Latest / Father's Refuge / Keep Those Feet Moving: A Resilient Journey Through Grief and Fatherhood with AJ Coleman

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Keep Those Feet Moving: A Resilient Journey Through Grief and Fatherhood with AJ Coleman · Father's Refuge

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Keep those feet moving is really an inspiration for me is because when we go through grief, we have a tendency to stand still.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: We get lost, we look for direction from others.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: We're sort of in that mindset of don't know what to do next.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: By keeping those feet moving, is you're moving.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: In my opinion, is motion creates action.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: Action creates happening.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: And then when you've got things going on and you're not just standing still, you're going places.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: And that's important because as you continue to heal in grief, the more activity that you're involved with, the more you're able to heal.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: And we're not saying forget, we're not saying just to ignore the morning aspect.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: Is the moving symbolizes that you're moving through a healing phase?
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: This evening we're joined by AJ Coleman.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: How are you doing, sir?
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: Great, thank you.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for being on the show.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: Please introduce yourself to the listening audience.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: I'm AJ Coleman, and it's a pleasure to be here to speak with you all today.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a resilience mentor, and I have gone through all sorts of grief, and I speak publicly about some of the challenges that I've gone through with hopefully providing inspiration for others to carry on the legacy of the grief and loved ones that have been left behind.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: So who were you before your life split into before and after?
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I would say I I was a completely different person in terms of owning responsibility in life.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: As a young guy coming out and just kind of taking the reins by the horns, I I felt like I had my whole life ahead of me, and that was sort of free from the responsibilities.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: And the first time I've ever been exposed to such a tragedy episode of my spouse getting sick, it really prepared me for who I am today.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I never realized at that moment that you really get to see what's alive in within you, and you have that drive.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: And before this tragedy, I I didn't think I had anything inside me that would help prepare or propel me for what I would soon later face in life and where I am today.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: That's why I like to call myself a resilience mentor because I have gone through so much that it's almost impossible for me to go back and look to see who I was and say if that did not happen to me, it's pretty self- I can say that I wouldn't be as strong, independent, and confident as I am today.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: AJ, can you can you share a little bit about your grief story?
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: So my first exposure to really any grief was actually my childhood.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: And very few people knew about this prior to me experiencing a loss of a loved one.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: I was born with a hearing impairment, and at the time I did not know growing up that I was mourning the loss of an ability.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: And back in the 70s and 80s, there wasn't a whole lot of conversation surrounding this type of grief loss.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of times we think about grief is through a passing of a loved one.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: And as I had gotten older years later, my wife became stricken with cancer, terminal brain cancer, and was given sort of a small window of quality of life left.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: And at the time we had just had our daughter that was born.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: And here I was managing not only the potential grief loss, but taking everything that I have learned from my childhood and applying it forward to really being a strong, all I would say, individual that really took on a lot of responsibilities, not only for my wife, but also for my daughter as well, of becoming a single father after she passed.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: And when I look back at my childhood, that's really where it all started was that first sign of grief loss, preparing me for all the things that I would face later on in life.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: What was your wife's name?
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: Her name was Corey.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: Can you tell us a little bit about her?
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: Well, if you met Corey, she was the life of a party.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: Always smiling, laid back, giggling, and just really just coming into any room and just lighting up.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: She would talk to everybody and anybody.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: She didn't care who you were, what status you had.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: And when I first met her, her really personality she shared with me that she had actually had brain cancer two years before we met and was in readmission and covered it.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: But the way she described it to me was exactly like her personality.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: It was almost like a flick of a fly.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like, no big deal, I'm good to go.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: And she just treated life just full of zest and realized that whatever time that she had in life to go through, she was really going to make the best of it.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: And the impact that she left on me was seen in an individual looking straight in the eye at something so devastating, so terminal, and just living life to the fullest, sharing that no matter what goes through her mind, no matter what goes through the system, that she would be okay.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: And that she wanted to make sure that I was comfortable in anything that I did.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: I still think about this today when she passed in 2009, we're going on about seventeen years.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I still remember conversations with her yesterday.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: I still see images of my daughter in looking exactly like her mother.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's almost like a reincarnation, if you think.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I think when you look back at who she was and the impact that she left behind, it's really the strength that carries it forward.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I choose to mourn, you know, more so celebrate the life rather than mourn the loss of her.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: And her legacy is what carries me through and enables me to share these great stories of who she is, who she was, and the impacts that she had behind.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: How old was Corey?
