Radio’s Stefan Rybak Beats Family Dysfunction

Polish immigrant parents who survived the war, suffered from their past with PTSD, alcoholism, family abuse and divorce. Stefan Rybak was raised in this dysfunctional environment and yet, through God's blessings became a highly successful radio personality, radio executive, and happy family man. It was a shocking and unexpected health crisis and surgery that cemented his faith and trust in God. Out of that experience he felt called to put his story in a book..."The Shadow on my Heart" . As this week's Amazing Greats guest, you have a chance to hear his story and share his experience in this episode.

His book is available on Amazon in paperback and on Kindle. It is a well crafted memoir of a rather extraordinary life.

STEFAN RYBACK AT A GLANCE

Journalist, longtime radio broadcaster, author of The Shadow on My Heart, and storyteller of faith, family, addiction, forgiveness and resilience.

Topics

Family trauma • Faith • Catholicism • Addiction • Recovery • Forgiveness • PTSD • Resilience • Radio broadcasting • Mentorship • Family • God’s will • The Shadow on My Heart

His Faith Journey

Catholic upbringing → turbulent family life → faith as a constant → struggles with drugs and alcohol → turning point in 1980 → deeper trust in God → writing his story of faith, family and forgiveness.

This Episode Explores

• Stefan Ryback’s turbulent childhood

• His mother’s kidnapping and Nazi slave labor

• His father’s experience as a Polish soldier and prisoner of war

• Immigration to America and the family’s early struggles

• His sister Jane and her cerebral palsy

• His parents’ divorce and his mother’s alcoholism

• How Catholic faith remained a constant in his life

• Brother Larry Lucier’s influence on his writing and career

• Stefan’s discovery of broadcast radio

• His drug and alcohol use in the late 1970s

• His life-changing Thanksgiving Day 1980 decision to quit drugs

• The meaning behind The Shadow on My Heart

• Faith, forgiveness, resilience and following God’s will

Questions Answered

• Who is Stefan Ryback?

• What is The Shadow on My Heart about?

• What happened to Stefan Ryback’s mother during World War II?

• What happened to Stefan Ryback’s father during the war?

• How did Stefan’s childhood affect his life?

• How did his mother’s alcoholism affect the family?

• How did Catholic faith help Stefan through his childhood?

• Who was Brother Larry Lucier?

• How did Stefan Ryback get into radio?

• What happened to Stefan on Thanksgiving Day 1980?

• How did Stefan quit drugs and alcohol?

• What does The Shadow on My Heart mean?

• What does Stefan Ryback say about following God’s will?

Core Story

Stefan Ryback grew up in a deeply troubled family shaped by his parents’ traumatic experiences during World War II. After finding his calling in radio, he entered a period of drugs, alcohol and reckless behavior that culminated in a frightening episode on Thanksgiving 1980. He credits God’s grace with giving him the clarity and strength to change direction. Years later, a serious heart condition helped prompt him to tell his five-year journey through The Shadow on My Heart, a story centered on faith, family, forgiveness, resilience and learning to follow God’s will.

The Shadow on My Heart: Stefan Ryback’s Story of Faith, Family, Forgiveness and Resilience

Amazing Greats with Ric Hansen

Ric Hansen — Introduction

Hey, Ric Hansen here in the Amazing Greats podcast studio with a glimpse into the life of a resilient survivor and all the blessings that made that possible along the way.

If you enjoyed this episode, please jump all over that like button. It is our powerful way to help the podcast grow, and we really appreciate your support on that. If you like stories of insight and encouragement like this, hit the subscribe button too, because that's all we do here at the Amazing Greats Podcast.

Today's episode is, in part, the story of one man's alcoholic mom, who was kidnapped at 16 and made a Nazi slave laborer, and his abusive dad, who had lifelong PTSD as a survivor of the Polish army. That had all the makings for a major dysfunctional family, and that's exactly what it was.

