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This is Undaunted Life, a man's podcast.
0:51
I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
0:53
Let's get into it.
0:54
All right, guys, today we've got a special guest on the podcast, her name is Sarah Wilkinson.
0:58
She is a Gold Star widow of Navy Seal Chad Wilkinson.
1:01
Chad served honorably for 21 years, including time with the Naval Special Warfare Development
1:04
Group.
1:05
Tragically, her husband Chad died via suicide in 2018.
1:10
Sarah has now dedicated her life to bringing awareness to suicide prevention, specifically
1:14
within the SpecOps community, and part of that is the Chad 1000X Workout of the Day.
1:19
That was named in honor of Chad, so this workout is where you do 1,000 weighted box stepups,
1:24
and it's done on Veterans Day every year, and you can do that with a ruck on and all
1:28
those different things.
1:29
That's actually a workout that her husband would do prior to his death, but I'll just
1:34
say this right from the outset.
1:35
This is unlike an interview that we've ever done here on this show, and it had a lot to
1:40
do with the conversation that Sarah and I had off air before we started recording.
1:45
I, essentially, sometimes in the middle of an interview, I'll just redirect and go down
1:50
this rabbit hole or check out something else over here and not really get to most of my
1:54
questions.
1:55
With this one, I didn't ask a single thing that I planned on asking her, okay?
2:00
She talked about that in the show, like it was just a rough day for, like the day started
2:04
rough and it's just one of those ebbs and flows when you're dealing with the loss of
2:08
someone that you love so deeply, that even though time goes on and you get further away
2:15
from when you lost that person, you're still having to deal with the day to day, and not
2:19
every day is going to be this peachy day where everything works out.
2:23
We just weaved everywhere in this podcast and, you know, it's almost, you know, right
2:28
now it's like, again, I'm almost at a loss for words just because it's like I wanted
2:33
to be as respectful as possible to her in the memory of Chad and everything, but also to
2:37
not belabor any of the points that, you know, other people have made or that she's made
2:41
on her own appearances that she's done.
2:44
And so what's what's probably going to be the best thing for you today listening to this
2:47
episode is if you haven't heard her appearance on Jocko's podcast, so that was a year or two
2:53
ago, when she was on there, she went into a lot of detail on her upbringing on her and
2:58
Chad's relationship on all Chad's deployments with the seals on whenever he started to take
3:03
a term for the worst mentally and then, you know, the day when he he took his life.
3:08
And I also have a link in the show notes that and I'll have a link to her recent appearance
3:12
with Andy Stump because she did the same thing.
3:14
So we went a different route in this podcast, we didn't go through all that detail.
3:18
So if you'd like to have some of that detail, it may provide some color to some of the things
3:22
that were being said today, but today we just we talked about grief.
3:26
We talked about, you know, the wake of suicide, you know, what happens after a suicide and
3:32
after, you know, the the meal train stop and the the prayer meeting stop and all the, you
3:37
know, people doing this in that memorial, like what what happens after them?
3:40
What about her?
3:41
What about the kids?
3:42
Like how do you grieve?
3:43
Well, like how do you take care of yourself while taking care of others while still lamenting
3:48
the loss of somebody that was so important.
3:50
And when we talk about all that, we talk about how even though she's very introverted, she's
3:53
made this her life's mission to not only get awareness out because sometimes awareness
3:57
campaigns are just annoying.
3:58
It's like you're making me aware of something and then not telling me how I can help fix
4:01
it.
4:02
But she is like that's that's something that she's dedicated her entire life to.
4:05
And again, guys, I just, you know, Sarah is an incredible person.
4:11
She's an incredibly strong person, but she's also an incredibly resilient person.
4:15
We talked about spiritual, mental and physical resilience here all the time, that ability
4:18
to bounce back.
4:19
And you know, she maybe doesn't always feel that way that she's very resilient and very
4:22
strong, but she just flat out is.
4:24
And it was inspiring today.
4:27
This is an emotional one.
4:28
Both of us got emotional several times throughout all this, and we did our best to to take care
4:33
of that as much as we could.
4:34
But man, this this one was special.
4:37
And I hope it blesses some people because there are some, some people that are dealing
4:40
with some of the stuff that she's dealt with.
4:43
And you know, when we get into this whole idea of suicide and grieving, obviously, you
4:47
guys know, just a few months ago, grieving, still grieving the loss of my cousin and what
4:51
that's done to that part of the family, our family, but also landed, you know, we talked
4:57
about that a couple of years ago or actually would have been a year ago, you know, a member
5:01
of my own foxhole, you know, he died via suicide just just a year ago, you know, I think
5:07
this, we're recording this like the month of the anniversary of that when that all went
5:12
down.
5:13
And you know, you do all this introspective looking and you're trying to connect all the
5:16
dots going backwards.
5:17
And it's like you can't always do that.
5:19
It's rough sometimes.
5:22
But you know, this interview today will help you kind of look at that maybe see some warning
5:25
signs and see some things that can be done on the front front end, some preventative things
5:29
and the controllables that you can control.
5:33
And so, yeah, again, just a special one, she's a very special woman and this is, this is
5:38
a very, very important conversation for you guys to listen to do not skip this, share
5:43
this one around, share it with people.
5:45
Don't be afraid to ask people if they're struggling.
5:48
Don't be afraid to ask people if they're they're having thoughts of suicide.
5:51
Those are all things that that should come out of a conversation like this.
5:55
So guys, without further ado, let's get into it.
5:57
Sarah Wilkinson.
5:58
Welcome, Don.
5:59
I'm glad you and I had a second to chat before we started the show because I feel like, you
6:08
know, we got to know one another and, you know, we got to kind of share in the lament
6:13
of something that that we've both experienced.
6:16
And so about a year or two ago, or it was a year ago, actually this summer, a good friend
6:22
of mine took his own life.
6:23
He was a police officer, buddy, a mind guy that I trained Jiu Jitsu with.
6:27
And, you know, it took everybody by surprise and this wasn't like a big emotional decision.
6:31
It was like, you know, he, he just planned it out and then it just, it just happened.
6:35
And then here a couple of months ago, a first cousin of mine, police officer was killed
6:38
while on duty.
6:40
And the initial thing that you run into is the tragedy of the loss of life.
6:46
But then it's the wake that everyone kind of forgets about.
6:50
And as I told you off air, everything that I was going to ask you, I just, I'm throwing
6:53
it away.
6:54
All the stuff that I was going to ask you, I'll, I'll link to some other interviews where
6:58
you've gotten into some more detail.
7:00
But let's talk about the wake a little bit, Sarah, because one thing that I mentioned
7:05
and I'm already getting upset, but when my cousin died, all I could think about was his
7:11
wife and his two kids that, you know, all the first that they're going to have, you know,
7:17
this week was the first baseball game without dad coaching and the first, the first daddy
7:21
daughter dancing, all that stuff.
7:24
Everyone forgets about the wake, Sarah.
7:26
And you know, I'm surrounded by a lot of Christians and we love to do our meal trains and we
7:29
love to pray for people and we love to do all that.
7:32
But then we get distracted, you know, by life, you know, 60 days goes by 90 days goes by a
7:36
year goes by three years goes by.
7:39
And you forget that there's still ministering that needs to be done.
7:43
And so I want to spend a lot of time today talking about operator syndrome and the kind
7:47
of the wider issue, but talk to me a little bit about the wake and how, I mean, that can
7:53
be a lonely road.
7:55
It's incredibly lonely.
7:57
Um, yeah, you're going to cry, you're going to make me cry, it's just going to be a fountain
8:04
over here.
8:05
Um, yeah, I woke up today, today's a pretty hard day.
