In this episode:
In this deeply moving episode of Bottomless to Sober, I sit down with Navy veteran, men’s coach, and fellow TEDx speaker Alex Lange, a man in recovery who opens up about losing his 18-month-old son, Liam, and how grief reshaped his life. Alex shares his process for healing and how he transformed unimaginable pain into purpose. We also talk about breaking the stigma around death, redefining masculinity through vulnerability, and what it truly means to live fully in the present moment.
Resources:
Watch Alex’s TEDx Talk – Transforming Pain Into Purpose
Jessica’s Links:
Watch Jessica’s TEDx Talk – What’s Success Without Self-Worth
Bottomless to Sober – Coaching, Classes, and Workshops
Transcript:
Jessica Dueñas: Hey everyone, welcome back to Bottomless to Sober. Appreciate all of you joining.
Jessica Dueñas: Before we start.
Jessica Dueñas: Just a heads up that today’s conversation does come with a heavy content warning, so if this is not the episode for you, I completely understand. But we will be talking about the death of a child, so if you do choose to continue to listen, please take good care of yourself and listen in a way that feels safe for you.
Jessica Dueñas: With that said, I am very honored and excited to be joined by Alex Lang. He is a Navy veteran, a men’s coach, and a speaker. We crossed paths just recently because we were both fellow TEDx speakers, and honestly, you all, his talk on turning pain into purpose, I mean, it left an impression on the audience, but it also really left an impression on me, and so I really want
Jessica Dueñas: wanted to give him some space to share a little bit about himself and his work, in case any of you need to listen to this message today. He and his wife lost their son, Liam.
Jessica Dueñas: at just 18 months to… it was a rare, undetected heart defect that Leanne was born with, and Alex shares his story, honestly, to help others find meaning, connection, and healing in the midst of grief. And a lot of people, struggle with that, and so I’m just so…
Jessica Dueñas: I’m honored to have Alex here and kind of continue that conversation. So, Alex, thanks for joining. Hello, hello.
Alex Lange: Thank you, thank you, thank you. I just want to say first, before I get into this, I told you at the TEDx event that I wholeheartedly do believe that people are put in our life as mirrors.
Alex Lange: And it’s an honor to be on this podcast, because it does hold a place for me, not just personally, within my own recovery and how I was numbing my own pain, but growing up in a broken home with my mother, who was a drug addict, and she passed away from drugs, and then my dad being an alcoholic, so…
Alex Lange: it was… it was a big, integral part of my life, and then just hearing your own story, and how you’ve overcome it, and how you’ve shared, and then you’ve just been welcomed through your sharing, that is healing in itself. So, listening to your talk, I told my… I told my wife, I told my sisters who were there, I was like, hey, this is the talk you need to be at, because she can rel… you know, she shows everything, what we’ve been going through, and just talking about it, so thank you.
Jessica Dueñas: Oh, no, thank you, Alex. And so, for my listeners who may be new to you, can you tell us a little bit about who you are, and share a little bit about your story and Liam’s story?
Alex Lange: Absolutely. So I’m a father, father of five, husband, 13 and a half year Navy veteran, as Jessica said. I live in the Dominican Republic. I am a writer, speaker, podcaster, men’s coach, post-military. And, I just, real quick, as I shined in my childhood.
Alex Lange: I grew up in a broken home, my mother was a drug addict, my father was an alcoholic, and so for me.
Alex Lange: Chaos was what I knew.
Alex Lange: And I am a firm believer as people that we learn… we’re conditioned at a young age from the people that raise us, from those relationships that we’re around, and I learned how to cope effectively a lot with a lot of the challenges that I had in my life. My dad wasn’t there, he was providing, he was a financial provider, but he wasn’t there emotionally, physically, and mentally. And my wife, or excuse me, my wife, my mother was, she was a drug addict, and so…
Alex Lange: we did more parenting to her than she did to us, and I… that’s my whole life, that’s all I knew with regards to my mother as a drug addict.
Alex Lange: That kind of sets the story, because for my whole life, up until Liam, as we talked about, my… I coped through all of the pain that I had in my life.
Alex Lange: And we’ll talk about 2021, which was the breaking point for me and the future here, but Liam…
Alex Lange: being able to sit with it. In February of this year, we were in Cyprus. We were a full-time traveling family. Seven of us traveled around the world, we sold everything, we were traveling Europe, went to Africa, and made our way to Cyprus, which is a small island across from Israel.
Alex Lange: And, we were there for a month, and the last day before we were leaving to go to Turkey, we were packing.
Alex Lange: And my sons, I have 5 kids, as I mentioned, my two oldest sons were playing with their little brother, and they were pushing him on an empty suitcase.
Alex Lange: And they were, they were pushing them around, and there was a doormat.
Alex Lange: And the suitcase got caught up on the doormat, and Liam fell, and he busted his lip. Really bad cut, it went through… it went through his, lip, and you could see it on his chin. And so, my… we took him to my wife, because he was still breastfeeding primarily, and…
Alex Lange: he wasn’t… he wasn’t breastfeeding. And so we… we were like, okay, let’s just give him a little bit of time, we’ll give him some water, do some other, you know, give him some other forms of food to try to see if he’ll… he’ll eat, but he was refusing everything. But he was calm the whole day.
Alex Lange: And so, for 14 and a half hours, he refused to eat consistently, consistently. That night, for the first time in his life, he went to bed without
Alex Lange: a boob, you know, he was breastfeeding, so he went to bed by himself, and we were like, wow, that’s so crazy. Like, that’s interesting.
