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How A Son’s Suicide Note Changed This Dad’s Life

When it comes to our tweens and teens’ mental health, we are in a crisis. We need to talk about it, even though we might not want to.

My guest, Jason Reid, shares all about our kids mental health. Jason just came out with a powerful film, “Tell My Story,” that just aired on PBS.

Jason’s son Ryan took his life when he was 14 years old, leaving two Post-It Notes: one was the passcode to his computer; the second said “Tell My Story.”

Jason set off on a quest to understand what led his son to end his own life, and what he could have done differently.

He shares what he has learned and how to have difficult but necessary conversations with our kids.

Scroll down to read the full episode transcribed, if you don’t have time.

 

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Where To Find Jason Reid: 

What You Will Learn: 

  • How to tell the difference between a moody teenager and one that is struggling with depression or is at high risk for hurting themselves.

  • The signs that you should get help for your tween or teen.

  • How to talk to your tween or teen in a way that they will want to talk to you if and when they are struggling with mental health issues.

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Sign up for our Moms of Tweens and Teens newsletter HERE

 

And here is the episode typed out!

Welcome to the Moms of Tweens and Teens Podcast. If some days you doubt yourself and you don’t know what you’re doing. If you’ve ugly cried alone in your bedroom because you felt like you’re failing. Well, I just want to let you know you are not alone and you have come to the right place.

Raising tweens and teens in today’s world is not easy. And I’m on a mission to equip you to love well, and to raise emotionally healthy, happy tweens and teens that thrive.

I believe that moms are heroes, and we have the power to transform our family and to impact future generations. If you are looking for answers, encouragement, and to become more of the mom and the woman that you want to be welcome. I am Sheryl Gould. And I am so glad that you’re here.

SHERYL: Jason, welcome. Thank you so much for coming on the show today.

JASON: Thank you, Sheryl. I’m happy to be here.

SHERYL: I’m glad that you’re here. You have a very powerful message. You’ve come out with a movie called, “Tell My Story.”

Can you share some of your story? What led you to make this movie?

JASON: Well, easy way to start. This is saying that I never thought I’d be here talking about this topic. Ever. Because March 21, three years ago, while I was on vacation, my wife celebrate my birthday.

My son Ryan had turned 14 a week before deciding to take his own life.

We were the family that would never have thought that would have happened. I had four kids, where Ryan was the youngest. Literally the night that happened, Kim and I were having dinner. We were talking about how great our lives were, entering the next phase, and would become empty nesters in about four or five years. We’ve gone through all the older kids and just had Ryan left. So we were talking about what we were going to do, what life would look like, and how wonderful and lucky we’ve been. And that changed.

So just everybody knows this is not a full story for me conversation, because that’s not what this is about.

This is a what did I miss and what did I learn so you guys don’t have to go through what my family’s gone through. It’s one of those things where everybody thinks it’s gonna happen to somebody else. “It would never happen to my family.” And I obviously never thought my family.

We didn’t have marital issues. We didn’t have drug and alcohol issues in the house. We don’t have any of those kind of issues. All the things you think the reasons why kids are having a tough time and would do something like this.

They didn’t exist. And I never saw the side of Ryan.

He was grumpy. But I have four teenagers and I thought he was the least grumpy of all of them. So I didn’t see it. But as I looked back on it, there were signs and I just didn’t notice them. I didn’t know. The big mistake I made is that I didn’t pay attention to any of my kids mental health. I didn’t think about it. I assumed it was always somebody else’s issue. Not mine, not my family.

I’ve never experienced depression or anxiety. Do I get sad? Sure. Since I’d never experienced true depression, I didn’t and don’t know what it’s like.

I didn’t check with my kids and see how they were feeling.

After Ryan died I was going through his drawers and room looking for clues. I read his letters and all that kind of stuff. But there’s a note in this top left hand drawer that said, “Tell my story.”

SHERYL: What do you think he meant by that?

JASON: It wasn’t so much to tell the story. Ryan was a 13 just became 14 year old boy. As far as I could tell, besides having Crohn’s disease, he was the happy go lucky kid with great grades and was just a good kid. We were literally planning our yearly trip to Washington because we go on a trip every year and he went by the rafters so he was looking at hotels in Dubai.

That was the week before he died. He had March Madness with his mother before we left for the trip and they watched it together so you just don’t even see it. So what does he mean by tell my story.