Then came his own bout with drugs and alcohol that ultimately brought him to the brink of ruining his own life as well. But God was watching out for him along this rocky journey and had bigger and better plans for Stefan Ryback, the hero in this story.

On the other end of the story, we're going to find success, family, forgiveness, and joy. So hang in there.

It was a shocking and life-threatening heart diagnosis and surgery that actually paved the way for a five-year journey to put this story in a book and share it with the world.

I'm excited for you to meet and get to know my new friend, Stefan Ryback. Let's go.

Stefan Ryback’s Early Life and Faith

Ric Hansen:Such a great story you tell in a new book that you just published. And it's funny because you and I, although we have radio backgrounds in common, have never really met and never really had an opportunity to even talk or communicate with one another.

But for some reason, you ended up on my Facebook friends list. And so you post quite a little bit. And I have to acknowledge you right from the get-go that you have some of the most positive, uplifting, inspirational posts of anybody on Facebook.

I really appreciate that, especially through this last year, when we're politically charged, when social unrest is prevalent, the pandemic, all of that is such a downer. Every time I scrolled down my Facebook page and saw yours, I said, "I know this is going to be a good one." So I stop and read it.

So I acknowledge you for that. Stefan, welcome to the show.

Stefan Ryback:Well, first of all, Ric, I want to say that I am very honored to be on the show with you. And thank you very much for your kind words.

You know, I grew up in a very, very turbulent household. And I have a feeling we might get into that a little bit later on in this discussion.

We're all blessed with different gifts. God gave us all different gifts, and one of the gifts that He gave me was the ability to look at things objectively. And I haven't always used that gift. I'm human like everybody else, and sometimes I haven't used the gift or I've ignored the gift.

Even as a very, very young kid, growing up in a very turbulent, very toxic household, I would sit back and kind of analyze it. Again, even as a young kid, I would sit back and say, "Is that all there is? This is it. This is my life. This is what I'm destined for."

And the tug of war that took place within me was that there would be all this turbulence in the house, yet on Sunday we were told that God loved us, and we were told that God wanted great things for our life.

I'm also a product of Catholic grammar school and a Catholic high school, where these things were instilled in us. You are placed on earth, you come from God, and you're placed on earth to manifest His kingdom.

And so I would look at all this turbulence going on in front of me, and I would say, "Well, this isn't jiving with what I'm being told in church. This isn't fitting with the things I'm being taught in school."

And so I was inspired even from the youngest age to seek out things that I wasn't seeing in my household. I was always looking for things that would uplift me, whether it was from the Bible or a motivational reader.

As I got older, I started putting things into my own words.

My formal training is as a journalist. I went to the University of Bridgeport as a journalism and communications major. And when you're a journalism communications major, you're forced to do a lot of writing.

Back then, it was radio, television, and newspaper. There was no internet, there were no cell phones, there was no text messaging, there were no emails. So communication was either written in the newspaper, verbal on the radio, or visual on TV.

I tried immersing myself into things that would uplift me. And over time I got more and more confident in expressing things in my own words.

Ric Hansen’s Introduction to Stefan’s Story

Ric Hansen:Knowing that you were a radio guy, when I picked up the book, I thought, "Oh, okay, we're going to read a story about his radio career here," because you were, at one time, a radio station program director.

You played the hits, you found the hits, you went to backstage meet-and-greets, you met a laundry list of people — Billy Joel, Kenny Rogers, Tina Turner, Barry Manilow, Phil Collins, Lionel Richie, and Donny Osmond, of course. There's a pictorial in the book.

And I guess that's about as in-depth as you got in radio for the most part, was some of the pictures that you showed in the book, which is really great.

But it's not a story about radio at all, really. It's a story about a guy who had, as you have already identified, a dysfunctional family, and some characters in your family who were strong personalities — and not in good ways in some cases.

Your mom and your dad both had kind of strong personalities, and each one of them was a bit dysfunctional. So, what I thought we'd start with is if you could just — and I know there's so much you could say about both of them — but just to scope it in so that our listeners know what kind of folks your folks were.