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: She was 31 when she passed.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I was How long have y'all been married?
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: So we had been married for just under five years, and we had a whole life ahead of us.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: We had relocated across the country for a career opportunity for me, a chance to really begin life as a newlywed couple.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: And we thought, how hard can marriage be, right?
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: So within right after we got married in the honeymoon, we decided to get a puppy, thinking, oh well, let's let's complicate our lives a little bit and see what life has to happen.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: And uh within the first year of our puppy, our puppy was actually diagnosed with a incurable um, I guess, medical, was it with maxatory myositis, which is like almost like inflammation on the jaw, which required special medication attention, and most people would put the dog down because of the rising cost and the pain.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: You know, she and I just took it and said, you know what, this is our fur baby, this is who we love, we're gonna beat this thing.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I will tell you that we gave her the attention she needed, we gave her all the meds, and that dog, our dog, she ended up living for almost 16 years with the uh disease.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, just to go back into when we were married, you know, one of the things that was always a concern is whether or not there would be the ability to have children.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: And when you go through chemo, you go through radiation in any part of the body, there's a lot of uncertainty as to what type of effects are going to be left behind.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: We consulted with a lot of different doctors and said, you know, she's been post five years, what did this mean?
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: And all the doctors said the same thing.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: The fact that you get through the first five years, the odds of anything returning is so remote.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you pretty much beat it.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: Well, during that pregnancy, something must have woken up the tumor and that just lay dormant for many years and became very aggressive, and I can't help thinking that our daughter is an angel of some sort because we were told it would take a long time to conceive due to the medical treatment and it was almost instantaneously, and if we hadn't conceived right away, I do not know if my daughter would still be here today because every time, every week that goes by, really her my wife's body was shutting down and dealing with the cancer while experiencing the hormonal, the excitement of a pregnancy.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: So we had our whole lives planned.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: And uh when she was diagnosed, she wanted to go back to Chicago.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: So we relocated back from Phoenix to Chicago so she can be with her family and spend the remaining time with those that she loved in the house that she grew up in, and as a spouse, as an individual.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted that for her.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the key aspects in any grief is closure.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's how do we close a chapter understanding that we have done everything that we could do to not only give somebody else the ability to live their lives, but knowing for us that there wasn't anything further we could have done any different.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: So that way we're not looking back with regret, with the sorrow that we could have done more.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: And that's something that I really take into that mindset on a regular basis in anything I do is what does this closure look like?
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: Can I do more?
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: What can I do while the situation is going on?
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: Because that closure at the very end is what helps promote healing.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel many people just never get that closure part, and that's why a lot of those grief wounds continue to be persistent today.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I you know that I lost a 10-year-old daughter to cancer to to a brain tumor.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: There's two different types of cancers.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: One was uh benign and the other one was l w way more aggressive and that was attached to her brain stem.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: And the doctor said when they did an emergency surgery on her that if she let us lasted twelve months that we'd be lucky.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: So she lasted fourteen months.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh same exact scenario.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: We lasted fourteen months too.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: It was a glioblastoma that we were dealing with on the stem.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: So can you can you talk about the can you talk about the treatment journey and how it affected you on the onset uh when it first first happened and became reality again?
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I know that I know that she told you before y'all got married that she had had it before and she was in remission, and uh I'm sure that both of your hopes were really up and and hoping that she was beyond that or past it.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then unfortunately it came back.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so how did you how did it aff how did it affect you personally as well as how did it affect your marriage?
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: Well, again, one of the things I loved about her is is the her ability to take devastating news and spin it in a way that it sounded like it was nothing.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the way she described the cancer before we met was almost like a cold, like a little flu bug, right?
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: And and she was able to go through it and come out.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I really didn't think about it impacting our marriage because I looked beyond that and looked to see who the person was.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: And that to me was who I fell in love with.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: And when our daughter was born, about two months later, I noticed that my wife was having some speech slurring one night, and I thought it was just because she was tired.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know, when you're a new mother and with a newborn, your sleep patterns are off, you may not get enough nutrients, and I never thought anything more than she's just probably tired.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: But as the incoherent continued throughout the evening, I said, Okay, well, let's go to the emergency room, let's go get some blood tests, and you know, we'll get some medicine and you'll be back where you need to be.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: The doctor comes in after doing a CAT scan and grimly said, You have a very large mass in your brain.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: We need to move quickly for surgery, and we needed to move you to another hospital that can handle this.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: And at that moment I didn't know what to think.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: It was, you know, at 33 years old, the new father, starting my career.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: I I didn't know.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm trying to be strong for her, I'm trying to be strong for me, and all I could think about was why did this happen?