8:07
I don't know why, just his, um, you know, I think of grief and death, like this, it's
8:18
been kind of this analogy where it's this ripple.
8:21
And so for me, my husband died.
8:23
So I am that immediate, closest circle.
8:26
And then you take, you know, more family, they're the next circle and then friends are
8:31
the next ripple and then acquaintances are the next ripple.
8:34
And this is how it affects people.
8:36
I mean, I'm not the only person who was affected by Chad's death.
8:40
It spanned families, extended cousins, friends, neighbors, they all feel it.
8:46
But who continues to feel it daily in daily tasks, drinking my coffee, I don't drink my
8:52
coffee the same are those people who were the most closely affected.
8:58
And it, and at any point in all of our lives, we will be the inner circle to that loss.
9:05
If that makes sense.
9:06
Yeah.
9:07
Right.
9:08
You're, you're, did you say it was your cousin?
9:10
Yep.
9:11
Right.
9:12
If she is in the immediate wake of that circle and you're right.
9:18
There's meal trains and there's friends and they reach out to you and they check on you.
9:22
And I, I've said before, I am incredibly fortunate to have a lot of amazing, amazing people in
9:27
my life.
9:28
That's never lost on me.
9:31
But what naturally happens is in the immediate loss of, of a life, people are around your
9:38
house is filled, meals are made, but then what I've determined is you get about a year,
9:45
you get one year, because everything is new.
9:48
You haven't experienced a Christmas, a Thanksgiving, a birthday, an Easter filled a blank.
9:54
But after a year, people do kind of tend to go away because their life has gone on and
10:00
you can't blame them for that.
10:04
And so their life just kind of continues per norm where your life is completely shattered.
10:10
And I was sitting outside this morning, I just woke up just having a really hard day.
10:16
And I was thinking about where my mind goes.
10:21
And I started to think about in the immediate days after losing Chad, how much it felt like
10:27
a roulette wheel.
10:30
And it's just when you first spin that roulette wheel, it goes so, so fast and the numbers
10:36
are blurred and you can't really see anything.
10:39
And eventually the roulette wheel starts to slow down and you can kind of make out the
10:43
numbers and you see the ball bouncing, but for, in my opinion, for someone in grief,
10:50
the roulette wheel never stops.
10:53
It's like it somehow maintains just enough momentum to keep going around in a circle.
10:59
And that's kind of how your mind goes.
11:03
And you just, you don't really ever get a break from it.
11:08
So as you're saying that, does it feel like in a way, so you mentioned the roulette wheel,
11:14
which has its momentum and continues to spin, but to a degree, it almost feels like your
11:18
life is on perpetual pause.
11:20
Or if you've ever, you know, back in the VHS guys, yeah, to all of you that were born
11:24
after the year 2000, you have no idea what that is, screw you, we don't like you.
11:27
But like whenever you would have a, have a VHS that would skip, so we would do the same
11:33
three seconds over and over and over until the VCR busted or until, you know, the, whatever
11:38
is inside the tape started like coming out of the front of the VCR or something like that.
11:43
Is that kind of what it, what it feels like?
11:45
Because it's like, again, you, I think we all will be the center point of that type of
11:51
pain at some point, but it's like you don't get over it, right?
11:55
Like you can get over an injury, you can get over a breakup or you can get over a loss
11:59
of a job and you can legitimately move on and you might be triggered in the future.
12:04
When something reminds you of that, it could be a smell or a person reminds you of that.
12:08
Oh God.
12:09
And when I used to date that crazy person, or oh man, when I used to work for that stupid
12:12
company, but this is so much deeper than that.
12:16
I think it goes to the soul connection that you have with a person whenever you're in
12:20
a holy matrimony with them, where you make a, you know, a covenant before God that this
12:24
is my, this is my person or if you're a secular humanist, this is my chimp, like this is my
12:29
chosen chimp kind of a thing.
12:31
I mean, I don't really have a question in there, Sarah, but does it kind of feel like
12:33
this, this just track skipping a little bit?
12:37
Oh, I mean, it's, it, it just shifts.
12:42
So grief changes over time, um, you know, keep Kubler, walk, Klimler, Ross, how do you
12:48
say her name and those, those varying degrees of grief and she basically says you cycle
12:53
through them, you know, denial, bargaining, et cetera, I disagree with all that.
12:59
It's not true because all of that can come up at any point.
13:04
So in the immediate loss of Chad, everything is just so raw and most people, um, don't
13:11
necessarily show sadness.
13:13
That's, I feel like a, a scarier emotion for people to express.
13:17
So they express anger and in my life, I would look around and I would see all of the things
13:23
that I would never get to have again.
13:24
I would watch families together in restaurants, dads, riding bicycles with their kids, name
13:30
it.
13:31
And I was so angry and it's, it's as if it just builds in you like this balloon.
13:37
And when you overfill a balloon, what do you do to, to let go of some of that air, right?
13:42
You pinch it and you kind of let it seep out.
13:45
And I found myself at times and I think, I know many of my girlfriends can relate to
13:50
this is that you just kind of lash out from time to time people, sometimes total strangers
13:55
who don't know any different because you've got to let some of the air out of the balloon
13:59
to not make it hurt so bad.
14:03
As time goes on, I feel probably less of that, but I, I see, I still see all the ways that
14:13
he's not in my life and all the things that I'm not going to get to experience with him
14:18
and that's just hard.
14:22
So I want to talk a little bit about the, what you mentioned there where, you know, fear
14:28
and being scared and all that, like it's so much easier to be angry.
14:31
Obviously you don't know this much about me, but you could tell just by my face, I'm a
14:35
ginger.
14:36
So I got anger problems, right?
14:37
So I've, I've had, I've had my fair share of rage, don't worry, I don't punch walls
14:40
or people typically, but that is a much easier emotion because you, it's not a slow seeping
14:46
of air, it is an explosion of air, right?
14:49
Like you, you get to throw that weight down after you lift it, you get to choke that person
14:54
a little harder to get to, you get to run a little harder, like you run until you're literally
14:59
feeling like your lungs are going to burst, you get the release.
15:02
You scream the F word, whatever the thing is, you just, you get it out.
15:06
But for me, like I try to control the other side, the sadness to an extreme degree.
15:12
And it's funny, as you said that, something I realized, like in the wake of my cousin's
15:15
death and of him being killed, like I was so angry, like even with my wife, and she's,
15:22
she's used to the nuts by now.
15:23
We've been together since we were in college, but it's like, I tried to avoid the tears
15:28
as much as possible.
15:30
And you know, I talked about it on my show and that was kind of cathartic and all that,
15:33
but I kept every time I would get upset, I would clinch my fist, right?
15:36
I would go to, I would go to anger.
15:39
And well, I guess for you, Sarah, being this far removed from, from Chad's death, but also
15:44
feeling like it just happened to a degree is what I would assume.
15:48
Did you want people around you to share in your sadness?
15:51
Did you, did you want them to share in your anger?
15:53
Did you want them to counteract you?
15:55
So if you were angry, they needed to be sad to kind of bring you back or vice versa or
15:59
was it just, you know, am I, am I theorizing too much?
16:02
I don't think I ever thought about that.
16:04
Like I'm mad.
16:05
I need everybody mad.
16:06
I'm sad.
16:07
I, I will say that, especially in those first initial days and weeks, the people that were
16:13
around me allowed me to just be like, whatever was happening, they, they allowed it.
16:21
And I'm, I'm grateful for that.
16:24
It was probably maybe the second day or the third day.
16:27
And I was reading through Chad left me a letter and I was reading through the letter.
16:31
He left me and there's just something he says in there that's just heartbreaking and I remember,
16:38
I had remembered there was a hammer in the hallway or somewhere and I went and grabbed
16:42
the hammer and I just started beating my bathroom door.