Identify your mom's personality in a brief way, and your dad's. Obviously your mom played a much larger role in your life, and we're going to talk about her more too. But tell us the quick story about your mom and your dad and where they came from and what kind of people they were.

Stefan Ryback’s Parents and Their Wartime Trauma

Stefan Ryback:My mother was born in southeastern Poland in 1925, and she was born into a farming family, so she was a farm girl.

In 1940, my mother was 16 years old. She was walking to school one day and was taken prisoner by the Nazis, as a lot of very young, able-bodied Polish kids were.

So one day, think about this: one day she leaves for school, she says goodbye to her family. "I'm going to school," and she never comes back.

Ric Hansen:Wow. Crazy.

Stefan Ryback:She never comes back. And the reason why she never came back is because she was kidnapped and shipped up to Germany, where initially she was in the Ravensbrook prisoner of war camp.

She was there for, we're estimating, about nine months, and then for whatever reason, she was chosen somehow to be removed from there.

For the rest of the time that she was in Germany during World War II, she was a slave laborer in the household of a German war officer.

My father was a city boy, born and raised in Warsaw. The economic circumstances of his family life were such that it made more sense to him to join the Polish army.

He would, first of all, be serving his country. My dad was a very proud man, a very proud Polish man. But due to the economic circumstances at the time, joining the army was actually an improvement in his lifestyle, so to speak. Three square meals a day and that sort of thing.

My father fought in the Polish army during World War II. Obviously, as we know, things did not go well for the Polish army against the Nazi forces.

The Polish forces were overrun. My father was wounded in battle. He was wounded in the wrist and in the knee, and he spent the next five and a half years of his life in a prisoner of war camp.

Coming to America

Ric Hansen:So, right from the get-go, the roots of your family are in PTSD. It's traumatic right from the get-go, as young people in their lives.

Then they have an opportunity to come to America and, now married and with two kids and pregnant with a third, come to America — the promised land, right?

But it wasn't all that they had hoped once they arrived. Tell us about what happened upon the landing of your mom and dad.

Stefan Ryback:My parents met in Germany after the liberation of Europe and had two children in Germany.

Then, like most people, they said, "Hey, let's go to America."

At that time, to come to this country as an immigrant, you needed a sponsor. The person who sponsored my parents was a man who owned a cotton plantation in Mississippi.

The requirement was that they would basically pay for you to come, and you would pay them back by performing a service.

So my parents and my two eldest siblings got on a boat with other people, landed in the port of New Orleans in September of 1949, got on a bus, and were transported to a cotton plantation somewhere in Mississippi.

So think about this. My dad, after spending five and a half years in a prisoner of war camp, going through the worst things you can possibly imagine. And my mother going through four years, ages 16 through 20, as a slave laborer.

Ric Hansen:Wasn't exactly the American dream, right?

Stefan Ryback:Yeah, it was not the American dream, but that's how they came to this country.

My father's first job in America was picking cotton.

Jane and the Family’s New Challenges

Ric Hansen:So then again, we move forward. Your sister Jane was born at that point, and added a new dimension to the family dynamic. Tell us about Jane. She's a prominent player in your book as well.

Stefan Ryback:She is.

My parents spent approximately six months in Mississippi. One of my father's army buddies was in Lynn, Massachusetts at the time and somehow got ahold of my father, contacted my father, somehow sent a letter, which made its way to my dad at this cotton plantation in Mississippi and said, "Hey, come on up to Massachusetts. There's work up here. There's factory work."

So my mom and my dad, with two young kids at the time, get on a bus. There was no interstate highway system in America in 1950. There were two-lane roads and back roads, and that was basically it.

They get on this bus, which probably took two days, three days, four days. They end up in Lynn, Massachusetts.

In April of 1950, my mother gives birth to her third child, and that's my sister Jane.

My mother said that when Jane was born, and they handed Jane to her in the delivery room, that her skin was blue and she was having trouble breathing.

As it turned out, my sister Jane was born with cerebral palsy, which obviously brought another very dramatic dynamic to the family.

