Introduction

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In this deeply moving episode of The Enlightened Life Podcast, host Scott Allan sits down with John DeDakis—acclaimed novelist, grief coach, and former CNN editor—to explore the transformative power of grief writing and healing through writing. Together, they dive into how writing can serve as a lifeline for those navigating loss, trauma, and personal transformation. Whether you’re coping with loss, seeking writing advice for beginners, or curious about the creative writing process, this conversation is filled with wisdom, warmth, and practical takeaways.

Chapters

• 00:00 – Cold Open: The Weight of Unfinished Stories
  Scott sets the scene for a vulnerable conversation about grief, healing, and the power of writing during the quietest hours of the night.
• 02:00 – Introducing John DeDakis: From Headlines to Healing
  Meet John DeDakis—journalist, CNN editor, novelist, and grief coach—as he shares how personal loss led him to writing as therapy.
• 05:00 – Journalism and Grief: Skills That Translate
  John discusses how a career in journalism shaped his ability to process and articulate grief, and the surprising ways reporting prepared him to face deep personal loss.
• 09:15 – Writing Without Deadlines: Freedom & Challenge
  Scott and John explore the differences between writing on deadline for news and the liberating (and sometimes paralyzing) nature of creative writing for healing.
• 12:00 – Writing as a Woman: Empathy and Vulnerability
  John reflects on writing his protagonist, Lark Chadwick, as a young woman, and what he learned about empathy, vulnerability, and emotional storytelling.
• 14:00 – Grieving Differently: Men, Women, and Relationships
  A candid discussion about how men and women process grief, the challenges couples face, and why understanding these differences matters in healing.
• 17:00 – The Catharsis of Writing: Fiction as Autobiography
  John shares how autobiographical fiction allowed him to process trauma and loss, and how writing became a record of his healing journey.
• 21:00 – News Media & Empathy: Navigating a 24/7 Cycle
  A thought-provoking look at how constant news and social media affect our empathy, emotional resilience, and ability to process grief.
• 24:30 – Getting Started: Advice for Beginners Facing Grief
  John offers practical tips for those paralyzed by pain, including the power of journaling, writing prompts for grief, and the importance of the “discovery draft.”
• 27:50 – Scott’s Story: From Funeral Director to Medium & Author
  Scott shares his own journey of writing through grief, awakening, and transformation, and how his memoir took shape over years of self-discovery.
• 29:40 – The Unfinished Story: Is Healing Ever Complete?
  A reflection on whether writing truly chronicles healing, or if the process is always ongoing.
• 31:00 – Move Toward the Pain: Writing as Survival
  John’s advice for anyone struggling with loss: embrace the pain, get it onto the page, and use writing as a tool for survival and growth.
• 34:00 – Final Thoughts & Resources
  John and Scott wrap up with encouragement for listeners, resources for grief support, and an invitation to explore more healing stories through writing.

Watch The Episode

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In This Episode

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Key Topics & Takeaways
Writing as Therapy: How John DeDakis used memoir and fiction to process grief, including the loss of his sister and son.
Journaling for Healing: The value of therapeutic journaling and how it helps capture raw emotion in the moment.
Autobiographical Fiction: The art of transforming pain into art and surviving tragedy through storytelling.
Grief Support: Insights into emotional resilience, grief counseling, and the importance of a personal support system.
Journalism and Grief: Lessons from a career covering presidential scandals and national tragedies, and how those skills translate to personal storytelling.
Writing Workshops for Grief: How John now helps others use writing as a tool for healing and self-discovery.
Advice for Beginners: Overcoming paralysis, starting your memoir, and the freedom of writing your own story.

