Latest / Adventures in Adversity: an inspirational podcast / Ep. 56: Ret. Marine K9 Handler Alfred Brenner on “Surviving w/Grief” - His book on war, service, & healing

Transcript

Ep. 56: Ret. Marine K9 Handler Alfred Brenner on “Surviving w/Grief” - His book on war, service, & healing · Adventures in Adversity: an inspirational podcast

• 0:00
  All right, welcome back. For those of you who are new,
• 0:03
  hopefully we have some new listeners here.
• 0:04
  I think we will with our guest today.
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  I started this as a mission really to just bring on real
• 0:12
  people, feature, you know, true stories and hopefully provide
• 0:17
  inspiration to people to take adversity in their life in
• 0:21
  whatever form that is. And somehow through sharing
• 0:26
  their story and hearing other people's stories, turn it into
• 0:29
  an adventure that can be turned into your life 'cause we all
• 0:33
  cope with different, different sources of adversity.
• 0:36
  So before I jump in, I want to say a big happy birthday to my
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  guest. Yes, thank you.
• 0:43
  Very much I appreciate. That so Sergeant?
• 0:46
  Retired Sergeant Alfred Brenner. Yes.
• 0:50
  Did I? Did I get the whole title right?
• 0:51
  Retired Sergeant. Yes, no, that's it.
• 0:53
  Yeah, it's it sound. I mean, it's goofy to say out
• 0:55
  loud because most sergeants don't retire.
• 0:57
  And you know, I kind of, it's an interesting, fun story is I was
• 1:00
  a corporal very young. You get promoted different ways,
• 1:03
  but I was a corporal very young. And then I spent my whole time
• 1:06
  as a corporal, and then I wound up doing my medical retire, you
• 1:10
  know, portion I did doing transition.
• 1:12
  I was actually home sooner. So I'm at home.
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  And then they wind up giving me a call from the kennels and they
• 1:16
  said, hey, guess what? You're getting promoted to
• 1:18
  Sergeant. So I was promoted right before I
• 1:20
  was actually discharged from the Marine Corps.
• 1:22
  So interesting little thing. Yeah.
• 1:24
  Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
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  And then like I said, if anyone said, what do you want for your
• 1:27
  birthday? It's like, just do what I love,
• 1:29
  you know, be able to talk about it and be on stuff like this.
• 1:31
  So I really appreciate it. Of course.
• 1:34
  Well, I'm going to flash your book right here because I've
• 1:38
  been carrying this around since you sent it to me.
• 1:40
  And thank you so much. I I'm privileged to get an
• 1:43
  actual autographed copy. And I love this stamp because
• 1:47
  obviously that's, that's all about your buddy here, who we're
• 1:49
  going to spend a lot of time talking about.
• 1:52
  So you wrote the book Surviving with Grief, and I'm just going
• 1:55
  to read it here. The true story of a Marine
• 1:57
  canine team surviving the everyday battles of war.
• 2:02
  So congratulations, first of all, on writing a book.
• 2:06
  Thank you. Very, very big accomplishment.
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  And even more importantly, thank you so much for your service.
• 2:13
  Thank you. I appreciate that.
• 2:14
  Thank you so much. Yeah.
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  Can't thank you enough from me, from my family.
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  I was raised, my dad was in the Marine Corps Reserves when he
• 2:24
  was 18. He never went, but he was in the
• 2:27
  reserve. So I, I so we've always grew up
• 2:29
  with, and he had a lot of friends that went to Vietnam.
• 2:32
  We grew up with such a respect for military and I think it's so
• 2:37
  important and I, I just want to advocate and, and remind people
• 2:43
  how important our service members are and our veterans.
• 2:46
  Thank you. Yeah, absolutely.
• 2:47
  Yeah. It's it's something I grew to
• 2:49
  appreciate over time. Yeah.
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  You know, growing up, you don't, not that you don't care, but
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  you're a younger kid, you know, you just see it in the movies or
• 2:56
  you hear about it. But once you live through it and
• 2:58
  then as you grow an age, I definitely have a much more
• 3:01
  profound appreciation to it. You know, the one thing I've
• 3:04
  started doing more recently in just a couple years is just
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  seeing guys older gentleman with the hat on or something and just
• 3:10
  say, Hey, welcome home. And you.
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  I just, it's obviously rewarding for myself, but I can just see
• 3:15
  it in their eyes. This is what they didn't get
• 3:16
  back in the day, you know, and we, we were taking care of much
• 3:19
  better than they were. Yeah.
• 3:21
  Supporting them and I'm appreciating what they went
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  through and it's funny you'll talk to older World War like
• 3:26
  wow, you know World War Two guys well, not anymore they're not
• 3:28
  around. But when you used to talk to
• 3:30
  these old generations, they tell stories about how like all you
• 3:32
  guys have it so much harder than we did over there and we're
• 3:35
  like, no, I don't believe that. And we always give each other
• 3:38
  credit, you know, because you always think someone else has a
• 3:41
  harder so. Yes.
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  And that's actually something you talk about in your book,
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  that someone always has it harder.
• 3:48
  Yes, right. To help you, not to diminish
• 3:50
  your own pain, but to help you get through whatever you're
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  going through. There is most likely somebody
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  that's going through something harder.
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  Yes, yeah, It's something I had to learn very quickly because,
• 4:00
  yeah, here I am, you know, laying there thinking that I had
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  completely, you know, mangled. I have all these injuries.
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  I'm hurt. And I was struggling with a lot
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  at that time as far as my injuries and what I was going
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  through. And then a gentleman next to me
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  was loose. You know, he's losing his life.
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  He's literally on his last breath.
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  And you just think to yourself, wow, that really put it in
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  perspective for me, You know, that even though I might be
• 4:22
  compared to others is way worse. Someone always has a hearter
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  than you. And that really helps you have
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  a, a kind of a hopeful perspective on everything in
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  life. Oh, yeah, yeah.
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  And I know we're, we're obviously jumping around with
• 4:34
  we're going to get to all of all of that.
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  And but I, I do want to because, and my dad would want me to,
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  he's going to listen to this. He's old school Buffalo, NY Dad
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  was a police officer, worked on the railroad and he he always
• 4:48
  tells me whenever you're out anywhere, you see anyone in
• 4:52
  uniform, you buy them whatever they're there to buy, like
• 4:55
  coffee sandwich. I love it.
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  Whatever. So that's always, I remember
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  even, you know, I was in Arizona and we saw, you know, someone in
• 5:02
  uniform sitting in a bar and I'm like, well, I got your next one.
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  And they're always yes, yes, that's.
• 5:08
  Cool. I love that.
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  Yeah. And it's just a little token of,
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  hey, we appreciate you because I, I don't think that we take
• 5:17
  care of our veterans enough. And I'm, I'm, I just, I just
• 5:21
  don't, I, I don't think it's enough based on what I've read
• 5:25
  and heard. Yep.
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  No, it's true. There's a lot of things, you
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  know, whether they can't find the help, they don't know how,
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  whether they don't want to. That's a big thing too, is a lot
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  of guys feel they don't deserve the help as I've talked to a lot
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  of guys who said, well, I don't want to go do the VA stuff or I
• 5:39
  don't want to go get this benefit because I feel like
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  someone else deserves it more. And that's a, you know, it
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  stinks because, you know, that's shouldn't be true.
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  I mean, if you served and you know you owed something, you
• 5:49
  should be able to get it. But there's a lot of different
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  things behind the curtains and scenes that I think people don't
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  see and know. For instance, a lot of times I
• 5:56
  would talk to people and they'd say, oh, well, you know, I can't
• 5:59
  believe this or they just don't understand it.
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  And I'd be like, well, they do take care of you pretty well.
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  I went to this hospital. It's the best hospital in the
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  world. You know, I was, I was very
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  fortunate because I was put through the system very easily.
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  You're clearly hurt. You clearly have issues.
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  And they streamlined it so quick where other guys, it may not
• 6:14
  have been that easy. You know, you they just got out
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  normally they're fighting their transition in the world.
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  So there's a lot of hurdles and there's a lot of obstacles.
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  Like you said, everything you've heard is true.
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  And some of the things we don't hear is, you know, just kept
• 6:26
  quiet for a reason. But yeah, it's it's tough.
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  It's a tough thing to do. And that's the one thing you can
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  do. If I have any advice for anybody
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  is exactly what you do is say thank you, buy that cup of
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  coffee, buy that extra round of drinks because that goes up
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  equally is a long way as opposed to like trying to get an
• 6:40
  appointment somewhere. You know, because it's all.
• 6:42
  About that mental health. Totally, and it's what you, I, I
• 6:46
  and and I'm we want to get into your book too and I'm I'm going
• 6:49
  to keep you here for longer, so don't worry.
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  No, but I just, I want to take that opportunity to say it
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  because I just think it needs to be said.
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  And I think that mental health is not visible whether you are a
• 7:03
  veteran or not, especially if you're a veteran though, you
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  know what I mean? That's absolutely being a human
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  is difficult and then deploy and come back.
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  And then again, based on your book, it looks like it's
• 7:16
  difficult and you need resources.
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  Yeah, absolutely, definitely is. It's tough.
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  The transition is a lot harder than people think.
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  And that's where a lot of the stuff starts to come up.
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  You know, you're in, it's easy. You're just, you're coasting.
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  You know, you put a, you have to have a heart of stone and you
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  have to put all your feelings away.
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  And you just keep doing it because the job, the mission is
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  way more important than anything else in life, including
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  relationships with your family, friends.
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  You know, it's just a lot easier to put those to the wayside.
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  And then when you get out, it all hits you like a a wave, you
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  know, and you just kind of get tumbled into it so.
• 7:47
  Yes, yes. Well, again, again, I'll just
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  thank you throughout the episode.
• 7:53
  How about that? And then I'm going to have to.
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  Like we'll just put a blanket statement out there.
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  It's covered. It's it's a disclosure.
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  Thank you. And now we can move on.
• 8:02
  I. Appreciate it.
• 8:02
  My dad is satisfied now. I'm sure he's old school.
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  You know, East Coast Catholic guy where you you do the right
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  thing and you say your thank yous first and, you know, firm
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  handshake shoulders back. So he's old school and I like
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  that. So anyway, so I want to kind of
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  start chronologically a little bit your book.
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  Genuinely, I and I was telling you this before we hit record.
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  I love the photos that are dispersed throughout.
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  You tell a story and then you see the photo.
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  Really cool to get that behind the scenes like I felt like and
• 8:39
  it is tell me about this. It's it when you sat down to
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  write it, it's a collection of you took your journal entries
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  plus what you were processing. It feels very you're there with
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  you very much. Yeah, and that's kind of the
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  idea of it was to have. So I started like my mom sent me
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  a care package. It was one of the few that I
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  got. It was there was a journal in it
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  and she was like, oh, just journal.
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  I guess. I wasn't like, oh, hey, send me
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  one. I just didn't have no idea.
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  To do that. Yeah, yes.
• 9:07
  OK. Well, I'll write down, you know,
• 9:09
  this date, something important happened.
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  It was not an everyday thing, but it was different dates that
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  I had meaningful stories. And it was really just a way for
• 9:17
  me to tell people back home if I was going to share them with
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  family or friends or just have a way to remember it.
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  And that's how it started. And it would just be that
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  throughout the deployment up until the time that I left.
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  And I was just so weird how it worked out because the book was
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  never an idea. It was never something I wanted
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  to do, but then having that journal where it was so fresh
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  and real as opposed to trying to remember, oh, I wonder what
• 9:40
  happened over there, you know? What date was that?
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  When we were? Where were we?
• 9:43
  Yeah, you had those markers. Yeah.
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  So it was actual historical, you know, factual data filtered in
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  with things like journal feelings.
