting on you. And I said, okay. And so that probably sat on the brain or on the back burner for probably nine months after that. I resisted it for a long while. And the thing that kind of brought it out is, I was on Facebook as all of us are.

I was looking at a reel and I don't remember what the reel is, but whatever was playing in the reel, wasn't, it was, there was something in there that I saw that reminded me of my son. And it, emotion just kind of, it kind of gut punched me. And like I just lost it. I just uncontrollably, know, as people say, ugly crying kind of thing. And

So I just opened up a Word document and like Oxford English style form, I wrote a letter to my son and I verbally vomited on a page and I did that for weeks. so ultimately what led to kind of what we're talking about here today is I got into one of the groups I was in. I got to know the female moderator there very well. And one day I said,

Do you mind if I post one of my journal entries? And she said, well, sure, we don't mind. In fact, we'd love for you to, because we so rarely get men in here posting. And so was just about to post it and I kind of paused myself and I thought, am I in the mental space right now to be able to post this on the internet? Because as wonderful and as helpful as this, I didn't know at that point, but as what I've learned, as helpful as they are,

I had to accept the fact it's still the internet and there's still going to be probably naysayers out there that are going to say something. And am I in the head space at this point to be able to take that criticism? And so I still did anyway, and no more than I did it probably with it. I posted it that morning and by that afternoon I had a massively positive response. You know, I had women say,

You know, we've never crossed paths. We don't know each other. I've never told anybody like what's deep down inside and you have hidden the nail on the head. I feel this entire letter word for word. And so, you know, I would come back and say, well, I appreciate, you know, the positive response. And this is inspired by my son. You know, I'm glad this kind of resonates with you. You know, I, I'm writing how I'm feeling just in the raw moment. And I'm glad that.

someone else can feel it feels the same thing, even though we're in a club none of us want to be in. And so that's that right there is kind of what started the ball rolling up to this current moment. Wow. Wow. So, you know, there's so many different ways we could go into this conversation. I, you know, let's start with grief as an emotion. So grief is an intense form of sadness, right?

And sadness is an extremely difficult emotion to sit with. And I've found throughout my life that I tend to do just like what you had said about what men tend to do when they go into grief, they start with anger. And although their initial emotion is sadness is grief, they jump to a secondary emotion. For me, it's because it feels safer.

To be angry, feels like I'm in more control of anger. How do you feel about that?

Well, as kind of a side note, before my son passed, I been seeing the same counselor for probably a year. I will openly admit for a very long time, and it wasn't directed at anybody, but I had a lot of anger inside. And what I realize now is that even when I didn't realize in the beginning was

before my son had ever passed, I was actually dealing with grief. I just didn't know it because I was grieving the life I thought I was going to have or what was going to happen versus the life I got. And then the life I got was incredibly difficult those first five or six years because it was flying at the kind of the seat of my pants kind of scenario. And so for the longest time, I had this just internal anger of

Life is not supposed to be this way. Why is this happening to us? Why is this so hard? You know, why is trying to get care from my kids so difficult? Why am I having to jump through all these hoops through, you know, I'm in Georgia, so the Georgia state government, you know, all of those just kind of difficult questions that a lot of us in the special needs community ask from the start outside of just battling with doctors and specialists and all that stuff. So.

You know, I dealt with grief for a very long time and it was like I said, it was kind of an internalized anger that I had for and I that of the year that I went to therapy, it probably took me at least a quarter of that therapy to finally get to the point of I'm tired of dealing with this garbage. I need to get past it. And I did and got different strategies and things that

you know, that I could deal with as it relates to the grief and just the life we're leading and which then which then translated after my son had actually passed. Yeah, I had so I had some moments there where I got really angry of, know, why did my son have to die at 15 years old? How can I write an obituary for the life of a 15 year old child when, you know, and anybody that loses someone

You sit back and go, I've got to condense my son's whole life into basically three paragraphs, three small paragraphs of that. And so I had a lot of anger with that and just, you know, the anger from, you know, my son from day one had a huge uphill battle his entire life. Now, granted, he was the most laid back, happy child you would ever meet. It's like it never fazed him. But from the parental side of it, I'm just like,

He went through all this struggle to all this stuff only to end this way. And so...