Memorable Quotes
“Writing isn’t just about telling the truth, it’s about surviving it.” —John DeDakis (00:50)
“The page is a place where the lost are found and the broken can finally speak.” —Scott Allan (01:22)
“Move toward the pain. Getting it on the page is a therapeutic and constructive way to deal with it.” —John DeDakis (31:05)

Resources & Links
Learn more about John DeDakis: johndedakis.com
Explore John’s novels and grief writing workshops
Scott Allan’s book: In the Presence of Light
Listen to more episodes of The Enlightened Life Podcast for inspiration on grief support, personal storytelling, and healing through writing

Full Unedited Transcript

Scott Allan (00:02.062)
Thanks

It’s 2 17 a.m. The world is silent, but your mind is not. You’re staring at the ceiling holding the weight of a thousand memories, some beautiful, some brutal, but all of them unfinished. For John DeDekes, this is where the real stories begin. Not in a bustling newsroom, not in the White House, slain, but in the quiet, haunted hours when the loss is the only thing that feels real.

He’s been the man behind the headlines, the editor shaping the news for millions. But when the camera lights fade and the world stops watching, is just a father, a brother, a man searching for answers in the ruins of heartbreak. So what do you do when the story you’re living is the one you wouldn’t wish on anyone? For John, the answer was to write again and again until the pain made sense or at least

made a little less noise. My guest today claims that writing isn’t just about telling the truth, it’s about surviving it. John DeDekes knows what it means to chase the story, whether it’s a presidential scandal or the private unspeakable tragedies that never make the news. He believes the page is a place where the lost are found and the broken can finally speak.

I’m Scott Allen and this is the Enlighten Life Podcast where we dig beneath the surface to uncover the mysteries of the soul, the afterlife, and the stories that refuse to let us go. Let’s uncover the truth. John, I wanna thank you for sitting with us today. I really appreciate you coming and sharing your story, not just your professional story, but your personal losses with us as well. I appreciate that.

John DeDakis (01:53.007)
Thank you, Scott. What an introduction. was very powerful.

Scott Allan (01:57.984)
thank you. Thank you for that. Yeah. You know, I’d really like to talk a little bit about how you found your way from the from the newsroom to the quiet, you know, lonely work of healing through your writing. You’ve covered riots, interviewed presidents and shaped national conversations. But when you lost your sister and then later your son, did any of those skills even begin to prepare you for the story you had to write for yourself?

John DeDakis (02:25.529)
I think that the chops that one has when they’re a journalist do prepare them to prepare a person to articulate what’s going on. And that was certainly the case for me. And that may actually have been a saving grace because it’s easy to bottle things up. And by having a career that required

answering deadlines and sticking to deadlines and writing when the muse isn’t there, when it’s cacophony and chaos all around and you still have to write. I think that did prepare me for being able to articulate the truth, as you say, in those dark hours. So I think journalism was a good preparation.

Scott Allan (03:19.832)
would think, yeah, in terms of that, but you know, I also feel like there’s this myth that journalists are somehow detached or objective, you know, when they have, because they have to be objective when they go out and they report, they’re reporting, right? But how did you face the pressure to keep it together while everything was just really falling apart?

John DeDakis (03:35.471)
Well, it depends on, I mean, if you’re talking about everything falling apart, covering a story, you know, I mean, probably the most difficult situation I was in when I was tear gassed. And that was a long time ago. I was just starting out as a reporter and, you know, keep it together. Well, you can’t when you’re basically, you can’t see and you’re fighting for air. But.

But then there’s also the personal tragedies that one has. I suppose the luxury, if I could use that word, is that in order to write about it, you don’t have to write about it on deadline. You can take the time to process it. And so I think that too is a saving grace that allows you time to process the pain.

Scott Allan (04:30.722)
Well, and I want to just point out to for people who are listening, you covered President Reagan. You know, I think I’ve seen somewhere pictures of you in the Oval Office with him potentially. And also you work for CNN, specifically Wolf Blitzer. You know, you’ve worked for his show as well. And you went from that journalistic type of writing to writing a novel, which was really based on, you know,

your, what was happening in your life at the time. How was that going from that to this blank page in front of you where you had to share, you know, some of your deepest sorrows and feelings?