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  You know, you're writing down your feelings.
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  Like I said, if you read the journal itself, it was very more
• 9:54
  raw and very, you know, journally, you know, things
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  where you would just throw them on there to get the feelings
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  out. Yeah.
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  And yeah. So that was very, very helpful
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  for the book. And I was always a storyteller.
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  Anybody who knows me knows I'm very elaborate sometimes to the
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  point where it makes no sense. You know, we weren't going 50.
• 10:10
  We're going 1000 miles an hour on the highway, you know, And
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  just it just to me, it was always just more interesting to
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  live life that way. You know, it was just a big
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  storyteller always told stories. That's why when I told my
• 10:21
  friends in high school I was joining the Marine Corps, they
• 10:22
  were didn't believe it until the day I left.
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  You know, it was a joke. Yeah.
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  That was just another one of his stories.
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  And. Yeah, exactly.
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  So it was kind of interesting and I always enjoyed, I never
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  actually liked reading. I hate reading, you know,
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  growing up in school, you know, during the summer, they make you
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  ruin your summer by reading books.
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  So I just, it was always something I hated.
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  And I just love the idea of being able to tell more of a
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  story as opposed to the chronological thing or, you
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  know, I wanted to frame it as somebody experiencing it.
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  And I really wanted the reader to understand kind of what I was
• 10:57
  going through as a normal, you know, kid.
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  And I say normal kid because some some of the guys I worked
• 11:02
  with, you know, they grew up with military in their blood,
• 11:05
  whether their grandfather or dad.
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  It was a generational thing. You know, they grew up hunting
• 11:09
  since they were five that, you know, been around weapons.
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  And I haven't held a weapon until I was at boot camp.
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  So for me, it was more of I grew up, you know, Catholic, very
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  suburban, you know, normal 90s, ride your bike, childhood and
• 11:22
  trying to go to college. I just didn't know what I wanted
• 11:24
  to do. So I just jumped right into a
• 11:26
  recruiter's office to kind of figuring out what that was all
• 11:28
  about, you know, paying for college, getting some
• 11:30
  experience, and it was giving me some life experience on the way.
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  And that's kind of how I wound up into it.
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  But it was the whole concept of the story was to allow people to
• 11:40
  understand that most of the kids in the country are your normal,
• 11:43
  you know, everyday, you know, I want to sign up and do this.
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  I want to better myself. I was a Boy Scout and I want to
• 11:49
  do the military. And then they're faced with some
• 11:51
  of these challenges throughout deployment.
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  And again, I always disclose I'm speaking just for myself, but I
• 11:58
  think a lot of people can relate even in the smallest detail with
• 12:00
  the story. You know, whether I'm missing
• 12:02
  home or I was next to a buddy who was killed and how do I
• 12:05
  process these feelings? And, and again, I just wanted to
• 12:09
  make it a story for all people, all Americans, not just the
• 12:12
  military community, you know, just kind of tie it all in
• 12:14
  there. You, you did that.
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  I mean it really, I appreciate your, your, the detail that you
• 12:21
  add about how you were feeling and the little anecdotes I took.
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  I just took notes on little things that kind of touched me,
• 12:28
  especially as a writer reading it.
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  It was, you know, those little details of when you talked
• 12:32
  about, you know, meeting your wife, the girl who sold lemonade
• 12:35
  and you really gave details like about grief, your dog.
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  He didn't care where he was as long as he was with me, you
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  know, and, and, and I, as a human can relate to those
• 12:44
  moments. Like it.
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  It's you really add detail that it just, it really helps you
• 12:51
  connect. So you're a great writer.
• 12:54
  Yeah. Thank you.
• 12:55
  Thank you. I appreciate it.
• 12:56
  Yeah. And again, just the level of
• 12:59
  details. I loved how you give the detail
• 13:06
  about, and we'll kind of get there when you're deployed, but
• 13:08
  just how things felt and looked and smelled, you know, it takes
• 13:13
  talent to kind of bring that to life while you're also trying to
• 13:16
  tell your story. So really, really wonderful
• 13:20
  read. Thank you.
• 13:22
  Thank you very much. Emotional.
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  Emotional. I will tell you, I had to like
• 13:26
  put it down a couple times, but that's life, you know?
• 13:29
  Life is emotional. Yeah, absolutely.
• 13:31
  Yeah, there's things that come up and it was hard.
• 13:33
  Everyone always asked was it difficult to write?
• 13:34
  And it honestly was, you know, I'd have to dive into a chapter
• 13:38
  and put it down for a while because you get to the dark
• 13:41
  place. And and then I struggled with,
• 13:43
  should I even write this? Is it something that's even, you
• 13:45
  know, I is it my story to share? You know, there's all these
• 13:48
  different things I struggled with.
• 13:49
  And yeah, so it took a long time.
• 13:52
  You know, it's it's it took, like you said, a lot of breaks,
• 13:54
  a lot of self reflecting. Even to this day, interestingly
• 13:57
  enough, I haven't read, I've read it the first couple times
• 14:00
  when I was editing it, but the finished product I haven't read
• 14:02
  really front to back is a story. I kind of jump around and
• 14:05
  revisit it and, you know, do it that way.
• 14:07
  Yeah. It's just a process, you know.
• 14:08
  Yeah, and I think because I talk a lot about mental health on
• 14:12
  this podcast just to remind people and what I've learned
• 14:16
  through therapy is the act of visiting those feelings while
• 14:21
  they are really tough, they will they'll kind of peak and then
• 14:27
  they'll settle, right. But then you're you're able to
• 14:30
  by visiting them versus never acknowledging them.
• 14:33
  You start to, that's what processing is, right?
• 14:38
  You have, you have to sit with it for a little bit and then
• 14:40
  sometimes you gotta be like, OK, that's enough sitting, I'm going
• 14:42
  to go not sit with it anymore. Yeah, no.
• 14:45
  Absolutely. I totally agree with that.
• 14:46
  Yeah, it's, yeah, that's what I learned about this whole a
• 14:48
  grieving thing is it's it's a whole entire you live with it
• 14:51
  forever. It's not.
• 14:52
  It should be a part of you. It's something that gets meshed
• 14:54
  within your soul. And that's why it hurts so much
• 14:57
  is because you're missing this part.
• 14:58
  But instead of treating it like something that you need to
• 15:01
  finish or work through, it's something that gets interwoven
• 15:04
  with you and it just goes on forever.
• 15:06
  Exactly. Yeah, that's what that's kind of
• 15:08
  what dealing with any of these feelings you were talking about.
• 15:11
  Don't it's it's not good to ignore them or push them down.
• 15:13
  It's good to sit with them for a while, like you said, or take
• 15:16
  those breaks. I always try to envision
• 15:18
  everything was working out. And I'll probably related to
• 15:20
  that a while because it's the most easiest common analogy.
• 15:22
  It's going to be painful, it's going to hurt, you're going to
• 15:25
  be out of breath, but you need to take a second, you know,
• 15:28
  breathe in between sets and then go back and hit it again, you
• 15:31
  know, So it's, it's a process. And then just like that, you
• 15:34
  want to see results immediately. So if you're trying to get
• 15:37
  through something hard, or whether it's grief or anger or
• 15:40
  whatever the emotion may be, you want the end result immediately
• 15:43
  and then you become frustrated and that creates other problems.
• 15:46
  So you have to take it one step at a time and be patient with
• 15:50
  yourself. Yeah, great analogy, because you
• 15:53
  got to work out consistently over time.
• 15:55
  But you can't. You got to take breaks between
• 15:57
  sets. You got to hide straight.
• 15:59
  It's it's it's really this it it's very similar.
• 16:02
  So you were saying, you know, you grew up.
• 16:04
  You're the oldest of four. Yes, you're used to.
• 16:08
  I'm the youngest. A lot of my friends are the
• 16:10
  oldest and I'm like, help me, you're the oldest I go into.
• 16:12
  The baby? Yeah.
• 16:14
  The baby of the family? Yep.
• 16:15
  And then the older ones are like, come on, Bree, I'm like,
• 16:18
  yeah, but learned roles. But so how do you think?
• 16:21
  And again, it's not like you were dreaming of the military
• 16:24
  and you didn't. You became a canine handler, but
• 16:27
  you didn't exactly grow up loving dogs or having dogs
• 16:30
  everywhere. Yes.
• 16:31
  That's correct. Yeah, it's true.
• 16:33
  Yeah. So tell me, how do you think
• 16:36
  being the oldest of four, how do you think that helped you?
• 16:40
  For any oldest children out there listening, how did that
• 16:44
  help you in the adversity that you ended up facing or how you
• 16:47
  moved to the military? Did that influence at all?
• 16:50
  I think so, yeah. It's because as as the oldest in
• 16:53
  your family, you're the leader. You know, you are, you do lead
• 16:55
  them, whether you do it on purpose, instinctively help mom
• 16:58
  out with the kids, whatever it is.
• 16:59
  So you're a natural born leader. I think it's becomes a lot
• 17:04
  easier when you have to be in a leadership role.
• 17:05
  Like a lot of the military is based off of leadership and of
• 17:08
  course following orders, but depending on how much you excel.
• 17:11
  So for me, I was never really much of A follower, you know, as
• 17:14
  far as that goes. So I think that definitely
• 17:16
  translated that into my military career, always trying to excel.
• 17:19
  Like I said, I was promoted very quickly initially.
• 17:22
  I would just love to be able to lead people, influence them in a
• 17:25
  good way. And so I think that had a big
• 17:27
  part to do with it, you know, so any, any first borns out there
• 17:30
  join the Marine Corps, you know, like.
• 17:33
  The pressure will pay off, right?
• 17:35
  Oldest is always, well, I find out my older brother, he's 3 1/2
• 17:38
  years older than me and like whenever he's around, I'm an
• 17:42
  adult. I'm going to be 44, but I'm
• 17:44
  always like, okay, older brothers here, like he'll tell
• 17:48
  me what to do, you know, like he'll be like, we're not doing
• 17:52
  that or like, and I'm like, is that work free?
• 17:54
  No, it's dumb. OK, we'll do whatever you want
• 17:58
  to do. But no, I just appreciate
• 18:00
  because I can see how being kind of transitioning into becoming a
• 18:06
  canine handler. So you're in the in the book,
• 18:10
  you get deployed right at a very young age.
• 18:12
  You had met your now wife right before, which wasn't in the
• 18:16
  plan. As you say in the book, you're
• 18:18
  like not what I'm, you know, high school romance.
• 18:22
  Tell me a little bit about because I know obviously Megan's
• 18:25
  support throughout this whole journey of going through this
• 18:29
  and then writing the book is obviously a huge support system
• 18:32
  for you. So I want to I want to give a
• 18:33
  shout out to your wife here. Tell me.
• 18:35
  Yeah. Tell me about for especially
• 18:37
  with the military families that are listening, Tell me about how
• 18:42
  deploying and kind of how the relationship you've had with her
• 18:45
  has has helped you through, you know, what you endured in this
• 18:49
  book and writing the book. And I'll just let you give her
• 18:52
  the spotlight for a second. Yeah, no, absolutely.
• 18:54
  You're right. I mean, we had, I had that
• 18:55
  summer job before, you know, getting out of.
• 18:57
  I was in high school next summer, I was leaving for the
• 18:59
  Marine Corps and just wasn't, I didn't think that was the part
• 19:02
  of the plan. And I think I, I've learned, I
• 19:04
  know this to be true to this day, right now even more than
• 19:07
  ever. But you know, God has plans for
• 19:09
  you that you don't know really exist.
