0:00 Welcome to the Human Experience, a podcast about the stories we live out every day and the importance of championing the vulnerability and courage of the storyteller. I'm your host, Jennifer Peterkin, and it was through my own lived story of experiencing domestic violence that this podcast was created. By traveling the globe and interviewing each guest in person, I am convinced now more than ever that stories have the power to change the world. Thank you for being here. In a world full of noise, to listen with intention is an act of resistance. Stephen, thank you so much for sitting down with me. I'm so excited to dig into your story. How you got here, what you're doing, and how your experiences have shaped who you are today. Sounds great.

0:49 Jennifer, I know you wrote a book called Walk on and I'm assuming that's kind of where we're gonna stick to today in terms of what your story means to you. But if I ask you the question, where does your story begin? How would you start that? Sadly, it begins on August 9, 2020. That was the day that our 16 year old son was killed. So everything literally changed in my life that day. I mean, everything. And it was by far the hardest thing I've ever had to endure and still are enduring. It's tough because it literally just, it changed who I am. It changed who my wife is, who Liam, Jake's little brother, is. And so it's been very complex to say the least. Yeah. In moving forward, but we have found a way. We are walking on. It's not for the faint of heart. I wouldn't wish this upon anybody. Yeah.

1:43 I'm so sorry for your loss. I appreciate you saying that. I can't even imagine the depth of your grief. To lose anybody is difficult. To lose a child, especially so unexpectedly, I imagine is devastating beyond belief. I feel like at that age too, it's never going to be okay. It's never going to be good. But at that age too, like so much is beginning for kids. They're becoming young adults. They're maybe getting their driver's licenses and they're maybe, you know, getting more independence going out into the world. And so to have that cut short is such a, I imagine, jarring experience. And there's a lot to contend with there. Yeah, it was a complete out of body experience. We found out via phone call first. It was a phone call.

2:38 Jake had gone away on a weekend getaway to Black island, which is a small island off the coast of Rhode island with his girlfriend of just a few weeks and her family. And it was her Mother and her brother. We had reluctantly let him go. We initially had said no. And then a storm came through our community, a little microburst storm that took out some trees, which took out power lines. So it was the dog days of summer, was really hot. We had no power. And so on Wednesday, we changed our mind, still without power, and said, okay, you can go. So he left on Friday morning. And on Sunday around 1 o', clock, my wife received a phone call from the other mom that there'd been an accident. Jake was injured. Those were the only details that we had. So we.

3:24 I grabbed Liam and Kelly quickly packed an overnight bag, and we ran to our car and began speeding towards Rhode Island. And we were about 12 minutes into the drive when Kelly's phone rang again. It was connected to the car speaker, and this time it was a doctor from Rhode island who introduced himself. He paused and he said, I'm sorry, I just pronounced your son dead. And everything just went black. Kelly screamed the most primal, guttural scream I've ever heard. Never want to hear again. Then I was flying. I was in the left lane doing about 85. I needed to get over. It was like. It was like time stopped. Everything just moved in slow motion. And I got over and exited at the first exit I could get to. And again, it was a Sunday, so a lot of things were closed. And we literally drove right off the exit and straight ahead was a bank empty parking lot. And we just pulled straight in there and got out of the car. We were screaming and crying and just kind of ran circles until we all kind of fell into each other's arms and fell to the ground. And later that night, we learned the details, and Jake was a passenger in a vehicle that was operated recklessly, went off the road and crashed. The driver was arrested on DUI and reckless driving charges, and the driver turned out to be his teenage girlfriend. Oh, gosh. Oh, my God.

4:43 Yeah. Were they on their way home? No, they were actually on their way to the ferry to change some tickets of some friends of theirs that had come in to visit for the day. We had no idea that these friends were even going there. We never would have agreed to it. There's three boys, and they decided, after having some fun at the beach, let's change our tickets and spend the night. And the mother agreed to let them sleep over and accepted responsibility for three more boy teenagers in her house, which is a little odd to us, but she did. So they needed to. You couldn't change it on via the phone. You had to go in person. So they were heading there, but they had been drinking, all of them. And she, the girlfriend, made a really dumb decision and got behind the wheel. The mom handed her the keys foolishly. It was just a disaster all the way around. There was at one point there was 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 teenage boys in that car because her brother and his friend had hopped in. They dropped them off at a kayak shop. And then a mile later, down the road, the accident happened.

5:54 And Jake was killed. Another boy was airlifted off the island. He survived. He's fine now. And yeah, it was like your life implodes. I mean, complete out of body. You don't feel like you're connected to this planet anymore. You see the world moving forward, but you feel like you're just literally in quicksand. Yeah. And your body's in traumatic shock, which is protecting you for as long as it can. And I'm now five years and a month out. And we literally just. We came from Parents Weekend this past weekend. We have a daughter now. It's another story we'll get to who's a sophomore at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania. And so we went and visited for Parents Weekend this past weekend. And these are the things that bereaved parents have to tackle. Right. There's like, we have such joy that we have this new daughter in our life and gratitude for that, but everything comes with triggers. So here we are at Parents Weekend. I'm watching a football game. Her boyfriend plays on the football team. And I'm thinking that my son's supposed to be a senior in college. I never got to watch a football game with him. Something that we, we shared a deep affinity for college football. And I know he would have gone to a school with, with a football program, and no matter where he went and we would have. We always dreamed of going to games together. Right. And tailgating and having. Just having a father son. We had a lot of father son sports moments. So you're hit with that loss. It's just everything is kind of a coin now. There's the joy on one side, and then on the