John DeDakis (05:15.269)
And the transition actually happened while I was at CNN. They made me an editor. I’d been a reporter and a writer, and I needed a creative outlet because editing was tedious, but it paid well. And so that’s when I started to play around with writing fiction. And so the very first story that I wrote or the first book that I wrote took 10 years to get published, but I was drawing from personal experience.

the suicide death of my sister in 1980, which would have been 15 years earlier from when I started writing fiction. And so, you you write what you know. And so I was pulling from personal experience and getting it onto the page. And it was a catharsis. And so while I was at CNN, I was also teaching myself how to write fiction. Some would say, you were always writing fiction if you were at CNN. But…

Scott Allan (06:10.542)
That’s another podcast. Right.

John DeDakis (06:11.427)
Be that as it may, we won’t go there, but that’s another podcast. But it was an opportunity to have a day job. Actually, I was working overnight, so we’re all just confused here. But I used the platform that I had and the opportunity that I had to get better as a writer of fiction. So I went to writers conferences and I read books and just learned how to.

write better and learned about the craft of writing fiction, learned about the business of publishing. And so it took 10 years to get the first book published and it took like 80 something like 39 rejections before I got the agent that I’ve got. So it was a process. There’s the long view. I think you need to take the long view.

Scott Allan (07:03.778)
Yeah, yeah. You said that every novel is a little bit autobiography. How much of what you went through, your experiences, did you let the protagonist in your novel, Lark Chadwick, carry for you?

John DeDakis (07:19.939)
That’s an interesting question. I would say at least 50 % is autobiographical and maybe even a lot more if I were to go line by line through each of the books. And yet you’re trying to embellish reality, you’re trying to attach it to something bigger and more dramatic than maybe the truth, the actual lived truth is. so, but I’d say fundamentally and foundationally, it’s very autobiographical and very much

a part of who I am as a person that pours into and shows up in who Lark is and who the other characters are as well.

Scott Allan (07:57.678)
Did you ever stop and say, okay, enough? mean, I just can’t, I mean, is that why this took so long to write or does it just take that long to write anyway?

John DeDakis (08:06.329)
Well, it takes me long because I’ve got procrastination nailed. I’m really good at that. I haven’t gotten to the point where it’s enough. In fact, when I first started writing, I had no plans to write a series. I just wanted to get published. And it was as I was doing it that I realized, this story could go here and it could go there. And so I didn’t have to cram everything into one book. I could spread it out. so…

Scott Allan (08:10.156)
Yeah, yeah, all right.

John DeDakis (08:33.537)
I don’t see an end in sight in terms of this particular series. You don’t have to read it in order because each story stands alone. But as long as Lark has got a pulse, there’s a hope for another story.

Scott Allan (08:49.932)
Yeah, well, you know, and it’s funny because that sort of ties into what I was going to say next to it. You when you’re dealing with journalism, you know, you have the relentless deadlines, you know, connected to that. And you didn’t have any of that. Obviously you could just write, right? You could write it the way you wanted. You could go back and rewrite it. You could take as long as you needed. Was that difficult for you to not have that pressure behind you when it came to writing?

John DeDakis (09:14.901)
actually was freeing. A lot of people need deadlines, but I think that at least based on my experience and what I know about myself, it’s easy for me to blow through deadlines that I set for myself because I know they’re artificial. so, and I think people, they set an artificial deadline that’s really not based on anything, you know, where there are consequences, then

Scott Allan (09:17.518)
Really?

John DeDakis (09:41.964)
you can easily be setting yourself up for discouragement. Because if you say, let’s say you set a goal for yourself of writing a thousand words a day because you’ve been told that in order to be a serious writer, you have to do that. Well, how do you feel about yourself if you only do 80, 800 words or 250 or zero over and over again? And you feel like you don’t measure up, you suck, you have no business doing this and you quit. And I think a lot of people do that.

Now that’s not to say there aren’t deadlines and you don’t, know, there can be, but for the most part, it’s been freeing to be able to write when I want, what I want, and for as long as I want.

