Jason Blau

hello everyone welcome can you hear me okay yeah great first of all thank you all so much for being here uh we'll spend the next 40 minutes or so and I promise to get you out of here on time I know shabas is coming in quick everybody has a lot to do first as we get started I want to say thank you Hashem it's starting already uh for the opportunity to stand here in front of you today and share my story uh one that's very deep and very personal and will become very raw at times so just bear with me also want to say thank you to Galan AI for inviting me here today and even um more deep and special thank you to uh broken ties uh organization that's very special to me and has supported me through my journey over the last year and uh to my family sitting here thank you for being here to support me okay here we go so the topic I've been asked to speak about today is um called from suffering to Salvation and and it's really a glimpse into my story uh with uh the idea that it's could be your child's story right we've all experienced so much trauma in our lives our children have experienced trauma this is seems to be the buzzword of the weekend so I'd like to share with you um how I saw Life as a young guy and a teen and as an adult uh suffering in silence all right not knowing how to speak out what I was experiencing so I hope you'll bear with me my goal is not only to let you know who I am as I'm new to this community um but to also give you a uh understanding of why maybe some of your children have made the choices that they've made all right maybe they didn't feel like they had very many and uh finally at the very end I want to give you a a little bit of an idea on how you may be able to help and support your children in a in a really great way okay before I begin I want you to stand up if you're a mother who dedicated her entire life to providing a loving home for your children stand up and if you're a father who so stand stand up and stay standing please if you're a father who supported his family and gave them everything he thought that they needed please stand up and if you're not standing yet and if you're a parent who did the best that they could and made some mistakes along the way please stand up now that you're all standing give yourselves a round of applause a real Round of Applause even pat yourself on the back all right you all deserve it you're amazing parents and as you sit down I want you to remember that your child's behavior is about them it's not about you in fact I had great parents too really great parents I'm one of three boys I have an identical twin a younger brother we grew up in Northeast Philly in a row home we all shared one bathroom some of you may know what that's like I went to a great school a Hebrew school secular day school and a Hebrew school at night on on on Sunday I even went to Israel '96 on a beautiful youth trip I went to a great College out in Westchester Pennsylvania and I was lucky in fortunate enough to get a lot of great jobs in fact I spent the majority of my adult career in sales and primarily in medical device sales about 15 plus years which was stressful very stressful in fact my entire life was about stress I was one of these kids that was always seeming to be worried about everything trying to figure out if I get this here and that there it should work out and it sometimes didn't as you know it sometimes didn't I was as a child pretty happy you know I felt like we got what we needed we had a great set of friends a lot of people to hang out with a lot of people to rely on but I was always feeling inside turmoil right kishkas they tell me were turning a lot in fact when I went to Israel I came back I was diagnosed with crohn's disease and intestinal disorder uh that really affected all of my dietary uh and eating habits which was also stressful carried that through college so what was building as a stressful childhood uh compounded over time I uh was doing great in medical device sales High performer making great money and um I was fortunate enough to meet during a sales presentation um my now ex-wife but uh we had a great couple of years together where we uh had a lot of fun and uh we uh we started our life together in doing that uh realized that the industry that I was in this medical device sales industry there was a lot of consolidation meaning one company bought another company bought another company and every time one company bought another company uh the salespeople got sort of you know chopped down and they had to um pick and choose who's going to stay and who's going to go so I thought got an idea I'll go and get a master's degree and uh in doing so um we also made the choice that we're going to have a little baby girl who's now eight I told my daughter actually I said I'm a little nervous about giving this talk and I thought she would say something really profound instead she said suck it up Dad um so about uh one week prior to Lexi being born I um entered into this master's degree program which was every other weekend I would come we would study and then I would go and live my life I was a new dad I was working in medical device sales I was supporting you know my family to the best of my ability and uh all the while I was suffering I mean really really struggling I uh at times turned to drugs some marijuana I'm sure some of you in the room have experienced with that or have heard uh the stories of your children I was looking for a coping mechanism I was tired I had a tough temper I was angry and stressed did I mention that I did really well in the Master's Degree I got up early 4:00 a.m. in the morning I studied at night and I tried to be as mindful of a dad as I could possibly be but I was in a total total fog when I finally got out of the master's program I