• 19:10
  And you might want to do one thing or the other, but that
• 19:13
  really is what happens, you know, And if you really believe
• 19:15
  that, it really helps you live life without worry, without
• 19:19
  anxiety. And back then I just was like,
• 19:21
  oh, whatever. This is just, you know, my last
• 19:23
  summer, I'm going to have fun. And then she pops up out of
• 19:25
  nowhere, instantly fell in love. And that's something that you
• 19:28
  can't ignore that connection you feel in your heart.
• 19:30
  And I was able to, you know, we dated for a while and, you know,
• 19:34
  we stayed together through boot camp, just writing letters and
• 19:37
  we did the long distance relationship.
• 19:39
  So she just was always by my side.
• 19:40
  And you know, we would be honest, we were obviously young
• 19:43
  and naive, but it's just that love kept these together
• 19:46
  forever. And then it got to the point
• 19:47
  where we're about to deploy, was supposed to go to Iraq and we
• 19:51
  went to work on a Tuesday morning.
• 19:53
  I had her flight booked to go home on Friday.
• 19:55
  We were supposed to move out of our apartment and they told us,
• 19:57
  hey, you're not going to Iraq anymore, you're going to
• 20:00
  Afghanistan in six months. So we had to cancel all of our
• 20:03
  plans. Again, it wasn't up to us.
• 20:05
  It was a bigger picture behind the scenes.
• 20:07
  And we had a, we had more time together.
• 20:09
  So instead of being married for only two months and deploying,
• 20:11
  we had a whole other year, We had our own apartment, we lived
• 20:13
  together. And then then at that point, we
• 20:16
  ramped up for this deployment to Afghanistan in 2010.
• 20:20
  So it was just, it was weird how it all worked out because again,
• 20:23
  it was just part of the plan initially, you know, it all just
• 20:25
  made sense. And she was by my side for the
• 20:27
  whole thing. And like I said, between just
• 20:29
  letters and boot camp all the way up to the long distance
• 20:31
  relationships. And I think that's why I made it
• 20:33
  so important. You know, initially we were
• 20:36
  talking about it and she's like, you know, I don't really feel
• 20:38
  comfortable with you putting me in the book.
• 20:39
  Why? It's not a part of the story.
• 20:41
  And it makes certain sense to the military perspective.
• 20:44
  But a lot of their credit never gets due to the the wives and
• 20:48
  the the dependents who I think sometimes deal with things a lot
• 20:51
  harder than us. You know, as far as know what we
• 20:53
  signed up for, it's our job. You know, we know we have to do
• 20:57
  for them. It's just they're along for the
• 20:58
  ride and they have to figure out what job to get in a different
• 21:01
  state, how many friends they're going to make.
• 21:03
  You know, again, it becomes a part of them over time, but it's
• 21:06
  just very difficult for them. And just the long deployments,
• 21:09
  you know, missing the birth of your first child, it's very
• 21:12
  difficult things. And I wanted to, as much as we
• 21:14
  could have spoke on our behalf for them.
• 21:16
  I just wanted to give them the credit that they go through a
• 21:18
  lot too. And that was important to share.
• 21:20
  I'm so glad and and you definitely she's she when I read
• 21:25
  about anything that you said about her, I just I was
• 21:28
  imagining obviously I've not met her, but every other military
• 21:32
  spouse. Yeah, whoever it might be,
• 21:36
  right. Amazing, awesome.
• 21:37
  And so I just I I really think it's it's great that you I'm
• 21:42
  glad that, you know, you pushed through and put her in because.
• 21:46
  And I'm sure obviously she her humility is like, oh, I didn't
• 21:49
  do anything right. And it's like, yeah, just like
• 21:51
  veterans are like, oh, no, no. And I'm like, no, yes, yes, you
• 21:55
  did, you know? Yeah.
• 21:57
  So. And that, that's partly, too, is
• 21:59
  mostly about not wanting the spotlight.
• 22:00
  And, you know, the attention and a lot of Military Wives are like
• 22:02
  that too. Yeah, you see them, you know,
• 22:05
  you have somebody getting up there for an award and they're
• 22:07
  standing there by them side. And but it's like, it's not
• 22:09
  about me, but it is. It's actually about you.
• 22:11
  And they actually, it was interesting.
• 22:13
  Fast forwarding to when I did get out, I've medically retired.
• 22:15
  I was leaving. They actually gave her an award
• 22:18
  for being, like, married still. I guess, like, we joke about it.
• 22:21
  We're like, oh, you got an award for still being married because
• 22:23
  the divorce rate's so high, you know?
• 22:24
  So I don't think that's necessarily why they do that.
• 22:26
  I think they're just being nice. But yeah, it's like a
• 22:29
  congratulations. You know, I didn't know that
• 22:31
  that the divorce rate was high. Yeah.
• 22:33
  And I do not want to say a number because I don't know if
• 22:36
  it's true. I mean, if we had it, yeah, you
• 22:38
  can ask your assistant on the side to look it up real quick
• 22:40
  and tell us what it is. But yeah.
• 22:43
  What was the dog's name? What's your dog's?
• 22:44
  Name. Yeah, Boba, Ruby and.
• 22:47
  Can you type? Can you paw that up real quick
• 22:48
  on the? Keyboard.
• 22:49
  One day I'll be like, hey crew. Yeah, yeah, There we go.
• 22:54
  You don't use the Internet. Hey, now you got to say hello.
• 22:59
  Hello. This is my guest, Mr. Alfred.
• 23:03
  What's your name? What's your name?
• 23:06
  If you come on, you got to say hi.
• 23:08
  What is it? Reese.
• 23:10
  Reese Reese Like Reese's Pieces? I love Reese's Pieces.
• 23:13
  Yes, like Reese's Pieces, yes, and she is never up early ever.
• 23:19
  So I just want to say, I think you might have gotten up to
• 23:22
  sneak a peek. Well, I appreciate you saying
• 23:24
  hi. That's awesome.
• 23:26
  She's been hearing all about the book this week and I showed her
• 23:30
  some of the reels and everything so.
• 23:32
  That's cool. All right, now.
• 23:34
  Now you do need to go. OK, why?
• 23:37
  This becomes the fun part, right?
• 23:39
  That's awesome. Hey, that's amazing.
• 23:41
  It was nice meeting you. You.
• 23:44
  Say nice to meet you. Nice to meet you.
• 23:50
  That's adorable. It's for real.
• 23:51
  Goodbye now. Why?
• 23:53
  Because I'm interviewing. Fine.
• 23:54
  Chris, that's funny. So it was my fault.
• 23:59
  I asked for an assistant and they just pop out of nowhere.
• 24:02
  Goodbye. Take care, have a good day.
• 24:05
  Wow. That's awesome.
• 24:07
  I love. It cool.
• 24:08
  All right, You're good. Now she's gonna sit here.
• 24:11
  No, but what were we saying before she?
• 24:13
  Interrupted. We were talking about the number
• 24:15
  I was not going to throw out because the divorce rate's so
• 24:17
  high. I mean, I want to say it was
• 24:18
  like close to the 80s. It was in the 80s.
• 24:20
  It's high. It's very high.
• 24:21
  Yeah, we're at least half. So it was difficult.
• 24:24
  Yeah. And again, marriage with just
• 24:27
  going through life, then also being married and then add in
• 24:30
  all these being deployed. It's just it's it's not
• 24:34
  surprising to me, but I did not, I did not know that.
• 24:37
  So it's good just to raise awareness to all this.
• 24:39
  Military families also need support, right?
• 24:43
  The kids I remember growing up, actually, quick tangent, I grew
• 24:46
  up in Irvine. And so we were near, there was a
• 24:50
  Marine base right near us. And one of the girls on my team,
• 24:54
  her name was Brittany. Her dad was a Marine.
• 24:58
  And I remember her mom, I just you just, I was 15 years old and
• 25:02
  now I'm like, gosh, I had no idea what you were going to.
• 25:06
  Her dad would always come. He had, you know, the haircut
• 25:09
  and the mom. And actually she had a sibling
• 25:11
  who had Down syndrome. They were always in a good mood.
• 25:14
  And now, Oh my gosh, you know, I just wish I like thanked you,
• 25:20
  but I was young. I didn't know.
• 25:21
  Exactly. You don't know at that age, you
• 25:23
  don't understand what they're going to.
• 25:24
  There's no way, not even from an adult perspective.
• 25:26
  Well, let alone a military 1, you know.
• 25:28
  Yeah, and remember, oh, you live on a military base, huh?
• 25:31
  Right. That like, oh, that's over
• 25:33
  there, huh? OK, right.
• 25:35
  You all live because you might be moved at any time and that's
• 25:39
  your community, you know, So just we wanted to call that out.
• 25:43
  Shout out to all the military families, the wives, the
• 25:46
  husbands, the the kids, the, the grandmas sending care packages
• 25:52
  and the grandpas and the I'm sure you know, nieces, nephews
• 25:56
  and cousins. It's just it's, it's, they go
• 25:59
  through a lot too. And so I just think we need to
• 26:02
  call that out. This is my message to the world.
• 26:04
  Take care of our veterans and take care of our military
• 26:06
  families. Absolutely.
• 26:07
  I love that. Thank you for doing that.
• 26:09
  Of course, of course. OK, so you get deployed and I, I
• 26:15
  again, one of the scenes that you wrote about, I felt like I
• 26:17
  was on the plane with you when you were deploying.
• 26:20
  I didn't know that whole drop. Yes, I didn't.
• 26:22
  We didn't. I didn't either.
• 26:23
  And it, I think it sounds more dramatic in the story than it
• 26:26
  actually is. I mean, it doesn't, it's not
• 26:27
  like the plane, you know, I, again, I'm a storyteller.
• 26:30
  I wanted it to make it in a sense.
• 26:32
  It's not like you're, you know, coasting down into the airport,
• 26:35
  you know, have you ever been on an airplane where you had a
• 26:38
  little bit of a rough landing? You know, you're coming in a
• 26:40
  little too hot? It's like that times 10, like I
• 26:43
  said, they were like, hey, prepare, you know, strap
• 26:44
  everything down. The planes going to turn
• 26:46
  sideways, and it started moving around a little bit.
• 26:49
  Yeah. So it was interesting for sure.
• 26:51
  And it was just something I thought I'd read about.
• 26:52
  Like I said, I see, like, dogs in the crate just holding on for
• 26:55
  dear life. And yeah, it was a good time.
• 26:57
  That makes sense. I can understand it, you know.
• 26:59
  Yeah. Well, here's the thing.
• 27:01
  Then it clicked for me. You're flying into enemy
• 27:04
  territory. This is not, I just, you know,
• 27:08
  you hear when someone's deployed and then you just think they're
• 27:11
  deployed. But I really appreciate that you
• 27:12
  take us through getting ready, getting deployed.
• 27:15
  And then when you said the ramp open and you feel like like an
• 27:19
  oven hits you. Holy shit, we're not in Kansas
• 27:22
  anymore. That was what you said.
• 27:23
  Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 27:24
  It was definitely like, it was, it felt like that, you know,
• 27:27
  it's just like I envisioned the house spinning and Dorothy gets
• 27:30
  out and it's just a totally different world.
• 27:32
  And that's exactly how it felt to me, you know, just like this
• 27:35
  is a real deal. So you find yourself in the
• 27:38
  military and you ended up becoming a canine handler.
• 27:42
  So tell me about and again, you can get the details in the book,
• 27:47
  but tell me about as a canine handler, the bond with your I
• 27:52
  mean, I have dogs and I love, I have a bond with a dog that's I
• 27:55
  just can't even describe it. The bond with a military dog
• 28:00
  Next level next. Level yeah, right.
• 28:03
  It's the way you, I mean, the way you related to is that you
• 28:06
  have guys who come over actually just shared a video of this.
