Jason Blyth
The Golden Handcuffs: How Jason Blyth Chose to Write His Own Story
Jason Blyth spent 30 years waiting for rescue before realising he held the power to save himself.
Hear this story
Kintsugi Studio
Jason Blyth
Jason Blyth spent 30 years waiting for rescue before realising he held the power to save himself.
Hear this story
Jason Blyth spent 30 years waiting for someone to rescue him before realising, sitting in a rehab unit on his 30th birthday, that the only way out was to change himself. His story begins before he was born: his mother survived a coma after a motorbike accident at 16, then was raped, and Jason was conceived from that assault. He grew up being told he was a bastard who would become like his rapist father. Between ages 2 and 15, he saw 20 different clinicians while the system failed to remove him from danger. He learned early that authority could not be trusted, and he could not trust himself. As a teenager and young adult, he lived as the villain his mother had named him: angry, full of rage, using drugs and alcohol to escape. At 29, he drank three litres of wine daily just to avoid being awake, until he lost touch with reality and checked himself into a psych ward. That was when everything shifted.
In rehab, Jason realised he had given his power away by waiting for rescue. He picked up the Bible and found in it a simple rule that changed everything: you cannot be forgiven without forgiving others. His wife's ultimatum had saved his life; her willingness to stay with him through his darkest hours gave him something to hold onto. Nearly eight years sober now, Jason has built a life around one central belief: pain is not designed to break us, but to form us, like olives crushed for oil or gold melted in fire. He sought out his biological father at 18 and found a gang member, heroin addict, and serial rapist with no remorse. That meeting gave him closure to reject the destiny he had been told awaited him. Today, Jason works to create systemic change in child protection and uses his voice, his story, and his visibility to show others that no matter what has happened, they hold the power to write their own ending. After a lifetime as a misanthrope, he now finds himself believing again in human goodness.
⚠️ Content advisory: this episode discusses abuse & exploitation and addiction & recovery, which some listeners may find distressing.
If you need support, you're not alone. Help is available: • Blue Knot Foundation (complex trauma): 1300 657 380 · blueknot.org.au • 1800RESPECT (family, domestic & sexual violence): 1800 737 732 · 1800respect.org.au • SMART Recovery Australia (addiction): smartrecoveryaustralia.com.au • ReachOut: au.reachout.com
“I realized it was either prison or dead if I carried on. And I'd believed all my life that someone was coming to save me. And I'd given my power away.”
“Olive oil and wine were two of the most valuable products in ancient times. But it wasn't the olives or the grapes that were valuable. Their true worth was only revealed once they'd been crushed.”
“Pain is the great initiator for us to be able to go to the deeper levels and to learn to truly learn the things and reveal the great characteristics that are in us.”
The hero, today
Jason believes that pain is never designed to break us, but rather to form us; what matters is the perspective from which we choose to look at hardship. He realised in rehab that he had given his power away by waiting for someone else to save him, and understood that if he wanted to get out of hell, it would be entirely up to him. Forgiveness is not about excusing what someone did to you; it is about releasing yourself from the bondage to it, and without it you will always be someone else's victim. Jason spent 15 years as a villain not because he was born broken, but because he believed the lies spoken to him by his mother and the system; he had to hit rock bottom to choose a different path. He came to see that his capacity for evil was equal to his capacity for good, and that the trauma response of black-and-white thinking, while it helped him survive, became a weakness he had to overcome by learning to hold nuance.
Yes. Jason Blyth is a real person who shared their own story in their own words. Kintsugi Heroes is a not-for-profit that shares first-person stories of overcoming adversity, told with the person's consent.
Kintsugi Heroes, a registered Australian not-for-profit. Every story is shared with the hero's own consent and reviewed under Kintsugi Heroes' trauma-informed content standard before it goes public.
Jason believes that pain is never designed to break us, but rather to form us; what matters is the perspective from which we choose to look at hardship.
He realised in rehab that he had given his power away by waiting for someone else to save him, and understood that if he wanted to get out of hell, it would be entirely up to him.
Forgiveness is not about excusing what someone did to you; it is about releasing yourself from the bondage to it, and without it you will always be someone else's victim.
Jason spent 15 years as a villain not because he was born broken, but because he believed the lies spoken to him by his mother and the system; he had to hit rock bottom to choose a different path.
John Milham (Host) · 00:01
Ladies and gentlemen, Kintsugi Heroes fans and friends, welcome back to another podcast, a podcast of stories that matter. And you know, this is our main podcast because we have main people who have main level, premier level stories, right? And today I'm very excited, as I often am, because this is a man who has turned story and purpose into a powerful movement, right? Like, you seem to be— Jason Blythe, welcome to Katsugi Heroes. You seem to be on flowing on the edge of a movement, mate. Would that be fair?
Jason Blyth (Guest) · 00:44
I would love for that to be true. I guess only time will tell. But yeah, I feel like sometimes I think life leads you in a certain direction and it's almost like you eventually get caught in the inevitable riptide where you end up in the right place at the right time with the right job because of the right set of circumstances that you've gone through in life. And I'm hoping that that ends up being the case.
John Milham (Host) · 01:11
That is a beautiful statement because it squeezes an awful lot of questions into my head which I want to ask about it. I guess we should introduce— I guess I should, but I'm going to ask you Jason, I've listened to your story and it's just, it's, you know, it's an amazing arc, right? An amazing narrative. But of course you lived it. Tell us a little bit about what it was that you lived that has led to that, you know, that crossroads where you now are, sort of the riptides have taken you to that point.
Jason Blyth (Guest) · 01:51
Yeah, sure. So without going into a huge amount of detail, because there's quite a lot of different parts of my story online, but I, I grew up in a quite a strange set of circumstances, and my story was shaped before I was even born. So for, for me, my, my mom was an absolute prodigy child. At 16, she was training with the New Zealand Olympic swimming team. She was taking the highest level piano exams that you could take in the world with the one of the greatest students in New Zealand. And she was about to leave school early to go to university. And one afternoon she had a motorbike accident. She was a passenger on the back of a bike that she wasn't supposed to be on. And she ended up in a coma on life support. And my grandparents, when they were met by the doctors at hospital, they'd said to them that she would never be anything more than a bedside vegetable. So after much praying and questions about what to do, they decided to switch off my mum's life support machine, but she breathed on her own. So this was, this was the first part of the miracle, but she was still in a coma and totally brain dead. And then 6 months later, she miraculously woke up. And until the day my grandma died, she maintained categorically that mum's survival was nothing short of a genuine miracle. There's no medical explanation for her survival, but that prodigy child had died. Right? And she was now totally paralyzed down her entire right side, permanent brain damage now. And so she had to relearn to walk and talk, and her emotional regulation was now entirely gone as well. And then fast forward 10 years later, my biological father came into the scene, and one, one night he snuck into her room and he raped her. And that's how I was conceived. So I came into the world under quite a dark shadow, and it felt like almost like life had been set for me in a lot of ways. Yeah, instantly mum rejected me, and I had my first psychology appointment at 2 years old because my mum was trying to kill me. Yeah, so I reminded her of, of what had happened, and, and obviously she, you know, she wasn't normal in her, her brain capacity after the accident. So yeah, ended up in psychology and psychiatry and and child psychotherapy. Between 2 and 15, I saw about 20 different clinicians. Was never taken away even though there was some serious reports of abuse. Different reports were started and, and dropped. The system categorically failed me, and I learned very early on that authority couldn't be trusted. But part of the process too was I was made out to be this problem child, so I believed that I couldn't even trust myself. And my voice was taken away. I left home at 15 believing that I would be fine because my circumstances would change. I just didn't realize I was traumatized and that didn't matter where I went, the problem was inside me.