realized that um I was out of control I was so reactive to everybody's comments and statements if they said something that I didn't like I was you know firing back at them and yelling and screaming all the time and I felt like wow if they're hearing me scream outside I wonder how I sound on the inside like really really struggling obviously I was struggling to keep Pace with everything right financially right I was doing well the house and the cars and the vacations and the stuff you know it seems to pile up pretty quickly and in doing so I was was reactive and stressed short-tempered I really only had a desire for one thing peace calmness happiness right just to get the heart to stop beating so fast I couldn't figure out how to do it after finishing the Master's Degree I hadit a wall a complete and under utter wall in fact I at the time had almost everything that I that I wanted I had the great job new marriage beautiful baby the money but I wasn't yet satisfied I wasn't able to really feel like I had enough there was something out there I was yearning for because of my reactivity lack of communication skills which if you're interested come to my workshop tomorrow after shabas little plug I was reaction reactionary to my to my wife at the time and uh a relationship started to suffer from it we didn't have the best Role Models either one of us we didn't know really how to respond traditional therapy didn't go so well for us not that that's a bad thing of course and um I could see that the uh writing on the wall the end of the marriage was was just about there and um this is about 2 months after the Master's deg degree after going to try to save my job I was fired violently from the job and um my wife at the time left our marriage and I got sued by a neighbor getting into a verbal alteration in the street he was driving his car a little too fast for my taste and I let him know what I thought of that I found myself alone like completely and utterly alone everything that I had built and worked so hard to do just crashed in in an instant it just was gone so I was left picking up the pieces and everybody said to me you need some help Jason I said okay I'm ready for the help remember scheduling the appointment with the chief you know the guy of psychology at a local hospital and after 35 minutes he diagnosed me with a personality disorder right which was quite odd considering I didn't think I had one and the symptoms also were indicative of somebody who was sort of spiritually Awakening nonetheless after 30 minutes or so he prescribed uh a pretty high does medication which I had never heard of before but after Googling decided it's not me it's not for me now growing up I had spent spent years on anti-anxiety medications the ssris right the ones that were supposed to get you even keeled and mellowed you out the cocktail of medications and I was self-regulating those right tuning them up when I needed them setting them down when I thought I was doing okay but I came home after that prescription and I said I'm done with this and not only did I not fill that prescription but I had taken myself off cold turkey all the medication that I had been on for years and that is not medically advised one bit all right I suffered greatly with withdrawal symptoms for like seven weeks I'm embarrassed to say but I was crawled up in a ball underneath a table in the living room I couldn't get myself literally to stand up meanwhile the house was quiet my ex-wife now had moved out and I was like what am I going to do everybody around me thinks that I'm angry and mean I'm yelling and barking orders at them if they got too close I would bite their hand off and I was just totally totally uh dumbfounded I didn't know what to do I knew that i' had always been into um yoga meditation Fitness and so I decided all right this is going to be my plan I'm going to go down Town into Philadelphia and I'm going to get back into this I'm going to take a yoga class and I remember I had this favorite teacher and she wasn't there that day as luck would have it and as a result there was another teacher there that offered at the end of this class this yoga class this guided meditation and for the first time in so many years I felt like I could actually breathe like sit in Stillness and not have to do anything or react to anybody or anything I didn't have to figure anything out so I left that class and I thought wow like how can I actually implement this like how can I use this as my comeback right how can I use this to get strong both in my mind and in my body and so I'd done a little bit of meditation but I wasn't really sure what it is I don't think anybody actually knows and if you're interested you should come to my Shear on Sunday another plug we'll talk a little bit about mindfulness and breathing techniques to slow down your heart rate so I decided let me just start what if I just sit here for a few minutes and breathe and just see what happens and I tracked on an app for 236 days consecutively I think I missed a day or two after that uh this practice and in doing so that little consistency few minutes every day it started to make me feel different I got stronger here and here and I was able to slowly begin to pick myself up right just slowly just get up and start moving again I never went back into the industry this medical device industry it was too Cutthroat for me and I had had enough and so I decided that I would start a my own startup company I had a medic or technology product and an app and I tried to you know make them work for some reason people decided that they wanted to give me money and so I collected about $150,000 in about a month's time of people I spoke to on the phone and they wired me all of this money and I I spent it pretty quickly about nine months