37 John Henry Parker | How Helping Troubled Veterans Helped Him Deal With Grief Artwork

How To Deal With Grief and Trauma

You can't go through life without experiencing loss and trauma the question is how do we deal and live with the grief and pain? Join Nathalie Himmelrich, grief expert and author, talking to people who have experienced grief and trauma first-hand. If you want to be inspired by others who traveled through their grief and trauma, found that healing is possible, and came out the other end knowing they can survive and thrive in life after loss. For more info: www.nathaliehimmelrich.com

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How To Deal With Grief and Trauma

37 John Henry Parker | How Helping Troubled Veterans Helped Him Deal With Grief

May 08, 2023 • Season 4 • Episode 37

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Today on the podcast I am speaking with John Henry Parker who has experienced multiple losses in his family. From avoiding grief and its emotionality altogether after the loss of his older brother Russel when John was just twenty years old, he could no longer do that when his son Danny died in 2009. Therapeutic writing and helping other troubled veterans as he calls them were his ways of dealing with his loss.

About this week’s guest

John Henry Parker is a behavioral assessment analyst, writer and audiobook narrator. For over 35 years, he has immersed himself in the work of personal transformation with a simple philosophy; Apply everything to self, first.
His passion ranges from writing, offering men’s transformational work to the philosophy in life of giving back and paying it forward. His passion for supporting and working with transitioning veterans and their families is in memory of his son Danny, who was killed in an adrenaline-seeking, excessive speed-related motorcycle accident after completing his military service. Danny was a Purple Heart Recipient and Combat Veteran of two deployments to Afghanistan with the Army 10th Mountain Division. John is a former peacetime Marine, and his father was a former Marine, Korean War Combat Veteran, and Air Force Reconnaissance photographer in Vietnam.

Check out John’s links:

Topics discussed in this episode

Growing up with an alcoholic father and in a ‘bad’ neighborhood
His mother’s Parkinson’s disease for 35 years
Significant losses: John’s older brother Russel through a motorcycle accident when he was twenty, and his son Danny (highspeed motorcycle accident) in 2009
Aunt Glady’s influence on John’s view on life: God is love, the gift of empathy, and the law of reciprocity
Working with troubled veterans
Epigenetic trauma