Alex Lange: You know, we were aware that dehydration is a thing, so we were like, hey, we need to try to get him to eat, especially that we’re traveling the next day.
Alex Lange: And so it was about 11 p.m. at night, and my wife says, because he started crying because he wasn’t eating, my wife said, hey, go to the other room with the boys, and get some sleep, because we have a long travel day. I’ll stay up with him, and I’ll try to get him to eat and take care of him.
Alex Lange: So, I do that, and I just feel like something’s off. I wish I could tell you… I wish I could tell you really what it was, but I knew something internally was off. I started to research.
Alex Lange: dehydration in kids in the other room. I was on ChatGPT, I was looking up to see how I could help if I needed to, and I ended up falling asleep, and at around 4 AM, my wife just
Alex Lange: busts into the room, and she starts freaking out, and my wife is very calm. If you were to see our relationship, she’s the very calm, level-headed, in the sense of, like, when the kids get hurt, me, I’m like, oh, what’s going on? Let me try to fix, fix, fix, fix.
Alex Lange: She comes in, she’s like, Alex, wake up, wake up. Liam, he’s seizing, he’s seizing, he’s fainting, we need to take him to the ER, I think he’s dehydrated. And so I, without hesitation, because I had already thought about it, I got into the car, we all packed into the car, I woke up our nanny, and said, hey, I have to take my kids, or I have to take Liam, can you please stay and watch the kids? We were in Cyprus, we had a traveling nanny with us.
Alex Lange: get in the car, I don’t even know where the hospital is, I find a police officer on the side of the street, I pull in, they’re asleep, so I bang on their window. I’m like, hey, where’s the nearest emergency room? My son needs to be in the ER right now, like.
Alex Lange: where do we need to go? And they told me 20 minutes that way. So they gave me the name, I typed it in, and it took us about 15 minutes. I was speeding, I was frantic. We get to the ER, and they’re not… they don’t really speak English, they’re speaking Greek.
Alex Lange: There is some broken English that they’re speaking, but long story short, they start doing tests, and I’m telling them, my wife and I are telling them, hey, he hasn’t eaten in 14 hours, he’s probably dehydrated.
Alex Lange: Can you put an IV in? So they’re starting to try to put IVs in, and the woman says, what’s going on with his skin? His skin is a different color. And we’re like, well, when he’s cold, his skin turns a little bluish.
Alex Lange: And and they were like, but feel him, he’s not cold.
Alex Lange: And so we felt him, and he was… he was warm. And that was… that was like, oh, wow, this is something different. Now they started to worry about that, so they took him back to do scans.
Alex Lange: And they said, they came back, and everybody’s frantic at this point. Like, the nurses, the doctors, everybody’s frantic. And they’re like, he’s critical, we have to get him to a hospital, we don’t have the capabilities to take care of him here.
Alex Lange: So I’m… I’m watching them because they start doing an EKG. I… myself, having some medical conditions, I… I was very familiar with the EKG, so I looked, and the EKG had all this crazy terminology that I’ve never seen before on an EKG, and I was like, oh, shh…
Alex Lange: snap, something’s wrong. And…
Alex Lange: they say, hey, he has an enlarged heart, we have to take him to a different hospital. So I have to go run back, I call this… the Airbnb.
Alex Lange: and the people, and said, hey, I couldn’t clean it the way that I wanted to. It’s not dirty, we didn’t leave the place messy, but I just want to let you know my son’s going to the critical care in this town 2 hours away.
Alex Lange: I can’t… I gotta go now. So, I cancel the Airbnb in Cyprus, I cancel our flights, we’re… I pack up all my kids in a car with all the suitcases, our nanny, and I’m…
Alex Lange: Driving behind, behind my wife and my son.
Alex Lange: And my wife, she’s texting me, my son’s… my kids in the car are screaming because I had told them, hey, something’s going on with Liam, it’s very serious, and knowing them, I had… I wanted to make sure that I re… like, I made sure that they were okay with the fact, like, hey, you didn’t hurt your brother, you saved his life.
Alex Lange: You know, they found, they caught something in these scans, you didn’t hurt your brother, you saved his life, because they were worried, like, oh, we heard him, what’s next?
Alex Lange: We get to the hospital, and the doctors tell my wife, go fill out paperwork.
Alex Lange: And, we’ll take… we have to take Liam.
Alex Lange: my wife goes and fills out paperwork, and Liam is… they sedate Liam without asking us anything like that. We come back, I arrive, Liam’s ventilator, he’s all hooked up, and they say that he has a…
Alex Lange: A serious heart condition that, he only was born… he was born with 3 chambers in his heart, but 2 were only functioning.
Alex Lange: He had two left atriums, so he didn’t have a main aorta that was going to his lungs. So his, his, basically, internally, his body had made a way to function, but his heart, if he wanted to live, it was going to be a long process.
Alex Lange: But it was gonna take, like, 3 years after surgeries, after surgeries after surgeries, and the woman, after doing more tests, they were like, there’s nothing that we can do.
Alex Lange: But we’re gonna trans… we’re gonna transport them to Israel, so they… they had gotten an air medevac.
Alex Lange: And they said, we’re gonna transform, and we’re gonna try to do an open-heart surgery. We’re gonna try to put a stent in his heart to his lungs to see if we can kickstart the growth in his lungs. But that doesn’t promise anything. That’s gonna have to be a year long, where we see if it holds, and then we can replace his heart. He’s gonna need a whole new heart.
