Jocko Podcast - 296: When You're There, You're There. When You're Home, You're Home. W/Sara Wilkinson and Jason McCarthy

Episode Date: August 25, 2021

0:00:00 - Opening0:10:21 - Sara Wilkinson2:48:10 - Final thoughts3:13:28 - How to stay on THE PATH.3:40:01 - Closing Gratitude.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 296 with me, Jocko Willink. The Chief of Naval Operations takes pleasure in presenting the Silver Star Medal 2 Special Warfare Operator First Class, Chad M. Wilkinson, United States Navy. For service as set forth in the following citation. For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action against. against the enemy while serving as a mission support site team leader while assigned to a joint task force in support of operations enduring freedom on 24 April 2011. Petty Officer Wilkinson displayed superior guidance during a daytime assault targeting a Taliban commander while under significant enemy fire. Upon arriving into the objective area, Petty Officer Wilkinson and his assault element came under a half. hail of enemy fire. He and his teammates led his assault to set containment on the objective area.

After receiving friendly wounded in action from direct enemy fires and grenades within 20 meters of the target compound, Petty Officer Wilkinson boldly exposed himself to the enemy and suppressed the incoming fire that allowed his element to move to safety and enabled a combat medic to move to their positions to treat a head wound of one of his teammates. He directed, directed two additional assaults on the target compound and coordinated with higher headquarters for three rotary wing close air support missions after evacuating all non-combatants from adjacent buildings. Petty Officer Wilkinson's actions eliminated the enemy combatants, enabled the evacuation of the wounded casualties, and allowed for the safe extraction of the assault force. by his bold leadership, courageous actions, and total dedication to duty. Petty Officer Wilkinson reflected great credit upon himself and upheld the highest traditions

of the United States Naval Service for the president, Jonathan W. Greenert, Admiral, United States Navy, chief of naval operations. So there you have the award citation. of a hero from one of our recent wars, Afghanistan. And war is in some ways timeless. It doesn't change. There are heroes, there are sacrifices, and there's fear and pain and loss.

War also evolves over time, and there's new weapon, new weapons, new technology, new tactics, there's lessons that are learned, there's solutions that are created with the advent of poison gas, and World War I came the advent of the gas mask. From the creation of machine guns came the creation of the tank.

War is responsible for the creation or the advancement of radios and radar and atomic weapons and energy and jet engines and electric computers and war creates problems and then creates solutions to those problems, or at least it's supposed to. There have been great advances in medicine from war. The Civil War in America brought about the significant use of anesthesia.

In World War I, men were now being gravely wounded by these newly developed machine guns, and they were losing massive quantities of blood, and so doctors started regularly using blood transfusions for the first time. World War II saw the expanded use of antibiotics to fight off infections. World War II is also where they started using metal plates to repair broken bones and fractures from these explosions from these new weapons. And the Korean War helped advance the idea of life flights. then using helicopters to get wounded soldiers,

the care that they needed as quickly as possible. The Vietnam War, we started using napalm regularly, and that brought about advances in burn care. And they started using antiseptic and antibiotic infused dressings to reduce infections. So war creates new forms of physical trauma, and then creates ways to help ease that trauma.

And then there's unseen trauma. Concussive blasts, the traumatic stress, every war has its own form. In World War I, it was shell shock. And the horror of going over the top, World War II, the dreadfulness of close killing. Vietnam, the confusion over who's good and who's bad. In our current modern wars,

there's something else to contend with. for our professional warriors. That is the idea of an unending war. Because World War I, as heinous and awful as it was, was also finite. World War II was similar. I mean, absolute horror, yes. But a horror that ended in four years. Korean War lasted three years.

Korean War is also where we started to see this idea of tours, where soldiers would go over. and do a tour and then go home and that was it the same thing in Vietnam We all kind of know that story service members were required to do their hitch in Nam one year count the days And in all those cases for a majority of soldiers War was a finite thing yes brutal yes horrific yes sickening But had an end point but many of this generation our current generation there's been no end point in sight constant exposure to violence conclusive explosions stress deployment after deployment after deployment after deployment after deployment and the training is elevated too and that's repetitive over and over and over again explosive breaching of doors firing rockets over and over again improvised demolition shots and then back on deployment again and that can

become a never-ending cycle of trauma. And that's taken its toll on the mental health of some of our nation's finest warriors. Men like Chad Wilkinson, who received that silver star and who finally met his end, not on the battlefield by the hands of the enemy, but who sadly took his own life.

I have to learn from that. And here today to talk to us about Chad, and what he went through is his wife, Sarah Wilkinson. And joining her is Jason McCarthy, former Special Forces Soldier, founder of Go Ruck, and a friend of Sarah's. And together, they've been trying to share the message of mental health, remove the stigmas, raise awareness,

and encourage people to reach out if they need help and encourage us all to help each other. with that Sarah Jason thank you for joining us thank you good to see you guys again yeah Jason came on before you're on podcast 208 talking about your experiences in the special forces in Florida tennis champion almost champion my mom was the athlete in the crew and Sarah thank you so much for coming out it's very very awesome to meet you and and I just want to you know get get right into your story and the story of you and Chad.

And let's start at the beginning. Where are you from? Where'd you grow up? How did it all start? I'm a military kid born, born and bred. My dad was Marine. I'm the youngest of two. I have an older sister.

My mom and dad met pretty young and got married. My dad joined the military, became a Marine, and set off their path to move around every couple years. Was he from a military? family? No. He just randomly joined the Marine Corps. Yeah, it was kind of like right where he just missed the draft, but yet still felt the need to serve, I guess. They come from a small town in Ohio where everyone kind of just stays in that same town. So I think he wanted to find something bigger, maybe more challenging. I can relate. He wanted to serve his country. So yeah,

he's a Marine. I was a military kid, moved around all the time. My dad was an officer, so that means we moved every two to three years. We spent most of the time on the East Coast. We lived once overseas in Okinawa. And, yeah, I mean, I went to 15 schools before I graduated. 15. So do you become super adaptable when you go to 15 schools? I guess you could either come super adaptable or just super in a shell and not talk to anybody.

I really think you could go either way. You're either out there or you're really. I consider myself more of like a chameleon because of that. So I can blend in in a room or I can stand out what needs to happen. So growing up, moving all the time, I mean, I went to a different school, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth grade, different school each year for those years. So yeah. And so then what about Chad? When did you meet Chad?

First day of high school. And where was this? Quantico, Virginia. Yeah. So my dad, Marine, right, Quantico's a Marine Corps base, and his dad was Navy. His dad was a former seal. His uncle was also a seal. So he always wanted to be a seal from the time he was like 12. But his dad had switched rates and then was kind of on the helicopter duty with the president. And so that's what brought him to Quantico. Because otherwise, I don't think we would have met. He would have never been there. Yeah, and we went to a really, really small school. It's a DOD high school. It doesn't exist anymore. So a high school that's on base that's just for the military kids.

Are kids well behaved on the military school, on the military base school? Well, when I went, yes, because, you know, we're talking early 90s. But also on base, not on Quantico when I moved to Luzun, this was the case, but a lot of times you would have a plaque in front of your house. So my house said there's a plaque that said Colonel Treleis. out in front of our house. So you couldn't really do too much because not only could they report to your dad, they knew where you lived.

So you're in a controlled environment? Pretty much, yeah. What kind of music were you listening to? Like grunge, you know, poppy type of stuff. Because what year is this? Well, when I met him, it was 91. So you're a freshman in high school in 91? Yeah, so it was kind of peak grunge.

Yeah. You were just getting your nirvana. Oh, yeah. Yeah. He loved pro. Yeah, yeah. I still listen to it and just smile. So you guys meet and what is the love at first sight? Is there? For me? Oh, yeah. I mean, I don't know about him. Yeah, he, we, so going to a military school right off the bat the first day, there starts to be buzz about who the new kids are.

Because this kid and this kid at the school was so, so small. And they were talking about the Wilkinson brothers. The girls were like, have you seen the Wilkinson brothers? And I was like, what's the deal? But I smile because I just remember this so clearly, sitting in the bleachers on the first day, traditional like PE coach, just like intense, call and roll. And this kid was sitting in front of me.

I saw the back of his head. And they called Chad Wilkinson, and he turned his head to the side. And he said, here. And I was like, oh, well, I'm done. I like him. And that was it. How did you connect them?

Well, I mean, a small school, And being military kids, I think it was pretty natural for all of us to just be friends. There really wasn't like a cool group and a not cool group. Everybody, you were kind of forced to be friends with everybody because the school is so small. How small? How many people per grade? His graduating class was 24, I think. Oh, that is really small.

Yeah, yeah. And so. Dang, that's like one classroom. Yeah, yeah. We actually, the school was middle school. in high school together. It was just in a different hall. So high school took up like one hall and a half and the middle school took up like

another hall and a half. And we didn't cross paths with the middle schoolers, but we were all in the same building. Now were you guys in the same grade? Was he a freshman? You were a freshman? No, he was a year older, sophomore. He was a sophomore. He was a freshman.

Yeah. And so then like what? Did he like say what's up sister? I mean, what did he do? How do you roll? How do you make this happen? He was pretty cool. I mean, I say there wasn't a cool.

group, but he was, I think he was pretty cool in high school and he was super athletic. And, I mean, for anybody who's listening, he's really good looking. So, you know, he had that going for him. We were just friends the first year or two. What sports did he play? Soccer, primarily. I think he was on the golf team one year. And I think he was the kicker for the football team one year because they just knew he could kick it, you know? So he'd run out there, kick and then come off. But yeah, for two years, we were more or less just friends. I mean, in that period of time, he did ask me to go to homecoming. And I was super pumped about it. So homecoming is what? Like, the thing is, I went to a really small school too. I think I had 80 people in my graduating.

I don't really remember the home. I know my kids, because I have, I have kids too, and my daughters went to some kind of homecoming. But what's the deal with homecoming? Yeah, good question. I don't know that people came to my house. They were dressed up. The boys were wearing ties and like this tuxedo type things. Yeah, it's basically a reason to get dressed up and have a party. And, you know, back then it was big deal because it's a small school and you have a huge pep rally on Friday.

Pep rally. Yeah. And we were pumped. I mean, my kids dread pep rallies now. They're like, that's lame. I'm not going. And I'm like, why not? It's awesome.

And that's what we did. And there was a football game. And then after the football game, you had a dance and you get dressed up. And you got the, like, corsod. and the flower and the whole thing. It's a different time. You know, I was, I was looking at a boot camp picture of myself the other day. And the picture was taken in 1990, right?

So I posted, I was like I posted on my social media page, right? Hey, you know, here's me, boot camp. And I thought, so that's 1990. That's 31 years ago. That means when I was in boot camp, if I would have looked at a picture that was 31 years old, it would have been from 1960. Yeah.

Crazy. And then I have, sometimes on the podcast, I'll have guys on that were in World War II Korea or Vietnam, but recently had a bunch of Vietnam guys on, and they just, like, they're talking about pep rallies, like these kind of things. It was just a different time. I think you caught the end of it.

You caught the tail end of it. I think I did. I think I found, like, the sweet spot of high school before all that just, blew up and diminished. I don't know. Yeah. Okay, so you get started to sidetrack.

I kind of needed to know about homecomings. Because I have, my two daughters went to home, the homecoming thing. They got picked up by some dudes at the house. The guys were wearing ties and whatnot. I tracked it. Don't worry. We're good. Okay, so you get asked the homecoming by Chad?

Yeah. And it was just the dance. and then later well so he asked me after he got in a food fight in the cafeteria wait you got in a food fight no he got in a food fight okay it was great and uh he came up he had food on a shirt and stuff and then he's like hey

as he would say you want to go to homecoming with me and I tried to act not really excited but I was like all right I was like yes score so yeah and we just went to homecoming and then that was that we didn't date or anything and then fast forward to the following spring. One more thing about homecoming and dances in high school. Was there particular, like, songs that were repetitive? Because when I went to high school, every single dance that I went through,

it started in middle school, which was, I guess, it was seventh, so seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grade, every single dance that I went to. That's what we had dances. I don't know what they're called now. But every single dance we went to. Every single one. So there's probably four or five a year, you know, six or 30 times.

The song that would play at the end of the night was, was Stairway to Heaven, Led Zeppelin. Oh, yeah. Is that a normal tradition? Is that a worldwide tradition? I think it's just a really good march out song. They're like, yeah, beat it. Lights are coming up. Mosey out the door.

Right on, right on. So you go to this dance and I cut you off. So you go to the homecoming. Yeah, we just went to the dance and that was it. and nothing really like became of it. But then fast forward a couple months later, towards the end of the year, he would go by me in the locker.

You know, I'd be sitting in my locker and he'd walk by and he just, hey, the whole, hey. And I just, I kind of just did the whole girl flip-out thing. Like, oh my God, he said hey to me. And then he needed help with a history paper, apparently. He asked me to help. A likely story. Yeah.

And so I was like, okay. And then he asked me out to dinner. I went to dinner and we started dating pretty much. So that was... Where'd you go to dinner? We went to this Mexican restaurant. I don't think it even exists anymore. I don't know the name of it.

In Acquia Harbor. A little shout out. I don't know if I actually asked a girl to dinner until I was in my twins. Well, he had class. Well, I don't even know if I should share all this, but we actually also went to a movie and we bought tickets to some stupid movie

because we couldn't get in a raid of our movie. And then we snuck into the movie Sliver. Sliver. Do you guys remember that movie? horror movie? It's like sexy smut movie. Oh, oh. And I'm like on this date and I was like, oh, is that Sharon Stone? Oh, I think so.

I actually don't remember who was in it. I mean, this was a long, long time ago, but I just remember being like completely red, thankfully in a dark movie theater, embarrassed. So yeah, so we did. We had dinner and snuck and snuck and overrated our movie. Crazy, crazy. Kids were getting crazy. I know. And so what year was that? Was this one his senior year? I was, it was the end of my sophomore year, his junior year.

Okay. And so this was 1993 when we really started dating. So now you're legit dating. Yeah. Through the summer? Well, so then I moved. Is homecoming in the fall? Yeah.

Well, then it was for us. I don't know if it changes, but it was like October. I have a really great picture from that day. I should pass it to you just because it's good. But no, we, my dad got stationed. in Lajune, so I had to leave after my sophomore year. And that was the only time I was ever really pissed, honestly. Every move I'd be like, okay, you know, we didn't get family vacations.

We moved. That's what happened. And then you're on a new adventure. And this was the only time I was mad. And so what were you into for, were you doing sports as well? I was, I was swimming. A swimmer. I was a swimmer.

Cool. Yeah. So I was that person that's like, you wake up at five, you swim, you go to school, you swim. You swim a lot. Yeah. Okay, so now you have to go to Camp Lejeune. Yeah. So I managed to work a deal and I stayed at my best friend's house, Steph Cuddy,

so I could hang out with her, but really so I could hang out with Chad. Let's be honest. I watch our radio movies. And, yeah, I just hung out that summer as a lifeguard at the pool on base through high school as a lifeguard and I pulled butts at the shooting range. Dang. You know, like when you roll them up and all the high school kids, We'd just sit there, like, getting this little dugout with ear pro on and you'd see the bullet go and pull the target, slap the sticker on it, throw it back up.

That's how we spend our weekends. Minimum wage? Oh, yeah. I was barely making anything. Well, I mean, I was actually in the Navy and I did that. We did that for each other. That's what we did. We didn't have, you know, people to come down and do it for us.

I guess that's the Marine Corps officer thing. Well, our friend's dad pretty much ran the range. So I think he was like, I'm going to make these kids do something. And so we could hang out with our friends all day on the weekend. It makes me sound like such a nerd, not that I'm saying this. I didn't do anything like super crazy in high school. But we could hang out with our friends and get paid a little bit of money. Okay.

So that's where you spend the summer. And this whole time you're hanging out with Chad. So you guys are tight, getting tight at this point. Or a thing. But you're going to bail. Yeah. Got to move to Lejeune. The clock is ticking.

And yep. So I moved to Lejeune. We continue dating. I'm a junior. He's a senior. And he's a senior. would drive down on the weekends, which was kind of a big deal because, you know, he was fairly newly licensed, you know, and his mom and dad would let him drive. The minivan, or what was he driving?

No, he had an old Oldsmobile. I think it might have belonged to his grandpa. And, like, the front seat, like, was busted, so it, like, sat crooked. It was a hoopty. It was great, though. And he would drive that down on the weekends and see me and then drive back. Not every weekend, but as much as he could. Stay the night? Mm-hmm. Parents were cool? Yeah, this was like a thing because my parents, my mom said to me recently, like in the last year, we had some conversations just about this, Chad and I in our youth.

And she said, I don't know what it was. I just, we just always knew that the relationship with you and Chad was just something different. And he stayed. I mean, he stayed in a separate room. Yeah. But, yeah. Well, at least as far as the parents know. I mean, you know.

He was getting tactical, I'm sure, at some point. I am declaring nothing. Cool. So then how long does this long-distance relationship work? So we date and then when I, so he graduates and now I'm a senior. So I'm a senior. He graduates high school. His mom and dad moved to Florida, to Orlando now.

When he's in high school, is he talking? about joining the Navy? Is he talking about going in the teams? He always kind of, I think he just always knew that's what he was going to do. It wasn't that he talked about it in excess. So he has two brothers. He's the oldest, two brothers and then a sister. And his house was just full of, you know, every classic seal movie, you know, specop movie. You know, he had posters on his wall, which I think I still have that you probably can't even find. anywhere anymore but I think it was just something he always knew that's what he was going to do I don't ever remember him talking about anything else like oh I might go to business school or

something no it was it was so obvious to him and you that it was not even really a big subject it was like yeah well what else am I going to do that type of thing yeah and I mean even then I don't think at my age I was even thinking about you know our life together like oh I'm going to marry him I I doodled his name a lot on all my notebooks because that's what you do in the 90s with your grunge t-shirt and your boy crush. But I just always thought, I'm just going to be wherever he is. You know, I wasn't thinking like marriage, but I just knew, well, wherever he is is where I want to be. Right on. Okay.

So then what happens? Oh, we break up. So that kind of. Yeah. So we broke up my senior year. Wait, so this is your senior year. My senior year. So he graduated?

Yeah. So he moved down to Florida. And so the deal was, is he wanted to be an officer. And at that time, so he enrolled in the University of Central Florida. His mom and dad are in Orlando. He's down there with them. He's thinking, I'm going to go to college. I'm going to get a four-year degree.

And then I'm going to go do the whole Navy Bud's deal. But they were saying, hey, we're not really taking officers right now because we just don't need them. So you can go get your degree, but that's not going to work out. And so basically a year-end college, he said, okay, I'm out and joined. So we broke up my senior year. Did you break up before or after he joined the Navy? Before. So before.

