Jonah Holm and John Holm

Recorded January 3, 2015 Archived January 3, 2015 41:20 minutes
0:00 / 0:00
Id: chi001004

Description

Jonah Holm (27) and their father, John Holm (56), talk about their relationship growing and changing through Jonah's struggle with suicide and addiction. Jonah talks about being inspired by John and deciding to give their life to God as a six month trial.

Subject Log / Time Code

Jonah talks about being a teen and being emotionally distant.
John talks about being afraid for Jonah, and struggling to fix Jonah.
John talks about being the pastor of a troubled church, and learning that he was part of the problem. He heard the same thing that applied to his personal and professional life.
Jonah talks about being inspired by their father's faith.
Jonah talks about recognizing how important Jonah was to John in rehab.
John talks about coming to terms with the idea that Jonah might die.
Jonah describes their relationship as friends, colleagues, and confidants in addition to traditional parent roles.
John talks about feeling lucky at the relationship he has with his child.

Participants

  • Jonah Holm
  • John Holm

Recording Locations

Chicago Cultural Center

Venue / Recording Kit


Transcript

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00:02 John Holmes 56 years old January 3rd, 2015 Chicago Cultural Center, Miami father

00:14 I'm Jonah home. I'm 27, it's January 3rd 2015 at the Chicago Cultural Center and I am Johnson.

00:25 So as we thought about doing with the question that I want to begin with, how would you describe our relationship from your perspective in map. Of High School freshman sophomore year and then you went to college early.

00:49 Yeah, I struggle to describe our relationship a lot then and I have I said before to other people in my life that I feel like I didn't really know until I was 18.

01:06 I think there's a sort of a big blank probably.

01:15 I was going through so much at a time.

01:20 And I think I was probably pretty absent from our family. Sometimes just emotionally, you know, I know I spent a lot of time locked in my room or straight away and then eventually when I was 16 physically I went to school I would come home just to sleep.

01:42 And

01:45 Yeah, so I think it's hard for me to think about our relationship it all cuz it wasn't it wasn't really I wasn't experiencing it. I think about this when I was a kid.

02:01 Primary experience of you and us as a kid was that you were my dad and you are a good dad and you were always going to be there and you were really reliable you were really involved in a way that a lot of my friends dads weren't but I didn't think you liked me and that was really hard cuz I didn't I didn't quite know what to do with that. I wasn't very good at a lot of the things that

02:33 So you like to do with it like we would try and do together and I was totally uncoordinated. You try and teach me how to rollerblade and I'll just fall down and hurt myself and want to stop and start falling. I didn't really like it and even has like 10 or 11.

02:54 You volunteered as you often did it at my school today to help me and some other kids do a project. We're building a balsa wood bridge and he was like engineering and and and I remember you telling me before you cut and you get so frustrated and I I remember to thinking all I'm just not I'm not very good at this and so I didn't know how to connect with you at all. And so then when I was an adolescent and I was so unhappy and so confused, and so I knew that you wanted to support me.

03:41 But I didn't even know how to talk to you and I felt like you didn't really know how to talk to me either and so you would try and offer advice or try and be a support and I just

03:53 I was having none of it cuz I didn't I was like, well, you're my dad and you're good, but you're over there and we have nothing to talk about and you don't understand my experience and I can never be the kind of kid that you wanted me to be and so I will just be unhappy and kind of a kid failure over here by myself, which is a feeling. I was having an alarm from 6 to 4.

04:25 How about you?

04:27 What years of your adolescence?

04:30 Email back to your first two years of high school you it was clear that you expect out. We are that you and I thought it was my job to protect you and to fix you and so I gave you no time for

05:13 And so I would just give you more and louder and harder and of course I can work but it was the only thing I knew to do in your darkroom. A lot of people knew what I knew harder. I pushed you away more and more and I was just really scary and hard to see and then you actually left.

06:04 You know you actually, you know more year left home and started calling too early and stuff and I thought well, maybe this will be good for you.

06:26 So

06:29 I was really am lost and I knew for a while that what I was doing was not working.

06:39 But he just kept doing it.

06:46 I mean, I think

06:49 My experience of the of the fixing attempt was similar to the the instructions to cut the balsa-wood differently when we were trying to build a bridge where

07:04 You would tell me and it would sound so simple and it would feel simple to you and it would feel simultaneously simple and impossible to me. Right and so whenever I thought you trying to fix me my experience was I can't be fixed and you keep trying and the more you try the more I fail.

07:25 Until I think that's part of why I just took myself out of the family cuz I thought you know, the family is good and I'm not and I know they want good things for me, but I can't so I could just stop disappointing everyone you remove yourself coming back here and there but what I experienced you were finally realized you were bringing me down.