16:46
I mean, just obliterating it and my girlfriend came in.
16:49
I think about how did she do this?
16:51
It must have been a drone.
16:52
I mean, she caught the hammer on the backswing and I just collapsed to the floor and I cried
16:58
and they let me cry and I beat that that door quite a few times and it stayed that way for
17:03
close to a year.
17:05
And my other girlfriend who was there as well made plans for a, you know, home repair guy
17:11
and bought a door and had it replaced and my daughter had said, you really shouldn't
17:15
replace that door.
17:17
You should just leave it because she kind of knew it wasn't done.
17:20
Well, sure enough, they replaced the door and a while later, I beat it down again.
17:25
Um, thankfully I don't beat doors.
17:28
Can't say never, but I haven't beat any more doors.
17:31
I've definitely broken stuff.
17:33
That was kind of my anger was to break things.
17:37
But I think what I've come to understand now is that, and I'm sure you've read those
17:44
analogies that grief is like a wave, right?
17:47
Sure.
17:48
And at the beginning, they just like capsized over you and then they come without warning.
17:53
And that's how it is.
17:54
And you have to just, you really just have to allow the emotion to be as much as it sucks.
18:01
Yeah, certainly as much as it sucks.
18:05
But I would, I would think that a lot of people try to find some semblance of stasis, some
18:11
semblance of controlling the controllables, controlling enough of the controllables to
18:16
where you can, you can operate to where you could do silly things like going to the grocery
18:21
store or picking a kid up or, you know, being sad with them about something that seems really
18:26
stupid, right?
18:27
I mean, I'm sure, you know, you've got girlfriends or, or people in your life that complain about
18:31
these petty things, and you just want to be like, yes, stupid idiot, like, what are you
18:35
talking about?
18:36
Like, this is so dumb.
18:37
So I guess maybe talk to me a little bit about that because everyone should would get
18:41
a lot more out of life if they just assumed everyone around them was stupid.
18:45
And it's like that you're going to have more empathy for those people.
18:47
If you think, hey, they don't recognize that what they're doing and saying right now is
18:51
insanely offensive or stupid or shortsighted.
18:54
But I guess for you kind of being steeped in this and marinated in it for a few years,
18:59
have you found some, some outlets that kind of keep you in some semblance of stasis while
19:05
giving you the ability to go outside of that stasis whenever you need to?
19:11
Uh, I mean, you name it, I've done it in terms of trying to heal myself.
19:19
Um, literally, you name it, I've done it, um, I'm someone who needs a lot of downtime and
19:27
a lot of private, just alone time, um, I don't do well being around lots of people for too
19:34
long.
19:35
Um, so I kind of recharge that way.
19:37
I've talked before I ride my skateboard a lot that has proven to be very therapeutic for
19:42
me when, when my mind is on that, you know, spinning roulette wheel, it's just kind of
19:46
like a timeout.
19:47
Um, I obviously spend time with, with close friends, but for me, uh, I guess, I'm not
19:57
doing a good job explaining this.
19:58
I know that my kind of go to is, is sort of like to run away or escape.
20:02
So I've spent a lot of time the last three years traveling and just leaving town, getting
20:08
out of town.
20:10
Um, and I've talked at length about this.
20:12
I, I live, I still live where we lived in the same town, Virginia Beach and I love Virginia
20:18
Beach, but as, um, soothing and comforting it can be, it's equally as painful.
20:27
It's, it's like it's this duplicity of emotion and, and I just got back into town the other
20:32
day and it's nice to be sitting in my house, but at the same time, I wonder if that's why
20:37
I'm so sad.
20:38
It hurts.
20:39
It hurts to be here.
20:42
So, uh, I can certainly understand that it sounds macabre to other people, but I don't
20:47
think it will be to you.
20:49
Like my wife and I have talked quite a bit about, you know, what would happen if one
20:52
of us, you know, didn't come home one day and, you know, we've got ourselves squared away
20:57
financially.
20:58
We have ourselves squared away, like emotionally, like I told her, like, you're my one shot.
21:02
I'm not going to get any better.
21:03
I'm not, you know, I'm not going to get remarried all that.
21:05
Like we've had those, those, those conversations about death and all those things and we both
21:09
agree that, you know, for us, like we wouldn't be able to stay in the same house.
21:13
Like we wouldn't be able to do some of the same things like we would try to hit a hard
21:16
reset.
21:17
It's easy to say that on this side of it, as opposed to experiencing it on the back
21:21
end.
21:22
And you know, maybe you need that friction.
21:23
You need that duplicity to a degree, but, but you said something that that caught me
21:29
that whenever you said you've tried everything to try and, you know, to fix yourself, to
21:35
try and heal, um, at the risk of being bold, like, I don't think that's possible, Sarah.
21:43
And I don't mean for you.
21:45
I mean, this, it's like losing a child, like when you lose a spouse, like the connection
21:50
is so unbelievably deep.
21:52
It's not like the roots of a tree that's been moved that can be repaired with a lot
21:56
of TLC.
21:58
The only thing that I've ever seen in my entire life, Sarah, and that is with people that
22:02
have experienced the loss of children, the loss of spouses, the loss of just unfathomable
22:08
things that they've seen in evil is turning to Christ and saying, I can't do any of this.
22:13
I can't, you know, I hooked my ponytail to a tree and said, Oh, and that didn't work.
22:18
You know, I ran, I trained for a triathlon.
22:21
That didn't work.
22:22
I kept traveling.
22:23
You know what I mean?
22:24
And like, and that didn't work, but it's like the only way that they were able able to
22:28
get rest was by throwing their hands up and saying, not me anymore, not me anymore.
22:34
Like, and again, we're going to have a bunch of times today where there's not a question.
22:38
I'm just going to stop talking and let you talk.
22:40
This is one of those times.
22:41
So go.
22:42
I mean, I, and maybe I should rephrase that.
22:46
I don't know.
22:47
I didn't mean heal as in the, as in it's an end point.
22:54
I just meant more, how do I process this so that I'm strong enough to carry it?
23:00
Okay.
23:01
And that has looked different too over the last, I'm coming up on four years.
23:06
The way that I was, and I talked about this with some other widows recently about how
23:10
we were in the first year versus the second year versus the third year.
23:16
And you're right.
23:17
I mean, the loss is always with us.
23:18
Chad, I will carry Chad till the day I die.
23:22
The way I carry him is different.
23:25
And sometimes maybe that's where the conflict lies is my love is always there.
23:32
My grief is always there, but my life is also moving forward.
23:36
So, so I said, I still live in Virginia Beach.
23:38
I did move homes and one of the things that he and I talked about is that if you ever
23:42
died to not make any big decisions for one year.
23:44
So I stayed in our home, I stayed in our home for actually two years so my children could
23:49
finish school and have some sort of normalcy.
23:53
But I have moved homes, but at the same time, so many other things in my life have gone forward.
23:58
You know, I just celebrated another birthday without him.
24:02
I've experienced holidays.
24:04
My daughter has graduated and moved to California.
24:06
My son has graduated and gone off to college.
24:10
And so as my life evolves, moving forward and the love and the grief is still there,
24:18
I think it's this constant kind of check in of like checks and balances of how you feel
24:24
about him and your loss and your love and what that looks like with each phase.
24:29
Do you feel guilty that your life is moving forward?
24:35
I don't think guilty, if you would have asked me a couple of years ago, yeah, you know,
24:40
you just kind of want time to stand still.
24:45
I don't think guilty, but just not what I thought my life would be, right?
24:55
Like you, you met your wife in college, I met Chad when I was 13.
25:00
So it's, I'm not, I don't feel guilty about my life moving forward.
25:08
If anything, I just feel sad, still watching.