So he's in Orlando. I'm in Lejeune. We break up really just because I think, you know, you got friends that are like, why are you dating some boy that lives so far away? That's stupid and all the things. So we broke up and we spent two and a half years pretty much went by in that time, the time he was in college and my senior year. And then my first year after graduating high school, we just didn't really speak to each other.

And this was before cell phones or social media. You can't properly cyber stalk somebody back in the day. Right. And I would stay in touch with his sister, his little sister. So she's 10 years younger than him. She was pretty young. I mean, I met her when she was five, so she's pretty young. And so I always kind of knew what he was doing, and I knew he joined the Navy and, you know, went to boot camp and was going to Buds.

And I really wanted to be there for his graduation of Buds, but I thought that might be weird if I just show up. Plus, I'd never been to California, the whole thing. I'm living. I'm going to confirm that would be weird. Yeah. Yeah. And so during this time, you know, he goes to college, joins the military. I finish high school.

My family moves to Tampa because my dad is at Centcom. So his family is Orlando. My family's in Tampa. I'm going to community college. And I think I want to be there for his buds graduation, but I can't do that. So I need to put myself in a position that doesn't allow me to do that. So I went on a cruise. And I thought, if I'm on a boat, I can't get off the boat.

I'm like 19 or something. And we docked in New Orleans. And I told my girlfriend, I was like, I'm getting off the boat. I'm going to go get on a plane and I'm just going to show up there. And she's like, okay. And then I realized I didn't have any money to get there. I'd spend it all on the cruise. But you hadn't been communicating with him during this time period.

No, just keeping in touch with his sister. And like his mom would check in from time to time. Oh, because his mom still liked you. Yeah. I hope, you know, so yeah. So then he graduates Buds. So he graduates Buds. And now what happens?

Well, I knew he graduated Buds and then I also knew he was coming back to Orlando. So I took a couple days off work and just waited. And then he called and said, hey, I'd really like to see you. And I was like, oh, that's cool. Let me see if I can get off work. You know, you got to play tough. And yeah, drove there. there was super nervous.

His brother, I think, opened the door. He was wrestling his other brother in the background, probably trying to play it cool. And pretty much the same thing as that day on the bleachers. You know, as soon as I saw him, I was like, oh. So he had graduated Buds at that point. So now he must be on orders, got orders to a team. Yeah.

So he had to go, this is when they had specific rates, your time frame probably too. so he went to the medic school. Oh, so he, yeah. So actually, so he, what he got was,

he must have been a Corman, and then they would take Corman, and after Buds, they would take Corman, and send them to 18 Delta, the special forces medic school. What's interesting about that, and I might mess this up a little bit,

but his dad then had orders to Fort Bragg, and his dad ran that school. Oh. So he went through the school that his dad was running. It's interesting. That's all. Awesome. I guess he got some good grades, hopefully. Yeah. He's a smart guy. He does good in school.

So then what happens? So then he's going to that school. Now, are you two back together? Is this like we're back? Yep. So we're back together. And this is, I had 96. And so I decide because I want to be wherever he is that I'm going to go to college at Methodist, which is a really small school in Fayetteville. So I go up there for a semester. I had to do a whole presentation of my dad. dad my dad right colonel the marine corps he always says when you want to do something you better have your ducks lined up and come to me and i did like a report and figured out how much it would cost i got scholarships i got different things how much it would be paid for really because i just wanted to be closer to chad was that part of the briefing or not i think he probably understood that but i lasted one semester i hated it and i left went back to florida so he did the medic school and then he was off to siltie mate And then once you got to SEAL Team 8, did you guys reconnect again?

Well, so we are dating long distance now. He's a teammate. I'm down in Florida. And then I end up going to the University of Florida. And we're thinking, okay, I'm going to do college down here. You're going to do that. And then we break up again. Yeah.

So two pretty big breakups. It's hard to check into a team and have like a girlfriend or, whatever. No offense to girlfriends of the world. But when you get to a team is like you are going down. You are when you're a young new team guy, you have so much on your mind as far as work goes. It's like, hey, I don't have time for anything else right now. And I don't know. That's probably has at least a little something to do with it. You know, you're down in Florida. He's up there like wanting to make sure he's good to go for this and that. Yeah. Tough. I mean, he would drive down still on the weekends. Oh, well, I give him credit. Then you, yeah. Like that. For, for sure.

All credit, though. But yeah, we broke up and that was just terrible because I really thought that that was probably it. I thought I probably lost him forever. And then how long are you guys broken up for? I'm trying to think of the timeline. It was probably like a year, year and a half, something like that. Did he do his first deployment?

Yeah, he did a deployment. He was on the Enterprise. He was on a ship. Only time he was on a ship, but that time. What year was that? Probably 97 or 8. Okay. Some more than that.

Right on. Yeah. So he does a deployment. He's a medic. Yeah. You guys are broken up. You're going to college in Florida. Yeah.

And I'm still keeping in touch with his sister. And we had, you know, we had email. So, you know, like the dial up, woo. And I would do the dial up email and check to see if you'd ever email me. And then all of a sudden one day he did. And he just said, I told the guys, I keep thinking about you. And I want to see you.

I was like, yes. So. So do you say come up to Virginia Beach? Did you come down to Florida? No. I said, you know where I live. Well, first of all, he was still on deployment. He wasn't quite home yet.

And so I didn't know. And I'm in college. And, you know. Yeah, he drove down and showed up at my doorstep. And I did the same thing I did in high school. I just couldn't believe he was there, you know, and just excited. And we said to each other, I said to him before he comes, came down, if we see each other again, we're going to know.

Like, this is either going to be forever or it's just not. And he came down. And pretty much role reversal when I went to Orlando and he asked me to say, stay an extra day. I said, do you think you could stay an extra day? And that was it. So that was the summer of 99, I think, May of 99. How old are you at this point?

You're going to make me do bath? I don't know, I'm like 21. 99. So you're, oh yeah, you're in college. So you're a young college girl. And he swoops in and says, all right, we're going to do this. Yeah, I mean. Did you drop out of college?

What'd you do? No, I stayed in college. You're slightly more responsible than that. Yeah, stayed in college. We got engaged that summer in July. We got married on paper, as a lot of military people do. We just got married up in Virginia Beach in this guy's backyard. And so we were at least married and had all that.

and I spent time down in Florida and then I worked it to graduate. I had to do an internship to finish my degree. So I got an internship with the city of Virginia Beach because I wanted to be where he was. So you guys, you get married. Well, he proposes to you and then you get married the old school like what I did. You know, my wife and I got married at the San Diego courthouse and my chief was like because you have to bring a witness. So I was like, hey, can you come witness my wedding?

And he's like, you're getting married? Yeah. Okay, so we went down there and, you know, the judge goes like, all right, you two are married and then we walked out and then we went to like dannies and had a hamburger. That was the honeymoon. I'm a little bad husband. But that's what we did. You know, that's what you guys did too.

I mean, I think for me, that's a better story, you know, our story. We went and got married in this guy's backyard. Nobody knew. We were living in a house with team guys. I was living with him and four of them. team guys in a house. It was just like, that was some good times. The weekend at Bernies, you know, just, uh, my poor wife, my poor wife did that too.

She didn't, well, it wasn't four team guys, but it was me, my running mate team guy roommate who is just the best guy ever and also just like insane. We were all crazy. And then, so we lived in the upstairs apartment and then two other team guys lived below us. And it was just, well, I'm sure it was very similar to. the environment you were in. You know, like the furniture was cruise boxes, dinner was dominoes, breakfast was Guinness,

lunch was Yeagermeister, and it was just mayhem. Yeah, Chad's brother likes to say, he remembers coming to visit, and he got out of the shower, and it was so disgusting. He just took a paper towel and, like, patted his body dry

because he didn't want to use anything. I mean, I don't know if it was that gross, maybe for him, but, you know, it was dudes. house and you know I got to live there and and there was one giant sofa that was the ugliest Chad had bought it was a Scandinavian print it was the tackiest ugliest thing and in literally his entire life he still talked about that stupid sofa I so my wife and I but my my old run inmate we had this freaking couch that was gold uh I think it's called velvet velvet is that what it's

called like this kind of like a like really soft yeah push back and forth so it was gold velvet it had some kind of wood carvings on the end it had to have been more than 10 feet long it was freaking huge we could that was this yeah and it was the most comfortable couch ever and I think we got it at a whatever a thrift store for whatever $38 or something best couch ever that's what he says and we could fit like three to four full-sized dudes on it I think it was more typical we'd wake up and of them would be on the sofa just because it was comfortable. And they, the house, it was, there was a sofa and there was a kegator. That was it in the living room.

And when I told them to put decorations up, I was like, you guys need stuff on the wall. They hung shooting targets. Like the real ones, the pictures of, you know, the man and the woman, you have to decide. Does he have a weapon? Does not? Go shoot them. That was when I was in our house for a little while. Yeah.

So you got like a hard, a really nice welcome to the. the team community. It was. Yeah, it was, it was such a different life back then. Yeah. And are you going out with the boys? Like when my wife came over and, you know, we weren't married yet, but when she started living with me,

she would like come out with us, you know, and hang. Oh, yeah. We'd go out and burn it down. I, you know, I'm in Virginia Beach and there's this bar that's been there forever hot tuna. They've since redone it. Plotunas. Yeah, I just went back literally like two weeks ago for the first time. And I thought, I haven't been here in forever.

And it took me back to one night in particular. Chad drove a green Jeep Cherokee, still his favorite car, always. And we went out with a bunch of guys and we just lifted up the back gate, you know, and just shoved him in there instead of actually, you know, this is a long time ago. Forget the seatbelt. Shove in there. We went hot tuna. Sure enough, there was a fight.

We got kicked out, told to leave. And I just remember running out there, throwing up the back gate, the guy's getting in, and we're out. And this lifestyle to you, what were you thinking? We were like, okay, well, this is the way it is. Yeah, I don't even think I thought anything. I just was in it. And you're military and a military kid. And you understand just the camaraderie that can happen there and the sense of family that it can create.

And I was really happy, and I think he was too, to have made it, to be a team guy. He was at team eight. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if there's anything better than being an E5 in a seal platoon. It's just freaking awesome. And it's everything you just said. So we had a big wedding later, right?

So I think for our family, they wanted like the bigger wedding. So in May of now we're going to go to 2000, I guess, we got married. And so the boys all decided they were going to come and they rented an RV and they drove from Virginia Beach to where we got married. And all my girlfriends from college had come and they were, you know, don't ask a dumb question. We're in the reception and you look around the room and there's one huge round table with all these really, good looking dudes around it and the girls are like are those the Navy SEALs. Not only are they like a bunch of dudes and they're good looking and one of them had like a butterfly stitch on his forehead because they stopped in Savannah and got in a bar fight. So it was like so appropriate,

you know, it was good. Once you moved to Virginia Beach, he was, he must have been in a workup. When did he go on deployment? That's when I start to forget. So he's already done one deployment when he was on the ship. And then he comes back and then he did two months. And then he did two more there. I honestly can't remember the ones. So he's going on deployment for the first time, or the first time that you're married. So it's his, I guess it would be his second deployment. Yeah. And now you're like, what did you do? Do you stay in Virginia Beach? Did you go? So this was like I had to do the whole, I live there. I did my internship. Then we got really married for real. And oh, that's right, because he did deploy. And I moved back home with my

during that second deployment. We were in the middle of not living anywhere. So we lived with the team guys. We had our own apartment for a little while, which was also one of the greatest times, because you don't realize that at the time when you're young and you have no money and you live in an apartment,

I think it was $425 a month, pleasure house road, Shore Drive, Chick's Beach, like where everything goes down. Just how great that is. You have nothing, and you kind of need nothing. It's such simplicity. So anyway, we moved out of that apartment.

He left on deployment. I went back home to stay with my family. What are you doing when you're living that little apartment? You know, like what makes that so good? I mean, there's nothing to take care of. It's an apartment. Our friend Lance Vicaro, who passed away in 2008, he lived in the same complex. So, you know, you shoot the shit with him when you see them.

And yeah, just like making dinner and eating it on that we had a crew. cruise box, one of those metal folding collapsible ones. Remember those? Oh yeah. That was our coffee table. You just put a little like tablecloth over it. We'd eat there. It was like cooking meals in a crock pot.

Terrible. Me and my buddy had a cruise box that we had like by the, by the big gold couch, we had a cruise box that had the phone on it. And then on the cruise box was in Sharpie was written everyone's like numbers from the different platoons and like the team area number. Oh yeah, those are good times. I was talking also about the, as you advance in life, when you get an apartment, that's like step one. But then when you get an apartment that has, I was telling my kids this, when you get an apartment that has a washer and dryer, like on site, that's a big deal.

And then if you have one that has parking, that's like the next big step up in life. Yeah, yeah. Those things bring you joy when you're young and broke. Yeah. I've driven by that apartment a few times in the last two years. And all the places we've lived in Virginia Beach, you know. Okay, so you do the big wedding. Yep.

And all these, your girlfriends are there from college. There's a bunch of team guys there. That sounds like an awesome time. And then he's going on deployment again? Yeah. So he, we get married. He goes on deployment. I think before he left on deployment is when I found out,

I was pregnant. Okay. Yeah, which was another reason that, like, took me home. Okay. So we weren't planning it, but we weren't not planning it. It was kind of like, you know, we've been together forever and it is what it is. So you get pregnant. He goes on deployment.

Yeah. You go home to Florida. Okay, you go home to Florida and you're living, you know, doing whatever you're doing. Yeah. And this, again, was before. We didn't have cell phones. So, you know, this, it's interesting when people are, like, upset because they didn't get to, like, FaceTime with their husband on deployment in today's world, right?

Because I would miss phone calls, and then you don't know when he's going to call you again. And I have so many letters he wrote me. I'm pretty grateful for that. And so I'm in Florida. He's deployed, trying to talk to him when I can, growing a baby in my belly, and all the things. And then he comes home. Did you have the baby while he was on deployment or did you come home in time? Yeah, he came home.

So, because I was like super newly pregnant when he left. So we know we're still staying in Virginia Beach. So I go up to Virginia Beach, super pregnant with my mom and buy our first house while he's gone. Sweet. Yeah. And then he came home from deployment May 2001. And my daughter was born in August. and now he's still at team eight

he's done two deployments and yeah and it's your daughter was born in August of 2001 and he's in another platoon at this point yeah and he so he he gets through his deployments

and for the rest of his time there he goes to night school because he's trying to finish his degree so he finishes his degree at ODU we have a new baby and then he finishes his time. He was at Trayette. Okay.

So we're just like a young family, you know. When September 11th happens. So is he at Trade Out when September 11th happens? He was at, yeah, I think he might have been, actually. Yeah. And so September 11th happens. Now what are you thinking? That's such crazy.

Everyone remembers where they were. when that happened. I don't even think I had the ability to think about it in the scope of the military and what the military was going to do or our country was going to do to react. I just was dumbfounded. Kept trying to call him at work,

couldn't get a hold of him. He eventually showed up at the house and we just kind of looked at each other and he's like, holy shit. So. And at that point, was he like, okay, I'm going to go back on deployment was he what was his plan at that point i mean i think his plan was to just stay he

at that point i think he always wanted to just be a career seal so whatever was going to keep him in the game quite honestly we had a conversation after a deployment and that he wanted to go to damn neck and i was like no um and i don't even know why i said no i never said no i always like support him and encouraged him and pushed him, but for some reason at that point, I didn't want him to go. I don't know how it would have turned out if he would have gone then, but yeah, so he stayed in the military, but then, because in all this, when he came home from that last deployment, I got pregnant with our son, or his third deployment at eight, and that was when, so 2001, but fast forward, you know, we're in 2004.

And I think we both kind of, well, I'd say it's more me. We wanted something different. So Chad wanted to be a seal. He always wanted to be a door kicker. That's what he wanted to do, you know, hide in the bushes and do all the things. And as military kids, I was really trying to do something different. And the grass is greener on the other side, right? I moved all the time.

And I didn't want my kids to have to move all the time. And I didn't want their dad to be gone all the time. And so we talked about it and we were making the decision to get out of the military. So he had been in 10 years at this point. And it's 2004. His son is born. He wrapped up that last deployment and we got out and moved to Raleigh, North Carolina. Do you know where he went on, did he go to Iraq or Afghanistan on that deployment?

Or did he do a different deployment like over to U-Com or something? I should know these statistics and facts better, but I don't. I mean, I'm like 23 with a baby. Yeah. Well, this would be very similar to asking my wife where I went on deployment. She'd be like, I have no idea. He was gone. He's gone.

He's gone. That was my wife's attitude too. Yeah. Yeah. He's gone. He'll be back later. Yeah. So you all make this decision to get out.

Right. And then what's the plan? So at that point, his family is now living in Raleigh, North Carolina. And he has his college degree. he's done 10 years in the military and he thinks, okay, I'm going to get out and I'm going to provide for my family in a civilian world and that's what we did. And he got a job in pharmaceuticals. You know, there's a lot of research there. Kind of irony in that when I'm sitting here thinking about him and his life and the path that he chose. But he was in pharmaceutical research and we just hated it from a moment we left. I think most people are Creatures of habit. It's my belief, right? People are creatures of habit. Whether you like that habit or you don't like the habit, it just is what it is. And our habit is that we are military kids. We are used to adversity and challenge and changing dynamics on the regular. We're used

to different situations and the idea of living in the same house, doing the same job with the same people for the rest of your life is nauseating. And I don't think it was challenging for him. And while he did one of his last jumps with the guys before he left, the guys jumped out of the plane and they're like, you're not going to do this with your pharmaceutical dudes, you know? And I think that always bugged him. And I think like most of these guys, they don't want to feel like they quit, I guess. And for Chad, anyway, Separating from the military and not retiring, he probably felt like he wasn't finished. And I felt that too because he was miserable.

He was miserable and we were miserable. How long did it take for buyer's remorse to set in? Like when you get to North Carolina, was there any sort of like honeymoon period? Hey, we can go on a picnic today and we don't have to worry about anything. Oh, yeah, yeah. How long did that last? There was all that. I mean, I think it lasted for about a year, even though I think in the back of our minds,

we'd lay in bed and we're like, he'd say, what are we doing? What are we doing? Like out of the gate? Yeah. Really? Yeah, at night, you know, but then it's like, okay, we're doing it though. Because at the same time you see it as a challenge in some ways. You're like, am I doubting myself because I want to go back or am I doubting myself?

Because now I just have this new challenge and I got to like overcome it. What was he doing for the pharmaceutical company? He was a project manager and I think he was eye candy for all the girls in the office. I know this because my sister-in-law works in the field too and she would tell me stories, but yeah, he told, I just, he said to me, he came home and he's like, Sarah, I was sitting in the break room today, celebrating a baby shower, eating a pink fucking cupcake, and I'm questioning my life.

