Ep 28: How Getting Sober Made Jay Vincent the Father He Never Had

What does it take to become the father you never had? Jay Vincent joins me for one of the most honest conversations we've had on the show. Jay grew up idolizing a dad who slid into alcoholism and walked out when Jay was 15, and for years Jay repeated the pattern, through addiction, two DUIs, and the day he came home to an empty house after his kids' mother left. This is the story of how he climbed back.

In this episode: how childhood shapes the dads we become, breaking a generational cycle of addiction, the night everything changed, getting sober and staying sober for 14 years, rebuilding trust with kids who barely knew him, parenting traumatized teenagers, and why doing the inner work is the real job of fatherhood.

If you enjoyed The Dad Manual, leave us a rating on your podcast app! If you loved it, share this episode with a Dad! Send your questions to [e-mail]. 

Connect with Tony Cooper: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thetonycooper/

00:00 A hard-won lesson: kids absorb everything
00:29 Meet Jay Vincent, girl dad
02:03 Becoming a girl dad
05:44 Jay's childhood and his father
09:33 When a hero slides into alcoholism
10:53 The dad who left at 15
12:01 An angry teenager finds the dark side
14:00 Five miscarriages and the road to Kirsten
17:58 Bringing a child into a fighting home
21:03 The definition of fatherhood
21:36 Coming home to an empty house
24:07 Losing his kids and hitting bottom
25:04 Two DUIs and the cop who kept showing up
27:16 The night he cried out for help
28:49 Fourteen years sober
30:22 Doing it for his kids, then for himself
33:33 Showing up across state lines
34:00 Finding purpose in a fathers' recovery group
46:26 Advice for parents in a struggling relationship
49:22 Closing thoughts

Creators and Guests

Host

Tony Cooper

Tony Cooper is the founder of Playing the Game of Business, a business coach, father, and podcast host.

What is The Dad Manual?

The Dad Manual is a fatherhood podcast hosted by Tony Cooper, featuring honest conversations with dads about the real, unfiltered journey of parenthood. This parenting podcast for dads explores everything from the excitement of being a first time dad to navigating the teenage years. As one of the best podcasts for expecting dads and experienced fathers alike, we dive deep into what it actually means to be a modern dad—the struggles, the growth, the mistakes, and the moments that change you forever. Whether you're looking for a new dad podcast or seasoned parenting wisdom, this family podcast delivers the honest guidance you won't find in books.

Jay Vincent 00:00
Kids absorb everything, every word, all the energy you put out. Like, go get some counseling. I would never wish on another father or human being to not know where their kids are.
Tony Cooper 00:11
Yeah.
Jay Vincent 00:11
I'll get this grandiose story I want to tell of the nostalgic past. Oftentimes I get carried away, and they'll use it against you, and you'll go, I shouldn't have told that story.
Tony Cooper 00:29
Hi, I'm Tony Cooper. This is The Dad Manual podcast. I am here today with one of my favorite dads. You are Kirsten and Izzy's dad. Will you please introduce yourself?
Jay Vincent 00:41
Hi. Yeah, I am Jay Vincent. I'm a great dad, and I have some wisdom to share.
Tony Cooper 00:45
You have wisdom to share. You also have a colorful life to share. And what I really appreciate about getting to know you and learning about your life is how much your growth and transformation is completely aligned with your fathering journey, and that who you were and who you became was the beginning of who you were as a dad, and that you've really found a different path and transformed in many ways. So I'm really excited that we get to dig in and talk about that, and I just, thank you for being here today, Jay.
Jay Vincent 01:22
You're welcome. Thanks for having me. It's an honor. A pleasure.
Tony Cooper 01:26
Yeah. Okay, so where should we begin? Why don't you tell me about your kids?
Jay Vincent 01:30
So I have two girls. They're both teenagers. My oldest daughter's name is Kirsten. She's 19 years old. She's going to be 20 on June 30th, so she's amazing. And then I have Izzy, and she's amazing in her own right. And she is 18 years old. She just turned 18 in February. They are fast becoming closer friends, which is really cool. I just wouldn't have it any other way than to have daughters.
Tony Cooper 02:03
Yeah. You identify with being a girl dad.
Jay Vincent 02:06
100%, man.
Tony Cooper 02:06
Did you think that's who you were going to be, or is that kind of the blessing of just how things turned out?
Jay Vincent 02:14
I'd say it's kind of a combination, but earlier on, I grew up with an older sister, and my dad wasn't around from the time that I was 15 on, so it was like my sister and my mom. So I've always gotten along pretty good with ladies and women, and now I've got girls.
Tony Cooper 02:34
Yeah, man, just look at you.