and uh business never took off just never worked so I was like what am I going to do now you know I'm like my third redo I got to rebuild again so of course I picked myself up once again and I thought well if I'm going to do this one more time if I'm GNA make something of myself what can I do and I thought you know what this meditation thing I think I know what I'm doing now and had decided to borrow more money you know who gives out money Banks they L me a lot of money and I spent it on building a beautiful Community Meditation Center it was the first of its kind in the Philadelphia area it was called sit meditation space and it really gave people an opportunity to come together as a community uh to lift each other up to slow down to go inwards right to get clear gain clarity about what they really wanted out of their own lives and to support each other in doing so and there was something like 18 teachers and 35 different classes all different types of meditation it was spectacular it's spent all the bank's money building this beautiful Studio space to make people feel really safe and secure a feeling that I've been searching for my entire life well that was tough too as all of you know retail business was tough it was a New Concept I'm not sure that the public was ready for this idea I was still going through the ending of the divorce at one point I just said you know take the money I don't want to fight anymore and uh I was left with nothing and in doing that I shut the studio down rebuild time I was getting good at it this time though thank you I'll give you the for warning this is going to hit me hard I remember closing the studio after thinking I have a choice here I have to put on my table for my daughter or I could support a community of people coming together for love and kindness we used to um Lexi and I sell our furniture I remember this beautiful girl said to me dad sell the couch and we did on that Facebook Marketplace I think we got like 70 bucks for it but it was enough to make the rent we lived in a one-bedroom apartment at the time we just gave everything away but I remember the look in this little girl's face when she understood what true sacrifice was and I realized that maybe I was making more of a difference than I thought I was maybe slowing down and listening and being together with my daughter and supporting her and what she wanted was more important than anything else she sat in a bean bag she still has it in the corner of her room I think it's a pride thing but she sat on the bean bag for about a year until we were able to afford buying a new couch to sit on we love that couch it means a lot to us so I was so lucky I got a phone call one day from a therapist she was running a local practice and she says I'm working with people experiencing trauma wasn't really sure what trauma was I didn't have a word for it now I know what trauma was and what it is and she gave me an opportunity to be uh sort of an adjunct off to the side you know can you help people slow down go inwards relax breathe so that they're able to do the heavy work that I was doing as a therapist and I said thank you so much for the opportunity yes I will take it and I did it was in the beginning of um 2020 and um she gave me a little upstairs office I made it nice it was great I think I had about four or five clients and I was flying high then Co hit reinvention time so here I was thinking what am I going to do what can I do what am I qualified to do and I reminded myself that many people are struggling many people are suffering I was suffering and I used that pain and suffering to put myself back up and it was really cool and I didn't know at the time I was documenting it along the way I was trying to figure out okay like if it was something was going to work I wanted to make sure that whatever it was that I was doing was because I knew that I was doing it right I wanted to do deliberate actions and I kind of tracked what was working wasn't working and at that point my experience was simply what I had done in my life it was drawing from my sales experience my successes my failures the things that worked in my life the things that didn't and so I decided that I would start a coaching business online cuz well everybody was on zoom and you didn't really need much startup Capital nobody wanted to lend me money at that point I promise you that and so I put a website out there and I called myself a mindset coach sounds pretty good life coach was taking so I started to take the process that I used to rebuild my own life to go inwards to gain Clarity right to take action to move forward to overcome your fear and I tried it with one person kind of worked I was like okay and then another person thank you and then another another and then another and I started to build my confidence like maybe I actually have something here maybe I'm qualified to do this maybe I can build myself back up even better this time around it's amazing how the emotion just comes up you can feel it R Russell was doing this who was in his his talk last night I love that I'm gonna start doing it I remember getting a call from a psychiatrist and and she said um hey would you be interested in joining a call with me I work with a group that is suffering from the trauma of their children not speaking to them I said hm it's interesting now I had gone through this not speaking to my parents thing a few times during the divorce my mother I overheard was in collaboration with my ex-wife making comparisons to of me to my father who she had divorced a year or so before that I now know that that emotion was betrayal at least from my perspective and she saw it differently clearly and I'm sure that it was never her intention to betray me in any way but we get wrapped up in things my father