“Thanks For the Little While” with Alan Pedersen

Steve Smelski: 00:00:04

Hello, everybody.

Steve Smelski: 00:00:05

Welcome to today's episode of help through grief.

Steve Smelski: 00:00:08

My name is Steve Smelski . I'm one of the co-hosts.

Steve Smelski: 00:00:09

I'm here with my good friend and cohost Marshall Adler.

Marshall Adler: 00:00:13

Hello everybody, hope everybody is doing well today.

Steve Smelski: 00:00:17

So we've got an interesting show planned for you today.

Steve Smelski: 00:00:20

We've reached out and we've got a friend that Shelly and I have met over

Steve Smelski: 00:00:24

the last six years on our journey.

Steve Smelski: 00:00:27

And we've invited Alan Peterson in today to have a

Steve Smelski: 00:00:31

conversation with us about grief.

Steve Smelski: 00:00:33

Alan has a lot of stories.

Steve Smelski: 00:00:36

He's met a lot of people over the years, and I think you're

Steve Smelski: 00:00:40

going to enjoy this conversation.

Steve Smelski: 00:00:42

Welcome, Alan.

Alan Pedersen: 00:00:44

Thank you so much for having me, both of you.

Alan Pedersen: 00:00:47

We've got a three bereaved dads hiere with three different stories

Alan Pedersen: 00:00:52

over a time span from 19 years that I've been on this journey and down

Alan Pedersen: 00:00:58

to, uh, just over a couple of years.

Alan Pedersen: 00:01:01

So, uh, we all have different backgrounds.

Alan Pedersen: 00:01:03

Those always in my opinion, make for the best conversations and thank you

Alan Pedersen: 00:01:08

for the honor of, uh, having just a conversation with you about this

Alan Pedersen: 00:01:13

crazy life we live, not the life we ever intended or planned to live.

Alan Pedersen: 00:01:18

But nevertheless, the life, um, that we've been given to live and how we do it.

Alan Pedersen: 00:01:24

And how we do it every day and how we just keep breathing, keep telling our stories.

Alan Pedersen: 00:01:30

So thank you for letting me share in this conversation with the two of you.

Alan Pedersen: 00:01:33

I am deeply, deeply honored.

Steve Smelski: 00:01:36

Thank you.,yeah, the honor ours.

Steve Smelski: 00:01:39

Why don't we, um, let you tell us about how your journey of grief started and

Steve Smelski: 00:01:45

it's a rather long journey and there's going to be a lot of things that.

Steve Smelski: 00:01:48

You can share with us, but let's start with that.

Alan Pedersen: 00:01:51

Well, let's start with, uh, I guess how it started.

Alan Pedersen: 00:01:54

I had, uh, my background is, uh, I've always been a writer.

Alan Pedersen: 00:01:59

I didn't graduate college because I thought I knew more than they knew.

Alan Pedersen: 00:02:02

I, I could tell people I went to college just long enough to learn how

Alan Pedersen: 00:02:07

to enjoy a warm beer and cold pizza.

Alan Pedersen: 00:02:10

And I started playing the guitar.

Alan Pedersen: 00:02:13

I started enjoying it and I've always been kind of a poet.

Alan Pedersen: 00:02:16

So I began playing music, but I got into writing of all types.

Alan Pedersen: 00:02:21

I ended up in the publishing business and publishing national trade magazines

Alan Pedersen: 00:02:27

or writing any kind of writing I could get my hands on, but my first

Alan Pedersen: 00:02:31

love was certainly, um, Music.

Alan Pedersen: 00:02:34

I moved to Nashville in the 90's and wrote for about four years there.

Alan Pedersen: 00:02:39

I used to write for Hank Williams Jr.'s publishing company.

Alan Pedersen: 00:02:42

Never had got a major label cut, but you know, I was kind of swimming with the

Alan Pedersen: 00:02:47

big fish learning how to write there.

Alan Pedersen: 00:02:50

I moved back to Colorado where I'm from.

Alan Pedersen: 00:02:52

I have three children, my oldest Ashley, and then two boys, Rocky and Allen Jr.

Alan Pedersen: 00:02:59

I moved back to Colorado and I decided I was going to get my

Alan Pedersen: 00:03:01

writing fixed by doing radio.

Alan Pedersen: 00:03:04

I also had a love for radio.

Alan Pedersen: 00:03:07

So I worked for Westwood One radio network.

Alan Pedersen: 00:03:09

I was kind of their grunt reporter out of Denver, Colorado.

Alan Pedersen: 00:03:12

I covered sports for awhile, which was, there's a lot of fun covering

Alan Pedersen: 00:03:15

the Broncos and the Nuggets and the Rockies and the Avalanche.

Alan Pedersen: 00:03:19

And then I moved over into the news department.

Alan Pedersen: 00:03:22

I was doing some consulting for other companies and, you

Alan Pedersen: 00:03:26

know, life was pretty good.

Alan Pedersen: 00:03:27

The radio was kind of my fun job.

Alan Pedersen: 00:03:29

And then the consulting work was the stuff that kind of paid the bills.

Alan Pedersen: 00:03:34

And all that changed on August 15th, 2001, I was taking my stepson to

Alan Pedersen: 00:03:40

Tucson, Arizona, where he was going to be a freshman at the University

Alan Pedersen: 00:03:44

of Arizona to freshmen orientation.

Alan Pedersen: 00:03:47

And my daughter had been out with him the night before Ashley to a

Alan Pedersen: 00:03:51

going away party for some of those kids as she was staying in Colorado.

Alan Pedersen: 00:03:56

And I got a telephone call when I got to the city limits of Tucson telling

Alan Pedersen: 00:04:00

me that Ashley had been killed in an automobile accident that day.

Alan Pedersen: 00:04:04

And so, you know, uh, we were talking earlier, before we recorded a little

Alan Pedersen: 00:04:09

bit and Marshall was, you know, we talk about that first moment we hear about

Alan Pedersen: 00:04:14

it, but I, I say this, that phone call is the day that life as I knew it ended.

Alan Pedersen: 00:04:21

And the day, the day that life is, as I now know it began.

Alan Pedersen: 00:04:24

And I think for people like us, it is the demarcation point in our lives.

Alan Pedersen: 00:04:29

It seems like everything happened before that date or since that date.

Alan Pedersen: 00:04:34

So when you say, where did it start?

Alan Pedersen: 00:04:35

It started there on the side of the interstate and not knowing what to do.

Alan Pedersen: 00:04:40

I walked around in a circle saying.

Alan Pedersen: 00:04:42

What do I do?

Alan Pedersen: 00:04:44

What do I do?

Alan Pedersen: 00:04:45

You know, what do we do there?

Alan Pedersen: 00:04:47

A person there's no book.

Alan Pedersen: 00:04:48

There's no way you can rehearse the hurt or practice the pain.

Alan Pedersen: 00:04:53

We are in such shock that we don't know what to do.

Alan Pedersen: 00:04:56

And so somehow I fell on my way back to Colorado to the scene of the accident

Alan Pedersen: 00:05:02

had happened just outside of Grand Junction, Colorado built a roadside

Alan Pedersen: 00:05:06

Memorial, went over and.....and just frozen solid with grief.

Alan Pedersen: 00:05:11

And you guys know that feeling, you see people's lips moving, but

Alan Pedersen: 00:05:14

you can't tell what they're saying.

Alan Pedersen: 00:05:16

You know, months later people would say, wow, that was a beautiful

Alan Pedersen: 00:05:19

service you had for Ashley.

Alan Pedersen: 00:05:21

We had 5, 600 people there and I go, it was, you were there?

Alan Pedersen: 00:05:26

I mean, it just in a complete funk and in a blur.

Alan Pedersen: 00:05:30

So, you know, people, when I tell my story and, you know,

Alan Pedersen: 00:05:34

everyone's stories different.

Alan Pedersen: 00:05:36

People say, well, what was the worst day of your life?

Alan Pedersen: 00:05:39

You would think that the worst day would be August 15th, 2001, but that

Alan Pedersen: 00:05:44

was not the worst day of my life.