Jay Vincent 02:38
I mean, there's that, but I've never really been that of a ladies' man in that respect, but in the respect of just, yeah, I've always gotten along really well with feminine energy. And at the same time, there's the innate kind of instinctual thing where, like, yeah, I want to have a boy, da da da. But that went away fairly quickly. And it was like, okay, we've got two girls and we get to enjoy this.
Tony Cooper 03:00
It's so funny. When Olivia, my oldest, was born, we didn't do any testing to know what her gender would be. And so we were like, let's just be surprised when the birth happens. And I was 100% convinced that Olivia was going to be a boy. I grew up with two brothers. I wasn't really exposed to girls growing up. So I was like, I have no idea how I would even raise a daughter. That feels so foreign to me. And then she's born and she's not a boy. And my first thought was, oh, man, I don't know what I'm going to do. How am I going to raise a daughter? And then when Leo was born 18 months later, I was convinced he was going to be a girl. So I'm over two, and he's born. And it was like, I don't know how I'm going to be a dad to a boy. Like, I have no idea, because I'd so instantly become, I'm raising daughters, that just became such an identity. So the fact that I now have both is interesting. But I know what you mean where you're like, I thought I'd want to be a boy dad. But then when the girls came along, you're hooked. I mean, there is something about daddy and daughter. There's a connection there. That's a pretty special thing.
Jay Vincent 04:19
Well, I will say that I kind of did get the experience of my oldest being into, like, boy stuff. She's always been super athletic, and she powerlifts, which is kind of rare, I think, for a female. And she cheerleads. So I kind of got both.
Tony Cooper 04:38
So I'm like.
Jay Vincent 04:39
I was worried about it at first with the powerlifting, and she's won the national championships the last two years in a row. And now I'm out there screaming.
Tony Cooper 04:46
Powerlifting? Yeah. National champion. Holy cow. Two years in a row. Yeah. Damn. She didn't compete. I'm a little stupid. It's like, is that the, when you lean over and pick the thing up and does it go over your head? What is this, the lift?
Jay Vincent 05:03
Well, that's a jerk. And that's an Olympic sport of its own. It's a combination of three different exercises. Bench press.
Tony Cooper 05:12
Okay. What?
Jay Vincent 05:12
And deadlift. You can easily deadlift 350 pounds. And she weighs about 120 wet.
Tony Cooper 05:21
No way.
Jay Vincent 05:22
She's a beast. And at the same time, she's kind of tiny, smaller, and she's a flyer, so they throw her up in the air when she's cheerleading. So she goes from one spectrum to the other with the way she balances herself.
Tony Cooper 05:40
Yeah.
Jay Vincent 05:40
And I'm cheering in both realms, man.
Tony Cooper 05:44
Yeah. That's amazing. How cool. How cool. Yeah. So let's dig in a little bit about your childhood, because that's where, as dads, we start to get an idea of what being a dad's like, because we have a dad. So what was your upbringing like that led you on the path to becoming a dad and how all that formed?
Jay Vincent 06:03
Well, my childhood was, I grew up with my mom's side of the family and my dad's side of the family. My mom's side of the family were very traditional, Italian, super loving. You always knew what was going on emotionally. And then my dad's side of the family, they were a little bit more closed off. He came from more of a just kind of a different sort of background, like farmers and stuff like that. So they were kind of like, rub some dirt on it. So my childhood, my dad and I actually did a lot when I was younger. We were in Boy Scouts, and we had this thing called Indian Guides up north, which was a Native American culture that was kind of a spinoff. We'd go hunting and fishing and camping. And so he was very much active in my youth, and we were pretty close. So he was my hero when I was younger, just the way he set the example of showing me all that stuff, which essentially paved the path to me being a biologist who started their own business. I have a pest control business, but essentially it's still biology in a way. So yeah, he helped mold the path, probably unknowingly helped mold the path of who I am today with my interests.
Tony Cooper 07:14
What were some of those experiences that you remember that were just, like, classic, like, oh, man, I love my dad so much, moments?
Jay Vincent 07:25
Oh, boy. So growing up in Michigan, we used to drive up to Upper Peninsula, Michigan, and we would go camping a lot. We had a hole-behind camper, an Airstream, one of those big silver old-school ones, and we traveled all across the US. And I just thought it was the neatest thing ever that I could experience doing that. And we did it every summer, so that was super cool. It was a lot of freedom, a lot of adventure. I mean, I'm talking, this is when I was like three to six.
Tony Cooper 07:57
Okay. Yeah. That's great.