Alex Lange: And, 18… er, excuse me, 16 hours after he was sedated, he, he passed away. We were walking…
Alex Lange: We were driving in.
Alex Lange: I was dropping my wife off, because she was going to be on the airplane. The medevac was here, they were coming to get him, he was about to leave, and my wife calls me as she gets into the room, and she says, Alex Liam’s in cardiac arrest. I parked my car in the middle of the street.
Alex Lange: I don’t care what’s around, and I sprint as hard as I can.
Alex Lange: And I walk into… a man doing CPR,
Alex Lange: my wife, who I see, she’s so strong, she’s never really been someone to lose it, She’s…
Alex Lange: Screaming and crying on the floor.
Alex Lange: And I’m just… I’m trying to process it all, you know, and…
Alex Lange: after 10 and a half minutes, I know I went long here, but after 10 and a half minutes, the cardiologist pulls me aside, and she says, look, she takes a Doppler monitor from an ultrasound, and she says his heart’s not beating.
Alex Lange: It’s…
Alex Lange: protocol, we have to… the parents have to call it. They have to tell them to stop. Do you want us to stop?
Alex Lange: And I remember… I remember looking at my wife, Looking at the man.
Alex Lange: And… it’s like, what you see in a movie, you’re like, this is never gonna happen to me.
Alex Lange: Yeah. And, I said yes, and that, you know, we’re here…
Alex Lange: And without, you know, one less kid. 18 months old.
Jessica Dueñas: Oh my gosh.
Jessica Dueñas: Alex… Ugh, that is so heavy, and I’m…
Jessica Dueñas: I am so sorry that that is what your family went through.
Jessica Dueñas: And I remember, you know, hearing the short inversion when you did this for TEDx, and I looked over at the audience, and…
Jessica Dueñas: We were all just… Breaking for you.
Jessica Dueñas: that… I can’t imagine it, and… the…
Jessica Dueñas: The fact that you have since… Turned around, and…
Jessica Dueñas: found purpose in this, and meaning in this, is…
Jessica Dueñas: I mean, it brings awe to me, honestly. I was looking at some of, like, your work online that you shared, and one of the things that really struck me
Jessica Dueñas: is you talk about this idea of pain having two sides, right? And there’s either one that can keep you stuck.
Jessica Dueñas: Or one that guides you to a deeper version of yourself. And…
Jessica Dueñas: I… if anybody went through what you went through and stayed stuck, I wouldn’t blame them, and I wouldn’t fault them, because I feel like, wow, what an incredibly human response, right, to… to be…
Jessica Dueñas: Just broken by this and stay… stay down and stay broken.
Jessica Dueñas: So, how did you move into the…
Jessica Dueñas: the deeper version of yourself. How did that happen after such a devastating moment?
Alex Lange: I first want to say every healing journey is different for anybody that’s listening. My… how I’m able to move through this challenging time in my life.
Alex Lange: doesn’t mean that you… that you need to move at the pace that I am, right? You have to move at a pace that works for you, what fits, but I think the framework that I’ll introduce at the end, it’s important to go through those frameworks to then be able to do it on your own time, right? There’s choice. I… I think I…
Alex Lange: I sat with my wife a couple days after, and I said, you know, our daughter… I have a… my oldest daughter, she’s 7 now, but when she was 2 and a half.
Alex Lange: She was diagnosed with a brain tumor. She was having over 10 seizures a day. She had a lot of autistic tendencies, and…
Alex Lange: My life in 2021 was very challenging. I mentioned at the very beginning that I had coped and ran from every challenging moment in my life.
Alex Lange: And I ran through alcohol. I ran through working, overworking. I ran through porn. I watched a lot of porn for a long time. And I’m sitting here in a humble place of telling you, because something that you said, Jessica, that I want a lot of people to realize is that
Alex Lange: Part of our healing journey Is sharing our story.
Alex Lange: And in sharing our stories, it doesn’t just help other people, it helps us through that process. And so in 2021, when my daughter was diagnosed with a brain tumor.
Alex Lange: you know, I kept asking, why me? I was stuck in this victim mindset of, like, why did I have to get
Alex Lange: you know, why did someone have to do this to me? And then a few months later.
Alex Lange: I have… I was diagnosed with 5 brain tumors.
Alex Lange: And then I’m sitting here, like, why? Like, why am I getting hit with this?
Alex Lange: And then my wife, you know, because I had coped and ran from everything in my life.
Alex Lange: my relationship wasn’t good. You know, externally.
Alex Lange: In the Navy, I was a hard charger, what they call a hard charger. I made Chief Petty Officer, which is a high senior enlisted rank, in 7 years. I was very successful at my job, but my identity outside of the uniform, I had no clue.
Alex Lange: I’d get home, and I’d scroll, I’d watch porn, I’d drink, I would busy myself staying away from
Alex Lange: what was really going on. So my wife asked for a divorce. She had an abortion that we had, it was a 12-week-old baby boy. When she passed the baby. You could see that it was a boy. And so it was like, I went through a lot of these things.
Alex Lange: And that was my wake-up point, is I had to ask myself, at what point do I stop running?
Alex Lange: And I just stay with it.
Alex Lange: I don’t need to do anything, I don’t need to distract myself, I just need to stay with it.
Alex Lange: And so I started to just…
Alex Lange: sit in the pain. I stopped drinking because of the medical… the brain tumors. I realized that my relationship with my wife was broken because of my porn usage, like, the intimacy is affected, like, how you relate in the world to people is affected.
