Speaker 1: Welcome to the Good Stuff. I'm Jacob Schick and I'm
Speaker 1: joined by my co host and wife, Ashley Shick.
Speaker 2: Jake is a third generation combat Marine and I'm a
Speaker 2: gold Star granddaughter. And we work together to serve military veterans,
Speaker 2: first responders, frontline healthcare workers, and their families with mental
Speaker 2: and emotional wellness through traditional and non traditional therapy. At
Speaker 2: One Tribe Foundation.
Speaker 1: We believe everyone has a story to tell, not only
Speaker 1: about the peaks, but also the valleys they've been through
Speaker 1: to get them to where they are today.
Speaker 2: Each week, we invite a guest to tell us their story,
Speaker 2: to share with us the lessons they've learned that shaped
Speaker 2: who they are and what they're doing to pay it
Speaker 2: forward and give back.
Speaker 1: Our mission with this show is to dig deep into
Speaker 1: our guest's journey so that we can celebrate the hope
Speaker 1: and inspiration their story has to offer.
Speaker 2: We're thrilled you're joining us again.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Good Stuff.
Speaker 2: Our guest today is our very dear friend k Shan Coffee.
Speaker 2: He and Jacob actually known each other for over a
Speaker 2: decade and originally met in the warrior space, which is
Speaker 2: a term we used to refer to the unofficial network
Speaker 2: of support systems for veterans. Kishan's a Navy veteran himself,
Speaker 2: an executive at a major corporation, and an incredible family man.
Speaker 1: When Kishan and I originally met, we were both in
Speaker 1: a very different place in our lives, especially mentally and emotionally.
Speaker 1: He's here to share his story of growing up in
Speaker 1: an army family and enlisting self admittedly for selfish reasons.
Speaker 1: He came face to face a personal tragedy on the
Speaker 1: other side of the world, struggled greatly for years, and
Speaker 1: finally found the resources and human connection to allow him
Speaker 1: to become the many is today. Keep in mind Keishan's
Speaker 1: a sailor and I'm a marine. The language does get
Speaker 1: a little salty, but trust.
Speaker 2: Me, you're going to want to stick around for this one.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for joining us. We're so excited
Speaker 2: you're here with us on the good stuff, and we're
Speaker 2: really excited to dig in and tell your story. I
Speaker 2: know you two have known each other for quite a while.
Speaker 2: How did you originally meet?
Speaker 3: I met Shick. I want to say it was carried
Speaker 3: a load.
Speaker 4: Twenty twelve, there was a marine by the name of
Speaker 4: Mike Rowles who invited me out to carry the Load.
Speaker 4: And I want to say it was about two o'clock
Speaker 4: in the morning. We were at the turn about. He
Speaker 4: was like, hey, you got to meet this other marine
Speaker 4: named Shiic and so I remember walking up to Shake
Speaker 4: saying hey, trying to introduce and Shick was very short
Speaker 4: with his words, like look, bro, you're out here at
Speaker 4: two am humping. It says a lot about you already,
Speaker 4: and so thank you for being here. And that's how
Speaker 4: I met Shike's ten words ten words.
Speaker 1: Good flong bond.
Speaker 2: So Carry the Load is an incredible organization and event
Speaker 2: that we take part in. This is your twelfth year.
Speaker 2: I think doing it my tenth and it was founded
Speaker 2: to put the meaning back into Memorial Day for individuals
Speaker 2: that want to come out and participate. And when when
Speaker 2: Keishan says humping, he means walking.
Speaker 1: Man, the Marines call it humping, and then everybody's like, oh,
Speaker 1: I can't maybe he says no, It's just it's basically
Speaker 1: were forced walking.
Speaker 2: And the idea is that you're you know, you're embracing
Speaker 2: the suck, you're going out there, you're walking, You're using
Speaker 2: your body to honor and remember and carry those that
Speaker 2: paid the ultimate sacrifice and can no longer carry it
Speaker 2: for us. They've already given their all, and so now
Speaker 2: it's our turn to honor them and remember them. And
Speaker 2: it's an incredible event nationwide now and the demons sweat
Speaker 2: out the demons exactly. That's what really beneficial for so
Speaker 2: many guys and gals who have served, and family members
Speaker 2: who have lost someone in service to our great country.
Speaker 2: Been a really really impactful organization and cause an event
Speaker 2: for our family doesn't surprise me. That's where the two
Speaker 2: of you met. You told how you got involved, but
Speaker 2: how did you find that first evolution of going out
Speaker 2: there and humping.
Speaker 4: It was one of those things you have in your
Speaker 4: mind set, like, yo, this is going to be fun,
Speaker 4: it's going to be raw, like everybody's hyping it up
Speaker 4: until you get to the two am walk and then
Speaker 4: you start to see that people start to do indo away.
Speaker 4: So then you start a questioning like what were you
Speaker 4: really out here for? Was it for you know, the sights,
Speaker 4: the shows, the people, the food, just the you know,
Speaker 4: the fun time to get together or like I think
Speaker 4: you really start to find the real soul crushers at
Speaker 4: three am in the morning that are just head down,
Speaker 4: like you said, cleansing their soul, thinking about the ones
Speaker 4: they lost overseas, and you know those are still fighting,
Speaker 4: you know, the wars, and so it was a great
Speaker 4: It was just a great time. Just just enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: I've got shells I leave lighter every year, Yeah, for sure,
Speaker 1: you know. And people ask every year, is that's carry
Speaker 1: the little big thing? Who are you carrying? And uh,
Speaker 1: you know, actually see me say this a lot and
Speaker 1: people ask you who you caring and I just say
Speaker 1: all of them. Yeah, I'm never gonna mention one name. Yeah,
Speaker 1: carrying all of them. Yeah, And that's our duty, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, especially ours, Yes, who've done the
Speaker 1: cloth of the nation. It's our job to be the
Speaker 1: gatekeepers at their legacy, absolutely till our dying day.
Speaker 2: And you have a lot to draw from. You've got
Speaker 2: a family of lifelong service.
Speaker 4: Yes I do. My grandfather was United States Navy. My
Speaker 4: father was a army It's a fun story kind of
Speaker 4: I got into the navy.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: My dad was three boys. You know, he wanted one
Speaker 4: of us to at least go to the to the army.
Speaker 4: And so my brother was a great lobbyist. He was like, look, man,
Speaker 4: don't go to the Army. You're gonna get stationed somewhere shitty.
Speaker 4: It's not where you want to be. You're gonna want
Speaker 4: to go to the Navy. You'll see the world x
Speaker 4: y Z. So I never forget telling my Dad's like, hey, Dad,
Speaker 4: I'm sorry to disappoint you, but you know I'm going
Speaker 4: to the Navy, you know, just a look. He wasn't disappointed,
Speaker 4: but you can tell there was that. All right, at
Speaker 4: least you're still going to go serve Roger that But
Speaker 4: it's a thing. Yeah, he wanted me to do it.
Speaker 1: Now as a sailor, it's a thing.
Speaker 4: It is, it is, it really is. But my brothers
Speaker 4: were Navy, so I come from a military family.
Speaker 2: And what was it like growing up in that household?
Speaker 4: Fun? It was just fun and structured and disciplined. You know,
Speaker 4: growing up you kind of hate it. But being a
Speaker 4: father now, I now understand why I need my daughter
Speaker 4: at six thirty to listen to me and put on
Speaker 4: her underwear before.
Speaker 3: We get out the door. Didn't understand it then, but
Speaker 3: I do now.
Speaker 4: But growing up with siblings and just my dad being
Speaker 4: in the military, it was just it was a journey
Speaker 4: of experience. I grew up in a very diverse city
Speaker 4: body name of Colleen, Texas, Fort Hoods, the military installation there,
Speaker 4: and so you know, at that at a very young age,
Speaker 4: I was exposed at different ethnic groups, all all kinds
Speaker 4: of people. So you know, you kind of learned to
Speaker 4: accept other people at a very early age. And so
Speaker 4: I think that was one thing that I truly cherished
Speaker 4: about being in the military. You know, just benefits, It's
Speaker 4: truly beneficial. So when I got to the military, I
Speaker 4: wasn't unaccustomed to, you know, seeing people at that point
Speaker 4: at that point, and that's make sure how you're raised
Speaker 4: because your dad serious, that's set. I credit my grandfather
Speaker 4: the same thing, you know, And you know, I've talked
Speaker 4: about this so many times growing up in Louisiana before
Speaker 4: I came here, and my dad very strict about content
Speaker 4: of character.