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This conversation includes a life shaped before birth, the problem child who couldn't trust himself, three litres a day until unconsciousness, the moment he realised no one was coming to save him, pain as a universal language and his mother's poison and his own rage.
John Milham (Host) · 04:46
The circumstances were attached.
Jason Blyth (Guest) · 04:49
Yeah, absolutely. And there was no escaping it. I was this broken, damaged child, but I didn't know this. Stuff. My life was so abnormal growing up in the, you know, the small town that I grew up in, that I was just different from every other kid around me. My life circumstances were totally different. I became furious at God because I was like, you must hate me, like you must have created me to destroy me. As a child, I couldn't, couldn't make sense of any of it. But yeah, grew up really angry. And then so I dropped out of school at 16, became an international athlete. In that time, I went to the Junior World Championships in inline speed skating. That was a different story. Sports saved my life. And it taught me different things that obviously school didn't, 'cause I dropped out of school and didn't go to uni. But for 15 years after leaving home at 15, I basically lived my life seeing myself as a victim. And I believed I was entitled to behave badly. I was furious, lived with a chip on my shoulder, and wanted to bring other people into this hell that I was living. It was unintentional, but I'd become the product of my environment. And it was just full of rage, just so angry at the circumstance of the world. Felt like I'd been hard done by and yeah, couldn't make sense of it. Did a lot of drugs, you know, was prostituting myself at 16 years old, different gambling, anything that was used for escapism. Yeah. And another really dark story, but I haven't really spoken about it too much, but ended up going into a satanic cult as part of my journey because I was, I went along the path of becoming— I was an international musician at a different stage. I recorded in Hollywood. And that was like my— this was leading into my death spiral where at 29 I would wake up at 7 in the morning and I would drink a liter of red wine just so I could pass out. And I would wake up again around midday. I'd drink a second liter of red wine until I could pass out again just because I didn't want to be awake and life was— it was painful to be awake.
John Milham (Host) · 06:51
Yeah, yeah.
Jason Blyth (Guest) · 06:52
Yeah. And then I'd wake up again around 6 or 7 PM and I would drink a third liter of red wine until I could pass out until the next day. And I did that for about 2 months straight until I started to actually lose touch with reality. And I ended up having to check myself into a psych ward, then onto a stabilization unit, and then into the dodgiest rehab in Sydney. And I got to this point and I was sitting there on my 30th birthday, I was like, how did I get here? How did I end up here?. And I realized it was either prison or dead if I carried on. And the only other option was to change. The final thing for me, I sat there in this rehab and I was like, man, I believed all my life that someone was coming to save me. And I'd given my power away. I'd almost like I've been put myself in a pair of golden handcuffs where I just was like, someone will come and fix my problems for me. And then it just dawned on me that if I wanted to get myself out of this hell, it would be entirely up to me. And that was the start of the journey, the long journey back. And that was almost 8 years ago. And gosh, life has changed drastically now. And to come back full circle to that riptide and the whole, I think the destiny part of it, I realize that I've been given a very unique lens and insight into a life of being failed by a system. Also the ability to be able to communicate deeply that lived experience of what it's like to go through significant trauma and to be failed by the system. And to use my voice now to create some systemic change that genuinely ensures the rights that children have to grow up in safe homes free from abuse and neglect are actually happening. 'Cause they're not still in this country, and it's shockingly bad, but all over the West it's a systemic problem. And it's something that fundamentally has never changed and it does need to finally change. So I think that's a big part of the reason why I'm here and why I counted it a great blessing that I went through everything I did because I otherwise wouldn't have the ability to be able to do what I'm meant to do.
John Milham (Host) · 08:58
Amazing. I love that. So many questions. Let me start with a couple of questions that are kind of you know, they're not meant to be, but they're kind of slightly sort of counter, right? The first is I just want to acknowledge the extraordinary things you've done, right? But, you know, the achievements have been extraordinary, but also the depths and darkness has been extraordinary. So you've never lived in the middle. Right. Right. And that's almost, you know, that creates this massive narrative. Right. So does that feel like, you know, all of the capacity to achieve things totally parallel to the capacity to be in the middle of a human disaster? Does this all feel purposeful? Like, do you now count this as part of your process, if you will, of becoming Jason the world changer?
Jason Blyth (Guest) · 10:11
I think it's— I absolutely think so. I speak a lot about the hero's journey and I'm fascinated by these universal patterns that we see. And for me, the hero's journey isn't speaking of some amazing story in Lord of the Rings or Star Wars or any of those sorts of things. These stories are pointing to our own journeys. I think we're all on a on a journey to become the hero of our own life. And part of the narrative is that a hero must go through trials and tribulations, face their own demon, the thing they fear most, which happens to be themselves in the dark cave, to then learn the wisdom that comes through trials, through pain and hardship. It's the only way that we learn and get refined into the product that has great value. And then to come back into the real world with the insight to not be the hero, but then to become the teacher, to become the sage. And again, you have to have lived experience to be able to do that. So I absolutely think it's part, it's a necessary part of the redemption process and it makes it so much richer.
John Milham (Host) · 11:14
Yeah, totally. Of course, the hero journey, you know, with your trials and tribulations, there's magical aid as well. So how, you know, is that where you're like, are you now creating the magical aid that other children called to the threshold to go through their journey. Is that, you know, are you part of that setting up the, you know, the aid that they will take them through their journey?
Jason Blyth (Guest) · 11:38
I hope so. I think a big part of, you know, why I really resonate with Kintsugi Heroes as well is the storytelling element of it. One of the things that I realize I have a natural gift in, and I think this is a big part of— I'm a hugely creative person. This was a way that I learned to, I think, deal with my my pain was through living in alternate worlds. But through music and being able to communicate the depth of the stuff that's inside me because of the insight that I've been given, I'm just a natural storyteller. And I think one of the weaknesses of the likes of any kind of advocacy movement is lived experience people, and especially people that have had a lot of trauma, generally don't have a great ability to communicate very well. And I think, I think To be able to put storytelling into the hands of, and communication into the hands of those that have really suffered the most, to create a ripple effect that's greater than just me or someone else that can be magnified by the amount of people sharing their experiences in a way that's hugely compelling and speaks to the depth of the issues is something that I really think is of huge value to this. On top of that, I think there's a lot of people that haven't yet done a lot of healing and they can come then across as very angry and it can become something that's quite ostracized amazing and pushes people away from the movement. But yeah, I would hope that I can be, in a way, one of my greatest— the things I'm working on the most is to be as congruent as I humanly possibly can be, to be an example, to shine a light, to show people the way as a trailblazer without trying to sound up myself. I think that's all we can do, right, is to literally be the absolute best that we can be to show other people that it's possible. And I'm kind of just using my life as a bit of a test to show that I can say I can do it. And I'm trying to take this as far as I possibly can to not just talk about how wouldn't it be wonderful if, but to go, I can tell you how to do it.