and I had a tough relationship and I estranged myself from him as well I pushed them both away and I thought hm yeah I can relate to this so I remember jumping on this Zoom call one night with an organization called broken ties and thank you all for being here yeah it's an incredible organization uh that has built a support system and so much more for parents and grandparents suffering in a deep way if you're here in the very beginning of my my uh introduction what I've realized is as parents we give so much to our kids we give them everything and it's funny because I believe that I believe that all parents give their kids everything that they think that they need with the resources and tools that they have to do so what nobody really told me about this Zoom call was that there were going to be 75 from Jews from myy Lakewood and Brooklyn New York now I didn't mention earlier that I grew up Jewish conservative I told you I went to Israel I went to secular like a day school or a like a Hebrew school but I don't know I had a bar mitzvah Ben Mitzvah in a snowstorm blizzard of 993 if anybody remembers that but I never really did anything I think I put the fill in on one time and I'm thinking what am I going to say to religious Jews like what am I what kind of credibility what kind of street cred do I have uh giving over advice you know to them and so I sat and I listened and I listened some more and uh I think I went from like a short sleeve polo shirt the first session to a longer sleeve you know dress shirt I got the clue real quickly where I should should put myself and um one by one I was getting phone calls from these amazing women saying can you help me and my natural response was with what and they said well we like what you're saying we think that um you know maybe I need to feel stronger in my mind in my body so I could do the really tough work of trying to reconnect with my child and I think we'll talk about this a little bit more through the weekend these are really tough situations because when a child is alienated from their parent there's usually an alienator there's a third party or a perpetrator that's creating a delusion is that a fair word or an illusion that the parents love and kindness uh somehow done out of manipulation and control when in reality uh it's the alienator who is searching for the control and this could be anybody it could be a a rabbi RV rabbitson r yiva a therapist did I call everybody out okay with respect what's that of thank you yeah so I said okay sure let's work together and we were doing these private sessions funny thing was every time I did like these sessions and I was giving her a little tool or a little technique something that worked I would hear the same thing over and over again they said how do you know this information I said who are you talking to what do you mean how do I know they said no no no that's not what we mean right I said what do you mean they said no how do you know this information I said what do you mean by that and they said well the Torah says things like this I said what Torah whose Torah says this I I never read a Torah I'm just you know just a guy who's had a really you know tough upbringing and so they I said okay you've convinced me it's in the Torah show me and that's when they said well we we we can't show you I said see it doesn't exist and I said no no no you need a rabbi to show you I said okay show me the rabbi and so as hashem's masterful plan would haveen I met not only the rabbi uh who would guide me U but the fatherly figure that I was always sort of searching for and this was uh Rabbi Israel monk out of Lakewood New Jersey and I remember calling Rabbi monk after the recommendation was given to me and he said um I said hi Rabbi my name is Jason from Philadelphia I'm not really sure what I'm calling you about but I'm calling you I remember exactly what he said to me he says great I got one question okay Rabbi one question I could probably answer it what's your address my address yeah what's your address so I said okay it's an easy answer so I gave him over the address and he says okay I have to go but let's talk next week on Monday 1 o'clock two days later I received a package in the mail inside two books one aash and two a book on bakira by Dr David liberman I'm sure most of you know him and if not I'm sure Tor anytime will make the links accordingly he's the top speaker so I met Rabbi monk a week later and I said okay now what he says page one and we began to read together and I only had the soul purpose of being able to support a community of religious people who I had never been in or around and in doing so I fell in love thank you and over the last year it's been quite a journey a lot of you know me from that first that first Zoom call and uh slowly but surely I've been studying and learning and studying some more and I stand in front of you today pretty religious right I [Applause] mean I know that I give a lot I know I do I put my Blood Sweat and Tears my heart and my soul into everything that I do I try to come from an authentic humble place but I never really imagined what I would re receive back from this community it's been overwhelming it's overwhelmed my 8-year-old I like to say she's the youngest balcha by choice and to see the Wonder through her eyes her love for Hashem she tells me dad I want a snack not so much of mos more like a sh this little girl has become a surrogate for a lot of women experiencing parental or grandparental alienation she's been a source of light and it has really taught me that I have no idea what I'm doing as a parent and so the best thing that you can do is be there with them in a couple moments as I wrap up I see the time's going fast I'll give you a couple things that I think that I've learned not so much