Speaker 1: And you know, that's still how I roll. Like, I
Speaker 1: believe everybody like you suck or you don't. There's no
Speaker 1: great area. And that's regardless of the pigmentation in your skin. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: you know, But I credit my grandpa for that. And
Speaker 1: the Marine cords, the one that changed his views. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well not you will.
Speaker 2: Absolutely Is that where you kind of developed your sense
Speaker 2: of wanting to serve your country or did you always
Speaker 2: have this overwhelming desire to go serve your country?
Speaker 4: Well, I guess if it really unpacking here, I won't
Speaker 4: say I ever truly had a very hard sense to
Speaker 4: serve my country in the very beginning, Like my dad served,
Speaker 4: I knew what it meant to, you know, respect the flag,
Speaker 4: respect the country. Like I understood that then two thousand
Speaker 4: and six, I think, right before the downturn was starting
Speaker 4: to happen, Like I was living in Dallas, I was
Speaker 4: sleeping on my floor. I was at a junction in
Speaker 4: my life where it's like, look, I got to figure
Speaker 4: out something because my dad was like, look, I'm not
Speaker 4: taking out no more student loans for.
Speaker 3: You to go to Baylor of course, smart man, smart man.
Speaker 4: Which I just paid that student loan off not too
Speaker 4: long ago, Gratua. That was a big step, big step,
Speaker 4: but no, but it was like a I gotta find
Speaker 4: something to do with my life. And my dad always
Speaker 4: told me like, hey, the military is something where you
Speaker 4: can get out from under where you're at right now,
Speaker 4: you know, just going to the military and so that's
Speaker 4: where I just started doing my due diligence and how
Speaker 4: I kind of involved and kind of got into the
Speaker 4: Navy it's elf. But I never truly understood until I
Speaker 4: got into the Navy what it was like to have
Speaker 4: a true appreciation for love for country. Like before I
Speaker 4: always saw the commercials like, Oh, I'm gonna be in
Speaker 4: a white suit standing on the side of aircraft carry
Speaker 4: going into a foreign country, like everybody's gonna love me.
Speaker 1: Like I had.
Speaker 4: This this weird epiphany of what I thought military service was,
Speaker 4: like just getting out, getting drunk, getting your education, Like
Speaker 4: that's what I thought the military was. But it wasn't
Speaker 4: until like my first duty station in Quantico, where I
Speaker 4: was stationed with Marines, Like I start to understand, like
Speaker 4: there's an undercurrent of love and appreciation in the military,
Speaker 4: especially amongst your brothers and sisters that you just don't
Speaker 4: get seeing a commercial, playing a video game, hearing the stories.
Speaker 3: You've got to go through it.
Speaker 4: And that's where I had a different appreciation of love
Speaker 4: of country because now my heart earned, sweat, blood and
Speaker 4: tears are now invested into the earth soil to where
Speaker 4: I now is like I love.
Speaker 1: It completely changes what you see and you look at
Speaker 1: those stores on the short.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, I have a different appreciation when I say to
Speaker 4: pledgere of the llegiance to when you know second grade,
Speaker 4: you're doing it because it's part of school routine, stand up,
Speaker 4: do it, you know. But when I do it now.
Speaker 3: It's like get you chills. It's like me, I know
Speaker 3: what it means and why I'm doing it. You figure
Speaker 3: out your why.
Speaker 1: As you as you know, every time I speak after
Speaker 1: we here in national anthem, and I always say the
Speaker 1: same thing as soon as I walk up, and I
Speaker 1: always say, if you didn't get chills, you're not doing
Speaker 1: it right now.
Speaker 2: And I'm usually in tears. Yeah, I mean every time
Speaker 2: I can't do that song, let's step back real quickly.
Speaker 2: So you didn't know at a young age, I'm going
Speaker 2: to serve my country. You kind of had other goals.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I had other goals.
Speaker 4: Like I wanted to get a degree in like sports management,
Speaker 4: and like I just wanted to go to the corporate world.
Speaker 4: Like you know, I grew up in a very small city.
Speaker 4: I wanted to go into like a big city, and
Speaker 4: so I kind of had that dream of doing something different. Initially,
Speaker 4: I didn't have that reserve, like I'm gonna serve my country,
Speaker 4: like I know some of my friends had so tell.
Speaker 2: Us about you got into the Navy.
Speaker 4: The what Yeah, So going into the Navy was a
Speaker 4: fun experience. My brother told me like, whatever you do,
Speaker 4: don't trust a recruiter, and I think any person.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And the sad part about it, my recruiter I won't
Speaker 4: say his name, was actually a high school friend of
Speaker 4: my brothers. And so I was like, hey, I want
Speaker 4: to get into a role or job where all I
Speaker 4: do is nothing like I was very selfish and I
Speaker 4: want to get my education.
Speaker 3: That's all I want to do. I just want to
Speaker 3: see the world get me education. Xyz.
Speaker 1: I appreciate your accountability, bro. I don't know how big
Speaker 1: I am on that because you've seen me call people
Speaker 1: out in front of God and everybody about that and
Speaker 1: they're like, yo, no, I just wanted to be a
Speaker 1: hard charger. And it's like, so when did you start
Speaker 1: your first class a month after I landed it? And
Speaker 1: it's like, come on, man.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I just have my own selfish goals that I
Speaker 4: wanted to do and have Uncle Sam funded. And so
Speaker 4: he was like, all right, coffee, then you should be
Speaker 4: an RP. I was like, well, what it's an RP.
Speaker 4: He was like, oh, it's a religious program specialist and
Speaker 4: you just work with a chaplain at a chapel. It's
Speaker 4: the chill ist, laid back job you will ever have.
Speaker 4: And then maybe all lives, all lies, all lies from
Speaker 4: beginning to end. And so I was like, Roger, that
Speaker 4: sign me up. You know, I'm going around telling people, Oh, yeah,
Speaker 4: I'm being an RP. I'm being an RP.
Speaker 1: Like you grew up religious to right. So it was
Speaker 1: like easy transitions.
Speaker 4: He transition, I'll be preaching the people in the field,
Speaker 4: say the lives, like, oh, this is going.
Speaker 3: To be great.
Speaker 2: You'll want people y'all need Jesus. So what are the
Speaker 2: duties of an RP.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so, so as an RP, we helped the chaplain
Speaker 4: manage the chapel, the base chapels, and so with some
Speaker 4: of our duties, we do coordinate funerals with local funeral homes.
Speaker 4: We do weddings as well, and christienings and baptisms. You know,
Speaker 4: some of the downsides about being an RP is, you know,
Speaker 4: we have to do last rights for service individuals. So
Speaker 4: whether they're KIA or whether we're going to an hospital,
Speaker 4: we help the chaplain provide last rights. And then we
Speaker 4: also do notifications at certain times. So if someone I.
Speaker 1: Was going to ask that, I didn't know if y'all
Speaker 1: had to do that or not.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we do notifications as well, and so every everything's
Speaker 4: just but yeah, it's kind of an all encompassing there's
Speaker 4: a lot a lot of parameters, right, And so I
Speaker 4: get to boot camp and they were like, oh, you're
Speaker 4: going to be an RP, because I guess you know,
Speaker 4: rps aren't that popular in the Navy, and so I
Speaker 4: was like, yeah, I'm going to be an RP. And
Speaker 4: so I go through boot camp and I get sent
Speaker 4: to Meridian, Mississippi, and Meridian, Mississippi is where I go
Speaker 4: to my aid school for RP.
Speaker 3: And I'll never forget.
Speaker 4: We had this first class petty officer walk out and
Speaker 4: say okay, because we did our dream sheets and then
Speaker 4: the Navy dream sheets is basically where do you want
Speaker 4: your first duty station to be? So I picked Norfolk
Speaker 4: Aircraft Carrier, Aircraft Carrier, aircraft carrier, Like that's exactly what
Speaker 4: I picked. I was like, there's no way they can
Speaker 4: mess this up. Nobody wants to go to Norfolk. I
Speaker 4: don't know if you ever visit Norfolk. Yeah, yeah, nobody
Speaker 4: wants to go to Norfolk. Like I was like Roger
Speaker 4: that this is where I want to go. He comes
Speaker 4: back and says, coffee camp. You all going to Quantico Virginia.
Speaker 3: I was like what.