John Milham (Host) · 13:39
Yeah. So the story you're telling is not just through the power of words, you're very articulate, but it's also through the power of being. Right. I am being my story. I'm being the story you can follow. Right. So the narrative is in both the person and the words. Right.
Jason Blyth (Guest) · 13:56
So you got it.
John Milham (Host) · 13:57
Yeah, I love it. A common theme I've heard you speak in other forums of pain. So pain's a player in your story. Pain's a character, but it's a connecting character because it says, look, my pain is so huge, right, because of all the crazy things I've been through and survived. But everybody has pain. Do you feel connected to everybody, or do you feel like, you know, that's a device, or is that something that draws you to other people?
Jason Blyth (Guest) · 14:29
Yeah, I think pain is the great initiator for us to be able to go to the deeper levels and to learn, to truly learn the things and reveal the great characteristics that are in us. I speak a lot about in nature and the universal patterns of the world, you know, it doesn't matter whether if we're alive today or 5,000 years ago, male, female, rich, poor, Japanese, African, or Aussie, everyone experiences pain. And for me, if there's a universal pattern like that, I ask why. Why? Why do we— why? What's the purpose?
John Milham (Host) · 14:59
Why is that part of the human experience?
Jason Blyth (Guest) · 15:01
Exactly. And all I can come up with, all I can logically come up with is that it's there to refine us and to test and to sift out the things that are undesirable about us, to bring us to the point of having to have realization and to encounter the things that we don't want. Or to go deeper down the path, which of course is the other option, right? It's not, not everyone chooses to become the hero. They either, you can get consumed as well. And I think this is part of the journey of life is to pick a side. Pick a side. And if you don't, you've picked a side, it just was the wrong one. So pain for me, and I speak again about these universal patterns of things like, so olive oil and wine were two of the most valuable products in ancient times. But it wasn't the olives or the grapes that were valuable. Their true worth was only revealed once they'd been crushed. And to produce pure gold as well— gold in its natural state isn't as valuable as it is. It has to go through multiple processes of being put into a furnace that is melted over 1,000 degrees till it melts and the impurities rise to the top and they can be removed. And then it's cooled back down, it goes through this process again and again until all the impurities are removed.
John Milham (Host) · 16:10
Yeah, yeah.
Jason Blyth (Guest) · 16:11
And it's only through that intense pain and tribulation and heat that gold can even be made pure. I mean, we all know pressure makes diamonds. These are just examples that nature teaches us. Exactly. And, and these, I think, are the universal patterns that we can see in nature for the process of what pain does to us. And you can listen to some of the greatest, most influential people in the world, and they will— there's this unifying chorus of pain was the great initiator and it's part of the hero's journey. It's pain, it's confrontation, it's agitation. Yeah.
John Milham (Host) · 16:50
And of course, no hero emerges with wisdom until they have died and been reborn. So that's the ultimate pain, isn't it? So I'll get to your point of death and rebirth soon, right? But I'm interested too, you know, a quote that I fall back on a lot is pain is inevitable. Suffering is a choice. How do you think you chose suffering, right?
Jason Blyth (Guest) · 17:17
Through—
John Milham (Host) · 17:17
you know, you were 2 when you were first put on trial, if you will, right? So how do you— how did you choose suffering?
Jason Blyth (Guest) · 17:26
I think initially it was programmed into me that I was— I was told that I would be a bad child. It was almost like the self-fulfilling prophecy. When I was 5 years old, my mum sat me on her bed before I went to school and she goes to me, if anyone asks where your real dad is, you tell them that he raped me and you're a bastard and you're going to grow up become just like him. And I didn't, I didn't know what those words meant then, but I, I could feel the knife being plunged into my stomach.
John Milham (Host) · 17:50
Yeah, energetically there's no doubt about that not being healthy, right?
Jason Blyth (Guest) · 17:53
So yeah, and you can feel the vitriol and the heat that comes through the poison being spat at you. And then going through this, this system where I saw all these different people and I was made out to be the problem You know, people aren't born broken. And I was born into this, this world of the mental health system, child protection. And I was— they were like, you're a problem child. And I'm sitting there at 9 years old going, how is it that I am the one that's being abused and I have to come to counseling and psychology and psychiatry sessions? Like, shouldn't the people that are abusing me be here? It was this, this absolute warping. So I felt like I had my identity ripped away and I started to believe this, all these things that had been spoken to me throughout time. And because I'd been so angry, I couldn't help but be damaged and just, yeah, live this life that was completely selfish and full of hate and rage. So a big part of my journey, obviously, I went into music and I sought for the world to love me. I thought if the whole world loved me, then I would finally find my place, you know, and and it was obviously hugely destructive. But I, I chose to become a villain. And I, again, I speak a lot about superheroes, and obviously there's a lot of these stories of the hero and villain arc in this. And, you know, Batman, or Bruce Wayne, saw his mum and father murdered in front of him at 8 years old, and, and that was the driving force for Batman. But then on the other hand, Erik Lehnsherr, at 10 years old, an X-Men he watched his mum murdered, and that was the catalyst for Magneto, the supervillain with immeasurable power. It was the same pain but a different path. And my keynote is called The Power of Choice. I categorically believe that we, we all have a choice. And for me, I just believed that the path that I'd come from meant that that was my destiny, like I couldn't change it. I didn't believe I could change it. I knew I wanted better. I knew that I didn't want to live this life, but I had to be one of those people, I think, that had to go to the absolute rock bottom to be faced with the choice myself to then decide whether or not I wanted to carry on. I would've probably died, I think.
John Milham (Host) · 20:15
Yeah.
Jason Blyth (Guest) · 20:16
If I'd carried on down that path, that would've been the only alternative, or change. And I mean, one of the things I think is very interesting, and we can talk about this or not, is I think we do people a big disservice by stopping them from hitting rock bottom. I think this is actually part of the journey for a lot of people is we can be so worried about where they go and the likelihood of them ending up at a bad state that we just, we save them. We save them so much from actually hitting the point of change. And again, in the hero's journey, the hero has to face the death, the death of self to choose to live.. And yeah, so this, this for me, I was not someone that could learn from other people's mistakes.
John Milham (Host) · 21:00
Yeah, I loved what you said earlier about how you felt like you were waiting for someone to give you the, the key, the, the pill, you know, the red pill, the blue pill, waiting for someone to make it right. Was that like waiting for love? I feel like you'd have had every bit of human care pulled away from you, right? And it seems very reasonable in that situation to be there waiting for someone to give it back, right? Especially as a kid when you say, hang on, I have rights. You know, kids, I think, innately understand they have a right to be loved, nurtured, and protected, right? So when it doesn't, it's so, so destroying for, you know, it obliterates your childhood. Um, do— where did you ever think back about, you know, the love not being like completely devoid, or no one handing you that love and no one trying to make it right? How did you even cope with that?
Jason Blyth (Guest) · 22:09
I had— so I had two— I had two people, two instances in my life of people showing me this unconditional love, and And I, from my understanding and from a lot of the research that I've done into this, it's you only need one person to, to love you, to actually to stop you from essentially going along the path of what would become sociopathic or psychopathic. And we basically become devoid of all human emotion. Yeah. And so for me, it was, it was actually my grandma as a child. So I, I grew up living between my mum and my stepdad and my grandparents, so when, when my mum was raped, my grandparents were Catholic, so abortion was not an option, right? And, but my mum was incapable of even looking after herself.