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what did we do wrong to deserve this?
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: Several days later she went in for the surgery, and the doctor came out after about six, seven hours and said, you know, we did our best to remove most of it, but we'll we're not gonna be able to get all of it.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: And she'll go through the radiation, she'll go through the chemo.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, and by the way, plan on her for about twelve to fourteen months of life expectancy.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: And right then and there I broke down into tears because I couldn't comprehend what was just said to me.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: It was almost like a countdown.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: And every day that you have together really felt like a countdown.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: And what I learned about hospitals, they're still a very much business oriented mentality.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: And they were almost predicating this type of treatments from a profitability.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: And there was a drug treatment that she could get into that they thought had high hopes and some success early on in their clinical, but I was told it would exceed the dollar limitations that, you know, of the what they can afford or what they can spend in the hospital.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: And that set me off because you're telling me that we can't do treatment based on money, that we're putting a dollar on life.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: So the administrator came out and I talked to that and like, well, if you want to pay ten thousand dollars per treatment, you know, we can administer this, but there's no guarantee that you are going to beat this, to prolong this.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: And at the time, I don't know about you, but something just rises up in you, right?
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: Whether it's anger, whether it's fear, whether it's just defiance, and you're saying, you know what, I don't care about the money.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: I care about my loved one.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm gonna do everything I can to put myself, put them in a position to beat this.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what we did on each treatment that we had.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it cost me$10,000.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: Even though the doctors have all said, you're wasting your money.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: This is too aggressive, this is too I didn't want to listen to that.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: So how it changed our marriage, it really pushed us more, so me closer.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: When you deal with someone who has brain cancer, their personality becomes a little altered.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: They may not be the same individual that you married.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: But that doesn't change who they are.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: That doesn't change what they can do.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: And in my personal experience, I wanted to beat this thing not only for her, but for our daughter.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: Toward the end, I can say this, this is where closure is so important to me.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: That despite the terminal, despite all the medicine, despite everybody telling me she's not going to be able to survive.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: My wife lived long enough to see our daughter walk and call me over the phone to tell me the kid was walking.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: That's the memory that I take with me every day when I look at my daughter and just you know, the fact that she got to see her own daughter walk right before she passed.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: The other at the end, I didn't know we were at the end.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: We had gone to the hospital because she was occurring some difficulty focusing, and the body was shutting down.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: As a newborn baby, a year old, I kept hurt my daughter away from the hospital as much because of all the diseases and you know, germs and everything.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't wonder getting sick and woke up one Saturday morning at the hospital with her, and I just said, you know what?
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna bring our daughter Zoe down to the hospital for her to visit you and just kind of cheer you up.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Zoe came down to the hospital with my in-maws and spent a good hour with my wife and seeing Zoe just kind of snuggle up with her mother was was amazing.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: When it came time my wife was getting tired, I picked up my daughter, gave my wife a kiss, and we started walking out and we turned, and I took my daughter's hand to wave, you know, like see you later.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: My wife looked at her, not me, looked at her, closed her eyes, and drifted off to sleep.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: I take comfort knowing the last image that she really wanted was our daughter.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: And the fact that I was able to give her that memory or that experience, it's helped me today not only talk about it, but I can also smile as I share this story because it's so heartfelt that it feels good that I was able to do something, even though it was just a tragic time.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: But I was able to give her what I call a storybook ending.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: And those are the things that help anybody who go through challenges to go through these types of incidences, is how they get that closure, that story.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I uh I struggled after the the passing, just the the loneliness, the void, everything, but I had to be strong for our daughter.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: But it truly did help having that storybook ending for my wife that allowed us to heal.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna ask you, are you a person of faith?