That was kind of the anger that I dealt with outside of it morphing into, know, what could I like the day that everything happened, I have replayed that day in my head a thousand times of what I could have done different. And at the end of the day, there's honestly nothing I could have done different because at the time I noticed things, it was, it was too far gone.

so as for the anger, you know, it's, it's, it's almost like when you heat up an oven and you get it to whatever temperature, uh, you, you want to have it and then you're done with it and you turn off and it takes like 30 minutes to kind of cool off. Well, for those next several months, it took me those next several months to kind of get to a point where I wasn't just so angry all the time is kind of how I dealt with it.

Well, that's a great way to put it, the stove and it having to cool down for a period of time, it makes a lot of sense. when you started posting more often, was it on this Facebook group that you had initially started or did you start going in a different direction? Well, the group I initially started with someone else's group. Like I said, I just got to know the admin very well.

After I posted that first letter, she loved it. And so we got to know each other very well. And she, she almost got to the point where she wanted me to post more more because she just liked the style of writing I had and just, you know, the analogies I had and just those kinds of parts of it that she hadn't really heard before, I guess. And in that time, I had several people, when you're someone that

People think when, when you're someone that people think you can write, typically you always get, well, have you ever thought about writing a book? have you ever thought about doing a podcast? Have you, there's three or four typical things. And you know that when they asked me that I was a little over a year out and, know, and I mean, I was nice to him, but I was just like, you know, I just don't know if I'm in the head space for a book. I'm definitely not in the head space for a podcast.

just because I know what's involved in that and the time consumption it can be and just everything. I said, maybe down the road. And I had several suggestions. And finally, someone, and I don't remember who it was, said, have you ever thought about doing a Facebook page? I said, well, what is that? And they said, you you go to your favorite like business and they've got a page on Facebook. That's a Facebook page.

It doesn't necessarily have to be business related. You can make it a blog or a hundred different other things. And they said, you don't necessarily have to create new content. You could just copy and paste what you already have. And when you do write it, you copy and paste it and make it page for your content. Cause you're already creating. at that point I said, you know, that's something I could do. It doesn't, it doesn't add anything to my plate. It just kinda, you know, it's kind of a lateral move versus a forward move.

And so I started doing that. know, initially I got friends and family that followed it. And for me, kind of the, even though it was grief, the competition part of my brain started kicking in and I was just like, well, I think I've got something here and I need to grow this, but I don't know how to grow it. And it was at that point I just, I'd literally started emailing all the big names in the grief community and said,

Hey, I'm so and so this is what I'm doing. You I feel like I've got something here. I've gotten a lot of good response from the groups I've been in. I'd like to grow this. Can you give me, you know, what worked for you when you did this? What's something to avoid when you, you know, when you've done this? And literally all of them were very gracious. They all helped me, you know, they were like, well, if you're going to write a book, you're eventually going to want to create a website. But if you're not writing a book, you're going to want to do A, B and C.

If you're going to go say the podcasting, right, you're going to want to do D and F and all of them. And I employed all of those things. And from that point forward, it just started growing. And so I had the Facebook page for probably. Maybe a year, a little less, something like that. And as of the other day, I'm

I'm about 1200 followers in a little over a year, which to some of the bigger pages may not be a whole lot, but for me, who's kind of the grassroots roots this, that's a big number to me doing that. website I've only had for a couple of months. I did that because and we can get into this later because I got published and I wanted somewhere where I could

One, put that on to sell it if people wanted it and to introduce me and all the other letters to Zachary stuff and possible speaking engagements, that kind of thing. So when did you decide to call it Letters to Zachary? Because ultimately from that first letter on, that's what I was doing. Basically what I was doing when I would have those moments, like I said, in Oxford English form,

date, name, dear Zachary, and I would just write in letter form till I got done writing. And it was my way to kind of express my emotion in the moment. You know, I am faith based. And so I 100 % believe he's in heaven because he was the gentle of soul. was...

for what he had to deal with. It's just my belief that there was purpose behind it and he's now been rewarded for that purpose. And when I wrote that first time, it was like I was writing him in heaven saying, hey, know, dear Zachary, today's been a really rough day, that kind of thing. That's kind of where the name came from.