Scott Allan (10:27.244)
Yeah. You wrote as a woman. I don’t mean personally as a woman, let’s clarify this because it’s not that podcast either, but

John DeDakis (10:34.725)
Well, I was at a book talk in Ireland and a woman in the back raised her hand and said, what do you wear when you write? And I know, and I mean, I wear my jammies, so that doesn’t really answer her question, but you know, I’m a straight male and yet I write as if my protagonist is a female and she’s 20 something and I’m not, but I used to be, but I used to be and I used to work.

Scott Allan (10:49.87)
Sure.

Scott Allan (10:58.958)
Right. And you’re not.

John DeDakis (11:04.431)
with 20 something young women at CNN, a lot of them. And they would let me ask them questions about their careers, their romances, their families. And I learned what it was like to be a woman because I asked and I learned a lot. And as a guy, think men really should ask those questions because one of the things I discovered is I asked one anchor I worked with who was gorgeous.

What’s it like for guys to come on to you all the time? And she said, I can tell them the first 20 seconds if I’m safe. I never have to worry about being safe in a conversation. And the takeaway for me was being a woman is playing defense, is playing defense. And so those were little tidbits that I picked up along the way. So, you know, that person and many other women I worked with at CNN became beta readers.

Scott Allan (11:42.487)
No.

Scott Allan (11:48.878)
That’s interesting.

Scott Allan (11:52.792)
That’s waiting.

John DeDakis (12:02.667)
so that they read early drafts to let me know if I was getting it right or wrong.

Scott Allan (12:06.976)
it felt right from their perspective. Did you, Right, right, right, right. What did you discover about empathy or vulnerability? I mean, is that, is that why you wrote as a woman and made your, your main character a woman or did that just kind of the story just sort of evolved?

John DeDakis (12:09.987)
Well, not at first.

John DeDakis (12:24.301)
It’s not why I wrote as a woman. There are two reasons. One is superficial, and that is when I was starting to write fiction, someone suggested that I should write in a way that stretches who I am. Never been a woman, at least not in this life, so I gave it a try. And what I discovered is that emotions are not gender specific. We all have the exact same emotions. It’s just that in my experience,

The women in my life are more willing to share their emotions and they’re more articulate about their emotions. And so what I’ve discovered is that, you know, guys kind of keep it in and women are just, to me, way more fascinating because you can talk to them on a deeper level. You know, how about them braves is not much of a conversation as far as I’m concerned, you know. And so I do…

Scott Allan (13:16.206)
Yes. No. Turn it off.

John DeDakis (13:19.969)
I really do appreciate a conversation where you can go deep and try to get ahead into a conversation where you’re talking about navigating life emotionally. And so the women in my life are valuable companions along the way.

Scott Allan (13:37.73)
And I can tell you too, you know, I was a funeral director for, God, you know, it’ll be 40 years next year. I don’t do it anymore. I stopped about 10 or 11 years ago, but I can tell you that men and women approach these things for the most part, you know, it’s a generalization, but for the most part, quite differently, not externally I’m talking about now, not necessarily internally. And a lot of couples, and you probably can understand this too, a lot of couples will,

John DeDakis (13:45.222)
My.

Scott Allan (14:06.956)
not survive the relationship I’m talking about because they grieve so differently or unable to understand each other. You know, if you lose your mother, you’ve got your spouse to support you and vice versa.

John DeDakis (14:08.742)
That’s right. That’s right. Yep.

man.

John DeDakis (14:19.23)
man, had a, that is so ringing true with me. When my son died, my wife and I were in the car and we were listening to a Carole King album on the CD, Tapestry. And a song came on, I think it’s called Home Again. You sometimes I wonder if I’m ever gonna make it home again. And Cindy hit the button that advanced it to the next track.

And I asked her, why did you do that? And she said, every time I hear it, it makes me cry. It was the same song when I heard it, I hit repeat to play it over and over again because it made me cry. Same song, same emotional reaction, different way of dealing with it.