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: I am now.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: I I lost my faith after my wife got sick and I was angry.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: I walked away little by little, years later, my faith returned.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: I have to say that uh my daughter got sick as we slowly but surely started coming towards the end of her journey.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: Initially we had a lot of hope.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: And uh we already knew the doctors had said she wouldn't last longer than twelve months.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: And but we also knew that God is a big God.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: He's an awesome God.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: And our prayer and hope was was that that he would heal her on this side of heaven.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: And we clung to the idea that Jessica was our own, that she belonged to us.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I at some point I had an epiphany, I guess, and realized that no, she didn't really belong to us, she belonged to God, and it was his will to heal her here on earth or in heaven.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so that that realization kind of set in and uh caused a lot of uh anger and anxiety and depression and bargaining with God and all the six stages of grief.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so when she finally did pass away, our I would be lying if I'd say um that didn't affect our faith because it sh it certainly affected the foundation of the f our faith, right?
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: And uh my pastor said, you know, a couple of years later or whatever, that he admired the fact that we didn't lose our faith over it.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I was like, Well, it got pretty close, but life goes on and we had other Children and that doesn't that doesn't minimize the importance of Jessica.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't minimize the love we had for her.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: But we had to let her go, obviously.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so what did caregiving teach you that success never could, as you look back at at taking care of Corey as she was moving through chemo and radiation and all of that?
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: Well, first I was blessed to have an employer at the time that understood what I was going through to enable me to be there with her for those treatments, and I would sort of work non-traditional hours to try to make up the time.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: But as a primary caretaker of her, I learned a lot about who I was, in a sense of what I was really made up.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know, waking up in the middle of the night, assisting her to go to the bathroom, waking up in the middle of the night because she couldn't sleep because of discomfort or something was in her mind that she couldn't get out and needed to discuss it with me.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: As a caretaker, caregiver, what it is is that you're actually the most important part is how you're spending time together.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: And just because there was an inability to move around at times because of the chemo, because of where the cancer was sitting, she lost mobility of the right side of her body.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: So she was confined to a wheelchair for a period of time.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: Then she had a walker, which was phenomenal.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: And really pushing her to regain strength.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: There was no mobility of the right arm, and that was a challenge because as we realize, especially as a mom, you had to change your daughter's diaper.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: And she became so good at changing our daughter's diaper with one hand, and I struggled just to do it with two hands.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: It was kind of the running joke in the household that who was gonna change the diaper because you know people would say, well, AJ, you're gonna go change the diaper, right?
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, well, not so fast.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: You gotta see this.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_01: She's good at what she does.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I think as a caregiver for her, it taught me a lot about give and take.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: Because sometimes you want to step in and just take over.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: But you also have to realize the human element of thing that they also want to do for themselves.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: You want to have them feel good.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: And at one point, even though she was restricted and was not able to drive, she had this massive desire just to one more time get behind the driver's seat and drive.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: I took her to a secluded area on the street and and had her kind of drive through.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: And the excitement, the beaming that she exhibited afterwards felt so good.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: But again, it taught me as human nature, we're rushing in to do something, to problem solve for somebody else.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: When all in reality, they just want us to support them and they want to figure out on their own.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: And finding that balance is extremely challenging.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: But at the same time, once that balance is achieved, it's actually very rewarding.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: And it it gives that individual and yourself more competence to try and take on more challenges on their own.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: So how old was your daughter?
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: And what's her name, by the way?
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: Zoe.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: Zoe.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: How old was Zoe when Corey passed away?
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: She was just under a year and a half.
• 25:36
  unknown: Okay.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_01: There wasn't really much of a mm.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: There wasn't much of a memory from a physical memory.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: We have videos, we have photos, we have stories, and I made the decision early on to keep her mother's legacy and memory alive throughout her entire childhood.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know, sometimes she would play the mommy card.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: Mommy wants me to do this.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, well, mommy told me she wants you to go to bed.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: And it was, you know, a give and take at times.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: But Zoe and I are extremely close today.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: She's uh next month she's gone off to college as a freshman.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_01: And everybody everybody says, Well, make sure you bring clinic, make sure you bring, you know, all this other stuff.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I have a little bit of a different mindset to those comments.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, I've gone through profound loss where I can't speak to my loved one anymore.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: But with Zoe, I know I can send her a text message, she'll return my text message, I can do a FaceTime, I can s call her, I can talk to her.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: So for me, that loss of her moving out of the house is a little bit different for us than it is maybe for other individuals who are having the children going off to college for the first time because of the void of the reaction.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm more excited to see her development in college.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: How is she going to react without dad waking her up every morning and putting her to bed?