• 28:09
  It was like they had a reel on Instagram or somewhere where
• 28:12
  these studies from haven't seen each other in 1520 years, you
• 28:15
  know, and their friends and from combat or the Marine Corps or
• 28:17
  the military and they see each other for the first time.
• 28:20
  They give themselves a Big Bear hug and they're they're crying.
• 28:22
  And it's like this connection, you know, these bonds forged in,
• 28:26
  you know, battle are something that can't be broken.
• 28:29
  And it's it's something that you live with for the rest of your
• 28:31
  life. Now with the dog, I think it
• 28:33
  becomes almost a little bit stronger because as you know,
• 28:35
  you have your dog at home. That bond that dog has with you
• 28:38
  because you spend so much time with them really just becomes so
• 28:42
  deep. I mean, you can move once, you
• 28:43
  know, you get up a little early and they're like art feed me.
• 28:46
  You know, it's you know, they get so excited and it's the same
• 28:49
  exact connection. And it's interesting because we
• 28:51
  don't talk, you know, we can't talk to each other.
• 28:53
  You can't let memories, but you do on a different level.
• 28:56
  And that's why in the beginning I struggled so much with dog
• 28:59
  because when I got grief, he was a puppy.
• 29:00
  He was two years old. He came right from dog school
• 29:03
  and I was straight out of dog school myself.
• 29:05
  I didn't have dogs growing up. I didn't understand it.
• 29:07
  So it was very difficult for me to handle him because I didn't
• 29:10
  really understand that portion of it.
• 29:12
  I was taught how to handle the leash, how to do all the basics.
• 29:16
  But then I would see all these other combat veterans and their
• 29:18
  older dogs and they are just like meshing so well and they're
• 29:21
  just tight like you said. And then I didn't understand
• 29:24
  that I'm like my dog just stupid.
• 29:26
  Am I not good enough? And it really is not just
• 29:29
  training all the time and working together, but it's also
• 29:32
  that 24 hour connection. You deploy with that dog.
• 29:35
  He's connected with you with the hip for 24 hours a day for the
• 29:38
  most part. And then you get breaks every
• 29:40
  once in awhile, but they're everywhere you go.
• 29:42
  They're sleeping with you. You know, you're on a mission
• 29:44
  with them on the side of the road, and you spend all that
• 29:47
  time with him through the hard times.
• 29:48
  He feels all my anxieties, and then he feels all my anxieties
• 29:51
  go away. These connections, these
• 29:53
  unspokeables. And that's really what creates
• 29:55
  that bond and essentially what saves lives.
• 29:59
  I am just so fascinated and moved by the relationship that
• 30:07
  you talk about with grief and I, I want to give him a big shot
• 30:12
  out because I've been thinking about him all week and looking
• 30:15
  at pictures of him and it'll be 15 years right in October.
• 30:19
  That's. Right.
• 30:20
  Yep, 15 years. Yep.
• 30:21
  And we will talk about just briefly that obviously he
• 30:25
  unfortunately did not make it when when you were deployed and,
• 30:29
  and you guys were hit by that IED.
• 30:31
  And I, I just want to give him some major love.
• 30:36
  I know he's probably floating around on the Rainbow Bridge
• 30:40
  here waiting for his buddies. Thank you so much.
• 30:44
  I appreciate those kind words. Thank.
• 30:45
  You, I just, I really, I just love dogs so much.
• 30:48
  And I, so I just love the tribute and the moments that you
• 30:52
  describe with him. I wrote a couple things down
• 30:55
  just. Oh, yeah.
• 30:56
  You said one phrase when he had done some.
• 30:59
  He had because, you know, he conducted all these searches and
• 31:01
  you'll read about in the book how he would just go in there.
• 31:04
  What a badass. Go, go get him.
• 31:06
  Go find it. And then you would say you gave
• 31:08
  it. Then he'd come back.
• 31:09
  You'd give him some lovin like, and I'm like, come here, that's
• 31:12
  what I do. Come here and now go back out.
• 31:15
  And it's like he probably lived for those little moments of
• 31:17
  finding his toy and getting his snuggles.
• 31:19
  And then what do you want to do next?
• 31:20
  Right. Yeah.
• 31:21
  And it's so interesting because that's what they get the whole
• 31:23
  game. Our job to save lives, find
• 31:25
  bombs, find bad guys. It's a game to them, you know,
• 31:28
  and we're a part of this game. It's because it's not.
• 31:30
  He knows. All right, I'm going to go find
• 31:32
  a bomb and I'm going to go save lives or I'm going to go bite
• 31:34
  this bad guy because I I want to find a bad guy.
• 31:37
  He just knows the game. You know, the game is go get it.
• 31:40
  He's happy. His tails move in and he's in a
• 31:42
  danger zone, and he has no idea what he's getting himself into,
• 31:45
  You know, in the back of our heads as we do.
• 31:47
  That's why we work together as a team.
• 31:49
  And then I see his body language change.
• 31:51
  OK, I smell something. I'm on something.
• 31:53
  And then if he gets it, he knows he gets a toy or he gets praise.
• 31:56
  So to him, it was just a game. And that does help us as
• 32:00
  handlers, too. It kind of keeps us grounded as
• 32:02
  a human, you know, because like a human being going into a door
• 32:06
  knowing to find a bad guy, you know, your, your adrenaline's
• 32:09
  flowing. OK, I know what I'm doing.
• 32:11
  I'm going to go find this guy. And you know, whether you're
• 32:13
  going to shoot, hurt, apprehend, whatever it may be, you have a
• 32:17
  lot of other emotions behind that that you have to unpack
• 32:19
  where a dog is. Just like, let's go, you know,
• 32:21
  I'm having fun, let's go get them.
• 32:22
  You know, So it's interesting. It kind of keeps us more common
• 32:25
  collective and kind of then trickles down the rest of the
• 32:28
  platoon or the group you're with, because then they feel it
• 32:31
  too. And even just the presence of
• 32:32
  the dog, I've noticed it. It helped them relax.
• 32:35
  We'd be on a mission. Just sit on the side of the road
• 32:37
  and you know, they'd be talking, hanging out, but then guys would
• 32:39
  just be playing with my dog and you know, petting them and
• 32:41
  stuff. And you know, it really just, it
• 32:43
  was like having an emotional support animal or therapy dog
• 32:46
  overseas, so. I'm learning so much.
• 32:49
  First of all, I don't even actually know if I really knew
• 32:53
  that dogs went to war. I don't know if everyone knows
• 32:56
  that. I was like, wow, like this is.
• 32:59
  And then seeing what they do with you, I was like, Oh yeah,
• 33:04
  they come out of the hell. Yeah.
• 33:06
  When I saw that reel, I was like, are you kidding me?
• 33:09
  Yeah, that's so that's a special, that's a high end tier
• 33:12
  one special groups that do that. But yeah, they so is there's
• 33:15
  stuff that I do and then there's stuff that other people do and
• 33:18
  it's crazy. It's unbelievable.
• 33:19
  And I I can't believe it either. I'm involved with it.
• 33:21
  I go watch the training and I see it and I'm like, I can't
• 33:24
  believe that. Like I know me even how grief
• 33:26
  was. I'm like, I I thought he was in
• 33:28
  a fallout of a helicopter once. I'm like, I don't know how these
• 33:30
  guys do it, you know, it's unbelievable.
• 33:31
  Some. Of the I remember you describe a
• 33:33
  scene where you're holding him and you're like, that was not a
• 33:35
  because. The back ramp was open.
• 33:36
  We're in a helicopter, they're flying and that like they the
• 33:38
  Gunners hanging off the side of the ramp and he's shoot, I'm and
• 33:42
  I'm just like, this is so close to him fault because all he's
• 33:44
  attached to is a leash. He's not buckled in or anything.
• 33:47
  So I started holding on to him for dear life, you know, and
• 33:50
  yeah, it's it's definitely an experience.
• 33:52
  But yeah, these things are amazing animals.
• 33:54
  They've been around since essentially World War 2 and, you
• 33:57
  know, progress evolutionary through different wars and
• 34:00
  different stuff. So yeah, they're, they're great,
• 34:02
  great things. So that's why they'll never go
• 34:04
  away. The dogs, you know, they tried
• 34:07
  very much so. They had robot dogs.
• 34:09
  They had other different types of things that may emulate that.
• 34:12
  But not only does the drive of a dog never deteriorate unless
• 34:17
  it's never gets older, which most people just retire and get
• 34:19
  out, but they'll, they'll never truly run out of batteries.
• 34:22
  You know, they'll always work. There's never a, you know,
• 34:25
  they're proven not perfect, but there's so many different facets
• 34:28
  that will never, ever phase out. You can't replace that with a
• 34:31
  machine. And then you have on top of it,
• 34:34
  the behavior they have with us, the relationship, the bond.
• 34:36
  You can't have a bond with a mechanical instrument.
• 34:39
  So yeah, you'll never be able to get that replicated.
• 34:42
  No. And I love the way you describe,
• 34:44
  you know, that he was always attached to you for the most
• 34:47
  part. And so it's literally it's so
• 34:50
  symbolic, right? I mean, you guys are.
• 34:51
  And and like you said, it must have been challenging at times.
• 34:54
  You're trying to maneuver, holding your gun, the weight of
• 34:57
  him sensing what he's doing, sensing.
• 35:00
  And then you get a call. OK, we got someone in the rear.
• 35:03
  OK, How is he OK? When When do I need to UN just?
• 35:06
  You got a lot to think about as a handler.
• 35:09
  Yes, yeah. And the first time out, I look
• 35:10
  like, you know, I just look like someone who's never handled the
• 35:13
  dog before, carrying their luggage and their groceries at
• 35:15
  the same time. It just looked ridiculous, like,
• 35:18
  you know, But every time you do it, you continue.
• 35:20
  And that's why training is so important.
• 35:21
  We emulate this as much as possible.
• 35:23
  But getting over there, I talk about the intangibles, the
• 35:26
  chickens running around, the kids, the extra stray dogs,
• 35:29
  which was a huge threat. Yes.
• 35:31
  And then it was just a lot of different things that got in the
• 35:33
  way. But you get used to it, you
• 35:34
  know, you every day you work on it and and then he gets better
• 35:37
  with it, you know, he's not as excited, so he's hanging out.
• 35:40
  So yeah, it's good. It's interesting stuff.
• 35:41
  Adapt right, adapting and one thing I do want to talk about, I
• 35:46
  really thought it was interesting how where his name
• 35:48
  came from. So the book surviving with
• 35:51
  grief. Great title, obviously.
• 35:53
  Thank you. Surviving with grief.
• 35:56
  Grief meaning your actual dog and the grief of losing him.
• 36:02
  He was an actual German Shepherd from Germany.
• 36:05
  Yes, Yeah, we do. Yeah.
• 36:07
  Yeah. So we'll go or we have a dog
• 36:09
  school down in San Antonio and Lackland Air Force Base is where
• 36:11
  the dog program is. And they actually breed their
• 36:13
  own dogs. We have a breeding program, but
• 36:15
  then we also buy dogs all over the world, and one of them is
• 36:19
  Germany. They'll go over there, do
• 36:20
  something called Buy Trip and they'll they'll pick out dogs.
• 36:22
  And they brought him back with a group he trained at the Lackland
• 36:26
  Air Force Base. So he was actually from Germany.
• 36:28
  So we joke, you know, it's not true, but we joke.
• 36:30
  Well, maybe he didn't listen because he didn't understand
• 36:32
  English, you know, or he just understand German.
