“I will use Tyler’s struggles to touch the lives of boys” -God
Boys, men, guys, males… whatever word you would like to use, I love really great ones.
God, clear as day, spoke a word over my son on a day that I felt worn out, frustrated, angry, and completely done with his behavior. I held onto those words for years, I’ve seen them take place through his death.
In the process, really great “boys” have entered my life.. some were already there.
This guy.. Jordan.. he has been a co-worker and friend for the last several years. The more you get to know him and learn his story, the more you simply love him.
My heart to tell his story is one of overcoming so much and using all of it to make a difference in the lives of others.
I’ll let him do the talking…..
I was born to a single mother as the youngest of 5 in Grants Pass, Oregon. My Parents had been in an on again off again relationship for the past 5 years and broke up while I was in utero. We moved to Redding around the time I was 6 months old and stayed there until right before I turned 5 and moved back to Grants Pass. The bulk of my memories begin at age 5. We lived in a double wide trailer on a hill and our property was covered in blackberries. I spent as much time as possible outside. So we lived there for a little less than 2 years. Then we moved out into what throughout my childhood was the nicest place I had ever lived, a house out in Wimer, Oregon. It had enough bedrooms where I only had to share my room with 1 person and had a sauna and jacuzzi and a swing set. I loved living there. We were only able to live there for about 4 months, because the people who rented to us put it on the market about 2 months after we moved in. During this I was going through my first 2 years of school and at the time didn't care about it at all, I refused to do anything close to homework and put most of my busy work in a roller briefcase. My teachers tried to hold me back in both the first and second grade, but my mother refused to let them because I was passing any and all of my tests
From there we were made homeless for an inability to find anyplace to rent. We stayed in our van and in campgrounds and put most of our belongings in storage. We bounced around about six times before something happened. My Mother's father had passed down in Phoenix, Arizona. We drove down there two days after finding out. I had never met my grandfather and my mother barely knew him. He had gone to prison when she was about 3 for 20 some odd years. They reconnected when she was in her late 20s and restarted a stillborn relationship. I remember the trip down to Arizona very vividly. There were only 5 of us total on this trip, my sister had already moved out of the house when she was 16 or 17. We had a dog and 2 cats with us and a van packed full of things. It was hot, we left GP right after my birthday in the middle of June and took about 2 days to drive there. Our ac broke at about Redding, California and our van started to overheat near central California and our van broke down in a park near or on death valley. It was the hottest I had ever been. We got it fixed and continued heading south. We made it into Phoenix late at night, it was still over 100°F and my mother met up with her cousin and her uncle. Both of them had already cleared out all of her father's belongings and taken anything of value for themselves. My Grandfather had contracted Hepititas C in prison and had started going into liver failure and just decided to spend to last part of his life getting as high as possible on anything until he died. He died of an overdose but then had his body ripped apart by his guard dogs. We stayed in Phoenix the entire summer. I remember the coolest it got night or day the entire time we were there was 83°F at 5 in the morning just before we left.
I had started to realize that the more of these terrible things that happened to us the more broken my mother was becoming, I was only 8 and I didn't have much in the way of means to help.
We started driving North. I thought we were going home to GP but my mother made a pitstop in Fresno, where she is from, to see some family. It turned from a pitstop to a year long stay.
The first night in Fresno we slept in the parking lot of a private school. The next day we found Aunt Cookies house (I'm not exactly clear on our relation but she is just known as aunt cookie). Aunt Cookies lived with 3 of her adults son that had no relationships and usually no job. We lived in Aunt cookies living room for about 2 months before we were able to get a place in one of the ghettos of Fresno. We lived in a large crapy apartment complex that was directly across the street from a large hobo camp. I was one of 2 white families in the entire complex. Even though the place was pretty bad I had a great time. I made friends fairly quickly. The second night we were there 3 kids about my age decided to try and jump me unsuccessfully. Soon after, we were the best of friends. We would take shopping carts from the hobo camp and race each other around the complex. While living here is when I started to really notice my brothers drinking and smoking a lot. They drank most nights and smoked cigarettes daily and weed anytime they had the chance.
I remember thinking to myself when I started school that I need to do as well as I could, and try to become as smart as I could so that I could help my mother. So I started trying in school and did very well. We had lived there about 4 months and besides the heat everyone seemed to be the happiest they had been in a long time.
There was one morning where I got up to go to school and when I went outside everything near our apartment was covered in a white powder. Later I found out that our upstairs neighbor was going through a divorce and one of them decided to try and blow the other one up with a car bomb that was placed right outside my bedroom window, but lucky for me a bomb squad had dealt with it in the middle of the night. We had lots of little crazy things like that happen, a number of drive by and other crazy events. I think the lack of safety is what spurred my mother to move us back to GP.