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: What kind of things is she gonna learn?
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: Is she really gonna be able to do her laundry on her own, or am I gonna get the call where she wants to send it out, right?
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, these are good, good fun things to have.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_01: But my my thoughts really is is because of what we've gone through in the absence of her having a mother, I've had to take on multiple roles.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: And by all means, uh a lot of stories we can share of of mishaps and challenges that we've had as a father and daughter with uh the mainstream.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: But we look back at our lives together and the fact that we are as close as we are now, I think it's a token of really her mother bringing us together because that's all we had and we needed each other at the time.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's kind of where that mindset really goes into my everyday that's why I feel like I'm very laid back, I'm very calm natured, because I've already gone through those challenging moments and I compare it to that and say, you know what, this doesn't even come close, you know.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: So what if she spilled, you know, and broke a glass, right?
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: As long as she's okay, I'll clean it up and we can move on, right?
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so she broke curfew a few times.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, but she came home, right?
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_01: Educate her on why curfew is important, but don't make it such a big deal of it, then she's gonna start withholding information from you.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: And as a dad, sometimes they tell you a little too much information, things that I'm not really sure I want to hear about it from a dad perspective, but I listen, I don't judge, I nod my head, and I maybe I'll walk away and mumble something like, Oh my goodness, where did I go wrong with this one?
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: I think as a father, with your going through the treatment journey and it eventually losing Corey to to that brain tumor, I would think that that would make you more inclined to maybe be a little more protective of Zoe and to protect her and to shield her from some of life's uh more ugly trials.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's a it's an interesting point.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: I think what I have done more so is overcompensate for her, meaning overcompensate when we go to the to the toy store, right?
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I buy a couple extra things.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: I I overcompensate making sure that I'm always available for her to pick her up, drive her places when she's before she was driving with her and a friend.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh there would be going and picking up at the same time.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's where the I think the overcompensation part of it is.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: I think she also understood that yes, as a protective father, but there were some things that I think she needed to experience on her own, with respect, right?
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_01: You know, but it was more of the overcompensation where it was harder for me to just be more of that, okay.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_01: Let it be, it's not the end of the world if she wants an extra set of ice cream at nine o'clock at night on a school night and go into the sugar.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_01: That was kind of the overcompensation, knowing that I was gonna probably have difficulty putting her to bed ten minutes after she finished it.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: But I think that's what makes our relationship special.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's where it worked for us.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_01: And as a single dad for so long into this whole process early on, I had to find things that worked well for us.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: And again, knowing that she's gonna go down for a nap at two o'clock, I don't start taking her out and running errands at one thirty.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_01: I was strict on keeping a set schedule, but keeping it flexible in case something else came up.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_01: But I will say I probably still overcompensate her today.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: Right, let her get away with things and I su one of my uh fondest memories of being with Zoe is our ability to just sit and laugh and talk about really meaningless things.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_01: And we traveled a lot together.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: It was important for me to not only have a companion in a sense, but show her different parts of the country, different parts of the world, and hopefully just kind of educate her on what it's like to be a child, what it's like to be in our situation.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_01: And some of the the more interesting stories that I can share with you today is my profession is more into the anti-money laundering, counterterrorism, and I do a lot of work with the banks and tracking down criminal activity that passes through.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_01: So early on when my daughter was young, she wanted to know what I did for a classroom assignment.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_01: So I went through this whole entire detail of what it is that I do, the importance of what it's happening.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I go to her open house for school, where they invite the parents in and to see all the artwork, see all the teachers and see the curriculum.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I see Zoe writing on the wall, and I'm taking a good quick look, and I'm a little mortified because what I read is that Zoe wrote up a whole synopsis of me saying that my dad for a living washes money.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_01: When it when it when it sh when it was really when it was really is the anti-money laundering.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_01: But for her, she thought I wash money.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_01: So this explains why everybody in the classroom in the school were avoiding me for the first part of this open house at school because they thought I was involved in illicit activity.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I had to explain to her after that night that what it is that I do, and you have to be very careful.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: And the other funniest memory that I can tell you is when she was in kindergarten.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: Kids at the school, they have like little cards that they can swipe for lunches as part of their meal plan.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I couldn't understand why her meal plan was like resetting every other day.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_01: And this is like$100 here,$100 there.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_01: And finally, finally I get a call from the school and says, Mr.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_01: Coleman, we need to talk to you about your daughter.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm thinking, what now?