Speaker 4: I literally thought Quantico was in another country. I've never
Speaker 4: heard of it. Like that was my first time ever
Speaker 4: hearing a Quantico and I was like, okay, it's like, oh,
Speaker 4: by the way, you go on green Side. I was
Speaker 4: like green Side? What is green Side? He was like,
Speaker 4: your recruited didn't tell you. I was like, he was like, yeah,
Speaker 4: you're going to go be stationed with the Marines. I
Speaker 4: was like, but what does that entail? It's like, oh,
Speaker 4: you're going to camp. Let you and go through boot
Speaker 4: camp again. I was like, you gotta be shitting me.
Speaker 4: And so like that was like a moment of deflation
Speaker 4: green weening. Wow, that's what we call that.
Speaker 1: Explain to us what your thoughts were when you showed
Speaker 1: up and got a taste of that.
Speaker 3: Oh man, that was a rude awakenment. So I'll never forget.
Speaker 4: Like, you know, those videos you see if like chesty
Speaker 4: and him like yelling at people with the drill sergeant
Speaker 4: hats and the greens or the bravos I think they
Speaker 4: had on.
Speaker 3: I'm never forget they're like, get the fuck off the boss.
Speaker 3: Wait a minute, the big white buses. The big white
Speaker 3: bus is not what I signed up for.
Speaker 4: And I remember we got on the parade deck like
Speaker 4: Mustard was every morning at zero four hundred, So we
Speaker 4: had to be up at zero three forty five. No,
Speaker 4: we had to be on deck at zero three five.
Speaker 4: Said late we were looking that we had to be
Speaker 4: on decade zero three forty five. Our barracks didn't have
Speaker 4: any air conditioning. We lucked out because one of the
Speaker 4: guys going through uncle was like a senator, so he
Speaker 4: called his uncle. Three months later, after our class graduated,
Speaker 4: all the bears got a c's so appreciate that guy.
Speaker 4: That's where the weakness started, the softness began. There's this
Speaker 4: little city they kind of have mocked up to like
Speaker 4: give you, like, hey, your down range, you're going in,
Speaker 4: you need to retrieve people out, and like they have
Speaker 4: like all these flash bangs going out. I'm like, yo,
Speaker 4: what the fuck is? And so like the thrown these
Speaker 4: flash bangs. It's like this little smoke and stuff that
Speaker 4: they have going. It's like, Yo, this is completely different
Speaker 4: than what I signed up for. Like when I went
Speaker 4: through my Navy boot camp, like we were on like
Speaker 4: this Disney ship that they created. There are sound effects
Speaker 4: and music playing, and like when the ship set on
Speaker 4: this fake water and we're throwing out mooring lines, I'm like, yo,
Speaker 4: this is easy.
Speaker 1: Are you so? Are you glad though, even though clearly
Speaker 1: it was gnarley and it was a shock to the system,
Speaker 1: are you grateful for Do you see now why the
Speaker 1: military designs it that way too, because you are going
Speaker 1: to put odds are you're going to be in an
Speaker 1: environment that you can never simulate exactly, but you'll at
Speaker 1: least be somewhat to wear.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I am extremely glad for that because it gave
Speaker 4: me a different appreciation of what you all have to
Speaker 4: go through downrange. And then I think one of the
Speaker 4: I think the defining moment in my career is like
Speaker 4: once I went through this boot camp and I got
Speaker 4: stationed at Quantico and worked at OCS, like, you know,
Speaker 4: I still kind of felt like the sword throm, you know,
Speaker 4: because I was an RP and people were kind of confused.
Speaker 4: I also had a no shaved ship because I was
Speaker 4: still had Navy rigs and Marines like, yo, what the
Speaker 4: fuck is that.
Speaker 3: On the face?
Speaker 1: Hold on.
Speaker 3: Stats, sergeant.
Speaker 4: But one thing I appreciate is like those marines also said, hey,
Speaker 4: you're one of us as well, like even though you
Speaker 4: don't have the e g. A you know on your hat,
Speaker 4: your yeah, the globe and anchor, you're still one of us.
Speaker 4: Like you treated you though, and treated me as if
Speaker 4: I was one of their own. So I'm glad I
Speaker 4: went through it right on. Then the other part, I
Speaker 4: got blindsided when I selected the RP role, Like, as
Speaker 4: you're learning your job, did we get to this chapter
Speaker 4: where's talking like, hey, if you're on the battlefield, you
Speaker 4: know your job is to protect the chaplain and take
Speaker 4: a bullet for the chaplain. And so I thought I
Speaker 4: misread the shit. I was like, sir, this says here
Speaker 4: we're supposed to take a bullet for the chaplain. He
Speaker 4: was like, yeah, your recruit didn't tell you. I was like, obviously,
Speaker 4: my recruiter left a lot out of the fine print.
Speaker 3: But that's where like.
Speaker 1: I was still safe.
Speaker 4: I tell people now going into the stairs, like, look, man,
Speaker 4: whatever your recruiter tells you, don't believe them, Like, do
Speaker 4: your own due diligence. They're going to get you in,
Speaker 4: but do you need to truly find out what you're
Speaker 4: getting yourself into when you get into that role. But hindsight,
Speaker 4: I would truly say that I'm more grateful now that
Speaker 4: I did get that role on the Green Side, because
Speaker 4: that's truly where I learned about camaraderie and brotherhood. A
Speaker 4: great example of that was we were corgy, young and dumb,
Speaker 4: and we had motorcycles and we went down from Quantico
Speaker 4: to Norfolk, me and a bunch of Marines. The way back,
Speaker 4: we're just as zipping in and out of traffic, and
Speaker 4: so we get pulled over by a state trooper and
Speaker 4: so I was like, you know what, I'll take the
Speaker 4: hit for this, but Sergeant Connors like, nah, man, we're
Speaker 4: here for you. RP like we're not going to leave
Speaker 4: you behind. You know, that was my first interaction. So
Speaker 4: you know, somebody mean, like they could have easily been like,
Speaker 4: all right, we're gonna get back to base, Good luck
Speaker 4: for you, brother, but they like that was one of
Speaker 4: my first encounters I was like, yo, Like they could
Speaker 4: have easily just said, you know what, you got to
Speaker 4: bite this one and we're going back, but they was
Speaker 4: like nah, they parked their bikes, they stood there. The
Speaker 4: trooper let me off with not even a warning. He's like, hey, man,
Speaker 4: let's get back the base safe. Slow down, And of
Speaker 4: course we did one hundred all the way back.
Speaker 1: But no.
Speaker 4: But that was just a great example of like for
Speaker 4: something that I had a selfish intention of going into,
Speaker 4: like along the way, my perception was slowly changing of
Speaker 4: like what it meant to serve and what it meant
Speaker 4: to look to the left and right of you and
Speaker 4: look out for them.
Speaker 1: And so humbling is you get humbled.
Speaker 4: You do often, you do, you really do, and you
Speaker 4: learn the care aracter of other people quickly. When you're
Speaker 4: in those situations where it's kind of like no one's looking,
Speaker 4: but everyone's looking, that's when you truly start to define
Speaker 4: who are your ship bags, who are your good people?
Speaker 4: Who are the soult of the earth. That's how I
Speaker 4: got to become an RP in the Navy. But I
Speaker 4: loved it. I have fun at olcs, a lot of
Speaker 4: god great stories from there.
Speaker 2: So where did you go from Virginia.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so Virginia, I went over to Yakuska, Japan. So
Speaker 4: I actually joined the Navy at that point, and so
Speaker 4: I went blue side. The ship that I was on
Speaker 4: was the US cow Pins, a cruiser, so we were
Speaker 4: part of the seventh Fleet. I think the carry at
Speaker 4: that time was US at George, Washington, and we were
Speaker 4: part of their air defense whenever we went on our deployments.
Speaker 4: And so Japan Yakuska was a different world and a
Speaker 4: different experience. It was crazy. I will never forget when
Speaker 4: I showed up to my ship for the first time.
Speaker 4: I was fortunate. I worked with this chaplain by the
Speaker 4: name of Chaplain Jones. He was also at Chronicle with me.
Speaker 4: He went over to Japan, and when I was getting
Speaker 4: ready to select for new orders, I called them and
Speaker 4: we talked about it. I was like, you know what,
Speaker 4: it'd be great just to you know, actually experience what
Speaker 4: the Navy is like and you know, be a drunken
Speaker 4: sailor and have those experiences, and so we talked about it.
Speaker 4: I got to Japan and I'll never forget like those
Speaker 4: last two and a half three years when I was
Speaker 4: in Chronicle, like I was wearing like Marine Corps uniforms.
Speaker 4: Like my standards were held at the Marine Corps level.