Alex Lange: I realized that I had a lot of childhood trauma, and still do. Like, I want to make sure people understand that a healing journey is a lifelong journey, especially anybody that has been an addict knows that it is a lifelong
Alex Lange: journey. Every day is a new day. And so, for me, I had to… I had to wake up and accept these things.
Alex Lange: So I sat with it.
Alex Lange: And… within sitting with it, I realized that there was some wisdom in the emotions. New thoughts were coming up.
Alex Lange: And with those thoughts, emotions were coming up. I started to really feel and lean into these emotions.
Alex Lange: And then I surrounded myself with men that were doing the work.
Alex Lange: And that’s very important within the healing journey, and I’m sure you could speak on this too, is when you surround yourself with people, like-minded people that are taking steps in that process, it helps so much.
Alex Lange: And so I started to see that other men were going through the same things that I was going through. And where I was isolating myself and thinking that I was the only one that was having the problem, there were other people that were going through the same thing, and hearing their stories, and hearing their perspectives.
Alex Lange: I was going back to my wife and being a totally different person because I could see how people were showing up in the world and what they were struggling with that were just like me.
Alex Lange: And so through that process, when Liam came, I had already built this foundation. I didn’t have a name for it. I didn’t have a name for this framework. I just knew that, hey, Liam died.
Alex Lange: And I needed to be… I needed to allow this to stay with me.
Alex Lange: I can’t numb it through scrolling, or working, or anything that I’ve done in the past.
Alex Lange: I gotta stay with it.
Alex Lange: And I cultivated that environment for my kids as well. I think that’s what helped me, because we were traveling, and so it was just our family.
Alex Lange: I didn’t have any external distractions, I didn’t have going to be a football coach, or a basketball coach, or the Navy, or things that were pulling me away, because I had committed that year, you know, that time frame to being fully leaned in, full-time dad, full-time partner, you know.
Alex Lange: For me, when I got kicked out of the military, I got a pension.
Alex Lange: for all the medical things that I was going through. And so that was what was our… that’s our passive income. So we just decided to reallocate our budget. Instead of having a mortgage, and a car payment, and all these other things, we decided, hey, you know what, let’s live the… let’s… let’s live. Let’s fully…
Alex Lange: See different cultures, let’s be present with each other, let’s silence… silence the external noise.
Alex Lange: And let’s… let’s really connect with each other.
Alex Lange: And so when Liam passed away, that was… being in that space and having that availability to just be with myself.
Alex Lange: And then when the emotions came up, and then asking the questions, instead of being in a victim mindset, and getting curious of what this is here to teach me… and I know that’s a challenging process when you’ve lost a child, or a partner, or, you know, you’re struggling with alcohol, or drugs, or whatever the battle is, or whatever the challenge is, I know it’s challenging.
Alex Lange: But if you can just get curious on, okay, what is this here to teach me?
Alex Lange: Why is it in my life?
Alex Lange: And that’s where I started to see a lot of change.
Jessica Dueñas: Ugh, that’s incredibly powerful, and, you know, I’m…
Jessica Dueñas: I’m so grateful that you were able to kind of get into community before all of this happened, because one of the things I’ve noticed, again, just from kind of, like, looking at all of your stuff and slightly stalking, especially in preparation to talk today, right? What I did notice is that you share very openly, and you share very vulnerably, and
Jessica Dueñas: 100%. I mean, I see it in being in recovery from alcohol, and in the sobriety community that I’m a part of, the Luckiest Club, right, that…
Jessica Dueñas: When people open up, when they share vulnerably, they break down that narrative in our heads that we’re the only one. And… because the truth is, we… we’re never the only one. And what I’ve seen in response to a lot of what you’ve shared about your story, specifically about Liam, are other people who have
Jessica Dueñas: experienced something similar, saying a version of, like, Me Too. What I’ve also seen, I have seen some people who push back, and they’re like, why are you doing this? And I’m curious, what is your… your mindset around the people who push back, and they’re like, you shouldn’t be doing this, you shouldn’t be posting this, etc?
Alex Lange: Well, I first want to say that I’ve never been the type of person that attacks the other side, like, in anything. I’m a big firm believer of education and then choice. So, you know, if we all have the same information and you make a different choice than me, then cool. Like, I respect it.
Alex Lange: It’s been… that’s been an interesting… I’m glad you brought this up, because this is something I’ve sat with the last few days, because I’ve received more backlash of, like, why are you being… like, why are you showing this? Your son just died, why are you taking a video or a picture? And at one point, I believed the same thing that they did.
Alex Lange: I’m like, this is a vulnerable moment that needs to be shared… that needs to be, like, quiet. Why are we sharing this? And…
Alex Lange: I feel like we’ve, as a society, gotten conditioned that there’s only perfection. Like, life is only, you know, if you work hard enough, if you have the big things, you know, you’re successful, we talk about success, that’s priority. And then on social media, we push the success picture.
Alex Lange: No one shares the challenges. So then, when we share the challenges, it becomes taboo. You know, like, it’s… it’s…
Alex Lange: It’s uncomfortable for some people. Death is uncomfortable for people. And
Alex Lange: I think that’s where I’m leaning into a lot, is to really say, you know what?
Alex Lange: This is my opportunity to help people realize that it’s a normal process of life.
Alex Lange: And everybody’s gonna die.
Alex Lange: We’re not able to escape that. Unless they find some miracle for us to live eternally, right? Everybody’s gonna die, and so I… in my own process, as I’ve been vulnerable and shared.