• 36:34
  Yeah. And incidentally enough, he did
• 36:36
  know German commands, obviously, you know, because they trained
• 36:38
  them. They, they do this early
• 36:40
  training phase. And then we see, OK, the dog's
• 36:42
  good enough to buy. When I fast forwarding, when I
• 36:44
  was in Afghanistan, I had some Internet connectivity and I
• 36:47
  Googled German commands. And the first time I said it, he
• 36:50
  did it right away, you know, And I was just blown away.
• 36:53
  I'm like, wow, that's crazy. You know what?
• 36:55
  What a he doesn't forget. Yeah, no, I just thought it was
• 36:59
  interesting that dogs come from all over the world, right?
• 37:01
  There's one from Israel, right? Yeah, A.
• 37:03
  Big group, he has a lot from Israel.
• 37:05
  That was a program very interesting and they grabbed
• 37:08
  those dogs and they're they're amazing to you all off leash.
• 37:10
  They're trained on radios, so you can talk to a dog.
• 37:13
  Yeah. They'll have a radio on the
• 37:14
  back. And then the guy has a headset
• 37:16
  like this, and he'll talk to the dog like, you know, down, left,
• 37:19
  right. Dumb.
• 37:20
  Yeah. It's unbelievable.
• 37:22
  Yeah. Just This is why I love dogs.
• 37:25
  I'm obsessed. Yeah, we definitely don't
• 37:27
  understand. I mean, we kind of do because
• 37:30
  we've been doing it for a while. But training wise, I mean,
• 37:32
  there's so many the capabilities they have, every day you hear
• 37:34
  something new, you know, even sniffing out bedbugs or
• 37:37
  something like that seems weird, but they can do that.
• 37:39
  Sniffing out cancer cells or turning on like weird stuff.
• 37:42
  Yeah, it's. I've seen the dogs that alert
• 37:45
  their owners when they're about to have a seizure and make them.
• 37:47
  Alert service dogs, yeah, absolutely panic attack.
• 37:50
  They'll do anything. You can train a dog probably to
• 37:52
  do absolutely anything. So it's very cool.
• 37:55
  Such a gift. Such a gift.
• 37:58
  Oh gosh, I'm going through my notes here because again, like I
• 38:00
  said, you're just going to have to buy the book to get all the
• 38:03
  details. But I'm just giving some some
• 38:06
  tidbits here to kind of give a high level of your story so that
• 38:10
  people can really learn by by buying the book and and I think
• 38:15
  by following you and even by you sharing that real the other day
• 38:19
  of war dogs following them now. Oh my gosh, this is a whole
• 38:22
  world and community. Just another way to support our
• 38:25
  veterans, right? Our veterans.
• 38:29
  Yeah, now they're a good group of the United States War Dog
• 38:31
  Association. They're great because they were
• 38:33
  started by a young, small group of Vietnam dog handlers.
• 38:36
  They were going to raise money to build a monument, which is
• 38:38
  actually in New Jersey, not too far down the road from where I
• 38:41
  live. And it evolved into doing care
• 38:43
  packages overseas and some other supplemental things.
• 38:46
  And I was actually the receiver of some of those care packages.
• 38:49
  And then when everyone started to get out, it was actually
• 38:51
  taken over by a good group of Marines that we worked with over
• 38:55
  there. Happened to be mentioned in the
• 38:56
  book, but he's now the president of that organization.
• 38:59
  And they're so big now they're doing RX program where they're
• 39:02
  taking care of medications for dogs when they get out.
• 39:04
  And they'll do more care packages, taking care of the
• 39:07
  active duty dogs. And because unfortunately there
• 39:09
  isn't a program that supports the dogs when they get out, like
• 39:12
  I go to the VA or get a benefit from the government, the dogs
• 39:15
  don't get any of that. Yeah.
• 39:17
  So they're treated, they're treated good.
• 39:18
  It's just, you know, as far as when they get out, there's just
• 39:20
  no funding for it. It's just not part of it.
• 39:22
  So a lot of good groups out there that take care of it
• 39:24
  which. Is step up.
• 39:25
  Yeah, amazing, amazing. So taking you through.
• 39:30
  So you had gotten there. You're kind of and in the in the
• 39:33
  in the book, you in such detail describe the various missions
• 39:38
  that you're sent on, right. And I think the unique thing
• 39:41
  that I didn't know about a canine handler, and correct me
• 39:43
  if I'm wrong, usually you're deployed with troop or if you
• 39:47
  have a group that you, you're with, you actually throughout
• 39:50
  the book, you start with your group of 30 dogs and their
• 39:53
  handlers and then you guys are dispersed wherever you're
• 39:56
  needed. So you're just moving, talk
• 40:00
  about how did you get in a mindset, whether you're in the
• 40:03
  military, say, if someone in the military is listening or if
• 40:05
  someone just going through a hard time with lots of changes,
• 40:09
  How do you adapt to the constant change without like getting
• 40:13
  overwhelmed with like what? No tips there.
• 40:16
  Yeah, it's a good question. And I I was always somebody and
• 40:19
  well, I'll mention it a couple times here, but faith in
• 40:21
  something bigger than yourself is very, very important.
• 40:24
  Now I'm a huge believer in God. I have my own faith that it's
• 40:27
  becoming stronger each day, but you have to believe in
• 40:30
  something. You know, when you're dealing
• 40:31
  with something, struggling with something as hard as addiction
• 40:34
  or any of that stuff, you're in these programs and the first
• 40:37
  thing they teach you is you have to let it all go to a higher
• 40:39
  power, whatever that may be. Because there's something about
• 40:43
  left letting go of the control. Because when we start to eat
• 40:46
  this control inside of ourselves, it creates all this
• 40:48
  anxiety and worry and all these different feelings that we can't
• 40:51
  overcome, which gets us into a digger hole.
• 40:53
  So you have to release it to somebody else.
• 40:55
  That's why I'm talking to somebody else is helpful.
• 40:58
  Giving it all to God, you know, letting go of that control.
• 41:01
  He's in control. A lot of times I've found where
• 41:04
  I was in a position where I got comfortable and this is what you
• 41:07
  do. You're in a job, you're
• 41:08
  comfortable or you're in a relationship with somebody, and
• 41:10
  next, you know, they're moving across country or you lose that
• 41:12
  job or you have to relinquish that control, that
• 41:15
  comfortability. You have to say, you know what,
• 41:18
  let me take a step back. I'm not in control here.
• 41:21
  This is his plan. I just have to agree and believe
• 41:25
  in that. And then at that point, you're
• 41:27
  not worried about it. I got a call.
• 41:29
  Hey, you're going to go work with this group, OK?
• 41:30
  It's not. So that control is going to
• 41:33
  release a lot of worry. It's going to come with some
• 41:35
  changes. So now you have to deal with
• 41:37
  meeting new people. But it's interesting that your
• 41:39
  thing is called adventures in adversity because I always
• 41:43
  treated every little changes in adventure, every little thing
• 41:46
  that happened to me, it was like, OK, this means I have to
• 41:49
  go here. It's not a part of my plan.
• 41:50
  It's God's plan. That means something else better
• 41:53
  is planned for me. You know, I was, even though I
• 41:55
  was comfortable with the friends and family I had here or
• 41:58
  whatever that job was, something else is coming up now.
• 42:01
  It might be hard at first because it might, but at the
• 42:04
  end, there's going to be something better because that's
• 42:06
  part of his plan. And if you adopt this kind of
• 42:09
  belief system or lifestyle, I promise you, all of your
• 42:12
  anxieties will start to go away and not at first.
• 42:15
  Again, just like working out, you have to do small increments
• 42:17
  and you have to put some faith into something 1st.
• 42:20
  And then next, you know, three days, a week later, you're going
• 42:22
  to go, Oh my gosh, I actually love this new position.
• 42:25
  You know, I actually love the new people I met.
• 42:27
  I have great relationships. And let me tell you something,
• 42:30
  the other ones you did have, the experiences you had will live
• 42:32
  with you forever. So you never lost that anyway.
• 42:34
  So it's it's something that you'll never forget.
• 42:37
  That's a great answer and I'm really glad you brought that up
• 42:41
  because faith is something that I am newly experiencing and I
• 42:47
  know it's a thread throughout your book.
• 42:50
  You talk a lot about prayer and praying constantly.
• 42:55
  You said you would go on daily walks with grief and clear your
• 43:00
  head and pray, right, and also bond with him.
• 43:03
  And so the power of prayer. Man, I completely understand
• 43:08
  what you're saying. And to be honest, a couple years
• 43:11
  ago if someone told me give it all to God, I'm like, yeah, I
• 43:15
  don't. Just don't understand what
• 43:16
  you're saying like. Yeah, and you don't want to hear
• 43:17
  it. I don't get it.
• 43:19
  Yep. And then I did it when I was two
• 43:23
  years ago after the narcissistic abuse situation in this room on
• 43:27
  my knees ready to be like, I'm done.
• 43:28
  I can't do this. And then that's when I felt
• 43:32
  something being like, no, I'm here and I'm like, OK, I'm going
• 43:37
  to give this. Then you take it all because I
• 43:39
  can't do it. And he did.
• 43:43
  And and seven months later I started the podcast and and then
• 43:45
  all these things have happened where I'm like, OK, yeah, I get
• 43:48
  it now. I thought y'all were a little
• 43:50
  yeah, I was raised Catholic and I was like, yeah, I kind of get
• 43:53
  it. I think all of you all.
• 43:55
  I tell my friends this that are talking about Jesus and all this
• 43:57
  stuff. I want to get it but I don't and
• 43:59
  now I do. Yeah, I have.
• 44:00
  The same way. I grew up Catholic, too, and I
• 44:02
  understand what you're saying. There's this moment and it
• 44:04
  doesn't sometimes some people talk about it.
• 44:06
  They're like, oh, you know, 4:00 on Tuesday, you know, and I knew
• 44:09
  I, you know, it happened. And for me, it wasn't so much
• 44:12
  like that, too. It was going through my own
• 44:14
  issues and you kind of you struggle with it.
• 44:16
  It's a balance. And but then if you really
• 44:19
  commit again, it's that work. It's that true belief.
• 44:21
  If you just say, okay, I'm gonna do it.
• 44:23
  But then you have your insecurities like, well, I'm
• 44:25
  gonna still try to control my life a little bit, but then you
• 44:27
  give it up again and again and again.
• 44:29
  And if you just keep doing that, you'll, you'll feel that relief
• 44:32
  that that whole feeling of you're right.
• 44:35
  It isn't, you know, because that you found that you heard that
• 44:37
  voice and, you know, some people are like, I heard the voice of
• 44:40
  God tell me, you know, it's going to be OK.
• 44:42
  And some people get upset because they're like, well, I
• 44:44
  never had that moment. I've never felt it.
• 44:46
  Yes, you have. You just didn't realize it.
• 44:48
  You know, you said you felt that breath or you felt that change
• 44:51
  in your life and you felt that relief.
• 44:53
  Those are all those things. Is that communication?
• 44:55
  It's that unspoken stuff. And maybe I understand it a lot
• 44:58
  too. That's something that grief
• 44:59
  taught me was there's a lot of communication between either
• 45:03
  humans and animals that we don't understand.
• 45:05
  I had a great relationship with him, but it's not like we sat
• 45:07
  around and talked, you know? It's none of that.
• 45:09
  And so it's the same thing I learned with faith in God.
• 45:12
  There's a lot of unspoken communication that just connects
• 45:16
  to your soul and that just teaches you that's a real thing.
• 45:18
  It's not fake. You know, it's not just go to
• 45:21
  church. It's not just I believe or
• 45:23
  someone telling you, just give it to God.
• 45:25
  You're like, it's not that easy. You know, it's really not that
• 45:28
  easy. You can't just talk about it.
• 45:29
  You have to feel it. It's a feeling.
• 45:32
  Totally. Once you are open to being like,
• 45:35
  OK, I surrender because this is too heavy.