08:16 And then we got some interesting to me. I went in the family counseling so that you could be fixed.

08:48 And I'm

08:51 I can only change myself and that indeed I needed to bring.

08:57 Regardless of what you were going to do so at some point I had to not only will let you go cuz I was trying to reel you back all the time.

09:25 You know you're going to do what you're going to do, and I haven't I realized that were important for me to be so and abandoned you.

09:55 It felt like I got my life back.

09:58 Call the energy and from my perspective all of the time that you were trying to fix me.

10:13 Meant that I was the problem and I was the one hurting her family and every time I couldn't just let my my problem be fixed by you or other members of our family the family continued to hurt and I think that's part of why I mean I kept coming back because because I love you because you're my family and because it was so important, but I think I kept trying to leave in part because I

10:44 I felt like I was hurting everybody and

10:49 And in some ways

10:53 You know, I I was the center of a lot of a lot of hurt their family was going through but for you to step out and stop trying to fix me and then address your staff get your life back as he say.

11:09 Then then I could just

11:12 Be a member of the family instead of being the thing that was wrong with us.

11:21 So

11:34 So we become a little bit and what have I could share with you and and it is that it's interesting how

11:46 God's chosen for me was the moment. You know that I'm trying to fix you and it's not working after I also in turmoil.

12:03 And just like in our relationship. I was part of the problem.

12:08 Again in my shirt, of course. I was also getting professional coaching and I heard the same things and my couch which was

12:37 You can't control others only your own perspective attitude and approach to a huge aha moment for me that.

12:58 The thing, you know trying to fix people under control organization work for long time.

13:09 And realizing that there was a different way, but I have to learn.

13:16 But I had to give up the old man in a proof like totally differently was with both scary and freezing at the same time when I learned.

13:33 But it also has like that anymore. I can just relate to you as a person not obviously relationship important to everything for me.

14:12 What are your journey?

14:17 Camina a lot a lot was happening here.

14:21 As an adolescent I was

14:25 Suicidal and confused and drug-addicted and isolated

14:33 The majority of people started speaking into my life at that time with people who are similarly on well under resource emotionally.

14:46 I think during the beginning years of that my experience of you and our family was that you were people who had it together. So you were in a camp of like he added together in a camp of like angsty suicidal drug-addicted teenager, and I was hanging out with my kind.

15:08 And when I would venture into your face, it was just so Stark, especially when you would make suggestions or what felt like demand of me around my behavior for my emotional health, or are you

15:27 You would ask me and I can hear the desperation in your voice that you would ask me how to help.

15:35 And I didn't know I didn't know that something just fundamentally wrong with me.

15:44 A lot A lot happened over those years and counseling was certainly a part of it.

15:55 Facebook a huge part of it too. I mean, I think I saw there were a lot of differences between you and the unhealthy people that I was hanging around. But but I saw that a lot of your strength your health your mental and emotional and spiritual well-being came from having this this rock of Faith, which is something that I always wanted a thought I couldn't couldn't have couldn't access.

16:25 I mean like V big change.

16:29 In my life in that time was

16:34 A place where like I knew that I was going to die.

16:38 And

16:40 Other people around me were dying.

16:44 And I I was I was distressed by how okay I was with that Prospect.

16:52 So I remember.

16:55 Starting to have conversations with you about face and about God and about frankly. I think it's a lot of questions that people ask at the end of their life.

17:10 What is going to happen to me? And what is God really about and

17:16 Has it all been worth anything and I I experienced some amount of hope it but in a very pragmatic way, I thought I can engage so I can spare a few things that I can try before I lay down and die.

17:35 You were

17:38 The only stable play it like the family was the only stable place anymore in my world and because of the way that you were able to engage me as a person and share of your own Journey when I reach out to you at that time when I was by 18.

18:01 You became the center of that for me. You became this this this place that I could go back to an end just explore and I would Retreat back into my own isolation, but I I should have tested the waters there for a while and then eventually said, okay well.

18:19 I'm going to try living the way that you do and that wasn't anymore. I don't know if I understood something new about you or if it was.

18:32 Everything else is stripped away or if it was some miracle from the Hun but like I started to recognize that the way that

18:41 That you were different from me wasn't about measuring twice before you cut or being more complicated than I was it was that when you were in your deepest distress.

18:55 You went to God.

18:58 And that give you hope.

19:03 And so I thought okay well.

19:07 I will try I will try and that was when I showed up and said hey, I am addicted to heroin I need to drop out of college and go to rehab and it would be really great. If I could. I knew you all were immediately supportive and I spent the next few months or the same way cuz I will do everything I can to give myself over to the gods over to this hope over to this different experience of the world.