And you're like, okay, I don't think this is going to work. And as cool as it is to have him home every day And he had a good job, we made good money, the American dream I mean our house had a wrap around porch, no joke, the picket fence I mean by most standards I don't even know if that's fair to say any more in today's world But it was the quote American dream but it was not our dream How far into it was the cupcake incident? Was that like two months into it six?

That was closer towards the end. That was probably about two years. It was like the cupcake that broke the camel's back. Totally. Pink cupcake broke him. I think it just was a real pivot point. And this isn't to bash cupcakes or baby showers or any of those things. But he's just a, he's a dude, you know.

He's a military dude. He's a knife-carrying, you know, dude. And for him to put on a business suit and a tie every day. you just people shouldn't be things they're not and that's not who he was so what was the total time that he made it in the pharmaceutical so he left the military in 2004 and we were back in the military September of 2007 so like two and a half two and a half years yeah what when he like okay so he comes home from the cup the cupcake incident or you just like you you you you can see the misery in his face and you're like, all right, I'm good, let's go.

Yeah. Yeah. That, we also, I mean, I remember being in the living room and in hearing about Red Wings and us sitting in the living room and watching it on TV and just him just, you know, he was just sitting there. He kind of had his hands on his head and he was, holy shit. I think that probably had a large part, even though we didn't come back for some time. I think those things weighed on him.

The way the world was changing, it was ramping up, we're now a couple years past 9-11. He felt called to go back. Then he makes a phone call, talk to like some team guy or whatever and team guy recruiter or something? Yeah, we didn't really know how that was going to play out, right? I mean, they could have just said, no, you left.

But I think at the time, you know, he was a team guy that had done a few deployments. He had good service. respected. They said, sure, but they told him because he hadn't deployed in, you know, almost three years, he had to go back through, um, well, SQT. Well, it was STT when he graduated by SQT. Yeah, yeah. So we, I mean, he left for work one day. He had talked to this guy and was kind of figuring out if this was going to work or not. And he left for work one day. And I just said, his tie and his suit and all the, I said, this is stupid. We, we, he had talked to this is stupid. We,

got to go back and we sold her house and he signed up to go back and we sold a lot of what we owned and because there was no need to have it we we were going to move to California he he said if he had to go back through SQT again he wanted to just go to a West Coast team just so we could all be out there together and we put a little bit of things in a U-Haul and the kids and I flew out to San Diego and I had never been there. Oh, I came out and like house hunted, tried to find an apartment for us a couple weeks prior. But other than that, I hadn't really spent any time out here. And he drove a U-Haul across country, chowing down on sunflower seeds and just going like 90 and like, you know, jacked up on caffeine and got there.

Then where did you guys move into? Did you guys move to Coronado? Yeah. We found this cool little, I just got lucky, found this cool little apartment. Same thing, kind of like our first apartment. I mean, this place can't be more than 800 square feet. It was two bedrooms, one bathroom. It was our entire BAH, maybe even a little bit more.

And our kids shared a room. Did you say you had been to San Diego before or you had not? I had only come out like a week or two before to try to find a place to live. What were you thinking when you drove from San Diego over the Coronado Bay Bridge and you see Coronado for the first time? I was flipping my lid. I just was like, yes, this is amazing. It's one of the craziest sites, I think, when you bring anyone to San Diego and you go to Coronado

and you drive over the bridge and you just see Coronado, it's ridiculous. It is. It's ridiculous. And I've spent, you know, I spent most of my youth on the East Coast and almost always close to a beach. I always, you know, I don't want to live more than 30 minutes from a beach, let's be honest. So the fact that I could flip coast and live here and on Coronado is, yeah.

And there's no mosquitoes here? Yeah. I had a friend coming out and him and his wife and like it was getting to be dusk. And they were like, oh, the mosquito's going to come. I'm like, there's no mosquitoes here. They didn't believe me. They didn't believe. They didn't understand.

What are you talking about? How could there be no mosquitoes? Yeah. It's totally, yeah, crazy. So now you're living in Coronado. Yeah. Kind of living the dream. Taking bikes around the sidewalk, walking to get coffee and all that stuff.

Oh, yeah. I got a rad little beach cruiser. Chad bought me and our kids were little. And my son learned to ride a two-wheeler at two. And he had this little mini bike and we made friends with the guy in the bike shop. And his name is my son's Hudson. And Hudson would ride into the bike shop. And one day the guy's like, hey, little man, come here.

And he swapped out. I should show you a picture of this. He swapped out at the handlebars of his bike for ape hangers. Oh, dang. So he was like, he turned three and he was a three-year-old with this little mini bike and these ape hanger handlebars. That was great. And Chad's going to SQT this time.

So SQT, just so everyone knows it's that when you get done with buds, you go, you graduate from buds. And after buds, they start to teach you some stuff in this thing called SQT. You don't really learn anything in buds other than how to go through suffering. And then you get to SQT and they start teaching you like all the fundamental basic individual skills of being a seal at a higher level. And occasionally like Chad's, a perfect example guys guys out for three years hey we got new radios uh we need we can't just

throw them back in a platoon all right send him through sqt so occasionally that happens it happens sometimes god doesn't even have to get out if a guy's on shore duty for three years and he's been in some billet where he's not operational for three years they'll be like hey you know you go back through sqtia and you guys are cool yep got it and so you're doing individual skills but he in that position all the other guys first of all the other guys don't even have their tridents yet. So he's an actual seal. Yeah.

And they're, uh, they're just not even new guys yet because they don't even, they don't even have their tridents. So he's in a position of like real mentorship and to help them out and they're looking up to him. So that's, that's what's happening with him.

Definitely. He, one thing I always loved about Chad is he is very good at teaching you what he knows without making you feel dumb. I think he gets a lot of that probably from his dad and the way his dad is, but I think that that's a real skill and try to like foster your own learning

while he's teaching you something. And so I think it was a really natural fit for him while he was in SQT to just be the guy that would, you know, lean into guys and say, hey man, this is how I like rig my gear up this way and I, you know, do this way. And I think it was a good experience, hopefully, for the guys that were with them, you know, to have this more senior person around. But it was also good for Chad.

And this, didn't you start doing CrossFit at this time out here? Oh, yeah. Yeah. And was that Andy's, Jim? Andy Stump, yeah. So the reason I'm laughing is because, you know, you're talking about how Chad was the type of person that could teach you something without making you feel bad about what you don't know. I think Andy might be the opposite of that. Andy, like, enjoys if he's got to teach somebody's stuff that he teaches me stuff that I already know he makes me feel stupid.

Yeah, that's definitely more his personality. He likes to have fun with it. Yeah, yeah, definitely. So you, so this is Andy had like a CrossFit gym in Coronado. Yeah, yeah. And so you just rolled in there and signed up. Did you know anything about CrossFit at the time? So when we were in Raleigh, Chad started doing CrossFit.

This was like 2005. And he was so into CrossFit. I was so not into CrossFit. It was kind of how that played out. I remember cooking dinner one night and he said, you need to come in the garage. I got this thing called a muscle up. And I was like, oh.

And I opened the door and he did it. And I was like, cool. And then slam the door, like a total jerk. So he had put me through some workouts in our garage and Raleigh, but minimal exposure, you know, and living in Coronado and having two little kids and he's busy with work. And I feel like, you know, I'm a mom with two kids. I probably need to exercise a little bit more.

riding my bike one day I just passed the gym and it was new it was like literally like just opening and I called him didn't know Andy Stomp at the time called him up and said hey can I come to your gym and that was it that was it was he teaching not as much his wife uh Jamie was teaching a lot um sage Castro Dave Castro's wife was coaching there some right on it was such as you know this was the early days we're talking 2000 seven of, you know, of CrossFit gyms kind of expanding. And so it was a small gym, not a lot of trainers. Yeah, this is so, like, this is when Dave Castro was teaching SQT.

And like, I think they ran a level one course. Yes. At SQT. And I went and went through it and just like hung out and got whatever, some kind of certification for that. And then that's probably the first time that I met And sort of hanging out with Dave Castro I think that's it because he was running that and he was like helping me out

And then we eventually well when we opened this gym that we're sitting in right now That was two thousand that was late 2007 so we had the You know I had to go to like the certs and stuff like this that you have to get yeah back in the day Yeah Keep your potential to keep your gym yeah to keep your gym and so you get you get into it you kind of get into it. Yeah, I do. I get really into it. I just, you know, I like the challenge. I like the physical challenge. I like the way my body was changing. Remember I'm a mom with two kids. So, yeah, I get into it. And so I got the opportunity to go to my level one, didn't want to coach people ever, never, never my plan.

I just wanted to know more about it. So I went to my level one in San Diego one weekend. Yeah. Okay. And then Chad, what's SQT? six, six months, something like that? Yeah, yeah. And he's thinking West Coast team, you're living the dream, living in Coronado. Yeah. And then what happens there?

Well, Bill King happened. The CEO from Damnak came to the West Coast to talk to the SQT guys. And to explain to them down the pipeline, if they want to ever, you know, bridge that gap and head over to Seal Team 6, here's kind of what you need to do. Most of those guys, when they finish SQT, as you said, they get their Trident. They go to a regular team. They've got to do two to three deployments, you know, become maybe a little less green,

and then they can screen to go to Damnack. And that's when Chad went and took it upon himself to introduce himself to him and say, hey, my name's Chad Wilkinson. Here's a little bit of my story. I'm going to finish this up. I'm going to go to a West Coast team, and then in the future, I plan on coming to screen. And he just said, how about you don't and just come screen right now? That was that.

Yeah. And he didn't consult me at all. But that's okay. So would you get six months in the Nado? Yeah. That's just about it. I was pretty upset. I mean, but not, right?

I mean, this is our life and this is our path. But I did not want to leave. Yeah, he came home and he said, hey, I'm going to fly to Virginia Beach next weekend and do this thing to screen. And if that's the case, we're moving. And yeah, fast forward. We moved back to Virginia Beach, April of 2008. Did you move back there even before, like while he's starting to go through Green Team and everything? Oh, yeah, yeah.

We moved like with him. Like he left to go to Green Team. We moved back. So then he makes it through Green Team and starts the cycle over there, which is deployment, deployment, deployment, workup, deployment, work up, deployment, work up deployment. I mean, at that time, yeah, 2008, it was. fast and furious. It was busy. And when you get to Virginia Beach, what did you do with your CrossFit deal? So I moved back to Virginia Beach. I check out at the time there were only two other gyms

in the area and I couldn't really take my kids because this was before there were a lot of kids spaces and CrossFit gyms and there was really nowhere safe for them to be. We rented an apartment when we came back to Virginia Beach not knowing where we wanted to live. live and also not knowing if the whole green team thing was going to pan out. I think for Chad, he just was like, I don't really know. And he rented a garage in this apartment complex, and we bought enough equipment so that we could put two people, he and I, essentially through a workout. And then my girlfriend said, well, can I come work out with you? And I was like, sure. And then that just kind of grew and grew. And then we had a whole bunch of people outside of the garage one

day and fast forward October 2008, I opened my gym. So he's in Green Team and anybody who's listening and has lived that is very stressful, especially when, you know, you're coming, you're doing all these things and you come home and you got your wife and your kids and you got to do the family man thing too. And then I go ahead to take it upon myself to start this whole business venture. Yeah. You rented, how big was the space that you rented for that CrossFit gym? Oh, the first one? Yeah. It was like 12 to 1,300 square feet.

And I just remember saying to him in the car. I was like, I need to do this because this is about to take off. And this is all I want to do. I think he was a little worried because, you know, in his world, you live a really quiet life. And he didn't want anything that I was doing to, not overshadow, but have any sort of imprint on what he was doing. Yeah, for sure.

And of course, in a military town, the interesting part about owning the gym is what you're doing is you're providing a service to people. And it's a very personable service. So people think they know you. And what happens is your friends come and join the gym. And I had kind of established at the very beginning, like we're friends, but at the same time. This is, this is a, you know, a business. And you do, if your team life, you don't talk about it in this gym. You don't, I don't want to hear when your husband's coming home. I don't want to hear

when your husband's leaving. I don't want to hear about another spouse. That just wasn't going to fly. So, so we were busy. And with two little kids. And how did the gym take off? How did it do? It went, it was awesome. My whole hope was just to be able to cover the rent and my expenses. And we exceeded that the first month. The first month. And we were still working on a lot of things, though. You know, the first person that came beyond my kids and they had a little kid, I didn't know what to do with them.

So I stacked up some tires, and I just stuck the kid in the center of the tires. I was like, just stay there until we're done. Because it was such a small space. I look back at those pictures now. Oh, man, anybody from CrossFit listening. And I do not know how someone didn't get clubbed in the head of the barbell, how close we but it all worked out and meanwhile chads like you said this is now 2008 so it's just um it's on yeah and he and he's going on deployments and now we kind of already talked about this and i mentioned

that my wife would be like i don't even know where my husband's at he's gone and he'll be back later that was kind of her attitude and it's i think quite frankly well i can't speak for everybody but it definitely worked for my wife, you know? She just, hey, you go do what you got to do. I'll be here. I'll be here, man in the fort back home. And that was good. Maybe it would have been more stressful if she knew where I was or what I was doing

or anything like that. She just was like, you go do what you got to do. Did you guys have that? Was that sort of the way you guys operated? Yeah. I mean, when he was deploying, it was Iraq, Afghanistan, then it became Africa. and I knew generally, you know, what country he was in. But beyond that, that's how we always operated was you do your job and I'll do my job,

meaning take care of our kids when you're gone. And when you're gone, you're gone, and when you're home, you're home. I know some other spouses, they share a whole lot, and they know probably way more stories about their husband than I know and maybe almost too much. but Chad really, really lived by the fact that you don't talk about it. And it could have much to what you said. Maybe he just didn't want me to worry either. That's what I'd like to think.

And vice versa, I didn't call him and say, you know, I mean, my hot water heater busted one time in the attic and it's flooding everywhere. What's it going to do if I call him? No. So, you know, seal wives are tough too. Yeah, yeah. Definitely and I think you know you said I don't you you said you weren't sure if Chad didn't want you to worry I can almost guarantee you that the attitude was like the last thing he wants you to do is worry and I remember

One of my guys Mikey Monsor who you know he died at the end of our deployment But when when I got home and talking to his family and his his sister Sarah Was you know just telling me this was we were in this place called Ramadi who was really kinetic deployment with a lot of casualties. And he had told his family, you know, when he would call them, oh, yeah, we're just, you know, we're just training some Iraqis. We're, yep, we're not doing anything. It's boring, like all these kind of things.

I mean, these are just outright, not true at all. But he just didn't want his family to worry about what he was doing. Yeah, and we had certain, like, code things. I knew when he would call me and he would say, okay, I'll call you when I can and I love you. he was going out. He was going out to do stuff and I, you know, would he call me in a day? Would it be three or four days? I don't know, but I knew that meant he was going to be busy.

And I'll also say like from my perspective, again, this is just me, but I don't want to talk to my wife about that stuff. You know, I don't want to talk to my wife. I don't want to explain to her what's going on with this and what I don't want to talk to her about like what our kids are doing or what we're having for dinner or whatever. I want to talk about other stuff. That's what I want to talk about. I don't want to talk about team guy stuff with my wife. That's not. So maybe that, you know, plays into it too.

And, yeah, I mean, like I said, my wife would, she would barely know where I was going or whatever. And it's partly because I didn't want to worry, yes, but also I just don't want to talk about other stuff. Yeah. Talk about work, you know, 19 hours with these dudes. I want to talk about it with you, darling. Talk about something else.

But at some point you must have realized or did you start to see like, hey, these things are wearing on, Chad? These deployments are like, was there a change in his, in his attitude and his personality in the way he carried himself? Yes and no. I think it's hard to distinguish when exactly that was. and I'm going to bounce around a minute. I just had to scroll through a bunch of photos. Jason and I were working on something. And through scrolling through those photos the other day,

what I realized is when he really got bad, it was two years before he died. So 2016, I can almost see it through photos. But even before that, I do know some stories now since he's died that he never shared with me. in 2012 was a pretty big deployment, I guess, or crazy deployment. I don't know the best way to say that.

And I think some stuff happened there. In 2014, he was starting to change a little bit more. But what a spouse says is, well, that's just how they are. The world, the media talks, you know, Navy SEALs are big in the news now, right? since 9-11, since May of 2011, they're all over and they're made to be larger than life. And they use these words. And so if a guy is always told how brave and fearless and heroic and strong they are, then he's got to believe that.

He's got to live that. And then on the same token, you see with our special operators how they are, you know, quiet and how they do sit in the corner of the room. and their back is always, you know, to the wall, and they're always facing the door, and they don't want to engage in conversation all the time and just chalk up all those PTSD symptoms that people like to throw out.

But it's, I think it's very easy for someone like a spouse to say, well, that's just kind of how the guys are because they have a stressful job and they're beat down, their body's broken. So you said when you're looking at pictures now and you're going through the years, you can kind of start to identify things that you saw, that when you look back it becomes a little bit,

does it become more obvious as you look back? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I couldn't tell you then, but it's more obvious to me now. This might be a dumb question, but do you think that that has to do with the fact that we don't get taught anything about this kind of stuff? We meaning, and maybe it's more prevalent now,

but, you know, I did a couple podcasts on here about Lewis Puller, Lewis Puller Jr. He was the son of a famous Marine, the most famous Marine named Chesty Puller. And Lewis Puller was, his dad, Chesty Puller, was like the most iconic Marine ever. And he received five Navy crosses. and he the here's a good way to describe how iconic he is he uh the Marine Corps has a has a what is it a mascot and they've had one it's a bulldog and yeah the mascot I think they're on number 17 but the mascot is named Chesty and at boot camp they sing uh good night Chesty wherever

you may be that's what they do in Marine Corps Bucha so this guy Chesty pulled the most iconic Marine of all time and he had a son and his His son was not quite cut from the same cloth as his dad. You know, his dad was this kind of gruff guy and the son was sort of a more mild guy. He wore glasses. He went to college. He was just more of a cerebral type guy and he gets done with college and he's not really sure what he's going to do with his life.

So he decides, well, you know, my dad was in the Marine Corps, I'll go join the Marine Corps. So he goes to join the Marine Corps. He can barely get in because his eyesight's bad. The people that are looking at his application are like, wait a second, this says Lewis Puller Jr. Are you Chesty Puller's son? He's like, yep, we can get you in. So he gets in the Marine Corps, goes through Officer Kennedy School, goes through the basic school, and then it's 1968. So he goes to Vietnam.