25:12
We have a lot of friends right now that are all a breaching on retirement.
25:16
I've been invited to many retirement parties.
25:19
And while I am happy for them and, you know, I want to express gratitude that they get
25:27
to go on to this next chapter in their life.
25:30
I cannot attend retirement parties.
25:32
I've kind of allowed myself that one grace that it's just, that's like a non-negotiable.
25:39
I didn't get to do that.
25:40
Chad didn't get to do that.
25:42
I can't, I just can't celebrate that.
25:45
It doesn't mean I'm not happy for them.
25:48
And so the same, you know, taking my son to college and being like a single parent there,
25:54
dropping him off and just, those things are hard.
25:59
So one thing that's been very clear in terms of my perception, watching you on, on other
26:06
people's shows and, and seeing some of your public appearances following you on social
26:10
media and again, social media is the biggest trick of all time because you're not showing
26:14
any of the times that you wiped out on that skateboard.
26:16
You know, and I know like if it was that have some good stories though.
26:21
Okay.
26:22
We're going to get into that here in just a second, but it's like, you know what you
26:24
can do.
26:25
You can also gloss up your life significantly on social media.
26:30
But for you as a strong single woman or a strong widow, however, it's most appropriate
26:37
to couch it, you are irrevocably tied to Chad almost in his personhood.
26:43
One thing that was very interesting.
26:44
I forget exactly which interview may have been with Jaco, but you just talked about how,
26:49
you know, as Chad breeds, you breed and, and I don't mean that like in the literal sense,
26:54
I mean, that almost ethereal sense like whatever Chad went, you went and you know, and when
26:59
Chad was gone, you were, you were thinking about how you could be there, even when y'all
27:03
were broken up because I think I'll broke up two or three times before you finally tied
27:06
the knot.
27:07
Like it was a circuitous route.
27:08
It wasn't love at first sight got married when you turned 18 and then, you know, everything
27:11
was peaches and cream.
27:13
And when, when you lose that, you don't also at the same time lose your responsibility
27:19
to yourself and to your children.
27:21
And so perhaps it would be appropriate to move on to discussing what, what you do with
27:26
children because your, your wife first, but then you're also mama bear second and mama
27:32
bear needs to nurture, but mama bear also has to be aggressive and be there to fight
27:35
for kids, especially when, you know, Papa bear is not going to be around anymore.
27:40
So and again, we're still in the early stages, but even in those early days, what did it
27:45
look like for your household in terms of how you're able to prop yourself up while also
27:51
supporting your kids and telling them, Hey, it's going to be okay, even if maybe you don't
27:55
believe it at the time.
27:57
Yeah, this is kind of a part of the story that people, it's, it's not awesome.
28:03
So my kids weren't that young.
28:06
My son was 14 and my daughter was 17 when he died.
28:09
And so I said before, that's such a pivotal age for kids, even if they have both parents
28:15
or whatever's happening in their life, 14 and 17 is just a hard time for kids.
28:21
And in a lot of ways, I wish I would have done better in, in that early loss.
28:28
I again, I had amazing support, but I'm sure that if my kids were, were going to talk about
28:36
it, which I'm sure they won't, but I was a little checked out because I was just so deep
28:44
in it.
28:45
And of course, you know, my daughter, you know, had a boyfriend at the time and I think was
28:51
just kind of focused on that in high school.
28:53
And my son really kind of threw himself into his friends and his friend group, because
28:58
when you start to read about children in grief, it talks about how they more or less compartmentalize.
29:05
I can say for my son, I'm not sure it really hit him hard until this past year, his senior
29:11
year, I think, is when he really allowed himself to, to feel and express to me the
29:17
loss of his dad.
29:20
But with my children and the way that I choose to raise them, we are very, we are very open
29:25
with each other.
29:27
There's kind of nothing really is off the table.
29:31
And I allowed that from them to and, and we, we each have all grieved this very differently.
29:37
I clearly talk about it publicly because I feel that's a mission to uphold to, to keep
29:43
others going down this path.
29:46
My daughter's pretty private.
29:49
She took her a long time to really talk about her dad much.
29:53
And my son too, you know, he keeps it close to his heart.
29:59
I think what's most important when talking to children is making sure that they know
30:05
that however they feel is okay, and just like I've talked about, those feelings are probably
30:10
going to change, wax and wane with time, and that's okay too.
30:17
And not try to squash it or minimize it, I think especially with death and what I would
30:22
call an out of timeline death, meaning Chad wasn't supposed to die at 43.
30:29
I think people try to minimize that.
30:33
And you can say, no, this really, this really fricking sucks.
30:36
This is terrible.
30:39
Being open.
30:40
I don't know if that helps answer that question.
30:42
No, it absolutely does.
30:44
And you know, it's always hard when you broach the kids subject because it's like, hey, why
30:48
are you bringing them into this?
30:49
But obviously there are people listening to the show right now that are in a similar
30:53
circumstance to you are maybe one person removed from a similar circumstance.
30:57
So you know, and you may not have a whole lot to add here, but I think what happens when
31:03
something like this happens when there's a tragic loss, you know, people immediately
31:07
go into, Hey, let me know if there's anything I can do for you mode, which I personally hate
31:11
that because what you've done is you've placed more burden onto the shoulders of that person,
31:17
because now they have to come up with something for you to do so that you feel better.
31:22
It's like there's a difference between, Hey, I'll be there for you, brother, friends and
31:27
Hey, I'm on my way, friends.
31:29
I tell the story all the time when my son was six weeks old, we had to rush to the hospital
31:32
in the middle of the night for him to have what we thought was going to be emergency surgery
31:36
at six weeks old first kid.
31:38
And one of my buddies, Adam, he didn't text me say, Hey, buddy, I'm praying for you, even
31:43
though we had a lot of prayer and that was great.
31:45
He didn't say, Hey, buddy, you know, let me know if there's anything I can do for you.
31:48
He texted me and said, I'm on my way to your house to take care of the dogs.
31:53
He had never been around my dogs.
31:55
He doesn't know my dogs.
31:56
He doesn't know anything about him.
31:57
He just knows that they're not vicious.
31:58
And so he's like, I'm on my way to your house to care for the dogs.
32:01
Just let me know how to get in that you know, I don't need anything else.
32:05
And you know, that's the difference between a, Hey, is there anything I can do for you?
32:10
Hey, can I pray for you?
32:11
And I'm on my way.
32:13
Let me know how to get in and then leave me alone.
32:16
We got this.
32:17
Right?
32:18
I've ran out with one kid in the middle of the night and a neighbor came over for the
32:21
other kid because they were sleeping and they were just ready.
32:24
So I guess what would your advice be to people that desperately and fervently and honestly
32:31
want to give a ministering to a family like yours that's going through that?
32:37
What are the things they should avoid doing and saying?
32:40
What are the things that they should do and say?
32:42
I know it's contextual to every family and all that and we'll we'll speak in broad strokes.
32:46
But I think that would really be helpful for people because those well-meaning people
32:49
sometimes stick their foot in their mouth and you know, they don't mean to.
32:53
Oh, this could be an entire discussion in itself.
32:56
Well, we got time.
32:57
Let's get in.
32:58
Um, and I talked about this recently, it's across the board for people who who die, especially
33:05
unexpectedly, whether it's, you know, a tragic car accident or suicide or whatever.
33:12
People's natural reaction is to fill that awkward void with some sort of like platitude.
33:18
No way.
33:19
Yeah.
33:20
Um, you're so strong, um, at least he didn't suffer he's he or she's in a better place.
33:26
I, you know, you, we could list a lot of these.
33:29
Yeah.
33:30
I want everyone to just stop that and I can understand, and who knows what I would have
33:33
said prior to losing chat.