I think our marriage survived and it’s been I think 12 or 13 years since Steven died. I think our marriage survived because instinctively we knew that we were not going to be able to fix the other person. And I think a lot of marriages are doomed when one or the other is comparing their grief to the other person. you’re not doing it right, snap out of it, whatever. That’s not helpful. You need your own personal support system.

Scott Allan (15:33.902)
Are you able to use your writing to be able to…

somehow, and I don’t know this, this is just coming to me now, but to somehow get what you needed that you couldn’t get, because you couldn’t fix obviously how she agreed. Were you able to put that into writing to somehow get what you needed?

John DeDakis (15:50.864)
Hmm.

John DeDakis (15:57.274)
I was able to put it into writing. I don’t know if I did it to get what I needed. I think that that was, in a sense, a byproduct. What I really needed was to be heard and to be listened to and supported, and grief counseling was a great way to do that. That was what I needed. I needed to be able to navigate that and get feedback and just get it out.

But writing was a catharsis and was therapeutic. And I can look back on it now and see how valuable it was long-term. Because now that I’m farther away from those tragic events, I’m in a position where now I I basically help people who are struggling with grief to use writing as a way to heal.

and it’s people in the writing community, but it can also be in the corporate world, associations and things like that. So now I am starting to do workshops and speeches to groups beyond just the writing community.

Scott Allan (17:05.518)
Based on that, your experience, what would you say is the hardest thing for people to admit on the page when they’re writing?

John DeDakis (17:15.428)
That’s one I have to think about. I don’t think I’ve been asked that one before. Congratulations. Restate it. Just let me make…

Scott Allan (17:23.854)
CNN if you’re watching. No, I’m kidding.

John DeDakis (17:30.042)
What would tell me the question again? Just let me make, I’m stalling for time here, Scott.

Scott Allan (17:32.982)
Yeah, you know, I mean, in your experience, because you do coach people who are struggling, you know, through grief and writing themselves, you know, what what would you say is the hardest thing for them to admit about, you know, themselves or whatever, as they’re writing?

John DeDakis (17:48.314)
Boy, that’s a hard question to answer and it’s personal for everybody. And I think, and I’m gonna dodge the question because with fiction, you get to camouflage things. You can actually get the capital T truth in there without you having to divulge the small t truths about yourself. And so there are probably a lot of small t truths

Scott Allan (18:00.909)
Sure.

Scott Allan (18:12.567)
Mm-hmm.

John DeDakis (18:17.718)
embedded in my stories that come from me, but I don’t want you to know it’s really me. And there are a lot of small t truths that are just made up or are appropriated from other conversations that I’ve had. I think that, I guess this is the answer. I think what makes it difficult and what maybe causes people to freeze up is that they may feel that they are going to be super personally vulnerable on the page.

Consequently, they freeze up and won’t do it. And my point is, you don’t have to necessarily be personally vulnerable, but you can still get a lot of that stuff out and still camouflage it in a way that it’s still true, but it’s not about you. Is that making sense? I mean, feel free to follow up, because I’m groping here.

Scott Allan (19:09.326)
I completely see that. And I agree with you that it probably is quite personal in terms of how everybody processes things. But that brings me to another thing too, talking about personal and the ability to process loss and that kind of thing. And it brings us back to what you did with CNN. I mean, we have this 24 hour news cycle where we’re just bombarded with sadness and negativity almost 24 seven.

Do you think that hinders our ability to manage our loss or does it shut us off a little bit? I’m talking about the, obviously what you went with your son, that’s not gonna shut you off, but in terms of our own empathy as viewers and listeners.

John DeDakis (19:57.553)
I don’t know. I don’t know if I can make a blanket statement because I think that it really kind of depends on the individual and what they’re choosing to consume. There is so much out there and so many choices. So I think that social media can be an escape. Social media can be a catharsis. Social media can…

stir us up emotionally in a healthy way and in an unhealthy way. So I don’t think I can make any kind of a blanket statement. It’s certainly there and I think we need to be mindful of its influence, but I think that probably the saving grace is that we need to realize that we are the people in control of our life and we need not respond to every single message that bombards us.