And when he gets to Vietnam, going on rotations and these things. three different spots and eventually goes on an operation and he steps on a landmine, gets severely wounded. He loses both of his legs. He loses a bunch of his fingers and dexterity in his hands, almost dies. I mean, it's just a miracle that they were able to keep him alive. And he does stay alive. Comes back to America, you know, devastating for his dad, the great iconic marine hero is breaking down when he sees his son. Chesty Puller, um,

Lewis Puller, you know, eventually recovered from his wounds and, uh, wrote a, wrote a book called Fortunate Son, which is an incredible book. And,

and sort of, you know, he was, he'd gone down the path of alcohol and being an alcoholic and all this and, and, um, eventually comes out of that, writes this book,

the book gets published. and in 1994 he fell out of his wheelchair, injured himself, went back in the hospital, they put him on painkillers. He got addicted to painkillers again, and he killed himself. And what was, when I did this series of podcasts about this, what was crazy was every single Marine,

every single Marine, percent knows who chesty puller is but a vast majority of Marines that I talked to as that podcast was coming out did not know the story of his son and it seems like the perfect way to educate people about the hardships that people face when they come home for more and they you know obviously Lewis Puller had a multitude of hardships as well but it seems like the education that we receive and not just us in the military but then the families that there's things hey this is what we need to be looking out for and it seems like if you're if you now are looking back at pictures to be able to say man I see this I remember this

these are the kind of things is this like part of the things that you're trying to share now so that people have better education about this kind of stuff? Oh my gosh, yes. Yes. And again, I'm no scientists. I'm no doctor. I don't have research under my belt, but I have what I've lived. And sitting in my chair, having been with this person for so long, you know, we, I didn't

just like meet a team guy and then we got married and that's not to bust on anybody that did. But, you know, I've known him almost his entire life. and then to watch him through his career and then to lose him in this way, I didn't see all these signs and symptoms prior. I think if Chad, I want to believe that if Chad thought something was wrong with him, that he was probably trying to hide it from me. I have other girlfriends, widows, whose husbands took their life, and they have said that their husbands expressed to them the struggle they were having

and what they were thinking about and, you know, their signs and symptoms, and I didn't have that. And it's not going to be the same for everybody or humans. We're all different. The whole biological DNA, it might express itself differently. But if we could maybe educate people a little bit more about the toll your service takes. and to know that even if you're not killed in action or killed in training or you don't die by suicide, but you've led a very active career, you are going to be impacted some more than others. And let's really have a conversation about what you might see and when is it going to be really,

when is it really a problem? So as these deployments are adding up for Chad, I mean, is when he's coming? home is it are you what what is the kind of things you're noticing uh well that he's he was always super quiet guy um never the loudest guy in the room um reserved but as time goes on he's even less and when we first you know a teammate we hung out with people and had friends and when we first got to the command we did that too and then over time we just didn't we didn't do social things I mean, we almost never, ever had anyone over to our house, ever. He never wanted anybody in her house.

He, and he says he likes to be home. He liked to be home with the kids and I, kind of what you mentioned. He's like, I'm with those dudes all the time. Like, I don't need to go hang out with them because I've just spent, you know, a rut trip in Chicago with him, and I'm home now. But what got really bad right away was asleep. And I think that that's true for a lot of the guys is. that, you know, sleep is so valued. And it's, if you think of your body, I like to think of it as a computer. And if you don't turn the computer down every once in a while and reboot it, it gets

jacked up, right? It doesn't run well. And that's what sleep provides all of us every single night. And if you've got a guy who has his body hurts, I mean, Chad fell off of a ladder pretty high up and jacked his back up. He messed his neck up off of a couple landings that he. He said, he was a lot of did. He was in the helicopter crash in 98. So, you know, I mean, his body, and I say this because I know so many of the guys are like really broken and he's probably the least of it in terms of broken bones and this and that, but his

body is beat up as most of them are. And then you add on top of that just the mental strain of war. Just deployments, you know, sleeping over and some shitty ass village compound you know you're listening to blast coming in the the high cycle of just like missions going out going out going out okay being away from your family and even though i didn't call my husband and say hey this is broken or i need this maybe maybe that's how other spouses communicate so now there might be stressed because they got shit going on back home with their family and so let's all add all that on to it and now let's add

at least for our special operators, the whole blast injury concept. And the guys that have spent time, and I'm going to talk teams because that's what I know, but time and the teams, the last 10 to 20 years, they 100%, in my opinion, are affected by blast injury because it comes from them breaching doors, which they do not just overseas, but in training, you know, helos, RPGs, all that. And that constant impact to the brain is terrible. It's terrible. And so you had all this stuff this guy's come through and he can't sleep.

He can't get a good night's sleep. So there's nothing helping him for his body to at least try to recover something. So his sleep went down bad. Is he seeing doctors or anything? Is he talking anybody about trying to get sleep? I mean, sometimes, you know, at some points they were given away like the sleep potions like it was nothing. Oh, yeah.

I mean, he did, he tried to do a lot of his own stuff, just like normal regular remedy stuff and better sleep hygiene. And then he was diagnosed with sleep apnea, which a lot of them have. So they have a CPAP machine. I mean, why are their dudes in their 30s and 40s with sleep apnea? Isn't that weird? And then, you know, and then what you also see in these guys is they get low testosterone. and because of, you know, their adrenal glands are jacked up.

Their cortisol levels are jacked up. And so their testosterone is jacked up. And I don't know how many of them are really willing to talk about it, but I think there's a really large number of dudes in special operations that are in their 30s that are on testosterone. And they're not, I can't speak for everyone. I mean, I don't think they're on it for like they necessarily want to be jacked. They're on it because their T's really low.

And that's needed. You know? Yeah. So you're seeing all this stuff. Is there a point where you start like trying to intervene yourself? Or is Chad just like, you know, again, I'm comparing this to my experience. Like I would never, my wife didn't know if there was anything going on. Like with bad things were happening at work, my wife would not know.

Well, and this is where like regret comes in and just kind of guilt, a lot of guilt. because it's really easy to sit here now and list all the things I could have done to be a better wife. But at the time, Chad and I are both the type of people that we want to work really hard at what we do and we want to be really, really freaking good at it. And being married to him while there are spouses and they choose to whatever they're out, maybe they work, maybe they stay home with their kids, everybody gets a choice, right? And my choice was to work

and go this whole fitness cross-fit path. So when you're married to someone who's this Navy SEAL and does all these awesome things and gets these awards, I was super proud of them, but I also wanted my own identity and I wanted my own success. And a lot of that driving force, truthfully, was always because I wanted him to be proud of me.

And so he's working hard in the teams, and I'm working really hard on this whole CrossFit side. And I don't think it's that I didn't want to intervene. I just kind of thought we both were almost like handling our shit, if that's fair to say. Like, okay, you're working, you're busy, you know, you're moving up, you know, within your troop and squadron and the whole thing. And I'm doing it over here.

And then we come home and we take care of our kids. and I guess I just didn't take enough responsibility for that. Is there some point where you say, okay, this was sort of, where you said, you said when you were looking through pictures, you said two years before he died, you were like, yeah, I look back now and that, this is a time period where there was definitely, he was, you know, over the edge. Yeah.

I mean, he really got a shorter fuse for sure. and it generally wasn't with me. It tended to be more with our kids. He would just snap, which was really out of character for him. And he would not listen. And I think a lot of spouses say, you know, my husband doesn't listen to me. My wife doesn't listen to me when I'm talking. But it's like he had no idea I was talking to him, and I'd be sitting right next to him.

And I've shared this story before, but I've shared this story before, but I, I don't know. I think it really says something that he, I said, Chad, you never listen to me. Like, just look at me. I need you to look at me and I need you to focus. And he said, you know what? When you talk to me, I have to look around and think, well, that's not going to kill me and that's not going to kill me. And I remember thinking, that's so weird.

But now I realize if you're kind of in this hyper state and you don't have a way to get out of it, you go on deployment and you kind of have to stay on point. right? Head's always on a swivel. Maybe when you're in bed, you've got to be ready for the next thing. How do you turn that off when you come home? I'm not sure. I'm not sure they've really figured that out. So they come home and they're still kind of like overloaded.

And that's something that you notice because you're talking to him and he's like not responding. Yeah. And in the pictures, two years prior in the pictures when I look at it, he just had a completely different look on his face. it was almost like, like in pictures, it was almost like, I'm going to kill you. You know, like that whole like, it just, it's just not like him. Yeah, that's the interesting thing that you pointed out is like you've known him since he was, whatever, 15. Yeah.

And so you see this entire arc of a human. Whereas, you know, if you cut out, if you met him in 2010, you would see this much smaller picture that maybe wouldn't paint such a dramatic change in the way he, in his character and the way he acted, right? But you saw him since he was 15 years old and, you know, and then you see this whole story play out. And so it becomes real clear. They're also being said,

since you're with him every day, you know, you're around him all the time. So there's also that thing where, you know, you don't notice that someone, you know, like, you don't notice that my hair's going gray, right? Because, like, my wife doesn't, she might notice it now, but, you know, over time, she's not like, oh, your hair went gray today, right?

It's like, it happens gradually over time. And so there's some of that, I'm sure, at play two, where, you know, one deployment, there's three degrees of change, right? The next deployment, there's four degrees of change. The next deployment, there's five degrees of change. Okay, so you look up in six deployments, and that little bit each time, you might not notice it so dramatic.

but from the amount that he's on a different course mentally is dramatic. Yeah, and I tried to take it back through chunks of our life. And I didn't go back as far as our childhood, but more like when we were at Team 8, how he was with his fellow team guys and peers and the way that we interacted with them. And then when we got out of the military, the way that he was and we had friends and did all the things normal couples and families do. and then coming back and then being at the command for the first couple years, it was that way. And then slowly he just did less and less socially.

He was a little more cut off. And then as it got farther along, he just was a little quieter. And, you know, the last year or two of his life, I'm sad. I'm like, gosh, I don't even know how much he smiled. Yeah. And no, no, no him saying like, hey, I got to talk to somebody? No. No.

Which, and I mean, I'm guessing it's changing now, but I mean, that's the culture from buds, from basic seal training. Don't go to medical, right? Don't go to medical. Don't talk to anybody. If you got a stress fracture in your leg, let it break. don't go to medical. Hobble around as long as you can. Don't, like that's...

And again, it's not like anybody. Of course, what do the instructors say? Yep, go to medical. Check in if you're feeling. But the culture is, and it's the same in every unit. It's every unit's like this. I mean, and it's special operators.

It's every unit in the military. Suck it up. Don't say anything. Don't go to medical. Like you said, handle your shit. Yeah, I think the guys are just too... I don't know what they think. I don't know if they think maybe this is just me.

Like, what's up with me? Am I fucked up? I don't want to tell my buddies. I might be a little fucked up. Or they don't want to hurt their service. Or they just want to ignore it and hope it'll go away. They think they'll just like muscle through it. I don't know what they think.

But somehow we need to shift the needle a little bit to recognize. You do all this training. I mean, millions of dollars are spent on these guys, you guys, to train. Millions of dollars. And, you know, I mean, Chad was a sniper and free fall jump master and, you know, name all the things. And you took the time to teach them that. So why wouldn't you take the time to also teach them about maybe some ways that they're

going to be potentially impacted after multiple years of service? It's 2021, and right now, what we're about to see are people that have served their entire career post 9-11. So this suicide epidemic, it is not going away. It's only ramping up. Yeah. You know, when I kind of started off talking about this, that's the connection that I made as I was like listening to your story, hearing it is, you know, we've made all these developments in all these different wars from the problem that the wars cause, right?

And yet, and I didn't even talk about like the, like these current wars, the prosthetics, you see the prosthetics that people have now, they're amazing, you know, they can do all these incredible things and we make these massive advancements and yet this is just like over here in this dark corner, not really being addressed.

Now, I take that back. There are things that are happening now that they are starting to address. I know that they're doing like baseline studies of guys. I don't know what you know about the stuff chasing, but they're doing like baseline studies, brain studies on guys so they can kind of tell where they're at so they can see what kind of impact they've had over time.

So I think maybe it is starting to come to light a little bit now. But certainly I don't think the culture has a big change to it yet because, I mean, it's hard, it takes time and effort to change culture. It would crush the recruiting process, wouldn't it? we've known for years because of history and wars that when you go serve your country there's a likelihood you could die you're choosing to serve and die potentially by your flag but it would really crush recruitment if insert army navy whoever and you say hey you want to be a seal you want to be a green beret you want to be a and you say you're going to come you're going to do your

service, you're going to do cool shit. You're going to jump out of airplanes. You're going to shoot guns and you're going to kill bad guys. And if you make it by the end of it, you might also have some pretty severe mental health issues and some brain injury. Are you good with that? You know, it's hard for them to pony up and say that because, oh man, is that going to crush our number? I think people would still show up for that. I mean, it's like, because everybody, when you do this, you're like, well, that's not going to happen to me. Oh, I know. I mean, I other guys, not me. I did the Kiko form before every deployment and I was fully prepared as you can be as a spouse in the world we were living in. I mean, we attended many funerals in those last 10 years that my husband might not come home.

And if he doesn't come home, he's going to come home and a coffin with the flag over it. That's not what I got. So where does it go towards the end? What are you seeing towards the end? One of the biggest things was, well, he started putting on weight. And, you know, he would joke because he was over 40. And he's like, you don't love me anymore because I'm getting heavy, which would never be the case.

But he started to put on weight. But what really started to happen in pretty drastically, I would say, the last six months that I can't. and look back now is he got really puffy. His face got puffy, almost like, this sounds terrible, like have you ever seen a fish in water? It's dead, and it's kind of like bloated. That's how his face got.

And I, he also, as weird as this is, I would always kind of kiss him on his temple, and he didn't smell the same. And I thought, oh, that's weird. Well, I've learned since. then a lot more about the way the brain's affected. And to go back to that kind of systemic derailment, when you have a blast injury, you know, it's a wave, right?

It goes through the air and basically your brain shakes up inside your skull. And that's what it's built to do. That's why we have a skull and that's how it's made. But it's not made to get that over and over again. And so when that happens and they're swelling in the brain, it then starts to affect everything else because the brain is connected to the rest of your body. And you see where not only hormones get derailed, but, you know, your metabolism gets jacked up. So the guys start to gain weight.

And when your metabolism gets jacked up, it also messes with the ketones in your body, which would be like, you know, factoring in with your urine and different things. and that's what changes the way they smell. And the puffiness is because, well, sure, if he's got brain injury and there's any swelling or there's just systemic swelling in the body, it's got to go somewhere. And so we start to notice it in the face.

And again, I didn't know any of this stuff prior. And that's not to say someone listening, you're sitting there and you look over at your husband. You're like, my husband's face is puffy. But there's something to be said that PTSD is a genuine thing, I believe. I also believe it's overused a lot. And this is a whole step further than PTSD. Well, and also you're talking about it's not just, hey, your face is puffy.

We have an issue. No, it's this, this, this, this. You add all these things together. and you get that many red flags. Yeah. Then that's, you know, you've got the, the, being short tempered. You've got the, hey, you smell different. Hey, you're not talking.

Hey, you know, you're not working out as much as you. You just start adding all these red flags together. And it's like, okay, you know, we have, we have to address this. Well, and when you think about the different parts of the brain, you've got your limbic brain, your monkey brain deep inside. that's what tells you what's safe. Is this dangerous? This is why we don't walk into the street, right?

We know that's dangerous. The prefrontal cortex kind of is, hmm, how do I feel about that? So if the brain is affected, that's when we see them, you know, the short fuse, how do I feel? I'm angry, I'm aggressive, maybe I'm sad, different emotions. But when it's brain injury, and we've heard CTE, right, punch drunk, NFL players, our guys get it too. our guys are getting interface astralglil scarring. And that's almost like think of like a ricochet almost bullets through the brain.

And that's what comes from the blast injury. And that's able to penetrate that deep monkey brain of like, is this safe for me? That's why guys make decisions that are really, really bad, whether it's, you know, drinking too much infidelity or, you know, I have a a friend who he's good now, but he had his daughter in the car and had been drinking and was speeding well far above the speed limit. Any father would know none of that is good, but he wasn't able to make the right decision. So yeah, so I started to see, looking back, I can see how he had changed. And I've shared with Jason to Chad climbed Mount Ocuncagua in January and of 2018.

And that's the second highest summit in the world. It's the highest in South America. It's in Argentina. And he went and climbed this. It's a little over 23,000 feet. And I will never know, but I do believe that him climbing that mountain exacerbated. any of his brain injuries that he had. And I've since talked to a doctor who I respect highly.

She's been studying blast injuries in Kosovo soldiers since the early 90s, or at least that's who she started with. And I asked her about that. And she, you know, again, she didn't test Chad's brain, but she was pretty confident that that was probably the case too. Yeah, I mean, how long was that? That's got to be a couple weeks at least of an evolution. Yeah, three weeks.

And it's lack of O2, highly strenuous. Yeah. And so now you've got this brain that's injured. What encourages healing in the body, blood, blood flow, right? You have surgery, okay, cool. Knee surgery, once you get up, we want you to move your knee because we've got to get blood flow to it because we want it to heal, right? Brain's injured. Wait, now I'm going to go up 23,000 feet, and I'm going to be without.

without oxygen, it really needs to heal itself. Yeah, one of my, um, um, the guys go through, uh, the hyperbaric chamber, right? Which is just 02. Pressure 02. It's the opposite of climbing a 23,000 foot mountain. And it provides a lot of healing, a lot of healing to guys. So to have, to do the opposite of that, I mean, it seems. I asked her about that.

And she said, I said, is that something that would help? And she said, yes, but not initially after injury. I mean, we're talking. talking different things because you're talking about guys have been back for a while. And we do see people who have a little bit exacerbated symptoms at a higher elevation. My best friend's husband, they live in Colorado. And I said to this doctor, I said, what would you say if there was a 20-year Navy SEAL veteran who's done upwards of probably 10 deployments, without a doubt, probably does have some brain blast injury and lives at 8 to 10,000 feet.

And before I could even finish the sentence, she just shook her head, no, no. She just kept shaking her head, no. And she said bad, bad, very bad, I'd tell him to move. What was Chad's, like, debrief points on the mountain climb? What do you say about it? He said it was really hard, really hard. I think he was really proud of himself for doing it. but when he came home and walked in the door,

I mean, he was so skinny. Just, you know. What do you lose 15, 20 pounds? Probably. And he came in and he just said, baby, that was really freaking hard. And I just didn't really ever hear him say that about anything. I was like, oh, well, you did it.

You know, good job. And he said, Denali's next. And that was his plan. And when was that? That was in January of 2000. 18. Yeah. And how about the interactions like with the kids at this point, the family, like, is it, are you noticing more? Is it, is it, um, plateaued out? Um, well, at this point, it's, we have teenagers and I remember saying to him, they don't even want to like hang out with us or be

home or anything. And he's like, I didn't want to hang on my parents when I was 14, 17. Uh, we did take a family trip that June of 2018. We went to the Grand Canyon. And again, I look back at those pictures. And he definitely was not there. Like he wasn't on the trip. You know what I mean? He, he was obviously there. But we stayed in a couple different cities. We kind of jumped around Arizona for a while. And, you know, we're staying in this really nice hotel and he didn't want to leave the room. You know, granted, it's June in Arizona. So it is very, very hot. But, you know, he didn't really want to come down to the pool.