Jay Vincent 07:58
So now I love traveling, of course, because that's experiencing life. As in terms of kind of who my dad was, like as a family man, I've taken a different approach than he did. I think that we kind of take what our parents teach us, and we take the good and we leave whatever else. His approach was kind of like, rub the dirt out of it, we don't talk about it, let's go do something. He was kind of a doer. And my approach is more emotional, because obviously I have two girls, and so I like to be transparent and talk about feelings and goals and passions and dreams. And me and my dad really never talked about any of that kind of stuff. And I don't know whether that was a 1980s kind of thing. Not a whole lot of that going on, just kind of more like, okay, go ahead and play, we'll see you at dinner. That was more the approach.
Tony Cooper 08:54
Yeah. I mean, look, we all have our own experiences, but now that I've done this quite a bit and talked to people about their dads, a lot of the dads sound pretty similar. Just, like, their provider-protector is kind of fine, but emotionally unavailable and didn't really have much emotional regulation and probably did a better job than his dad. It's sort of like there's a particular frame in which a lot of those dad descriptions fit. But your specific experience with your dad, so it went from kind of idyllic as a little kid, and then as you got older and went into your teens, what was the rest of your relationship like with your dad?
Jay Vincent 09:33
So as I got past the age of 10, and I think this was also awareness, my dad started to get pretty in the throes of alcoholism. So he started becoming...
Tony Cooper 09:47
Did it not start until you were older, or you just only learned about it then?
Jay Vincent 09:52
Well, he was always a heavy drinker, but there was a point where it started to get kind of like we were being held prisoner in our own house.
Tony Cooper 09:59
What was it like? Did you notice...
Jay Vincent 10:00
We were walking on eggshells. You didn't know what would make him mad and what that might look like. He would wake up in super bad moods, probably because he was super hungover, I would guess. At night when he would come home, he would just kind of lock himself in the back room and nobody was allowed to go on that side of the house. And when he came out, he was somebody that you didn't really want to be talking to. So it went from having a dad growing up doing all this stuff as a family to a transitionary point where him and my mom's marriage started to fail. And my mom did only what she knew to do best, which was to stay with him for the next three or four years. And then, yeah, then he left when I was 15. It kind of all came crashing down and he decided to move out. And I didn't talk to him. He lived a mile down the street from me, and I didn't talk to him from the age of 15 to the age of probably 21.
Tony Cooper 10:53
Oh. Like he didn't want anything to do with you. He's the adult in this situation.
Jay Vincent 10:59
Yeah. I mean, he just, I think he only dealt with it the only way he knew how, which was to not deal with it, because he came from a long line of alcoholics who were pretty abusive. And whatever happened between him and my mom, I think there was some infidelity, probably some shame going on with him, and he just decided to dip out. And there was also, I think, a child support thing and a divorce thing going on for a while, to where after I turned 18, then he knew he didn't have to pay it, kind of thing. I mean, I don't know. I'm intentionally, I can't speak for him, but I would assume that was the reason why. But he went on to another marriage to do the same exact thing. I have a half sister, actually, from another family that he did the same thing to. Gosh, it was probably close to 20 years later. 15 years later.
Tony Cooper 11:54
Wow. Well, look, obviously all you can speak about is your experience, but your experience of being a kid and having that dad who is, like, adventurous and having fun and expanding your world, to a dad that was kind of scary, certainly unavailable, to a dad that's just gone. That's three different dads that you live with or that you experience. What was the impact on you?
Jay Vincent 12:18
I became an angry kid at about the age of 15, and I was uber involved in music. I was very artistic, so I played the guitar. I was a traditionally trained jazz drummer, and I was also involved in soccer and wrestling. And I played a slew of other sports when I was younger. And honestly, by the time I was to the age of 16, I was like, I'm not doing this anymore. And I kind of went over to the dark side and started hanging out with some of the, we called them burnouts back in high school. They were the jean jackets and they were the folks that got in trouble and pushed the envelope of experimenting, I'll put it that way. And so I became more exploratory and kind of moved away from more traditional expressions, more sports and music.
Tony Cooper 13:04
Like both of those things kind of went away for you.
Jay Vincent 13:07
I was still in the weight room, but it was not for training for sports and such. And then I actually started to get into listening to a lot of heavy metal. Like, it seemed to suit my rebel spirit and my anger. So I got into listening to some pretty heavy stuff. And then I started to switch from playing blues on the guitar to more distortion type stuff. So still kept the music, but put the sports on the back burner and just decided to kind of hang out. And what I really needed was I needed to have a dad that was around. Because I just ran all over my mom. Bless her soul, man. She's so amazing. I've got an amazing mother. She just didn't know what to do with me, man.
Tony Cooper 13:59
Right. So then how does that lead to you becoming a dad?