33:35
I could have very well said the same thing.
33:36
I mean, you do learn a lot about life in hindsight.
33:39
So I think it's okay to just sit with the person almost in the awkward silence and say
33:47
something to the effect like, I'm really sorry you're going through this.
33:51
You know, I'm expressing it that way is better than trying to fill some kind of fake empty
33:58
line.
34:00
People often said to me, how are you doing?
34:02
I just say, how are you doing?
34:05
And what are you supposed to say to that?
34:07
I mean, I would find myself like, especially in the blurry days, like I didn't even know
34:11
how I was doing.
34:12
I mean, I would find myself going, I don't know how I'm doing.
34:16
And I remember expressing this to a girlfriend.
34:19
And I said, I feel like people should say, how are you doing today?
34:23
Because when you just add that one word today, and this goes for people that are living too,
34:28
because in our world, there's so much struggle with, with, with mental health and depression
34:33
and et cetera, that people are really in a tough spot, that if we would just change the
34:37
language to how are you doing today?
34:40
It gives people the freedom to say, just as I said to you when we got on today before
34:46
you started recording, I'm having a really bad day.
34:50
Give me the freedom to have a bad day.
34:53
Maybe tomorrow won't be a bad day.
34:54
It doesn't mean that my whole entire life is bad.
34:57
It just means in this moment, I'm really struggling.
35:00
Or you know what, I'm having a really good day because X, Y, and Z happened.
35:06
And as far as people not knowing what to do, again, I experience the same.
35:12
I can't even express how much love and grace and support I've been given in the last few
35:18
years, a ton.
35:20
I've also been encountered with some very mean, rude and hurtful comments, not near
35:25
as many, but they're just out there.
35:29
And so I think it is doing exactly what your friend did.
35:33
It's just showing up.
35:36
And in some reason death creates this bubble where people are like, I don't want to overstep.
35:41
I don't want to hurt someone's feelings.
35:43
And maybe in the moment they might be using your example, which I don't think was the
35:47
case.
35:48
You might be like, why are you going to my house?
35:49
Don't go in my house because they're in this whirlwind of a traumatic situation.
35:56
But if they think that then, there's a good chance on hindsight, maybe it's a week, a
36:00
month, maybe it's 10 years down the road.
36:01
They're going to remember, gosh, when my child was sick, that guy came to my house and took
36:05
care of my dogs.
36:06
That was pretty, that was incredibly kind.
36:10
And that's what's been, I've had people, you know, bring me a girlfriend just a couple
36:15
weeks ago, made this dessert for me and brought it to my porch.
36:21
She didn't tell me.
36:22
She didn't bother me.
36:24
She just sent me a text later and said, hey, I made this sweet dessert.
36:28
I really thought you would enjoy some.
36:29
So I packaged it up and I left it on your porch.
36:32
It's like, I didn't ask, she didn't know what kind of day I was having, but it was incredibly
36:37
appreciated.
36:38
So I was saying, I was thinking about this too this morning, knowing that we were going
36:44
to talk and where my headspace was of, of I think for some reason today, people steer
36:50
away from saying or doing the kind thing because they don't want to necessarily overstep.
36:57
And I would like to think that most people's words and efforts are usually more kinder
37:02
than hurtful.
37:03
So do it.
37:06
I would say as well, like there is beauty and subtlety and some people do things for people
37:13
so that they can be recognized, right?
37:16
They will, they will do the dessert, they will ring the doorbell and they want to hear you
37:20
say thank you.
37:21
They may not be aware of that, but they want to hear that.
37:25
I remember and I shared this on my show when I went to my cousin's house after, you know,
37:30
we had lost her, her husband, I went there the very next day and I walked in the door
37:37
with a baseball glove and a ball because I knew their son liked that and we were just
37:43
going to go play catch, but as soon as I locked eyes with my cousin, she just came and cried
37:48
on me.
37:49
And that's fine.
37:50
And like, I didn't say anything, I didn't quote scripture.
37:53
I didn't like, you know, tell her all these grand things that some, you know, a random
37:57
dude said that was smart a few hundred years ago, I just let her do that and let her do
38:01
whatever she needs to do.
38:02
But before I left, a couple interesting things happen.
38:05
I did pull her aside and I did, I did show her some scripture and I didn't say something
38:10
silly that had no foundation, like, you know, you're stronger than you think and it'll
38:15
all be okay in any of those platitudes that, you know, any of you guys had in your mind
38:18
whenever Sarah was talking, I just said, you have a unique opportunity to show your kids
38:24
strength that they will never forget that they've never seen before.
38:29
And at the funeral, she spoke at the funeral, which I still can't wrap my head around how
38:36
she did that.
38:38
And as she walked back to her seat, she just ran her hand along the side of the casket
38:43
subtle.
38:44
There's American flag draped on it.
38:45
And it's like, but her kids saw that they're going to remember that.
38:49
But then as I was leaving that day, Sarah, like leaving the house, there were like eight
38:53
people in their flower beds, just just taking care of the mulch and, you know, weed eating
38:59
and, you know, pulling some weeds and doing some things like that.
39:02
They didn't ask to show up.
39:03
They just showed up.
39:04
And I think that's, that's very important for people because again, you never know what
39:09
you're going to spark in somebody later and you're exactly right.
39:12
You may think about that down the road and it just, it brings you a little sense of happiness
39:17
in that moment.
39:18
Um, and so I think that that's, that's deeply helpful.
39:22
One thing that I know that you do a lot and the reason why you carry, carry this burden
39:26
as strongly as you do, even though you're more introverted and would probably prefer
39:30
or not, um, is because of the signs that you saw in Chad, uh, before, you know, he died
39:38
and not that you didn't do anything, but you didn't know what to do with the signs that
39:43
you were seeing.
39:44
And so I generally have a problem with awareness campaigns.
39:47
It's like, why are you making them be aware of this?
39:50
Can you tell me what I need to do?
39:51
Like you're making me aware about the plight of puppies in, you know, uh, I don't know,
39:56
Tennessee, but it's like, what can I send you money so we can save the puppies?
39:59
Like tell me what I can do.
40:01
But talk to me a little bit about the signs that you saw, because this is an awareness
40:06
that people think, Oh, well, maybe that's just a Navy Seal thing or that's a mental health
40:10
thing and we can leave it in the ethereal and the nonspecific and we don't really have
40:13
to deal with it.
40:15
Um, but there were certainly things that could have been done in things in, in every situation
40:21
where we see something like this, like it wasn't Chad at the end, right?
40:27
It simply wasn't, it was something else to a degree, but, but go ahead and talk a little
40:30
bit about all that.
40:31
Yeah.
40:32
Um, obviously it was all recognized in hindsight.
40:36
Again, I mean, I could look back and go, okay, that was weird.
40:39
That was weird.
40:40
Um, and that's what's interesting about the brain is that it is very complex.
40:46
So we can't sit here and say, this is what you need to do.
40:50
X, Y and Z and this will heal your brain.
40:52
We're not there yet.
40:53
Um, but it is about being aware of signs and symptoms and so like I've said, he, he was
40:59
just, he was a very quiet guy, always quiet, always pretty reserved.
41:04
Uh, wasn't like the life of the party always going to be out.
41:08
It just wasn't him.
41:09
Um, but he definitely got more reserved, more quiet, um, you know, his calm demeanor became
41:19
short fused.
41:20
Um, he, he slept terribly.
41:25
I mean, I've said that till I'm blue in the face.
41:28
I mean, and that had been going on for quite, quite a while, like well over a year, year
41:32
and a half, just really, really bad sleep.
41:35
Um, and like many symptoms you hear about PTSD, PTSD, TBIs, yes, his eyes were super
41:43
sensitive.