Ric Hansen:Yeah, yeah, and lifelong. And Jane's still with us.

Stefan Ryback:She just celebrated last Sunday, Divine Mercy Sunday, April 11th. She celebrated her 71st birthday.

She's living in a home, a private group home that my family and I have established in Waterbury, Connecticut. It's called Jane's Home, and it's a home for developmentally disabled men and women.

It initially started as a home for developmentally disabled women, but recently we were approached by the Department of Developmental Services in the state of Connecticut, and we were asked if we would take in our first male resident.

The reason they asked us that is it's a brother and sister tandem, both born developmentally disabled, and one didn't want to move into the home without the other.

So the first seven or eight years that we had Jane's Home, it was strictly for senior-age developmentally disabled women. The gentleman who will be moving in with his sister will be the first male moving into the home. So we've kind of expanded what we're doing at the home.

Divorce, Alcoholism and a Difficult Home Life

Ric Hansen:When your mom passed in 2013 — spoiler alert — Mom, we haven't talked about that, but Mom has passed, and that was a key part of your story as well.

I love the way your book interweaves things amongst family members, friends of the family, and kind of — it doesn't tell a linear story or necessarily, although it does follow a storyline, but it's not linear because you jump back to some things that entered into the scenario earlier on.

Very good read, by the way. It's a great book.

But tell us about the dysfunction. You and Mom had a special bond. Dad — there was a divorce, Mom and Dad split up, Dad kind of took off, and you and your Mom created this kind of lifelong bond.

But she wasn't exactly the perfect — she wasn't Harriet Nelson. She had some issues, and that created some difficulty in your life. So tell us about Maria.

Stefan Ryback:Well, I just want to go back to the dynamic with my parents.

My memories of my parents as a kid were that there was always a lot of fighting going on. The happiest moments were Christmas Eve or Easter, but invariably there was a lot of drama on those days as well.

When my parents got divorced, I was like 13 or 14. It was actually a moment of relief for me because I grew up with all this turbulence, arguing and fighting.

My dad was not an evil man, but he was a very troubled man. He spent, as I said, five and a half years in a prisoner of war camp. And there were a lot of things that happened to him during that experience.

My father, were he alive today, would have been diagnosed with severe PTSD.

My mother had her own version of PTSD from being a slave laborer from the ages of 16 through 20. She's kidnapped, shipped to another country, and she's a slave laborer.

So the fact that my parents were both dysfunctional people, highly flawed people, is not a surprise when you realize what they lived through.

My parents ended up getting divorced, and the two people that lived with my mother were me and my developmentally disabled sister Jane. All of my other siblings were older, much older, so they were already out of the house.

Here I am, 13 or 14 years old, and all of a sudden I'm being raised by a single mother, and all of a sudden I'm the man of the house.

That's a lot of responsibility for me to handle. But the greater responsibility, obviously, fell on my mother's shoulders.

It was around that time — seventh grade, eighth grade, freshman in high school — that another dynamic entered the household. And that was my mother's alcoholism.

I don't remember her drinking or being drunk when I was a young kid. But I think after the divorce, I think the pressures of being the sole breadwinner — my father didn't pay any child support — meant that the responsibilities of paying the mortgage, paying the light and buying groceries all fell onto my mother.

She was not a well-educated woman. She never completed what we would consider a basic education.

So the only job she could get was as a cook in a restaurant, and she paid whatever that job paid. It wasn't a lot of money.

One of the ways that she coped was by drinking. And obviously, alcohol has an effect on people's minds, and it has an effect on people's behavior.

When my mom was sober, just a great, great, unbelievably wonderful, powerful, dynamic, engaging, lovely person.

When she drank, she was awful. It was just awful to be around, as you can probably imagine.

So here I am, 13, 14, 15, 16, in my teens. I'm growing up in a household that on some days my mom is great, on other days she's drunk, and we have a developmentally disabled person in the name of my sister Jane.

Yeah. It was tough.