Alan Pedersen: 00:05:46

The worst day of my life actually came a few months later.

Alan Pedersen: 00:05:49

Because the casseroles came and the food came and that, and the people

Alan Pedersen: 00:05:54

came and then they all went home.

Alan Pedersen: 00:05:56

But a few months later I woke up one morning and I looked out the window,

Alan Pedersen: 00:05:59

saw the rest of the world going on with life as though Ashley had never lived.

Alan Pedersen: 00:06:05

Still she hadn't died.

Alan Pedersen: 00:06:07

And as though I wasn't just sinking in a pit of grief that I didn't understand

Alan Pedersen: 00:06:13

that I didn't feel prepared to handle and, uh, you know, that's the day

Alan Pedersen: 00:06:18

I went in the shower and let out a primal scream, the likes of which had

Alan Pedersen: 00:06:24

never come out of, out of my body.

Alan Pedersen: 00:06:26

And that's the day when I knew I needed something, uh, some help support.

Alan Pedersen: 00:06:31

And it's, it's the day I found in my case, a group called The Compassionate Friends.

Alan Pedersen: 00:06:36

So that's where it started for me.

Alan Pedersen: 00:06:39

My grief journey really didn't start until I could unfreeze just enough that

Alan Pedersen: 00:06:44

I could begin to maybe wrap my head a little bit around what I was doing.

Alan Pedersen: 00:06:49

And so, that's where it started.

Alan Pedersen: 00:06:52

That's chapter one.

Marshall Adler: 00:06:54

How old was Ashley when she passed?

Alan Pedersen: 00:06:56

Thank you for asking that Marshall Ashley was 18 years old.

Marshall Adler: 00:07:00

18

Alan Pedersen: 00:07:01

She had just graduated high school was going to

Alan Pedersen: 00:07:04

take a trip from Denver on her own.

Alan Pedersen: 00:07:06

I knew nothing about it, and there's kind of a, a lot more to that story.

Alan Pedersen: 00:07:10

We can talk about some other time, but she took kind of an

Alan Pedersen: 00:07:13

unplanned road trip out of Denver.

Alan Pedersen: 00:07:15

She was headed out to California with a friend and we believe she fell

Alan Pedersen: 00:07:19

asleep at the wheel, was not wearing a seatbelt on Interstate 70 mile marker

Alan Pedersen: 00:07:24

four just 4 miles from going into Utah and on kind of a lonely stretch road.

Alan Pedersen: 00:07:29

We believe she fell asleep.

Alan Pedersen: 00:07:31

The car flipped, Ashley was thrown from the car.

Alan Pedersen: 00:07:35

No one witnessed the accident.

Alan Pedersen: 00:07:36

A truck driver came up and found her on the side of the road and she was

Alan Pedersen: 00:07:39

dead at the scene of the accident and with the seatbelt, uh, there's no

Alan Pedersen: 00:07:44

question they believe she would have survived probably without a scratch.

Alan Pedersen: 00:07:48

So, um, you know, those are things as we look back, we always think,

Alan Pedersen: 00:07:53

well, what could we have done said to influence make a difference, but that

Alan Pedersen: 00:07:57

is how she died at 18 years old and just, just getting started in life.

Marshall Adler: 00:08:03

You know, it's ironic.

Marshall Adler: 00:08:04

I actually know that road.

Marshall Adler: 00:08:07

Again, I grew up in Buffalo, New York, and then Florida last 40 years.

Marshall Adler: 00:08:11

But before we start, I think I told you, my sister lives in Denver.

Marshall Adler: 00:08:15

She lives in Aurora and we were in Moab, Utah, and we drove from Moab to see her in

Marshall Adler: 00:08:26

Denver and we were on 70 and I know that Utah, Colorado, there's nothing there.

Marshall Adler: 00:08:32

I mean.....

Alan Pedersen: 00:08:32

that's a lonely stretch where you pass, you pass

Alan Pedersen: 00:08:36

right by where she, uh, she died.

Alan Pedersen: 00:08:38

So....

Marshall Adler: 00:08:38

Wow

Alan Pedersen: 00:08:39

I was just out there a couple of weeks ago so, uh, yeah.

Marshall Adler: 00:08:43

That's ironic because you know, I remember

Marshall Adler: 00:08:48

about 60 miles from the Utah.

Marshall Adler: 00:08:51

We were in Utah, the Utah Colorado line.

Marshall Adler: 00:08:56

There was a sign that says this is the last rest stop of any

Marshall Adler: 00:09:00

nature until the Colorado line.

Marshall Adler: 00:09:03

I go 60 miles, are they kidding?

Marshall Adler: 00:09:05

I go, I don't know if my, if my bladder is strong enough for that for 60 miles,

Marshall Adler: 00:09:10

no rest stop and realize, well, I guess I could make my own rest stop pulling

Marshall Adler: 00:09:14

off the side of the road, but it's funny how sometimes there's a convergence of

Marshall Adler: 00:09:21

people and I, we never met and I never, I did not know how Ashley passed or where

Marshall Adler: 00:09:27

she passed, but I've been on that road.

Marshall Adler: 00:09:30

What are the odds of that, of all the roads in the United States.

Marshall Adler: 00:09:33

I know exactly where that road is.

Alan Pedersen: 00:09:35

Yeah, but it's definitely out in the bad lands there

Alan Pedersen: 00:09:38

and the high deserts of Colorado.

Alan Pedersen: 00:09:40

So yeah, there you were.

Steve Smelski: 00:09:44

Allen, could you tell us what's Ashley like?

Steve Smelski: 00:09:48

Give us a little, little update on Ashley.

Steve Smelski: 00:09:50

What she liked

Steve Smelski: 00:09:52

? Alan Pedersen: Ashley was, um,

Steve Smelski: 00:09:57

Ashley was a writer like me and an intellectual a lot like Matt.

Steve Smelski: 00:10:01

In fact, when we talked about Matt earlier off the air, um, there is

Steve Smelski: 00:10:07

a lot of, a lot of, uh, Ashley I could see in there, she was a deep

Steve Smelski: 00:10:11

thinker, always for the underdog.

Steve Smelski: 00:10:14

And I always tell people she was generous.

Steve Smelski: 00:10:16

She would gladly give people the shirt off of my back.

Steve Smelski: 00:10:19

You know, you couldn't pass a, you know, a little donation

Steve Smelski: 00:10:24

packet, you didn't have anything.

Steve Smelski: 00:10:26

So, uh, I always said whenever I went anywhere with Ashley, if

Steve Smelski: 00:10:30

I came home with $5 in my wallet left I had earned $5 that day.

Steve Smelski: 00:10:36

But she, yeah, she was an amazing soul.

Steve Smelski: 00:10:39

She was turning out to be an incredible writer.

Steve Smelski: 00:10:42

When I worked for Westwood One radio, I was the grunt reporter.

Steve Smelski: 00:10:46

And when I was doing news on Sunday nights, my job would be to go in.

Steve Smelski: 00:10:51

And write the headlines over the weekend, kind of wrapped the weekend up and

Steve Smelski: 00:10:55

then people subscribed to that service.

Steve Smelski: 00:10:57

So we had 450 radio stations around the country.

Steve Smelski: 00:11:01

They would come in on know on Monday morning.

Steve Smelski: 00:11:03

And if there had been a big story in Denver, No, I'd write the

Steve Smelski: 00:11:07

story and put some sound, right?

Steve Smelski: 00:11:08

That was, she was so good and so talented.

Steve Smelski: 00:11:11

That job has taken me about three to four hours she could go into the

Steve Smelski: 00:11:15

studio with me on Sunday nights.

Steve Smelski: 00:11:18

It was just us there.

Steve Smelski: 00:11:19

And she could write so well that we could do it in about an hour and

Steve Smelski: 00:11:23

a half to two hours and her stuff would pass muster with my editors

Steve Smelski: 00:11:27

and Houston, and they were tough.

Steve Smelski: 00:11:29

So, really blossoming as a writer, really into philosophy.