• 45:37
  Whatever it doesn't, whatever your adversity is, then you
• 45:42
  start to go out in the world. You start to have these moments
• 45:45
  in where you're like, there's no, that's not.
• 45:48
  How did you bring that up? When did I?
• 45:51
  You have these moments where I'm just like, there's just no way
• 45:55
  that could have been said. When I like, you're like, OK,
• 45:58
  yeah. And then you follow those.
• 46:01
  But it's might be unspoken. Like you said, the bond with the
• 46:03
  dog or the feeling when you walk in a room and you feel love.
• 46:08
  Not everything is done with words or audible proof.
• 46:12
  It's a feeling. Yeah, absolutely.
• 46:15
  And like you said that what you were explaining, this whole just
• 46:17
  flows and something will happen. That's God cock talking to you.
• 46:20
  That's God. That's that higher power.
• 46:22
  Whatever you believe in, that's the direction of life.
• 46:24
  And if you start to notice it and believe it, it becomes
• 46:27
  infectious and it is something you adopt.
• 46:28
  And that's what they mean by being a true believer, you know,
• 46:31
  constantly living in faith. You know, for instance, let's
• 46:34
  say I'm going to give a quick story.
• 46:35
  It's like I'm driving down the road and I'm stuck behind
• 46:38
  someone going 40 to 60. And you're like, you want to
• 46:40
  curse and pass them and give them the finger and get all
• 46:43
  upset. But you never know the reason
• 46:45
  why. You know, you don't know why
• 46:46
  they're going slow. You don't know why you have to
• 46:48
  go slow. Next thing you know, you get
• 46:49
  stuck at the red light. So you say, you know what, I'm
• 46:51
  going to make the stop at the convenience store instead of
• 46:53
  sitting here. So you make a left and you go in
• 46:54
  there. Then there's an old lady getting
• 46:56
  out of her car and she's struggling.
• 46:57
  So you help her with her Walker and then you help her open the
• 46:59
  door. So you wouldn't have been in
• 47:01
  that position to help her if you you weren't stuck there and you
• 47:04
  made that green light. So all these little things that
• 47:06
  you didn't really mean to do lined up.
• 47:09
  And I'm telling you, that's God speaking to you.
• 47:11
  That's God giving you direction. And it could be as something as
• 47:13
  silly and small as that. Even just opening the door for
• 47:15
  one random person with their head down, they look up and
• 47:17
  smile. They might be having the worst
• 47:19
  day of their entire life, but you just made that difference.
• 47:22
  So try to take those extra little moments of just saying
• 47:26
  this is happening for a reason and it's most likely not, you
• 47:30
  know, a bad thing. Yeah, yeah, no, I'm so glad we
• 47:34
  brought up. I mean, I could talk for hours
• 47:36
  about the faith and if anybody is listening and whether you
• 47:39
  grew up Catholic or grew up without faith or it doesn't even
• 47:42
  matter. I have friends that are Muslim.
• 47:43
  I have friends that are Jewish, you know, atheist, whatever.
• 47:47
  I wouldn't like you said, I would encourage you to look for
• 47:50
  a higher power because I feel like when you, you know, there's
• 47:53
  that baby Christian now that all my friends like you're a little
• 47:57
  baby, I'm learning. Wow.
• 47:59
  But it's like basic stuff that I'm learning, but it's also new
• 48:03
  to me. And like, so all these stories
• 48:05
  in the Bible and quotes, I'm like the Bible has so, so much
• 48:10
  it's. It is and it's it's definitely
• 48:12
  daunting. So like you said, it's I can see
• 48:14
  why people, like you said, get turned off to it.
• 48:15
  Like, oh, just give it up to God or like, oh, just pick up the
• 48:18
  Bible and read it every day. Trust me, it'll change your
• 48:20
  life. And I've been doing that.
• 48:21
  I actually did the 365 challenge like every day.
• 48:23
  I'm on the the Bible. Yeah, you version, whatever.
• 48:26
  I'm reading it every day and I'm stuck in the Old Testament and
• 48:28
  I'm like 20 days behind. It's it's it's brutal.
• 48:31
  Yeah, it's tough. So if you're trying to do it and
• 48:34
  you get this, you know, you're discouraged.
• 48:36
  Don't be. It's normal, you know, and yeah,
• 48:38
  just keep at it. Yeah, you're right.
• 48:39
  It's. And like you said, so work out
• 48:40
  for your soul, you know you gotta keep on it.
• 48:43
  You know, my friend Michelle told me I was like a couple
• 48:45
  months post breakdown, like early hanging on a couple of
• 48:48
  years ago. And she she was like, she was
• 48:50
  like girl, she's like, do you wanna?
• 48:51
  Do you wanna come to mothers together, this church group?
• 48:54
  And honestly, I was like, no, no, I don't want to go to a
• 48:57
  church right now, but you're awesome and I will go and just
• 49:02
  saying yes to anything that might better you right.
• 49:05
  And she was like, I was like, I don't even know where to start
• 49:07
  with the Bible. And she goes just read the book
• 49:09
  of Job and I'm like, why? And she's like, he's been
• 49:13
  through some stuff. And I'm like, OK, she's like,
• 49:15
  you're doing a podcast about adversity.
• 49:17
  Check out Joe. But I'm like, damn, this is
• 49:20
  rough, you know? But that was like, it was, it
• 49:22
  was more readable because he just goes through like trial
• 49:25
  after trial. And then why?
• 49:27
  God. And then just I was like, oh,
• 49:29
  OK, there. I I get this guy, you know?
• 49:33
  Yeah, absolutely. No, I totally love that.
• 49:35
  So, OK, well, I'll bring you back.
• 49:38
  We'll just talk all about God. That'll be like 4 hours, yeah.
• 49:42
  Into four different episodes. Seriously, I know.
• 49:45
  So you're deployed, you're going on all these missions, and you
• 49:49
  guys, your primary goal, it would change.
• 49:52
  We talked about how you were adapting to change and giving it
• 49:55
  to God. One day you could be sniffing
• 49:58
  for explosives, the other day you could be just protecting
• 50:01
  somebody in a zone, right? So you are adapting to different
• 50:05
  missions and what I found really eye opening for me was the way
• 50:12
  you described how you guys moved at night in the dark.
• 50:16
  Yes, yeah. I don't know as a non military
• 50:19
  person I was like but wait, how do you move in pitch black?
• 50:22
  Yeah, and why would you be awake?
• 50:24
  Or how do you even like it? Sounds like a dumb question, but
• 50:26
  I'm like, wow, I didn't even realize that that you would have
• 50:31
  to move in pitch black and figure that out and then have a
• 50:34
  dog with you. And then there you describe one
• 50:37
  moment where you fall down into was it was water, right?
• 50:40
  Yes. Yeah.
• 50:41
  And you were? Little water canal thing, Yeah.
• 50:44
  And that instinct to panic, you said you remain calm, Yes, you
• 50:50
  have to calm yourself down in that emergency.
• 50:53
  Yes, yeah. And that's an that's an
• 50:54
  interesting story because we that would actually happen 15
• 50:57
  years ago to like the second that was on my birthday 15 years
• 50:59
  ago during my appointment. Yes, Yeah, that was my birthday.
• 51:02
  Today it happened. Yes, yeah.
• 51:04
  And with the time change, it might have been exactly right
• 51:06
  now. So that's interesting.
• 51:07
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 51:09
  It's funny you brought that story up.
• 51:10
  It's because, like, it was that same day.
• 51:12
  It was my birthday. It was supposed to, and that's
• 51:14
  why I write about it. It's supposed to be a special
• 51:15
  day. And you know, I think I even
• 51:17
  joke that because I thought I was in a drown.
• 51:18
  I thought it was die on my. Birthday.
• 51:20
  Yeah. I'm like, I'm gonna die on my
• 51:21
  birthday. This is really weird.
• 51:22
  But yeah, it was this silly little story.
• 51:24
  We were just walking and we're on this tiny little goat path.
• 51:26
  It was next to a little Canal Creek thing, and the road, the
• 51:31
  little part of the road for dirt path just gave away.
• 51:34
  I fell straight down into it, and immediately I was submerged.
• 51:37
  But then after a second, I was able to realize I was chest high
• 51:40
  in water. You know, it wasn't that bad.
• 51:42
  So initially I'm soaking wet and in darkness, and then I'm
• 51:44
  standing up and everyone's a little stressed out.
• 51:47
  My dog's up there running around because he's still up to, you
• 51:49
  know, Yeah. And he's like, where'd he go?
• 51:51
  Where'd he go? And again, I think I commented.
• 51:53
  I was like, that was the first time we were ever operated
• 51:55
  without, without a reason. Like, hey, go in your crate and
• 51:57
  relax. We were just separated.
• 51:58
  And he's just like, where the heck did he go?
• 52:00
  You know, everyone's stressed. He's feeling the stress of
• 52:02
  everybody. And yeah, no.
• 52:04
  So it wasn't that bad. I wind up having to take all my
• 52:06
  gear off because they couldn't lift me up out of that muddy
• 52:08
  water. And, you know, they pulled me
• 52:10
  out. I was soaking wet.
• 52:11
  And yeah, it was a cool story. It was.
• 52:13
  It was a nice night and it was fun.
• 52:15
  You know, it was more adventurous than anything.
• 52:17
  And yeah, it was on my birthday. I say everybody was supposed to
• 52:19
  be a special day, and it was special to me.
• 52:21
  You know, it was cool. Yeah, well, kind of.
• 52:23
  It just reminded me too, when you, not to make it too much of
• 52:26
  A metaphor, but you could look at it like when you get in you
• 52:30
  when adversity hits, say you get a call about something or you
• 52:33
  lose a job or you just shit happens.
• 52:36
  We can't predict that. Initially it feels like
• 52:39
  everything's I'm gonna die. Like that's it.
• 52:42
  And then you're like, oh, wait, I'm in, OK.
• 52:44
  I love that. Yeah, like you, yeah, you might
• 52:48
  think you're submerged and drowning, but you're really just
• 52:49
  chest high. Take a second, breathe and.
• 52:52
  A second. Yeah, and that goes that
• 52:53
  translates into what I was talking about with other stuff
• 52:55
  like you were saying about someone always says it worse.
• 52:57
  Yeah, you might feel like your world just came collapsing down,
• 52:59
  but take that second breathe, look around you because it's not
• 53:03
  that bad and it could be you could be really, really bad.
• 53:05
  I'm sure it could be the worst thing in the world, or at least
• 53:08
  it is to you. Like some other your friends and
• 53:10
  stuff might be like whatever you lost your job, it's not that bad
• 53:13
  or like whatever your friend moved like get over it, you
• 53:15
  know? But but to you it feels like the
• 53:17
  end of the world, you know? But then you start to realize,
• 53:19
  OK, maybe it isn't that bad. And if you just say that to
• 53:21
  yourself, it'll just start to feel better, you know?
• 53:24
  It is honestly like you got breath in your lungs, you're
• 53:27
  good if if you do have breath in your lungs, there's a chance
• 53:30
  that you can keep going. It's.
• 53:32
  Yeah, I like that. Yeah.
• 53:33
  Yeah, exactly. Yep.
• 53:36
  OK, so we're and again, not to, to move too quickly, but again,
• 53:41
  the full story is in here, but I'm taking kind of a high level.
• 53:45
  So you're going on all these missions and you were talking
• 53:50
  about too, how time moves differently out there, right,
• 53:53
  Because you're just there mission to mission to mission,
• 53:57
  sleep, get up. Sometimes you get sleep,
• 53:59
  sometimes you don't. I remember you were saying you'd
• 54:01
  look at you're watching me like, OK, well, that's an hour of
• 54:03
  shit. Like, you don't, you don't, you
• 54:06
  got to move, you know? And so I have such and you're
• 54:09
  talking about 120° heat and you guys had walked three miles.