as a parent because I'm not the expert but as somebody who became Mindful and really aware of how this whole thing goes down let me summarize for you before I make my final points is this over at 3:30 I struggled a lot through stress anxiety depression I struggled to express myself I didn't have the tools at times I felt nobody cares nobody sees me I could hide I could hide away I could smoke it away I could do whatever I needed to do nobody knew on the outside I was calm and steady top performer top guy in the business competition startup you know all of the stuff but on the inside I was dying and I was really struggling so in looking back here's a few things that I learned one I didn't ask for help I didn't know how I didn't express my feelings I didn't know how in fact I was a product of my own fight ORF flight right that you'll hear so much about this weekend I didn't share my pain because I didn't know how so I kept it bottled up until it came out and it reverted to my learned behavior like anger I didn't let my parents in I pushed them away because I didn't know how and so I suffered alone every child I don't care what the experts say every child experiences trauma everybody in this room has experienced trauma emotional trauma physical trauma here's my advice to you unsolicited of course I said this earlier I want to make sure I repeat it again so everybody hears it who missed it in the beginning you must realize that no matter what your child is going through whether they've estranged themselves or alienated never been alienated from you whether they're off the DK whether they're experiencing drugs or they're on the internet doing something it's not safe this is about them it's not about you and so number two I'm asking you to show them compassion I guarantee you'll hear many definitions of compassion and I'll reiterate this over the next two days as well here's my definition compassion is the ability to sit in a room with someone listening to how they feel here's the key without trying to fix it for them okay without trying to fix it for them and as parents it's the thing we want we want to remove their pain you can't they are here to have their own experiences and that's number three if they're here to have their own experiences then your only job is to try to understand understand what their experience is and to be there with them Empower them it's number four with tools because I didn't have them you don't have them and it's so amazing to see all the great speakers this weekend they're giving tools take them with you apply them practice them learn them by learning them and showing your children you are teaching them and you're also teaching their children and their children and and you get to redesign those learned behaviors validate them if I had a quarter for every time I heard the word validation I'd never have to work a day again you know I'm going to give you my definition of validation it's to let somebody know that you heard what they said but from the way that they intended for it to be heard and I hope you'll join me tomorrow night it's my second plug for my communications Workshop where we're going to talk about how to validate somebody and better understand what they mean by what they say everybody wants to be seen everybody wants to be heard it's the best that you can do for your children and loved ones is to see them not for the way that you want to see them but for the way that they want to be seen number six is give them some space breathing room they need it give it to them all right by being strong by putting your own mask on first by taking your own space and giving others space everybody's fight ORF flight goes down right uh Rabbi Russell was saying uh what was the term he used going offline and then back online everybody needs to be online for you to co-create a strong healthy relationship and as I finish I think this is number eight and probably the most important one yet forgiveness forgiveness first of yourself my definition of forgiveness right realizing that you did the best that you could with the information that you had at the time I'm sure if some of us had different information we would have done different things if we realized how our divorce uh or our you know whatever late nights at the office we influencing and affecting our kids and our family would have made different decisions we we weren't aware it's not our fault so it's not about placing blame it's about being able to stand up and keep moving forward and forgiving them for the pain that they've inflicted either intentionally or unintentionally for they did the best that they could with the information or lack thereof that they had at the time my wish one day I'll have Rabbi in front of my name I think but for now if I was to give a little wish a little blessing is that you take this story of mine and make it yours just fill in the details and I hope that you're able to use it as something that can give you hope Hashem is perfect in everything he does that's what I'm learning and when you Embrace thaten they tell me when you really Embrace this there's something that we could all learn about ourselves and each other from all of this my story is just one of many children struggling through trauma your kid will pull through they need your support they need your guidance they need to see a great example from you I'm asking you to stay strong for yourself and for each other find it in your heart to know that when they come back to you when they come back to your guidance and they will that together you will grow into a healthy strong relationship with boundaries and everything will be as it should be thank you so much for listening to my story I really am grateful to all of you and have an amazing shabas and we'll see you soon thanks