So this community, you have it, it's, it's, it's very open, right? It sounds like men, women, everyone's invited and everyone is learning from you and learning from each other. Can you talk a little bit more about the community? Sure. I initially created the community for specifically just man. I mean, I'll be honest about that because

When I initially started looking for people to talk to, I wanted to find other men, maybe not the exact same scenario, that had unfortunately lost a child, people that I could kind of bounce things off of, and I could not find any. And it was just frustrating to me. And a long time ago, I just decided instead of complaining about things in life, do something about it versus complain about it. Now, I I still have my moments where I do complain, but I try to...

do something physical about it to correct it versus just sit there and again,

about it. So I initially created it for men so that they could come onto the page and comment on the things that I posted about from their point of view from whatever their situation was. Well, as we learn from both men and women, most guys that go onto pages, unless they're sports pages or something in that genre,

They're lurkers. They'll come in and read and all that, but a lot of them aren't, they're not active in the sense of posting and commenting and that kind of thing. So in the competition side of my brain, went, well, I'd like to open this because I'd like to grow it. So then I decided I'm going to open it up to people instead of just lost a child, you know, lost a sibling, lost a parent, you know, all sorts of loss And that grew at some.

And then at the end, it's going to sound weird, but at the end, I opened it up to women. Now it was always open to women, but I say that because when I decided I was under the assumption of opening up to women, my thought process was, well, if men aren't going to come here or the ones that are lurking and reading, but the ones that aren't definitely the wives are going to find because women typically tend to be researchers.

when it comes to things like this. I said, well, if men aren't going to come, their spouses will eventually find this at some point. They will be able to read on it from another man. And then inadvertently, whatever I'm putting on there will get to them. So that's kind of why I say why I added women last. They were always welcome. It's just, I kind of made an effort to do it, to go, how can I?

kind of do a backdoor way, if you will, to be able to meet the audience I want to meet. And that's why I did it that way. Yeah. You know, it's really, really hard for everyone, in a sense, to be able to be open about their emotions. We were taught when we were young, you know, don't show your emotions. Don't be an angry girl. Don't make your grandma upset with your sadness. That kind of thing.

It's very hard for people, especially my age, to open up and to accept that others are willing to listen, especially for men. I think that's not a secret whatsoever because men have the added, know, don't be silly.

You don't have a right to show your emotions. It's difficult. I can see how it's more difficult for men to be able to open up. Have you seen more men as they are slowly flowing into the community? Are you seeing more men open up?

I'm seeing more there. There are men like, for example, the typical grief page has about 4 % men in there. Mine currently has 12%. So I'm above average in there. A lot, a lot of them are lurkers. They'll read when they're on there or that's the feeling I get or like I've had a lot of women say, well, I'll post something that they like and they'll go, I'm going to share this with my husband. I'm just like, okay, go for it.

And so that's kind of the roundabout way I get the men that are in there. I see it in the sense of I've got a my percentage of men in my on my page is three times higher than the average page. So I know they're there. Are they posting a lot? Not typically. But I mean, I don't I don't take any offense to it just because that's your standard guy.

You know, again, if it's not sports or something like that, but I mean, I'm a part of it and all men's like grieving group and they are out there and they do post a lot. It's just, it depends on what the environment is. like I've got something pinned to the top of the page that I'm just like, look, you're here to share your emotions.

You're not here to critique others emotions is what I tell people and I make no bones about it. I have told all my followers, if I see you coming in here critiquing someone because they don't grieve the way that you do, I will remove you because we all grieve differently. We all have different scenarios in which we've lost loved ones. Mine's probably completely different than most of them.

But yeah, I mean, I do see it there, but kind of in a roundabout way. So what are your future plans for Letters to Zachary? I mean, I still want to grow it. am wanting in today's world doing podcasting like we're doing. That's kind of your your new age version of speaking on stage.

But I'm of an age that I want to get, I want to be able to get on an actual stage and do it. I want to do those kinds of public speaking events. Like I've applied for TEDx in Atlanta. I just haven't heard anything yet. So I would love to do that because I've had a lot of people say, well, you've certainly got a story to be able to tell on one of those stages. So I'd certainly like to do that. I am published.

About four months ago, I ran across a publisher in one of the podcasting groups and she was doing something about getting on her podcast. And the first like four or five, she got her podcast. She would do a press release for them to give them advertisement for whatever their pages are or foundations, that kind of thing. And so I messaged her and said, Hey, I'd love to be on your podcast. Here's kind of my story. what do you think? Let me know. And I said, I could really use the press release cause I'm really trying to grow this.

And when I say press release, she puts it out on the Associated Press, that kind of thing. It was a big deal. And so she comes back and goes, well, I could do that. But she said, I think we could do one better. She said, have you ever thought about being trying to be published? I said, well, I have. said, but I don't really know what direction I want to go. And she said, well, have you ever thought about a coloring book? And I said.