Jay Vincent 14:04
So, I mean, for many years, I kind of went down that road. I became kind of a jam-band type of guy, and I followed the Grateful Dead for a while. And then I got into the rave scene and started DJing and dancing. I picked up dancing in my 20s where I became a break dancer and a hip hop dancer. And I met someone in college, all in the midst of the while, I somehow made it to college by some miraculous chance. I don't know how I got through it. And I met their children's mother at a bar and we just shot pool and we both partied a lot. And that whole lifestyle involved me with getting involved with her. And we stayed together for a few years and had our first child, Kirsten.
Tony Cooper 14:48
Did you guys say, let's have a kid?
Jay Vincent 14:49
I'm so glad you're asking me this. So we tried to have some kids probably about four years into the relationship, and we had five miscarriages in a row.
Tony Cooper 15:00
Oh, man.
Jay Vincent 15:01
And so that was crushing me. She would tell me she was pregnant, and by the third or fourth time, I just was very disconnected. I was still kind of angry, considering the fact that I'd never dealt with any of the anger and processing my emotions around my dad. That all the dreams of being a dad were being crushed. And I ended up developing being super closed off on top of being angry. So that was a rough few years. We found out we were low on estrogen and ended up getting the cream and she rubbed it on her belly and along came Kirsten.
Tony Cooper 15:40
No way. Wow. Did you really want to be a dad? Like, was that something that was true for you, or were you just kind of following it? Because, you know, like, as I hear your story and think about the role model you had as a dad, I mean, that's a pretty good sales pitch to not want to do it. So how did you feel about it?
Jay Vincent 16:02
You know, that's a great question. So Angie and I didn't have the best relationship as in terms of the health of it, because we were in a lifestyle that just didn't afford you to be super grounded. It was more partying and, yeah, irresponsible. We liked the idea of having a child, but we didn't know how to be parents. Like, neither of us. She came from a very broken family, more so than even mine. And I think it was more, we wanted, the idea of having a kid was amazing, but I don't think we were grounded enough into what that would look like when she came along.
Tony Cooper 16:38
Right.
Jay Vincent 16:39
Didn't do our research. We didn't have any practice. We had no idea what we were doing.
Tony Cooper 16:44
Yeah.
Jay Vincent 16:45
So along came Kirsten, and we're still choosing to be in the same lifestyle that we were in before we had her, which didn't suit having a kid.
Tony Cooper 16:56
Yeah. How old were you?
Jay Vincent 16:59
So when Kirsten came along, I'm 53 now. She's about to be 20. I was 33.
Tony Cooper 17:07
Yeah. Okay. We were old. You're old enough. You're old enough to maybe know better.
Jay Vincent 17:11
We were. We tried for a few years. We were together a while, and it was just, honestly, like, when Kirsten came along, I was at the point where I wanted to give up, because I was just super angry. I felt like I was being punished somehow. This is against me. Why is this happening? And then she came along and it was like, surprise. We were planning, but we tried for so long, I didn't think it was possible, if that makes sense.
Tony Cooper 17:42
Yeah. Well, you had a lot of disappointment, and all your history is telling you it's not going to work. So I can see where you'd get to that place.
Jay Vincent 17:49
Yeah. And so then along comes Kirsten, this beautiful, amazing, pudgy little girl. She was so pudgy. And we are fighting worse than ever. So we brought a child into an environment with a lot of arguing. If I could give any advice to anyone on any, like, a mistake that I've made with fatherhood, is kids absorb everything. Every word, every emotion, all the energy you put out. Like, go get some counseling if you're not, because it's important.
Tony Cooper 18:23
Yeah.
Jay Vincent 18:23
That's one of my biggest regrets as a dad, is just winging it, not really going to get any help for years, and then our kids coming up into that environment. We can fast forward into the rest of that story. After Kirsten was born, Izzy came along 19 months later.
Tony Cooper 18:41
That's quick.
Jay Vincent 18:41
It is quick. And that one was like, oh, we're pregnant again. Not that I don't freaking love my daughter Izzy. She's freaking amazing. She's hilarious. She's artistic. It's like both my kids are me, like, split into different kids. One's athletic and super outgoing. The other one's artistic and funny. And so it's like me. I'm like, wow, this is so cool. But we didn't plan for Izzy. And so that just kind of added some fuel to what we were already dealing with, which was not getting along. You're already kind of failing at what you're doing, and you're like, oh, great, we can double down on it now.
Tony Cooper 19:20
That's a tough spot.
Jay Vincent 19:25
My oldest, Kirsten, had colic, so the only way she could go to bed is if you picked her up and rocked her to sleep or took her on a walk or took her in the car. So there's a lot of driving and walking, and you put her down and you'd wake up. And so having kids, man, your sleep patterns, at least our sleep patterns, changed.