7:25 other side is agony and grief. Yeah. It's the death of the person, but it's also the death of the dreams that you had for them. The future. Yeah. Is completely gone. Yeah. You lose everything. You lose seeing them graduate high school, college, getting married, having kids, having a career, just all the holidays, all the anniversaries. And so, you know, it's. Your whole outlook changes when something like this happens. You initially, you don't believe in anything anymore. You don't trust anything or anyone anymore. I was nervous the first time the three of us got back into a car and got on 95 again. And each one of us had our own independent panic attack around that. Cause that's how we found out. And especially heading in that same direction, it's just challenging to move forward for any bereaved parent. And I think there's. Jake left such a big footprint. He lived in every time zone. So he had friends all across the country. He was an extrovert on steroids and played sports. So he knew kids all over this county with travel, sports, and he just made friends everywhere he went. He was in three church youth groups. Wow. He just. Jake couldn't get enough of life.

8:36 And so there's a lot of triggers. Yeah. And it makes it. You know, you'd think five years. Right. He should be doing better. I'm doing a lot better. But this is a life sentence. And you learn to. You learn to walk on and hold space for it because you have to. But that grief is always there, just like a dragon. And some days he rears up and roars up and reminds you how big and dark and fierce grief can be. And other days it's just kind of like water off the back. Yeah. So it just depends. But it's. It makes it complicated for sure. Because everything. Like I said, we all suffered the same tragedy. Kelly, Liam and I, but we all cope and process differently. So there's a layer. Right.

9:19 Where men and women grieve differently. So there's a lot to it. Which, like I said, really complicates life moving forward. You have to think through things. You develop healthier boundaries. Saying yes and no to things, you really evaluate and reflect. Can I do that? Do I have the capacity? You know? Yeah, just little things. Right. You've run it. My. Like, my wife the other day went to the grocery store and all these moms were talking about every row she turned into. There was just another mom running into another mom whose son was at college. And they were talking about drop off. You know, how did your drop off go? And my wife's like, I couldn't get out of the store fast enough. Sure. This is a life sentence, like you said. That was a. The perfect way to put it. And I think grief is something that we're really uncomfortable with until we have to face it ourselves.

10:10 And even then we can be uncomfortable with it, but we don't have a choice. Right. We have to kind of find our way through that marshland. I think it's really important, though, that we have these conversations about grief, because, again, we are uncomfortable with it. We're uncomfortable with other people's grief, and we're uncomfortable with other people's timelines on grief. And we don't really have the right to be, but we like to fix things. Right. I think especially in our culture of productivity, we have to get something checked off a list. Yeah. And so for us to be like, well, Stephen's still. Stephen's still grieving. I can't say, like, he's okay. And, you know, check. Check him off of my friend list. Like, he's good. I don't have to worry about him. And that's just life. Right. Like, life is about the tension and about the things that are constantly happening and how we act and react around them.

11:07 So I think it's wonderful and extremely brave of you to talk about this with such candor, because a lot of people can't. And that's okay. Like you said, people grieve differently. But I think it's incredibly important that you have chosen to this path because you're capable of doing it. Well, I appreciate that. I mean, I feel like I've been called to do it. And some of it is through Jake, and some of it is through God. And it. What I've learned is that our vulnerability is our strength. So it's the opposite of what we're taught, especially as men. Yes. My father always was like, get down. Get back up again. And I certainly applied that credo to much of my life. I've been knocked down. I went. I. We lived in New Orleans and were uprooted by Hurricane Katrina. Oh, wow. We've had our share of adverse life situations that we've had to deal with and overcome and.

11:57 But it was all child's play compared to this. Losing a child is unnatural. It's out of the. Out of order. Parents aren't supposed to bury their kids. And so I had a choice. Right. And it wasn't easy. It took a while. I was lost. I had no meaning. I had no purpose in my life other than pure survival for myself and my wife and son, who at different points in time, in the first two years, didn't want to live. So it was very rife with challenge and dark. We were in a very dark place. And what helped me was we set up a scholarship fund initially, in the days right after Jake passed, because we realized one. We were getting so many flowers, and we didn't need any more flowers. And Kelly And I sat down and said, what would Jake want? And Jake lived his life lifting up others. That's just who he was.

12:48 It was intuitive, it was natural. Whoever he encountered, he just had a way of knowing what they needed. And he brought joy everywhere he went. So he had been on a mission trip a year before out to South Dakota to Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, and really identified and took great umbrage with how he saw the inequalities, the witnesses he witnessed between how he lived as a teenage boy in Fairfield, Connecticut, and how they were living in Pine Ridge, South Dakota. And so we decided to create a scholarship to help those young children out there, because that's what Jake would want to do. So the first, it was initially called the Jake Panis Memorial Scholarship, and it rewards Lakota children from Red Shirt. TABLE Attending Red Shirt Indian School with college scholarships. So that was the first one. And then Jake's dream was to go to University of South Carolina and follow in my footsteps.

13:49 And as a father, I felt a responsibility to make sure he got there in some way, in spirit. So as it turned out, I had been ideating as much as one could, but I was a mess. And it was two days before our first Christmas, 2020, and my wife and I took a walk down to the beach just to get away. It was very joyless time in this house. We were trying to put a happy face on it for Liam as best we could, but it was. It was not easy. And so I left my phone behind, which was uncharacteristic. I just wanted a break. And an hour or so later, we came home and I checked my phone, and there was a voicemail and a phone number with an 843 prefix, which is the Charleston, South Carolina, area, low country.