Well, that's unusual. I said, I I've always been kind of on the right side of usual as it is. And I said, that sounds good. So after talking for a while, we decided that I was going to create a grief coloring book. And now the grief coloring book isn't like. Does it necessarily give lessons on death and trauma grief? No, not necessarily.

What it is is it's me and about 20 or 30 other people I've run across that have lost a loved one. And in that coloring book, essentially what they did was they filled out a survey, they gave it to the illustrators, they took all the information and attributes that they gave them, they put it together and they either created a full coloring book page scene based on what they gave or like a collage scene.

is what they did. And then on the backside of that page, they let them write out a little blurb about their loved one and kind of, you know, their first name and kind of where they're from, because there were several all over the United States. And so even though the first like five or six like pages are mine and my family, because I'm the namesake of it, literally everybody else in there is someone that has actually lost a loved one recently.

So anybody that looks at it can at least go in there and read about other people. And maybe someone in there has lost a child, something similar to them. So it's something that they can relate to. The other reason why I created it was my son has a sister and I got the thing. said, well, how am I going to explain this to her?

Now I'm a little bit different scenario because both of them had developmental delays. she doesn't necessarily understand, say, a neurotypical child. And so thought, well, how am going to explain this to her? And then I thought, well, we can do a coloring book. for those that don't know, getting a child to sit down and color, especially when you're talking about a deep topic like death and grief, is what they call a mindfulness activity.

What it does is it distracts them from what's going on. It helps them to relax and doing what they're doing and de-stressed while they're doing that and then it will then give the parent What I would call some time to kind of think on their feet while they're talking to them And especially if they're calling a page of someone that has lost someone similar to them They can kind of tie all that in together while they're coloring the page

And then as it relates to kids, what kid doesn't like the color? And so that's kind of the reason why I did it. So it's called Letters to Zachary on there. And then I'll show you one of the pages on there. Let me just if I can find one real quick. There's one. Just a second. This is a camping scene of one of the families. The child really like camping and

You may not be able to see it on here, but there's a lot of subtle attributes in there as it relates to things that they liked and phrases and just things that were important to the family. So that was a that's a part of the future. I've got the website. I've got that. I mean, mean, I'm still wanting to do speaking engagements wherever and whenever.

At this point, I've done them all over the world at this point. As many people can tell, especially that know me personally, I can run my mouth, so I don't mind talking. You know, the sky's the limit. In a perfect world, I'd love to do a career, make a career change where I could like make a living at this. Although at this point, I think that's kind of a distance down the road. Yeah.

It's understandable. The coloring book is beautiful. Well, thank you. Yeah. And I'm excited for that, for you. So you spoke of that you were in therapy before your son passed. Not many people are in therapy when they have some sort of grief happen to them. What would you say to someone, especially a man that would be in your position

What would you give as advice for them going through the process?

Well, the first thing I always say is, even though men are simple, we're an interesting creature. And I say that meaning men will be the first to tell you that they don't want anybody to tell them what to do. And I laugh at that because especially when it comes to men in grief, I said, you don't want someone to tell you what to do, but you're letting society tell you how to grieve, when to grieve and where to grieve. I said, that's telling you what to do.

Why do you care what some stranger or maybe even a family member is telling you what to do? It's your experience. It's not theirs. I mean, even between my wife and I, we, we grieve vastly different. I'm more open and upfront and, and I, you know, I'm raw and transparent where my wife is quiet and unto herself and that kind of thing. So, you know, I tell men, first of all,

Who cares what anybody else thinks? know, men are typically very blunt to each other. So I would look at them and go, who the hell cares what someone thinks about how you're dealing with this? Forget them. It's you're you're dealing with it. They're not. And then I would tell them, you know, I get the old macho attitude, you know, work to avoid it or do something to avoid it.

And what I would tell them is, sure, you can avoid it for a while. I said, but eventually it's going to catch up with you. And I said, the only way to get through grief is to grieve. You have to get it out. If you bottle it, suppress it, either you're going to put it back into being a workaholic and avoiding everybody, or you're going to live inside of a bottle, or you're going to one day, you're going to have so much suppressed anger.

You're just going to explode one day and you may do something you may not be able to return from. therapy and talking about it is just to get it out, to lessen the pressure on you. Now, where you do it and how you do it, that's up to you. If you want to do it in your man cave with some of your buddies that understand, probably what guys who've been to war can do, do it.