Tony Cooper 19:42
Yeah. Yeah. It is kind of wild. That's the first thing that you learn is that babies are not on adult waking and sleeping patterns. I don't know why that wasn't obvious, but once you start realizing, like, they eat every few hours, which means they're not sleeping through the night, and they don't know how to sleep. And some of them are easier than others. And when Leo was like six months old, I just, I don't think we've had one straight night of sleep in six months, and very interrupted. And then it really dawned on me. I'm like, how am I operating still? It's kind of crazy that you can still keep going with that little sleep. So I think, yeah, you definitely learn a lot of interesting things about yourself when you become a parent.
Jay Vincent 20:30
You do, and one of which is you think you're patient, but when the kids come along, your patience is like, wow. And so one of the things that I developed on later in life was working on myself, meditating, making sure I'm taking time to take care of me, which are some of the tools when I was a younger dad that I didn't implement right away. It was more very outwardly kind of focused. Like, this is why I'm like this, instead of, I'm like this so I can be this for them.
Tony Cooper 21:01
Right? Yeah.
Jay Vincent 21:03
Which is really the definition of fatherhood for me, is just developing yourself and getting grounded and getting all the tools you can spiritually and emotionally and physically to take care of yourself so you can be the rock for your family.
Tony Cooper 21:17
So how did you get to that place? Because you guys are still partying, you're arguing. You guys are, like you said, not creating a great home environment. You got these two little kids. How did you get from that chaos to what you're talking about now?
Jay Vincent 21:31
So there is a journey involved from the time that Izzy was born until where I'm at now. And when she was eight and a half months old, their mother decided to leave. So my youngest one was eight and a half months. My oldest one was about two and a half. And they dipped. I came home to an empty house. Everything was gone without a word. Just disappeared. I mean, I was down in Hilton Head visiting my dad. And typically Angie would usually come with me, and the kids would come. Or at least my oldest one was used to come. She'd been down there a couple times, and I was expecting them to come. She was going to come follow me. But the plan, I guess, for her was not to follow and to move everything out. And so I didn't hear from them.
Tony Cooper 22:18
Take me to that moment. You walk in and your family's gone. I don't know how you felt about Angie not being there, but your two daughters aren't there. What was that like for you?
Jay Vincent 22:29
I mean, coming home to an empty house, the feeling of dread and deep sadness was just something that, I mean, that was one of the lowest moments of my life. I can't even describe the feeling other than I've lost everything. I'm alone. Where are they? Worry, dread. All these feelings that I would never wish on another father or human being, to not know where their kids are.
Tony Cooper 22:57
Yeah. That is scary.
Jay Vincent 23:00
And so on top of it, poor guy, we had this guy, his name was Brian. We went to college together. We reunited, and he was living with us. Man, the hell that we had to have put this human being through with all the fighting and stuff. He said, hey, man. He was there. And I'm like, what's going on? He's like, she left. And I'm like, why didn't you call me? And he was like, man, I'm sorry. I wanted to, but she asked me not to. And I said, I understand. And he's like, so I'm moving out tomorrow. So he moves out the next day.
Tony Cooper 23:39
Oh, man. Wow. You said before Kirsten was born, you were at a pretty low point, so this sounds even lower.
Jay Vincent 23:47
Oh, my gosh. Yeah. We would always talk and we would fight and we would say, hey, this isn't working. We either need to go get some counseling or we need to not be together and figure it out. But you say all those things and you say them out of spite, and again, words are very powerful. Eventually, she left. And to be honest with you, the way that our relationship was going, it makes sense that she left, because it was starting to get kind of scary. And so she took the kids and moved back to Ohio.
Tony Cooper 24:20
So when did you find out where she was and where the kids were? How did that start to reform for you?
Jay Vincent 24:25
It took a few months.
Tony Cooper 24:27
Jesus.
Jay Vincent 24:27
To find out where they were. And she would go through these phases where she would contact me and want to work on whatever was going on with us and kind of regress, as in terms of her standing in her decision, and want to get back together. And then she wouldn't. It was like this weird thing. And then she's like, well, if you want to come and visit, you're going to have to have police surveillance on you. And I'm like, for what? And we didn't have a good relationship. It was never like that, in my opinion. So that was weird. And considering my lifestyle, I'm like, police, kids, that doesn't mix. And either way, I came up for a dance battle called Scribble Jam back in the day. Eminem won it back in 96, I think. And it was an MC battle, DJ, beatbox and break dancing and graffiti. They had all of the elements of hip hop. And so I came up for that. And that was the first time I got to see them because I was with my friends, and she knew one of them, trusted it enough for me to see them. And that kind of broke the seal with me being able to see them. And then it started to become where I started to come up more often. But my addiction and alcoholism started to get really advanced after they left. And I had two DUIs by the same cop on the same road within a couple of months after them leaving.