Scott Allan (20:22.488)
Right.

John DeDakis (20:48.024)
We need to be selective and discerning and make choices about what or whether to consume things.

Scott Allan (20:55.554)
Well, and I make that decision every day. You know, I used to be a news junkie and I find myself, it’s not that I’m, I’m trying to be completely detached, but I certainly don’t sit and just engage like I did. You know, I have to do other things that take my mind away from it because it’s, it’s nothing good. You know, there isn’t a feel good news or everything is wonderful coming through.

John DeDakis (21:14.118)
pretty much. There probably is somewhere, but I mean, know, and partly that’s the definition of news. The definition of news is something new, and it’s not news to go to national airport and say, another plane landed safely today. That’s just not news. It’s right. And so, and I think that part of…

Scott Allan (21:30.03)
And no one’s gonna watch it.

John DeDakis (21:38.363)
The problem too is that, and this is true of CNN, MSNBC, Fox, all of these, it’s clickbait and they’re not necessarily there to generate light, they’re generating heat. so they’re trying to get you riled up. Sure, they may wanna inform you, but they’re also trying to inform you in a certain particular direction. So as far as consuming news,

Scott Allan (21:44.878)
Yeah

Scott Allan (22:02.67)
Correct.

John DeDakis (22:06.894)
I’ll get it from the Associated Press, from Reuters. I’ll read it. It’s a lot faster and I don’t have to sit there and be buffeted by everybody’s opinion.

Scott Allan (22:16.257)
Well, I think it’s the opinion stuff that can be so challenging. It’s like social media on TV, really. You know, just get all of these opinions and I don’t need to hear all of that, you know?

John DeDakis (22:25.754)
Yeah, yeah. mean, some of it is news analysis. And I think that you can have really astute news analysis, especially if it’s coming from people who, have been in the trenches and know what they’re talking about and that they come from both the left and the right. And it’s especially good when they’re in the same room talking to each other. The problem now is that we’re siloed. You know, we go to the news organization that reinforces our point of view and

Scott Allan (22:33.603)
Mm-hmm.

Scott Allan (22:54.466)
that matches our belief.

John DeDakis (22:55.622)
And it’s hard also, I’ll just say this one other thing, is the extremes are so extreme that we can’t even agree on what the facts are. So in order to have a conversation with a mega Republican, that’s gonna be hard because they’re in their own world and they’re making it up. They’re making it up.

Scott Allan (23:16.365)
Yeah.

Scott Allan (23:24.876)
Yeah. And then they believe what they’ve made up. know, yeah, it’s It’s true.

John DeDakis (23:26.958)
And then they believe it. Yeah, then they believe it. It’s pathological. know, I’ll just say this other thing. The Republican Party, in my opinion, is a Trump cult. And it’s going to be a while before we get beyond that.

Scott Allan (23:41.804)
Yeah, I think so. It’s changed. It’s not the Republican party. My parents, you know, were part of, know, Nick and Reagan.

John DeDakis (23:46.63)
Same here, my parents were Nixon Republicans and there was a problem with that, but even then, they had relationships with people that didn’t agree with them and they could still talk. And I think we still can on a human level. We get the politics out of it and talk on a human level, I think there’s still room for finding common ground.

Scott Allan (24:00.758)
And that’s the difference.

Scott Allan (24:08.942)
100%. So when you coach people about writing and you’ve got someone that shows up and they’re really kind of just paralyzed by the pain that they’ve experienced and they can’t even imagine what the first word is going to be on this blank page, what do you suggest? What’s the smallest step you might recommend to them to begin?

John DeDakis (24:31.735)
Well, first, if you’re in the middle of grief, paralysis is part of the process and don’t be freaked out by that. But when it comes time to writing, I recommend journaling. It’s not for everybody, but there was one student who took one of my classes on memoir writing. He was writing a memoir based on the death of his wife. And he told me he went back and looked at some of his old journals and he said, I forgot how angry I was at the time.