Alex Lange: I’ve heard so many beautiful stories, and that’s what I’m leaning into.
Alex Lange: You know, the positive of listening to a woman who had a 6-month-old child that passed away of the same condition.
Alex Lange: And how she got to spend so much time with him, and they knew because they got an ultrasound at 20 weeks. You know, just to back a little bit, the reason why we didn’t know Liam had a heart condition was because my wife gave birth at home and had no ultrasounds at all.
Alex Lange: And so, the doctor, when Liam passed away, she said that he was a medical miracle. He shouldn’t have lived past a few days. And so I lean into that as well, you know, where people have hit me on that, like, you guys are careless, you didn’t get your kid checked out, like, I hear it. I respect your opinion, but I also know
Alex Lange: that this happened for a reason, and he lived long, that he lived a longer life because of what we… like, of how we brought him into the world, and we got to have all these beautiful memories. So I… I tell them, these people thank you, right? Like, I don’t want anybody that comes to my page, and I’ve said this before.
Alex Lange: Everybody has an opinion. Now, for me, my opportunity is when someone hits me in the chest with something that I don’t like, how can I just acknowledge it.
Alex Lange: Thank you for your opinion, and you can… you can continue to carry on just like I’m gonna carry on.
Alex Lange: Because the… the medicine, the story, which is the medicine, It’s so much more powerful
Alex Lange: than the onesies or the twosies, the people that come hit me and say, hey.
Alex Lange: Why did you record your son?
Alex Lange: And that’s all I have, though. You know, like, those are the only… those are the last memories, and yes, he’s dead, but being able to see him…
Alex Lange: Still… I wish I could explain it to you, but it’s just… those are memories now.
Jessica Dueñas: Yeah, and you know, the thing I’m hearing
Jessica Dueñas: some of the arguments, and I remember seeing some of that posted in, like, response to some of your content, you know, we can’t change the outcomes of things in life, right? Like, if you would have
Jessica Dueñas: done… if you all would have known earlier on, you know, the timing was his timing. The other thing that I think about, too, quality of life, you know, it looks like Liam had a really beautiful life, and, like, you all did so many awesome things, and, you know.
Jessica Dueñas: I wonder what his life would have looked like if you had known that, you know, there was this heart defect going on, right? Like, would he have just been in the hospital his entire existence until his passing, and then what kind of life would that have been? You know, so it’s like, I see what those folks are saying, but at the end of the day, like, this was his lived experience, and it sounds like he did live a beautiful life with his siblings and you all until his time came, and so.
Alex Lange: So, it’s so difficult, right? And I think, like.
Jessica Dueñas: there’s so many different things that people are bringing with them when they’re making those charged comments, right? Like, their own stories, their own experiences that make them feel like their way is right. And so, I… I love that you just kind of use that as an invitation to just practice, like, alright, you can have your thought, you can carry on, and I’m gonna carry on.
Alex Lange: Can I say one thing, too.
Jessica Dueñas: Yeah.
Alex Lange: You made me think about, most people suffer in any situation, any challenge, most people suffer because they’re either thinking about the future, or they’re thinking about the past.
Alex Lange: And in this healing journey for me, I’ve really found solace in staying in the present moment as much as possible. Like, when I acknowledge, when I start to see myself thinking about the future, or I start to think about, what if we did this? What if we did that?
Alex Lange: And I feel the emotions, I take it… I stop and I take a deep breath.
Alex Lange: And I’m like, okay.
Alex Lange: Where am I at right now?
Alex Lange: Am I safe? Am I okay? Like, I start to ask myself these questions, because…
Alex Lange: That’s how… it’s so interesting how the brain works, because it’s going to take us to this what-if scenario, or this, and especially in the future, if we’re thinking about something in the future, but it hasn’t even happened, why are we anxious about it? Why are we freaking out about it? Now we have to go through that process twice.
Alex Lange: But if we can just stay in the moment and control the controllables for us.
Alex Lange: We can look at how we can control ourselves and how we show up in the world.
Alex Lange: When that moment comes, then we… then we navigate through it.
Jessica Dueñas: Yeah, and you know, when you talk about controlling the controllables, like, the only thing we’re in control of is ourselves.
Alex Lange: Yeah.
Jessica Dueñas: how do we choose to respond to things? Like, even that first emotion we’re not in control of, right? It’s really, like, we’re just in control of the decisions and, you know, what thoughts we choose to continue to, like, cycle through our minds versus not. I’m curious, I know that you do coach people, and…
Jessica Dueñas: how have you helped others, aside from sharing your story, which I think is incredibly important, and it breaks down shame, and it helps to build community.
Jessica Dueñas: how else do you support others who are grieving when they… when they share, like, hey, me too, like, what help, what… what do I do with this pain?
Alex Lange: So I created this framework. I went back and I looked at my own life as I progressed through 2021, and then the coaching clients that I had, like I said, I didn’t have a name for this process, but then as I was writing the TEDx.
Alex Lange: you know, Dr. R kept telling me, hey, I need you to create, like, some type of framework that people can take away, something tangible.
Alex Lange: So then, I thought about my son, and I’m like, hey, what a good way to honor him with the Liam process. And this process, what I do with… and I coach mostly men, so I’m not saying that I don’t take women, I’m in a different phase of my life, I was hardcore men for a long time, but…
Alex Lange: The big thing is listening. So just being there, asking them to sit with what’s going on.
Alex Lange: Not scrolling, not coping with whatever their coping mechanism is, listening to what’s going on.
