Pat and Tammy McLeod, Harvard University Chaplains on Ambiguous Loss

Sports Spectrum Podcast

Sports Spectrum

Sports

4.9 • 685 Ratings

🗓️ 9 July 2019

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Episode 329

Life hit Harvard team chaplains Pat and Tammy McLeod hard when their son Zach collapsed on a high school football field—he had sustained a severe brain injury. Two emergency brain surgeries later, Zach began waking up. Slowly the entire family woke up to the reality that life would never again be the same. The fallout of his injury would reshape their marriage, their family, their future and their faith in ways they never saw coming.

What would it take for them to navigate the endless fallout of their son’s life-transforming injury? How could they reconcile their grief over the life Zach lost, with gratitude for the life that remained? And how does a couple move forward together in their search for hope, rather than letting indefinable loss drive them apart? Hit Hard releases todayand is the true story of the McLeods’ journey through ambiguous loss—both having and not having their son. It’s the story of a family who faced unexpected heartbreak, a story that offers us all glimpses of how we can pick up the pieces, redefine expectations, and find hope in the midst of unresolved pain.

On this podcast, we hear Zach McLeod's story, learn from Pat and Tammy about ambiguous loss, why they wanted to tell Zach's story, what it is like to grieve the loss of their son when he's still alive, and safety on the football field in 2019.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Sports Spectrum, the Sports and Faith podcast that brings Jesus back into the conversation.
0:17.5	Here's your host, Jason Romano.
0:19.9	Welcome everyone to Sports Spectrum. Grateful to have you joining us on the program today. I, Jason Romano. Welcome everyone to Sports Spectrum.
0:22.1	I'm grateful to have you joining us on the program today.
0:24.1	I am Jason Romano, and we are bringing you a story today from Pat and Tammy McLeod.
0:32.0	They're our guests on the podcast, and they have a new book out called Hit Hard,
0:36.5	One Family's Journey of Letting Go of What Was and Learning to Live Well with What is.
0:43.5	And this is a football story.
0:46.5	It's a family story.
0:48.7	It's a mother-son story.
0:50.2	It's a father-son story.
0:53.2	And it's a powerful one.
0:55.0	Pat and Tammy McLeod are Harvard chaplains for crew ministry in Boston and they work with a lot of athletes.
1:03.0	Pat was telling us and he'll tell you on the podcast, he works with primarily the football team as a chaplain and they have ministered to young people for many,
1:13.6	many years. But this story isn't really about their role as chaplains. It's about their role as
1:20.5	mom and dad and having a son named Zach who desired to be a football player and was a high school football player, suffer a traumatic
1:31.2	brain injury that would alter the trajectory of Zach's life and in many ways Pat and Tammy's
1:37.6	life. Interestingly enough on this podcast, you're going to learn about ambiguous loss.
1:43.8	What ambiguous loss is, both having and not
1:47.0	having the person that you love. And it's an interesting concept that I really didn't know a lot
1:55.3	about and we'll learn about that as well. This is a powerful podcast, a powerful story, and the book is called Hit Hard,
2:03.4	One Family's Journey of Letting Go of What Was and Learning to Live Well with What Is.
	...

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