Faith as a Constant

Ric Hansen:And you never knew what to expect from day to day because things changed.

So how did your faith play a role in helping you through all of that? Do you remember that being a source of help to you?

Stefan Ryback:It was a tremendous source of help, Ric.

Again, I'm a product of Catholic grammar school and Catholic high school. And regardless of whether or not my mother was an alcoholic, she insisted that we go to Mass as a family every Sunday.

Even after I became a hot-rocking, flamethrowing Top 40 disc jockey working the overnight shift — midnight to six — I'd get home at 6:15 or 6:20 on a Sunday morning. My mother insisted that we go to the 8 o'clock Polish Mass because we had to go to church.

We had to go to that particular Mass because that was the only Mass that was said in Polish. My mother wanted us to stay in touch with our heritage.

I would say going to church and listening to the readings and paying attention to what's going on, and also being a product of a Catholic grammar school and Catholic high school, where nine months out of the year, five days a week, my faith, my Catholicism, my Christianity was something that was a part of my life every single day.

Brother Larry and the Beginning of a Radio Career

Ric Hansen:That's where you ran across what became a lifelong mentor of yours, Brother Larry. And he was one of your instructors. In fact, he kind of directed your life toward a radio career?

Stefan Ryback:You get into your junior and senior years of high school, they start letting you take electives.

We're picking out our courses for my junior year, and I see on the list of electives a course entitled Mass Media 101.

Remember, this is 1974, 1975. It was an overview of the media at the time — radio, television and print.

Even though I didn't play basketball in my sophomore year, I still had the jock mentality. So the jock mentality is, "I want to pick a course that's interesting to me, that I don't have to do a lot of work, it'll be easy, and I'll get a good grade."

Ric Hansen:There you go. Sounds good.

Stefan Ryback:Mass Media 101. I love listening to the radio, I like watching TV, and I like reading the newspaper.

So I walk into the class the first day, and standing at the front is Brother Larry Lucier.

Brother Larry is a brother of Holy Cross. I had had Brother Larry in my sophomore English class, and it's not that he was a bad guy, but he was really, really tough. Very, very demanding.

In my sophomore English class, I did very well. One day at the end of class, Brother Larry said, "Stefan, I want you to stay after class. I want to talk to you about your paper."

I'm looking at this paper that he had just given me an A-plus on. And I'm saying, "Well, what could he possibly want to talk to me about?"

What he wanted to talk to me about was this. He said, "Stefan, I gave you an A because you are the best writer in this class. But knowing you like I think I know you, this paper is not indicative of your best work.

"So I'm just giving you fair warning that this time I gave you an A-plus because compared to the other papers in this class, it's an A. I'm not going to do that anymore if you fail to give me your best work.

"I know you are more capable than what's reflected in this paper that you've given me.

"So from now on, I'm not going to grade your papers based on a comparison to the other papers in this class. We've already established I already know you're the best writer in the class. I'm going to start grading these papers based on what I think you're capable of.

"So if you don't start giving me your best writing, it's going to be reflected in your grades, and it's not going to be an A."

Ric Hansen:He put some accountability on your abilities, right?

Stefan Ryback:You know, as a sophomore, you're kind of like, "Wow." You're not really quite sure how to react to that other than with fear.

That was the experience that I had with Brother Larry.

I walk into Mass Media 101, day one of that class, and who's standing at the front of the class? It's Brother Larry.

All of a sudden my heart sank. And I'm like, "Man, I just can't get away from this guy."

I sat through the first class, and the first class was him giving the general outline of what the course was going to be like. He was going over the syllabus of the semester, and I remember making a notation in my notebook: "I just can't catch a break."

What I wanted to do was drop the class and just pick something else because I didn't want to go through another semester with Brother Larry.

Again, it's not that he was a bad man. He was a wonderful man, but just really challenged his students to the core and developed what they had within them.

That's what Brother Larry challenged me to do.

Discovering Broadcast Radio

Ric Hansen:And in the challenging, he suggested to you that you check out the local radio station.