Alex Lange: And then, having them write it down, I either have them write it down, so journaling, voice memos, some form of getting it out, because the thoughts that are in our head, we close the loop when we get them on a piece of paper. If we just… we… they’re there, and we just keep pushing them, they’re gonna recycle.
Alex Lange: And so with my clients, I have them do a lot of either writing, which I know is something that I saw on your page. You do a form of writing with regards to coaching. And then, I’m a big speaker, I love speaking, I love connecting to people, so I really relate with people on the voice, so I have them do a lot of voice connection, if that… voice processing, if that relates to them.
Alex Lange: And then the action piece is action to self.
Alex Lange: So…
Alex Lange: you acknowledge, or I skipped the I, the integration. So the feelings, listening to the feelings, listening to what’s coming up, and then integrating it into your life.
Alex Lange: So, not acting like it’s never happened to you, like you don’t have something going on, acknowledging it, giving it a place, giving it a name, face, whatever you need to do.
Alex Lange: Integrate it.
Alex Lange: And then let’s act with it. And that action, once again, can be as simple as a walk, it could be a phone call, it could be a journal entry, a voice memo.
Alex Lange: starting to get movement from the body, because somatically, movement is medicine for the mind. So when we start to move around, when we start to take action within what we’re going through.
Alex Lange: Other things start to flow. Ideas, thoughts.
Alex Lange: And then part of this framework that I’ve asked people to do is service to others.
Alex Lange: Now, it doesn’t mean, like, you have to go out and be so insert, like, being a servant to other people and lose focus of yourself, but the service to others is sharing your story and talking about it.
Alex Lange: Because this is the… this is the thing with regards to self-worth, is when these things happen to us, we don’t think that we’re worthy. We don’t feel like we belong in the room.
Alex Lange: And the mental part of this all, that’s more than half the battle.
Alex Lange: So I say, hey, let’s go share your story. I want you to share your story to a few people.
Alex Lange: Like, let… whatever… however… whatever platform, it doesn’t have to be Instagram or TEDx, or… but maybe it’s someone that you know that you just… that they don’t know what you’re going through. Share it.
Alex Lange: And a lot of times, the people come back and they’re like, man.
Alex Lange: I didn’t know this person was going through this, too.
Alex Lange: And especially working with men, that’s the constant theme that I get, is because we leave it… we keep it so internal, because we feel like we’re the only ones going through it. When they start to open up to other men.
Alex Lange: They… they realize that other men are going through the same thing, and then they…
Alex Lange: They stop believing that it’s… it’s not manly.
Alex Lange: It’s, it’s not manly to, to open up.
Alex Lange: You know, I think that we’ve been conditioned as men to… to keep it in, to suck it up, to… to push through it.
Alex Lange: But human beings are not meant to just always do, they’re meant to be as well.
Alex Lange: And so, we have to create a space for that.
Jessica Dueñas: Yeah, and I mean, I think it’s so important that you bring that up, because that can be such a block for men’s mental health. Like, the idea that, you know, it’s manly to not express your emotions, and then, you know, you keep all of this bottled up, and I mean, eventually, it’s like a pressure cooker, right? Like, you’ve got to let these feelings out, you’ve got to find a way to process them, otherwise it’s gonna be like an explosion, and that
Jessica Dueñas: Helps no one. Literally, it helps no one.
Alex Lange: Absolutely.
Jessica Dueñas: So I’m so glad that you’re creating, and, you know, having these spaces, having these conversations for men to really get in touch with their feelings, because it needs to be, like, we need to change the narrative socially, that it’s okay for men to carry these emotions, and to be impacted, and to name it. Again, you know, they don’t have to be suffering in silence.
Jessica Dueñas: The other thing that you had mentioned earlier that I wanted to come back to that I think is really important is With regard to, like, looking at death as a transition point.
Jessica Dueñas: I… I wanted to talk about that a little bit, only because…
Jessica Dueñas: what I’ve noticed is a lot of people are incredibly uncomfortable with speaking about death, when the reality is, is that
Jessica Dueñas: you said it yourself, everyone is going to pass away. It’s guaranteed, as much as being born is a guarantee, so is the fact that one day we all transition off of this earth. And I’m curious,
Jessica Dueñas: How you perceive death, or, like, how you aim to break the stigma around that with the work that you do as well.
Alex Lange: Yeah, I…
Alex Lange: I feel, in my own journey, this is an I statement because it starts with me, anything that I say here, it’s something that I’ve done, but I do believe that it relates with a lot of people. I was scared of death for so long because I didn’t like the life that I was living.
Alex Lange: So many people are in a job that they hate.
Alex Lange: They’re chasing the dreams of other people, they’re building the dreams of other people, they’re doing things that they don’t like to do, but because they have to financially. And so I think that they’re… in my own experience, when I ask myself, why was I so scared, it’s because I’m not living a life that I’m really enjoying.
Alex Lange: So, I am hoping, as I share more, and, you know, I talk about
Alex Lange: inspiring families to live with purpose. You know, post Liam, it’s about inspiring families to live with purpose, inspiring people to do things that they want to do.
Alex Lange: And it doesn’t have to look like mine, right? It just requires you to sit, to say, okay, what is it that I really want in the world? What is it… what fills my cup?
Alex Lange: Because a lot of times, we lose focus of that. We’re doing things because we have to do them, or we’re told to do them.
Alex Lange: Maybe, maybe you’re listening to this, and, you know, you’ve been told that, hey, you need to go this career path.