He just wanted to sit in the room. And you're like, okay, well, we're on a family vacation. And one time he was sitting down by the pool, and I saw him from a distance, and he just was kind of like leaned over in the chair just like zoning out. Just he was just not there. And I said, I walked up. I said, hey, what are you doing? And he's like, nothing.

Yeah, just things like that. He just wasn't, I don't know what he was thinking about. So where's it go from there? Well, and in the timeline? Yeah. Yeah. So he, he, this year in 2018, I think, is when it started. He switched squadron, so he was moving around within the command.

And he had said that he didn't think that this is what he was supposed to be doing. I remember him saying, I just, I don't think this is right. I don't think this is really the path. I'm supposed to be on. And again, he didn't really share a lot with me. And I said, well, you're someone who's always accomplished every goal you've ever sat for yourself. You make a goal, you go do it. So he had this goal for himself.

He was in the process, I guess, of attaining the goal. And I said, maybe this is just the first time you change your mind. Like, you just don't want to do it. okay. You can decide to change your mind. And he was like, well, they've spent so much time and money on doing this. And again, he didn't tell me any details. And he said, he goes, I know I'm not really telling you much, but it makes me feel good to talk about it. And I was like, okay, because if he's going to talk, I'm going to listen. And yeah, so something was bugging him. And I don't, I don't know what, but something was really bugging him. And the beginning of October, he, he,

started hanging up his awards and things in the house, which he never did before. So we had, you know, like a lot of guys all plaques and awards and he has a silver star and a Navy Marine Corps medal and a bronze star and all the things. And we had them all framed years ago, but he never hung him up. And he just thought it was really weird to hang that stuff up in your house because he said, someone's going to come in the house. And it's just like, look at me. And I always thought that was weird that he had to struggle with that. But yeah, he hung him up in our stairwell to our house. So maybe like you and your wife, marriage is a compromise, right?

And I thought, you know, almost no one comes in our house anyway. And if someone were to come in our house, the only way they would see him as if they went up our stairs, basically to our bedrooms. But in my mind, I just thought, well, at least he's hanging him up. so they're not going to get broken or busted or anything. And he talked about hanging a Somali flag on one wall, which you would have seen when you come in the front door. And I just remember thinking, that's so weird. And I thought he was really messing with me.

And when I turned around to kind of laugh, I realized he was serious. He was dead serious. And he's like, yeah, I guess that's dumb, huh? And I was like, well, Maybe. I asked him if he was okay. I remember kneeling down in front of him and I said, are you okay? And he said, yeah, I'm okay. But if there was any sort of like first feeling, it was like, he is off. I would have never thought three weeks later he would take his life,

but that's what happened. So it's interesting. And while I won't, share her story. My other girlfriend will tell you who knew that her husband was struggling. About two months prior, there was just like a switch. Two months and he was gone. So for me, I think it was three weeks and he was gone. I think they just meet this like threshold. And I don't know how we figure out where that is. That's going to be half to left to scientists. But there is some threshold that happens and then the switch is flipped. And is he still going to work? I mean, you kneel down in front of him.

You say, are you okay? He says, yeah. Do you buy it? You want to buy it? I did buy it. And this, again, is one of those post-death struggles. When someone takes their life, you military or not, you are left with so many questions.

And I think that's the beast to not have answers. And I believed him because there is nothing I didn't tell him. So I believed that if there was something he needed to tell me, he would tell me. And then he goes into work. Yeah. He went into work. He had a work trip the week before. this is when it gets really weird.

So I had a work trip, and he could drive there, and he was supposed to come home on a Friday, and he called me on a Thursday. They had used rental cars to go out there, and he said, hey, I'm coming home early. Can you pick me up from the rental car place wherever? And I was like, oh, okay. And pick him up.

He, we had to take her, I had to go get my son from a football game. So I drive him back home, and he instantly comes in the house, So Chad had been doing, had a concealed carry license, and he'd been rolling with a concealed carry, you know, when he's home around town for probably the last year or two. And again, I didn't really think much of it because, I mean, well, crap, he's a team guy. And this is America. So we come home and he instantly goes to the safe and gets his gun.

And I said, it was just kind of frantic. And I said, you realize that we're going on a school. pickup Hudson he said I'm not getting out of the car and I it was very like short and I was like okay so we go no big deal I in the whole time he's in the seat he's just like he just seemed uncomfortable I learned later that and I don't know any details of whatever he was doing but he was in a course and he withdrew from the course he never quit anything he never like stepped down from anything I'd ever known. So that conversation about I'm not sure I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing,

that came later that night when he got home. And this was on a Thursday, and on Friday I had to leave to go. I was working now in Raleigh. I could drive there for a seminar. CrossFit seminar. Yeah. And we talked about it that he needed to call his doctor because he felt like he just needed to check in, like maybe his testosterone was off, maybe something.

He's like, he wasn't feeling good. Earlier that week, he told me that he had some headaches and like some stomach aches. He had said he didn't feel good, which again, Chad never said. I mean, I don't know if ever. He said, I don't feel good. I mean, he didn't say it like that, but he would never say that to me. But he did. He didn't feel good.

And so the deal was when I left, he was going to make an appointment with his doctor, and he was going to make an appointment to talk to his boss about whatever his work situation was to try to figure out what his path is going to be. And I left, I told her kids, hey, you know, dad's kind of stressed out, just so you know, he's got a lot on his plate right now. And when I left, I'm leaving Virginia Beach, and I just had this, like, gut and, like, pit in my stomach. Like, I just felt like I shouldn't be leaving him. But I did. And went to Raleigh, worked, talked to him on Saturday, um, and on Sunday, Kinsley called and said that dad's acting really weird and he's just laying on the landing

and he's just staring at the ceiling. And I just, I just, that's just weird. That's just weird. And I was four hours away and I had to work still a full seminar and I just knew I had to get home. So the seminar finishes and I get in the car as quick as I can and try to race home. And he called me at one point and he just said, I love you. And I kind of laughed and I said, oh, I love you too. And he's like, no, I mean, I really love you. I love you so much. I love you so much, Sarah. And he knew I loved it when he would say my name. And I said, you know, I love you too. But can I you back. I had a really bad headache. And honestly, I was just really trying to get home. So fast forward a couple hours later, I get home, and I go in the house, and he's upstairs,

and he's rummaging below the bed for something, and I come in, and he turns to me, and I hug him and kiss him, and he kind of just, like, like, collapses in my arms a little bit. So I just hug him for a second and I just think in my mind, well, I'm home now, so I'm near you and I'm going to try to just, I didn't think at the time that I needed to necessarily keep you safe. I thought I just had to keep you close and make you feel better. And so I got, I had to get a shower and I said, come talk to me while I'm in the shower. And when I went around in the bathroom to start the shower, he wasn't right behind me and I looked out the door and he had just like, collapsed like face first on the bed, kind of like the letter T, like arms out to the side,

his head is to the side, like just exhaustion. And I said, what, what are you doing? Come on, come in. And so I get in the shower, and he's sitting on the bathtub, and he's just had been over, and he's got his hands on either side of his head, and he's holding his hair. And he's kind like gripping his hair and I kept saying what's wrong you know what's going on and he got to talk to me and he just kept saying I don't know um anyway I asked him to pass me a towel and he looked at me and he was not he wasn't there like his eyes were just like I was just like looking straight through his eyes and I just laid down with them in bed and I just thought if I could keep him next to me then then he would feel better but that wasn't the case so I woke up in the middle of the night and he

was standing there dressed looking out the window and I said what are you doing and he just said I don't know I said well come lay back in bed with me and he did and the next morning, early, I woke up, I woke up to see just him walking out the door. I saw like the back of his shoulder leave. And it's like I couldn't talk. It was like I couldn't get up. I don't know if it's just because I was sleepy or what or I wasn't really processing. Like, oh, he's leaving right now.

And then I couldn't find him. So I woke up, you know, a little while later and I couldn't find him. So I looked around and I thought, well, maybe he went for a walk. Maybe he went for a run. Maybe he went to go get coffee. I tried calling him. He didn't answer. I texted him.

He didn't answer. And went around in my head trying to figure out where he could be. I got in my car at one point. I thought, I'll drive around. And then I thought, where am I? Literally like which direction? would I drive? What's happening? I thought, well, did he leave for work? He was supposed to leave on a work trip. But I figured he was also going to talk to his boss. So, you know, did he go to work? I just didn't know.

I called his dad. But because he was so weird the night before, I just thought it was weird that he left and he didn't say bye. He never didn't not kiss me goodbye. Never. He actually would do this. I'd be upstairs and he'd say, okay, bye, I'll see you later. And he would slam a door in the house just to see me. me run down furiously down the steps because he knew I would get so spun up if he left and didn't kiss me goodbye. So I don't know what I was thinking. I just know I wanted, I just wanted confirmation of where he was. And I finally called the command. And I talked to the psych there. and she asked me a bunch of questions. One of the questions she asked was,

how does he feel about, and he asked, he said Chad's boss's name. And I thought that was a really weird question. Because another thing I really loved about Chad is he really never said anything bad about people. So, you know, if he liked you or didn't like you, I didn't really know. He just, that's, that's how he walked.

And I was like, I have no idea. But she, she just kind of let me think he's on his way to work. You know, like he's probably left and is on this training trip. And a little while later, I had talked to her again. And I said, you know, everything's here. His toothbrush is here. His medicine is here. His sunglasses are here.

He wouldn't leave with all that stuff. And she told me, Due to the privacy of his job, it would be likely that he wouldn't be answering his cell phone. And I said, okay. So, like the wife that I was, I kind of just thought, okay, so he must have gone. And it was a driving trip up the coast a little bit. So I thought, okay, he was supposed to be back the next day. And so I think about that.

And my kids came home from school that day. And they said, where's dad? And I said, oh, I don't know. I think he left on this work trip. He should be home tomorrow. And I'm saying that, almost feeling like I'm lying, because I don't believe it. But I'm trying to believe it because that's what I was told. And why wouldn't you?

Right. So this point, you know, he disappears Monday morning, probably I'm saying, somewhere between 3 and 6 a.m. And Monday goes by, we started demolition on our house. We were doing renovations. That started that day. And Tuesday comes and I went, my house sits near a lake. You can see it from my front porch. And I went for a run. And this is why I'm sharing. It'll make sense in a minute. But I went for a run and I ran past the lake, down the bike path all around. And I was going to sit at the lake for and it's the end of October, it's Virginia Beach. The weather was really beautiful that day.

And I was going to sit on the bench at that lake, but I didn't because I wanted to go inside and shower and, like, curl my hair and look nice for when he got home. So I did that and dropped my son off at a friend's house. He was going to play, going to a football game. And as I was pulling back in, a psych from work called and said, ma'am, your husband didn't report to muster. we're heightening the alert. And I said, that's bad.

That's bad. That's very bad. And I'm pretty sure I hung up the phone on him. And when I got out of my car, so now where my car was, it's in this cul-de-sac nearby, and it's facing that lake. And my house is on the left. And as I'm walking up to my house, the head contractor from the renovations comes out, and he says, Ms. Sarah, there's two police officers at your back door.

I called my best friend Courtney, her husband and my husband, were in buds together. And I said, you need to come to my house right now. And I just hung up the phone. And I didn't know what was going on. I just thought something is like, seriously. And I went in my front door and out my back door the way the house is, and there were two cops in my garage, and they were, we stood out. the door and they said, ma'am, do you know where your husband is? And I said, no, I can't find

him and I haven't been able to find him. And I asked them if they could move farther down into the street because we were right underneath my daughter's window and I knew that she was upstairs. And I just didn't want her to be, I just, I just didn't know what was happening. So we moved out into the street. And this cop just, opens his door and he like dig something out of his car and he just turned me and he said ma'am i'm really sorry to tell you but we found your husband and he took his life and i was all alone so right about that time court corny pulled up sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry Courtney pulled up and i think i was screaming and she bear hugged me from behind

and I think we pretty much took her to the ground, I think. And she said, you don't know that. So she screamed at him, you don't know that. Well, he'd taken his life at that lake, and he could see her house from where he was. At least that's what they tell me. So my daughter's upstairs in her room by herself, and she can see and hear everything.

And my son is at a friend's house. and I'm pretty sure my neighbor went to pick him up. So he told my son. So you have to understand, like, logistically speaking, there's a lot of things that just don't make sense. Where my car was, when I got out of it, and that guy said the cops were at the back door, if they had just found his body,

I didn't see anybody over by that lake. It had been like 36 hours since I couldn't find him. We went back later, and I do think he was at the lake, and this is why. We went back later, and in our neighborhood so many people have cameras on their house, and there's footage of Chad, and the bike path that lines that lake, if you walk to it, it kind of tease, and if you go left, it takes you all the way up to the main road. that the cars go in and out of the neighborhood. And I think we timed it so that cameras caught him walking that way.

And that would have been right at the same time he would have watched our kids leave for school. When this is happening, when this is getting like when he leaves in the morning and you start thinking like where is he? Is there any part of your brain that's thinking he could kill himself? No. Well, I take that back. I did ask Chad's dad. I was trying to get into the safe. So I guess there was a part of me that did. But this was a little farther on in the morning. So when I first couldn't find him, I just couldn't find him. And then after a while, I think it might have been his dad that said, have you checked the safe? And so it took me a minute to try to remember the combo. And I got in there and to my knowledge all the guns were there. But apparently they weren't. I guess the reason I'm asking you that is because, I don't know, various conversations I've had in my life with various people at various times.

And the conversation is something like, you know, that little exploration of, hey, I'm worried about him. and then there'll be some kind of an explanation like what do you mean well I'm just worried like he might kill himself and then the conversation is he would never do that right so that idea of we think we know we think we know what someone's going through we think we know what's going on in their heads and I think that we don't know we don't know we don't know know and you know like um he disappears you know like what that's what I was just thinking like what was that in your head of like hey you know what he's you know he probably he's going to see his parents or he's you know going to go freaking surfing or whatever he's going to

do but this crazy idea that he might go kill himself it seems so unlawful You know for someone that's like hey, he's been through whatever 10 deployments. He's done all this. He's done this. He's done that we got kids. We got a house. We got all these things going on all these good things going on in our lives. That's not a that's not going to happen. And it seems like oftentimes people are caught off guard by it. People are caught off guard and I know you mentioned a couple of friends where there was real signs of you know, hey, Not things aren't going good for the individual, but all, but a lot of times I hear it's like, you know, there's been some suicides in the seal community where there was no indication at all, at all of any kind. And, and it seems like we're conditioned to sort of not even think that it's a feasible thing. I guilt. I, you know, I, I was just as bad as, as the military makes the guys out to be because, as I said in his funeral, to me, Chad was unbreakable. I mean, to me, he had done all these really amazing things in his life. He's, you know, everything he did, he did well. everything he did and seal you know great ridiculous high GPA when he's going night school and he

has a life and a baby and really good in sniper school and went and got his project manager license certification all that in the business world and whatever fill in the blank climbing mountains qualifying for the crossfit games like insert whatever he just was so unbreakable to me And I guess that's part of my, what I want people to recognize with your person is that, yeah, they're Navy SEALs, but at the end of the day, you're just dudes, you know, you're dudes and humans and with a heart and a conscience and dads and husbands and brothers and sons and, um, Not unbreakable. There's a book written by a guy named David Hackworth, who is a Vietnam, Korean War veteran. And one of the things that he talks about

is the fact that, like, people are different, right? And as you mentioned, people are different. And some things impact different people, different ways. And he described, like, there's a cup that people have. And when it gets filled up with, like, the stress and the trauma, once it overflows, like, that's it. if you if it overflows that's it like you that's it and different people have different size cups and some people got a freaking five-gallon jug and some people got a teacup and and everything in

between and i compare that to another war veteran dick winters who is the character of band of brothers you ever seen that but he's got a book about about war as well and his big thing was Like when that cup, they use a different metaphor, but when the cup starts to get filled up, you need to get the person out of the situation. And if you get them out of the situation, the cup like the water will dissipate and it'll go back down and they can continue. They can go back. They can continue to perform their job. But same thing. If you let the cup overflow, then you can't put the water back in there.

You know, I always talk, when I talk to people about this kind of stuff, I talk about the check engine light in a car, right? If the check engine light comes on, you take it in for a service. You stop driving it. And as long as you take it in for a service and it gets some downtime and the engine cools and you put in fresh oil, whatever, the engine's going to be okay. But if the check engine light comes on and you just keep running that engine, you're going to burn that engine out and you'll destroy the engine. And, you know, I think that all these things come into play, and that's what makes this so difficult is everyone's just got a different size cup, and everyone's got a, you know, a different time that their check engine light comes on

and how much it's going to take to get that thing cooled back down. And it makes it so challenging to universally say, okay, well, here's the limitation that people have. So I think what you're doing talking about how to identify that check engine light. so people can see it. And then also trying to help people to recognize that you got to kind of, you got to do your best to see your own check engine light. And when that freaking thing comes on,

you got to do something about it. And if you don't do something about it, you're going to blow out the engine. And then you're no good. Yeah. And as we've said a couple times that the guys don't want to worry the spouse, or I say spouse or first responder, Like who is your go-to person, right?

They don't want to worry the spouse, but if I were to ask someone that was struggling right now, maybe they're sitting there and they've thought about taking their life and they say, I don't want to bother my spouse, I don't, I would, it would be better for her if I wasn't here. And I can't speak to the relationships that people have. But sitting on this side of it, sorry, I'm like a total crier today. he didn't even give me the chance to help him. That hurts. So it's, on one hand, you can say, well, he didn't want to burden you, you know, he just,

he didn't want to cause you any worry, but, I mean, look at where I am now. Did he not think that this wouldn't, like, devastate me forever? He didn't even give me the opportunity to, like, try to help. You know, Jaco, the hard part comes in. when you've got guys who you're bred not to talk about this stuff. You're just constantly bred. And the interesting part for me in this journey of learning Chad's story and my wife Emily and I getting to know Sarah and her family really well

and going really into this issue is there's actually something that happens to your brain. Right? This is not something where it's not like, oh, you know, I'm, I've just got this, this inexplicable weakness going on. Because that's what it is in the teams, right? It's like, oh, that dude's weak if he goes and does this. And, you know, but if you, if you blow your back out or if you, you know, you get shot, or if you do, you know, things that are acceptable injuries, you know, by just by team rooms. standards of sorts, right? And the thing that's, that it's like my best friend in basic training killed himself. And I didn't unpack that at all, right? I mean, his dad was a general. And that was

something that in my training, it's just, you know, I couldn't sit and think about this at all. It's like days of thunder, right? When, you know, Cole gets, Tom Cruise gets injured, right? I mean, the injured driver goes way over there and nobody ever wants to be around them. And for me personally, I had to just kind of take that and say, all right, I have a job to do and he was weak. Good friend of mine and he just, that's, that can happen to him. And there's something, what I told myself was there's something that he was born with that made him do that. And this just kind of brought it to life. And when you hear Chad's story, if you think that, you didn't hear the story. Because, you know, that's the word of caution to the guys in our profession and to

millions of Americans out there, right? This idea that you're born with this or you're not, I mean, situation brought this, brought this out, right? It's chronic stress, chronic pain going on from injuries and just the way that you train, the way that, I mean, it takes its toll. And then that leads to all sorts of things. And, you know, the brain is something that we don't really study that well. We don't study it much at all.