41:44
He was sensitive to noise.
41:46
He was sensitive to light.
41:47
Um, he did get headaches, uh, pretty often.
41:52
And I, I've told this story I think once before, but, um, we had a running joke over who could
41:58
make better pancakes.
41:59
It was me, but, um, it was actually probably him.
42:03
But I remember a couple of times in the morning making breakfast and he would kind of lose
42:07
his balance and he would kind of double step and fall over maybe twice.
42:13
I remember this.
42:14
And he would go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, and just kind of play it off as a joke.
42:19
But, uh, I look back now and I think, well, that, that might have been something too.
42:24
I mean, why, why would you lose your balance?
42:27
You know, he's not 80.
42:28
Um, and he, he was super hypervigilant as again.
42:36
You can easily say, well, all those guys are, right?
42:38
I could, we could, you could get 10 wives on here and they're all probably going to say
42:42
that about, about operators, but especially guys with a naval special warfare, um, but
42:50
it definitely became extreme.
42:52
I would say maybe a little bit of paranoia set in and, um, he just stopped smiling.
43:01
So, which I didn't really noticed at the time because he was also in the transition
43:06
of his career doing some different things.
43:09
I think it was a little stressful for him.
43:11
And so that's what I just always chalked it up to.
43:14
Um, and so it's just important for me to share those things because if I could share with
43:23
you the amount of messages that have inundated my email and or social media platforms from
43:31
people sharing their personal stories to extend beyond military, but especially our police
43:36
officers and firefighters and just first responders as a whole, um, it's astounding.
43:45
And they say, I have these symptoms.
43:47
Do you know, do you think I'm okay and one, I'm not a medical professional.
43:51
I'm not a researcher.
43:53
I'm just a wife who has lived it.
43:55
And the only thing I can share is my own personal story with the symptoms I saw.
44:03
And so we, you know, you hear suicide mentioned as the silent epidemic or with our veterans,
44:09
you'll hear referred to as invisible wounds of war.
44:14
And that's what's the scariest part about it is it is in a lot of ways invisible and
44:20
it's silent and it just creeps in your house and you may never notice.
44:26
So with that in mind, you mentioned obviously you can't connect the dots looking forward.
44:30
You can only connect them looking backwards.
44:32
Obviously that's age old wisdom, but even though we're still in the very elementary stages,
44:38
I feel this, this chronological snobbery all the time as just a side note, where people
44:42
feel like, Oh, it's 2022.
44:44
We've arrived.
44:45
We know how to fix everything.
44:46
Like every fix comes in, you know, little orange bottle with a white top or, you know,
44:50
some, some new agey thing that you can do down somewhere down in Central America.
44:55
And then all of a sudden your life is fixed.
44:57
It's just, it's a silly thing for us to think about because we basically don't even know
45:00
how the brain functions in, in large part, but looking back as you're able to connect
45:07
the dots, if you could go back, what, what could be those things that, that could have
45:16
been done.
45:17
And I say that specifically to your situation, but also to the people listening to this that
45:22
are like, Oh my gosh, I'm seeing some of those signs.
45:26
What are those things that can be done?
45:27
Like, and everyone's a little different because what if someone's super extrovert and they
45:30
become even more extroverted, obviously that's contextual to them.
45:33
But for, for Sarah and Chad, what, what would you have done differently?
45:37
But also what can other people do that are seeing signs like this and to be clear guys,
45:42
this doesn't always lead to the same thing, right?
45:44
This doesn't always lead to people hurting themselves or others or any of that.
45:48
Like there's so much nuance here and I hate even using that word, but I would just like
45:52
to hear from you.
45:53
Like what are some of those helpful things that you could give to folks?
45:56
Yeah.
45:57
So, so I'm going to kind of answer that backwards and say, and in terms of, so, so Chad, we donated
46:05
his brain to science and, and he had what's called interface astroglyal scarring.
46:10
So some of your listeners might have heard of CTE chronic traumatic encephalopathy, which
46:15
comes from, you know, that, that physical hit, whether it's boxing, NFL, our, our military
46:22
experience as CTE as well, interface astroglyal scarring comes more or less from blast waves
46:28
that they're exposed to.
46:29
So breaching doors, shooting guns, et cetera.
46:33
So we definitely had a physical wound on his brain.
46:37
There are various treatments out there, whether it's the ganglion block, which Chad had and
46:43
he was still gone.
46:45
There's Mert, which is essentially kind of magnets on the brain.
46:49
I'm going to simplify that.
46:51
There is plant medicine research.
46:54
And then beyond that, there is what I call experiential therapies, which you can go online
46:59
and find, you can shoot guns, ride horses, go sailing, right?
47:03
All that.
47:04
Great.
47:05
That's 16% effective, I believe, are the numbers right now.
47:08
So it might alleviate the signs and symptoms of PTS or PTSD, but it's not going to actually
47:14
heal the brain.
47:15
So with that all being said, and it's up to you to, if you're there, to kind of find
47:22
the path of treatment that might work.
47:27
Now the front part of your question is, if I was with Chad and I could try to help him,
47:34
assuming that he shared with me that he was struggling and he didn't, I think it really
47:39
comes down to basically triaging.
47:42
And you said it.
47:43
The brain is really complex and there's so much that we know, but there's so much that
47:48
we don't know.
47:49
And to that effect, how our brains are wired, it also has to take an account kind of what
47:55
we've experienced in our life from birth up until you and I sitting here right now, which
48:00
only adds to its complexity.
48:04
But I think of triaging, because I've had some other wives say this to me, like, well,
48:08
my husband is sensitive to light and my husband doesn't like loud noises and my husband sleeps
48:12
terribly.
48:14
And I guess my advice to myself or anybody else would be triaging the most profound signs
48:23
and symptoms and maybe just try to focus on the most profound that you feel like you
48:30
can alleviate.
48:31
For example, his sleep.
48:33
We did what we could.
48:35
He also had sleep apnea, which many of the guys do have, which you have to ask yourself,
48:40
why does a 40 year old sleep with a CPAP machine?
48:46
But creating an environment, you know, whether you hear the word sleep hygiene, and he did.
48:53
He did do a lot of things.
48:55
He drank the Rick parsley, drink every night, he did a lot of things to try to improve his
49:05
sleep with not much luck.
49:07
So my point being is, as a spouse, what could I have done who may be improved that environment
49:13
for him?
49:14
Maybe I think nutrition is pretty paramount to our overall health, physical and mental.
49:19
Maybe what could I have done to prioritize that for him so that he could be on a more
49:25
regulated, regimented, you know, kind of Whole Foods nutrition?
49:32
What could I have done to minimize the noise in our house?
49:35
Maybe have two dogs who aren't here right now, thankfully, but and they're great, but
49:40
man, they bark a lot, a lot.
49:43
And I never really noticed it because obviously it wasn't kind of a triggering event for me,
49:49
but any time they barked, I mean, he went through the roof.
49:55
So you know, that's my answer is as a, I always say, spouse or first responder, not
50:03
everyone's married, who's the person in your life?
50:06
When they see signs and symptoms, can you maybe have an honest conversation with each
50:11
other and really talk openly about what is hard for you, the person struggling and ways
50:18
in which we can minimize that stress on your mind and body?
50:23
I mean, that's the only thing I can think of as a starting point.
50:26
Yeah, I mean, and again, just to echo that, it is a starting point.
50:29
Like obviously you're not, you're not prescribing anything to people.
50:33
This is just to get things going.
50:36
But in preparation for this interview and for this, for this chat with you Sarah, there
50:40
are two things that I noticed that stuck out like a sore thumb to me, at least in your
50:45
other interviews or even things that you've written or public appearances is like you,
50:51
you love Chad, like he's still here.