Steve Smelski: 00:11:34

She played soccer, world's worst soccer player by far I've ever seen.

Steve Smelski: 00:11:39

She, uh, she could play a uniform on a muddy field and have the cleanest uniform

Steve Smelski: 00:11:43

at the end of the game you've ever seen.

Steve Smelski: 00:11:46

Couldn't sing a note, but loved all kinds of music and her, and I would listen, uh,

Steve Smelski: 00:11:52

play games where I, you know, I grew up in gospel music and, and country music.

Steve Smelski: 00:11:57

And, uh, but then of course I got into rock, but we'd listened to everything

Steve Smelski: 00:12:01

from rap music to, uh, classical music and everything in between.

Steve Smelski: 00:12:06

She had just such a love and appreciation for it.

Steve Smelski: 00:12:09

So thank you for that question.

Steve Smelski: 00:12:10

I always love when I can say a little bit about her life.

Steve Smelski: 00:12:13

She was, she was my biggest fan in music, but my harshest critic.

Steve Smelski: 00:12:19

So what better combination could you ask for?

Steve Smelski: 00:12:22

Well, thanks for sharing her with us.

Steve Smelski: 00:12:27

So she, she did get to hear you play your music?

Alan Pedersen: 00:12:31

Oh, yeah, we lived in Nashville..

Alan Pedersen: 00:12:33

When I lived in Nashville, Ashley lived with me, I was divorced and kind

Alan Pedersen: 00:12:37

of another convoluted story there, but she always had to live with me.

Alan Pedersen: 00:12:41

And so a huge fan of my music when I have a great Garth Brooks story.

Alan Pedersen: 00:12:48

Garth Brooks and I have common friends.

Alan Pedersen: 00:12:50

And so he was in a restaurant, I was in a restaurant.

Alan Pedersen: 00:12:53

He came over and he sat down at the table and my daughter love this guy.

Alan Pedersen: 00:12:57

I mean, there's bigger than life to him.

Alan Pedersen: 00:13:00

And they sat down with my kids.

Alan Pedersen: 00:13:02

My, uh, my two boys were there too.

Alan Pedersen: 00:13:04

But he came over and sat down for about 20, 30 minutes and

Alan Pedersen: 00:13:07

just chatted things up with her.

Alan Pedersen: 00:13:09

And, um, I was like the highlight of her life and she, you know, she tried to

Alan Pedersen: 00:13:13

tell her friends and, but did tell you what, what a great guy Garth Brooks is

Alan Pedersen: 00:13:17

and I, and I've hung out with him a few other times, but he is such a great guy.

Alan Pedersen: 00:13:21

But no one had a pen or a pencil there and, and he knew she wanted an autograph.

Alan Pedersen: 00:13:26

And so he gets up from the table, just walks up to the hostess stand, asked for

Alan Pedersen: 00:13:31

paper, and a pencil and walks back down and sits and writes an autograph for her,

Alan Pedersen: 00:13:38

which was one of her treasured possession.

Alan Pedersen: 00:13:40

So yes, she was definitely a big fan of my song writing from the

Alan Pedersen: 00:13:44

time she was just a little girl.

Alan Pedersen: 00:13:46

I wrote her whole life so....

Steve Smelski: 00:13:49

oh, that's great to hear.

Steve Smelski: 00:13:50

Tough critic though huh?

Alan Pedersen: 00:13:53

Yeah.

Alan Pedersen: 00:13:54

Tough.

Steve Smelski: 00:13:55

So you touched on a little bit about the early grief and it takes two

Steve Smelski: 00:14:00

to three months before we get to the point where you feel you can reach out to help

Steve Smelski: 00:14:05

you figure out what to do or where to go.

Steve Smelski: 00:14:08

What did you do?

Steve Smelski: 00:14:10

Who did you reach out to?

Steve Smelski: 00:14:11

You mentioned the compassionate friends.

Alan Pedersen: 00:14:14

I actually call myself a fortunate pre-ver because two things

Alan Pedersen: 00:14:18

came along in my life about the same time .After Ashley died, I said, I'm

Alan Pedersen: 00:14:23

not going to write music, you know, Marshall, or you mentioned you may

Alan Pedersen: 00:14:26

never go to the city of San Diego.

Alan Pedersen: 00:14:28

Well, I see that after Ashley died, I would never drive on interstate 70.

Alan Pedersen: 00:14:33

Well, um, And that sounded right to me at the time.

Alan Pedersen: 00:14:36

But as somebody who's done 1600 concert events now in the last, whatever

Alan Pedersen: 00:14:41

years you try and Chris cross his country and never use I70, it's not

Alan Pedersen: 00:14:46

too feasible, but, uh, I was very fortunate and I call myself a fortunate

Alan Pedersen: 00:14:51

griever because two things intersected.

Alan Pedersen: 00:14:53

I found the compassionate friends.

Alan Pedersen: 00:14:55

I knew nothing about this organization.

Alan Pedersen: 00:14:58

I walked in there the first night and I, and I met a Steve.

Alan Pedersen: 00:15:02

His name was Gene about the same kind of thing I walked in.

Alan Pedersen: 00:15:05

I met this Denver a police department, captain whose only son

Alan Pedersen: 00:15:09

had died in kind of a freak accident.

Alan Pedersen: 00:15:11

And here this tough police officer hugs me, tells me I don't have

Alan Pedersen: 00:15:15

to walk this journey by myself that I'm in the right place.

Alan Pedersen: 00:15:19

And um, you know, I didn't know if I was in the right place, but it

Alan Pedersen: 00:15:22

was the Jefferson County, Colorado Chapter of the Compassionate Friends.

Alan Pedersen: 00:15:26

And if you look out the window where we meet, you literally can see the

Alan Pedersen: 00:15:29

hillside where the first shots were fired at Columbine High School.

Alan Pedersen: 00:15:33

I lived in that neighborhood and covered that story and radio.

Marshall Adler: 00:15:36

Wow, wow

Alan Pedersen: 00:15:37

So I found a group of people there who, um, who weren't

Alan Pedersen: 00:15:42

going to teach me a grief course.

Alan Pedersen: 00:15:45

What they were going to do is walk with me.

Alan Pedersen: 00:15:47

They were going to let me, they were going to normalize things for me.

Alan Pedersen: 00:15:52

And I think the most important thing, uh, that we need when we're new.

Alan Pedersen: 00:15:56

I got, because there's people out there that want to rationalize

Alan Pedersen: 00:16:00

our loss or spiritualize our loss or pathologize our loss.

Alan Pedersen: 00:16:06

But what the Compassionate Friends does is normalizes it.

Alan Pedersen: 00:16:09

You know, when I said, Hey, I want to go be with Ashley.

Alan Pedersen: 00:16:12

Well, if you say that, You know, to somebody outside of this

Alan Pedersen: 00:16:15

little world to go, Oh my gosh, we got to get you help now.

Alan Pedersen: 00:16:18

But they help you to understand that those are normal feelings.

Alan Pedersen: 00:16:22

Now making a plan and you're going on, you know, that you, that you want to harm

Alan Pedersen: 00:16:26

yourself, you need additional support.

Alan Pedersen: 00:16:28

But they normalize me, they met me, say my story and say her

Alan Pedersen: 00:16:33

name again and again and again.

Alan Pedersen: 00:16:36

So I was very fortunate for that and then about that same time, a couple

Alan Pedersen: 00:16:40

months later, I found a group that was created a grief support group,

Alan Pedersen: 00:16:45

a different thing, grief share, but it was created by a man named dD.

Alan Pedersen: 00:16:48

Alan Wolfelt out of Fort Collins, Colorado.

Alan Pedersen: 00:16:52

And it was a 10 week grief program.

Alan Pedersen: 00:16:54

And that's really where I learned about grief.

Alan Pedersen: 00:16:56

It's where I could sit down now that I had this support.

Alan Pedersen: 00:17:01

And then I could learn that, you know, I was in trauma, acute grief that

Alan Pedersen: 00:17:06

this was going to hit me emotionally, physically, mentally, and spiritually,

Alan Pedersen: 00:17:12

and, and things that I could do.