And, you know, it's one of those things where we're able to, you know, cure this virus almost a year later with a huge national surge. Because we give a shit and it matters. And this is something that is just kind of still floating around over here. I mean, what's it going to take? we're losing some of our most valuable people in our country, right, to something that we just don't understand. But what I know, my mental shift is to say there wasn't one bit of weakness in Chad Wilkinson. There was something that is inexplicable that we just have not explained yet,

that changed inside of him. And some decision-making process, you know, it just changed. And we have a long ways to go. Yeah, there's a famous football player from San Diego A guy named Junior Say, I have you ever heard of him? Oh, yeah. Like the most beloved, probably San Diego Charger, maybe even the most beloved San Diego athlete,

total stud, you know, a beast of a human, like a super nice guy, he was just this incredible human being. And he retired from the NFL and he killed himself. Like, he had everything. and you know that that that that made me think of this you know sir when you're like talking about chad and when i've talked to people that like are are depressed straight up depressed their heads in like this their heads in a storm their heads in like darkness and and it's really like from the outside you look at them and you think oh yeah well hey man it's you know you're in

this bad situation, but it's only, it's only just right around you. And if you come over here a little bit, you'll be out of the storm. Like, come on over. But from their perspective, no matter where they look, it's like darkness. And they just see the storm. And they don't see that if they can move forward more, they can go a little bit further. And they don't see that everybody's on the outside going, hey, like, it's okay, man. It's super sunny and bright. And like, there's a rainbow over here and everything's cool, just move over here a little bit and they can't, they, they don't see it. They don't see it. They can't see it. They can't see it because it's there. That's what they're, that's what's around them. And so like, it just causes them to do things that don't make any sense to us because we're

looking at them from the outside going, hey, like, no, it's sunny. It's sunny. And they can't see it. And it's like trying to convince people. It's almost impossible. It seems almost impossible to try and convince someone that that storm that they see 360 degrees around them, thunder, lightning, winds, that's what they see. And to convince them that, hey, man, right over here, it's sunny and it's a nice beach day and it's 80 degrees and we're going to, it's okay. They can't see it. And it's so hard to get them out of that cloud.

And I think that's where people get stuck. And it's so frustrating from the outside because we can see all that other good stuff that they just don't have the ability to see anymore. So I think it's like a combination. You got, like I said, Junior Seow, what better life could that guy have set up for himself? You know, he's got everything that a person could want.

And yet he's in this cloud and it consumes him. I mean, so did Chad, right? I mean, a great family, great life he had respect he had honor you know he had everything it doesn't get better than that right i mean that's that's the currency when you're in that line of line of work you just want you want to be respected and you want them to think oh he he's doing a good job and you know you look at you look at where he went and what he did he had that and when you can't see it there's there's just something there's something else going on

Absolutely. And so when you kind of look at that, I mean, you know, it's like what's the responsibility moving forward, right? I mean, there's some command responsibility. I'm not sitting here pointing fingers backwards. I'm sitting saying like, you know, part of what we want to do is educate the next, the next crop. And I know you're huge on this as well.

And I mean, it's the hardest thing to do sometimes is to take someone out of the game. It's like, you know, we started this in football. You've got the concussion. measurements and if you get a concussion, you've got to come out. And, you know, if it's your star player, you still got to come out. And you start to look at, like, how are we doing this in the military? You know, we kind of say the military is not a social experiment because it's not. But the truth of the matter is that when you get into these, especially units like DevGrew and

Delta and SF, right? I mean, your job is to go win wars. I mean, this is not, like, that requires. I mean, the American alpha male is a very special kind of thing in the history of history. And it requires a special type of training. It requires all sorts of things that make it very difficult to stop them from wanting to keep going after that. It's like we're breeding it into them. It's like you take American alpha males and you make them more alpha.

I mean, it's quite impressive. and you create these units, I mean, they're storied units. I mean, Dev grew, Seal Team 6? I mean, the SEALs, these are, you know, it's very impressive. And so how do we, how do we protect the guys, though? And I say this from a two-way street, you know, it's one thing to hear and say, oh, you know, we got to know that if we're not sleeping well, that there's something wrong, and that's going to be a problem.

Like, okay, I'm like, I'm on a team. I'm like, yeah, got it, right? Take another pill. right work out a little harder maybe I'll sleep better yeah good you know and it's like that's not going to work right it's not going to work it's at some point we have to we have to put more of a systematic approach in here to mental health we've done that in sF right I mean they're starting to treat green berets like professional athletes which is great you know you've got a locker room you've got you know the physical trainers you get physicals you get checked up you get all these

things and you know if we don't then it's too much of the loss is in vain yeah yeah no and and they they definitely are moving in that direction in in the teams in the seal teams like the baseline studies that they're doing they are they are absolutely moving that direction i mean they have whole organizations within the organization that are focused on that and um yeah i mean the lessons have definitely been learned that's great i mean chad Chad killed himself three years ago. Yep. Like we're not moving, we're not moving fast enough.

I mean, the VA, you know what the budget is for veteran suicide prevention? It's 10.2 billion. Wow. That's a big number. That is a big number. Right. And, you know, the VA gets just shit on all over the place, right? The VA is actually trying.

I mean, if you look at budget, there's some trying there. They're trying experimental stuff, antidepressant nasal spray, right? virtual reality-based suicide prevention training. I mean, these kinds of things, like they are, there are things that we are trying. We as a nation. And it's at some point, you know, the guys that are close to the guys and gals,

I don't want to exclude the female service members either because this affects them as well. I mean, you're actually statistically more likely to commit suicide if you did not deploy, than if you did. Explain that again? So if you did not, I mean, it's saying, you know, just because you were on SEAL Team 6

or just because you saw intense combat, right? That's not a predictor of suicide. So it might be a predictor of, you know, TBI and those kinds of things. Because, you know, if all you do is explosive breach charges next to doors all day long, I mean, you know, commanders, have to figure out a way to limit that stuff.

Like you can only do this so many times. I got it. You don't want the first one to be on, you know, the house down range. You have to work with live explosives. But at the same time, you can't just go through the same repetitions a million times. And, you know, I mean, the other part is you have your team time and you roll off a team and there's always guys behind you. And this is credit to America.

first off, and credit to just who we are. We sign up and we say send me. And there's a lot of us that answer that. When you're on that, when you're living that life and you're on these deployments doing this cool way stuff, you don't want to miss any of it. You're like, this is my slot. Nobody's coming in behind me.

And, you know, Sarah, you told me this. You're like, you know, and the truth of the matter is, there's a lot more seals right behind you. And so commanders have this at their discretion. They have this ability to kind of how do we, we can take a look back now, right? Remove all the politics about, you know, the wars are ending. Well, the wars aren't going to end for the tier one units ever, right?

But at the same time, we have an operational, we're not, there's less going on. There's less work. And we have this ability to kind of reset a little bit the way that we're, the way that we're approaching this. Yeah. Yeah. Well, this kind of conversation right here is,

is the thing that can hopefully move this in the right direction. And I know that's the main reason that you're sitting here today is to try and move this in the right direction. And you're actually, let's talk about how you're doing that. Let's talk about, you know, the actual charities and stuff that you guys are doing to try and raise awareness. Yeah. So the one thing Jason and I are partnered on is the workout in honor of my husband.

and we refer to it as Chad 1,000 X. Again, I spoke about this at his funeral. As he prepped to climb that mountain, he did it by doing step-ups on a box, and he did it on a 20-inch box with a 45-pound pack, working up to 1,000 over a period of time. And then once he got there, then he would just, like, pump out 1,000 every couple days.

Chad was super disciplined. He was incredibly focused in every goal that he had. and that's definitely something that I'm trying to have live within me. This workout I talked about it as funeral, and so it more or less organically kind of just became a thing, right? Dave was there, CrossFit friends were there. Oh, Dave Castro was there. Yeah. And they just did it on their own,

just because they thought, oh, challenge, right? That's cool, 1,000 step-ups, 45, you know, man stuff, let's do it. and then fast forward. I'll stop you there. I won't speak for Dave, but I will say, I mean, Dave knew Chad, they serve together.

And he doesn't know how to process that, you know? I mean, he doesn't know how to process the loss of a friend, especially to suicide. And so, you know, he's trying to do,

it is amazing how many people want to help, how many people this has affected. I mean, Chad's life, ripple effects huge. everybody has this, there's some, this, this epidemic has touched so many people and nobody knows how to deal with it. Nobody knows how. I mean, am I supposed to do 22 push-ups in front of my, you know, phone and publish it on social media? I mean, is that helping? 22 is not the number. Right. It's not even an accurate number. Yeah, it's 17, it's 17 now,

which is, which is better, you know, it's just, so many people want to, want to help. So I think, You know, Dave, for his part, I mean, I know he wanted to honor Chad, and, you know, I think he wanted other people to honor Chad as well. And that's... Yeah. So we've established Chad 1,000X into an annual fundraiser. And there are many spouses, like myself, Gold Star spouses, and they've gone on, and there's golf tournaments, and there's 5Ks, and there's the like, and they raise monies. for different organizations. This workout specifically we want around Veterans Day

because while it's Chad's face and I have kind of stepped into the role of sharing his story, for me, it has less to do with Chad Wilkinson and more to do about the struggle that our veterans currently have. And so why not really focus this around Veterans Day when that's what we're doing?

doing, honoring those serving, and create a platform for them to talk to one another. We did this last year, and it was kind of a late rollout, and we're like, let's just like do this and see what happens. And very, we really had no expectation. And I can't even express how humbled we were by the response. And, I mean, it went global. It went around the world. People did this workout.

I think the beauty of it is anybody can do this workout because a step up is not technical. We're not snatching. There's no muscle ups. Anybody can do a step up. And then obviously we scale it. And you have this huge fitness background. You're well aware.

Not everyone has to do the 20 inch box. Not everybody has to do that weight. but being able to go do a workout in honor of someone in our military that generally brings people together anyway because they want to kind of pay their humble respects. But the potential that it could bring for people to have a conversation, whether it's you're doing the step-ups and maybe you start to realize in that hour time frame where your brain does go, what do you think about? You know, your struggle, the person you're doing it for, the friend you lost, do you do it with a friend and you guys can talk to each other?

Well, I think Jason and I have confirmed that once you get to probably about 500, you don't really talk anymore. But the idea of doing it with a friend, the symbolism there is to me, everybody needs somebody. Have you put together, technical question here, have you put together like a ramp up program for people to do, you know, two months out, do a hundred and then whatever, break it down. Like, you know, those marathon programming things where you guys, yeah, there's a training program. Yeah. Yeah.

And so, you know, part of the bigger message here is, you know, I've never met the guy that I served with ever who said, man, I'm really looking forward to going to that shrink's office with the waterfall in the background and it's really quiet and let's go talk about feelings. I've never met that person, right, especially from our community. Have you heard a NICO? Chad went. Okay. Do you want to know how I feel about it? Sure. I mean, I've talked to a lot of guys that went to it that thought it was awesome. And I don't know when Chad went. December 2016 and within two years he was dead. They found seven TBIs on his brain and they laughed. What do you mean? That wasn't very many. One of the guys we were with had 42. He made a joke. He said, yeah, I got to walk around with football helmet because I can't

risk falling over. The guy. You know, I mean, they can joke among each other, but it's just like seven TBIs to them wasn't very many. But you know what? You can't find on all those screens. CTE or Interface Astroglyoscarrying. So, you know, I am an advocate of whatever you find works If that works for you, do it. 100% I believe it, feel it, live it. But I am not convinced by any military-centered organization that they're really doing any sort of good yet. And I don't know if they just want to talk about it

and not be about it. But less than two years later, Chad was dead. And, you know, you do all the things. I mean, there is a lot of a sense. that happens at that place and could be potentially good. It told me almost all the things I already knew about him as a spouse. I are, you know, they did personality tests and different stress tests. And I mean, yes, I don't know the scientific sleep lab study, but I could tell you his sleep is shit.

they did a test where they are trying to realize, are you the guy that's going to, I'm trying to think of the best way they said this. Basically, are you the guy that's going to see a problem and respond right away, like rapid fire, like bull in a china shop? Are you the guy that's going to like take a minute, assess it, and you're not going to be very fast, but it's going to be methodical and it's going to be perfect. Well, that's chat. If you would have ever watched him pack a car for a family trip, that's chat. So all the things that they did there, you know, I don't feel like it gave me any more insight than I already had. And I'm not so sure that's the case for Chad.

I mean, and they do art therapy and they do dog therapy and they do music therapy. And I mean, even them making him walk a dog, he finally said to him, hey man, I'll do whatever you want me to do, but I'm not walking this damn dog. He's probably one of the few team guys that, like, he didn't like dogs. So, yeah, if it works for people and they got something out of it, great. But the way I see it is it's a way for the guys to go fatten their medical records so they can punch the ticket on where their medical disability lies, which, to be totally frank as a spouse,

every single one of those dudes should be 100% disabled. Yeah, no, I never went to it. It wasn't, I don't think it was in existence, maybe, but I never went to it. But I do know a lot of guys that went through it that got a lot of, lot out of it and part of what they got out of it yeah they're looking at their medical record but you know they're I mean just the the decompression aspect of it meaning for 30 days like you're just gonna eat nice food and like not do anything not blow anything up or whatever there was and and guys felt I definitely know some guys that got a lot out of going to it clearly there's some shortfalls

especially if they find issues and they're like oh yeah this is no factor that seems kind of crazy but yeah you mentioned that CTE thing because they can't they they can't see CTE while you're alive right it's postmortem so same thing interface obstacle is scarring right now there is no test for it so to some degree for those guys out there that have served multiple deployments and know you have some TBIs you might want to almost assume that that could be in there what what I think could be a great way and an extension of service for some of our military as this KCO form we fill out before the guys deploy. And for listeners, it's, it's a form we fill out that basically says what's going to happen should your husband get killed or wife, your spouse gets killed. And everything from who's going to

show up at your door, are they going to wear their uniform? Is it military honors? Are they buried? Are they cremated? Who's going to take your kids? All those, you know, preemptive. You know, important questions. It's kind of sad that when you fill it out so many times, it's commonplace. I remember the first time I filled it out, we mold over these questions for so long. And by the end of the deployments, I mean, I'm like making dinner and I'm like, oh, yeah, that's fine. Yep, that's fine. Wait, change that because she moved and she's not going to be able to get here in time, so make it this person. I mean, that's how it is. But, and there's, there is going to be some limitations, and I don't know what they are, but we were able to donate Chad's brain

because he was state-side, and you have to do it probably within 48 to 72 hours. I'm not quite sure what the time frame is. And his brain was studied, and that's how we were able to determine that he did have that. And I don't know if it would be applicable if you're overseas because of travel time, et cetera. But if you were to add that on the Keko form,

that if you were killed, you would like your brain donated. this is in no way to encourage anybody to take their life by any means. But either way, if you're a team guy and you get in a car accident and you die, fill in the blank, if you could also put on there or at least have a conversation with your person that you also want your brain donated, that would be a great extension of service. I think that's a straightforward ask. I mean, yeah, the straightforward ask. Brain study is kind of a big, it's a big topic in those circles right now.

And there's so many elements that go into this. But, you know, there's the two places where the brain's really being studied right now are China and Japan. And Europe, you know, there's just protests on chimpanzees, excuse me. And so, you know, because they're the closest to us. The best way to study the brain is while it's working, you know. You can't make sense, right? And so, you know, we have issues doing that here with chimpanzees. You know, they're chasing off the European equivalent of PETA's chasing off, you know,

scientists from Europe. They're just setting up shop in China. And it's like, yeah, we're going to, we're going to graph this brain, you know. And so there's a lot of challenges that we will face. What we do know is that mass veteran suicide is not a thing. Guys don't all get together and kill themselves at the same time. We need to create communities with bonds of people that were able to take some of the lessons that Sarah's bravely sharing with us. And so many behind and around her are sharing about their journey, what they've seen.

We need to strengthen the community so that we're able to kind of watch after. each other because the military has a stronger social fabric than pretty much anywhere. And in sort of normal, you know, middle America or anywhere America, right? And still, you're 1.5, there's a lot of different statistics, but you're 1.5 times more likely to take your life if you're in the military than if you're not. And it's just, you know, how is this happening? Like, how is this okay? Well, it's not okay.

And so what we're trying to do and what we are doing is bringing people together in the real world, not in a shrink's office with the waterfall, you know, that you don't want to be there. And it's like, hey, you know, physical health, mental health, somehow those are definitely, we don't have to study chimpanzees to know that those are definitely tied together. And obviously, Chad did not suffer from physical, you know, like he could do a thousand step-ups, just fine and climb mountains and stuff. But, you know, all these things, you know, you're not sleeping well. great work out you know you talk about this all the time jaco right you know and and so bring people

together yes think about this and so it was really telling when we did this in virginia beach and guys that chatted served with showed up you know quietly kind of did the work you know they showed up in the big f950s that you know it's like just awesome this is america god bless us right and uh you know they showed up and if if this was a group counseling something session to talk about, you know, the mandatory briefs. No way, nobody's showing up for that stuff. But you show up and you do the work in honor of, you know, to honor Chad's life and to think about veteran suicide prevention to think about this unbreakable guy, right? I mean, go ask anybody in the Navy that go wants to be a seal. Do you want Chad's career? They're like, yes. That's, I want that to be

me. And you got guys showing up and, you know, there's some community around it. You know, everyone's bend in Sarah's ear that's that's you know because this issue is so close to so close to so many people in the community and but you're just strengthening bonds right you bring people together in the real world this is very counterculture and we're very cool with that you know in a world where kids are growing up text messaging each other to instead of talking instead of sitting kneecap to kneecap like like we are right now right and we need this we're social animals and we need to be a part of something bigger than ourselves. And so that's what we're about and physical health and mental health and raising awareness.

