Jon Dorenbos - Life Is Magic: My Inspiring Journey from Tragedy to Self-Discovery

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For Annalise, who turned my heart right side up, and Amaya, who will always be able to have lunch with her dad

He who has a Why to live for can bear almost any How.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Sometimes, you find yourself in one of these moments. The type of moment in which how you act actually reveals the kind of man you are. The kind of moment in which, if you trust yourself enough to really listen to what youre feeling, youre able to freeze out the chattering voice of doubt in your own head.

You feel calm in moments like these. Thats the calm of inner peace. All else fades away. Your focus is on the Task. At. Hand. Gone is the fear of failure and rejection, the what if worries about outcome that eat away at us, day after day. Youre beyond all that, beyond outcome. Youre all about the only thing that really and truly exists: the present moment. You know who you are and what your purpose is. Lets do this, you say to yourself.

Ive found myself in many such moments ever since I was twelve years old, when I had to grow up real quick. In each, I learned not only how to handle pressure, but how to make it my friend. I learned the power of positive thinking, how to talk to myself instead of listening to myself. In short, I learned how to build a life when tragedy rocks your world at all of twelve years old.

For fourteen years, I was a long snapper in the NFL. Its not a position that gets a lot of attention. ESPN doesnt show long-snap highlights. But the psychological degree of difficulty involved in doing it makes up for its lack of athletic glamour. Pressure? Shee-it. Try viewing your moms autopsy photos when youre twelve years old. Pressure? Bring it on.

There have been other such moments. Like when Im onstage, performing magic before drop-jawed audiences, like the ones who saw me perform during my 2016 run to the finals of Americas Got Talent. You block out that inner voice that, if given a chance, will tell you youre an imposter. Instead, you tell your story to yourself until it becomes your reality, and the next thing you know, Simon Cowell is telling you you rock and the crowd is going wild.

Lets not forget the harried moments leading up to my ten-hour, lifesaving open-heart surgery in the fall of 2017one day youre a professional athlete at age thirty-seven, the next youre being told you might not make it. There was no time for fear. I had a mission: to find a ninja of a surgeon. Lets do this, I said to the warrior to whom I entrusted my life.

And now here I am again. Another moment. Just like when a game-deciding field goal loomed, there are no nerves. Just a focus on the task at hand, and calm.

Its April of 2019 and Im parked outside the Davenport Tower Hotel in Spokane, Washington. In a matter of minutes, Ill be meeting my dad in the hotel restaurant, the Safari Room. I havent seen him since shortly after his trial in 1992, at the end of which he was sentenced to thirteen years for murdering my mom. For beating her to death in our garage with a sledgehammer and bench grinder. Now here I am, a grown-ass man, and Im looking at my reflection in the rearview mirror.

Before going in, I need to speak to myself. I need to hear the words. Theres a lump in my throat.

Today, after years of therapy and forcing myself to face tough questions, I know how important self-talk is. Talk to yourself, dont listen to yourself, I like to, uh, tell myself. So I walk around talking out loud to myself all day, just like in that car. People think Im kinda touched. But Ive learned the hard way that the more you tell yourself your story, the more it becomes your story.

My story is not what I do. You might know me as a magician. Or you might know me from those fourteen years in the NFL, which those of us on the inside of the game like to refer to as the Not For Long League, with its average career span of three seasons. For fourteen seasons, giant mean guys tried to flatten me after I snapped the football during punts or field goals. Never heard of the long snapper? Youre not alone. You know the guy who kicks the ball in football games? Yeah, thats not meIm not that cool. You know the guy who holds the ball for the guy who kicks the ball? Not me either. Not even that cool. Im the guy who snaps it between his legs to the guy who holds the ball for the guy who kicks the ball.

Thats what I did, but it has never been who I am. Who I am is someone forced to go on a lifelong journey of self-discovery at the most tender of ages. Someone who had to dig real deep, real early. Someone who has spent a lifetime coming to grips with the emotional fallout from one summer day more than twenty-five years ago.

It was the morning of August 3, 1992. My dad had just woken me up. Wheres Mom? I asked.

Shes at the club, she went swimming, he said.

I didnt think anything of it.

Alan Dorenbos was a computer consultant by trade. But really, he was my hero. He was president of our Little League. Every day after school, Id wait for him in our driveway, with my baseball glove on. Hed get home from work and wed play catch; wed end every night when Id say, Dad! Its time for an American pop fly! And hed throw the ball skyward as high as he could, so you could barely see it, a dot in the clouds, and Id get under it and catch it like I was Ken Griffey Jr. One more! One more! Id yell, and Id be out there, fielding towering pop flies, until dusk.

On this morning, Dad had taken my baseball gear from the garage and laid it out for me on the kitchen table. He made me cereal and walked me outside, where I was picked up for baseball day camp. I remember getting into the backseat of the car. As we pulled away, I looked back at our upper-middle-class suburban Seattle home. Dad was standing in the street, on the lip of our driveway.

I didnt know then the degree to which my life had already changed. Later that day, I was told, Theres been an accident. Your mom didnt make it. I didnt know what that meant. I kept asking where Mom was. A blur ensued; later, Id learn that Dad killed Mom the night before in the far-right stall of our three-car garage. And he put her body in a sleeping bag and rolled her up in the trunk of his car. And then he tried to clean up by the time I came home for dinner, after playing with the other neighborhood kids. He stayed up all night, painting the garage. The next morning, after getting me off to camp, he came to his senses and turned himself in to the police.

Good-bye, old life.

Today, when I think of myself at twelve, I think of a shy, wounded, embarrassed kid. Everywhere I went, I felt I was wearing a sign that blared MY DAD KILLED MY MOM . There was so much I didnt know then. Like how much magic, football, and forgiveness would save me.

Magic came first: Id lose myself all day, every day, in the intricacies of sleight of hand. Looking back on it now, after years of intense therapy and soul-searching, it makes total sense, right? If youre living a day-to-day life right out of