Tony Cooper 25:53
Damn.
Jay Vincent 25:53
The same stretch of a mile. I think he targeted me the second time. Pretty sure. But I honestly would shake his hand today if I could ever see him. I hated him at the time. I got that for three or four years in court until it all came down. But I would shake his hand today because that man stayed after me. He kept showing up in court and he's like, this guy needs help. Because the second time I was in the back of his squad car, eyes broke down and told him everything. My kids are gone. I've got drinking issues, I've got drug issues. I need help. I honestly don't remember a lot of it. I remember spots, but it was like he was the only person at that time I had to talk to.
Tony Cooper 26:34
Damn.
Jay Vincent 26:34
And he stayed after my ass, man. He made sure that I went to a 12-step program.
Tony Cooper 26:41
Okay. And did that help?
Jay Vincent 26:44
So, yeah, I mean, I dodged it for three or four years. So this all happened in 2008 when they left. And in 2011, it all started coming down the pipe. And it was like, the lawyers, they took my money. They're like, I think we could fight it. And then when it all came down to it, they're like, nah, you're pretty much fucked. They're gonna nail you to the wall. And I'm like, oh, great. So $11,000 later, you tell me it's not gonna work. They had me red-handed. And it took me about a year, from 2011 to 2012, of making a decision on whether I wanted to change. But it came down to a night in my apartment after I'd moved out. It's actually November 21, 2012, where I got on my knees and I just cried out for help and I just said, I can't do this anymore.
Tony Cooper 27:32
Wow.
Jay Vincent 27:33
I'd already been through the court system for a year and going to these meetings, and, you know, those people are not like me kind of attitude, and just getting my paper signed. But I had a moment of clarity in my apartment where I honestly did not want to be here anymore. I missed my kids. I felt like I was a prisoner to my devices and substances and stuff. And all roads were leading in the wrong direction. What this really scary thing is, is what once was a solution to numb out was not working anymore. So it just was not working. So I still felt all the pain times 10. And my solution wasn't working anymore. So I was at the dropping-off point, is what they call it in recovery. And so it's like you can't live with it and you can't live without it. And you really are just at this point where you don't know how to live. That same meeting I went to the next day, I'd asked a gentleman to help me and to be my mentor, they call it a sponsor in the program. And me and him went through some work and I stayed sober, coming up on 14 years.
Tony Cooper 28:47
So, hey, well done, man. What decision did you have to make and how much of it was connected to you being a dad?
Jay Vincent 28:57
All of it. So the decision I had to make was I was thinking to myself, I don't want to be here anymore. And I had my past pretty close at hand. And it was starting to get kind of scary. Like, I'm like, okay, this is dark. And I don't want my kids to remember me this way. And I don't want to be remembered this way. It was my biggest fear that they're going to find me in my apartment. And they were literally in the forefront of my mind where it was like, I have to be there for them. I get to be there for them. And then you get further along in recovery and it starts to become about you. Like, because if you can't strengthen yourself and get tools and grow, then it's not really good to anyone else if you're just not drinking and using. Because that same very person that drank and used, if you don't change, will go back and do the same thing again. They're the entire reason why. Because I want nothing more than to be a dad, because my dad wasn't there for me. And I'm going through the same cycle, but I'm like, how did I get here? This is exactly what I didn't want.
Tony Cooper 30:11
Yeah. It's like a generational cycle.
Jay Vincent 30:15
Yeah. Right. And I'm so proud to say that I'm not trapped in that cycle anymore. My kids have much more tools and avenues and an open dad who's willing to supply whatever they need for support. I didn't have any of that.
Tony Cooper 30:34
Yeah. So at this point, I mean, you didn't really have that much of a relationship then with your kids. How well did they know you?
Jay Vincent 30:40
It was weird. Like, the first few times I visited them, since it had been so long, my oldest one remembered me, but my youngest one had no idea who I was. And it was so sad the first time I visited because she was like, who? She just, she didn't know who I was. And so that was heartbreaking. And of course, I went through several more years of that before I got sober. But it started to become so painful that it was like, that was the entire motivation of, like, this, something's got to change.
Tony Cooper 31:12
Yeah. Like, the facade of pretending everything was okay became unbearably hard.
Jay Vincent 31:17
I just feel so painful as you say that. Like, I can just feel that, like, that you've got this kid and the kid's like, I don't know who you are.
Tony Cooper 31:24
Yeah. And maybe like, I don't trust you, or not have any of that natural sort of I love you, daddy sort of things that you're supposed to get from a kid.