I believe he meant tell the story of him and other kids so that parents can see the signs and understand what they need to maybe do differently.

And that’s what I did.

I did a TEDx talk in October of that year in Lake Forest in your part of town. I did a follow up TEDx talk in Temecula, a couple years later, and I did a gold cast with the guys in Montreal about a year ago.

The movie was supposed to come out in March of last year, and with COVID, it didn’t. I was frustrated, but I’m actually happy came on now because I think it’s got more attention now. It’s on PBS to be on the month. It’s available on thomasjoyfilm.com. It was aired on PBS this weekend.

I think it’s now is the time when people pay more attention to this. Because COVID has put us all in a situation where we’re on a mental health crisis in America like we’ve never been in.

With teens and tweens and parents, in our military, you name it, everybody’s in a really bad spot. You can see it in the news. You can see it in the amount of people who are yelling and screaming of each other on airlines. You can see it in the mass shootings that are happening, the violence across America. And unfortunately, the increase in suicides and suicide attempts. We’re in a rough spot.

SHERYL: I know. I’ve been busier than I’ve ever been before. Kids are cocooning in their rooms, they’re on video games, on their phones, and isolated. In your movie you gave the statistic that there’s been a 70% increase in suicide. This was before the pandemic, right?

JASON: Yeah, it was. Numbers are higher now.

SHERYL: What did you learn from making this movie? Because I know you set out on a quest to find answers. You interviewed suicide survivors, prevention experts, parents, kids that were dealing with depression? What were some of the answers that you found?

JASON: So here’s what I learned because I was trying to figure out. Why and how does this happen? The first thing that’s really important for parents to understand is, teen suicide exists and is the number two killer for kids. The chances of it happening to you is probably rare, and nobody wants to talk about it.

So let’s not talk about it. I want to talk about the mental health of your kids. And what I mean by that is, I want you to understand something that depending on what stats you listen to, and they’re all over the map. 20-30% of our kids today, in the last 12 months have experienced some kind of major depression.

30-40% of them have anxiety issues. A major depression isn’t like I got sad for days. And I’ve been really, really, really sad for multiple days.

We all get sad for a day.

Depression is where you upset from long periods of time. And there’s probably a much more clinical definition, but I’m not a therapist I don’t try to be. But I want to talk to you about that.

There is a chance that your child is going to experience depression or anxiety during their middle school years or high school years or college years is a lot higher than you think.

They need the coping skills to be able to deal with that, and we currently don’t have it for them.

In fact, there’s something crazy like 80% of depression goes undiagnosed and untreated.

SHERYL: Wow, 80%.

JASON: Now, again, a stat that everybody’s afraid of where stats come from these days and me too. But, there’s just a lot of people that don’t know if they should do anything.

So let’s talk about the fact that your kids may be experiencing depression and here’s how we define depression for you from what I’ve learned.

I’m in Southern California right now an hour north of San Diego in Santa Maria. I’m looking at my office window.

There’s not a cloud in the sky. It’s a blue sky and the sun is shining. It’s a gorgeous day. If I was here with someone who was really depressed, they may look at that same sky and always see clouds.
If you think that, let that sink in for a second. It’s a blue sky, but they won’t see a blue sky. They see clouds in the sky.

And that’s what depression is. They’re not seeing life the same way you’re seeing it. No matter what you can tell them why that’s a blue sky and there’s no clouds up there.

You’re not going to convince them that there’s no clouds up there.

So what did I learn? I learned from talking to kids and understanding from parents that have gone through this is that I can’t convince you there’s no clouds. And trying to convince you there’s no clouds makes you want to talk to me less. What I can do is ask you what the clouds look like.

Describe them to me – how do those clouds make you feel?

Why do you think those clouds are there? Do those clouds ever go away? How often do you see the clouds?

SHERYL: Wow, Jason that is so powerful.

JASON: Because that’s what we try to do – talk him out of that it’s a beautiful day outside. There’s no clouds there.

I know your audiences a lot of women and mothers. Ladies, you may be married to a guy like me. I’m the guy who’s built companies. I’m an entrepreneur. I point two and a half 1000 people across the country with my partners. I own other companies, I co CEOs, like 60 CEOs around the country. I’ve written eight books. I’m making documentary movies to tell my story. I’ve done Iron Man’s black belt. Now I’m not saying married guy, just all those things.

But here’s who I really am and you probably identify this.