Speaker 4: So during the Marine Corps pet test, everything was that, yep,
Speaker 4: just like docs, just like docs. And so when I
Speaker 4: got to my base or my new duty station, like
Speaker 4: I show up in like my Marine Corps stuff because
Speaker 4: that's all I had. I didn't have like my naval
Speaker 4: gear because I didn't need to buy it at the time.
Speaker 4: And I'll never forget people like, well, look at me weird.
Speaker 4: It's like, yo, who's this square away?
Speaker 1: Say it?
Speaker 3: Or like think he's a shit. I'm like, we're your standards,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: It's like it was an awkward transition because people kind
Speaker 4: of always saw me as the RP that came from
Speaker 4: the Marines, and like my raq was squared away. And
Speaker 4: then I will say, like, of course I started to
Speaker 4: adopt the Navy standards. So I was like, man, it's
Speaker 4: shits a little too easy. But it was an experience
Speaker 4: being in a different country, you know, away from family,
Speaker 4: like just being in a complete different culture. You know,
Speaker 4: you have the people that want you to be there
Speaker 4: because it's a great economic opportunity for the locals. Then
Speaker 4: you have the other people who remember, you know, what
Speaker 4: happened years ago and don't want us to be there.
Speaker 4: And so it was I made a lot of great
Speaker 4: friends when I was in Japan, and that was also
Speaker 4: just a great humbling experience of just how kind the
Speaker 4: people were. And that was something that always stood out
Speaker 4: to me.
Speaker 2: That's beautiful, that's I mean, that's why I love traveling
Speaker 2: and I love teaching children about travel because it's so
Speaker 2: important for us to see how other people live. Yes,
Speaker 2: and there's so many great traditions that we can adopt ourselves, Yes,
Speaker 2: but especially the kindness. That's beautiful.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and the sushi, Like I never liked sushi until
Speaker 4: I got to Japan.
Speaker 2: Can you think of one person in particular you got
Speaker 2: close to while you were there in Japan?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I will say Chaplin Jones. Yeah, that was my
Speaker 4: immediate boss. And he was just a good guy. He
Speaker 4: was just a good, solid guy. Of course, you always
Speaker 4: think like you hear the chaplain and everybody wants to,
Speaker 4: you know, Roger up and perk up because the holiest.
Speaker 3: Man on the ship is walking into the room.
Speaker 4: He was open to different thoughts for ideologies, and I
Speaker 4: think that's one thing as an RP I learned to
Speaker 4: appreciate was at the time being a you know, devout Christian,
Speaker 4: I had to support people who had opposite beliefs with me,
Speaker 4: so I had to or no beliefs at all. It
Speaker 4: was one of those things where I learned like, it's
Speaker 4: not about me. Like there was another example of it's
Speaker 4: not about me. The first was with the Marines. They
Speaker 4: could have left me and said, yeah, to take that ticket.
Speaker 4: The second is like me learning like, hey, this person's wicked.
Speaker 4: I need to do what's best for them. It's not
Speaker 4: about me. That was a unique journey that I've had
Speaker 4: with Chaplin, Jones and so.
Speaker 1: Together, you know. And I gotta say because a lot
Speaker 1: of people know, you know how combatants, like with the
Speaker 1: quarterbacks of the military, we get all the praise and
Speaker 1: all the everything, but people don't understand for chaplains and
Speaker 1: anyone who are in direct assistance of chaplains. And I
Speaker 1: feel the same way about anyone especially in the field
Speaker 1: medically or even back home during a wartime situation that
Speaker 1: work in our military hospitals. People don't have a clue
Speaker 1: how much they go through. Yeah, because they are the
Speaker 1: catch all for everybody else's stuff, yes, and then it's
Speaker 1: like okay, well what's there, I mean, what's their outlet? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Or outlets? And how do they just carry it?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: And I mean it's compassionate fatigue, like it's a real thing.
Speaker 1: It is.
Speaker 4: And that was one thing that I think when in Quantico,
Speaker 4: like you know, I had all these guys coming back
Speaker 4: from overseas, you know, they were just getting stationed there,
Speaker 4: you know, and they'll come to the Chappin office for
Speaker 4: counseling and typically Chappin oledge, you know, chapping sometimes like
Speaker 4: would just let me sit there like this to be
Speaker 4: an observer, just you know, security reasons where the case
Speaker 4: may be. But you hear the stories of these people
Speaker 4: and they're coming to you saying, hey, RP, I'm dealing
Speaker 4: with something. Then you learn how to become this spiderweb
Speaker 4: of resources for the base and you're kind of like, okay,
Speaker 4: well sarget such and such, let's connect you here or
Speaker 4: let's do this. But to your point, like you at
Speaker 4: some point you hit this wall of compassion fatigue because
Speaker 4: it's not that you hear every story is the same,
Speaker 4: but you can kind of get to where that person's
Speaker 4: going to go. And then you're kind of like, Okay,
Speaker 4: I'm no longer here in the moment with them, I'm
Speaker 4: already ten steps of like here's where I need to
Speaker 4: connect you to. But you forget to be there in
Speaker 4: the moment with that person because for them, that's their
Speaker 4: first time going through that journey. For you, that's your
Speaker 4: thousand times hearing the story of me and my wife
Speaker 4: aren't getting a law.
Speaker 1: To put in perspective for the people listening. It's the
Speaker 1: same as when it's operational success, and you have to
Speaker 1: have that mindset in order to keep moving forward. Just
Speaker 1: because you're pushing through and somebody goes down, well, it's
Speaker 1: not an all stop. You can't stop, And I mean
Speaker 1: that's not our job. That's stocks job. You have to
Speaker 1: keep pushing through because our enemy's not going to be
Speaker 1: like okay, game, it's just but it's the same, and
Speaker 1: just put it in perspective for people. That's the way
Speaker 1: you guys have to operate. You have to because there's
Speaker 1: a lot of people behind that person. They're you can
Speaker 1: come in with a whole different set of problems, a
Speaker 1: whole different set of abundant life situations that everybody knows
Speaker 1: and understands you don't have to. You never had to
Speaker 1: be in a military that you're trying to help mentor guide, heal,
Speaker 1: so on and so forth. And it's I mean, we
Speaker 1: know now too, out of the military doing what we
Speaker 1: used to do. It's exhausting. It is exhausting.
Speaker 4: It is it's mentally taxing because then it's like what
Speaker 4: do you do for yourself?
Speaker 3: Like what's your outlet?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 4: And chaplain General's is really my outlet, and kind of
Speaker 4: vice versa for each other. But to that point, those
Speaker 4: people who are behind the lines every day in and out,
Speaker 4: like what's their outlet?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 3: Where do they go?
Speaker 2: Right, it's clear that the Navy you achieved your goal
Speaker 2: of getting experienced, because it truly broadened your horizons, right
Speaker 2: from living in another country, seeing how other people live,
Speaker 2: experiencing this emotional growth that you went through. What was
Speaker 2: it like living on the ship?
Speaker 3: Oh man, that's you're not a small guy. Yeah, that
Speaker 3: was rough.
Speaker 4: Saw where I slept at in the kind of the
Speaker 4: four bunks. I was still the most junior person, so
Speaker 4: I had the top rack.
Speaker 3: So you got this.
Speaker 4: Six foot four, two hundred and thirty pound black guy
Speaker 4: always trying to go up and down these other people
Speaker 4: rags as all as.
Speaker 3: Like being in jails, like hey, brother, don't put your
Speaker 3: foot on my rack. I'm like, what do you want
Speaker 3: me to do.
Speaker 1: I'm not Michael Jordan bro I.
Speaker 3: Can't just liftate up to the top rack.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and so, but no, being on the ship is
Speaker 4: it is fun, It is experienced. I got my sea
Speaker 4: legs there, you know, I remember, yeah, I will. I
Speaker 4: don't know what I think. It's called drama. Mean, there's
Speaker 4: not enough drama. Mean a person can take you know,
Speaker 4: when you're out in the black China Sea, like there's
Speaker 4: nothing drama. I was trying to get drama in ear
Speaker 4: patch butt shots all of them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there was like whatever.
Speaker 4: The only way you're going to get through it is
Speaker 4: to go through it. There's no other way, you know,
Speaker 4: to get your seat legs. And so getting my sea
Speaker 4: legs at first week that was brutal, Like I thought
Speaker 4: that was that was painful. It's horrible, it is. It's
Speaker 4: Sally can't tell up from down, you know. I'm also
Speaker 4: trying to puke from the top and so now I'm
Speaker 4: trying to sleep near the couch so I don't piss
Speaker 4: off my bunk mates. You know, because I got this
Speaker 4: black trash bag hanging down.