14:32 So I figured it was a college roommate trying to cheer me up around the holidays. And I played the message, and lo and behold, it was Shane Beamer, who's the head football coach at the University of South Carolina. He had just been hired two weeks prior, and here he was taking time out to call us. He wanted to check in on Liam and Kelly and I, but he was really concerned about Liam. He'd heard the story from a mutual friend, and just the fact that he took time out. He was in the middle of hiring complete staff, recruiting not only his new recruits, but trying to keep the kids on the team from transferring to other schools. And he had more than his share of responsibilities at the moment. But here he was taking time out to check in on Liam and I. I was really struck by that and we had a great conversation.

15:15 And after I hung up the phone, I turned to Kelly and I was like, you know, I think I have a way to get Jake to South Carolina. And I waited till after the holidays and mid January. I reached back out to Shane and shared the idea of creating a walk on scholarship. And Shane was a walk on himself at Virginia Tech. So he immediately embraced the scholarship, loved it, the idea. We raised the money and quickly we had an endowed scholarship called the Jake Panis Walk on Walk on Football Scholarship at the University of South Carolina. So now we had two scholarships. And that September 2021 I went down to award the first one at South Carolina and that's when I kind of had my first pivot.

15:57 I was still a mess, but I was granted the opportunity to speak to the team and announce the scholarship. So at 7:45 the whole team was gathered, coaching staff and I walked into the team meeting room and Shane introduced me. And I got up there and I'm not a public speaker by trade. I was always. My background is a sports agent, attorney. I'm the guy in the behind the curtain, right? I'm the one, you know, orchestrating the appearances on behalf of my clients and putting them out in front. And Jake was more the spotlight guy. I wasn't. So here I was standing up in front of all these 100 and so people and just internally shaking inside, just, I was like, oh my God, what am I, what am I doing? And I gave a speech and I gave it from like, what would Jake want these kids to hear?

16:44 And it was like Jake was behind me, holding me up because I was, I don't know how I did it, but I did it and I awarded the scholarship and the young man came down. Matthew Bailey was the first recipient, a long snapper. And even some of Jake's friends afterward said, man, he kind of has similar hair to Jake and. But when he walked up towards me to hug me, he. I could just see the joy in his face. But I also saw Jake in his face and that really, it was the first time I kind of felt joy again in my heart. And I realized how powerful that was. And it set the. Set me on a pathway of helping others. And that was going to be my way to walk on. I was going to be able to help others with their own struggle because as you mentioned, grief is indiscriminate and it's universal, right? It comes in a variety of different forms. We associate grief with death only sometimes. But grief happens when small scale stuff. The teenager doesn't get into the his or her college of their choice. Their boyfriend breaks up with them.

17:38 A relationship fails. In an adult couple, you run into a financial crisis. A medical condition is diagnosed and it's not good. An addiction forms. Your house is taken away by a fire or tornado or earthquake or you don't know, hurricane. You pick the, the natural disaster. There's grief is everywhere and we just don't want to admit it. Like you said, we don't want to talk about it. So I decided to write a little bit. And I was writing about my. I was writing a goodbye letter to Jake and never intended to write a book. And I thought I could do something that would help Liam, maybe one, you know, to figure out what to do and because I looked at Liam probably two or three months in and I was like, oh my God, I'm 52 years old, grown man and I am struggling. How is an 11 year old boy supposed to process and, and really cope with losing his beloved older brother? So I asked Liam to, to meet me outside and we walked across our property and I told him to get his buck knife and he ran upstairs and got it and we walked over there to an old mature tree and I had him carve off a swath of bark. So he carved off this little rectangle of bark and he looked at me, said, now what, dad? And I said, now we're going to watch this tree heal.

18:59 It's going to take time. It's not going to be the same. We're going to see if the tree can regrow new bark over this scar. It may be a different color, could be a different texture, it may not fully cover it, but the tree is going to find a way to heal. And just like this tree, so is our heart. And we're going to together walk on. We're going to find a way. It's going to take time. I'm not going to lie to you. We're never going to be the same, Liam. But we do. All the answers are within us and we have to lean on them. We have to lean on our faith and we have to lean on each other to walk on. And I wanted him to believe in himself more than anybody. So after that experience, I again was just writing this goodbye letter to Jake that was very hard. Stop and start.

19:41 And that's when I realized I had this tradition with my boys where I would write, post it sticky note messages every morning. Started when Jake was five and then obviously continued with Liam. And it was all about inspirational messages around key Values and character traits that I thought were important in life, many non negotiable. And I just wanted to impart wisdom and inspiration into their developing heart, mind and souls. And somehow I stumbled across a lot of the old notes. My wife had kept them this all on little posted sticky notes, yellow notes. And I needed to, when I looked at them, I was just like, this is all, you know, it just doesn't mean anything now. So I had to really question the veracity that was inside of those messages and what I had modeled as the truth to my boys.

20:27 And in doing that reflection and that search, the writing changed from a goodbye letter to Jake to more of just honoring Jake and what he stood for and our relationship, but also Liam and the journey out. And that's what emerges. My book, titled Walk on, which honors the scholarships. It also honors what we need to do as a family. And I later learned that when I was out in May of 2022, awarding the first scholarship at Red Cloud Indian School, when the elders asked me at the school, how did I come up with the name Walk On, I explained, it's a term that's used for a student athlete who's not on a scholarship. They work hard, sometimes they're undersized, they came from a small school, so they're overlooked. And they go and they perform well and prove themselves to the coaches and ultimately earn a scholarship.