I’m a guy who thinks he has it all figured out. As most of your husband’s may think they have it all figured out.

I’m a guy who spends his days fixing things because that’s what guys do. Whether you fix cars or you fix companies, we look at it the same way.

It’s my job to fix stuff. So when you come to us with a problem, what do we do? Here’s how you fix it.

And with our kids, they didn’t come for a solution. We need to watch and listen. That’s really hard for guys like me, and that’s really hard for your husbands.

Getting your husband to understand that that’s not the way to deal with your kids is a really important lesson for them. To decide on that was right. I don’t remember every time Ryan came to me upset or my kids came to me upset, but I guarantee it. I was going to look around. See where you live? What the hell do you have to be upset about? You have everything. You know how I grew up? Let me tell you I grew up. Let me tell you about my dad.

But when you do that to a child who is upset and seeing clouds, they don’t want to talk to you anymore.

They need to talk to you and they don’t want the solutions because there are no solutions to their problems. Here’s something that I had to come to terms with, as well as like, when you go to a therapist, what do they do? They ask questions and listen.

You ask questions, you listen, and you ask more questions. Therapist very rarely are going to judge you and offer you solutions to your problems. The best ones don’t do any of that. They ask you how you think you should solve your problem. You could go to a therapy session, and you’re paying for an hour and you talked for 55 minutes. You should only pay for five minutes. I’m kidding.

But you talk for 55 minutes, paid for an hour. You walk out feeling better because you got it all off the chest. And that’s the point that I want to make.

You can all be your child’s therapist.

Sometimes you need to be your child’s therapist not just your child’s parent.

My big message with parents, if you want to change the path of mental health, I choose like that already, we’ve set up saying that we’re gonna end teen suicide by 2030. If you can’t do that, Jason maybe, maybe not. What I can do is make a huge difference in 10 years.

SHERYL: Yes, you can.

JASON: By saying that we’re going to own our kids mental health as parents, we can set it back to where it was when we were kids by caring and taking the time to understand and have those conversations.

It’s a conversation that you and your husbands have to have with your kids where you’re not judging, you’re not trying to fix, and you’re just listening. It won’t make any sense to you and it doesn’t have to. You will find they will be so upset about a problem.

You’re going, “What the heck, your boyfriend dumped you and you’re 14 and are you serious?”

SHERYL: Yeah right, we didn’t like him anyway.

JASON: You didn’t like him anyway, he’s terrible for you. But to them, it’s a huge deal.

It’s the biggest thing going on and you know you might have just lost your job. You might have to worry about how you make the mortgage payment. And yes, it’s a lot more serious I’m sure. But not to them.

So that’s one of the big things I learned is that they do want to talk. And by the way, if you’re feeling like if you’re having that conversation, we’ll talk about how to talk about it in a second. That’s important too.

And you’re like, “Oh my gosh, they’re in trouble. They’re in crisis. What do I do?” Well, you can’t back away, you can’t get free.

You’ve got to lean in. And let me tell you how you lean in. You’re looking in the eyes and say, “That sounds really serious. Thank you for sharing. I have a question. Is it that serious that you ever thought of hurting yourself?”

SHERYL: Yeah. That’s one of the parents are scared to ask and yet we have to ask.

JASON: And you’re scared because you’re afraid you put the idea in their head. And the ideas already in their head. You’re not putting in their head.

And by the way, that idea pops into a whole bunch of people’s heads, and it’s a common thought. You may never have had it. I may never have had it. But the survey says that over half people have said I think I’m better off just not being here on earth at some point in their lives.That doesn’t mean you’re gonna do anything about it.

Yeah, so if the answer is, “Yes, I’ve thought about hurting myself.” Then you would ask, “Have you thought about taking your own life? Has that crossed your mind?” Yeah, it’s crossed my mind.

Now you’re freaking out. I get it, but you have to lean in more.

You can’t be scared in the back, you need to know more. “Do you have a plan on how you’re going to do that?” Which is by the way, the most important question because if they haven’t articulated a plan, then you need to get them the hospital right away to make sure they’re safe.

If they don’t have a plan, you still have to get them into therapy. You have to hug them and tell them you love them. Don’t judge them. Don’t tell them why they shouldn’t change their life. Don’t give them all that crap. Remember they see clouds, so you can’t convince them. How you handle that one moment is the most important moment when it comes to having kiids. Remember, they don’t want to die. This one is a very important thing. They don’t want to die. Ryan didn’t wanna die.