And it's, it can't just be, you know, trying to beat it into people, right? Like, oh, I'm a hammer. I see a nail. Let me just tell you about veteran suicide prevention. People just tune that out. But when you've got a story as, you got a story like Chaz and you've got some like Sarah that's able and willing to tell it, I mean, this is hard. She's got to saddle up every time, every time for this.

And she's doing it because she wants to change the number. And she wants other people to not go through what she's had to go through. And there's a lot of bravery that goes into that. And, you know, and so that's, I'm proud that we get to, I mean, I work for her in this. Go Ruck works for her. And, you know, we don't do anything that she's not on board with in terms of Chad's story or just the way that we're running the event around. And, you know, we just have, this is just a unique opportunity

in the kind of veteran suicide prevention space that nobody wants to be too close to. But unfortunately, you know, some of us are. And so it's a real honor. This is the thing I'm most proud of that I've been a part of because it is, it's just, it's changing lives. It's helping people and bringing them together. and raising awareness for something that is really important to me.

Because I know you've lost people in your circle, I'm sure. People in my circle. There's, you know, you don't have to, there's Sarah sitting right there. I mean, this is her life. And so it just, this is, this matters hugely to us. Well, I'm on board. Like, what do people need to do when they're on board? What are we doing?

What's our deal? Well, we, we want people to take to the world. workout and that might look different for a lot of people you can go to your local gyms jump on it do it in your garage find a buddy we're hosting larger scale what we call live events this year and we're doing those in some we'll call like flagship cities one of them's here in san diego so we're hoping maybe you might come and show up right on november 6th uh san diego it'll be at crossfit humanity so not too far from here i passed it actually on the way we're doing it november 3rd well let me back up. November 5th, we're going to be doing it in Fort Pierce, Florida at the UDT Seal Museum.

So it's their stump muster weekend. I'll be speaking and doing some other things down there. That place is outstanding. If you get a chance, go to Fort Pierce, Florida and visit the UDT Seal Museum. It's awesome. It is really, really cool. So that's November 5th. November 6th, we're in San Diego. November 11th is going to be New York City. November 13th is going to be Virginia Beach. my hometown and Jacks. Jackson is actually November 6th now. Oh, is it? We moved it. We moved it. Yeah, so we're hosting. So, you know, call it a big giant muster.

Start getting your train on. You got a thousand box steps with a 45-pound ruck, bro. That's a get-some evolution right there. That's a get-some evolution right there. That is a get-some evolution for sure. You know, he used to do that. I don't know if you know this, but he used to do it in the garage. I have video of this. him doing step-ups and he would do it in the garage and just shorts in his backpack he cut all the

tags out of his gear right ounces equal pounds sarah ounces equal pounds so he knew he was carrying but he used a projector and he projected a concagawa on the back of our garage door so when i talk about focus that's how focused he was and that's that's how focused i am with this so and then and then what we're raising money is that what we're doing we are raising money okay so So this came about through a partnership that GoRuck had had with the Navy SEAL Foundation. Awesome. You know, one of your brothers, Chris Irwin, who was, Sarah was his level one crossfit instructor in Virginia Beach way back when.

I mean, you know, everyone is so close, close to everyone. And he had called me and said, hey, you know, because. Did you ever teach any of these ones out here on the West Coast? I taught some in Del Mar. Yeah. I think I probably went to two or three of those over the years. In that time frame, too. Yeah.

Yeah, I'm sure we cross paths. Yeah. I was the guy with the massive deadlift. No, I'm just kidding. Yeah. No, you would not remember me from my physical attributes at a CrossFit seminar. So we're raising money. So we're raising money.

And, you know, this came about through that partnership. And, you know, Chris had called me up and he was like, you know, nobody knows how to deal with this, man. Everyone wants to deal with it and nobody knows how to deal with it. and you know so you get guys that are in positions you're at the seal foundation and go rock whatever right it's like we want to deal with this and we still didn't know how to deal with it and he's like well i think i got i think this chad workout is the way that we can deal with this he goes but i got to call sarah because obviously you know you don't do anything without the family if the family's not on board especially the spouse and spouse is the that that's the

that's the deal. And, you know, she had to think about it and, you know, said no and then thought about it. And we ended up chatting. It was me and Emily and Chris and Sarah Nicole. I'm out, you know, it's Florida. We have, you know, it's hot. I'm outside. My kids are inside pure chaos.

We're chatting on Zoom or whatever it was in the middle of the pandemic. And she's finally like, okay, let's do this. And I'm like, I kind of said, okay, well, you know, if you change your mind, she's like, no, I've made up my mind. We're doing this, right? And so to throw her another. like crossfit there's a lot of hard workouts in crossfit right a lot of you can look at you know you can do them harder you can scale them to whatever the the hardest the hardest workout in

the history of crossfit that's ever been done was how she did chad the first time she went into their garage and she put on chad's rucksack by herself and did chad so think about that when you're feeling sorry for yourself out there you know because it's a hard work And it is, right? And that's what it's supposed to be. Everyone's selling easy. That that's, you don't think about anything when life's easy except the next easy thing you're going to get, right? You're meant to dig deep. You're meant to think about this. And that's, that's the goal. And so we're raising money, half of it's going to the SEAL Foundation. Sarah has a nonprofit called the Step Up Project. And that's, you know, it's veteran mental health stuff. It's all going to support that. Yeah, that's outstanding. And, you know, I have to throw this out there because, like, earlier, you, we were talking in the middle of whatever, some high emotion moments and you said something about the families, right? And I just, I thought about it, but then, you know, we kept talking, but just the fact that the military family is out there and what they put up with and what they go through. And usually, I mean, in my mind, have to worry more than the people that are.

than the military themselves. So on top of all this, just, you know, the families that are out there, that the, the, the spouses, you know, come on down, too, because, like, it just get to know other people that are living that life. You know, I know that my wife, you know, she wasn't around. We didn't have any family around. Like, we didn't have any family. We lived in California.

When we lived in Virginia Beach, I was gone almost the entire time. didn't know anyone. She ended up doing what you did, which is going to live with my parents for a while. But yeah, just families, right? Military families too, come and get it. That's what I'm thinking. Family friendly, kid friendly.

We don't discriminate. Come on down. All of them. It was so awesome in Virginia Beach. It was such a great vibe. You know, we were there at the crack of dawn, right? Setting boxes up. And then, you know, it's like all of a sudden,

people start to show up in waves because you need a box, right? So there's waves. people getting on the box and people, I mean, we were there, my flight was late that afternoon. And you guys are still, you know, there was still a big crew there just like social. It was social. And so it's not a depressing. You know, it's not a, it's not like you just, people can't live inside that space forever, right? You have your, you have your difficult moments and you think about it and it's hard. But, you know, anybody, anybody that served the way that Chad served, like the guys I served with,

You don't want people to walk around depressed after you're gone. You want them. You don't want that. I also think like a lot of, I just think the more we do talk about it, the easier it is for someone else to say, me too. And so it's hard to come out and talk about this all the time. And I've had, this week has been a very busy week for me. So I'm pretty, it's been hard.

But I have to believe that the more I talk about it and share Chad's story or share the story of other friends that have passed took their lives, that other people will start to speak up. At this Virginia Beach event, I had three people separately pull me aside and confide in me struggles that they had. I've had people reach out to me through social media, like long messages. I don't care. I don't care how long it is. I don't care how short it is. and I respond back. And I think that it's slow and I think it's a trickle,

but the potential for this workout done around Veterans Day so we can talk about people's stories so that it might encourage someone else to say me too. Maybe if all they need to hear is that they're not alone and that someone else feels that too, maybe that's what someone needs and that's great. Yeah, that's, when you know what's happening,

it makes things so much easier. And I talk about this, like you get a new guy, like Jason, you get a new guy that looks really nervous before their first operation. And if you go, hey, bro, here's what's going on. You're nervous, it's cool. You're a little queasy. Your stomach's a little messed up.

Because they're scared. They're nervous. And if you go, yeah, that's normal. It's just no big deal. You're going to feel that way a little bit before you go on an ops. No big deal. Don't worry about it. It's your body preparing to go into confidence.

bat's all good and you can see like relief on their face that's mentorship right there yeah yeah and we need more of that yeah and this to me this this whole thing is like if you can tell someone oh yeah you you've you've breached 47 doors in your last three-week trip which is not an extraordinary number like that that's you know oh you've you got crashed in the room however many times you shot a Carl Gustav 29 times or you were the r so you had you know, two troops go through and shoot one per man and you RSOed all of them. That's whatever, you know, 80 freaking blast next to your head that you sat through.

And there's some things that are going on inside your brain. Here's what's going on. Here's what you need to watch out for. Here's how you can get ahead of it. That kind of conversation about this stuff is the same thing that it impacts that young, new guy that goes, okay, got it. Now I can grab it now I can get a hold of it and I can move forward. It's awesome Chad 1000x.com That's where we can go to find out about this stuff

Go Ruck you're at go Ruck across the board Jason if you want to talk to Jason at go Ruck and just go Ruck if I live in Idaho can I do go Ruck? Yes, what if I live in Nebraska? So look here's the thing we have we have fire 500 official go rock clubs around the country. And part of it is we're activating all of them for this. We really believe in this world of people getting together in the real world. And this is not about you don't have to be a veteran to do this.

You don't have to be anything except willing to show up, right? And you get so much out of that. And got through a freaking thousand step-ups, just FYI. Yeah, it's an hour. You know, it's an hour. Yeah. Right? Okay.

Slow and steady. Slow and steady wins the race. Yeah, I mean, yeah. And you want to train up. Yeah, well, that's, maybe we need to release some kind of a preparatory workouts. We got one. We got one. A bunch of rabdo people coming at me.

Scale it. You're worried about people coming at you after, for a rabdo now. Come on. I've imposed rabdo on a few people, and it doesn't feel good. I feel horrible. You know, I always feel like I won't do it anymore. I kind of figured it out. Like it just, it's not, I don't like doing that to people.

No, no, same thing. So disclaimer is you need to train yourself up. This is an hour. It's step-ups. Yeah, yeah. You got this. Step-ups with a 45-pound plate on your back. Yeah, scale it down if you're not ready.

Do we need to train for it, right? Yes. That's what I'm saying. So it's a buy-in for your workouts. It's a cash out for your workouts. Whatever else you're doing, just integrate a box. If you've got a cooler in your house, use a cooler. If there's, you know, like whatever the case may be.

You have steps. Yep. Get it. Instagram. You're on Instagram? Yes. Sarah Wilkinson, seven. Number seven.

Yep. Jason, you got anything else? Did I miss anything? I don't think so. Did we miss anything? Oh, well, I guess just to bring, just to make the point one more time is that where we find the guys are very fragile, I'm going to say fragile, is in their transition. time. So when people are separating from the military, maybe they didn't hit retirement, maybe they've

done 10 years and they're transitioning out, or they're at retirement and now they need to transition to civilian life, that is a very, for a seal, I'm going to say, that's a very delicate time for them. And I would encourage families, peers, to really be on the lookout for them during that time. because as we've talked so much about the brain and PTSD, there's also that loss of tribe, or at least they feel as though there is. And what we see is sometimes that increases the likelihood of maybe someone not making a really good decision.

So I would just encourage people to just be of the best support for those people during that period of transition. Yeah, interestingly, that's when a seal platoon is most exposed when they're transitioning from the water to the land or the land to the water. And there's not only a perceived loss of tribe like you're talking about, but also that perceived loss of mission because what have I been doing my whole life and all of a sudden what am I going to do now? Yeah, when Chad was close to 20 years, we were at the discussion of what do we do. you know, my dad served 26 years. His dad served somewhere about that. I can't quite remember.

And, you know, the hard part is I really kind of hoped he would pick us. I thought, okay, we've done 20 years. Like, we've done 20 years. Me, Sarah, Chad, Kinsley, Hudson. We've done it. Boom. Pick us. And he didn't.

And I, again, believe he had a warrior's heart, and he was born to do this. but I said to him, well, you know, we talked about jobs and I just remember he looked at me and he said, I don't have any skills. That's what they think. I mean, he was dead serious. And you're thinking, what? I mean, I know that you're not going to go work for someone and be hanging out in bushes and kicking down doors most likely. But what the skills these guys do have, I mean, most of them are very intelligent, critical thinkers, analytical, problem solvers, think outside of the box, can make decisions quickly. That is a lot of really great attributes that many organizations in the civilian world would want. And so, again, just to speak to, you know, it's that loss of identity. And it's like, I've been shooting guns and busting down doors. What else do I do?

One of my first platoon chief said there was an old Vietnam seal. and he was a mailman now and they would go over there and like drink beer or whatever at his house and he'd tell stories about Nam nice and he had this picture on the wall and it was like a shop from behind like a picture of a guy's back

and the guy's back you see is clearly a Vietnam seal with a floppy hat and a stoner and his web gear on and his jungle cammy top and his blue jeans and he's standing in front of like a corporate desk and the corporate desk. There's the boss guys looking at him and the caption underneath is, I'm sorry, sir, we don't have any jobs for point men here, which is true. But to your point, and believe me, I see this all the time.

I work with companies all over the country and all over the world, actually. And they absolutely need the individuals that have these kind of attributes that you're talking about. And there is absolutely a new mission when you get done with the military to go out in the civilian world and have an impact and make people's lives better and build great products and build great companies and do great things. And that is absolutely available. And you are needed in the, in the civilian world. And that's the way it is. We need them too. Our country needs people with this kind of experience spread throughout our country, spread throughout our companies, spread throughout our communities, spread throughout our neighborhoods. And one,

One of the things that makes San Diego such a great town is it's a military. It's a military town. You've got this just underpinnings of San Diego, the foundation is strong. It's the same where I live in Jacksonville Beach. I mean, my neighbor two doors down is a top gun instructor. I mean, these things are just normal around us. And it's great. They're just good people that are just, you know, this talk about, you know, the greatest generation coming back to America and just doing great stuff, getting educated and working their asses off and building America.

into America and you know we need more of that and so we need we need the transition is is it's to echo her point I mean it's just sucks I mean don't underestimate it under any circumstances it can't happen to you it will happen to you it will be terrible and and just now that you it's coming brace for it a little bit take it easy on yourself build out some support structures around you you know stuff like that and we just this is going to require something that is kind of normal this day and age. It's going to require us to kind of work together, you know, like how to support transitioning folks better, how to kind of build stronger communities in the real world. That's what we need. We don't, you don't need guys coming out and it's like, hey,

you know what you need to do? You need to be an influencer on Instagram, right? Like, no, you know, How about not that? Right? And so, you know, it's difficult. It's difficult. And we have to keep having the conversation. That's why I respect you and I respect this long form podcast stuff that you do. Because it forces people, you know, it's not just sound bites.

It's like, hey, here's the story. This is nothing's as simple as it looks on someone's feed. And, you know, that's kind of what real life is like. And I think that we need more of that, not less. Totally agree. Well, speaking along for them, I've kept you in here for over three hours. Jason, thank you for what you're doing. Thanks for your service.

You know, we covered that last time. And thanks for what you're continuing to do, building go rock and forming communities out there. Real communities, I can see this look in your eye when you start saying that. And I get it, man. And for me, it's a lot through jiu-jitsu, but look, that's a real thing. and getting people together to get together and sweat and work. It's a positive thing, man. I appreciate what you're doing.

And Sarah, obviously, thanks for coming on. Thanks for your service. Thanks for your sacrifice. Thanks for holding the line. And while your husband was gone and gone again and gone again and being there and raising a family and building a business and doing all those things. all the military families that are listening right now for what you go through and what they risk so thanks to you, thanks to your kids as well

for what they've gone through. And of course, Chad, thanks for your service, bro. We won't forget. Amen. Thank you. And with that, Sarah Wilkinson and Jason McCarthy have

left the building and Echo Charles we need to go a little bit old school I think on this one for the decompress so if you've never listened to this before

the original purpose of when we would get done with a podcast Echo Charles and I would just kind of start talking about stuff for a little while it was to decompress from a heavy subject as we started doing podcasts and started hitting some heavy subjects along the way this we would originally just kind of start talking and I would just kind of let echo talk for a little bit

while I did the decompression because I'm usually the one that's all wrapped up in whatever subject is we're talking about so certainly uh in need of a little decompression after that one um just a just a very tough subject and and that's why we're talking about it right we're talking about it as you know Sarah said like something that she doesn't want

anyone else to have to go through and that's why we talk about these things so for a little decompressant I'll let you talk a little bit echo Charles we we want people to take care of themselves

it's true so you like it's weird so there's so many mysteries to the brain right so and with your body like your physical your other parts of your body it's like less of a mystery right

so like yeah you go in you know you're in a combat scenario you get shot in the abdomen then it's like okay it's gonna be pretty straightforward as far as hey can we save this guy can we not you know all the stuff and like he can bleed out

there's all these things and then there's these you know you can take specific actions and then hopefully we can save them all this stuff. You get shot on the leg or something while you're running or you blow out your knee or something. It's like, okay, it's broken. He can't run anymore. It's like pretty straightforward. But the brain, he gets damaged in one way or another. It's kind of like, there's no telling what's going to happen a lot of the time, you know, and you don't know when either. It's, it is the, the

brain is the mysterious part of the anatomy right now and nerves, right? Yeah. I don't really know how they work. It's very hard to, like, repair them. And, and then, yeah, as we see, said you take that brain and rattle around inside of a inside of your skull over and over again we don't know what it's going to do but we know it's not good we know that much and then you have to make it kind of in a way work okay remember kirstie ennis yes right so she she got jammed up she got injured and she still at her leg you know she was she was doing this day and then but she was constantly being checked in upon you know checked on and be like okay and then over time they were like hey okay we're at a point where we got to make this very specific decision and we know what could and you know all the stuff and it was pretty it was pretty

clear and then you make the decision but that's an that's an example of incurring an injury and then it's still having lasting effects last in effects last in effect until you got to you know either risk actually dying or risk huger and bigger injuries or just say chop it off or amputate and and you know remember her talking about she knows she because she could still walk yeah yeah yeah and she and she She was taking her last walk on the beach in the sand. Yeah, exactly right. But a perfect example of like you can incur the injury and still handle, still, you know, go about your business. Sure, you're jammed up here and there, here and there.

And then, but the injury is still progressing. Yeah, it's getting worse. Getting worse. And then you get and meanwhile, but the thing is again for your other parts of your body, it's kind of like there's kind of a protocol. You can check in and be like, okay. For the brain, it's so mysterious. It's like, we can try. And we are kind of trying to do that,

but it's so mysterious that it's not as cut and dry like that. And it's the same exact thing. He incurred all these injuries at some point, and that thing just keeps lasting and lasting, getting worse and worse and worse, you know, until it gets you. But it's crazy. It's hard to get a grip on exactly what's happening.