Speaker 3: Try full of pew. I'm like, hey, bro, I could
Speaker 3: only do so much, you know. But no, that was fun.
Speaker 4: But I would say ship life is hectic, you know
Speaker 4: what I mean. It's a twenty four to seven operation.
Speaker 4: It's never really down time.
Speaker 2: Obviously you've gone through a ton of experience here at
Speaker 2: such a young age. When did you deal with your
Speaker 2: first big heartache or hardship?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I would say that the one that was more
Speaker 4: so I awakening for me was in June of twenty ten.
Speaker 4: At my ship, I had a good friend of mine,
Speaker 4: Christopher Perino, take his life. We was in dry docks,
Speaker 4: and every day you have what's called like the plan
Speaker 4: of the day.
Speaker 3: So typically in the I was admin support is what
Speaker 3: I was.
Speaker 4: Glad I was kind of an admin section, and so
Speaker 4: we will type up the plan of the days and
Speaker 4: we'll get it up to the EXO or the Master
Speaker 4: chief to sign off. You know, go to EXO and
Speaker 4: then you'll go to the CEOs. Hey, here's our schedule
Speaker 4: for the day. Drills were going to be running XYZ
Speaker 4: and so I remember that day. We get to the
Speaker 4: ship and we're walking through the planet of the day
Speaker 4: before it sent out, and we hear this guy come
Speaker 4: over the one m CE, you know, had a very
Speaker 4: shaky voice, and he said, you know, I think it's
Speaker 4: like five minutes, five minutes to Colors. So we thought
Speaker 4: it was the new guy that had just joined the ship,
Speaker 4: you know, and it was his first time on the
Speaker 4: one MC, because it's heard throughout the entire ship and
Speaker 4: external the ship like first call first called the Colors,
Speaker 4: and so we didn't think anything of it, was like, oh,
Speaker 4: that's the new guy. Boys' shaky. We're all just like
Speaker 4: kind of cracking jokes, blah blah blah. And then we
Speaker 4: hear the whistle for Colors to go off at zero
Speaker 4: eight hundred zero zero eight oh three because in the
Speaker 4: foreign country we played the national anthem and then the
Speaker 4: local country plays their anthem and so it's about a
Speaker 4: three minute spill altogether. And so then we hear the
Speaker 4: final wheelers that Colors are is secured. Then about say
Speaker 4: two to three minutes later, we hear someone come over
Speaker 4: to the one m CE say man overboard, man of
Speaker 4: aboard starver Side. And so at that time our ship
Speaker 4: is in dry Dox. Those who aren't familiar with dry dock.
Speaker 4: Shot docks is typically where they pull the ship into
Speaker 4: this big empty pit they drain all the water from
Speaker 4: beneath it so they can work on the exterior of
Speaker 4: the ship. And so we're looking through the plan of
Speaker 4: the day, like we didn't have a man of a
Speaker 4: board drill schedule, especially while we're.
Speaker 3: In dry dock, you know, getting construction work done, so
Speaker 3: something just we didn't know what was going on.
Speaker 4: And then someone came back over one tom see like
Speaker 4: a minute later saying, this is not a drill, man
Speaker 4: of a board, man of a board starbar side, and
Speaker 4: so we originally thought, you know, it was maybe one
Speaker 4: of the local nationals who were suspended doing kind of
Speaker 4: like the sidework of a ship may have like may
Speaker 4: have may have fallen or you know, from being suspended.
Speaker 4: Most logical, we could not, you know, we were thinking
Speaker 4: through there, and once we heard it was not, you know,
Speaker 4: a drill. A part of my role on the ship,
Speaker 4: I was also a stretcher bearer and so as you
Speaker 4: all know, you can't call a fire department in the
Speaker 4: middle of the ocean, even with all the water, so
Speaker 4: you typically take on you know, additional Roles. I was
Speaker 4: a stretcher bearer, and so as a stretcher bearer, we
Speaker 4: got to respond to crisis, and so we I'll never
Speaker 4: forget we ran up to like we sprinted out of
Speaker 4: the office, ran up the ladder well, looked over the
Speaker 4: starbars side of the ship and we see a sailor
Speaker 4: face down and it's cover offs and we're like, it
Speaker 4: is it's still processing. So I remember running through the
Speaker 4: quarter deck running down into the dry Dox was like
Speaker 4: one hundred feet so it was a long way to
Speaker 4: get there.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, And I think it's important for people to
Speaker 1: understand to the magnitude of the size of these ships
Speaker 1: unless you've seen one, like you've been up on one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like everybody's seeing them on TV or on the computer
Speaker 1: or whatever, but like if you unless you've been next
Speaker 1: to one, these are massive, massive pieces of still.
Speaker 3: Yes they are, they are.
Speaker 4: And that ship at the time in dry do Ox
Speaker 4: is also suspended on top of blocks. So what could
Speaker 4: be a two hundred foot tall ship is now a
Speaker 4: two hundred and fifty two and seventy five foot tall ship.
Speaker 4: So I never forget running down, we run down to
Speaker 4: the sailor facing down, and I can. I still hear
Speaker 4: people saying secure ship, scarship, like I hear people like
Speaker 4: frantically getting back there, saying, hey, all hands inside ship
Speaker 4: if you're not there. And so before we turned him over,
Speaker 4: we were kind of like all processing. So it's like, okay,
Speaker 4: you know, grab his foot, grab his head, and like
Speaker 4: let's slowly turn him over like this thing, yep, and
Speaker 4: turn them over. And so I'll never forget. Once we
Speaker 4: turned him over and we saw his nameplate, I was like, fuck, yeah, Perino, you.
Speaker 1: Know what I mean.
Speaker 4: And then you so there's no we have no idea.
Speaker 4: We don't know if it was an accident, if it
Speaker 4: was intentional, whatever the case may be. We were just
Speaker 4: there to try to resuscitate him and revive him. We
Speaker 4: turned Parena over. Of course he had like all these
Speaker 4: open compound fractures.
Speaker 1: Think about that. It was two hundred and fifty feet.
Speaker 3: Yeah, face first, so you can only imagine you know
Speaker 3: what he looked like. Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: It was brutal.
Speaker 3: It was really brutal. And so you know, they don't
Speaker 3: train you. You can't train for that.
Speaker 4: You can go through all the fake dummies that you
Speaker 4: see in the boot camp it is not the same
Speaker 4: when you're there in a moment. And so we get
Speaker 4: the ambulists arrived, we get him on a stretcher, and
Speaker 4: now we put him on a stretcher, and now we
Speaker 4: have to carry him two hundred.
Speaker 3: Feet up out the dock. And so that was just
Speaker 3: say we moment.
Speaker 4: No one was talking to each other, you know, we
Speaker 4: were trying to like have a cadence of going up
Speaker 4: the stairs because the stairs are about tiny. They're tiny,
Speaker 4: They're not like, you know, eighteen foot long stairs. We
Speaker 4: can just comfortably go up, like you have to kind
Speaker 4: of be locking foot going up. I remember we put
Speaker 4: Perino in the back of the ambulance and then like
Speaker 4: we all just stood there and it's like a big
Speaker 4: sigh just went out, like it was just a deafening sound,
Speaker 4: and there was a little puddle.
Speaker 3: I'll never forget that.
Speaker 4: I went over and walked to and I kind of
Speaker 4: washed my hands because I had some of his blood
Speaker 4: on my hands at that time, and we were all
Speaker 4: just like what just happened, you know, because I was
Speaker 4: shocking to all of us, and so of course the
Speaker 4: entire base kind of just ascend it to our ship.
Speaker 4: I remember trying to go back to the ship, our senior,
Speaker 4: our master chief. I saw him behind one of the
Speaker 4: trash cans, like he was just crying. Like as an RP,
Speaker 4: and chapin like, our job is try to console. We
Speaker 4: try to heal the unhealable, you know. Of course, we
Speaker 4: try to do those things that we can't do. I
Speaker 4: remember I tried to console them. He just broke down
Speaker 4: like mass shapes like it's not your fault, it's not
Speaker 4: our fault. We don't know what happened, you know, like
Speaker 4: whatever the case may be. And so I remember we
Speaker 4: got the call that he was officially deceased. So of course,
Speaker 4: as being an RP, like a part of our job
Speaker 4: is also to help support the chaplain and doing last rites.
Speaker 4: And so me and Chaps went up to the base
Speaker 4: hospital and we walked into the morgue probably half size
Speaker 4: of this room, a little bit more colder than this.