Stefan Ryback:He gave all of the students an assignment specifically for them.

Remember, he's getting to know each student, which says a lot about the type of teacher Brother Larry was. He got to know the strengths and weaknesses and interests of every student.

For whatever reason, Brother Larry noticed that I had an interest in radio. I loved Top 40 music, is what we called it at the time.

I listened to WWCO Radio, our hometown Top 40 radio station.

How he came to know that, I'm not exactly sure.

But the assignment that he gave me was to connect with one of the disc jockeys at WWCO Radio and to shadow them.

This was a project that went on for four, five, six weeks. It wasn't a one-shot thing. I had to call the radio station.

It's funny how things happen, Ric, because the first person I called at the radio station was the guy who was doing the morning show at the time.

He did a great morning show, but he was also this kind of crotchety old Top 40 disc jockey. Who shall remain nameless.

I called him and explained this project that I was working on. And he said, "You don't want radio. Radio stinks. You don't want to get into radio. But if you really have to do this project, call Tom Collins," which was the radio name of the guy who did the afternoon show. "Call him."

So I did. And Tom Collins readily agreed right off the bat to let me shadow him.

It was during the course of that project that I just became entranced with broadcast radio.

I said, "You know what? I'm not going to be one of the top 10 best basketball players of all time anyway. This radio thing, playing records on the radio and talking on the radio and going to remotes and appearances and fairs and festivals — man, this thing just seems so exciting."

And I fell in love with broadcast radio.

Think about the timing of events in our life, Ric. Think about the timing and the synchronicity of Brother Larry assigning that project to me and not to somebody else.

He could have, but for whatever reason, he assigned that project to me.

So that's how I got into broadcast radio.

I did the project. And a funny quick story about Brother Larry: when he first gave me the assignment, before I realized how much fun that assignment was going to be, at first it seemed like a tremendous amount of work.

So I went up to Brother Larry and I said, "Brother Larry, I'd like to talk to you about this semester project that you gave me."

"Well, what is it you want to talk about?"

I said, "You know, it seems like a lot of work."

Without hesitating, Brother Larry looked at me and he said, "Stefan, it seems like a lot of work because it is a lot of work, and you're the perfect man to do it."

And so was born "Stef in the Nighttime."

In a very short period of time, I went from production guy and board operator to hot-rocking, flamethrowing overnight disc jockey.

Before I did my first on-air shift as a jock, I went to the program director I had at the time.

Back then, all the disc jockeys were changing their names. So I went to the program director at the radio station and said, "Well, what air name do you think I should use?"

He said, "You know, there's not that many Stephans in the world. It's just not a very common name. I think that you should use your first name, Stefan."

I said, "Well, not everybody calls me Stefan back then."

He said, "Well, what do they call you?"

I said, "They call me Steph."

So he says, "Let's do this. Starting right now, you're Stef in the Nighttime, because you're doing the overnight show and everybody calls you Steph. So you're a Steph in the nighttime."

That's the on-air persona I became.

And it was a great release.

When I finally got hired at the radio station, it was my freshman year in college. I went to the University of Bridgeport in Bridgeport, Connecticut, as a journalism communications major.

I was extremely blessed because my classmates were trying to figure out what internships they were going to go after. And here I was in the spring semester of my freshman year of college, working in my chosen profession.

That was a tremendous blessing.

I actually worked full-time in radio as the overnight guy and went to college full-time at the same time.

The Wild Years

Ric Hansen:Interesting. Yeah, and that's kind of my similar story, same kind of deal.

I worked my way when I was in radio. The Vietnam War was a big deal, and they had the draft and all of that. The only way you could really get out of the draft was to have a school deferment. So that's what forced me to stay in school and work full-time.

But your story during the late '70s now kind of turned into a bit of a wild — well, it wasn't a bit. It was a lot of it was a lot of it.

Stefan Ryback:It was a lot of sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

And again, you have to go back to the time. Late '70s, I'm 19, 20, 21, 22 years old, and I'm a disc jockey on my hometown radio station, and it was a very influential radio station.