19:48 And if at the end of a few months of that I gave him 6 months and I said if I know how to do it, but I will I will give God's that and

20:01 And you became

20:05 Apartment or in that with me and you weren't trying to fix me anymore and that gave me the freedom to just come to you and talk cuz you weren't you weren't going to give me answers about God you were going to ask those questions with me. You weren't going to give me the spiritual recipe to you know, being more functional adult. You were just going to be private in me. As I was seriously searching and say yeah, I'm searching to

20:35 Can I experience. And that support from you in a totally different way and it wasn't until that time that I realized I could have new in Alexa that you loved me and I worried that you didn't like me but

20:51 But that love must have been so weak like my idea of what your love for me men was so small because it didn't have room prize.

21:06 If you would ask the time, I would have known that you would show out that you would do the things you're a reliable person, whatever but I remember.

21:16 You taking my calls stepping out of work work with such a huge part of your life was so important to you that when I found out later that in my darkest moments anytime. I called you were you were always answering the phone and I didn't realize that it wasn't because you were always available it was because you always made you would step out of important meetings whenever I called and when I said, hey, I need to go to rehab you drove me an hour there and then you drive an hour back to work and then you drive an hour to pick me up and drive an hour back and and

21:59 I didn't register to me until that time how important I was to you.

22:05 But that would be a logical choice for you to make.

22:11 Because You Loved Me and I think at that moment it stop being important whether you liked me because loving you meant something else

22:29 That that really stood until I think my entire I left and I was trying to hold it all together. It's my fix myself. I was trying to let myself be fixed. I was trying not to lean on you all too much because I knew I was hurting you and you couldn't help me cuz I couldn't be helped.

22:46 But when I when I like gave up my whole life and all of my my horrible coping mechanisms. I had nothing I didn't I could barely get up out of bed and forced me to trust.

23:09 You in a way that I hadn't before I think and I support coming from you with such a different kind of support. It was accompaniment. It was present that was being with you were just with me and you weren't rejecting me and you weren't

23:28 Fixing mean or advising me

23:32 You were just

23:35 Letting me do me but not alone.

23:40 And

23:44 I remember.

23:46 Within a year after that we're going to hear after going to rehab in.

23:52 And moving in with you guys for a Time.

23:57 Remember being at a retreat and just starting to sob because I have I thought about the prospect of of your death.

24:08 And I just thought I can't lose him.

24:13 He's my dad.

24:18 And that had never

24:21 I spent my whole life trying to.

24:26 Be okay with the prospect of losing you.

24:30 I couldn't pretend anymore.

24:35 And I let myself just love you and need you.

24:42 And over time I've had to come to the fact that someday I will lose you.

24:49 And that will be devastating.

24:53 And it will be okay.

25:00 But I'm not moving through life anymore. Trying to just

25:04 Prepare for your absence.

25:10 I'm trying to be present so that I can love your presence.

25:16 I need it.

25:19 And it's totally different.

25:22 No, it's totally different different you find it. You know, we both had to let go of old.

25:33 Model and all definitions of our relationship

25:39 Intentionally

25:44 It took a lot of intentionality to give those old definitions. What broke it open for?

25:59 Female

26:02 Be there and then to do it together to come alongside of each other, you know, so.

26:21 That time

26:25 When when it was coming back when our relationship was being restored?

26:32 It was interesting because it happened for me in ways that I didn't.

26:42 Naturally for me that

26:50 I could tell you no and you talked about whether or not I liked you or and I actually didn't ever think you like me.

27:10 But I realized but that really wasn't important current new.

27:25 And that

27:27 Are there any way for me?

27:30 Who is that like from your perspective like what you know is he talked about before giving me advice trying to fix what what did loving me in a new way with a different idea of what that would look like. What was that like their didn't you actually meant if it's you know, cuz I started this before you knew became God and all that also included.

28:12 Being okay to word it also included.

28:18 Living with the reality that you might die.

28:25 And that

28:28 My not trying to fix you.

28:31 Would wouldn't be the cause of it?

28:36 I could protect her anymore. I could love you, but could be your protector anymore. And that's a very scary thing for a parent to come to that real.

28:50 And what it meant was

28:55 You know, I'm a different generation than you really

29:18 Found and wonderful and real as mine.

29:25 And so

29:31 You told me who you were and you told me about your life and you told me how you could change the world.

29:43 More of you

29:59 You know who you were able to help enough to each other? Cuz I do I remember the intuitive in the Before Time feeling like when I would tell you who I was or what the world I lived in look like you would end and what my experience was and coming in so defensive I didn't have any room feeling cuz I wasn't I didn't feel recognized that you love me and I was like bullshit. I don't care about that. Do you respect I think that was about being recognized and understood.