Speaker 4: And I remember we walked up to him and Chaplin
Speaker 4: Jones unzipped his bag, and that was a moment in
Speaker 4: time where I realize I am not indepensible, like I
Speaker 4: can be broken too, you know. And Chaps asked me, like, hey,
Speaker 4: do you want a moment, you know, by yourself because
Speaker 4: he knew we were pretty close. And I was like, no, like,
Speaker 4: I don't ever want to do this ever again, Like
Speaker 4: I'm done. As a part of being an RP, all
Speaker 4: part of our job is also you know we do funerals. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I would say that's the toughest thing to see and
Speaker 4: to do, just because like you just see all these
Speaker 4: young people coming back, you know what I mean. It's
Speaker 4: not like you're going to somebody's grandparents funerals, Like you're
Speaker 4: just seeing young people who had lives ahead of them
Speaker 4: come back.
Speaker 3: I'll never forget when I was in Quantico.
Speaker 4: I think this was my first time I ever was
Speaker 4: kind of made cognizant of like veteran suicide. There was
Speaker 4: a marine, a sergeant that took his life and they
Speaker 4: had his funeral at the base chapel, and I'll never
Speaker 4: forget I was standing in the kind of the anax
Speaker 4: because I helped coordinate with the local funeral home all
Speaker 4: that good stuff. When they come on base, I'll stand
Speaker 4: in an annex. And or this little girl that I
Speaker 4: think was his daughter, she came back into the ANX
Speaker 4: and she was kind of like she asked me like why,
Speaker 4: like why did my dad do that? Like, you know,
Speaker 4: this is what do you say to a seven year
Speaker 4: old kid? Like that was my first time ever truly
Speaker 4: having to grass that there was a veteran suicide issue.
Speaker 4: Like I didn't know, Like I have my own selfish
Speaker 4: reagions of going into the military. It wasn't like the
Speaker 4: noble thing that everybody else would have did, and so
Speaker 4: it wasn't something that was top of mind to me.
Speaker 4: And I didn't have a lot of friends from high
Speaker 4: school that joined and that I knew that deployed and
Speaker 4: didn't make it back. Like it was something that was
Speaker 4: kind of foreign to me. But to be in that
Speaker 4: moment with Perino like it was personal, it made it personal.
Speaker 4: It made it real. I'll never forget all the conversations
Speaker 4: me and Perino had, like in the Chaplin office with
Speaker 4: the things that he was dealing with back home. To
Speaker 4: your point earlier, that compassion fatigue, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: Sometimes I felt like, you know that those little moments
Speaker 4: of guilts kind of like you know, I've heard these stories,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean, Like everybody has something going
Speaker 4: on at home, like including myself, you know, but then
Speaker 4: when you look at it, it's like, man, if I
Speaker 4: just had a little more time, you know what I mean,
Speaker 4: if I would have took the conversation a little more serious,
Speaker 4: like you know, you try to do the Monday morning
Speaker 4: quarterback coach of Like, how could this have turned out differently? Honestly,
Speaker 4: I would say as an RP, you learn to build
Speaker 4: these like emotional callouses and so like it was like
Speaker 4: you just become callous, and so I would say I
Speaker 4: never truly processed it until after the military, when I
Speaker 4: was kind of reintegrating. Then I got out the military
Speaker 4: and met shit going to carry love.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then everything has been rainbows and roses.
Speaker 2: Rose color. Oh, I'm so sorry for your loss and
Speaker 2: can't imagine, especially being half a world away from your family, yeah,
Speaker 2: and having to go through that and knowing the guy
Speaker 2: that personally, Yeah, you then went on, I mean you
Speaker 2: had to do the funerals and everything when you came home.
Speaker 2: How much did you carry that?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 4: I carried it a lot, Like I don't think there
Speaker 4: was a day that went by where kind of to
Speaker 4: early I was kind of like, man, like, what.
Speaker 3: Could we have done differently?
Speaker 1: You know, I don't realize we don't get trained on
Speaker 1: how to process that stuff. I don't get trained on
Speaker 1: I would say anything aside from violence of action on
Speaker 1: how to handle anything outside of that.
Speaker 3: It's true, It's very true.
Speaker 2: How did you cope?
Speaker 4: I don't think I did. I just allowed it to
Speaker 4: simmer and just spread and I just never truly addressed
Speaker 4: it until it decided to address me. And that's why
Speaker 4: me and Chapin Jones are so close to it because
Speaker 4: like even around that time, he'll text me or we'll
Speaker 4: call and say, hey, how are you doing? You know,
Speaker 4: when it gets up to that date, you know, and
Speaker 4: so that's something that's always positive. But even with the
Speaker 4: conversation with him, it's like, man, could we have done more?
Speaker 4: Could we have seen something different? Because you know, you
Speaker 4: always go through these trainings where it's kind of like, hey,
Speaker 4: how do see suicide coming? I don't think you ever can,
Speaker 4: Like I don't care as many trainings as you go through,
Speaker 4: the signs, like you just never know what a person
Speaker 4: is going through. I think for me, when I got out,
Speaker 4: the coping was just truly allowing my ego to be
Speaker 4: my healer. To your point, nobody ever teaches you like
Speaker 4: how to where do you begin to process it? Like
Speaker 4: do you talk about it?
Speaker 1: Do you go on? Then we don't want to do that.
Speaker 3: Wekness you don't want to go do that.
Speaker 4: I think the hardest thing for me when I I
Speaker 4: always say when I got out was I knew I
Speaker 4: was dealing with something upstairs because something was right, because
Speaker 4: I still have a nightmares, Like I just I was
Speaker 4: not me. I think the most humbling and I want
Speaker 4: to say humbling, but the most embarrassing thing to me.
Speaker 4: You know, when we got connected with the place we
Speaker 4: used to work previously and starting to learn about PTSD
Speaker 4: and things, and started to hear the other stories of warriors,
Speaker 4: you know, and what they had to go through on
Speaker 4: the battlefield and how they had TBI and PTSD, I'm like, well, shit,
Speaker 4: my story doesn't compare to their. It's like, I'm not
Speaker 4: going to go tell somebody I have PTSD, you know,
Speaker 4: based off an incident that happened, because who am I
Speaker 4: to sit across from a person who's a purple heart?
Speaker 1: Don't you now know? Is the completely wrong approach?
Speaker 3: Completely wrong approaches But that's not your fault.
Speaker 1: That was you were conditioned to think.
Speaker 4: That way absolutely, So I was like, who am I
Speaker 4: to go to the VA to ask for help when
Speaker 4: there's people out there who had hit by an ID,
Speaker 4: who got shot, you know, lost brothers and sisters and
Speaker 4: saw it happen to the left and right of them.
Speaker 4: For me, I always kind of kept that in. I mean,
Speaker 4: the people that I work with, they knew my story,
Speaker 4: you know, the people that you know when we told
Speaker 4: our war stories for individuals that came to hear kind
Speaker 4: of what we were doing in the in the veteran space,
Speaker 4: they knew about it. But on a wide scale, I
Speaker 4: wasn't proud to say, like, hey, I'm suffering too, but
Speaker 4: my story is not as traumatic as yours.
Speaker 3: I mean, I just felt like there was.
Speaker 1: That's that comparison of pain and suffering and it's like
Speaker 1: and it's all relative. Yeah, everybody does it. We all
Speaker 1: do it, and it's there's no Richter skill on it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the only thing that makes us all equal. That's it.
Speaker 1: That's the one thing, the pain and suffering. Stop comparing contrasting. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's all relative.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, So when you got back, how was PTS manifested
Speaker 2: for you?
Speaker 4: I was never really a big drinker, even when I
Speaker 4: was like my first year in college, Like even in
Speaker 4: high school, Like it just wasn't for me. But when
Speaker 4: I got back, like one thing that I saw, like
Speaker 4: I became a very heavy drinker. My mother kind of
Speaker 4: pointed that out to me, and I was like, oh,
Speaker 4: you know what you're talking about. I don't drink that much.
Speaker 4: You know what I mean, I'm holding a fifth in
Speaker 4: my hand. I don't drink that much. And I also
Speaker 4: saw the deteriorations in relationships you know, that I had,
Speaker 4: And so a lot of people would say, hey, you're
Speaker 4: not the same that I remember. You know what I mean,
Speaker 4: you kind of take the fence to this guy. Well,
Speaker 4: how the fuck do you remember? Yeah, you know what
Speaker 4: I mean?
Speaker 3: Like, how did I change?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Yes, I mean there was all these social clues, you know,
Speaker 4: when people really didn't want to spend as much time
Speaker 4: with me, just because like I was always on edge.