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's not even the first week of school is completed and we're already having an issue.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_01: Your daughter is buying lunches for everybody in the school and charging it through your account.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_01: We need to inform you that this probably isn't what you wanted her to do.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_01: So I said, No, we need to put a cap on this right away.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_01: So that night I sat her down and I said, Zoe, and I do the same thing on I walk me through this.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_01: Why are you buying lunches for everybody?
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_01: You're in kindergarten, you've got fifth graders at your side, you've got third graders, you've got first graders.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_01: And she said, Daddy, you buy lunches and dinners for your friends and people, so I'm gonna do the same thing.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_01: And that's when I had to educate her on the importance of generosity and finding a balance on it's okay to spend money for you because if I didn't do this, I would probably had gone into significant debt just by funding everybody's lunches for the next like ten years.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_01: But it's great rewarding stories that we have that we share with each other that makes Zoe and I as close and dynamic as we are today.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_01: And at some point when she goes off to college, hopefully, hopefully the light bulb goes on a few times and she'll think before she reacts.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_01: But I think deep down she knows that dad will always be there for her.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: From the mouth of babes, right?
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so that's kind of you know where we get into some pickles as father and daughter is the suspending, it's the what we do and the professions of what we do for a living.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think she still tells that story and has to remember to put the anti instead of the uh just coming out.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_01: But it's uh it it's it's what makes our relationship fun, dynamic, and we smile.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_01: That's wonderful.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, thank you.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: So so why keep those feet moving instead of stay strong?
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_01: Keep those feet moving is really an inspiration for me is because when we go through grief, we have a tendency to stand still.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_01: We get lost, we look for direction from others.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_01: We're sort of in that mindset of don't know what to do next.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_01: By keeping those feet moving is you're moving.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_01: In my opinion, is motion creates action, action creates happening.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_01: And then when you've got things going on and you're not just standing still, you're going places.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_01: And that's important because as you continue to heal in grief, the more activity that you're involved with, the more you're able to heal.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_01: And we're not saying forget, we're not saying just to ignore the morning aspect, is the moving symbolizes that you're moving through a healing phase.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_01: And that helps you with your emotional well-being, your mental well-being, and in case your physical well-being, because of how you interact.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where to keep those feet moving is that we just don't stay in one place.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_01: We just keep going.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_01: And it's okay to mourn the loss, but don't take the loss and turn it into a lifetime of mourning.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_01: Instead, take that loss and celebrate the life, celebrate the legacy.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: So what advice about grief frustrates you the most?
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_01: The most frustrated part is the why phase.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_01: Why did this happen to me?
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_01: Why did this happen to us?
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_01: Why now?
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_01: Why not later?
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of time during that why phase, you're not looking at it and saying, is there a divine reason behind all this?
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I believe through my own faith in recent years that our entire lives is one big test.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_01: And if you pass little series of tests, you move on to the next phase.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_01: That God would never put us in a position that we truthfully can't handle.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_01: We may not understand today, we might not understand tomorrow.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_01: But through healing, through inspiration, motivation, through these type of podcasts and having your listeners listen to you, they're able to heal.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_01: And when we become stuck talking about the why, the why, the why, that's really frustrating because every setback is an opportunity for us to move forward to do something.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_01: And if you would have talked to you yourself twenty years ago, you would never have thought about the podcast.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_01: But the work that you do is so meaningful and inspiring to helping your listeners grieve through their own process and you bring in on individuals such as myself to help contribute, there is a divine purpose.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_01: And again, we may not like what happened, we may not understand it, but when you no longer question the why and you turn it into where am I going?
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_01: Where do I go next?
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_01: That's the opportunity that we have to make a full impact.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I guess what I was looking for what advice did you receive from other people about grief that frustrated you?
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's a different quote.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: We got a lot of advice.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_01: I think people watch too many movies and shows where people believe that you're supposed to act a certain way, you're supposed to grieve a certain way.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's frustrating because everybody's different.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_01: And there are those that have sudden loss, and there are others that have more of an expected loss.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_01: And even though they're two different and nobody has the exact same pathways, I think it's frustrating that people think like, okay, well, it's, you know, nine o'clock on this day, you need to feel this.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're out there and you're just enjoying yourself for a few moments, people like to remind you, well, aren't you grieving?