Thanksgiving Day 1980

Ric Hansen:I think everybody's got memorial, personal memorial days — days that really stand out in their life as being poignant and important.

Yours was Thanksgiving of 1980. That was an important and pivotal moment for you, and that was after a wild night like you're describing.

What happened on that Thanksgiving day?

Stefan Ryback:In Waterbury, growing up, the night before Thanksgiving was just considered one of those nights that people partied, young people partied. It was considered the biggest party night of the year.

So it's 1980. I'm 22 years old. I've been working at the radio station for three, three and a half years.

Remember, we're always partying at the radio station, but on this particular night, we thought we would party around town.

Very, very frankly, it was a night filled with a lot of marijuana, a night filled with snorting a lot of cocaine, a night filled with a lot of drinking, and we're driving around town from bar to bar.

You think about the stupidity of it and how dangerous it was. Not just from the standpoint of taking drugs, but driving a car around town.

But we did it.

I'm not proud of it, but I also think it's good for me to talk about it.

What happened was that after last call at one of the bars, we went over to one of the guys' houses, one of the guys that I worked with, where the party continued.

I took a very, very long snort of cocaine, and all of a sudden my heart started beating very, very fast.

I'm breaking out in a sweat, and my heart is beating.

I say to everybody, "You know, I've got to go outside and get some fresh air."

So I'm standing out on the porch. It's the night before Thanksgiving. It's whatever time it is, late at night, early in the morning.

My heart is just beating, and I'm saying to myself, "I'm having a heart attack."

That's what I thought.

I didn't want to disappoint my mother and anybody who knew me as this clean-cut Catholic kid. I didn't want them to take me to the hospital. I didn't want anybody to find out.

So I said, "Why don't you take me home?"

They took me home.

I snuck in, and the bed is spinning, the room is spinning, and I'm having this physical episode.

I thought to myself, "If I'm dying right now, would I even know it?"

I eventually fall asleep, and I wake up the next morning.

It's Thanksgiving Day, 1980.

I could smell the food coming up. My bedroom was on the second floor, and I could smell the aroma of the Thanksgiving food that my mother was in the kitchen preparing.

I thought to myself, "It's Thanksgiving morning."

But I just had this horrific, very scary episode.

I thought about everything that I had done the night before, and I realized how stupid I was.

I realized that not only was I taking my life into my hands, but I was endangering other people.

I got out of bed, I went to the drawer where my marijuana, my cocaine, and my speed pills were, and I took the baggie of pot and the baggie of the speed pills and the vial of cocaine.

I went into the bathroom and dumped everything in the toilet and flushed it down.

And I said, "I'm never going to do this again."

And so I quit cold turkey.

Ric Hansen:Nice.

Stefan Ryback:Which is a tremendous blessing, Ric, because I'm very thankful that I had the strength to do that.

Even to this day, there are people in my life who got into drugs in the '70s and they're still doing it.

There are people in my life who — or died.

There are people in my life who, I'll put it this way, they gave their life to alcohol.

They just, for whatever reason, couldn't quit.

I'm not criticizing, I'm not condemning. I'm just saying, thank God that there was a sliver of reasoned thinking in my brain where I was able to wake up on Thanksgiving morning and instead of saying, "Wow, what a night. Boy, did I dodge a bullet," and then anticipate the next night of partying, I got out of bed feeling as if I'd been hit by a truck and said to myself, "You know what? This is not the right thing for me. This is not a good thing."

I went to the drawer, pulled out all the dope, flushed it down the toilet, and that was the end of that.

The Shadow on My Heart

Ric Hansen:And that was surely through the good grace of God that you were able to do that.

Your heart became — in fact, the book is called The Shadow on My Heart. So there's a lot of stuff relating to the heart, not only physically but metaphorically.

Physically, it was your heart that brought you to the point of writing this book and starting this new journey that you're on post-major heart issue.