Alex Lange: You know, I was in the military for 13 and a half years, and the majority of the reason why I was in the military was because
Alex Lange: I didn’t have a relationship with my dad.
Alex Lange: Until I joined the military. My dad was a retired… he was in the military for 20 years, and he retired. And I went to the military because I didn’t really have any other options that were gonna push me up into being a productive human, and he was like, listen, you have to… you either get… you get out of my house.
Alex Lange: Or you join the military. And I was like, well, I don’t wanna… I don’t know what I’m gonna do with regards to career-wise, I’ll join the military. And so I just sucked it up. I was just continually focusing on building this… this beautiful career within the military. And then I sat back in 2021, like I mentioned, and asked myself.
Alex Lange: What am I doing this for?
Alex Lange: Who am I doing this for? Like, I hated… I loved leading people. I love leading people.
Alex Lange: But my job and being in the military, I was just like, this is not who I want to be. So then I started to take these steps of, okay, what fills my cup?
Alex Lange: What did I like about the military? How can I incorporate that into my life?
Alex Lange: So if you’re listening to this, I would ask you to just have a direction, understand where you want to go as a person.
Alex Lange: Are you in a career that really fills you up? Are you doing a job that really is giving and not just taking?
Alex Lange: If something is just taking from you, how is it serving you?
Alex Lange: And that’s… that’s why, for me, I was afraid of death, was because I’m like, man, I’m not really living a life.
Alex Lange: that I’m… like, if I was to die today, I’d have a lot of… a lot left on the table.
Alex Lange: regret. Resentment towards myself. Like, there would be a lot left on the table. And so now…
Alex Lange: Being able to…
Alex Lange: really redefined success, which I’ve changed that whole narrative in my mind. It’s not the cars, it’s not the six-figure paying job, because I had it all, and I was still struggling internally. For me, success is now about my inner self, like, having self-awareness.
Alex Lange: And then, now that helps me show up in the world differently. So, any challenge that, in my life that happens, I want to make sure I say this, because I’ve been thinking about it as you’ve been speaking.
Alex Lange: For death, when there’s death, there’s rebirth.
Jessica Dueñas: So anything that is no longer serving us that, like, falls off, it, you know, I use the word, maybe it’s a little harsh, but it dies, right?
Alex Lange: There’s a part of you that’s re… like, that’s gonna be rebirthed.
Alex Lange: You know, when forest fires… when there’s forest fires that happen, and they burn all down, the soil is actually more rich with nutrients for new trees to… to birth. So, like, that’s where I’m… where I lean into with death, is like, okay, how can I make the time that I have on Earth
Alex Lange: You know, the dash between the dates that are on the headstone, right? How can I make that dash more meaningful to me, not to others?
Jessica Dueñas: And that’s incredibly powerful, too, because if you’re kind of going off of what you’re saying, if you’re living a life that feels satisfying to you, because you’re defining what that satisfaction, what that success is.
Jessica Dueñas: then when your time comes, there’s kind of, like, that piece of, okay, like, well, I lived a good life, and so…
Jessica Dueñas: now I’m transitioning, as opposed to, like you said, that idea of, like, the stuff on the table, like, all this regret. And, you know, I hear it so much when people talk about, like, interviewing people, like, on their deathbeds, and, you know, like, the list of things that they regret, and I do hope that I’m
Jessica Dueñas: not with a lengthy list by the time that comes for me, whenever that is meant to be. I really hope and pray that I don’t have that experience either.
Jessica Dueñas: So, as we start to kind of, wrap up here, I want to think a little bit about the listener who might be… feel stuck, right, which happens to a lot of us.
Jessica Dueñas: What do you want them to kind of take from your story, or Liam’s life, or even if they get to listen to your TEDx talk? Like, what do you hope the stuck person does next?
Alex Lange: I think it’s important that…
Alex Lange: We take a moment, if you’re really… if you’re struggling in life.
Alex Lange: Possibly, if we could reframe, what if your biggest
Alex Lange: Perceived failures is actually your greatest success.
Alex Lange: So, really, when we are able to sit with ourselves, and just get curious on the emotions, the thoughts that come up, I want you to just give yourself that space.
Alex Lange: It can be… it can be in silence without any type of distraction.
Alex Lange: And this is… this may not be a one-time process. It may be a few weeks, a month’s process.
Alex Lange: But give yourself a space to know a direction that you want to go in.
Alex Lange: I talked about at the very beginning of the podcast, of educating yourself, and then having a choice.
Alex Lange: Most people follow blindly.
Alex Lange: From what the traditional narrative has been.
Alex Lange: They don’t even look into what things, like, the things that are happening in the world, and making a choice for themselves, they just follow blindly. So for yourself, I want you to really…
Alex Lange: And I steal this from a friend that told me after Liam passed, he said, love in all moments.
Alex Lange: Liam, love in all moments. He said, your healing journey, your addiction journey, your… whatever journey you’re going through.
Alex Lange: It’s about being able to love yourself. That’s how you’re going to get through the challenging times.
Alex Lange: And if you’re having a hard time loving yourself, I think it’s very important to surround yourself with people that are in this journey that you are on.
Alex Lange: That are… that are maybe a step ahead of you, or two steps, so on and so forth.
Alex Lange: And then as you’re on that journey, and you’re starting to see you’re able to love yourself more, you’re pouring back into your cup, part of this healing journey is then to look behind you and see the people that are maybe in step 0 or Step 1, and pulling them with you, guiding them.