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_01: Aren't you taking some sort of loss?
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's more the frustration is because people assume they know what's in your best interest, even though they're not in the exact same type of a position that you are.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone's different.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody has their own process and how they handle it.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_01: What works for one person may not work for another.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think one of the things that I heard that was the most frustrating is is people that I guess in their minds they think after six months or a year or three years or whatever, it's like, get over it.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_00: You're supposed to get over it.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_00: You need to get over it and move forward.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and it's like grief is not something that you get over.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_00: Grief is with you all the time.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_00: And we we learn how to live with that grief.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_00: And on the at the outset, the the triggers come fast and hard, right?
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_00: And uh uh the emotions just overwhelm you and can they can just they can cause a lot of problems.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_00: I mean a lot of people just want to curl up in a ball and put a blanket over their head and just stay in bed and just cut themselves off from the world because it's painful.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's a pendulum that swings from one side to the next, and uh we have to find balance in how we get healing and and how we uh I always tell people that don't suffer in silence.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_00: Get help.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_00: Call 211, talk to United Way, tell them what you're going through.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_00: They will put you in contact with many times free resources that are available to you in your community.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_00: Go to church and talk to somebody in pastoral care, talk to parents, talk to brothers, sisters, just talk to somebody.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, don't suffer in silence.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_01: So I think a lot of that's really talking to where we are today with society, right?
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, today society's a little bit more open to accepting those that may have some emotional or mental concerns and provide necessary resources where I know from my parents' age, even when I was growing up in the late 70s, early eighties, there weren't a whole lot of resources with this, and it was sort of a taboo to even talk about your feelings.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_01: And if somebody were to seek some counseling or a third party to help cope through some of the challenges, people looked at it and say, What's the matter with that kid?
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_01: What's the matter with that person?
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_01: So I I think we benefit today much better than we did years ago, where people accept it and are more nurturing involved because you were absolutely right.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_01: Holding it inside doesn't add any value.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes finding that release enables you to really go through that mourning process into the healing process.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_00: AJ, you wrote a book, right?
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_01: I did, Keep Those Feet Moving.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_00: Keep Those Feet Moving.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_00: Where can people find that?
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_01: People can find that on Amazon, just under the same title, Keep Those Feet Moving, AJ Coleman.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_01: I also have a website called Keep Those Feet Moving, where I post various blogs and the various podcasts, but I'm always available to chat and help others and really help inspire those that may be going through whatever group that they go to to share encouraging words.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I appreciate you shar sharing your story about Corey and Zoe and all of that.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm sure it's going to resonate with some of the listening audience.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_01: Well, thank you for having me.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's been enjoyable.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_00: So in this heartfelt episode of the Father's Refuge podcast, A.J.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_00: Coleman shares a deeply personal journey that transformed his life after losing his wife, Corey, to brain cancer while becoming the sole parent of the young daughter, Zoe.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_00: AJ opens up about navigating unimaginable grief, overcoming anxiety and isolation, and discovering that healing isn't about moving on, it's about moving forward with purpose.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_00: Through his Keep Those Feet Moving philosophy, he offers practical encouragement and hope for fathers and anyone facing life's most difficult seasons.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_00: This conversation is a powerful reminder that resilience isn't the absence of pain, it's choosing the next step, even when the path ahead is uncertain.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_00: So if AJ's story resonated with you, talking to the listening audience, don't keep it to yourself.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_00: Share this episode with a father, friend, or family member who may be walking through grief, loss, or a difficult season.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_00: Your recommendation could be the encouragement they need today.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_00: Be sure to subscribe to the Father's Refuge podcast, leave a review, and follow us for more conversations that strengthen fathers, families, and faith through real stories of resilience and hope.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_00: And if you'd like to learn more about AJ Coleman or pick up a copy of Keep Those Feet Moving, you can go to KeepthoseFeet Moving dot com.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_00: Every step forward matters.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes the first step begins with hearing someone else's story.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so to the listening audience, I want to say thank you for the privilege of your time.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_00: And AJ, thank you for sharing your story of uh Corey and your daughter Zoe.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you again for this wonderful opportunity.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_00: And glad to have you.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_00: And uh to everybody listening, we'll say we'll see you in the next episode.