50:55
You talk about him like a giggly little girl, like, you know, you almost revert back to
51:00
your 13 year old self when you talk about him and like you can feel that, that, that,
51:06
not just love because there's a lot of people that love somebody, but then they don't like
51:10
them.
51:11
You know what I mean?
51:12
Like you loved him.
51:13
You liked him.
51:14
You were interested in him and not just because he was a cute kid in class, but because he
51:18
was Chad and you were Sarah and you were Chad and Sarah and like, that's kind of how it
51:22
went.
51:23
So that's the first thing.
51:24
The second thing is almost like this deep level of lament that he didn't and you just
51:28
mentioned it in your last answer that he didn't tell you that he was struggling.
51:32
Yeah.
51:33
And again, you can't do much with that because you can only control you.
51:38
You can only control the controllables, but he was an alpha and then he got into a community
51:44
of alphas and then ascended to the upper echelon of the community of alphas and in those communities,
51:52
you just deal with it, right?
51:54
Like you don't get through buds and that's not just hell week.
51:56
You don't get through the six months of buds.
51:58
You don't get through all the other workups.
52:00
You don't get through the deployments.
52:01
You don't get through green team screening.
52:02
You don't get through any of that.
52:04
If you're really sitting there going, gosh, my toe just kind of hurts today.
52:08
I really wish I didn't have to run with this boat on my head.
52:10
Like like those things don't don't happen.
52:12
You just get over it.
52:14
You don't tell people you're struggling.
52:15
You just deal with it.
52:17
So I don't necessarily need you to talk about the first thing because you know, we get it.
52:21
Like you you're in love with him and you will be and that's just how it is.
52:25
But on the second part, like it's almost like you want to feel some responsibility, but
52:31
you also intellectually know that it's it's not your fault that he didn't come to you and
52:36
tell you like you couldn't have known.
52:39
But walk me through that because I'm sure you've had your ups and downs just with that feeling
52:43
responsible and then feeling like you were out of control and you know, everything in
52:47
between.
52:48
Yeah, I again, I've talked about this before, but for maybe your listeners so logically
52:57
I can sit here and tell you his brain was sick.
53:00
He had changed.
53:01
He wasn't the same.
53:02
There was more at play right that took his life.
53:07
But what I also know is that the unconscious doesn't care about facts.
53:13
And so when you know, I'm in this not just from a logical, you know, looking at the brain
53:20
kind of neuroscientists perspective that they have, I'm emotionally attached to this.
53:26
And you mentioned earlier about taking a vow.
53:29
And when you take a vow to marry someone in sickness and in health.
53:35
There are many sicknesses that when someone dies, that's excusable because how could you
53:40
have have stopped it, you know, cancer or heart disease.
53:48
But with a suicide and with a mental battle and someone kind of struggling day in and
53:54
day out for him to not hold that thought for a second.
54:02
And then for him to be a Navy Seal, which, you know, yeah, he was tough.
54:05
He did amazing things, he was type A overachiever, things that I loved about him.
54:11
I would imagine there were many times in his job, he didn't feel safe and he's on high
54:17
alert, right?
54:18
And he's deployed and you just never know and in that constant cycle.
54:23
And for him to come home to me, I felt safe.
54:29
I felt the safest when I was with Chad always.
54:33
So my understanding is wouldn't I also make him feel safe or he could be completely himself?
54:40
I was going to make him feel safe.
54:43
And the safest place to marry people I think can be is also the bed that you share together.
54:50
Where you sleep side by side.
54:52
And so it's just incredibly painful to me that he didn't share a struggle with me, which
55:00
makes me wonder, did I not make him feel safe enough to share that?
55:05
And that when he did take his life, he got up out of our bed and walked away in the middle
55:10
of the night.
55:12
And so it's twofold and I'm going to do better at not crying when I talk about it, but that's
55:19
incredibly painful.
55:25
That's incredibly painful because there was nothing I didn't tell him.
55:30
And I'm going to do it.
55:36
I think that your listeners or anything you listen to me on, you will understand the way
55:40
I love him.
55:43
So there's nothing that he could have told me that would have changed that.
55:54
And so I just, I don't know why he didn't tell me.
56:00
Yeah, I think it's important to note in all of this era is that there are people that
56:10
go through what you've gone through that they, they navel gaze for the rest of their lives.
56:15
Or they lash out in ways that hurt themselves and hurt other people.
56:19
And that becomes the defining thing about them is, yeah, you know, old Tom, you know,
56:26
he lost his wife, you know, 20 years ago, and he's just been shut in curmudgeon, hermit,
56:30
the rest of the time, like they're defined by that horrible, horrific thing, right?
56:36
But what you've done and against your own wiring, you know, as a person, not wanting
56:41
to go out there and be the one blowing the trumpet, you'd rather be the one behind the
56:45
scenes listening to it.
56:47
You've gotten the story out about what happened as painful and as much as it sucks.
56:52
And you've turned it into something that other people can attach themselves to for their
56:56
own journey, for their own mental health journey, for their own improvement.
57:01
So I'd like you to talk a little bit about the things that you're doing now from an advocacy
57:05
standpoint, from an awareness standpoint.
57:08
And then other things, obviously, you know, perhaps in there, we can talk about Chad 1000
57:12
X will certainly talk about that before we get you out of here, but talk to me about
57:15
what's happening now because I mean, in all honesty, and I tried to affirm you before
57:19
you even got on here, like you're not doing the normal thing.
57:23
And that's awesome because the normal thing would be to do all this that you're going
57:27
through outside of the public eye.
57:30
You can feel that safety from from all the eyeballs and all the attention, but there's
57:34
something really important that you want to make sure it gets out there.
57:38
And you don't want what happened to you and your family to happen to other families or
57:42
to just be like, well, that's a thing that happened and there's nothing we can do about
57:45
it.
57:46
So, so talk about all the things that you're working on now.
57:48
Yeah, I think I didn't I didn't set out to be this public speaker and person who goes
57:58
on a bunch of podcasts to share my personal story.
58:00
If anything, it goes completely against the way Chad and I lived our lives the last 20
58:05
years, but it's happened organically.
58:10
And I'm okay with it, at least for now, for the moment, and it really kind of stems back
58:14
to that love, like I loved him so much and and you look out into the world at the billions
58:19
of people and you think, you know, everybody is somebody's person, it's somebody's person.
58:28
And I don't want the next person to lose the most important person in their life.
58:34
And so just trying to use our story and there are so many of us as the statistic over 7,000
58:41
have been killed overseas since 9/11 over 30,000 have died by suicide.
58:48
That's a staggering statistic.
58:49
And so it's terrifying.
58:51
I do a lot of public speaking to various veteran groups or within other nonprofits.
58:58
I've also partnered with Go Rock, as you've mentioned, and we did start a workout in Chad's
59:02
name.
59:03
It's called Chad 1000 X and Chad was a, as I like to say, a hobby alpinist because the
59:10
guy liked to do heart things and not everybody could do, he thought, I'm going to go climb
59:14
mountains.
59:15
So he climbs Kenya and Kilimanjaro in 2012, and then he kind of made the personal goal
59:22
to climb the seven summits.
59:24
And he did a couple of mountaineering courses and he climbed Akum Kagwa, which is the second
59:28
highest summit in the world in January of 2018.
59:32
And to do that, he trained religiously.
59:37
But doing one of the things he did was 1,000 step ups on a box with a 45-pound pack because
59:42
he naturally didn't want to be the last man of the mountain.
59:46
He didn't want to pull the team down.
59:49
He was going to make sure he went in fully prepared.
59:52
And I did speak at his funeral.