You want the pain that he was feeling to stop. There’s a big difference.

That’s all they think of to stop the pain is to die. They need to understand there’s another way to stop the pain.

To have hope that they can feel better. That there’s there’s an answer to feel better.

Just be able to talk about them express their feelings is that it’s like you know, we the pressures building up building up and building up and the ability to talk about it releases the pressure. Right, and it goes in it starts boiling back down. But now Gotta make you feel crazy. Let me hear you, oh my gosh, that they’re feeling that every time to talk with you better.

SHERYL: Yeah, I’m thinking when we’re in our head, when your kids in your head, their head with all those thoughts and they’re depressed, it gets distorted, the more that they’re alone with it. So by just expressing it, they’re not alone anymore.

And not to tell him you’re crazy, you know, send this message that you’re crazy for feeling the way that you do, because they’re already feeling that despair that they feel the way they do. It’s like, almost like normalizing it in the sense that it’s okay that they feel this way. And that there’s help. Would you agree with that?

JASON: Absolutely. The stuff we’re talking about right now isn’t just for teens and tweens. This is for your spouse, your friends, and your parents. It works the same for everybody.
Yeah, I felt convicted myself watching your movie because I try to normalize kids behavior to moms so they don’t judge it. This is so they’re more accepting, their adolescent brain is developing, and they’re going to be moody. But the kids were talking about the movie how it’s not like that. They’re just moody to dismiss their behavior. A mom could be listening, and she’s got her kid hid away in the room, and she peeks in and says, “How are you?” and they say, “I’m fine. I’m fine.”

You were talking about that in the movie. How do we know the difference between I’m fine, I’m just cocooning and I’m moody” and “I’m struggling in here.”

The first thing that I realized was when someone says they’re fine that’s a very specially chosen word. Because then I’m good. I’m great. Life’s awesome. They didn’t – they said “I’m fine.” Fine means I’m not great. I don’t want to tell you. I’m bad. I’m probably not in a very good spot. That’s why I told you, I’m fine. I just don’t want to tell you, so I chose fine.

So why don’t we view fine as a cry for help as opposed to I’m fine. And by the way, when I used to go to Ryan’s room, and he said, I’m fine. I would said, “Well great. I have other stuff to do. Glad you’re fine.”

SHERYL: I checked in.

JASON: I did my job. Right? I didn’t do my job.

Fine means there’s probably something going on that you need to dig into. So let me give you a couple of tips on this one because I learned this one the hard way too. And, and I wish I knew it.

I know you own the house. I know you pay the bills, you pay the rent, you pay the mortgage, everything that room is yours. Your kids exists only means you paid for everything and they were born because of you.

Again, so you have every right to barge into the room and tell them you want to talk to them. But from their perspective, the only sacred space they have on the entire planet is that room. So when you barge in and tell them you got to talk to them. You just barged into their only little secret space.

So how about not doing that anymore? How about finding the time that you can talk to them when you know you want to talk to them? And by the way, I get this. They never want to talk to you when you want to talk to them.

Parenting is inconvenient by nature, but you all know that there’s times when they’ll just babble and babble.

Maybe you’re driving the car at school, maybe you’re going to a sporting event. Maybe you’re out for a walk, and there’s times when they’re just more willing to talk.

Or it’s like a five o’clock at night when you’re like getting ready to go to bed and you’re exhausted.

And they’re like, “Can we talk?” It’s inconvenient, I got it. But those are the times we want to dig in.
I can’t tell you how to talk to your kids in the sense that you know your kids. You can you know when they’re more vocal when they’re not. Find those times. Take him out for a walk. Don’t do it in the room and don’t force him.

One of the things I didn’t do right. I showed up the way I just told you. I am a CEO. That doesn’t matter at all. I was the guy that never cried. I fixed everything. Everything’s awesome. That’s how I showed up.
The reality of my life. I felt like 13 other businesses myself. My partners are 20 over 37 years, 27 years, almost bankrupt two or three times.

I didn’t tell Ryan any of that. My kids and my wife didn’t even know. I guess she does now. But I hid that from everybody. So what did Ryan see? And this is another point for ladies for your husband’s right.

Ryan saw me as my life was completely put together. I got all my act together. I’ve done all these things. Nothing ever went wrong for me. So when things went wrong for Ryan, he naturally assumed there must be a problem with him.