21:19 And they were like, wow, that's pretty cool. We have a different meaning. And I'm like, wow, what's that? And they said, well, we believe that when one dies, they walk on in the journey, and it's not a linear pathway and it's just the next logical step. And I was like, wow, that's really cool. So it really married it all together. And when I finished it, I thought, wow, this, this can definitely help Liam one day, but maybe it can help others. So on a lark, I decided to send out book pitch letters to a variety of publishing houses and agents, literary agents, and lo and behold, I had four that were interested. And I ended up publishing it with Kohler Books out of Virginia Beach, Virginia, Great small publishing company, but they were fantastic to work with.

21:59 And I donate all the proceeds of the book sales to the scholarships. And it's been wonderful because I've gotten a lot of incredible feedback from, like, from people who've lost loved ones to people who've just struggled with their own hardship or suffering. Because again, it's not just about losing someone. It's about grief in its purest form. And the first chapter is Hard to read. And then after that, I tell people the book becomes a lot more inspiring and uplifting. And that's what it's designed to do, is just to represent everything. Like I said, that Jake stood for, which was to lift up others. That's a long winded answer, I realized. But. Oh, my gosh, no, please. I have gotten chills so many times as you've been telling your story. Just the intention with which you have pursued Jake's legacy and the support that you've gotten along the way.

22:51 It's just a beautiful. It's a tragically beautiful story. You know, nobody wants this. And this never should have happened. Yeah, but it did. And what you have created out of it, what you and your family have created out of it, is something that me, who, not knowing Jake a day in my life, could say that he would be proud of. I appreciate that, as you said, you. You've had your share of adversity before this, but how do you even begin to wrap your mind around the grief process when this. Something like this happened when you. When you lose a child? Yeah, it's a good question.

23:32 It. It takes a lot of time for us. And again, grief is an individual journey, as we discussed, so everyone has to find what works for them. But for us. We knew we needed help badly. And my wife, within 30 days, found a therapist, grief therapist, who specializes in grief therapy for 40 years, and he's out of Cambridge, Mass. So we had virtual meetings three times a week for the first year, and then it moved to two times a week, I believe. And I just. I still stay in touch with the therapist. I don't see him regularly anymore, but I still have emergency sessions. My wife is still seeing him, but not as regularly. But you lean on that because you need. You need a place to go that's safe and that you can just talk.

24:15 And I just went and cried a lot. And I was. Like I said I was a bundle. If you don't cry when. When something like this happens, like something's wrong with you. And I didn't just cry. I weeped until my bones rattled. I mean, I was down and out. It's just. It's a gut punch like nothing. You're literally knocked to the ground. And you. I, thankfully, because I was raised with a deep faith and optimism, I landed on that. So there was some pliancy to hitting the cement that we were knocked down to. And I never gave up hope, but I was helpless like there was watching my wife just completely suffer, struggle, hurt. And there was Nothing I could do to change that. And you mentioned earlier how we're. We're all. As humans, we're geared to fix things. And this is. You can't fix this. There's nothing I could say that was going to swish your pain, make it better in any way.

25:04 There's nothing anybody could say. And so you're learning how to handle people coming up to you and saying whatever they think. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad. It lands flat when people say, like, well, God needed an angel. And I'm like, well, then take your kid. Yeah, right. But then you realize that people don't know what to say because we're also scared shitless of grief. And nobody wants to be around parent. If you're a parent, you don't want to be around a set of parents who've just lost a child. It's just like, almost like bad chi, right? It's going to. Oh, yeah. Contagious. But it's not. I mean, it's. We all are dealing with grief in some form, and it's been. It's come out even more in the wake of COVID Right. And we became isolated and people got lonely and grief really started to grow. So it's. I felt like if I could help others, it would help me. And it also keeps me connected to Jake by going out and speaking and writing this book and publishing it and. And where I mentioned earlier, I lost a future with him. This gives me some future where Jake and I are still on this journey. And everywhere I go, he goes. There's a great quote from Thich Nhat Hanh, a great Buddhist monk, late monk, who said, it's the concept of inner being.

26:18 When they die, a part of us dies, but when we. We live, they live on through us. So it really came down to that. And I'm a big reader. I started to read every book I could get my hands on about grief and loss and life spirituality. And one of the quotes that right before I left for South Carolina and gave that speech that really helped allow me to stand up there and give the speech, was a quote by Aldous Huxley that says, experience isn't what happens to a man. This is what a man does with what happens to him. And then. Then I got led to Victor Franco and man search for meaning. And, you know, and you realize he was so right when he was like, forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess, except one thing, and that's your freedom to choose how you're going to respond. We don't control what happens in life, but we control what we think and do about what happens to us. And that really hit home. You know, it's like we're at a crossroads. We can wallow and say, why me? Why us? Why did this happen? Be mad at God and be bitter and angry, or we can move to the light as hard as it was going to be and, you know, take it literally. We live one hour at a time, one day at a time. I still live one day at a time now, very focused on the present moment, but recognizing that it was a choice. I could either be the victim or I could be the victor, if you will, and just find a way to. To honor Jake and to also make sure that Liam rose up and it becomes everything that he potentially can be in life. And to make sure that

27:50 the same for Kelly, that we could find a way to walk on and to do it in a way that helps others. We've since launched the third Jake Panis Walk on Scholarship here in Bridgeport, Connecticut, with a Boys and Girls club that Jake was very active in. This one helps inner city kids who are underprivileged and underserved that participate in a fourth and eighth grade football program. And then they stay active in the Boys and Girls club through high school. They're rewarded with college scholarships. So we've awarded eight in five years, and it's incredibly fulfilling. And most importantly is each recipient now carries a part of Jake in their heart forward with them. And that to a brief parent, that's everything. Truly. I can only imagine there's. So, you know, we talk about the stages of grief that there's so many different feelings and emotions and places you go. And I think it's all important in the story of grief because as we've mentioned multiple times, we don't all grieve the same way. But I think it's equally important that you can talk about your grief and hope in the same sentence and not contradict yourself. And I think that's a misconception that we hold generally about grief, is that you're. If you're talking about hope, your grief is gone. And that's just not true. Yeah, well, think about it. I mean, when parent, when someone says, well, like, why do you have a picture of your kids still up?