59:56
For two reasons, one, I felt that I would probably be able to speak the most thoroughly
1:00:05
as it pertained to Chad as the person and the man that he was.
1:00:09
But I also wanted to show my kid strength.
1:00:13
And I've tried to do that these last almost four years.
1:00:18
And so we've started this workout and we like people to complete it close to or on Veterans
1:00:24
Day, which is November 11th.
1:00:27
And oftentimes when workouts are made in names of the fall and it's done on their anniversary
1:00:33
date in Chad died October 29th of 2018.
1:00:36
But the story isn't Chad, right?
1:00:39
I mean, it's named Chad 1,000 X, but the story is really about all of our current veterans
1:00:47
and first responders who serve our country to give us freedoms and these invisible scars
1:00:54
they carry.
1:00:56
And so doing that on around Veterans Day really is a testament to our current people
1:01:03
in uniform that we stand by them and we see them and we recognize and we want to provide
1:01:08
help and support to them.
1:01:12
And Chad 1,000 X dot com is where people can register.
1:01:16
The funds will go to the nonprofit I started called the Step Up Foundation and the Step
1:01:21
Up Foundation then filters those funds to programs that serve veterans for TBI, PTS and
1:01:29
Glassway of Injury.
1:01:33
And so this topic is really growing in momentum.
1:01:36
You can find a ton out there on the internet right now regarding mental health, which is
1:01:41
a great thing.
1:01:44
But I don't want to talk about it, I want to be about it.
1:01:47
And that's all I'm trying to do is share my story.
1:01:51
Unfortunately, I know too many other stories that I never include in interviews because
1:01:57
it's not my story to tell.
1:01:59
But I'm just one of thousands of thousands of people that have experienced this loss.
1:02:05
Well, you're not trying to do it.
1:02:08
You're doing it.
1:02:09
You're absolutely doing it every day.
1:02:12
And as we talked about before, even got all this started, like, there are days that just
1:02:17
flat out suck, but it's a day and you're blessed to have that day and you have to figure out
1:02:22
a way to get to the end of it.
1:02:24
And for a lot of people, you talk about the inspiration behind the workout and everything
1:02:29
like that with a lot of these mountaineers or these types of people.
1:02:32
It's the next step.
1:02:33
Like that.
1:02:34
That's really all it is going all the way back to his training to be a Navy SEAL.
1:02:38
It's that next thing.
1:02:40
It's just get to that next meal or get to that next, you know, get to that next seagull.
1:02:45
As you're running on the sea, like it's get to the next thing and that that's what you're
1:02:48
all there to do.
1:02:49
And I'm so glad to be in the show for to be an ambassador for the Chad 1000 X this year,
1:02:54
guys.
1:02:55
You were listening to this.
1:02:56
It was basically 30 days before Veterans Day, okay?
1:03:00
And so you've got a little bit of time to train and just you didn't necessarily talk
1:03:04
about this, but I'm going to be doing it the way that he did.
1:03:06
So I'm going to have the 45 pound pack.
1:03:07
I've got, you know, the box that I'm going to step up on and all that.
1:03:10
But if you're not there, guys, like do this with a buddy, right?
1:03:14
You don't have to do it with a pack.
1:03:15
You don't have to do it with a 45 pound pack.
1:03:17
You can do a 30 or a 15 and like you can go back and forth with a person.
1:03:21
And if you're going to do it by yourself, get ready to get about an hour in, right?
1:03:25
You know, without breaks and all those types of things.
1:03:27
But as I've done with other memorial workouts and I've been, I've been parts of other memorial
1:03:32
workouts ones that are known internationally and ones that are only known locally.
1:03:36
When you're doing those things, don't just look at it as an opportunity to post something
1:03:41
on Instagram with a particular hashtag and say, look what I've done.
1:03:45
Try to bounce off that attention off of you onto whatever the thing is onto the foundation
1:03:51
that's being supported onto the family that's being supported, because that is your role.
1:03:56
In my opinion, you can differ with me on the Sarah and I'll take the correction.
1:04:00
But this is not this workouts out about you guys, right?
1:04:02
This is about honoring somebody else.
1:04:04
I remember years ago, you know, someone's mother died suddenly, a coworker of mine.
1:04:08
And I went on a run that day, like it wasn't a memorial workout, but I went on an especially
1:04:13
hard run and I did no music, no headphones and I just, I thought about that family and
1:04:17
I prayed for that family the entire time because they were the point, right?
1:04:21
And so that, that's the encouragement I would want to give to you guys is not only do that,
1:04:25
go and register.
1:04:26
There are people that are gathering in your area that are doing it.
1:04:29
You can do it by yourself, you know, there, there's a lot of different options out there.
1:04:32
So Sarah, there's, there's more that we can talk about, but I think that we've covered
1:04:36
a lot of, a lot of ground today and we've done a lot of good and I'll have stuff in the
1:04:41
show notes so people can, can know where to find you, know where to find all these different
1:04:45
organizations and everything else like that, but is there anything else that you'd like
1:04:48
to say to our audience before we let you get out of here?
1:04:51
No, just, I would say that if you have someone in your life that you think is struggling,
1:04:58
your first thought might be to not ask them if they thought about taking their life or
1:05:02
to ask them if they're struggling, but that's exactly what you should be doing.
1:05:08
And if you feel as though something is off with someone that you know and love, trust
1:05:12
your gut and, and lean into that, I can absolutely cosign that as well.
1:05:18
Sarah Wilkinson, thank you for coming on Daunted Life of Man's podcast.
1:05:21
Thank you, Kyle.
1:05:22
There you go.
1:05:23
Guys.
1:05:24
I hope you enjoyed my time with Sarah Wilkinson, but before we let you go, we are going to do
1:05:26
a quick resilience boost at an Daunted Life or mission is equipping men to push back darkness
1:05:30
with content that for just spiritual, mental and physical resilience.
1:05:33
So I've got a lot of links for you today.
1:05:34
I got a link to Sarah's Instagram page because that's where she does the majority of her
1:05:37
communication, but also she mentioned the step up foundation.
1:05:40
So that's the foundation she started in the wake of Chad suicide.
1:05:43
And so I've got a link to their Instagram and also to their foundation page.
1:05:47
And then I've got a link to the Chad 1000 X website.
1:05:49
So if you guys are going to do this website, if you're going to do it out your, your gym
1:05:52
or your, your, your group or your foxhole or whatever, make sure you go to that website
1:05:56
and register.
1:05:57
Also, I've got a link to the go Rook website where they have some gear.
1:05:59
So if you're wanting to buy a Rook or some different things that you can use for that
1:06:03
workout, you can go there and do that.
1:06:04
And then I've got links to her interviews with Jocko Willing and also Andy Stump.
1:06:07
Thank you guys so much for listening to the show.
1:06:09
We do appreciate it.
1:06:10
Wherever you're listening to this, please subscribe, rate, leave us a positive five
1:06:13
star review.
1:06:14
If you want to come speak live at your event or on your podcast, just shoot me an email
1:06:16
to info@undontin.life, that's I N F O at undontin.life, follow us on Instagram and like us on Facebook
1:06:22
and check out our website for everything else, including how to donate to keep more content
1:06:25
like this coming your way, just go to www.undontin.life.
1:06:28
And as always, we want to thank the band August Burns read for allowing us to use their music
1:06:32
for our content.
1:06:33
The music on this podcast is our song, cutting the ties, which is off their 10th anniversary
1:06:37
re-recording of their album, Leveler, the links are in the description.
1:06:40
I'm your host, Kyle Thompson.
1:06:42
Remember, keep pushing back darkness, keep forging spiritual, mental, and physical resilience.
1:06:49
Keep seeking the Lion of Judah.
1:07:07
Be Re-Vived!