Jay Vincent 31:35
Yeah. My oldest one was very much always attached to me. She would cry a lot when I would leave. And my youngest one was very closed off, and she still kind of is. And I don't know whether that was why, but I'm sure that that probably facilitated some of that. She's just closed off in general. But like you said, with your fighting and with the energies that we create around them, they just absorb it all.
Tony Cooper 32:02
Right. Maybe it's not even like a memory or even a conscious thought, but they take in everything that we're creating all the time.
Jay Vincent 32:09
So, yeah, I'm sure that definitely had an impact on her and has an impact on her. And, you know, fast forward the story. I get sober and start to get my life together and go through the get-my-license-back and all the stuff and start to get healthier physically and emotionally and everything. And I start to go visit more. And then their mother starts to transition into, it's not that she wasn't a partier, but she sustained it when they were younger enough to be manageable. But then she crossed over into the other side and they began to go through a lot of trauma and things that I went through when I was a kid with her. And so then it became many years of showing up for them. And in Ohio, like, the dads don't have any rights. So it started to become like I would drive eight hours up there, like once or twice a month to be there for them. Sometimes she would just not show up and I would be like calling, where are you? Like, I'm here. And like, no, you're not visiting them this time. I'm like, oh, okay. So then it would become a tug of war. Most of the time I could see them. But it started to become this insane dynamic. I started to get my ducks in a row with my mentors.
Tony Cooper 33:31
And you're a lot clearer mentally and emotionally and you can really get what's going on in a really, probably a deeper way, because you're not numbing yourself out to anything and you're watching, like, your kids go through the same experience you had as a kid. That's almost been a lot.
Jay Vincent 33:52
I tell you what, I mean, I can't stress enough the importance of working on yourself and your emotional bandwidth and working with other people who are in trauma and working, especially men, because I got involved with single men in recovery and divorced fathers in recovery nonprofit group. And what these guys did is we donated weeks to other guys across the US, and condos and stuff that needed to see their kids. And some of them were like a couple months into the journey and some of them were 20 years into the journey. And all these guys, they just lifted me up and I got to lift other gentlemen up. And it was very powerful and it started to become my superpower. So what I thought was my biggest liability became my biggest asset. And it started to become not a fight, but just a matter of purpose. And this is why I'm here.
Tony Cooper 34:44
Wow, that's powerful. So how did you get to then be an active part of your kids' lives five years ago?
Jay Vincent 34:52
Typically in Ohio, the magic number is 14, 14 to 15. So my oldest one wanted to come live with me since 8. Very verbal about it.
Tony Cooper 35:01
Very verbal.
Jay Vincent 35:02
She was 8 and she wanted out. She could see the difference in the household because their mother was only mandated to bring them to me in the summer and the rest of the time I had to drive them. And it was very much one-sided. There was never any help. It was, you're coming to see them. And then it was a struggle to even get her to come. So there was no co-parenting involved. They could see that their mother very much did not want to communicate with me and was difficult, or at least my oldest one could see it. And she knew something was wrong. She was like, okay, so dad's always nice, and what is going on, what's wrong? At eight years old, she started to figure out something's wrong with mom. Youngest one has always been a little mommy's girl and just so in love with her mother. Fast forward, now she's pretty crushed by it. But you get to the age of 15 and things are starting to become so dysfunctional. Things are happening with school, there's physical abuse going on, CPS is being called, outside of what we were already trying to build. And then now they've both been with me. She let my oldest one come first. I wanted both. She'd only let my oldest one come. And then my youngest one was here within a year after.
Tony Cooper 36:18
Yeah. Wow.
Jay Vincent 36:20
And then we're dealing with two teens that are severely traumatized through everything they went through. But they get to get the help, they get to get the support. And you want to think you're a spiritually fit dad, wait till you have two teenagers that have been completely traumatized move in with you and your happy little marriage you have going on. And there's just been a lot of growth in the last five years around the fact that I didn't know jack about raising teenagers. Still sometimes feel like I don't.
Tony Cooper 36:58
Why would you? I mean, that's the thing about being a parent, is like, why do you think we would know anything? We've never done this before. Right. We're making it up as we go along. So that's the best we can do, is be present to it.
Jay Vincent 37:10
We can be. And sometimes I get roped into the conflict, and I find myself being like, how did I get here? And then you get a choice to back away and draw boundaries and stuff. And it's always very interesting because I see a lot of myself in them too. I'm like, my God. Like, I know that, I remember that like it was yesterday, because I didn't mature as a human being from the age of 15 when I picked up drugs and alcohol to when I got sober when I was 39. I spent 24 years as a 15-year-old emotionally.
Tony Cooper 37:45
Interesting.