29:12 Well, he's my child. Right. Just like you have a picture of your child, you know, they're their child for your life. And I'm still living. And so Jake is, like I mentioned, just he's living through me. And I Still have, you know, have things happen, signs. It's. You realize. What I've realized is the veil between here and there is way thinner than we're led to believe. And maybe that's part of it. I think that God has come through me, and I often wondered why. Initially, I was like, why is this happening? Why am I becoming a public speaker? Why am I walking down this new pathway that I never even considered before or would have even ventured to consider? And what I've come to realize is that it's through broken vessels that God's light can shine through. And that's. That's what's happened for me, is I have a completely different relationship with God than I've ever had. It's much closer.

30:04 I'm very spiritual, more spiritual than religious. And I've seen things and had things happen that are unexplainable to the. To the human five senses, but they're real. I've experienced them, and I know. So I know that there's something else out there, and I know that it's something. It's powerful, and I know that Jake's right there because I've. I've seen it, I felt it, I've touched it. I've heard him. Yeah, I love that. Yeah. So you mentioned a daughter. Yeah. Where does she come into the picture? So this is crazy. And this. This will speak to some of the spirituality and other worldliness stuff, but I got to go back in time to kind of set it up. So when Jake was three, we lived in. We just moved from Colorado to Las Vegas, where I was then working for Andre Agassi and Stephanie Graf, tennis superstars. So we moved to Vegas.

30:58 Jake was enrolled in a Montessori school, and he began telling everyone there that he had a sister. And the teachers asked us one day, and we're like, no, Jake doesn't have a sister. He's an only child. And we just kind of laughed it off. And. But both. He was insistent and that he had a sister and both grandmothers became a little worried with his imagination. We were just like, it's fine. He's all right. But he. And I asked him one day, I think he was about 5, and I just said, why do you say that? He goes, because I do. And I said, okay. And we just kind of left it at that. He. He would draw family pictures at school, you know, like kids do with crayons and whatnot. And I actually found one, and I'll show you in a minute on my phone. He drew a picture when he was 4 or 5. And when I found it after he died, I was just like, oh my God, I'd forgotten about this. He. The picture has me labeled as dad.

31:47 Above it says, dad, it's got a dog. We had one dog at the time, dog. Then it's got mom over here. And this is me for Jake with his curly. He had a beautiful blonde afro, yellow curls that men and women alike would kill for. And then it had Liam, said Liam, smaller than Jake. And then Liam was holding the hand of his sister. And when I found this picture, I was like, oh my God. So, so now fast forward. It's 2015, a year before Jake dies. And he just come back from that mission trip. He's a 15 year old boy and he tells one of his friends that he has a sister. And about three weeks later, I was at a sporting event, a horse. I worked in horse racing at the time. So I was at a Saratoga race course with a dad whose son went on the trip with Jake. And the dad asked me, hey man, can I ask you a really awkward question? As we were sitting there enjoying a good day at the races. And I said, mark, you can ask me anything, man. He's like, did you and Kelly have previous marriages? And then you got to conjoin families like the Brady Bunch? And I laughed like that. Just like you're laughing, Jennifer. I'm like, no, why do you ask?

32:50 And he goes, well, because Jake told my son he has a sister. And I left. And I was like, oh my God, I haven't heard that in years. And I couldn't wait to get home and tell Kelly, like, you're never going to believe what Jake has said again. And so then a year later, he dies. And about six months after he died, Kelly one day said, and I'll never forget it, she just turned to me and said, when the time is right, Jake is going to send someone to us. I said, okay. And I didn't doubt her for a minute. So then in the fall of 2022, Kelly asked me to let the ministers at our church know that if they ever learn of anyone, a child in need of love and a home to let us know.

33:35 And we had also started foster parent classes with the state. We started it and then we stopped because it just, it wasn't right at the time. We got about halfway and we realized maybe this isn't right for us right now. We were still obviously very much hurting, so we stopped. And then now three months later, that was like November. Now three months later, it's February 2023. It's cold here in the northeast in the winter. And we decided to get away. And Liam could do school from long distance because of COVID still distance learning and whatnot. So we. We decided to go to Antigua and Barbuda. Barbuda is a small island right off Antigua to get warm weather, to totally relax, to get away. And we literally just landed in Barbuda, small third world tiny island.