• 54:14
  Like that's probably even nothing.
• 54:16
  I just like, damn, how do you physically do that?
• 54:19
  That is so challenging physically, mentally,
• 54:23
  emotionally. I just can't believe what you
• 54:26
  guys do over there. Yeah, it's because you, you,
• 54:29
  you're in it together. You realize this is what you're
• 54:31
  trained to do. You know, it's, that's why they
• 54:33
  push you through a lot of training.
• 54:34
  You know, you go through heck and boot camp and all this other
• 54:36
  extra deployment training. And when you're over there, it's
• 54:39
  almost more high end. You know, you're over there for
• 54:41
  a reason. Everything's more stimulated and
• 54:43
  you kind of push through it. You know, you there's no turning
• 54:46
  back. You can't be like, I'm not going
• 54:47
  to do it. You know, you push your body to
• 54:48
  limits you didn't under, you know, you didn't have before.
• 54:51
  Yeah. And then ultimately it winds up
• 54:53
  not being that bad. It's not going to kill you, you
• 54:55
  know, because the guy to the left and right are with you, and
• 54:57
  they did it, too. And yeah, it's amazing what the
• 55:00
  human body can do as long as you push your mind to it.
• 55:02
  Yeah, you're what is there. I don't know if someone said it,
• 55:04
  David Goggins or somebody was like, your mind's going to quit
• 55:08
  way before your body. Yeah, I think it was him, yeah.
• 55:10
  Was it? Yeah.
• 55:11
  Oh my gosh, I love him so. Much.
• 55:13
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's the guy who'll get you up
• 55:15
  out of bed in the morning for sure.
• 55:16
  If I'm ever complaining, I hear him being like, what are you
• 55:18
  complaining? I'm like, nothing.
• 55:20
  You're right, I'm not complaining about anything.
• 55:23
  Yeah, that's true. Yeah.
• 55:25
  You bought your mind will give or.
• 55:27
  Yeah, way before your. You know that works.
• 55:30
  So because your mind is weak, that's all boot camp is, to be
• 55:32
  honest. Yeah, boot camp is literally
• 55:34
  just mind games. It's not even physical.
• 55:37
  They just be like, stand up, get down, stand up, get down.
• 55:40
  Like there's a portion where they make you hold a piece of
• 55:42
  paper in front of your body for several minutes and it's just a
• 55:46
  piece of paper. But then after like 20 minutes,
• 55:48
  it becomes extremely heavy. Your brain is telling you put
• 55:50
  your arms down, put your arms down.
• 55:51
  But you have to basically keep your brain saying, no, it's not
• 55:54
  that heavy to keep your arms up. And it's these little things
• 55:57
  like keep pushing, keep pushing, crawl 5 feet, crawl 5 feet and
• 56:00
  do it till you hit 200 feet. It's just a a mind game, you
• 56:02
  know? And what's what you just said?
• 56:05
  They're so powerful. Your brain is telling you.
• 56:08
  And I believe we're the watcher. We're we're the, we are not our
• 56:11
  thoughts. We're the watcher.
• 56:13
  Our brain is that tool, the intuition, and God will speak
• 56:17
  outside of your brain. So it's a reminder whether
• 56:21
  you're, again, it can be applied to so many things in life,
• 56:24
  whether you're working out or you're working on a presentation
• 56:27
  or you're whatever, you have that negative voice come in
• 56:31
  being like, you can't do this. And you're like, yes, you can
• 56:33
  keep going. Yes, you can keep going.
• 56:35
  Five more, be quiet. It's this dialogue.
• 56:37
  Right. Yeah, absolutely.
• 56:38
  It's a battle of good and evil within yourself all the time.
• 56:41
  I struggle with it to this day. I have a home gym, but I joke my
• 56:44
  couch is closer than my gym. You know, I'm going to going to
• 56:48
  watch TV before I, you know, work out.
• 56:49
  And it's because your brain just says it's easier.
• 56:51
  It's easier, you know? We're always looking to take the
• 56:52
  easy way out, you know? Yeah, so you have to.
• 56:56
  You just don't negotiate with your brain.
• 56:57
  You're like, this is what we do. Yes.
• 57:00
  And one line I wrote down here, you, you had said fear is the
• 57:03
  emotion and I might, I don't know if it's word for word, but
• 57:05
  you said something like fear is the emotion we create based on
• 57:08
  the reactions you have adrenaline and that.
• 57:11
  So if you're, you were in combat, you get that rush of
• 57:14
  adrenaline, cortisol, the things you were saying, fear is the
• 57:17
  emotion kind of that we create. And then faith is living 2nd to
• 57:21
  2nd. I love that.
• 57:23
  Yeah, and it's funny you brought that up because I just popped in
• 57:26
  my head when you said fear is like, there's a good Christian
• 57:28
  song out now and I don't want to.
• 57:29
  I don't forget who sing is it? But it's called Fear is a Liar.
• 57:32
  I'm sure you've heard it or maybe.
• 57:33
  But yeah. And it's true.
• 57:34
  Fear is a lie. It's not a real thing.
• 57:36
  It's this thing we create in ourselves that basically says,
• 57:39
  oh, you're afraid of this because it's so scary.
• 57:41
  Like, no, it's not. It's scary, but it doesn't mean
• 57:43
  I have to be afraid of it, you know, all the changes or
• 57:45
  whatever it may be. So yeah, you have to have faith.
• 57:48
  And when you have that faith instead of faith replaces fear
• 57:51
  all the time. They can't coexist.
• 57:53
  Exactly. Very true, Yes.
• 57:55
  There's no such thing as like, dark within light then like,
• 57:58
  that's how you create. Yeah, that's how you get rid of
• 58:00
  darkness, to just shine a light on it, you know, it's the same
• 58:02
  thing, so. And one more thing on the faith.
• 58:06
  This might be the best analogy I've ever heard, honestly, about
• 58:10
  faith. I wrote it down and I I think I
• 58:12
  teared up when you when I read it, you said life without faith
• 58:17
  is like it's a minefield, right? And then when you have faith in
• 58:22
  God, it's like going through the minefield in the dark with the
• 58:27
  guy who placed the mines. Now that is, I've never ever
• 58:34
  thought about it like that. Now, and that analogy came
• 58:37
  easier to me overseas when I was, you know, dealing with that
• 58:41
  myself, you know, And I had to think, why I can't be afraid to
• 58:43
  take a step because, you know, he's in control.
• 58:46
  And if I get hurt, it's because he, you know, that's what has to
• 58:50
  needs to happen. So if you're, if you're worried
• 58:52
  about going or doing anything, you shouldn't be.
• 58:55
  And you know, if something does happen, you know, you're out of
• 58:58
  it's out of your control anyway, you know, So, and that's why
• 59:00
  every step I went, I was like, well, this is where I'm supposed
• 59:02
  to walk. That's where I'm supposed to
• 59:03
  walk. That's how you get through it,
• 59:04
  through faith. Otherwise you would be frozen
• 59:07
  with fear. You wouldn't be able to take a
• 59:08
  step. Exactly.
• 59:09
  And then or you have other issues like you're just like,
• 59:11
  you know, I got a death wish or you just don't care or you know,
• 59:14
  whatever may be, or you just, you know, whatever it may be, or
• 59:17
  you could have like complete opposite you have.
• 59:19
  So you have such an ego, you're overconfident in yourself and
• 59:22
  things, bad things happen. And then you don't know why, you
• 59:24
  know, so there's a million different things.
• 59:25
  So if you just live through faith and just push through,
• 59:28
  knowing that every step you take is because he's there to guide
• 59:31
  you, it makes life so much easier.
• 59:33
  Because then if you do get hurt or something bad does happen,
• 59:36
  you don't blame yourself, you don't blame others.
• 59:38
  You just say, This is why I'm supposed to be hurt.
• 59:40
  You know, This is why I'm supposed to go this direction,
• 59:43
  because he wanted me to. And I knew it.
• 59:45
  As soon as the day I got hurt on the ground and I was blown up,
• 59:49
  one of the first thoughts was I'd, well, obviously I thought I
• 59:51
  was dead. But then the first thought was
• 59:52
  like, well, if I'm supposed to live through this, then this is
• 59:55
  what you wanted me to do. It was like this was the plan
• 59:57
  all along. Well, and I was, I was just
• 59:59
  going to ask you about that and you, you describe it in your
• 1:00:04
  book that obviously everything slowed down and you kind of just
• 1:00:08
  you thought, OK, this is what I'm dying and this is what's
• 1:00:12
  happening. Thank you for being so open.
• 1:00:15
  I know that can't be easy to share and write about and I
• 1:00:19
  don't like take it lightly bringing it up.
• 1:00:20
  So I just wanted to thank you for for being open to talking,
• 1:00:24
  talking about it. And again, that obviously that
• 1:00:27
  was the moment when you guys, it was an IED inside of a wall,
• 1:00:31
  right? Yes, yeah, It was right next to
• 1:00:33
  like a doorway we're trying to get into, and it was a right
• 1:00:36
  there, waist high in a wall. It might.
• 1:00:39
  The way I think about it is that they put these in this wall like
• 1:00:41
  that. So if we were going to stack up
• 1:00:43
  or have multiple guys ready to go into a building, it would.
• 1:00:46
  It'll mangle six or seven guys. And luckily I was the only one
• 1:00:49
  with close enough to get seriously.
• 1:00:50
  Hurt. Yeah.
• 1:00:52
  So yeah. And and and grief grief did not
• 1:00:56
  make it, but he he certainly is, is honored forever.
• 1:01:00
  And I just, you know, that was a, that was a tough part of the
• 1:01:05
  book for me to read. But I'm, I'm glad that you
• 1:01:08
  opened up and wrote about it because I think people need to
• 1:01:11
  understand what you guys go through over there and the, the
• 1:01:15
  trauma that you guys go through. And obviously you survived and
• 1:01:18
  you have, you have injuries that you have to deal with.
• 1:01:21
  How are you doing today? Like physically?
• 1:01:24
  Very to this very 2nd and very, very good.
• 1:01:26
  You know, it was a long, long road and again, we through any
• 1:01:30
  type of changes or adversity or struggles.
• 1:01:32
  I went through peaks and valleys for sure.
• 1:01:34
  I initially was very easy to get better because you had a
• 1:01:37
  trajectory. You knew the mission.
• 1:01:38
  It was like I had to move my hands again.
• 1:01:40
  So you have to work on that. You have to be able to walk
• 1:01:42
  again, so you have to work on that.
• 1:01:43
  So there was always a plan, there was a mission, people that
• 1:01:45
  guide you. And then you start to when
• 1:01:47
  you're on that peak, you know, you get comfortable and then you
• 1:01:50
  start to fall back down again because you're slipping and then
• 1:01:52
  these feelings come in. Oh, well, yeah, your hands can
• 1:01:54
  work, but they could work better.
• 1:01:55
  Or you could have done this, but you can't.
• 1:01:57
  And then you start to to lie to yourself and treat yourself like
• 1:02:00
  crap. And I lived, I lived lying to
• 1:02:02
  myself for a long time. Whether it was you don't have a
• 1:02:04
  problem with this or, you know, you could do better with
• 1:02:06
  yourself, you know, struggling with go, I don't have a career.
• 1:02:09
  Things would have been different if you didn't get hurt.
• 1:02:11
  So I always struggle with this. And unfortunately for me, I was
• 1:02:15
  always involved with medication initially.
• 1:02:18
  So I was pumped through a lot of medication.