30:53 Cuz I couldn't understand that. I couldn't even understand and you were trying to understand it. But also correct it and so when you

31:07 While I was still such a mess when you started to just let me be that and articulate that overtime as I got healthier when I when I stopped feeling like I had to defend myself and my world that gave me room then two for the first time in my life. I say, oh well, so who are you I think I stopped worrying about whether you liked me.

31:37 Hartley when I felt like you

31:41 Will you love me in this really meaningful way that that made liking me not as important, but also I really stopped asking that question at all when I realized I liked you and I and I was it but I knew you for the first time in my life and that's why when I try and tell you my friends are like how you and your dad are so close. How did you get to be so close what we know what we like growing up and I didn't I didn't know my dad until I Was Eighteen, but then I started

32:24 How how would you describe a relationship today?

32:30 Well, you're my dad and I

32:36 I don't know. It's not enough to say that you're my friend. But you are among a thousand things. You are a friend a confidant. You're somebody who I look forward to seeing somebody who life. I'm invested in somebody who who calls I gladly take and there are not many but I I just looked forward.

33:02 I look forward to talking to you to spend time with you. You're still my dad in some of the most classic ways of your the person that I call when I'm in trouble. If you're a person that I call when I'm trying to fix my friends water heater and I'm being a struggling but I my relationship with you is so complete and I'm so grateful because you're not just a relic of my past because I think a lot of people experience their parents. You are a huge part of my present life and I'm a part of yours and I am

33:42 I'm just really grateful for that.

33:48 Night Owl lamp

33:50 I tell people that.

33:53 I'm just amazed. Joyful that you like me to actually like to spend time with me and they are shocked and we can about something. I never have her dream where we are today. So filled with joy and thankfulness about where we are today. I really do look forward to spending time with

34:53 Love now that you know in your headlights. But I'll never so you add.

35:23 Is there other stuff that we wanted to ask?

35:29 You're good.

35:31 Anything else for 4 minutes? I mean, I think it's hard cuz we gave flashed some sort of where we were and what we went through and now I want to find a way to describe in ways other than sort of Big Ideas. What a relationship is like now.

35:57 Someone on hand eye.

36:01 I just

36:04 How much of what we do it but I need even today so we wanted to do this project together and you came out on a train you're going to be a little early. So we're like let's grab lunch. We can talk and and prep for this interview. And for the first hour that we were together. We didn't talk about this because I asked you what book you were reading on their way here and can we spend the next you know, what that means for your work with what that means for the church that I work with what that means for my coop with that means in our family what that means for, you know denominations and we just get caught up with the other word that feels too kind of cold, but but is accurate is like I

37:04 I come to you for work advice. We you know, we talked to Thurman's that we're preaching the same thing on that the same tax on the same Sunday. We could have totally different conclusions. And so I look forward to hearing your sermon and and hearing how your take on it and

37:21 And so there's just so many dimensions. I think you're my dad. You're my friend. You're my colleague. You're my mentor. You're somebody who keeps me company or somebody who spends time with me. You're somebody who called me sometimes and then we'll get distracted but will refuse to get off the phone so you can hear you kind of working in the background, but you don't want to hang out cuz we're enjoying talking and that's who you are to me.

38:06 What do you want for the future of your relationship?

38:11 Future I want more but we have today which is this comfortable.

38:21 Wonderful pretty darn transparent for the father and child relationship and two. I'm just looking forward to seeing where you're going.

38:36 And you're doing something awesome things in your life in your vocation. And you know, I just look forward to

38:50 Watching the part of that and learning from it.

38:55 I love our relationship now and I so I just want more but looking to the future. I really

39:09 I'm so excited.

39:12 To see where you're going. I think one of the times when I realize how much our relationship had changed was when you called me and I was in Guatemala and I think typically in those situations when a parent call the child and her child is traveling. It's this very brief. Like hey, are you alive and I'll have you got food poisoning yet? And we ended up having a long conversation so long that I had to run out to the store and buy more minutes because you were telling me about your journey starting Consulting and I was so that was so great to be to be involved in your life. And so I'm really excited as you and you can sit the continue doing Ministry in Consulting as you are looking for retirement as you do kind of activism or can you go to Palestine and I'm so excited to be

40:11 A part of that writing about you to everyone I know as I'm so excited to see things that you're doing and I'm super excited for you to continue to be involved in in my life and in the church, I want to start and then and you know the coop that I'm a part of support income involvement in my children family and have been really amazing. I'm super pumped for when I have kids and I'm so excited for you to be a grandparent to them and to see what that will be like for us, but I'm really

41:00 I'm not sure what the future has but I'm excited about it. And I think I've learned throughout the course of all of this that I can trust that no matter what happened. We will both we're both in it now.

41:17 And that's awesome.