34:26 And my phone buzzes and it's a note text from our minister. Hey, there's this young girl. She's a scholar athlete, but she's about to be. She's been homeless since October. She's couch surfed, and she's currently on the couch of a fellow church member, but she's getting placed into the foster system. Are you guys interested? And I just wrote yes. And then I went and told Kelly. And Kelly spent much of the rest of the vacation on the phone with the mom that she was currently staying with and then the social workers to try to figure out the situation. And as it turned out, it was good that we had started those classes because that gave them some comfort level with with us as parents. And we came home from that trip thinking there was about 75% chance that in a week or 10 days she may come to us. We weren't really sure. We hadn't told Liam yet or discussed it with him because we didn't want to cause alarm if nothing was going to happen. But we also knew when we got home, we had to tackle Jake's room. We had not touched it. It pretty much sat as it was. And that was very hard, but we did it and we tried to feminize the room. Here was a boy's room, right, painted in blue. And we didn't repaint or anything. We just rearranged it.

35:37 Kelly got some more colorful items you might say to put in there. And the next day we got a phone call at around noon saying we're bringing her over at 8 o' clock tonight night. And we're like, oh my gosh. So Liam got home from school, we took him for a walk. We told him what was going on, and we asked him, are you okay with this? Because if you're not okay, we will work with them to find a home for her. And he's like, no, this is. She needs a home. We need to take her in. So April arrived that night, and she had a backpack and a small duffel bag that was her worldly possessions. And the Liam gave her a tour of the house as we met with the social workers and signed all the paperwork. And she may have heard the social workers say goodbye to us. Goodbye, Mr. And Mrs. Panis, I think.

36:22 But I took her upstairs to show her her bedroom, and I did. And I said, hey, you can unpack the. All the drawers are empty. Make yourself at home. And I started to walk out, and she asked a really great question. Hey, how long am I going to be here? And I turned around, I said, as long as you want, it's all up to you. But as long as you could be here for the rest of your life if you want, it's all, you know. And she kind of smiled, so she started unpacking. Then Kelly came up, and I gave them some time, girl time. And I was in the other room on our room. Then I heard April ask, who's. Whose room is this? And Kelly had told her that we had lost a son prior to her coming. And so she knew she was coming into a house of trauma and that it just felt fair to tell her that. And obviously she was coming from her own trauma. And she said, is this a guest room?

37:15 And Kelly's like, no, this is our late son's room. And she's like, what was his name? And Kelly said, jake. And all of a sudden, I hear April say, jake Panis. And both of our heads just kind of snapped, you know, Kelly's like, yeah. She's like, oh, my God, I heard of him. She goes, I didn't know him, but I heard about him. And I. I know everyone, you know, thought the world of him. He was athlete and all that. And we were just stunned. And it turned. You know, April has curly hair. Jake has curly hair. April's a lefty. Jake's a lefty. And she does things that absolutely remind us of Jake. Our jaws will drop. We'll be like, that's exactly what Jake would have said. So I. We really feel like Jake sent us his sister. She was born two years after Jake, so about a year after he was started to talk about this stuff, that he had a sister. It was crazy. Wow. Yeah. It's just this. You can't even explain it right. And when I show you this picture.

38:17 Let me find it quick. You'll just. It's some. It's just stunning, the fact that he would draw the picture, and not only just drawing it, but she is holding Liam's hand in this picture, and she looks like April, and she's smaller than Jake, but bigger than Liam, so she fits in the order perfectly. It's really it's such a beautiful thing, because as bereaved parents, Jennifer, we honor that not everyone who loses a child gets a child. And it doesn't fill the void of losing Jake. Nothing ever will. But it makes you have gratitude, and it brought joy back into our life, and we've saved April's life, and she saved Kelly's life. So it's this really beautiful. And it's been so seamless that it's been like she was always meant to be with us. Like, I'm gonna say seamless.

39:04 It's uncanny. Wow. How easy and natural it's been. And if I submitted this script to Hollywood, they would laugh me right out of the. The state of California. But it gives me goosebumps talking about it every time. But she is Jake's sister. There's no question in my mind. He knew exactly what his mother needed and when. And two lives were saved as a result of it. Wow. And Liam's doing a lot better. He's very close with April. Like I said, we just visited her for parents weekend, and she's a beautiful soul, and she's a special young woman in her own right. She's more driven. She's overcome more than most people have to endure in their early years as a child. And just to overcome that and be who she is today is remarkable. It just speaks to her drive and determination and passion for life. And she's going to be so successful in life whatever she chooses to do. I wouldn't be surprised if she was the first female president one day. She's just an amazing young woman with a supremely bright future, and we have immense gratitude that she's in our lives. Wow. That's incredible. Yeah. I think it just speaks to the fact that human connection is the most important thing we have is each other. You know, we don't do well in isolation, and we are the ones that are able to show up for and save each other. Well said.

40:30 Because that's what people need to do, is show up. People ask me all the time, well, how do you help someone in grief show up? Don't worry about what you're going to say or not say, because there's nothing. You can't say the right thing because there is no right thing to say. Just say you're sorry and show up. And showing up means just being there for them. You can sit in silence, you can sit in prayer, you can hug them, you can cry with them, you can mow their lawn, you can grocery shop for them. Because when people are suffering intense Grief. They don't want to go out. They don't want to leave their house. They don't want to shower. They don't eat, they don't cook. They, you know, the, the mail fills up in their mailbox. They don't even go out for that. They just feel so disconnected from society that you need to show up. And that's the, the reality is that we all feel alone in our circumstances, but we're not alone. Yeah, we're here.

41:19 That's why we're here. We're here to love each other and to lift each other up and to be there for each other. It's as simple as that. And that's kind of what I've learned through my, I say new connection with God. It's just it, it. I've been. Things have been said to me and shared with me in, in unique and I can't even put words to it. Ways that this is what life's about. And I need to help share this message because there is so much division and hatred and fear based on issues with our world today. And we've gotten so far away from humanity that we need to refocus on the simple things and the things that last.