Alex Lange: And so that’s what I want anybody that’s listening to this, is to give yourself a space to first listen.
Alex Lange: Listen to what’s coming up. Acknowledge it.
Alex Lange: Integrated into your life.
Alex Lange: Feel the feelings.
Alex Lange: Like, if you need to cry, cry.
Alex Lange: If you need to scream, scream. Give it a place, give it a name.
Alex Lange: And then take this action. Love yourself. Fill your cup.
Alex Lange: Identify a list of things that make you feel better, external of the coping mechanism. So, like, I get it, like, for me, you know, for a long time, I thought, okay, alcohol helped me feel better, porn, working, like, that’s what gave me value. But as you sit with yourself, you’re gonna realize, okay, those just took from me.
Alex Lange: What really gives me life? What makes me feel good?
Alex Lange: And when you start to do that for yourself, once again, that multiply.
Alex Lange: Get service to others by sharing your story. Everyone here, when they share their story, gives permission for others to do the same.
Alex Lange: And that’s how we heal the unconscious collective, so to speak.
Alex Lange: Our healing journey is we’re connected, we’re so interconnected as people. And when we suppress things, they come out sideways, through addiction, through drugs, through whatever it may be.
Alex Lange: And that’s why it’s important to have this expression, this creative expression.
Alex Lange: Hopefully that answers your question.
Jessica Dueñas: Yeah, no, it totally does, and when you talk about, like, that, what if your greatest perceived failure is, like, actually, like, your greatest success, or… you said something along those lines.
Jessica Dueñas: You know, it made me think immediately about my relationship with alcohol, and how there was a time when
Jessica Dueñas: I was totally in that, woe is me, why do I have to be the one that’s addicted to this stuff, and now I have to figure out how to get sober when all these people in the world just get to enjoy their casual drink, like, with dinner, I can’t do that. There was so much resentment that I had about the fact that I’m one of the lucky 10% who struggles with, you know, some sort of substance use disorder.
Jessica Dueñas: And at the same time, while I didn’t ask for it, I look around at the life that I have today, and nothing that I have today would have
Jessica Dueñas: been here, like my daughter, my relationship, you know, sort of like this rebirth that I’ve had to experience myself. None of this would be here if I didn’t have the struggle in the first place. Again, you know, resiliency, that’s a tough one because we become resilient when we go through really hard things.
Jessica Dueñas: But I’m really glad that I am a resilient person at this point, and I… I am so grateful that there isn’t anything in this world
Jessica Dueñas: that I don’t believe I can’t face, if that makes sense, you know? And the confidence that I have, and a lot of that is because
Jessica Dueñas: I overcame the struggles that I had with alcohol and continue on a daily basis. I make that choice every day to stay sober, to work to protect that sobriety. I… it is my greatest success. Everything that I have today is because of my sobriety, even though…
Jessica Dueñas: you know, would I have asked for this, you know, lot in life? Sure, no, of course not. Like, nobody wants to go through those struggles, but I did it, and here I am. So, I definitely think that it’s hard, because in those moments, when we’re in the thick of it, we don’t see the way out, but if we can just, like you said, be in community and see that there’s other people who were in our shoes, and they got through it, and trust that if other humans can do it.
Jessica Dueñas: I can too. That can really, really take us a long way. So, thank you for that point. So, Alex, before we wrap up, how can people connect with you? How can people find you, follow your work, or learn more about what you do?
Alex Lange: Absolutely. So, you can find me right now, I do a lot of more of sharing my writings, and just being vulnerable on Instagram, at alexlang22. I am not official in the sense of having a website, I do have a substack, but I’m very infant in the speaking journey. That’s been a dream of mine.
Alex Lange: And when Liam passed away, I said, hey, you know what? The reason why I did a TEDx was because Liam passed away. And I’ve been holding my own dreams off.
Alex Lange: And I was like, hey, it’s time to share. So, at alexlang22, Instagram, and then you can email me, a lot of my… I do a lot of coaching at, it’s alexlangcoaching at gmail.com, and
Alex Lange: things are evolving. You know, the TEDx, and I’m sure you could speak the same, a lot of opportunities have opened up for me since. You know, a lot of people have reached out asking me to share, and so I do… if you’re listening to this and you have a podcast.
Alex Lange: please reach out. I’d love to share my story. I’d love to have you share your story, because I think at the end of the day, as humans, we thrive on connection. Connection to self, and connection to others. And if you’re going through something that’s challenging.
Alex Lange: there’s a lot more people that are gonna have… your story is medicine to them than the people that think… that are gonna shame you, and be on you, and give you a hard time. And I… and I hid my mom… you know, for a long time, I hid my mom’s addiction, my dad’s alcoholism, because I thought it was something so bad.
Alex Lange: But the reality is, we’re all human, and we’re all going through something. We connect when we come together, and we’re just honest, vulnerable, and we’re there for each other.
Jessica Dueñas: Absolutely. Well, Alex, again, just thank you for sharing Liam’s story, thank you for opening up about how grief has shaped your journey and has you… how you navigated everything.
Jessica Dueñas: To anyone listening, just that reminder that if today’s conversation brought up anything heavy for you, please remember that you don’t have to go through grief alone. I mean, Alex shared his contact information, but also remember that there’s always a trusted friend in your circle, a support group, or even a counselor to help you talk through these things. We don’t have to go through this human experience alone, so…
Jessica Dueñas: Thank you all for listening. Thank you, Alex, for joining. Until next time.
Alex Lange: Thank you so much.
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