John Milham (Host) · 22:55
Yeah, the level of crime that was committed against her was, you know, terrible, right? It must have been tough.
Jason Blyth (Guest) · 23:03
But my grandparents also, I think they felt something greater about this, the story arc, because my mum also wasn't supposed to be even able to have kids after her accident. She was raped once as a virgin, got pregnant, and I think they felt there was something to the story. So they obviously— they played their part. My granddad died while I was relatively young. He was a heavy smoker and had a lot of strokes and became incapacitated through that process. But my grandma basically gave up her life for me and raised me as if I was one of her other 8 children, and I, if it was not for her, I, I don't know where I would have been. And so she instilled in me this early idea of, of, of God, of faith early. They had great morals, you know, that, that, you know, she would have been in her well into her 90s now, just fantastic morals, good ethics, and taught me and raised me as if I'm a generation older than I am. So yeah, I feel hugely, hugely blessed because of that. But then our relationship broke down as I got to about 12 years old because I started to become hard to deal with, and she was aging. She couldn't, she couldn't cope with me anymore. And I eventually had to move like more full-time back in with my mum and my stepdad, which was horribly dangerous. And then I was going to either end up homeless or in full-time foster care, and that was when I moved out of home full-time from the South Island of New Zealand to the North. But so my, so my relationship with my grandma pretty much ended at that, at that point. I mean, we, we still maintained contact, but she lived in New Zealand and I, and then I lived away, moved to Australia when I was 21, and then had many different relationships. Obviously was, was looking for, for love, looking for connection. But one of the things that I find so fascinating was I was completely unconscious to and unable to accept love. Like, I'd been so conditioned to believe that people would leave and didn't genuinely love of me and was so suspicious of everything and everyone and so untrusting that I, if someone said they loved me or they cared about me, I would stretch them as far as I humanly could to test whether or not they would actually stay. And I would do horrible things to break people just to prove that eventually they would leave so that unconsciously I could say I'm too much and I'm not worthy of love and all this kind of thing. And the other person was, is my wife now, and we've been together for 13 years. And in that process, mate, she has been— she got taken to absolute hell, to genuine hell with, with me, and went through some horrible, unspeakable things. Never threatened to leave me through any of the process until the point on, you know, when I was 29, when I was drinking all that wine And she was the one, she rung me one afternoon because I was going absolutely insane. The people I was living with at the time were like, he has to leave, we have to call the police to get him out because he's a psycho. And she goes, she just knew that she couldn't take anymore. She'd finally reached her limit. And very calmly she said to me, if you don't check yourself into a psych ward today, I can never speak to you again. And something in me just knew that I was going to lose everything good. If just literally everything— have the full carpet ripped out from underneath me. And she booked me an Uber. I got in the Uber, went to the psych ward, and she was like, I'll stick with you as long as you do get yourself right. And this was a big part of the— that I'd come to this point of destruction. And I know, I know if I'd carried on, I would have lost everything. And like I said, prison or dead, that was, that was it. So absolutely, I, I think it's a it's a fundamental part of the journey. And again, in the hero's journey, there's always, you know, some kind of assistance, and often a love story as well. Yeah. And yeah, so she's— she, she can't even answer why. You know, people go, why? When they know the story, they go, why did you stay? And she goes, I don't know. But I think now our life looks very, very different. Very, very different now. And it's, um, yeah, I'm, I'm eternally grateful for my wife. She is absolutely my better half for sure.
John Milham (Host) · 27:21
How does she feel now? Worth it? Does she like the journey you're on? Right, because, you know, like, I remember coaching a bloke who, you know, hard as nails, lived out, out in far north Western Australia, mining. And he married, he'd had a long, long relationship with fiery relationship with his woman. And we— he sought coaching and became— found another way, found, you know, hooked into another path, made a pivot on that point and said, no, I've got— I'm going to take the high road or the better journey or the growth or whatever you want to call it. And his wife insisted. His wife insisted that, you know, what is this, right? You're changing now, right? You're you're doing all this growth stuff. I don't like it. And I said, wow, wow, that's amazing. So your wife is, you know, so what did you do? How did you manage that? And he said, well, I'm much more woke now. So I told her to lump it, right? Get out. So lucky you didn't insist on now that you were woke and grow growing and developing, you didn't insist on your wife getting out.
Jason Blyth (Guest) · 28:44
So, no. And I mean, obviously it's a progressive journey. She could— she had different moments where it felt like that probably the growth was pretty confronting. She had— as, as I said, I'd been in a stage where I'd gone into satanic cults and, and things like that, and she was with me. So at different stages of my journey, she had natural trauma around the rapid growth or the different paths that I was taking, and she was suspicious about where it would go. But she came along the journey and it's been a, you know, she's, she's on the same journey that I'm on now. We have a, we have an almost 11-month-old son as well. So that's added a huge different part. And I also think this is part of the redemption process of the hero's journey of, it's like a, you know, a healing in a way of being able to give my son the childhood that I never got. And although it's not my childhood, it helps me to, I think, have closure by being able to just give him the love that I would have wanted. Yeah. So, so yeah, but she's— no, man, she, she's fully on, on the path. I think that she also knows that this was always meant to be, and I think there's probably a big unexplainable element to why she is still with me here, but almost like it was, it was destiny, without it sounding too spooky.
John Milham (Host) · 30:05
Well, it's quite spooky all up on your story, right? So the miracle of your birth. It's no— why not have a miracle of your marriage and then the miracle of your son, right? Who is now— that inherits all of those miracles, right? So it's beautiful. The purpose of pain to reform and to bring wisdom to the fore in your story. What has that asked you to do now? Like what purpose is coming out of that whole process? What do you want the world to be like? You said you've got a mission for children, right, who are, who were in a situation similar to yours. But you know, what's the message? What do you want us to do?
Jason Blyth (Guest) · 30:56
So for me, there's, yeah, there's two parts to the stuff that I do and my speaking, my speaking is the vehicle for both, right? So On the one hand, the big lot of speaking is to speak to people that have lived part of their life, they've experienced a lot of pain or hardship, or maybe they just don't feel like they're where they're supposed to be in life, and hard done by life. And for me, it's really about being able to put the power into their hands to let them know that pain was never designed to break them, but it's about formation. And it's all in the perspective. It's all in the way that we look at it, the look at the hardship. And I genuinely believe if we look at the hardest things that we've gone through in our life, I think life happens for us rather than to us, and pain is part of that process. And if we look at it through a different lens, we'll generally find that we've been given some pretty incredible gifts. Yeah. And I, and I do believe that if the world was running in the way that I think it probably should, you know, should have been running, then that makes a place for people to have this redemptive process themselves, where their pain becomes the purpose and the wisdom and the insight to help heal humanity too. It's that lived experience that can then, I think it reveals the purpose of what we could be doing to help mend and heal our communities and our societies around us. But I don't think we live in a world that's shaped in a way that that's necessarily practical for people to be able to make money doing that or to pivot with the pressures of life. So it's, you know, it's more fantasy-esque. But so there's that side wanting to encourage people to really understand that regardless of what's happened in the past, they hold the power to write their story, right? You've heard I speak a lot about the pen and authoring our story. And no matter what's happened in the past, we alone decide our future, right? And it's about not giving away our pen to pain, to others' expectations, to the circumstances that we've gone through, and to write the ending to the story that we want regardless of that. But to take it and to understand that it was actually shaping us. So that's the one side. But then, of course, as I mentioned, it's the systemic change to be able to take what's happened to me, like I was just saying, and use that for the ultimate purpose. Like, isn't that the perfect redemption? If that was the thing that gives me the ammunition, the authority to be able to speak on behalf of, to reclaim my voice on behalf of all those that don't have a voice and to genuinely create some change. That for me is the ultimate redemption process. It makes all of it worth it. And it feels like that's what I'm here to do. So I want people to understand that pain is an initiator. It's something that brings us to something greater, but it's all in the perspective. And regardless of any of the stuff that we've gone through, we have a choice ultimately to decide the path that we're going.