Jay Vincent 37:46
So I don't forget what that looks like. So I have a lot of empathy towards that. And I also, it's kind of triggering sometimes. I'm like, you're me.
Tony Cooper 37:57
I know that trick.
Jay Vincent 38:02
Yeah.
Tony Cooper 38:02
Halfway. You're like, kudos, well done. And you're messing with the wrong person because I invented that shit. So, yeah. Pick your game up a little bit.
Jay Vincent 38:13
Yeah, it's nothing. I try not to tell the war stories though, man, because those don't help. As fathers, at least I could speak for myself. Sometimes I'll get this grandiose story I want to tell of the nostalgic past, and oftentimes I get carried away and they'll use it against you and you're like, shit, I shouldn't have told that story.
Tony Cooper 38:35
Yeah. Good move. Good move, kid.
Jay Vincent 38:39
Yeah, my bad.
Tony Cooper 38:39
Well, look, man, what a journey. And I know, look, you're just still on it and your girls are still working through their past like we all are, and looking to create bright futures. And you haven't had a lot of time to work with it either. You're just kind of almost new to the game of being a full-time dad. So it's sort of interesting that you've been a dad for 19 years, but front and center, not really.
Jay Vincent 39:10
Yeah, not a long time. But I feel that there's just been a ton of progress made with just watching how they are developing emotionally and how they look at the world and how they know they're supported and loved. And then they kind of fall back into old behavior, but they just know the love's here. And look, I didn't have that as a kid, so the fact that I can offer that to them and that they feel that. I mean, my oldest one is really, she'll just tell me, you're my rock. I don't know what I'd do without you. I don't know where my life would be. And she is super driven and just feeling super supportive. My youngest one still, she's still figuring it out, but she knows she's supported.
Tony Cooper 39:52
Yeah. What a gift to be able to have that comfort, to know that you've got a parent that wants to support you, that you can be open with and tell the truth to, that has had a colorful past and really nothing you're going to tell them is going to shake them for the most part. Then your kids know that about you.
Jay Vincent 40:11
Oh, they know. Yeah. They know what their mother's mostly told them about me. But yeah, again, like, I've told some stories. I've got a bunch. There's lots of adventures. 24 years of adventures. Sober, I'm glad you're here. Yeah, man.
Tony Cooper 40:26
Let's wrap up with just sort of thinking about your story in particular and what big lessons you've gotten along the way. And so typically I ask about, for, you know, what advice would you have for a brand new father? I think that's actually something I'm more interested in from you, which is because a lot of parents will find themselves in a situation where they were once a loving couple, and then they had kids and then something happened and then the relationship really starts to devolve in a negative way. And I don't think people know what to do or how to think or how to approach that. So how would you, thinking back on that, if someone were to find themselves in a relationship where trying to be a great parent but the relationship with the spouse is really tough, what advice would you give that person?
Jay Vincent 41:14
Well, what advice I could tell you as a father is that we have to exercise a lot of patience and a lot of listening, because we tend to take things personally. And don't take yourself so seriously. Don't take everybody else so seriously. And also at the same time, take care of yourself. Grace. Patience. Sometimes it's okay to just not say anything. Sometimes your wife just needs you to listen and be there for her and rub her on the shoulder and the back and tell her you're there to listen. That's not always about you personally, because there's lots of changes that come along. The kids start to become very important. The romantic life sort of takes breaks at times. And you're in it to win it with that spiritual connection. And so be open to outside counseling. Spending time together where the TV's not on and you're connecting and you're sitting across from each other looking at each other, actually talking. Spend time together where you're not constantly go, go, go, go, and just learn how to listen.
Tony Cooper 42:23
Yeah. Well, Jay, you're a real redemption story. And I loved our conversation and I love you and I thank you so much for sharing everything that you shared, and I just really appreciate you.
Jay Vincent 42:36
I appreciate you, too. Thanks for having me, man. It's been great. I can't believe it whipped by as fast as it did.
Tony Cooper 42:42
I know, right? All right, well. Well, then, until next time.
Jay Vincent 42:47
Till next time.
Tony Cooper 42:50
I just want to thank you for listening to this episode of The Dad Manual podcast and for supporting dads to become the best version of themselves as they strive to bring healing and inspiration to their families. I'm looking to grow a community of fathers who are ready to change the world. But I need your help. It's super valuable to the podcast when you like an episode, when you leave us a rating and subscribe to our YouTube channel, when you follow us on Instagram, the dadmanualpodcast, and maybe even the most important, when you share the podcast with the dad you love. Also, you can impact what we talk about here. If you've got questions or topics you want me to explore, email them to me at [e-mail]. I would love to answer your question on our next episode. And until next time, I'm Tony Cooper, and this is The Dad Manual podcast.