If it's working over a car, that's fine. You don't have to go to a counselor's office or a therapist office. You know, and, you know, I jokingly tell other man, said, look, am I asking you to come have a moment with me and cry on my shoulder? No, that's not what I'm asking. What I'm telling you is you don't run from it because it's going to catch you. You cannot run fast enough to get away from it. It's coming for you, whether you like it or not. It's like the old phrase.

You know, the light at the end of the tunnel isn't a light. It's a freight train coming my way. And I look at him go, it's your decision. If you don't go to, if you don't get it out, it's going to be a freight train that's going to run you over. If you do and go through the steps to go through that, it may very well be just the other end of the tunnel. so that's what I try to tell them. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. And you know, I, I'm a big proponent of therapy. I've been in therapy for

throughout most of my life. And I understand when people are shy to choose a therapist, but what I tell people a lot when it comes to having a therapist is that this person is a third party. They're not a part of your life. You can tell them anything and it doesn't become a part of your life. You're not gonna tell your wife, you're not gonna tell your best friend everything.

that you're feeling, right? So yeah, I, I, I try to, I, don't, I'm not the type of person who wants to force people to do it, but I try to give an explanation of why a therapist may be the best possible way for you to let it all out. Right. Exactly. And another way is through letters to Zachary. Sure. you know, my whole mission,

is... You know, the weird thing about man is no man wants to do it, but every man is looking for that first man to be the example. And once they see that it doesn't hurt so much, then they'll start doing it. So that's the oxymoron of being a man. None of us want to be the first one. But when we finally see someone do it, we'll copycat them. And so part of the decision for me to do this was...

You know, if people want to be negative about it, fine, but I'm going to be the first one to open the or one of the first ones to open the door to say, hey, I've opened the door. You know, I'm not dying of embarrassment. haven't been shunned from my community. know, I've. What I try to get them to understand is once you start meeting people that are dealing with this, it opens up a vast, huge world of people, men and women.

that you can communicate with. mean, you don't, I mean, for lack of better ways, if you just want someone to shoot the shit with, there's a lot of people I've come across that I could do that with if I really wanted to. It doesn't always have to be sad grief stuff. Right. You know, it's interesting with every interview that I've done for this podcast, community always comes up and it's such an important part of our healing journeys.

and our growth journeys. And when you're younger, you don't really see... When I was younger and I had to go to group therapy, I hated it. It's like, why do I wanna be in a group with a bunch of other kids talking about this? But as an adult, having that community of people, for me, it's people who experience complex PTSD, who have experienced trauma, and those people are...

such an important community so that you know that you have others and you're not feeling alone? sure. Certainly. mean, communities, just human nature. mean, there are, can look at multiple points throughout just human civilization all the way back to times of tribes. I mean, it's in the human DNA that things work better with a group of people versus individual. And

you can look at it as simplistically as the fact that most of us live in neighborhoods and all neighborhoods are our community. You may not know everybody in there, but if something were to happen like a natural disaster or something like that, look at what happened in North Carolina and all the people from surrounding states that have gone in there to help them out. That's a, it may not be all North Carolina, but it's still.

neighboring states that have come in. That's still community. Yeah. Yeah. And it's important. So tell us where we can find you. Well, my website is letters to Zachary.com and Zachary is spelled Z A C H A R Y. A lot of people want to do E R Y. So it's letters to Zachary.com. All of my social media is letters to Zachary.

Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. If you go to my webpage on the bottom, I've got the icons and you can just hit the links and you can go there, which would probably be the easiest to be able to do that. I will say that TikTok is my newest one. I never thought at my age I'd be doing TikTok videos, but here we are. It was honestly one of the people I'm connected with.

is huge on TikTok. Like he's got a quarter million followers. but he's also been doing it 10 years. I wasn't originally going to do it. And he, he came back and said, there's a bigger group community on TikTok than you realize. So, but yeah, I've got the website, the social media, is where everybody can find me. you can email me through the website or my page. I'm typically a pretty quick response time most of the day.

Well, thank you so much for coming on, Jason. This was such a wonderful conversation. Well, thank you so much for having me. Thanks.

When Not Yet Becomes Right Now (41:21)
I truly appreciate Jason's story and the work he is doing to help others through their own grieving process. The loss of a child is for me the worst possible thing that could happen in my own life. And I know I am not alone in that sentiment.

For Jason to take that grief and give it purpose is truly inspiring. His coloring book, also named Letters to Zachary, is quite beautiful, and I would consider it a way to bridge communication to those I love who are going through their grieving process. Please check out Jason's website and Facebook group. The info is in the show notes.