It's crazy. It's the unknown frontier of the human body. Probably the most unknown frontier of the human body. Yeah. the nerves in the brain. And there's so many illusions too, even like with yourself where you can be like,

oh, I'd just do this in this situation or that situation or I would never choose to do that. But you get in a certain situation, you do some stuff that's real unexplainable or only explainable later, even though you thought from like beforehand, you were so convinced of something.

And then afterwards you're like, oh, shoot, all surprised on what you did, you know, kind of thing. So it's like, so there's this big illusion. Like it's like oh yeah He could just make the decision not to or whatever But it's like bad doesn't work like that Lots of factors come into play

I don't know Well we do want people to Like I said Want people to take care of themselves Yeah and the ones around them And the ones around them But we gotta kind of like the analogy goes With the plane and the oxygen

Got to put the oxygen on your own face Before you put it on your kids It's true so So you gotta do a little something To kind of keep yourself game. Sarah mentioned something where he said, oh, I don't have any skills, right? And he was talking about getting a job or something like this. And I was thinking, yeah, you know, I can see why someone might think that off like for at first, but the fact is you have a lot of skills. And one of the

main skills is straight up capability in all these different ways where, you know, you can learn this specific thing or learn that specific trade and all this other stuff. But if someone who's just a more capable person across the board, that guy's going to excel in those skills. For sure. So, in my opinion, that's an important thing to be capable and to stay capable. So on this path of capability, hopefully, we're going to take some hits, some heavies. It happens. That's kind of like you mentioned jiu-jitsu. In jiu-jitsu, if you're going hard, are you not going to get dinged up?

No, you are going to get dingo. Yeah, that's kind of the nature of going hard. See what I'm saying? Just like in workouts, just like with anything else. but don't worry. Supplementation will help us all through those dings. Dents. So anyway, Jocka has supplements.

It's a long way of saying Jocko has supplements. So first thing we'll go over. So you're decompressing. Yeah, a little bit. You made me chuckle a little bit. A little bit. We're trying over here. Decompression.

Okay. Yeah. So Jocko has a new era of energy drinks. Straight up healthy for you. I know we don't equate health and energy drinks in the same thing. Didn't used to. No? We do now.

We do now. New era. Discipline go. any different flavors. Best flavor is mango. Kind of by far too. On a bash of your own activities. And that's saying a lot because the orange is freaking good.

You know, the sourab, like these are like good flavor. They taste good, but like mango is just so much better. It's like crazy. It's saying a lot. See what I'm saying?

Yeah. The good thing is that these drinks, they taste different. You got to, some people might not like mango. Probably a small number of people. Some people might not like orange Some people might not like sour apple sniper

Some people might not like Jocko Palmer Some people might not like whatever So the recommendation is Try one see what you like Yep, let me know Let Echo Charles know if his Signature flavor is the best Well it's factually the best

Do you love your flavor the best? Will you ever drink another different kind? Yes, yeah I do Okay see that's what you're It's weird. Only because I don't want to chum come on. I won't have any. I got to call Pete and Brian and them.

You know, there's that. But if you had all flavors in a fridge for one year. Yeah. I can do one year, yeah. And I was restocking yours. Would I ever have to replace a sour apple sniper? You would never have to know. Here's the thing.

I can do one year, but in the spirit of, you know, nature and all that stuff. Like if you're eating steak every single night and someone offers you, off the path of the of the mango ma'am. In the spirit of variety, yes. Okay. For sure. Well, that's, you know, I think that's natural. I'm pretty sure I would only drink Jocco Palmer.

I understand. Because it tastes so good to me. Yeah. But I also only eat steak. There you go. See, because you're different. All right, well, either way. Either way, it doesn't matter. So we got to drink is what you're saying. It doesn't matter what flavor you choose to drink at any particular time. Regardless, if mango is the best

flavor. It's all healthy for you. So you drink in the energy drink, you get in the front end, the energy, the little boost that we sometimes want, boom, bite,

you get the health benefits as well. Yeah. As opposed to the poison benefits or lack of benefits or whatever. The detriments. You understand what I'm saying. Either way, discipline.

Go, you can get this at Wawa, vitamin shop. Yep. Amazon. Yeah. And origin, USA. com.

Also, we have jockofuel.com? JacoFuel.com. Yeah, yeah. For either one. But Jock Fuel is the easier to remember? Yeah, yeah, that's the direct one. You don't got to click around,

all that stuff. Also, that joint warfare, this is for your joints. When you're lifting hard, you're doing jiu-jitsu, like you don't want to worry about the joints. If you don't want to worry about your joints, this is the one that we need. I don't want to worry about joints. It's going to be pretty rare.

You're going to want to worry about your joints. But I don't know, some people are more in touch with that kind of stuff, and that's cool, too. Either way, joint warfare and super Creole oil will make sure that they're still in the game. Longevity, man. Hey, have you had the greens yet? No.

Well, we have greens now. Oh, right now. And decide to come up with a creative name. All right, what is it? Jaco greens. We made some very good greens. And so you can check those out too. If you don't eat enough vegetables like me or fruits like me.

Yeah. Now you can. Boom. In a scoop. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. And again, you know, true Jocko style.

Apparently you're making these things taste good. Yeah. Which is very not hardcore of you, by the way. But it is very efficient. And what he saw? It's real low drag. It's also results related. Yeah.

We're not trying to feed. Not trying to get you to drink something that tastes like junk. Yeah. And then you don't drink it because it tastes like junk. Yeah. Why would we do that? You're not trying to offer up another element of resistance in a good path that we're all on. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. That's true. That's a good move. Also, vitamin D3, Cold War, immunity stuff. This is essential. So don't forget about that kind of stuff. Also, milk.

We just talked about steaks. I get it. But sometimes you want extra dessert and protein. Back on the strawberry path right now. You are. We're going hardcore strawberry for like a week and a half. I was going hardcore peanut butter for at least a month. What's your normal?

Are you putting anything in there in a little banana, a little whatever? What are you just straight? Moak. Moke. And some variety of milk could be. Could be coconut milk. Could be almond milk. Could be the oat milk.

Could be the milk milk. But yeah, mix it up with one of those. And they all taste legit. They all have their own little, you know? Yeah. You don't know my protocol? What's up? I've been freaking on and it's freaking solid.

And it tastes good. I don't know, though. So is it normal? Like, what do you, let's say you had a salad, like not like a side salad, but a robust salad. Salad, you know? Steak salad, chicken salad, whatever. What do you drink with that?

What's the norm? What pairs with that? I know you're going to say water. I know. But what's the jam? You don't want me to say water. All right. Well, water kind of goes with everything.

You always get water. At the restaurant, they're going to give you the water first. That's a given. But what is, you know, what's the jam? Your thing is not going anywhere. So where are you going with this? I drink water with myself. Here's what I pair with the big salad.

It's called the big salad. Chicken, very robust salad. Mokeshake. but just a plain one though plain like not usually I add a banana a frozen banana in there or whatever no no whatever

so I'll go the peanut butter peanut butter chocolate and then milk or the almond milk or whatever just you know you don't add the oatmeal or bananas or whatever if you want to make it all luxury

or whatever do you know what I'm saying but it like pairs nicely right on I like it all right well either way these things again joccofuel dot com yeah subscribe if you want the influx you know, where you don't got to remember to reorder or run out and all that stuff.

You don't have to remember. You don't have to pay shipping. Those are two real solid elements. It's true. So we mentioned origin USA.com. This is where you can get your American-made denim. Kind of a big deal. No, it's a real big deal.

Yeah, when you kind of go down the line, it's like, sure, you're getting good jeans. I get it. That's good. It's great, actually. You hear something crazy? When we first looked into making these jeans, we were talking to people in the fashion industry. Legit. Yeah, I understand.

You know how much they wanted us to charge for a pair of jeans? American-made jeans. You know what the value placed on 100% American-made jeans was? Take a guess how much? $118. I'm not kidding you. They said the good market price, $450. $450 for a pair of jeans.

This was like in New York City with fashion people. And I like kicked Pete under the table. I'm like, I'm charging $450 for a pair of jeans. No. That's not happening. And we walked out. I'm with,

that's not a big. It's not happening. He said, calm down, you know? I was kind of losing it. Because we know I already don't like fashion people in the first place. Now they want to charge 450. Because they're trying to keep the control of the market. Right.

You're trying to keep that thing elevated because they want to charge $450 for their pair of jeans. Yeah. But you know the whole idea of charging that much for jeans? Like whatever they're doing there? Like it's not a matter of like, hey, we got to, you know, and it makes this logistical sense. It's not that they're doing something. Oh, no. They're inflating the prices.

Yeah, for a reason. Like they're doing. What's their thing? What are they doing? Like that thing? I'll tell you what they're doing. They know that people want to buy American-made stuff. They know they can't make it.

They want us to price it out of the market So they don't have to worry about it That's what they are doing That makes sense When I'm playing their games Well the good news is it doesn't cost 4509 99 Whatever you said

So boom there you go You also got boots on there By the way same American made 100% bringing back the industry By the way Expanding like Geez Louise As far as geez Louise goes

But I'm saying There's a lot going on Louise's been deadlifting. She's getting jacked. That's what's happening with G's Louise. Yes, sir. But yes, so, origin USA, there's a lot of cool stuff. Jiu-Jitsu stuff on there as well.

Yeah, you get that ghee. Yeah, you get the key. If you're getting back into Jiu-Jitsu, or you're staying in Jiu-Jitsu and another key. Hope you're staying in J-J-J-J-G-T-T. Bad, not too. You know what we talked about with Jason. Go-Rock.

Awesome, good community. J-Jitsu also community. Yeah, that's true. Also, we have a store. It's called Jocko Store. So, boom, if you're on the path, you want to represent, discipline equals freedom good take the high ground or the high ground will take you

is where you can get your shirts and hoodies and hats and whatnot some shorts on there utility surfing swimming cruising lifting j j j i said it all of it everything they're what hybrid or whatever anyway we've got some shorts on there too anyway we're shorts with cargo pockets no well you can't be wearing them for swimming or jiu jitsu if they have the pockets on them The big pockets for the, uh, cargo. Cargo pockets. No, you can have a little cargo pocket on there. Not a freaking baggy like from the Gap store cargo pocket from 1994.

It does not have that now. But the hand, like the hand, the pockets that you stick your hands into on the front, you can't do Jiu-Jit-Soo with those. And swimming's not recommended. Oh, yes, you can. Okay. Trust me, you can. Well, you might be able to, but it's not optimal. Yeah, yeah.

Well, maybe I'll put like zip. Can you put zippers on them? That would be making it a little bit better. We need to do a pair of shorts with a slim pocket on the leg. No, wait. And I think these already, I don't have to double check, but they have like the pocket is kind of, it breathes like through. So the water can pass through. I'm wearing them right now.

They do have that. But that's still. See, but you know what I'm doing right now? I'm working. I'm podcast. They're excellent for podcasting. Yeah. Right.

Yes. They're excellent for cruising for sure. Yeah. Swimming is marginal because that even though the. water is made to drain out of them it's still you're there's big pockets holding water we're not setting we're not swimming the English channel no yeah actually no now that it's so there's that and then Jiu Jitsu you're you know your toes getting caught there or whatever so let's redesign yes sir okay I thought we did redesign uh well are we lagging

we're working on that one okay you know it's a work in progress or whatever but the good thing about this is swimming jiu jiu jitsu I know your toes get stuck in there and it's true But if they're not ideal, because really what's ideal for jujitsu, really, it's like spats and rash guard. Same thing we're swimming. What's ideal for swimming? Go to Olympics, check it out.

That's what's ideal for swimming. A lot of us sometimes we don't want to wear that kind of stuff when we go swimming. Some of us, I don't know. I understood. If we're not swimming, though, English Channel, I get it, we can jump in the surf zone. If you, if we're just cruising right now

and then we just find ourselves at the beach, I don't know. Or like, freak, let's go body surfing. You can wear those shorts. is what I'm saying. Yes. And they're going to work great. They're going to be acceptable.

Very acceptable. Not optimal. They'll be appropriate. How about that? Now, they're really good for normal life. Yeah. Which is what I wear them for. But if I'm going to roll, I'm going to put on a different pair of shorts that we need to make.

Jocco store.com. That's where you get all this stuff. If you like something, get something. How about that? Including but not limited to the shorts. Right on. Subscribe to this podcast if you want to. Also I have some other podcast Jocco unraveling me and Daryl Cooper the grounded podcast or your kid podcast

We also have that underground look we don't know what's going to happen with these platforms So if something does happen these platforms we'll be on jocco underground.com if you want to subscribe to that it helps us build it $8.18 a month. Thanks for the support if you can't afford it cool. We'll support you Email assistance at jocco underground.com we have a YouTube YouTube channel, which there's a lot of high level assistant directing happening on there. Yeah, very high level for sure. Sarcasm. Yeah.

Actually, I've accepted it factually that, yeah, I dig it. Even like with setup, right, you've been, you know, you've come a long way. You do some great work. So thank you. But yeah, the YouTube channel, video version of this podcast also. Yeah. By the way, it's becoming more and more common way to consume as it were. Yeah, check that out.

Origin USA also. has a little YouTube channel that you can check out. It's true. Also, psychological warfare. If you don't know what that is,

it's an album with tracks, Jocko, getting you and me and us all pass our moments of weakness that do come every once in a great while. Visitations of moments of weakness.

Just saying it happens. It's all I'm saying. So psychological warfare will help you with that. Do I have to make a psychological warfare track about postophobia? Yeah. See, you know, I had a question mark in my head.

Like, should I even say that? Because it's going to trigger you to start, you know, talking to me about this kind of stuff. And maybe the answer is yes. I don't know. But the current psychological warfare where you can get wherever you buy MP3s, that will help you with weaknesses that it addresses. Check. Also, flipsidecanvice.com. Dakota Meyer.

Order some cool stuff to hang on your wall. Got a bunch of books. I just finished the audio version of. Final Spin, which is the next book that I've coming out. I think it's coming out, November 6th or something like that, which I just realized means I will not be in this area for the Chad 1000X event, because I will be on the road. Okay.

I just recorded the audio book, and it was the first time that I got to see someone's reaction live to the book. because there was a worker. There was an audio engineer. Yeah, yeah. She was named Deb. She was in there working the, working the dials and stuff, the switches.

She was mixing it. But here's what's freaking awesome. This is what's fired up. There's funny parts in that book, right? And she's outside the glass, right? I'm in the room, right? She's outside the glass, and I'm watching her. And like, I would read a funny line

and I can see her, and she'd like laugh and she'd be, And like laughing and like looking at me and like like nodding her head and then there's a couple points in the book that are kind of like fired up like they're gonna go And she was literally raising your hands like I'd look at her she'd like raise her hands like like they're gonna go And then that was day one lots of setup. You know you can kind of get to know the characters a little bit day two stuff starts getting a little bit going sideways Day two Deb openly weeping that I can visually watch her crying that's that's as I'm reading like the some parts of the story that are heavy. So final spin, if you want to know what that's all about, check it out.

Dang, that's crazy. That's like she was like your little audience. I had an audience of one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know what? Check this out. She's supposed to be a professional. I know, really.

Right? No disrespect to damn. She is a professional. She did a great job. And I was much appreciated. Yeah. She's not supposed to be in there laughing, cheering, and crying, right? That's not, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Hey, would you be stoked if your doctor's doing a surgery on you and like high-fiving and laughing? Like, no, right? Right? You would be stoked on that? No, no. But I was definitely stoked.

Yeah. It was, think about it. It's like a, you're right. It was an audience or one. Yeah, yeah. And she's not supposed to be showing emotions and she's in there getting emotional. All emotions revealed. So if you want to feel some of those emotions, hear about it.

I also did a little The additional The additional commentary For the audio track Is with Good Deal, Dave Burke Because he read it and he Interviewed me And we talked about it

So that's that Final Spin, check it out Pre-order it now If you want that first a dish Who knows? With that kind of emotional reaction You get that first a dish You may be holding on

Something special You know Come on to something special So you like Pass on to your kids When they're old enough I don't know Talk to Dave Burke about that.

I'm like, hey, would you let your, how old you can, how old will your kids have to be before they're allowed to read this book? And he's like, I, he's like, I wanted to read it as young as they can. But old, there's swear words in it. Yeah. There's F bombs, quite a few. Mm-hmm. So he's like, he goes real soon. Yeah.

You know, 13, 14. He said, because the perspective is that it gives a person on life so powerful that he wants them to have it. So that's final spin. Leadership strategy and tactics field manual. The code, the evaluation of protocol. Discipline equals freedom field manual. Brand new versions out. Way of the Warrior kit.

One, two, three, and four. Mikey and the Dragons. Hackworth, about face. And, of course, extreme ownership and the dichotomy of leadership that I wrote with my brother, Laif Babin. We also have a consulting company. We solve problems through leadership. Go to Eslamfront.com for details on that.

If you want us to come and help your company. If you want to come to one of our live events, the next muster is in Las Vegas, October 28th and 29th. So if you want to come to that, FTX, September 20th and 21st, we're getting close. Might have already passed that. We also have an online training academy called Extreme Ownership, Extreme Ownership Academy, Extreme Ownership.com,

where you can learn leadership and keep your leadership edge sharp. if you want to help service members active and retired, their families, Gold Star families. I talked a little bit about the hyperbaric chamber today, and that's one of the things that Mama Lee's charity organization does is pay for veterans to go into a city and stay for like 30 days

and get 30 days worth of hyperbaric treatments that are so helpful. They're even helpful for these kind of injuries that we talked about today. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to America's mighty warriors.org. And if you want more of my pathological pauses, or you need more of Echo's vacant verbalizations, you can find us on the interwebs on Twitter, on the gram, on Facebook. Echo's at Echo Charles. I am at Jockle Willink. And once again, for Chad 1000X, go to Chad 1000X.com.

If you want to check out Sarah's Instagram, it's Sarah Wilkinson 7. And then Jason and everything that he's doing on Go Ruck. You want to find out where you can get involved in that. It's a really good stuff. Check out at Go Ruck. And thanks once again to Sarah Wilkinson and Jason McCarthy for joining us today. Thanks to both of you for your service and thanks for to both of you for everything that you're doing today to try and help raise awareness and prevent suicide straight up and all the veterans out there You've been through a lot and

You start feeling like maybe you're in that storm Remember that you can get out of that storm ask for help get out of that storm ask for help get Help. There's things that you've been exposed to that can physiologically damage your brain, psychologically damage your brain. That can be fixed. So talk to someone. Get help if you need it. Please. And the same thing goes to police and law enforcement, firefighters out there, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, all first responders. You live in a stressful environment. You get exposed to things. can damage you physiologically and psychologically if you're feeling it talk to

somebody and it's really the same thing for everybody else out there talk to people there's no shame in asking for help you don't have to face the darkness alone hold on ask for help take another step because there is light and however dark it may seen in that storm there is light so take another step and to Chad Wilkinson thank you for your service brother till next time this echo and jaco