My father was living with a friend in Wilderville, Oregon and had us move into a spare room. I can't remember the man's name right now but I remember that he always had a beer in his hand and a cigarette in his mouth.
We lived there for about 3 months. We then got our own place on Rogue River Hwy at the Rogue River Inn. We lived there a little less than a year. My brothers had to watch me a lot and I ended up hanging with a lot of interesting people, a few of them just happened to be drug dealers. We ended up moving during the summer again, this time back to GP into the Kellenbeck apartments. We had gotten HUD so we could afford a place that had more than a 2 bedroom and 1 bathroom. I was in the 5th grade now and was still doing well in school. I was being asked to take advanced classes and to help teach other students.
My brothers brought a lot of their friends over to our house because our house was cool house without rules.
They would drink or smoke pot a lot at our place. Both of our upstairs neighbors did meth, and our neighbor right next to us was an alcoholic. While living there my brothers met Tom. Tom would have my brothers beat his knees with sticks so he could go get pills from the hospital. While living here my brothers started to get into more drugs. I don't know exactly what, but a whole mess of things. We lived in those apartments for just shy of 2 years. Again, I was happy and so was my mother and I thought things were good. Then one of my brothers got us kicked out of there on a 72 hour notice by threatening to punish a neighbors child. We were kicked off of HUD and made homeless again. We ended up living out of the van again, it barely ran.
After maybe a few weeks we ended up moving in with some strange women my mother found through the newspaper. We lived on their large back porch, I think it was screened in. We ended up adding plastic to the screen to help with the cool when winter came around. We where on a small hill out between Merlin and Hugo. We lived there maybe 4 months. Then we ended up moving because my mom refused to go to the Mormon church with her anymore so we moved in with my mom's friend Pam.
Pam was a severe alcoholic. She had been through a lot of abuse and trauma in her life. She would wake up at about 6 and drink a 24 pack by noon and then drink tequila the rest of the day. Pam lived with her boyfriend Kurt, he was real creepy and just a shell of a man. He was worth about 10 million dollars through a trust fund but lived like he had nothing. He was a hoarder and had filled his property to a mountain of things.
My mother, my brother and I lived in 1 small room together and shared a bathroom that the pipes to it had rusted. I think I bathed/showered 1 time the entire time we lived there. I was the saddest and maddest I think I had ever been. We lived there about 3 months (almost every night Pam and Kurt would get into a fight that would end with Pam punching him in the face).
We moved from there to a house out deep in Wimer, about 13 miles from Rogue River, Oregon. We were renting 2 rooms from a lesbian couple that bought a decent sized home on 5 acres and couldn't afford to pay for it, so they rented stuff out. One of them was a hoarder and had semi truck containers filled with junk. They rented us the room, rented a loft type space to someone and then rented two RV spots out. We lived there for almost exactly a year. While there I would walk to town often, and became extremely comfortable depending on myself where ever I was to do what ever I wanted. I chopped firewood almost daily, I cooked dinner for everyone multiple times a week, I dug a septic tank by hand with my brother, and put in a floor for the loft space. Both of my brothers that moved away moved back here. We all moved into the loft space. It was about 400 sq ft with 5 of us living in it. While living out there I went to RR middle school which put me back a year on science and math because when I was going to schools in other districts I was taking mostly advanced classes. When I took math at RR I was essentially a student teacher helping any kids that were having trouble in the middle of class. I was also in a class called creative minds where we just learned about anything and everything and had field trips often.
From here I moved one more time with my family, we moved into a small duplex off of Bridge St in Grants Pass. We lived here until I was almost done with school, when we moved in I told my mother that if she tried to move again that I would not be joining her and I would figure it out on my own. While living here my brother got in trouble with the law the most. My brothers drank almost daily and smoked weed as often as possible. They would crush and snort pills anytime they could and would fight over these things often. There would be a small part of sorts at this house almost weekly for the entire time we lived there. Here is where I really started to hone in on my anger. I have a very vivid memory of being 14 and getting into an argument with my oldest brother and him calling me subhuman trash and then me just seeing red, I punched him in the back of the head with everything I had.. knocking him into a rose bush. He was 26 6'3" 210 lbs, I was 14 5'2" 110 lbs. As soon as I did it I ran and ran and ran. I ran until I wasn't mad anymore. I ran about 4 miles. I was barefoot and I was tired, I walked home and just thought about everything. I started doing this every time I would get mad. I would just run until I wasn't mad anymore. I hated running so it was a good deterrent from getting mad, also every time I would walk home I would go back over why I got mad and figure out a way to not get mad by these things. I found a way to become less reactionary through this.