John Milham (Host) · 33:54
Yeah, it's interesting. From my observation and experience, you don't remember pain. You remember the suffering you went through, the experience of the discomfort, the rejection, the circumstances you found yourself in that felt overwhelming or miserable, right? But you don't remember the pain itself. And I, I come to think that that's part of the gift of pain, to when once you're— once you're beyond it, you can then start to forgive. Did you learn how to forgive? Like, this is some pretty awful stuff you've had to deal with. Did you forgive any of it?
Jason Blyth (Guest) · 34:39
I, I don't think you can genuinely live a life like this without going. I think it's a necessity. It's, it's an un— there's no, there's no question about whether or not forgiveness is necessary to be truly free. I think that unforgiveness leads people to always be the victim of someone else, and without forgiveness, you will be someone's victim. So I had to go through the process of of, of course, coming to terms with and forgiving my mum and making peace with all of that. And being able to try and rationalize that although I couldn't understand it, she is brain damaged. And to, to even try and remedy and have some kind of a relationship with her now, which is very hard. Like, it is, it is hard. She's got no recollection. Conversations are very basic. It's like she's a 10 or a 12-year-old. Mentally. And conversation is just always the same kind of thing— how's the weather? It's super basic. She'd have no recollection of anything that's happened before. And it's hard. It is hard. But it— I, I am— I believe in the Bible, and as far as I'm concerned, it's like it determines universal laws and principles as well. And part of that is that you can't be forgiven without forgiving others. And I try and, I try and live by that. I have to, you know, try and make peace with the, the system as well for failing me. But you'll always be eaten up if you don't, if you don't come to terms with this. And again, I think this is part of the hero's journey, right? It's, it's the, it's the rage, it's the unforgiveness, it's the anger, it's the bitterness that festers, and it becomes a seed that then buds forth and brings forth fruit. And for most of my life, I was living in total unforgiveness. And when I was creating music, it was designed to bring people to hell with me. I was like a Pied Piper then, but leading people to hell. And this is— I think your capacity for evil is also the capacity you have for good, you know. And, and this is kind of my, my journey. It was like you said, it was— there was no gray, it was black or white. And I think that's a trauma response too, right? Like, it helps you make sense of the world. You're either this or that. But it can be a weakness of ours because there is a lot of gray in life.
John Milham (Host) · 37:00
Well, the nuance is life, right? The black and the white are extremes, right? So yeah, and you were sort of living in extremes, right?
Jason Blyth (Guest) · 37:09
Yeah, exactly. And it's how we, I think, how we partition and make sense of, and this cognitive dissonance to hold two opposing ideas at the same time is, it's almost impossible for humans. It takes some great insight and I think the ability to control your mind, which you can develop too, But yeah, so for me, it definitely, man, forgiveness is an absolute necessity. And it's something that genuinely I think is the thing that sets us free. It's not necessarily about saying that what you did, I, as in, I excuse what you did, but it's about being able to release, release the bondage to it.
John Milham (Host) · 37:49
Yeah, absolutely. It's not an easy skill, right? And when the further, you know, I often think the blacker the place, the harder it is to see the color of forgiveness. How did you manage? What was the key to you letting go of what no one should have endured, let alone a young kid?
Jason Blyth (Guest) · 38:17
For me, man, again, it it became as simple as, like, when I was in rehab, I picked up the Bible. That this is it for me, right? Like, I picked up the Bible. I'd always wanted to read it. I'd always believed that God was real. Like, this, it was undeniable for me. I just could, I could see it in the evidence of the design of humanity. I could see it in animals. I could see it in nature. I could see it, but I just didn't know what it was. And I'd always wanted to read the most popular and greatest book ever written, but had always found something more important. Rehab, I was like, I'm just gonna— I'm gonna read this. Like, I'm desperate. And as I was reading it, it was, it was part of the— it was one of these universal laws, and things jumped off the page at me. And as I said to you, it was understanding that I couldn't be forgiven if I didn't forgive. And so a big part of the story was I intentionally made the choice to go into satanic cults knowing that God was real to flip him the bird and say, "You want a bad kid? I'll give you the worst." So I was in this place of going, "Far out, man. Like I intentionally made these decisions knowing what I was doing, trying to bring hell on earth. And if I want you to forgive me, then I've got some pretty heavy forgiveness that I need to be dishing out." And it was simple for me. You know, like I just, if it said it there, I did it. Yeah. I didn't argue with it. I was even having a conversation with someone last night. They're like, you're very strong and able to like stand on your, your beliefs. And I'm like, yeah, but it's easy. It's easier for me. Like, I've got a, I've got a book that tells me the rules. I got a rule book. I don't have to make it up. So just, it was just easier for me than probably what it is for, for a lot of people that don't subscribe to what I subscribe to. But the, the fundamental is still the same regardless of what you believe in. Forgiveness will set you free.
John Milham (Host) · 40:08
Yeah, yep, I think that's pretty fair. That's a pretty good big job you pulled off though, particularly— and this is just a little thing, but, you know, the little things often are, you know, sort of activates the big things, you know, particularly when you're trying to make a dist— you know, get— put distance between you and the worst things that happen to you. So as you look in the mirror, you've I notice you've just got some tats there that are interesting. Do they remind you or do they warn you?
Jason Blyth (Guest) · 40:38
Honestly, I don't even see them. It's— I don't see them anymore. It's literally just part of who I am. I forget that people see them. I forget that people say that I've got a gun on my neck or a tattoo on my face or on my hands. And sometimes I, I just I've so removed from that life that I'm sometimes confronted when people are standoffish. I mean, it's getting better, obviously. So many people have tattoos now, but it's still, you know, there's certain people in certain cultures and certain people that have probably been and had experiences with people that maybe looked like me, and everyone's got underlying pain and trauma, you know, so how they respond. But it's— I don't, I don't get any more tattoos. Like, I won't get any more. I'm getting some removed that definitively don't represent me anymore.
John Milham (Host) · 41:28
More.
Jason Blyth (Guest) · 41:29
I'm not conscious of like feeling the need to get rid of all of them. It tells part of the story. But honestly, I don't— it's just there.