Speaker 4: I couldn't understand why. I was just angry, you know,
Speaker 4: I was angry at something and I didn't know what
Speaker 4: that something was.
Speaker 2: So how did you how did you start to heal?
Speaker 1: Gosh, I'm pretty sure you're scared straight.
Speaker 4: I was, so I think the defining moment for me.
Speaker 4: It's funny how this story comes back full circle. And
Speaker 4: so I was a student at UT Dallas and going
Speaker 4: through I'll tell you right now, I graduated with a two.
Speaker 3: Point one GPA.
Speaker 4: I will not be the persons like, oh yeah, I
Speaker 4: graduated magnum cum latti. I was the smartest. Like you said,
Speaker 4: it's all hunky dory. When I got no, I sucked
Speaker 4: like I got ass.
Speaker 1: I got d's.
Speaker 4: But I kept it to myself, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: Anybody outside looking in thought I was doing good. As
Speaker 4: long as I had that GI build that bah hit
Speaker 4: every month, I was golding. And that was my goal
Speaker 4: because I had no plan.
Speaker 1: But you only had the two point Because I know you,
Speaker 1: like you're my brother, You're an intelligent human being. You
Speaker 1: just were not applying yourself. Was not at all.
Speaker 3: I wasn't in a position.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to make it very clear for everybody.
Speaker 1: It's not from not like you were busting your ass
Speaker 1: just for barely showing up.
Speaker 3: Like yeah, I was giving bare minimum, like just to
Speaker 3: get by. But I'll never forget I was.
Speaker 4: I just got finished taking an exam and I was
Speaker 4: getting ready to head home, and I got t bone
Speaker 4: on the way home, and so like somebody called the ambulance,
Speaker 4: like what a responsible citizen should do. And I'm like, look, guy,
Speaker 4: don't take me to the hospital because I just know
Speaker 4: it's going to be bad.
Speaker 3: Like my gut. I avoided hospitals ever since that last moment.
Speaker 4: Who in the hospital, And so I was like, hey,
Speaker 4: don't take me there, like I don't want to go.
Speaker 4: I'm okay, you know, I'll get somebody profen and water.
Speaker 4: I'll suck it up and you know, I'll figure it out.
Speaker 1: Water clean socks, you're solid.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, rest and elevate. And I was like, hey, don't
Speaker 4: take me there. I don't want to go there, like
Speaker 4: I just know it's not gonna end. And so he's like,
Speaker 4: hey man, you got hit pretty bad. You need to
Speaker 4: go get checked out. And so I go to the
Speaker 4: Richardson I think Methodist Hospital and I'm sitting in there
Speaker 4: and then I can just That's when I knew something
Speaker 4: was right, Like I started to have triggers. I started
Speaker 4: to have this big panic attack where things were just
Speaker 4: I was just like in a time and space didn't exist,
Speaker 4: Like I was blacking out, and I remember running down
Speaker 4: the hallway in like my red Puma underwear. That's when
Speaker 4: I knew shit was fucked up, and I run out
Speaker 4: the hospital.
Speaker 1: Pretty good precursor, that's pretty good, Like, oh, this isn't normal,
Speaker 1: this is normal.
Speaker 4: I remember running out of the hospital and I'm standing
Speaker 4: in the intersection, this busy intersection in the middle of
Speaker 4: the day, and he's. Fortunate for me, there was two
Speaker 4: police officers who were also there, not due to me,
Speaker 4: but due to another call that they were there for.
Speaker 3: Vaguely remember hearing people saying stop him, stop him.
Speaker 4: I'm running out, like I need to get out of
Speaker 4: here because whatever's happened, something was happening, and I remember
Speaker 4: breaking down, sobbing on the side walk in the middle
Speaker 4: of the in the middle of the street, and these
Speaker 4: two officers walk up. It's like, hey, man, like what's
Speaker 4: going on. I was like, look, man, I'm a veteran.
Speaker 4: I saw some shit when I was in It fucked
Speaker 4: me up mentally, and I'm just like pouring out. Fortunate
Speaker 4: for me, they were also veterans. It was like, look, brother,
Speaker 4: you got two options. You can either a go get
Speaker 4: your shit together and find some resources, go to VA
Speaker 4: wherever you gotta go, or be grand up dead. This
Speaker 4: was two options, Like you're going to see things. I
Speaker 4: guess they've seen it a lot. And so that's when
Speaker 4: I reached out to.
Speaker 1: A little blessing dude that especially in today's society, But
Speaker 1: I mean, it wasn't that long ago that you had
Speaker 1: two warriors who happened to just transition over to the
Speaker 1: law enforcement officer side to walk up to you and
Speaker 1: you just got treated like family as opposed to some
Speaker 1: crazy dude and his underwear just losing it on the road. Yes,
Speaker 1: absolutely think about how differently that could have turned out.
Speaker 4: It could have turned out real bad. In today's climate,
Speaker 4: we see things are different. This was in twenty twelve
Speaker 4: and so not that long ago. Yeah, not that long ago.
Speaker 4: And so he was like, you need to get you
Speaker 4: need to get some help. And so that's when I
Speaker 4: reached out to this warrior of Mike Rows. That connected
Speaker 4: me with the program that doctor John Hart was doing,
Speaker 4: and that was my introduction into kind of the brain
Speaker 4: health space and started my healing journey.
Speaker 2: And that's an ongoing journey, isn't it. It is.
Speaker 3: It's a forever journey. I don't think it ever ends.
Speaker 4: You've uncovered some stone along the way that you're like, huh,
Speaker 4: didn't know that stone was there.
Speaker 2: And one of the things I truly admire about the
Speaker 2: military family is how easily they are. You are able
Speaker 2: to lean into one another to understand even though one
Speaker 2: of you might have gotten injured in combat and the
Speaker 2: other saw some really gnarly stuff in another country, You're
Speaker 2: able to lean into each other. It's so important because
Speaker 2: you know you're not alone, and you know that you
Speaker 2: have someone sitting across from you that you can talk to.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean that's why therapy is such a huge deal
Speaker 2: to us.
Speaker 1: I mean, regardless of what con as you can find
Speaker 1: therapy and anything you do.
Speaker 3: It's about who's to your left and to your right.
Speaker 4: And you know, so I continue to have these experiences
Speaker 4: of being around people to my left and to my
Speaker 4: right that care, that matter, and so the love all
Speaker 4: the way, that loved all the way there was no condition,
Speaker 4: unconditional love, and that was a part of my healing process.
Speaker 4: It's like, well, how can I become an unconditional lover
Speaker 4: to other people the way people have treated me?
Speaker 3: I need to treat other people that exact same way.
Speaker 1: Once you started your journey to healing forward and started
Speaker 1: doing the daily work and empty in that bucket. What
Speaker 1: did your grades look like in your master's program in
Speaker 1: comparison to your undergrad program.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So when I applied for grad school, I thought
Speaker 4: I wasn't going to get accepted because I had a
Speaker 4: two point one GPA and if you look through the
Speaker 4: different requirements, it's like minimum, you know, and bold letters,
Speaker 4: minimum minimum bold letters. I was like a view points.
Speaker 4: I was like, there's no way I'm gonna get in
Speaker 4: grad school. But I was like, you know what, I'm
Speaker 4: just gonna apply and see what happens. And so I
Speaker 4: remember talking to the advisor and I was like, hey,
Speaker 4: before you even look at my application, I'm gonna tell
Speaker 4: you right now, I had a two point one undergrad GPA.
Speaker 3: It's not who I am, you know. And so she
Speaker 3: basically was like, hey, write a letter telling us like
Speaker 3: what was happening? You know, why is this not you?
Speaker 3: Why should we let you in?
Speaker 4: So I wrote the letters, submitted my application, I got accepted.
Speaker 4: That was like a monumental moment from me. So I
Speaker 4: was like, Okay, it's time to reset, you know, I
Speaker 4: have a second opportunity to do something. And so like
Speaker 4: my first semester, I get all a's I'm like, man,
Speaker 4: this just feels so easy. But what I wasn't truly
Speaker 4: comprehending was like not that I was completely healed, but
Speaker 4: I was on the other side of healing. You know.
Speaker 4: I didn't have all that mental weight that I was carrying,
Speaker 4: all the guilt that I was carrying, all the broken relationships.
Speaker 4: I had support functions around me to where if I
Speaker 4: need yep, I had ability to be president and be there.