And that’s one of the things I think that makes journaling valuable because you’re writing in real time. You’re writing at the moment. You’re not writing for publication. You’re just getting the feelings and the circumstances down because we forget. And so it’s valuable because, you know, memory is a saving grace as well because we’re, we, part of, think healing is we don’t carry

the loss in the same visceral way. And so a lot of that trauma sheds over time and we were not always crippled by it. But once we do get to the point where you’re actually thinking of writing for publication, my suggestion is often probably the biggest decision someone makes is should it be first person or should it be third person? And before you’ve even written one word, you’re frozen.

and paralyzed, then my suggestion is write the first draft in first person, because that’s your comfort zone. That’s how you talk, that’s how you tell stories. So do it that way first, and then see if the story holds up that way. Or in the rewrite, you can change it and do it in third person. But get something on paper and follow it through. Don’t worry about making mistakes, don’t worry that it’s gonna suck, because it is, it’s sucky in the very first draft. But then,

Go back and make it better. There’s always a second draft.

Scott Allan (26:29.25)
Well, it’s funny and funny, interesting because my first book came out in January. And when I say first book, it may be my only book. I don’t know if I have the time to sit and do it again because it took years and years and years, but it didn’t start out. It was, it’s not a novel. It’s really a story about me and the crazy stuff that was happening to me during my kind of awakening and unfolding and through the years of the funeral business and,

The grief, it’s called In the Presence of Light. It’s a funeral director’s journey from mourning, M-O-U-R-N-I-N-G, to mediumship. So it went through that, and some of the grief that I went through in Loss is part of this book. But it didn’t start out that way. People were telling me you need to just write things down, like journaling, so that you remember what’s happening to you. And I did. And then as I looked back at it, I thought, well, gee, have, there’s something here that kind of makes sense. Let me start putting some of it together and connect the dots, which I did.

And by the time I got to the end of that first, you know, the full, I looked back and I said, that’s not me anymore. You know, the writing is different. The way I’m writing is different. It doesn’t feel like the same. It feels like the writer shift halfway through. And I had to go back and rewrite. then, you know, and you continue to do that. And took years and years and years to kind of get through it.

John DeDakis (27:52.666)
You’re making a really important point and that is that the first draft is what they call the discovery draft. And what you discovered is that the process of writing changed you and it manifested itself on the page. And so you discovered that and that enabled you and enlightened you to go back and clarify things.

Scott Allan (28:16.898)
You wrote Bullet in the Chamber. That’s your first novel, Bullet in the Chamber?

John DeDakis (28:20.913)
First novel is a fast track and that deals with my sister’s suicide and the first chapter deals with that. Book four is bullet in the chamber and that deals more with my son’s death.

Scott Allan (28:23.852)
Okay

Scott Allan (28:31.608)
Gotcha.

Is there a scene, a passage or something that you wrote in that that still makes you, you know, gives you pause even now?

John DeDakis (28:42.135)
man, I I cried the whole time I wrote the book. Boy, I’d have to think about that because it’s been a while since I read it. Interestingly, my third book, Troubled Water, my protagonist, Lark Chadwick, helps Lionel Stone, who is her mentor and editor, helps him work through the grief of the loss of his daughter. And I wrote that book before my son died.

Scott Allan (28:45.281)
Sure.

John DeDakis (29:10.767)
And yet there’s a scene when Lionel has to identify the body of his daughter and the morgue. And I read that after I had identified my own son’s body. And I remember reading it and realizing, man, that it packed an emotional punch to read it. And it was ironic that I’d written it before I actually experienced it. And it still retains an emotional power.

Scott Allan (29:38.794)
imagine. Do you see your novels as a record of your healing or is it still kind of an unfinished story?