42:02 I always joke when I, when I give talks. One of, one of the lines I use is like, when you. When we get to the pearly gates and you meet St. Peter, he's not going to ask you, hey, how was that corner office? Didn't you love that huge office with the sofa, the big desk, the views? Or how was that second home in the Keys or Martha's Vineyard? That stuff doesn't matter. Yeah, what he's going to ask you is how many people did you touch? How many people did you lift up and help? Yeah, 100% agree. I'd actually love if you would talk about how your relationship with God changed through this process because I have a very similar story in that I grew up in. In faith and have always had a relationship with God. But my, you know, kind of pivot point in my life just flipped my relationship with God on its head, like completely 180.

42:56 And I guess not completely 180, because maybe that's not believing in God at all, but it just completely changed my view of God and my relationship with God to what I would say is such a deeper, richer relationship. And I identify with, like, being less religious. So I would love to hear that process for you because I feel like a lot of it is either, like, clinging to the religious or completely losing your faith entirely. And There is other options, right? Yeah. So I was raised Catholic, and faith was just a big part of growing up in our life. And I appreciate everything that my parents did to instill faith. They also let us explore our own. So after I left for college and then I was in law school in New Orleans, and I'm kind of writing a book about this right now, actually, about how everything, you know, how my relationship with God changed. And it really came down to.

43:52 I was sitting in church in New Orleans one day, and the priest, who was a big guy, he was probably 6, 6, and he would move up and down the. The aisle, the center aisle, as he gave his sermon, but he would point with his finger and scream. I mean, bellow, big yell, you killed the Christ. And I just watched everyone in church just kind of wilt. Shoulders would slump. And I remember sitting there one day going, this is not the answer. This is not the Jesus that I believe in. And I kind of. And also they started to sermonize about things I didn't think they had business telling us to do or not to do. And I really just stepped away from the church at that point in time. And I knew my theory all along was that God, Jesus is within us.

44:37 I don't need to go to a church to find him. He. That's not how Jesus operated. Jesus took it to the people. You didn't have to go to a cathedral to find Jesus. He found you. And he's with us wherever we go. We each carry him inside of us. So that was part of it. And then I started to read a lot about Buddhism and became really drawn to that and saw a lot of similarities between the stories of Jesus and the messages. Was very similar with, you know, treating people with kindness, loving one another, you know, not hurting somebody, all the simple concepts. And Jesus also stood up against the churches, even back in his time, and the institutions and spoke more about the simple, unconditional love and faith. And it was more about that than it was about. And today we're seeing politics, right, hijack it. And human institutions have hijacked Jesus truth for their own agendas. And that's wrong. We see stuff, you see from the pulpit. They'll say, love your neighbor and be kind, but then they're out on the streets doing the exact opposite.

45:53 And I'm not even getting into politics, but politics have hijacked religion. And if you really just winnow it down and look at the basic core truths that Jesus espoused, they're simple and they're not complicated. They weren't involved with any dogma or religion or political side or persuasion. They were just pure truth. And they were like, love, be kind, have mercy, forgive, be humble. Really simple concepts. Do unto others as if you were the others. And we have strayed so far from that. And I think we. If we can talk more about that, maybe people can realize that this is the stuff that matters. We're so consumed with everything that doesn't matter. Yeah. Chasing the wrong things. And I. I say this when I talk to a lot of people have literally taken their ladder of life and propped it up against the wrong building and they're climbing. And they're only going to realize it when it's too late, when they reach the top and go, oh, this is the wrong place.

46:56 Yeah, I just spent all this time getting here. I don't got a lot of time left. And now what? I got to climb back down and start over and cross my fingers. I prop it up against the right place this time. So I really hope that humanity can refocus and see how connected we are. We're not that different, but we act like it. But we're so much more connected than we want to admit. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think, to be honest, not to plug my own shtick here, but having conversations like this, when you are addressing people one on one or in small capacity, you really get to know an individual. And I think that's so important for remembering our humanity because it's through that that we're able to see people as people and not as a group of something that we can decide arbitrarily to love or hate or be indifferent towards. You know, it's a lot harder to hate somebody when you're sitting in front of them, talking to them as another human being.

47:58 Right. I use this too. I say, I. And this is how I look at life. I view everyone carrying an invisible backpack. And in that backpack is their suffering. And if you can learn to look at people like that, you realize, like, hey, man, they're having a bad day. And I'll give you an example. I get on the highway, emerging, and some guy goes to cut me off, right? He won't let me in. And instead of honking and giving him the bird, getting all riled up in my car, I say, he must be in a hurry. Maybe he is. Maybe there's an emergency. I have no idea what's going on in this car. But let's give people the benefit of the doubt versus move right to hate. Anger, bitterness, rage. It's like, so it's not that hard. But if we can look at everyone with their own invisible backpack, we start to have a lot more empathy. And I do believe empathy is a word. I know that's been debated in the last week or two with hundred percent.

48:52 Empathy is a word. We're going there and it's a feeling and we need to have it. And Jesus talked a lot about empathy. You know, he did, and it's chronicled. And we just need to have compassion for one another. Yeah. Understand that everyone is suffering in some way, shape or form. There's different degrees of it, obviously. Have some patience, have some compassion, have some understanding. Maybe slow down. Yeah. You know, more and more I just think about the fruit of the spirit. And all of those are such simple concepts, but they're so antithetical to how we perceive success in our lives. Because to live as Jesus or to live in the footprints or footsteps of Jesus is to diminish power and hierarchy.