A lot of things happened while we lived there, we had 4 or 5 different friends of my brothers that would randomly stay there for a few weeks at a time. Both of my older brothers got their girlfriends pregnant and had kids. One of my brothers got married. My other brother ran away and started using meth and heroin heavily. When I was 17 and half way through my senior year of high school my mother had a full mental breakdown. She stopped paying rent, went on a bunch of shopping sprees and then threatened to kill herself. In April 2013 she moved down to Fresno and I stayed in Grants Pass. I moved in with a very good friend of mine and put all of my stuff out at my dads house out in Murphy. I don't think I told the school or anyone, but a few friends and I finished out the year. I didn't talk to my mother for a little over 2 years, she never contacted me. I ended up staying with that friend and his family and started helping a lot around the house with cooking and cleaning because they insisted that I go to school. I graduated without much issue, but did not tell anyone that I was sleeping on a friends floor. I did not tell the school what had happened. This wasn't an issue because since I was about 10 I had been forging my mother's signature for all documents related to school.
After high school I was set to get a degree. I had originally planned to move to Germany and work toward degrees in business and linguistics, but then I met the woman that would become my wife. I met her through a mutual friend and within minutes of meeting her I was sold. I scraped the Germany plans and shifted everything for a chance with this girl. I started going to the local community college, taking business classes and then decided to find a degree with similar classes so I could spend as much time with her as possible. My focus was her and school was just a secondary. I ended up becoming a massage therapist and getting an associates in business while working a lot and spending the rest of my time with my girlfriend. I was a part owner of a small multimedia marketing business, I worked doing anything I could so I could have money, and I was taking between 18 and 22 credit terms, all while sleeping 2 - 4 hours a night. I turned my friend's pantry into my bedroom and he let me live in there for free, but I felt the need to help around the house so I would also help cook and clean and manage there landscaping. I did all of this for about 2 years, and because my friend let me stay at his house I did it debt free. I then started doing massage on my own for a little over a year while working nights at a company where I helped adults with intellectual disabilities. After a year of doing it on my own I got a position at Axis Health where I met Angie.
All of the things that I went through made me who I am today. Which makes me happy and grateful that I went through them. Today I am married to the love of my life, I am a proud home owner, I am successful in work (not only financially but in the fact that I love what I do), and I strive to be a better version of me every day. I work on myself mental, emotionally or physically every day so that I can be better for myself and better for the ones that love me and the ones that don't know me yet, so that I can influence change in as many lifes as possible.
~STORY HIGHLIGHTS~
*When I was 5 my 2 oldest brothers decided to teach me to fight. So throughout all of this I was constantly learning to fight.
*When I was 10 they started having me fight people closer to my size like there friends and would have me fight often. This happened at least 4 times a week from 6 to 16. I go to school.
*Starting at 5, my mother started teaching me to be self sufficient. She taught me how to cook, bake, clean, sow, repair things, pay bills, and balance a checkbook until at 10 or 11 I was borderline self sufficient.
*My anger issues go back as far as I can remember but reached their peak from 12 to 14. I was afraid that if I didn't change my ways that I would end up dead or in prison.
*My brother that is 15 months older than me is high functioning Autistic, so a good portion of my time was spent almost acting like his older brother.
*From a very young age I realized that I needed to find a way out of the cycle that my family was stuck in. So I started to learn vicariously what not to do from my brothers and mother.
*I would usually see my father once a month for most of my adolescence.. sometimes more, sometimes less. I never hated him, but I often wished that he would have helped more.
*I started to understand that people let their traumas consume them so I tried as hard as I could to deal with all of my trauma immediately.
*In high school I started visiting my sister every summer down in Fresno for a few weeks at a time. It was nice to get away from the disfunction.
*When I was 14 I started trying to get jobs anywhere and everywhere and got turned away by everyone so I ended up joining a number of after school clubs so at the time I ended up being unable to work. The clubs helped to build and reassure my confidence and keep me away from home. I knew that I was the most reactionary around my family, so any chance I had to not be home I took.
-Jordan D
You guys.. seriously.. when I asked Jordan if I could share his story, my intention was to highlight good men who make it out of chaos and dysfunction to be a positive influence to those around them (which is exactly what he does and what I love the most about him) but after reading all of the above, I knew I needed to let him tell it and I would simply just add to it.
I love good men! I love men who have the heart and mind to overcome every circumstance and obstacle to be a positive influence to those around them.. to learn and grow and overcome, so that the world is a better place because of them.
Jordan is that man, and I love knowing him because of it. Never underestimate the power of your story, it very well could be the open door for another to change the course of their life.
Be an influencer.
Be the change.
Be the difference.
You Are Lovely… don’t believe the lie