John DeDakis (29:47.26)
hadn’t thought about that because I don’t really think of my novels as an art and a chronology or a chronicle of healing. I’ll leave that maybe to the critics. I’d have to think about that. I’d have to read them again and see because I there probably is and maybe I’m not aware of it because I think a lot goes on in our subconscious that we’re not quite aware of.

But I know that a lot of the books that I wrote usually were inspired by something I was dealing with in my personal life. And the book gave me an opportunity to kind of work it through in an imaginative and fictional way. And so, yeah, I would imagine that there is stuff, there’s psychological stuff in there, let’s put it that way. But what it is, I’m not so sure I know yet. How’s that for dodging the question?

Scott Allan (30:41.974)
Yeah, yeah. How’s that? That’s all right. You did well. You did well. Yeah. No, I know. So if there’s someone listening to this, it’s 2 17 in the morning and they’re feeling kind of lost in their own grief, what would you say to them about the power of writing? Even if no one else is going to read it?

John DeDakis (30:47.451)
I’ve been around politicians for a long time.

John DeDakis (31:02.789)
Well, I think it is powerful. And I would say one thing, our society tries to anesthetize the and numb, we feel that pain is painful, and so we don’t wanna experience it, and we wanna numb it. My advice is move toward the pain. And I think getting it onto the page is a therapeutic and constructive way to deal with it. Even if you’re just writing all kinds of just raw,

vulgar verbiage raw emotion that’s okay it’s totally okay i think it’s much better to get it onto the page than to take it out physically on someone else or on yourself so get it onto the page get it onto the page

Scott Allan (31:44.6)
Yes.

Scott Allan (31:50.902)
In the words of Lawrence O’Donnell, I’d like to give you the last word and just allow you to kind of share anything you want. Wrong network, but it came to me. I want to give you an opportunity to kind of share a little bit about, you know, anything you’d like to leave with people.

John DeDakis (32:09.041)
Well, I certainly appreciate the opportunity to talk with you. And I think that your experience in the funeral directing business equips you for being able to write about it. mean, consider you knew people, you saw people on the worst days of their lives and without the barriers and the veneer and the buffers and all that kind of stuff. And…

And so I especially appreciate the opportunity to talk with you because you ask really good, insightful questions. And I really hope that you will write some more and consider writing another memoir, but consider fiction too, because there, I think, are a lot of stories that you’ve got to tell. But I certainly appreciate the opportunity with a podcast to talk.

Scott Allan (32:39.47)
Thank you, John.

Scott Allan (32:47.406)
Thank you.

John DeDakis (33:03.431)
And I’ve really said a lot, I don’t know, to summarize it would be to look, grief and loss and pain are universal. And it doesn’t just mean the loss of a loved one. It can be the loss of a pet, a job, a relationship, your health, your innocence. We have all experienced loss. It’s part of life. And to try to live a life that escapes that,

is futility indeed, it’s going to happen and not on your schedule. And so if you can be realistic about what life is all about, I think that the saving grace, and I keep coming back to that word saving grace, I think the saving grace is that, and I’m not sure if this is part of any kind of universal plan, but I feel that when we do go through bad times,

It is equipping us to be able to help other people who will go through bad times, but haven’t yet. And the farther away we get from our traumatic event, the better positioned we are to be able to help someone else for whom it’s fresh.

Scott Allan (34:20.14)
Beautiful. John, thank you. Thank you for just being willing to sit here and talk about your own experiences and your pain. And for anyone who wants to learn more about John, his books, his editorial work, or his workshops, visit johndedacus.com, D-E-D-A-K-I-S. You’ll find links to his novels, his coaching, ways to connect, and if tonight’s conversation stirred something in you, and if you’re holding your own unfinished story,

John DeDakis (34:23.175)
Thank you.

Scott Allan (34:48.674)
Maybe it’s time to pick out a pen, pick up a pen I should say. You know, don’t have to write a novel, you don’t have to start, you just have to start, you don’t have to write a novel, you just have to start. Stay curious, please stay searching and join us next time as we explore more mysteries right here on the Enlightened Life Podcast. Have a good night.