I’m supposed to be strong.

If I had the ability to do it all over again. And I guess I do with my kids, I have changed. I’d be a lot more sharing and vulnerable with my kids as to how I actually feel. So they see that you know what, I don’t have it all put together and it’s okay.

Life’s full of problems and challenges. They happen every day, and that’s okay. How we deal with problems and how we deal with the challenges matters.

But they all have them. We all have them. And just because you’re looking at that Facebook post or the Instagram and say their life is perfect. I guarantee you their life is not perfect. We as parents know that, I hope.

SHERYL: Even moms struggle with it. They look at the families and they’re all together and smiling and happy and think what’s wrong with my family because we have bad stuff behind the scenes.

JASON: Then there was a fight that happened before that picture. You’re not seeing it. It’s like that that’s that’s the reality of life.

We all deal with the same stuff, right?

As parents, we can conceptualize that. As young kids 12-14 years of age, they can’t.

They look at those kids and think their lives are so much better than mine. Depression and suicide is not about where you stand in life from a socio economic standpoint. It spreads across everybody and everything.

The high school cheerleader, the high school quarterback, who lives are perfect compared to everybody else’s are some of the more depressed people because they don’t know how to deal with stuff.

SHERYL: Yeah, we just had a big high school quarterback, good looking kid, great grades, and everything. He commited suicide during the pandemic. Nobody even knew.

JASON: I mean, it’s every day. The only way it’s going to stop is by paying attention to your kids.
The only good stuff is realizing that everything I’m telling, you don’t take my word for it, look it up. This is real. We need to own our kids mental health like we own our kids physical health. You can’t wait for your doctor or your school or someone else to do it for you. Schools don’t know what the hell to do and doctors are not trained.

There’s not enough therapists. And it’s not that hard to be your kid’s therapist; to listen and love them.

SHERYL: You have a really sweet part in the movie, where you’re with your daughter. You’re sitting at the table and talking about both of your experiences. You’re talking to her about your feelings and your emotions and opened up about your weaknesses. I thought what a beautiful picture of how to start that conversation with your kids.

Can you talk about how parents might enter into that about wanting to be a family where they can actually talk about their struggles?

JASON: Yeah, but I’ll also tell you that’s a bit of a Facebook picture. My daughter and I stopped talking to each other pretty much after that movie was being made.

We’re just now starting to rekindle our relationship after two and a half years. Because she’s had her own struggles and I’ve had my own struggles. We have not agreed on things. And that’s life.

That moment in the movie was a real moment, but a fake moment. Behind that moment where a lot of other deeper issues and how she may feel about me, and how I may feel that her. We’re now working through it, but it’s tough.

I don’t have a block on how you’re supposed to do all this stuff. None of its easy.

It’s messy. But I can tell you some ways to that I think are really important. I was doing a lot of this, like, put down your phone. Have dinner.

I wrote a book called dinner conversations was the basically all the fun conversations we had at the dinner table because there’s no phones and iPads. There was music playing on the background. We had family dinner, and it was an hour and a half. We would be telling stories and take the funniest story and put it on Facebook.

Ryan took all those stories off of Facebook and put it into the book called, “Dinner Conversations,” which is essentially all my parenting mistakes. Because even that didn’t save us.

SHERYL: I wonder when I saw that. I didn’t see that year. But I was wondering was that written before or after the summer before he died?

JASON: I paid him by the hour to go take all the Facebook posts off my account. But anyways, my point behind all this is not to go buy the book. You don’t have to go buy the book. But you should watch the movie with your kids.
I’m saying to put down your phone and talk to your kids. Get i mean it’s it’s I know it’s hard. I know you’re busy. I get it. Me too.

But try to have a family rule where there’s no phones and we’re going to sit down and talk. I don’t know how many times I go to dinners and you see the same thing.

When you go to a restaurant, you see a whole family with iPads and phones and like no one’s talking to each other. We were the family that would go to dinner, we’d get there at eight, and we’d close the restaurant at 1030. We’d watch all these other families and say why are all these people on their phones, like try to be more of that family. Even when you’re that family, it doesn’t mean nothing bad’s gonna happen to you. But that’s a better family to be.