Alan Pedersen: 00:17:15

You know, we talk about the pain and grief and all of these things that it

Alan Pedersen: 00:17:19

does to us, but what can we actually do?

Alan Pedersen: 00:17:22

And this program helped me to understand what I could do.

Alan Pedersen: 00:17:27

So by the time I got through my first year, And I was so new in grief, I had

Alan Pedersen: 00:17:33

at least began to form a plan in my head that all that was going to matter.

Alan Pedersen: 00:17:41

And all that was going to make a difference is what

Alan Pedersen: 00:17:44

I could go do with my life.

Alan Pedersen: 00:17:45

If Ashley's voice was going to be heard.

Alan Pedersen: 00:17:48

I had to be the one saying for, I had to be her voice.

Alan Pedersen: 00:17:52

I had to be her hands and I had to be her feet.

Alan Pedersen: 00:17:55

And I thought, well, how am I going to do that?

Alan Pedersen: 00:17:58

And at one year I was not ready, but over the course of the next

Alan Pedersen: 00:18:02

year, I took what I was learning.

Alan Pedersen: 00:18:05

My compassionate friends became my lifeline, my absolute lifeline.

Alan Pedersen: 00:18:09

So when people out there would say ridiculously stupid things to me and,

Alan Pedersen: 00:18:14

or have expectations and benchmarks that I should be meeting in my grief,

Alan Pedersen: 00:18:19

my compassionate friends would say they don't know what they're talking about.

Alan Pedersen: 00:18:22

So they got me through.

Alan Pedersen: 00:18:23

And in my second year I decided that I was going to mess around with music.

Alan Pedersen: 00:18:29

I started out.

Alan Pedersen: 00:18:31

Late at night, I would, I'm not a real public prior, but late at

Alan Pedersen: 00:18:34

night I would get my guitar out.

Alan Pedersen: 00:18:37

And I would, uh, when everybody was in bed and I'd play songs that I used

Alan Pedersen: 00:18:40

to play for Ashley that she loved like Brown Eyed GIrl not all songs

Alan Pedersen: 00:18:45

I'd written and man I could just cry.

Alan Pedersen: 00:18:48

And then one night I started hearing this, you know, like the

Alan Pedersen: 00:18:52

writers do lyric and this and that.

Alan Pedersen: 00:18:55

And before long I'm writing songs and I just wrote them for me.

Alan Pedersen: 00:19:00

And what's interesting I like to tell people this, if you're not a

Alan Pedersen: 00:19:03

songwriter, it might not mean that much to you, but when you're living

Alan Pedersen: 00:19:06

in Nashville, you're always trying to write a song for somebody else.

Alan Pedersen: 00:19:10

I never fancy being a recording artist.

Alan Pedersen: 00:19:12

That was never, but I always wanted to write songs for somebody else.

Alan Pedersen: 00:19:16

You're always telling somebody else's story.

Alan Pedersen: 00:19:18

So for the first time, in my professional life, as a songwriter,

Alan Pedersen: 00:19:22

I said, I don't care if one person likes this music, I could care less.

Alan Pedersen: 00:19:28

I'm going to write what I feel because I don't hear a lot of music that

Alan Pedersen: 00:19:32

really tells what this story is like.

Alan Pedersen: 00:19:36

So I wrote a collection of songs and I played a couple of them for

Alan Pedersen: 00:19:41

some people in my, um, in my group, which, uh, I always tell people that

Alan Pedersen: 00:19:46

was the greatest thing I ever did or the biggest mistake I ever made.

Alan Pedersen: 00:19:49

But they said, Oh, you gotta go in the studio and record them.

Alan Pedersen: 00:19:53

And there's a great story and I don't, we don't have time for all of them,

Alan Pedersen: 00:19:56

but God's hand was at work in my life, even when I was so mad, I, I could spit

Alan Pedersen: 00:20:03

at God God's hand was at work because the people that came into my life that

Alan Pedersen: 00:20:07

helped me produce that first record called Ashley's Songbook were amazing.

Alan Pedersen: 00:20:12

The connections they had back to Ashley.

Alan Pedersen: 00:20:14

But, at about the two year mark, I came out with a CD of music called

Alan Pedersen: 00:20:18

Ashley's Songbooks and I went to the National Conference of the Compassionate

Alan Pedersen: 00:20:22

Friends, and I just took it 200 of them and put them in their bookstore.

Alan Pedersen: 00:20:26

And I believe they sold out in less than a day.

Alan Pedersen: 00:20:30

And I got home and the phone started ringing from groups all

Alan Pedersen: 00:20:32

over the country saying, would you come and would you play and speak?

Alan Pedersen: 00:20:36

And you know, most of them, like we don't have any money, but

Alan Pedersen: 00:20:39

we'll do our best to get you here.

Alan Pedersen: 00:20:42

And that begins something called the Angels Across the USA tour

Alan Pedersen: 00:20:46

that I started really in 2004.

Alan Pedersen: 00:20:49

So we're 16 years and I've traveled, like I said, to over 1600 cities all

Alan Pedersen: 00:20:55

across the country playing and speaking.

Alan Pedersen: 00:20:58

And, uh, and at first I just played the songs cause I didn't know

Alan Pedersen: 00:21:01

anything about grief that I later went and became certified, uh, and

Alan Pedersen: 00:21:06

became a grief services provider through the American Grief Academy.

Alan Pedersen: 00:21:10

And so that was the next step in my grief.

Alan Pedersen: 00:21:12

I just kept learning and learning and meeting tens of thousands of

Alan Pedersen: 00:21:16

people, uh, shaking their hands, hugging their necks, hearing their

Alan Pedersen: 00:21:20

stories like, uh, Matt and Jordan.

Alan Pedersen: 00:21:24

And then eventually I started doing workshops and those became quite popular.

Alan Pedersen: 00:21:28

So that's what my life is today.

Alan Pedersen: 00:21:31

And that was a real quick speed through there.

Alan Pedersen: 00:21:34

But, uh, but that's kind of where grief took me and it

Alan Pedersen: 00:21:37

gave me something I could do.

Alan Pedersen: 00:21:40

I believe that I am on this earth to be Ashley's dad for as long as I live, not

Alan Pedersen: 00:21:47

for as long as she lived, the way that I can best do that is to take all of

Alan Pedersen: 00:21:54

what I believeD she stood for and to put that out in the world in honor of her.

Alan Pedersen: 00:22:01

And I know that it makes a difference and in that difference, it helps me to heal.

Alan Pedersen: 00:22:06

And it helps me to feel like she's just working with me every day of my life

Marshall Adler: 00:22:11

Illness incredible, like, you know, the things you're saying,

Marshall Adler: 00:22:17

it just sort of resonates with me.

Marshall Adler: 00:22:18

Like you mentioned Columbine.

Marshall Adler: 00:22:21

And I remember obviously when that happened and we were in

Marshall Adler: 00:22:30

Washington, D C with the kids, we took them to DC when that happened.

Marshall Adler: 00:22:34

And I remember talking to then david and just, you know, talking

Marshall Adler: 00:22:40

about how random life can be.

Marshall Adler: 00:22:46

These kids were just, they thought a safe place.

Marshall Adler: 00:22:50

They were in school and obviously since then we realize school's not

Marshall Adler: 00:22:54

necessarily the same place that we thought it was when we were growing up.

Marshall Adler: 00:22:58

Society's changed and the bubble of protectiveness that

Marshall Adler: 00:23:09

I know I had for my children.

Marshall Adler: 00:23:14

As you go old, you realize there's chips in that thought process as it's

Marshall Adler: 00:23:19

an illusion or delusion thinking, Oh, I can guarantee my children's safety.

Marshall Adler: 00:23:27

And you always think you can, until you can't.

Marshall Adler: 00:23:32

And the three of us have lost children and obviously we'd have done anything

Marshall Adler: 00:23:39

humanly possible to prevent them from passing as many other people would,

Marshall Adler: 00:23:46

but it's not in our power to do that.