Speaker 4: And so I ended up finishing my Masters and Organizational
Speaker 4: behavior with a certificate executive coaching with a four point
Speaker 4: zero GPA and a scholar of high distinction. And so
Speaker 4: it's a great testament to say who I was ten
Speaker 4: years ago is not who I am today. But yeah,
Speaker 4: it's it was great. It was a great time.
Speaker 2: That's amazing, ma'am. That's huge. And how beautiful is that
Speaker 2: that this and we've seen it over and over again
Speaker 2: that it took this valley to get to this peak. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and the deeper appreciation you have for life, and the
Speaker 2: deeper appreciation you have for your family and your loved
Speaker 2: ones and your brothers and your sisters, you wouldn't appreciate
Speaker 2: them as much had you not been through that tough time.
Speaker 4: The way I look at life now, and I remember
Speaker 4: that moment in the Morga Prino, you know, where it's
Speaker 4: like I'm not independable, like I can be broken to
Speaker 4: like just like my daughter. You know, I have a
Speaker 4: four year old beautiful daughter, and I also have a
Speaker 4: four month other son and beautiful wife. I'll talk about
Speaker 4: them in a second, you know. But like for me,
Speaker 4: the way I view life, it's more so like the
Speaker 4: moments of time and interaction in a sense of watching
Speaker 4: her develop, like her seeing a butterfly for the first time,
Speaker 4: like what I may have taken for granted, like, oh,
Speaker 4: that's just a bird, her time seeing a bird for
Speaker 4: the first time, Like dad, what is that like? Just
Speaker 4: watching her see and experience things like And I was like,
Speaker 4: you know what, I want to take all that experience
Speaker 4: I've had, like how people love me unconditional. I want
Speaker 4: to be that unconditional lover to her and to my
Speaker 4: wife and to my son, and to my mother and
Speaker 4: to my siblings. So you know, just and just bring
Speaker 4: it all back home. But to your point, like I
Speaker 4: had to go through that valley to be appreciative to
Speaker 4: where I am today. Absolutely most recently, my father and
Speaker 4: I were talking and I started to learn more about
Speaker 4: his childhood and like how he grew up like in
Speaker 4: just a one bedroom house with like eight other siblings,
Speaker 4: and how they had to share everything. He was a
Speaker 4: baby of the family and you know, the things he
Speaker 4: had to go through, and as he strives today to
Speaker 4: break barriers, you know, for us, it's the same way
Speaker 4: him and my mother to instill, like, hey, we can
Speaker 4: only get you so far with the resources we had.
Speaker 4: Now I want you to pick up where we left
Speaker 4: off and get your kids as far as you can
Speaker 4: with the resources that you have, and keep that generational
Speaker 4: building going. So you're right, like, it's been a journey
Speaker 4: these last ten years of just you know, kicking down
Speaker 4: doors and taking names, and I don't know still I
Speaker 4: feel like my journey is truly beginning now that I'm
Speaker 4: on the other side of the coin.
Speaker 2: Absolutely it is. And at this stage of your life,
Speaker 2: what inspires you.
Speaker 4: The possibility of what's to come. It's like, what I
Speaker 4: truly feel is what inspires me. I think that I
Speaker 4: know that I haven't truly reached my potential. It's something
Speaker 4: that I think is going to kind of catapult me
Speaker 4: to that next level. I took a break from like
Speaker 4: the veteran space just because I mean, shit, you're still
Speaker 4: in it, and you are as well as like this.
Speaker 3: You're in the trenches, you know.
Speaker 4: And I couldn't continue to do the mental trenches anymore
Speaker 4: of like seeing what was happening to us, so I
Speaker 4: take a step back.
Speaker 3: So I think I had to take a step.
Speaker 2: Away from putting yourself first and doing that.
Speaker 3: You're right, you know I never thought about it like that,
Speaker 3: but you're right. I did self care yeah, self care.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And so I need to find my way back
Speaker 4: into the vet space and give back because I know
Speaker 4: there's more for me.
Speaker 1: Of course, it's an easy day, you know, and you.
Speaker 2: Know people, well you're here and we're not going to
Speaker 2: let you leave.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, tell me how you celebrate your winds
Speaker 1: now man, I would say, before it used to be
Speaker 1: just about me partying. We know stories.
Speaker 3: But I think my celebration of wins today is like
Speaker 3: with my with my wife and with my family.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: Before, I think in longest journey was more so like
Speaker 4: how can I get self gratification? And so my wins
Speaker 4: are now in us, like my wins are more so
Speaker 4: for my kids and for my wife and like how
Speaker 4: their quality of life is. And that's really what's my
Speaker 4: big win is. You know how I celebrate my wins Now,
Speaker 4: it's like, can my daughter put on a backpack and
Speaker 4: go to schoo you know what I mean? Can she
Speaker 4: stop saying to f MOhm in the grocery store?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Those are winds for me now I kind of celebrate
Speaker 3: that I'm doing the right.
Speaker 4: Thing, that I know I'm on the right way. The
Speaker 4: winds that matter, yeah, the winds that matter, and celebrating
Speaker 4: with the people I love.
Speaker 1: That's freaking beautiful. Well, you've clearly learned some stuff along
Speaker 1: the way.
Speaker 4: You know, I'd be remiss if I didn't say, you know,
Speaker 4: part of this journey, A big part of it was
Speaker 4: my wife. You know, she was truly that crush that
Speaker 4: I could lean And I kind of get emotional here,
Speaker 4: so I won't get the tear ducks going. But I'm
Speaker 4: extremely grateful for her because she put up with my
Speaker 4: ship for so many years.
Speaker 1: She didn't have to.
Speaker 3: So I'm extremely grateful for my wife, and she was
Speaker 3: my true support group.
Speaker 1: I love you, bro, you know this, and your my brothers,
Speaker 1: And that's the way it'll always and forever, be anytime, anywhere, anything,
Speaker 1: say the word. You know, I'm not going to ask questions,
Speaker 1: but I'll show Kishan.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for being on the good stuff.
Speaker 3: Thank you all for having me.
Speaker 1: Now you know why I love it.
Speaker 2: He's so great. He brings such great energy. And for
Speaker 2: him to open up and tell his story, it's truly inspiring.
Speaker 2: For him to come in and speak so candidly about
Speaker 2: even his very selfish reasons for wanting to join the military,
Speaker 2: that's vulnerability one hundred percent.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then how it's grown today into this incredible, strong,
Speaker 2: intelligent family man with love of country sitting in front
Speaker 2: of us, sharing with us about it.
Speaker 1: Executive of a major cor Yeah.
Speaker 2: Sharing with us. You know what all he's been through
Speaker 2: and what's gotten him there, just like we said, through
Speaker 2: the valleys, to truly get to and not only get to,
Speaker 2: but to appreciate the peak, to live in gratitude, to
Speaker 2: have that mindset, it's just beautiful.
Speaker 1: It has not been through lack of hard work and
Speaker 1: embracing is suffering and feeling it all the way and
Speaker 1: all the things we all have to do to watch
Speaker 1: our child see a butterfly for the first time and
Speaker 1: it make us give us the ability because of the
Speaker 1: work we put in on us to be able to
Speaker 1: see the same thing right. That's spiritual stuff.
Speaker 2: I agree. And the self care, you know he touched
Speaker 2: on it. You've got to take time for yourself, make
Speaker 2: sure that you don't have compassion fatigue, make sure that
Speaker 2: you're taking care of yourself so that you can go
Speaker 2: truly be effective for others that are in need. And
Speaker 2: when you're in need, don't be afraid to reach out
Speaker 2: and seek help.
Speaker 1: That's it. You got to make sure your own bucket
Speaker 1: is empty before you start helping others.
Speaker 2: Empty theirs absolutely, And of course the wonderful lesson of
Speaker 2: don't get stuck on the top bunk of a.
Speaker 1: Ship, top box, no fun, zero fun factor on the
Speaker 1: top on a ship.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for listening. If this episode touched
Speaker 2: you today, please share it and be part of making
Speaker 2: someone else's day better.
Speaker 1: Put on your bad ass capes and be great today.
Speaker 1: And remember you can't do epic stuff without epic people.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to the good Stuff. The Good
Speaker 1: Stuff is executive produced by Ashley Shick, Jacob Schick, Leah
Speaker 1: Pictures and q Code Media, hosted by Ashley Shick and
Speaker 1: Jacob Shick. Produced by Nick Casslini and Ryan Countshouse. Post
Speaker 1: production supervisor Will Tindi. Music editing by Will Haywood Smith,
Speaker 1: Edited by Mike Robinson,