John Milham (Host) · 41:39
Which is amazing, like that you so don't identify with that piece of you, right? That you don't see them, right? That's pretty powerful. It's like a flyer now. You're handing out a flyer saying, hey, come to me and talk to me about my journey, right? So it's almost like advertising So inviting conversation so that curiosity can lead you to spread your message almost.
Jason Blyth (Guest) · 42:02
Well, I think in a huge way, it's massively beneficial for me because people don't expect the words and the language and the way that I speak and the way that I conduct myself to come out of this package. And people, I think people feel like it's really incongruent and they don't quite know what it is. And then when they spend a bit of time with me, they're just like, 'Oh, there's, yeah, there's something very different about you.' Yeah. So, and I mean, for young people, it relates obviously really well for, for young people as well. I can walk into somewhere, somewhere, and, and if I go into a school or something like that, I've got probably a bit more credibility than, than an old dude in a suit, you know. So I, it's, I think it's, I, again, it's all part of the stuff I think I needed as part of my journey. And, but yes, it's, it's really bizarre, I think, sometimes if I look and think about where I've come from and some of the tattoos that I've got and things like that. I look at them and I just go, what on earth was I thinking? Yeah, I wasn't. Obviously I wasn't thinking.
John Milham (Host) · 43:05
I'm very pleased that it's now just a benign sort of regret as opposed to, you know, the pain, you know, that you can put aside the, the, the pain. Um, interesting. What do you do now to maintain where you have got to. How do you maintain the grace you live in?
Jason Blyth (Guest) · 43:27
A really strict routine, man. I'm, I'm a super disciplined person, and this was where I think the training and sport— like I said, it saved my life, and it gave me some life lessons that school never gave me. Because I, I was smart, but I didn't get on. I didn't get on at school because I got bullied. I just hated it. I hated the, this, the restrictiveness of it, and I just played up because I was this troubled kid. So sport, you know, at one stage when I went to the Junior World Championships at 16. I was training 14 times a week. You know, it was a rest day was a 50K bike ride. And so it was— I got tough. And I've struggled with, and I speak quite a lot about mental health issues, and I've struggled with a lot of anxiety at different times. And I think I have a gift of insight in the sense of being able to understand and learn more about the way that my body and my mind sort of operates. But for a long time, I lived in a glass box where the walls kept closing in. And now I'm very intentional about seeing how I can push myself out of that glass box to take back the ground. Because again, the battles in here about fear and how we can learn to overcome the, the voices that say, shut up, you've got nothing to speak about. Being gaslit by the system for so long makes you feel invalidated and like your story's not not justified. And yeah, there's so much nuance to it. But for me, it's, it's the mission, man. Like, I'm finally— I always knew I had a job to do, the thing that kept me alive as a kid, even when I was going through that stuff and not understanding anything. I just knew one day it would make sense. I knew one day there'd be a purpose for all of it. I just, I just knew. I just knew for whatever reason. And I'm finally on that path. At the start of that and on that journey where single-handedly everything about my life now is entirely about going along this path to be able to try and make the world better. And it's purely about the purpose. I wasted 30 years of my life. Now it's time for rapid, quick action. And I can't afford to slip. I just, I can't afford to slip. I know I don't consider myself to be like— one of the things I don't love about the whole AA thing is you go in there and you say you're an alcoholic. Like, a big part of my faith is I believe that you're free from those things. Like, I do believe that as part of our faith we can be free from those things. Yeah, but I don't, I don't, I don't dabble with it. I don't, I don't smoke anymore. I don't do drugs. I haven't drunk for almost 8 years. I don't swear anymore. I've got swear words tatted on me, but I haven't sworn for years. I don't lie. I don't litter. I don't do things that I know, and if, and if I, I can feel and I can sense when I'm just going to be very careful about being— don't put myself in the same situations. Rehab talk is that you— it's people, places, and things, right? That's part of recovery stuff. You remove the people that were negative influences, you go remove the things that would try and tempt you into the old way, and you remove going to the places that you would because of the temptations and those sorts of things. So discipline and a regimented routine of intentionally going forward rather than looking in the rear vision mirror.
John Milham (Host) · 46:51
Do you see like that's some, you know, that's a Herculean kind of task to take on, that sort of regimen that is keeping you locked in and healthy and happy and, you know, productive. Do you see something in the future where JOY is that regimen, you know, like where, you know, where we keep growing? Do you see yourself reaching another level?
Jason Blyth (Guest) · 47:20
Yeah, 100%. I think that I'm being trained for whatever the real mission is. I don't even think this is it. Like, this is still training. I'm nowhere near the end goal at all. This is— I've still got my training wheels on to a degree. And the joy for me is in— I'm trying to enjoy the journey. You know, like I'm someone that notices patterns. And some of the greatest and most successful people that have come from hard stuff and not are all like, it's not the destination, it's the journey, right? And I don't think I would ever be the type of person that would ever retire. I Why would you want to? Like if you are literally living your life's purpose, I don't think you retire.
John Milham (Host) · 48:05
Yeah, I have to agree. Well, I have to agree now because I'm, you know, it's much closer to me than you, right? So you're like, I'm not done yet, right? So, but brilliant idea and of course now the tools of transformation are not necessarily the cauterized assaults that you were, the pain and fire that you were going through. Now you're being forged by the influences of your child and the people who provide affirmation. But that can also be equally enticing and sort of can equally be to grab the reality from you. What do you do to keep grounded? You know, when you're on stage and people come up and say, you've just changed my life, that can equally send you down a path that isn't always useful.
Jason Blyth (Guest) · 49:06
For sure. I think I had that kicked out of me. I think I had this snot kicked out of me. I think this was part of my journey of why I needed to go to rock bottom. Is I needed to realize that even in my best efforts of going along this rock star life and all this kind of thing, I'd led myself to hell. And a big part of the deal was like, if you, if you get me out of this, and I'm, I'm, I'm all in with this. So I don't think that I would have even been, have been prepared to even start this had I not gone through that. Now, is, is that to say that I'm, I'm not going to get caught up in that? I'm I'm conscious, and I'm not to say that it's, it's never not going to happen. You see people slip and fall all the time, right? Like, you hear it all the time. But I'm, I'm very well aware that this is part of, of the journey. And part, yeah, part of that journey is like, will you be seduced by the things that used to seduce you, uh, so that you lose, lose your credibility? And I'm very, very conscious of those sorts of things. And this is where I think my wife is fantastic too, because we're total opposites. So she has a different line of sight, and it's very— I'm one of those like, let's just do it, this is an awesome idea. And she's gone, nah, you've got to think about this and this and this and this. And I hate it, but at the same time, it's obviously what I, what I need. She's my, she's my eyes behind. So yeah, obviously, man, it's, um, it's one of those things that I'm, I'm very very well aware of. And the devil's sneaky.
John Milham (Host) · 50:44
Yeah, yeah, yeah, very true. What do you want? Like, I watched a video and I was in the audience and saw your ability to connect with people, take them with you as you describe the journey, and then have them at the end feel like they want to do something that is equally encouraging for themselves that you have encouraged, that, you know, you've shown how you've encouraged them to do something like that. What do you want them to do? How can people, you know, forgive? How can people, like, you know, take a step towards their new person, like not following you but becoming their own?