49:44 Right. And that's the opposite of what the world tells us we need. And so, yeah, I think it's important to like, just keeping those in mind when you're moving through, you know, patience is big ones. When we struggle, it's when I struggle with. Yeah, but it. You're right. It is absolutely imperative that we do that in moving ourselves forward and trying to heal so much of what has been broken. Yeah. Well said. So I think that another thing that's wonderful about what you're doing is that you're a man doing it. Talking about grief, talking about emotions, talking about processing your grief and emotions. And it sounds like also talking to other men about it a lot of times too, being involved in sports. So how have you found that conversation you had mentioned earlier about like, not being able to express yourself as.

50:46 Or being told not to express yourself. Pull yourself up by bootstraps, kind of rhetoric that a lot of men are told. And I think, unfortunately, if we could access this kind of talk earlier in life and kind of instill these values earlier in life, it would be helpful for a lot of men. How have you found that as you were speaking to other men, your message is received? You know, it's been incredible. And I think that is what fuels me, is that people probably need to hear it. And I hope more people talk about it. I'm just doing my little part is how I view it. Again, harkening back to my vulnerability is my strength, and I'm hopeful that others embrace that.

51:34 But I have seen how empowering it is, and we're seeing it more in sports. We're seeing, you know, before, if a quarterback admitted that he saw someone, a therapist or psychologist, that they would be knocked down a peg and maybe distrusted. We can't rely on him. He's weak. And. And it's actually the exact opposite. He's strong. He's admitting that he needs help. We all need help. That's the reality. And he's getting stronger mentally as a result of that relationship. And so it's not looked at as a weakness anymore. And we're seeing more and more athletes step up for mental awareness and mental health. It's important. It's a big component of our society. Right. You need to be physically healthy, and you need to. Need to be mentally healthy, and you need to be emotionally healthy. And so I think when I've been out there, I recognize that one. There's a lot of guys similar to me that were told not to cry, told get back up on the horse, you know, ride on. And that certainly is something that you need to do. But in time, right? It's. There's a process, and with grief, you have to figure out, you know, it's different.

52:45 There's. Like you said, there's stages. They don't go in any particular order. They come and go. In fact, you. You're often bouncing like a pinball from one back to the other, back to the other. Like, geez, I thought it was past denial. No, you're still struggling with a little bit, right? I thought it was past my rage and anger. Well, there's things that are going to come up that are going to reignite it. And so how do you handle it? For me, I looked at when I was in year two, and I knew I really had to make a stronger pivot. The Buddhists say that you have to lean into the sharp points. So I started to lean in to my own suffering, and I made adversity my teacher rather than an obstacle. And that was part. And then the Lakota revere the bison for a simple reason. The bison is the only animal that will turn directly into a storm and move through it, recognizing that it's the shortest pathway. Wow. And I think there's a lesson for humans in that, is that we look to trouble. Comes up suffering, hardship.

53:40 It's the elephant in the room, Right. We try not to talk about it. We sweep it under the rug if we can. We push it out of the room. We run from it. Oh, I'll just move. No, guess what? It's gonna. Wherever you are, there you are. There it is. It's gonna chase you. And grief is a dark shadow. It's gonna follow you everywhere. So if you don't confront your problems, you're just exacerbating them. Your suffering intensifies. So you need to share. You need to be open. You need to say, I need help. It's okay to say I'm not okay. But you need to go right through it. And it's not easy. It takes time. So I always tell people I just literally talked to a father who lost his son two months ago in a horrific car crash.

54:20 And he could barely talk on the phone. But we talked for an hour and a half. And there was a lot of listening. There's a lot of dead air. But, you know, I could viscerally feel his pain. I knew exactly what he was feeling. I was teleported back, which is what happens. And I was telling him that everything you're feeling, as bad as it is, as hard as it feels, it's right where you're supposed to be. And that sucks because you want to. You want to change it. Right. And he can't help his wife. Kind of like I couldn't help my wife. And that you feel helpless. But the key is never losing hope. And hope is that light that moves you towards the bigger light and allows you to find gratitude and find joy and rediscover things in life that matter.

55:06 And you reprioritize. That's what my book does. It. I think it compels you when you finish reading, compels you to reprioritize what matters most in your life and put them at the top. Because this is fleeting. It goes really quickly. We have no idea. None of us get to predict when we die. Yeah. Or how we die. But you have a choice in how you live. Yeah. So what are you going to do about it? And be the author of your own story. I love that. Thank you so much. I do have a question I ask everybody at the end of each episode, which is through the lens of your experience. What does compassion mean to you? Compassion means stepping up when someone needs you. They may not be asking directly for it, but it just means showing up.

55:48 It means being there for someone, lifting somebody up. Oftentimes it's obvious. Right. You can tell when someone's down or hurting. You hear about it or you see it and be there for them. Because one day you're going to need someone there for yourself. So it's just having an open heart and recognizing that we're all connected, we're all related and we're all here to love and help each other. Well said. Thank you so much for again, your candor and your vulnerability. I I do think it's a strength and I do believe that it has and will continue to help people. And we will link to your book, your website, whatever in in our show notes so people can find you there and grab a copy for themselves. Well, I appreciate it.

56:31 And if anyone's ever looking for a speaker, they can find me through the website. Stephen Panis P a n u s.com and thanks for the time, Jennifer. It was great to have this conversation with you. Thank you for listening to the human experience. Everyone has a story and I'd love to hear yours. So be sure to check out the show notes for more information about how to stay in touch, do good, and love.