Marshall Adler: 00:23:50

And I think what you're saying about living your life, which is what I'm

Marshall Adler: 00:23:58

trying to do also is attribute to Ashley is what I'm trying to do with Matt.

Marshall Adler: 00:24:04

And it just, again, it just shows you we're all here a short time.

Marshall Adler: 00:24:09

You gotta make it the best time possible.

Marshall Adler: 00:24:13

And you know, one of the things you mentioned, like, I people ask me, we

Marshall Adler: 00:24:20

didn't even know how to answer this, but now I know how to answer this.

Marshall Adler: 00:24:22

You know?

Marshall Adler: 00:24:22

So many times you see somebody that was asking you, well,

Marshall Adler: 00:24:25

what do you do for a living?

Marshall Adler: 00:24:26

Lawyer for 40 years, I've said that many, many times the next

Marshall Adler: 00:24:30

thing is, do you have children?

Marshall Adler: 00:24:33

And I, Deb and I talk, what do we say?

Marshall Adler: 00:24:38

We've lost a child.

Marshall Adler: 00:24:39

And we say, I said, I, I have two sons not, I had two sons.

Marshall Adler: 00:24:45

I have two sons in the present.

Marshall Adler: 00:24:49

Matt is still with me, not physically on this earth, but he's still with me

Marshall Adler: 00:24:55

and he's always going to be my son.

Marshall Adler: 00:24:57

My parents passed away.

Marshall Adler: 00:25:00

They're still my parents Matt still my son.

Marshall Adler: 00:25:04

And I think as you get older and more philosophical.

Marshall Adler: 00:25:13

Not that it gives you an answer, but it does give you some solace

Marshall Adler: 00:25:20

or contentment realizing that, you know, grief is part of the human

Marshall Adler: 00:25:28

experience for better, for worse.

Marshall Adler: 00:25:31

Either we're going to die, people are gonna grieve us or we're going to live.

Marshall Adler: 00:25:34

And people we love are going to pay us and we're going to grieve them.

Marshall Adler: 00:25:39

And he sounds like Ashley and Matt were very kindred souls.

Marshall Adler: 00:25:46

And I think that knowing them the way we did for me, I always try to

Marshall Adler: 00:25:56

look at it as a honor that I had the opportunity to be his father for 32 years.

Marshall Adler: 00:26:06

And what I'd like to see them grow up and experience life, absolutely.

Marshall Adler: 00:26:12

But there wasn't in the cards and it doesn't make me appreciate what he

Marshall Adler: 00:26:21

did when he was here any less cause he did the most with the time that he

Marshall Adler: 00:26:26

had, which is all, any of us could do.

Alan Pedersen: 00:26:29

Right, then, you know, we look at our children and

Alan Pedersen: 00:26:33

I say, Ashley lived her whole life.

Alan Pedersen: 00:26:36

And, uh, you know, in 18 years and three months.

Alan Pedersen: 00:26:41

And you know, we look back and, and I used to early in grief, even when

Alan Pedersen: 00:26:46

I was out playing, I would say 18 years, that's all we had 18 years.

Alan Pedersen: 00:26:50

That's all we had 18 years.

Alan Pedersen: 00:26:52

That's all we had in one day.

Alan Pedersen: 00:26:54

I thought, you know what?

Alan Pedersen: 00:26:56

18 years we had all that.

Alan Pedersen: 00:27:00

Now it, wasn't not enough.

Alan Pedersen: 00:27:01

And I don't want anybody to ever think, Oh, wow.

Alan Pedersen: 00:27:04

But if I don't have gratitude for those 18 years.

Alan Pedersen: 00:27:09

And we all get to there in our own time and in our own way.

Alan Pedersen: 00:27:12

And we may have, yeah, the people here listening who are very new

Alan Pedersen: 00:27:15

in their greif, so don't because you don't feel that today.

Alan Pedersen: 00:27:19

When I say something like that, it's just to say that, you know what I was

Alan Pedersen: 00:27:23

where you are, where I couldn't see gratitude for the 18 years, but I have

Alan Pedersen: 00:27:28

learned that within those 18 years by Ashley living, I got to love at a

Alan Pedersen: 00:27:34

level I never thought humanly possible.

Alan Pedersen: 00:27:38

When she died, I heard at a level I never thought humanly imaginable.

Alan Pedersen: 00:27:43

And then the journey of trying to find life again.

Alan Pedersen: 00:27:48

And that's really what the word bereaved means.

Alan Pedersen: 00:27:51

Living with loss, living the rest of our lives.

Alan Pedersen: 00:27:53

And that journey is a life journey.

Alan Pedersen: 00:27:56

I've learned more in the journey.

Alan Pedersen: 00:27:59

Of trying to find life without ashes than I ever could have gotten from

Alan Pedersen: 00:28:03

all the education in the world.

Alan Pedersen: 00:28:05

I've learned, uh, things about compassion and about not judging people so harshly.

Alan Pedersen: 00:28:13

So there are many gifts Ashley left for me.

Alan Pedersen: 00:28:15

It takes time for us, but if we stay open and if we continue to live,

Alan Pedersen: 00:28:21

because if we don't continue to live in two lives were lost that day.

Marshall Adler: 00:28:25

Right

Alan Pedersen: 00:28:25

And, uh, you know, it's real easy for people who

Alan Pedersen: 00:28:28

haven't had our loss to say, well, Ashley wouldn't want you to do that.

Alan Pedersen: 00:28:31

Well, you know what?

Alan Pedersen: 00:28:32

I don't like when you say that to me, but you put another person.

Alan Pedersen: 00:28:36

Who's had the same loss as me next to me.

Alan Pedersen: 00:28:39

And we know that that our children would want us to live and we can

Alan Pedersen: 00:28:46

tap into that love and who they were, the essence of who they are.

Alan Pedersen: 00:28:51

And I'm with you.

Alan Pedersen: 00:28:52

I have a daughter, Ashley.

Alan Pedersen: 00:28:54

She will be a part of my life every day.

Alan Pedersen: 00:28:57

I take a breath.

Alan Pedersen: 00:28:58

So that's the news that, that I want people to know that when you're ready

Alan Pedersen: 00:29:04

to begin to let go of some of the pain.

Alan Pedersen: 00:29:06

You can let go of some of the pain without having to release one ounce of the love.

Alan Pedersen: 00:29:12

And that's what keeps people stuck in grief often is they don't, they,

Alan Pedersen: 00:29:16

they, they equate the pain with having to let go of the love, but

Alan Pedersen: 00:29:21

you will know when you're ready.

Alan Pedersen: 00:29:24

And when you get to that place, we can let go of a little of the pain and it

Alan Pedersen: 00:29:29

actually opens us up more to have space to grab on and hold on to the love.

Alan Pedersen: 00:29:35

And that's really what our journey is all about.

Steve Smelski: 00:29:39

Alan.

Steve Smelski: 00:29:40

I heard you say, I forget what it was, but you've said that when you

Steve Smelski: 00:29:43

get invited, let's say to a party.

Steve Smelski: 00:29:46

You'll say, okay, as long as Ashley comes with me, what do you mean by that?

Alan Pedersen: 00:29:51

Yeah, that's great.

Alan Pedersen: 00:29:52

You know, I do, uh, one of the workshops I do in the fall.

Alan Pedersen: 00:29:56

I'll be doing some of them virtually this year.

Alan Pedersen: 00:29:58

I do one on handling the holidays, but I tell newly grieving people

Alan Pedersen: 00:30:02

this all the time, because, you know, you asked, you said something,

Alan Pedersen: 00:30:06

Marshall, that's very interesting.

Alan Pedersen: 00:30:08

People ask us how many children we have.

Alan Pedersen: 00:30:10

Well, you know, you think my Pat answer would be, well, you know, I have my

Alan Pedersen: 00:30:15

boys and I have Ashley or, you know, sometimes I'll say I have two boys,

Alan Pedersen: 00:30:20

you know, AJ and my daughter died in an automobile accident when she was 18.

