"Grief and Parenting With A Growth Mindset" with Personal Development Author Adam Griffin

Fatherhood On Fire

This episode is presented in memory of Cade Griffin and Luca Summitt.

Adam Griffin is a personal development author and former founder of Bodeefit. In this episode we discuss Adam's book The Guy At The Bar: Notes From A Father Who Lost A Lot, But Gained A Little.

Adam's first born son, Cade, had an extremely rare genetic condition that halted his skin growth during pregnancy. The rest of his body continued to develop and grow which meant Cade eventually outgrew his own skin. Two months prior to his estimated birth date, Cade was born on March 13, 2014. Two days later Adam was standing in a bar waiting for a carry out pizza. Cade's condition was incurable and not survivable. Yet Adam waited for a pizza. A seemingly normal guy completing a normal task. It was in this moment on what he called "the longest, worst, most beautiful day of my life," that Adam came to understand how little we actually know about what our fellow man may be going through. Adam realized "Not a single one of these people know that I have to go back to the hospital after this and say goodbye to my first-born son."

In our episode we go beyond the pages and discuss how The Guy At The Bar came to be. At the time of Cade's death, Adam was contracted with a publisher to write a fitness book. However, as he used writing as an outlet for grief, he soon realized that sharing what he was currently going through was the only thing he would have the fortitude to write about.

Adam talks about the concept of "The Wall" in grief. Many of us probably familiar with the concept of "hitting the wall" in athletics. Adam describes it as similar if you were being chased by a bear. Your body would flood with adrenaline and testosterone to overcome the physical threat at hand. In grief your mind resorts to numbness and isolation to get through the emotional trauma and proceed to safety. However, once the immediacy of the situation has seceded the numbness and isolation wears off and we are faced full force with our grief.

Adam shares how grief is actually a really good construct for personal development. When we dig deeper into what personal development, we're really seeking to improve our ability to handle unexpected challenges that come our way. He expands on this in his second book Redwood: A Guide To Leading A Remarkable Life when he dissects the short comings of the "fail fast, fail forward" mantra which encourages people to seek out failure. But if you're really striving for something and expecting positive outcomes failure is a gut punch that knocks you to your knees and leaves you struggling to breath let alone move forward.

Adam discusses how Cade's life and death has impacted how he parents now. He's found that "what death does is it makes really clear what's important and what's not." And closes by encouraging listeners to take a growth mindset to parenting. To be open to what your children can teach you about yourself.

To purchase The Guy At The Bar or Redwood click here.

To learn more about Adam and read his other work visit http://adamgriff.in/

You can follow Adam on Instagram @adamgriffinbty

PPROM Foundation https://www.aapprom.org/

Society For Maternal Fetal Medicine list of support groups https://www.smfm.org/members/support-groups

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