Had you known back then that you had this heart issue that was actually genetically a part of you, it could have taken your life back then.

Stefan Ryback:But it could have, and it should have.

The Shadow on My Heart.

I was in a conversation with a literary friend of mine who was helping me with the project. And it was actually his suggestion.

He said, "Stefan, I've got an idea for a title of your book."

And I said, "What is it?"

He said, "The Shadow on My Heart."

When he verbalized those words, Ric, I got a chill up and down my spine. And I said, "That's the title of my book."

The reason why I fell in love with the title, and the reason why that title has such deep personal meaning to me, is not only because it pertains to the shadow that was seen on my heart in that X-ray, but also to the shadows of the heart that I dealt with growing up.

We think of shadows as very mysterious things. And very often we think of shadows as frightening things.

So The Shadow on My Heart is a book about these things that are scary, like growing up with a mother who's an alcoholic.

The shadow on my heart, the frightful things that I witnessed having a father who was abusive, not because he was a bad man, but because he had seen through the war man's inhumanity to man, and it scarred him mentally, and he took it out on his wife and his kids.

And also my experiences as somebody who abused drugs back in the late '70s.

So that's where the title The Shadow on My Heart comes from.

It's a multiple meaning.

Faith, Forgiveness and God’s Will

Ric Hansen:If anybody really is looking for a great read and a great story and an inspirational story of getting through, sometimes I was reading it and saying, "How does this guy, in this scenario with this kind of family background, end up being a successful, wonderful family man and live to share that with the world?"

It's a testament to your ability to learn from the struggles in a positive way, knowing that this isn't the way it's supposed to be, and there must be something better, as you first said in the initial—

Stefan Ryback:"Is that all there is?"

Ric Hansen:"Is that all there is?"

Stefan Ryback:I would look at those things and I would say, "Is that all there is?"

And thank you for your very kind words, Ric.

What I would say is, first of all, all praise, honor, and glory be to God for giving me this life where I'm able to tell this story.

So anybody who's listening or watching, wondering what my book is about, I would say my book is for anybody who has encountered unexpected situations, unexpected difficulties, difficult circumstances in their life.

My book is for anybody who has either been hurt or disappointed by a loved one.

My book is for anybody who has felt even one moment of feeling shattered.

My book is for anybody who has ever felt that they wanted to give up.

And my book is also for anyone who has ever wondered if God listens to their prayers and their pleadings.

I would say that the greatest lesson from this book is listening for, understanding, and following the will of God.

And when you are not able to understand His will, then you'll be given the strength to follow through anyway.

That comes from the Lord's Prayer.

We say, "Thy will be done." We don't say "my will be done." We don't say "Stefan's will be done." We don't say "Ric's will be done." We say, "Thy will be done."

Isn't that part of our faith journey when we are challenged to listen to what God's will is?

Then once we gain an understanding, even if it's only a flicker of understanding, once we gain an understanding of what we believe God's will for our life is, then to have the strength to follow through.

Even if following through means on one day we take one step forward and the next day we take two steps back, with the intention of taking another step forward.

And that's what this book is about.

Closing

Ric Hansen:Let's leave it with that.

What a great opportunity to have you on our episode, on our podcast, The Amazing Greats.

You've been a fantastic guest.

To get the book, it's available on Amazon.

Stefan Ryback:It is available on Amazon.

I'm going to reach over here and hold it up. There you go. Hopefully you can see it.

The Shadow on My Heart by Stefan Ryback.

It is a book about faith, family, and forgiveness.

Right now the book is available in paperback and Kindle.

So if you would honor me by having an interest in reading my book, go to Amazon. You'll find it either in paperback or on Kindle.

And if any of the viewers or listeners read the book and have a reaction to it, then I would love to hear from them.

My email address, if they want to reach out to me by email, is Stefan S-T-E-F-A-N, Stefan at Stefanradio.com.

Stefan at Stefanradio.com.

And Ric, I just want to say that I am deeply honored to have been a guest on your show.

You've made my day.

Thank you so much.