Alan Pedersen: 00:30:25

And sometimes frankly, I don't tell people not everybody's entitled to

Alan Pedersen: 00:30:29

know that I'm a bereaved parent because maybe I don't think they can handle it.

Alan Pedersen: 00:30:33

So it's a very personal choice how we do it.

Alan Pedersen: 00:30:36

But as I, uh, and again, I had such great grief information early on that it helped

Alan Pedersen: 00:30:43

me to help myself and now to help others.

Alan Pedersen: 00:30:45

But if people would ask me to an event and especially in those early years,

Alan Pedersen: 00:30:51

I'd say, you know, they invite me.

Alan Pedersen: 00:30:52

And I said, look, I don't know whether or not I'm going to be able

Alan Pedersen: 00:30:55

to make it to that first, whatever Thanksgiving dinner or the second one.

Alan Pedersen: 00:31:00

But I always said to people do not invite me any event, friends, family, whoever.

Alan Pedersen: 00:31:06

Do not invite m if Ashley is not invited.

Alan Pedersen: 00:31:09

And what I meant by that was simply, I'm not going to show up in an Ashley

Alan Pedersen: 00:31:14

tshirt and Ashley hat, nationally balloons, and expect the whole

Alan Pedersen: 00:31:18

conversation to be about this or pitiful, grieving dad whose daughter died.

Alan Pedersen: 00:31:23

But I'll be damned, excuse me, language if I'm going to show up and

Alan Pedersen: 00:31:28

pretend tha I am not Ashley's dad.

Alan Pedersen: 00:31:32

And so what I ask people is I say, you know, I just want to be able to talk about

Alan Pedersen: 00:31:36

her and to not shy away from her name.

Alan Pedersen: 00:31:39

And I let people know how important it is for us to hear the name,

Alan Pedersen: 00:31:43

say the name, see the name.

Alan Pedersen: 00:31:46

So I want to be free to talk about Ashley just as free as I am anybody else.

Alan Pedersen: 00:31:51

And I promise I won't be Debbie downer at your party, but if I feel like

Alan Pedersen: 00:31:56

telling stories and if you're not comfortable, I understand completely,

Alan Pedersen: 00:32:02

but don't invite me because I won't show up and suffer in silence because

Alan Pedersen: 00:32:07

others are uncomfortable with my loss.

Alan Pedersen: 00:32:10

And that keeps her alive.

Alan Pedersen: 00:32:11

That keeps her right then and there.

Alan Pedersen: 00:32:13

And when we'd tell people I have a child.

Alan Pedersen: 00:32:17

I have a daughter, Ashley, I have a son, Matt.

Alan Pedersen: 00:32:20

I have a son Jordan.

Alan Pedersen: 00:32:22

When we say that it changes the demeanor of people as well.

Alan Pedersen: 00:32:26

Now, some people will just, there's an old saying when, when someone asks, how many

Alan Pedersen: 00:32:30

children you have, and, and I say, I have two sons and my daughter, Ashley died.

Alan Pedersen: 00:32:35

If their next question is about your living children.

Alan Pedersen: 00:32:39

They can't handle the grief.

Alan Pedersen: 00:32:40

If their next question is about your child that died, they're probably a safe

Alan Pedersen: 00:32:44

person with you to talk to about it.

Marshall Adler: 00:32:48

That's really interesting.

Marshall Adler: 00:32:49

You know, I have been amazed how people react and I'll say

Marshall Adler: 00:32:56

two different things here.

Marshall Adler: 00:32:58

You know, being a lawyer, I interact publicly before the pandemic.

Marshall Adler: 00:33:04

So after Matt passed, I saw two different reactions from people.

Marshall Adler: 00:33:10

Some people, I could almost sense that they thought that my grief was contagious,

Marshall Adler: 00:33:18

that it was like coronavirus with it that we didn't know about back then.

Marshall Adler: 00:33:24

And then other people would come up to me and be so heartbroken.

Marshall Adler: 00:33:33

And a lot of these people it'd be i'm holding my arms they were crying

Marshall Adler: 00:33:39

and I realized they never met Matt.

Marshall Adler: 00:33:42

They didn't know who he was, and they're not really crying for Matt.

Marshall Adler: 00:33:48

They're probably crying for their own grief that they've experienced or fear

Marshall Adler: 00:33:53

of grief that they will experience.

Marshall Adler: 00:33:55

And then which made me sort of think about the first group that

Marshall Adler: 00:34:02

thought maybe this was contagious.

Marshall Adler: 00:34:05

And I joke about it now and I say it is contagious.

Marshall Adler: 00:34:09

If you're a human being, you're going to catch grief, you will catch it.

Marshall Adler: 00:34:14

So it is contagious because you're human and Lord knows the pandemic has turned

Marshall Adler: 00:34:22

the world of grief upside down and people that never thought about grief

Marshall Adler: 00:34:26

are just change their life differently.

Marshall Adler: 00:34:30

No, I saw this on the news was yesterday.

Marshall Adler: 00:34:33

There was a young man who's volunteering for the vaccine

Marshall Adler: 00:34:40

trials, which could be dangerous.

Marshall Adler: 00:34:41

You don't know if it's a placebo or it's something that's

Marshall Adler: 00:34:43

going to help him hurt him.

Marshall Adler: 00:34:45

And as a young man, they asked him, why are you doing this?

Marshall Adler: 00:34:49

And he said, he lost seven family members to the coronavirus.

Marshall Adler: 00:34:54

It's grief, but for grief, do you think this young person would have any interest

Marshall Adler: 00:35:00

in being a Guinea pig for this vaccine?

Marshall Adler: 00:35:03

And it just shows you how I think all three of us and so many other people

Marshall Adler: 00:35:10

that have lost loved ones can make the world a so much better place at

Marshall Adler: 00:35:18

attributing to our lost, loved ones.

Marshall Adler: 00:35:20

You know, this young man's efforts to help with the vaccine.

Marshall Adler: 00:35:26

It could lead to a cure who knows, but at least he's trying.

Marshall Adler: 00:35:31

And that to me is I know you are so far ahead of where I am.

Marshall Adler: 00:35:37

I'm two years out.

Marshall Adler: 00:35:38

You're 19 years out and I know this is such a lifelong journey

Marshall Adler: 00:35:46

that as I'm on, I just come up with more questions than answers.

Marshall Adler: 00:35:51

But the one thing to keep on thinking about is, you know, there's a Jewish

Marshall Adler: 00:36:00

saying that which somebody, you mentioned, somebody passed down, you

Marshall Adler: 00:36:06

say may their memory be a blessing.

Marshall Adler: 00:36:10

And that's what I want because I know Matt was a blessing and I want his memory

Marshall Adler: 00:36:18

to be forever a blessing because of all the things that he did, he was here and

Marshall Adler: 00:36:25

all the things that I'm going to try to do to tribute to him while I'm here.

Marshall Adler: 00:36:30

So that was really interesting when you mentioned about the powdery, because

Marshall Adler: 00:36:34

I can see how people react and it just is different because we're different.

Alan Pedersen: 00:36:42

Yeah.

Alan Pedersen: 00:36:42

I call it grieving out loud.

Alan Pedersen: 00:36:44

Grieve loud grief proud.

Alan Pedersen: 00:36:46

It's the life we were, uh, we were handed.

Alan Pedersen: 00:36:49

And so what do we do?

Alan Pedersen: 00:36:51

But let's live it loudly and proudly.

Alan Pedersen: 00:36:53

That's what gets me up in the morning.

Alan Pedersen: 00:36:57

We all need a reason and you do the next thing and so the next thing

Alan Pedersen: 00:37:01

for me now is to get myself back out on tour, which I'm working on.

Alan Pedersen: 00:37:05

So you're on the right path.

Alan Pedersen: 00:37:08

You know, I there's a lot, I could say about it, but doing this podcast

Alan Pedersen: 00:37:13

that you're doing, telling your story and just doing what you can at your

Alan Pedersen: 00:37:19

own pace to remember Matt, and to remember, and honor Jordan that in

Alan Pedersen: 00:37:26

itself, running a grief share program.