Jason Blyth (Guest) · 51:33
Hero? I think there's all— every hero has multiple different necessary traits: patience, courage, strength. And it's very easy for us to pray to be more patient or to ask God to give us more strength or to be more courageous. But I think the reason why we're here on Earth is it's a real-time test of how we can develop those characteristics, right? God doesn't wave a magic wand and poof, you're more patient, right? Like, if you pray for patience, chances are you'll be presented with some opportunities in life to develop the skill of patience. And people pray for strength, but to be strong, you have to carry some heavy weight. And to be courageous, you'll probably have to face some things in life where you have to practice being courageous. And I don't think we stop enough and analyze the traits of what we need to go to the next stage as part of this initiation on the hero's journey to develop these traits. Forgiveness, I mean, obviously it's one of those things that people need to really, I think, self-reflect and think about the things that are, they're bound to. And also where a big part of the process of forgiveness also is asking, I think, for others for their forgiveness. A big, big thing that happened for me when I came out of rehab rehab is I was very intentional to contact every person I could possibly think of that I'd hurt and, and just apologize and ask for forgiveness. Whether or not they forgave me, I just— and whether or not I thought that I was like hard done by, if I knew that I'd done the wrong thing or was culpable, I admitted my fault regardless of— I didn't care if they did or not. That was about— it was about making it almost impossible for me to go back to the old life because I'd gone through so much embarrassment and shame of having to own up to what I'd done. And it was like to the point where I'd even been overpaid like a week of holiday pay. And I contacted this company I'd worked at years ago, just contacted the accountant. I said, I have to pay this back. He goes, don't worry about it, man. Like, they're not even going to know. And I was like, I know I have to, I have to do it, I have to pay it back. So, you know, I went through, through that process. But to answer the question, man, I, I went like in a very simple way. I wrote down all the things that I wanted to start doing with my life, and I just started ticking them off, you know. Like, I just wanted to get my motorbike license, I don't know, for whatever reason. And this is like just a silly practical thing, but instead of just— as I wrote down everything that I wanted to achieve in the year, and I just started booking things in. I'm just going to book in this motorbike license rather than just leave it and put it off. And that started a process of me realizing that I was more capable of achieving the things in my life that I wanted. And sometimes it's starting with the simple, the simple things that seem menial and getting really good at holding yourself accountable to those sorts of things, to then be able to build up to go to the next layer and the next layer and the next layer. And I've done a lot of sport and a lot of coaching and training of people throughout time. And one of the things that you see a lot is people come in gung-ho, and they want to just like— say, say fitness as an example. I've done a lot of personal training, and people come in, they've never exercised really, or maybe this has been a long time since they've exercised. They go to bed real late, they eat badly, all that kind of stuff. And then they'll come in and they'll go, yeah, I'm going to start getting up early every single day, I'm going to train 5 days a week, I'm going to run 3 days a week, I'm going to get all my steps in, and I'm going to hit my calories. And then 5 weeks later, after the honeymoon phase, knocked off. They fall off because it's— it was this unsustainable goal, which was— I think it was almost set unintentionally but intentionally deep down to cause self-sabotage. So one of the things that people can do really well is get good at doing this, and then once they get the good foundation there, add in this, and then add in the next thing, and build and build and build. And know that you're going to have stumbles and falls, but the faster you can get yourself back up not self-flagellate and beat yourself up and just carry on. That's genuinely the journey. And then those falls become— the gap becomes less and less and less. And the journey to the top is not linear, it's an undulation. But as long as you up here and not here in 6, 12, 18, 24 months, you're on the right path. And that's the journey of life.
John Milham (Host) · 56:03
Sounds good. The, um, You mentioned it right at the beginning about the gifts of suffering. What about the gifts in suffering? Do you look back and do you know that there were moments— do you recognize moments or things that happen that you're actually appreciative for, even though the story is pretty bleak?
Jason Blyth (Guest) · 56:27
Yeah, absolutely. There's— I still have these clear moments as well, which for me, it really was like stuff that proved my faith. That was— it was the moments where God revealed himself to me in those deeply personal ways where I have, I have no doubt about, about the journey because it was like it, it was in those dark moments that I was able to have the revelation. And often it is in those moments, right? And the— you can't have the good without the bad, can't have the bad without the good. And for me, I would literally replace none of it. I would do everything again. If it meant that I would be where I am, I absolutely would. Like, I, I'm— I feel so grateful for the life that I've lived because I am who I am. Like, I, I, I'm so grateful. I am so grateful because I understand that you don't get the insight and the gifts that I have if you don't go through the fire. And I'm not saying that to be like I'm the man, but I'm appreciative of the fact that I have the gifts that I do, and I'm trying to own and accept that I do have some very unique and special gifts that only came though because of the experience that I had. And I think this is one of the, the great perspective shifts that I'd want people to take away is that we often downplay our special gifts because it's all we've ever known and it's normal to us. But Often, often our superpowers are completely abnormal, and we just think that everyone else thinks the way that we do. We think that they have the same emotional capacity or empathy, and, or, you know, and it was a long process for me to realize that people don't think the way that I do. Their brains just are not— they don't work the same way. And that's a good and a bad thing, but you've got to optimize for it to be your your— for your benefit.
John Milham (Host) · 58:24
Yeah, yeah, it's a tough question here, um, and please, if it— you don't want to explore it, that's fine. But, um, we've spoken about forgiveness, but of course, you're— you sought out your biological dad, um, of which a lot of people would say that's walking into a world of hurt, right? Now, you know, is it even possible to forgive someone who gave you the gift of life but almost as a consequence of something evil? So how did you decide to do that? Why did you decide to do that? And what was the outcome?
Jason Blyth (Guest) · 59:07
To meet him? Was that there?
John Milham (Host) · 59:09
Yeah.
Jason Blyth (Guest) · 59:09
Yep.
John Milham (Host) · 59:09
Well, why, why did you seek him?
Jason Blyth (Guest) · 59:13
I think it was just to see a bit of— I'd heard, you know, I'd heard the story about this, this guy all my, all my life and all the horrible bad things. And I wanted to see for myself if, if part of the story was, was, was true. I wanted to see if he was this, this mess of a guy. I feel in a way like I probably wanted to make him feel like he was missing something. You know, I think that's kind of what like any abandoned or, or rejected kind of kid feels like. They want, they want to feel like that parent feels like they missed, missed out on something, and it almost validates and gives a bit of closure. So I— it was much later in my life. I met him at around about 18, and it was, it was interesting because he, you know, he'd been a heroin addict for 20 years. As we sat in the, in the room, he like, he shook like Ozzy Osbourne, and he, he had way— he has way more tattoos than me. He, you know, he showed me his— he'd had this massive gouge out of his neck and out of his stomach and out of his bicep from when he'd been stabbed and gutted. Had been heavily involved with gangs in New Zealand and stuff. And he, like, he bragged about it. And he showed me his gun collection. He lived in this, like, he lived in the roughest part of this town called Hastings in New Zealand, in like gang territory. It was rough and quite scary. And he, he showed me his favorite tattoo on his stomach, which was a cartoon penis chasing after a cartoon vagina. And I didn't think about it at the time, but it was years later I realized that it was just the picture of who he was. He was a, he was a rapist. Yeah, he was a sexual predator. And this— and he, you know, he had 4 different kids to 4 different women at that stage. You know, a kid in her 40s, a kid that was like 7 years old at the time, And it was just one of those things where I don't know his backstory, but he must have come from some pain too. Again, I don't— it's one of those things.