The life we grew up in, I grew up in as a 54 year old guy is different than the way that their kids are growing up right now. Why are they so anxious? Why are they so depressed? Look around the world. I didn’t know what was going on when I was 14. The news was at six o’clock at night, and my father watched it. I never watched it. I didn’t read the newspaper. You start fires in the newspaper, and you don’t read them. I didn’t know what you’re supposed to newspaper when I was 14.

But now your kids know about COVID. They know about global warming. They know that there’s potential wars with Iran, China, and Russia. There’s stress and pressure for kids to get into the right college. I never thought about it never cared.

To be get that scholarship. I never thought about it and never cared. Sometimes it’s not us putting the pressure on them; it’s themselves. It’s too much for a 14-16 year old kid to be worried about. They need to live their lives and have some fun. Otherwise, that pressure cooker keeps building and that’s why we have these problems. So keep in mind that that’s going on.

Then, they’ve got the bully who used to be at school. He was never at my house and their bully is at the house. My bully was a big kid who could beat me up. Their bully could be anybody with a keyboard. I know you know that. But it’s real. Middle school kids are mean. So be there for them; if you’re going to give your kid Facebook, Instagram, and Tik Tok.

Leave their room alone. But if you own that phone and you pay for that phone, it’s your phone. They’re welcome to borrow it, which means that you can look at any time you want to look at it. You have the right to take it from them every single day, and they need to know that. When you look at their Facebook or Instagram, and you catch them hiding it, take the phone away from them. So they learn they can’t do that.
Yeah, be talking to them about it.

But have the conversation with how that’s not real and this isn’t real. This is real life. Help them deal with the bullies and deal with it all. You can’t protect them. You can’t bubble wrap them, but you can talk to him about life.

The final point is one thing mistake I made and I made a lot of them was I don’t think a kid who’s 11, 12, 13 years of age needs to have a browser on their phone. I gave Ryan a phone when he was 12. He was a great kid, with great grades, and had no issues. So I thought, here’s a phone. Here’s how you hack into have your own Facebook account and say you’re older than you actually are.

When I gave Ryan a phone with a browser on it, what it basically said is “Ryan, if you could go anywhere in the world you want and learn whatever you want. And I’ll probably not ask you questions, I’ll forget you’re there.” And they do. There’s a lot of bad stuff you could ever imagined is on the Internet. People think that porn is the worst thing on the Internet. I’m not saying it’s a good thing. But it’s not the worst thing on the internet.

Ryan used that phone to research how to kill himself. I know it because he wrote it in his letter. So my thoughts for you is I’m not saying don’t give your kids phone, lockdown the browser, check their Facebook pages, and make sure you understand how they can hide stuff from you on that phone. It’s your phone, not their phone.

Privacy is not something a 14 year old kid needs.

SHERYL: Jason, I have to ask you before we wrap up. What are some of those signs we should look for? What signs did you see in Ryan?

JASON: He was moodier. He was more withdrawn and spent less time with his friends. He spent more time online and was short tempered. I thought it’s just normal teenager stuff. All I’m saying is just pay attention to it. Talk to your kids and find out why they seem to be acting that way.

SHERYL: Yeah, don’t slough it off.

JASON: Maybe it’s normal teenager stuff, but the stats are staggering as to how many kids are actually experiencing major anxiety and depression.

Teach them and if they do, which most of us do, right? You need to learn how to deal with our anxiety and learn how to deal with our thoughts and depression. You can’t let 80% of depression go untreated because that does lead to bad things. So what I’d love to offer up to you guys is please watch the movie. Watch it with your kids and have a conversation.

I’d love it if you could go and maybe do a screening in your schools because I want more people to see this movie. In fact, I’m gonna look up really quick. My producer texted me last night saying make sure you tell them they can do a screening at their schools. But if you go to howtowatch.com, it’ll show you how to do a screening your school.

If my message resonates within you, please organize something with the parents in your neighborhood. Let’s get more and more people to see this.

SHERYL: It’s such a good film and watching it with your kids because you have so many people and kids talking about it in a vulnerable way. I love that one gal that was filming you that took all the pictures. It’s powerful. Everybody needs to see the movie. Well, thank you so much for being here, sharing your story, telling Ryan’s story, and using your pain and tragedy to help us.

JASON: If the movie’s a little much for you. Look at chooselife.org, J talks, watch the Goal Cast, or the Hot Lava Talk, which I think is 18 minutes. It will give you a lot of stuff to think about with your kids.

SHERYL: Thank you so much Jason.

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