Alan Pedersen: 00:37:30

Those are the things that pay big dividends.

Alan Pedersen: 00:37:33

This is a lifelong journey.

Alan Pedersen: 00:37:35

I liked the way you just said that it's not, it doesn't

Alan Pedersen: 00:37:37

have to be a life sentence.

Alan Pedersen: 00:37:39

It is a lifelong journey.

Alan Pedersen: 00:37:41

It can feel like a life sentence at time and we act to acknowledge that that no

Alan Pedersen: 00:37:46

matter how much we do and how many people we might make an impact on it still hurts.

Alan Pedersen: 00:37:52

And we still have those raw difficult times and to give ourselves permission

Alan Pedersen: 00:37:58

to have those and feel those and lay in that heavy, hard grief.

Alan Pedersen: 00:38:04

But there is also.

Alan Pedersen: 00:38:06

Hope and healing when we do the next thing.

Alan Pedersen: 00:38:09

And when we move forward and when we reach out, there was no question that there

Alan Pedersen: 00:38:15

is post traumatic growth in this grief.

Alan Pedersen: 00:38:18

There's transformational healing power, and I've seen thousands

Alan Pedersen: 00:38:24

of people doing things today.

Alan Pedersen: 00:38:26

They never would have done.

Alan Pedersen: 00:38:27

Maybe the two of you thought, would you have ever thought

Alan Pedersen: 00:38:30

you'd be doing a podcast?

Alan Pedersen: 00:38:32

All right, so yeah, this is kind of my message and I was going to try

Alan Pedersen: 00:38:36

to, you know, I know you wanted more stories today, but one of the things

Alan Pedersen: 00:38:40

in my message that I tell people at any, wherever they are in grief is

Alan Pedersen: 00:38:46

grief is going to take you somewhere.

Alan Pedersen: 00:38:49

You're not going to be the same.

Alan Pedersen: 00:38:51

And, and, and, and we know, and, and if you think, think how scary grief

Alan Pedersen: 00:38:56

is in a sense because when we have the loss, the life that we knew, we

Alan Pedersen: 00:39:01

instinctively know that life is gone.

Alan Pedersen: 00:39:04

Okay.

Alan Pedersen: 00:39:05

It doesn't mean life ends, but that life is gone.

Alan Pedersen: 00:39:08

But then we walked through this valley and who we are going to become in

Alan Pedersen: 00:39:13

this grief that is not yet formed.

Alan Pedersen: 00:39:16

And that is a scary place to be walking between those two things.

Alan Pedersen: 00:39:21

Are we going to carry the loss with us the rest of our lives?

Alan Pedersen: 00:39:24

Of course, because the love is never going to go away.

Alan Pedersen: 00:39:28

So I think when we, you know, the one thing that if people can just take

Alan Pedersen: 00:39:34

where you are right now in your grief and realize the view is not going to

Alan Pedersen: 00:39:39

always be the same, how you feel today.

Alan Pedersen: 00:39:42

And that's why we can help others and why this podcast can.

Alan Pedersen: 00:39:45

But grief's gonna to take you somewhere.

Alan Pedersen: 00:39:48

And it's like a big wave.

Alan Pedersen: 00:39:49

You can run head on into that wave, boom!

Alan Pedersen: 00:39:52

It'll knock you on your rear end everyday.

Alan Pedersen: 00:39:54

You can walk and get up every morning and run or at some point you can get up on

Alan Pedersen: 00:39:59

top of the wave and say, you know what?

Alan Pedersen: 00:40:01

I don't know where this is going to take me, but ride that wave.

Alan Pedersen: 00:40:06

And it is amazing the things I've been able to do and see,

Alan Pedersen: 00:40:10

and people that I've met and the life that I've been able to have.

Alan Pedersen: 00:40:15

Simply because I said, I don't know where it's taking me.

Alan Pedersen: 00:40:18

I'll write the songs.

Alan Pedersen: 00:40:19

I'll show up.

Alan Pedersen: 00:40:20

I'll trust God that the finances will be there.

Alan Pedersen: 00:40:23

And like I said, here's two guys, uh, that I, you know, I know I

Alan Pedersen: 00:40:28

would never think you'd be doing a podcast, but God bless you.

Alan Pedersen: 00:40:32

Here you are and here I am with you.

Alan Pedersen: 00:40:35

If you hadn't done what you did, I wouldn't be here with you today day.

Alan Pedersen: 00:40:38

And somebody whose life will be touched today.

Alan Pedersen: 00:40:41

And that's the great healing circle that we that's the circle of healing,

Alan Pedersen: 00:40:47

the circle of hope that grief offers.

Alan Pedersen: 00:40:50

It offers the opportunity for ordinary people to accomplish extraordinary things.

Alan Pedersen: 00:40:57

And that's why I love being a part of something like this today.

Alan Pedersen: 00:41:00

I'm excited for the possibilities of where all this will take all of us.

Alan Pedersen: 00:41:08

But especially you guys.

Steve Smelski: 00:41:10

Oh, thank you.

Steve Smelski: 00:41:12

Tell us a little bit about Angels Across America.

Steve Smelski: 00:41:17

I'd love that whole concept and idea.

Alan Pedersen: 00:41:20

Well, I got a funny story for you because you

Alan Pedersen: 00:41:22

just said Angels Across America.

Alan Pedersen: 00:41:24

And that's what I wanted to call this thing.

Alan Pedersen: 00:41:27

It was the first name.

Alan Pedersen: 00:41:28

So I went to get, you know, the Angels Across America.com.

Alan Pedersen: 00:41:32

It's actually called Angels across the USA, but definitely I wanted

Alan Pedersen: 00:41:36

it to be Angels Across America.

Steve Smelski: 00:41:38

I did have USA, but you couldn't do America?

Alan Pedersen: 00:41:41

No, by that I went and I looked and I wanted to get,

Alan Pedersen: 00:41:44

you know, get it and I thought, okay.

Alan Pedersen: 00:41:46

Well, I couldn't get it because I found out that Victoria's secret

Alan Pedersen: 00:41:50

owns Angels Across America.

Alan Pedersen: 00:41:52

And I thought, what on earth?

Alan Pedersen: 00:41:54

Well, apparently they've got a big tour bus.

Alan Pedersen: 00:41:57

And when they go around back in the day, they would like, they would go into cities

Alan Pedersen: 00:42:02

and do this blitz with these Victoria's secret models coming off of the bus.

Alan Pedersen: 00:42:06

So I had to go call mine the Angels Across the USA, and they used to

Alan Pedersen: 00:42:10

tell people drill interesting at some of our events, you know, some

Alan Pedersen: 00:42:14

young, young man would show up, uh, thinking, uh, getting the name wrong.

Alan Pedersen: 00:42:19

And boy were they sadly disappointed when they saw the only person

Alan Pedersen: 00:42:23

wearing underwear was me

Alan Pedersen: 00:42:29

So it started out where, I mean, I'll just get real raw with you.

Alan Pedersen: 00:42:34

I, um, I was back from my song writing experience.

Alan Pedersen: 00:42:39

That's a tough bit since living in Nashville, is it, you know,

Alan Pedersen: 00:42:42

everybody knows it's, it's tough.

Alan Pedersen: 00:42:44

Uh, and I was tired of the music business, but as I did this first CD, and then

Alan Pedersen: 00:42:49

there started to be this demand for it.

Alan Pedersen: 00:42:51

I thought, well, okay, these people are asking me to come here.

Alan Pedersen: 00:42:54

So I planned a single road trip and I lived in Denver area at the time.

Alan Pedersen: 00:43:02

And I started out a woman invtied me to a big event back in New Hampshire.

Alan Pedersen: 00:43:07

In Manchester, New Hampshire was a butterfly garden dedication, and she

Alan Pedersen: 00:43:11

was going to have 500 people at it.

Alan Pedersen: 00:43:14

She said, come we'll raise the money.

Alan Pedersen: 00:43:17

So, and then, you know, you'll, you'll sell CDs and blah, blah, blah.