John Milham (Host) · 1:01:15
I don't think anyone chooses that much blackness, right, without some, you know, sort of initiating blackness, you know, like it's like, yeah, yeah, 100%.
Jason Blyth (Guest) · 1:01:27
And that's, and that's it, like I mean, obviously it's a rarer instance, but, you know, kids from really good homes, it's rarer that they'll end up in that kind of depth of depravity. And it's hard. It's really hard. Again, you know, we often see in front of us and, you know, you'll see bad people in front of you and you go, "I don't like that person." But there's obviously a huge story behind that. And it's— I think we're very disconnected from the reality of how people become the way that they are.
John Milham (Host) · 1:01:52
Yeah.
Jason Blyth (Guest) · 1:01:53
But yeah, so with him, like, I, I realized as I left that I just— he didn't offer me anything, and I didn't want anything to do with him. He didn't really show any kind of— he didn't show any remorse or sadness or anything like that. He obviously was bragging about this bravado type of gang crime life. I was like, oh yeah, it was good. Like, it gave me the closure to— I saw him a couple of times I was like, I don't— yeah, I just don't want to have anything to do with this guy. And I just left and, and never went back. I was like, I don't, I don't have to be him. I've— I think in a part I was like, am I gonna, am I gonna be him? I was told I was just gonna grow up to become like him. So in a way, I think it was this ability to be able to close parts of the chapter and again write the story that I, I wanted to. Ironically, I did become like him. I mean, in the sense of like The lifestyle.
John Milham (Host) · 1:02:48
You still have some movement to go, but, you know. Yeah.
Jason Blyth (Guest) · 1:02:50
But fundamentally, at the end of the day, I, you know, he's, I would imagine he's still on that path. Because he was old. I would have guessed he'd probably have been in his maybe 60s then, and that was close to 20 years ago. Haven't heard from him. Don't know. I wonder sometimes, I just wonder sometimes about, I don't know my brother or sister's names, even their first names, but I wonder sometimes how close I've ever come to walking past them on the street and never knowing. And wouldn't even know how to find them. I wouldn't necessarily feel like I need to either, but those, yeah, those sorts of things are interesting.
John Milham (Host) · 1:03:25
Yeah, and it's interesting too, the way you describe it, it's pretty clear that you were not him, right? So maybe that whole process of being— of lining yourself up and going, nah, this isn't me, you know, began the process that you were able to access later to get out.
Jason Blyth (Guest) · 1:03:41
I think so, and I think this is— yeah, I think that everything I, for me, I'm just like, everything happens for a reason. I don't struggle with that concept. It took me a while to get to that place, but where I am now, and very, like I said, I think that life happens for us. And again, it's the same with the pain. I think it's happening for us rather than to us. It's just the perspective of which we accept that or not.
John Milham (Host) · 1:04:08
Yeah. Just a question on faith. Right? You feel very grounded in your faith and obviously you've built an incredible stairway on faith, right, out of what was terrible. If people haven't got that same faith, you know, can they have an experience like yours? Is that like, you know, is the first step to gain faith Or is, you know, the human condition that you've experienced and have, you know, now created purpose with, is that available to anyone at the moment?
Jason Blyth (Guest) · 1:04:51
It's a good question and I don't really know how to answer it like in the sense of like a definitive answer. I can only speculate based on sort of like my best my best judgment. And I would imagine that people could have a level of it, but probably not the entire part of the, the genuine— like you spoke about, like a full rebirth. And I think that, I think there's an element that has to be spiritual in, in that. And, and I'm not saying that people can't, can't achieve that, but I speculate that the full ability to genuinely have a genuine fully reborn experience The pattern that I hear throughout life is that it's attached to some kind of divine intervention choice that comes down to a spiritual thing. And again, this, this was the hero's journey. It was, it was always a mystical element. There was always a spiritual nature of it. It was never, it was never solely based in the material world. And I, I think that's part of the reason why we're here too. Is to acknowledge that there is something, regardless of what you believe it is, to admit and to acknowledge that there is something greater and to pursue that. And I think this is one of the, the greatest weaknesses of our Western, but the worldwide civilization, but the Western civilization is that I think the world's been created in such a way that it has been— there's so much distraction Everyone has these questions of like, you know, they— most people believe in something. They never spend the time to actually look and discover with their whole heart what it is because we're so, we're so much under so much pressure of having to pay our mortgage, our car on tick, our credit card debt, our HECS debt, our personal debt. And then, you know, to try and find love and meaning and everything else in the world and purpose, where, where do most people even have the time to go to the this whole other level, um, search and seeking. But I think this is genuinely what it is. Like the Bible says, as an example, that you'll search for me and you'll find me when you, you search for me with all your heart. You'll search me and you'll seek me and you'll find me when you look for me with all of your heart. Yeah, so I think it's, uh, that was part of, of my journey. So my speculation is, without trying to sound like it's a lost cause because I don't think it is. People can have a better life, but this full transformative thing, I think, I believe, because it's what my faith tells me as well, that it's a necessity.
John Milham (Host) · 1:07:33
Yeah, fabulous. What do you think you are looking forward to as as things develop and grow?
Jason Blyth (Guest) · 1:07:46
At the moment, for me, I'm really looking to challenge myself and evolve as a speaker. I understand that I have a gift and I understand I have a big story. I'm looking forward to the impact of what that looks like to getting to a point of real unrestrainedness in my ability to connect with audiences. I still struggle with anxiety. I still struggle with the whole imposter syndrome. Thing. I think this is, again, this is part of the stretching and breaking outside of that glass box I was talking about before. So I'm looking forward to that. And just looking forward to the rest of the journey of seeing where this goes. I've got some amazing irons in the fire at the moment in a range of different fields, not, you know, just in the child protection field, in the professional speaking field, in the corporate space, in the school space. In the charitable space. And, and one of the things that excites me the most over this last probably couple of years is I feel like I'm having my faith in humanity restored because there's so many amazing people out there that are doing incredible things and are so giving and generous of their time. Obviously there's vultures out there as well, but I, for most of my life, I considered myself to be a misanthrope. Stop. Like, I hated humans. I'd rather animals all day. But this last couple of years has, has really started to make me re-believe in the goodness still and, and hope in humanity.
John Milham (Host) · 1:09:22
Yeah, well, that is a beautiful, hopeful, and, um, exciting place to round up a chat, mate. Thank you so much for sharing a story that is powerful. And I know you've developed it into a mission, but the personal challenges of it, I connect with your pain, right, as a young child. And I hope no other child has to experience that because of that, of what you've gone through. So I really wish your mission all the success in the world, right? And anything we can do, of course, at Kintsugi, that's the power of storytelling is our true belief, right? So, and you're doing a fabulous job. Thank you, Jason, for being a Kintsugi hero, mate.
Jason Blyth (Guest) · 1:10:23
Thank you, mate. And you asked some Awesome questions, mate. That was a fantastic interview. I loved it.
John Milham (Host) · 1:10:29
Oh mate, you're very kind, and I really look forward to watching more of your stories as they come out. You're doing a fabulous job, mate.
Jason Blyth (Guest) · 1:10:39
Well done. Thank you, brother. Cheers.
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