Alan Pedersen: 00:43:20

So I thought, well, okay, well she thought I was going to fly there.

Alan Pedersen: 00:43:25

I'm not gonna , Ashley and I are, we're going to take a road trip.

Alan Pedersen: 00:43:29

So I left Colorado in that I played in that in a city called St.

Alan Pedersen: 00:43:32

Francis, Kansas.

Alan Pedersen: 00:43:33

And then the next night it played somewhere in Nebraska then another place

Alan Pedersen: 00:43:37

in Nebraska, then I went up and I ended up going into Cleveland and then finally back

Alan Pedersen: 00:43:43

to New Hampshire kind of played my way.

Alan Pedersen: 00:43:45

I don't even know if it was a 10 events and it's been so long ago and I sat down.

Alan Pedersen: 00:43:50

like I normally would.

Alan Pedersen: 00:43:52

And, and I, and I kinda liked, I took an Excel spreadsheet and thought hmmm,

Alan Pedersen: 00:43:57

this is really going to be expensive.

Alan Pedersen: 00:43:59

And I, at that time, I just said, people, you can pay whatever you can afford to

Alan Pedersen: 00:44:03

pay because part of this ministry and it is to this day, the same thing is

Alan Pedersen: 00:44:08

that I wanted it to be ministry based.

Alan Pedersen: 00:44:10

I wanted it to be available to all, but I had no reference

Alan Pedersen: 00:44:14

point of how that would happen.

Alan Pedersen: 00:44:16

So I had the money, obviously I just set it aside.

Alan Pedersen: 00:44:19

I thought, you know, if nobody buys a CD and people donate a little,

Alan Pedersen: 00:44:23

whatever I'm going to do this is just a me and Ashley road trip.

Alan Pedersen: 00:44:27

So I went into this little town of St.

Alan Pedersen: 00:44:29

Francis, Kansas.

Alan Pedersen: 00:44:30

It's right on the Colorado border.

Alan Pedersen: 00:44:32

There's not the hotel I stayed in, had fans in the window.

Alan Pedersen: 00:44:35

There wasn't a restaurant there, there was a gas station and there

Alan Pedersen: 00:44:39

I'm at this little church and I'm like, okay, there's a little bit the

Alan Pedersen: 00:44:42

Compassionate Friends group there, but some of the town people showed up.

Alan Pedersen: 00:44:46

Anyway, I played my first event and, uh, the, you know, they had

Alan Pedersen: 00:44:51

dessert and stuff afterwards.

Alan Pedersen: 00:44:52

I dunno about 50 people showed up, 60 people showed up.

Alan Pedersen: 00:44:55

I got done at the end of the night and I had looked and people had

Alan Pedersen: 00:45:00

bought almost $500 worth of CDs.

Alan Pedersen: 00:45:03

And I'm like . There's no way because in the songwriting world, you know, if

Alan Pedersen: 00:45:07

you play for a group of 50 people, you probably are going to sell five, 10 CDs.

Alan Pedersen: 00:45:11

I'm like.

Alan Pedersen: 00:45:12

What on earth happened?

Alan Pedersen: 00:45:14

And then I also had these little wristbands that said angels across, uh,

Alan Pedersen: 00:45:18

our angels are forever, but anyway, I just made my way on across the country and I

Alan Pedersen: 00:45:23

came back back and I thought, you know what, I paid all my expenses and I got

Alan Pedersen: 00:45:28

enough here that I can go do another trip.

Alan Pedersen: 00:45:30

And so I just did another trip.

Alan Pedersen: 00:45:33

I just put it out to groups and then, yeah, just got to be where I'm,

Alan Pedersen: 00:45:37

you know, I would just go, go, go.

Alan Pedersen: 00:45:39

And then, then a few years after doing it.

Alan Pedersen: 00:45:42

I began to realize it was an expensive proposition so i bought

Alan Pedersen: 00:45:47

a van and I put a, uh, a wrap on it.

Alan Pedersen: 00:45:50

It said Angels across the USA.

Alan Pedersen: 00:45:53

And I tell people, look, I want to play for any group, anywhere, any

Alan Pedersen: 00:45:57

size, regardless if they have a dime to pay me and, you know, some groups do,

Alan Pedersen: 00:46:01

they can afford to cover your expenses of whatever, four or $500 in event.

Alan Pedersen: 00:46:07

But anyway, people started sponsoring butterfly decals, but the names

Alan Pedersen: 00:46:11

and hometowns for a hundred dollars of their children on it.

Alan Pedersen: 00:46:15

And our children and grandchildren, brothers, sisters, some people

Alan Pedersen: 00:46:20

would sponsor their parents and that kind of became the thing.

Alan Pedersen: 00:46:23

And I'm in my third iteration of that.

Alan Pedersen: 00:46:27

I believe Jordan's riding with me now.

Alan Pedersen: 00:46:29

Uh, Steve, and thanks for that, but that is, uh, how I was able to do what

Alan Pedersen: 00:46:34

I do so just year after year, the most I did 119 cities, which is, which was,

Alan Pedersen: 00:46:42

is tough and you know, by yourself, drive in, I didn't have a road crew.

Alan Pedersen: 00:46:46

But it just grew and it grew and it grew and it grew and I just

Alan Pedersen: 00:46:51

tried to limit two groups of the compassionate friends or people

Alan Pedersen: 00:46:55

helping families who'd lost children.

Alan Pedersen: 00:46:57

I expand out sometimes and I do other types of groups as well.

Alan Pedersen: 00:47:02

So it's been a blessing.

Alan Pedersen: 00:47:03

I can't, I didn't ever think I wanted to live my life on the

Alan Pedersen: 00:47:08

road again, but basically in the spring I leave in February and I'm

Alan Pedersen: 00:47:13

not done till, um, Memorial day.

Alan Pedersen: 00:47:15

And in the fall I leave right after labor day and I finished

Alan Pedersen: 00:47:18

right before Thanksgiving.

Alan Pedersen: 00:47:20

And then in my off times, when I'm down, I go fly to a few events, but

Alan Pedersen: 00:47:26

what a great way to meet tens of thousands of people and present these

Alan Pedersen: 00:47:30

workshops and present these concerts and you just learn your pips, where'd

Alan Pedersen: 00:47:35

you learn all that about grief?

Alan Pedersen: 00:47:37

Well, you hear enough stories, hug enough necks, shake enough hands

Alan Pedersen: 00:47:42

you learn what works for people.

Alan Pedersen: 00:47:44

You learn what doesn't work for people and you just kind of put it all in there

Alan Pedersen: 00:47:48

and put it back out in your own words.

Alan Pedersen: 00:47:51

But, but it's been a real blessing doing Angels across the USA tour.

Steve Smelski: 00:47:58

That wraps up our part 1 of our episode with Alan Pederson this week.

Steve Smelski: 00:48:04

Thank you for joining us.

Steve Smelski: 00:48:07

Please stay tuned for next week.

Steve Smelski: 00:48:08

When we release episode 16, part 2 with Alan Pederson.

Steve Smelski: 00:48:13

Remember, if you have any questions or you'd like to reach out to us, and

Steve Smelski: 00:48:18

you've got questions about a particular topic, go ahead and send them into our

Steve Smelski: 00:48:21

website and we'll be sure to get them on the air over the next few weeks.

Steve Smelski: 00:48:26

Thank you for listening today to Alan Pederson and Hope Thru Grief.

Steve Smelski: 00:48:33

Thank you for joining us on Hope Thru Grief with your cohost

Steve Smelski: 00:48:36

Marshall Adler and Steve Smelski.

Marshall Adler: 00:48:39

We hope our episode today was helpful and informative

Marshall Adler: 00:48:44

.Since we are not medical or mental health professionals, we cannot

Marshall Adler: 00:48:49

and will not provide any medical, psychological, or mental health advice.

Marshall Adler: 00:48:56

Therefore, if you or anyone, you know, requires medical or mental health

Marshall Adler: 00:49:01

treatment, please contact a medical or mental health professional immediately.