• 1:02:20
  So not only that blunt might, you know, healing process, but
• 1:02:24
  it also cheated it in a sense. And then there was a point where
• 1:02:27
  I stayed on it for so long that I just was a different person.
• 1:02:30
  And then that had to stop because other things.
• 1:02:33
  And then but then I'm supplementing that with alcohol.
• 1:02:36
  So then you have to you have that and then that's worse
• 1:02:38
  because it's so socially acceptable.
• 1:02:40
  And then, yeah. And I like to blame it.
• 1:02:42
  But then COVID hit and then we all just stayed at home and
• 1:02:44
  drank for a year, you know, so that that kind of skyrocketed
• 1:02:47
  things. And meanwhile, the whole time,
• 1:02:49
  you know, I'm still trying to get a job.
• 1:02:51
  I'm working on my life. I'm doing, I'm working on the
• 1:02:53
  book, I'm working on speaking engagements.
• 1:02:55
  I've done a lot of these things. And to the public eye, I look
• 1:02:59
  like this, you know, perfect person who made it through the
• 1:03:02
  hardest thing they ever dealt with.
• 1:03:03
  We're deep down you're dealing with things that you don't talk
• 1:03:06
  about. And it wasn't until recently
• 1:03:08
  where I'd realized I got to cut out all the crap of my life.
• 1:03:11
  I have to devote and put everything into God and really
• 1:03:14
  just relinquish any control like you touched on in the beginning.
• 1:03:18
  And it's I can speak on it now because it's true, you know, and
• 1:03:21
  then I didn't be passed. I'd be lying about it.
• 1:03:23
  So I'd be even worse, you know, because I didn't truly, truly
• 1:03:25
  believed it, because there's always that lie in my head.
• 1:03:27
  No, you could be better or no, this is not, or you can control
• 1:03:30
  your own life. And it's not until this day
• 1:03:32
  where I can realize, hey, look, you're only as strong as you're
• 1:03:35
  going to be. The effort that you put in, you
• 1:03:37
  know, everything is out of your control.
• 1:03:39
  Just live every second by second knowing that it's good.
• 1:03:41
  And then now looking back, I can see all this stuff is a lot
• 1:03:45
  clearer. You know, this was always the
• 1:03:46
  mission and purpose, being here to be able to talk with you,
• 1:03:49
  being able to share the story is just, you know, part of my
• 1:03:52
  life's mission right now. And, yeah, just so grateful.
• 1:03:55
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:03:55
  It's been amazing. That's why you're like, what do
• 1:03:56
  you want doing your birthday? And I'm like, absolutely, let's
• 1:03:58
  do it. Love to.
• 1:04:00
  Well, and it's, you know, life, life, anyone listening to this
• 1:04:05
  has had adversity. That's why I always say too, I
• 1:04:07
  go when people go, oh, what kind of guest star do you want to
• 1:04:10
  have on your podcast? I'm like any, any person, every
• 1:04:14
  person, every, every single person.
• 1:04:17
  I don't care how much money you have.
• 1:04:18
  I don't care where you live. You have some adversity of some
• 1:04:21
  kind, whether it's seen or unseen, right?
• 1:04:25
  And you're making the adversity. What I commend you for is your,
• 1:04:31
  you have the courage to, as a man, as a veteran, as a person
• 1:04:38
  to open up and literally talk about the, the unseen adversity
• 1:04:43
  that you're going through, not only for veterans, but anyone
• 1:04:48
  who is surviving with grief of any kind.
• 1:04:51
  You know what I mean? Absolutely.
• 1:04:53
  Yeah. And so when those lies right
• 1:04:56
  from now, which I know they're from, you know, the enemy now I
• 1:04:59
  get it now. I'm like, this makes so much
• 1:05:02
  sense now. Those lies.
• 1:05:04
  Everything is God had this plan for you, right?
• 1:05:08
  And it doesn't look like the you know, you obviously, you know,
• 1:05:12
  were discharged. And I'm sure you never thought
• 1:05:15
  you would be on a podcast talking about a book about like
• 1:05:19
  this wasn't in the life plan. I'm sure I.
• 1:05:21
  Mean the book wasn't and like you said, not doing any of this.
• 1:05:23
  It was just, it all just evolves, you know, it's put in
• 1:05:26
  front of you and you just kind of you.
• 1:05:28
  Follow those, like those, your therapist, you need to write a
• 1:05:31
  book. You're like, oh, OK, follow
• 1:05:32
  that. And then little things happen
• 1:05:34
  that lead you to the next, right?
• 1:05:35
  Yes, Yep. I want to just commend you for
• 1:05:40
  all of this. And I know I could keep talking
• 1:05:42
  to you for hours and hours. And I really want to do justice
• 1:05:45
  to this guy right here. Thank you.
• 1:05:47
  Yeah. Because I'm sure you could see
• 1:05:49
  I'm, I'm a big, big animal dog lover.
• 1:05:52
  And so I hope that in talking today, I've, I've given him him
• 1:05:56
  some love as well. You know, you definitely.
• 1:05:59
  Yeah, absolutely. And it's, you know, it's, I had
• 1:06:02
  a great life with him. He was not, you know, I had him
• 1:06:05
  for about 2 1/2 years. He was almost going to be 4 or
• 1:06:07
  something like that. And you know they they have a
• 1:06:09
  short lifespan regardless. OK.
• 1:06:11
  But yeah, but he, you know, he lived up to his name for sure.
• 1:06:15
  And, you know, he'll always be a part of me, so I really
• 1:06:17
  appreciate. That yeah, he had a good sounds
• 1:06:20
  like he had a good time playing with you guys between missions
• 1:06:27
  and doing what he did and, you know, snuggling and all those
• 1:06:32
  you have those moments, you know, it's all those micro
• 1:06:34
  moments that that you remember. Let that define the
• 1:06:37
  relationships. And I also you do a beautiful
• 1:06:40
  tribute in the back here and threw out a couple of your
• 1:06:43
  chapters of some of your some of our fallen heroes here, Derek
• 1:06:48
  Hernandez, Joseph T Printler, Steven DuPont, Max Donahue,
• 1:06:54
  Fengi. And again, my apologies if I
• 1:06:57
  missed anyone that talk about in the book.
• 1:07:01
  Yeah, because those are the ones, I mean, there was guys
• 1:07:03
  unfortunately losing their lives throughout deployment.
• 1:07:05
  That was 2010 those. But those are the ones that I
• 1:07:08
  either worked with personally knew or part of our group.
• 1:07:12
  Some of the some of the kids were sitting right next to me
• 1:07:14
  when it happened. And some of them like Max was
• 1:07:16
  just one of my good buddies is a dog handler, one of our brothers
• 1:07:19
  and he lost his life over there. And I, it was very important for
• 1:07:22
  me to add that that's why it was a very delicate situation to
• 1:07:25
  write about. But then also, it's very
• 1:07:26
  difficult for me to promote it because it's not something to
• 1:07:29
  promote, it's something to be shared.
• 1:07:32
  Like it was important for me to do that because they say that,
• 1:07:35
  you know, we all die once, but we die for the last time when
• 1:07:38
  they stopped saying your name. So I really appreciate you
• 1:07:41
  saying their names like that. That was very powerful because
• 1:07:44
  that's important. We do memorial services,
• 1:07:46
  remember Memorial Day, they'll read the names of fallen heroes.
• 1:07:49
  And we do that on purpose to keep their memory alive, to talk
• 1:07:52
  about them, share stories. And I wanted to immortalize them
• 1:07:55
  as much as possible, as much as I could, you know, honorably do.
• 1:08:00
  So I thank you for doing that of.
• 1:08:01
  Course, of course, and you bring to life like the relationships
• 1:08:05
  you have in such a great way. And the book has moments of like
• 1:08:09
  just the anecdotes of like funny things.
• 1:08:11
  And I love just how real you are about it and, you know, the
• 1:08:15
  stream of consciousness and you gosh, the, the, when you guys
• 1:08:20
  did the memorial for Max, I think, and you all that was I
• 1:08:24
  had to put the, the book down for a second because it was just
• 1:08:27
  such a beautiful tribute. And the way you described, you
• 1:08:30
  know, the helmet and the dog tags.
• 1:08:32
  And then then I turned the page and saw the picture and I was
• 1:08:34
  like, OK, I'm taking a break now.
• 1:08:35
  Like I was like, and I'm out. All right.
• 1:08:38
  Yeah. Well, meaning I want, I know I'm
• 1:08:40
  not. It's OK.
• 1:08:41
  It's good to feel emotions because again, remembering these
• 1:08:44
  these amazing people who and their families like will never
• 1:08:48
  stop talking about them for sure.
• 1:08:50
  Yes, thank you. Thank you for doing that.
• 1:08:52
  I appreciate that a lot. Yeah, gosh.
• 1:08:55
  Well, Alfred I, we're right around an hour and 15 and.
• 1:09:00
  Is that the sweet spot? Yeah, that's it.
• 1:09:03
  Someone just got to work right now.
• 1:09:04
  They're waiting. They're going to be late.
• 1:09:05
  They're like, I got to get out of this car.
• 1:09:09
  And I just, is there anything else?
• 1:09:11
  Again, please check the show notes Surviving with Grief
• 1:09:14
  available on Amazon. I'm going to put a link to your
• 1:09:17
  Instagram page, your website, any resources.
• 1:09:22
  I know you right now. You travel around, you're on
• 1:09:25
  podcasts, you go to events. Tell me what what are you up to
• 1:09:29
  these days? That that we can?
• 1:09:31
  Where can we follow you besides there?
• 1:09:33
  Yeah, I, well, right now I'm today, I just finished a little
• 1:09:36
  job. I'm trying to figure out my life
• 1:09:38
  still, like everybody is, but I'm trying to.
• 1:09:40
  Yeah. I'm trying to use my benefit for
• 1:09:42
  the schooling. That's how I got involved in the
• 1:09:44
  Marine Corps. And so I have two years left.
• 1:09:46
  I just got my associate's degree.
• 1:09:47
  Now I'm trying to go back to get my bachelor's.
• 1:09:50
  So amazing. Yeah.
• 1:09:51
  So I start school a week from like today.
• 1:09:53
  I go back next week. So I'll be doing schooling in
• 1:09:55
  the meantime, hopefully being able to do more like this
• 1:09:57
  because this is very flexible and I love being able to share a
• 1:10:00
  story. Yeah.
• 1:10:01
  And then so yeah, I'm just filling it with hopefully more
• 1:10:04
  traveling and meeting new people, being able to share it.
• 1:10:07
  I've done some speaking engagements.
• 1:10:09
  I do love that. I love seeing the faces making
• 1:10:12
  impacts on people's lives. I would like to get paid for
• 1:10:14
  doing it. I mean, I do it a lot for free.
• 1:10:16
  I do a lot for free. It's actually a joke in the last
• 1:10:18
  podcast, but they realized all I do is work for free.
• 1:10:21
  I was like, they're like, how's the book sales?
• 1:10:22
  I was like, I just gave away 20. You know, they're like, that's
• 1:10:24
  not a good way to do this. Like I did you get caught up on
• 1:10:28
  Emily is stupid. Like I just want people to hear
• 1:10:29
  my story. I'm giving them away like
• 1:10:31
  that's. I know so I know.
• 1:10:34
  But hey, you know, listen, we, we got to, we got to, we got to
• 1:10:37
  get some Benjamins up in here, you know, let's.
• 1:10:39
  See. Well, I just got to pay the
• 1:10:41
  electric. Bill, that's money, you know.
• 1:10:42
  Yeah, yeah, I just got to keep my lights off.
• 1:10:44
  That's all right. Hey, you know.
• 1:10:46
  Yeah, so that's it. And I'll be then, like I said,
• 1:10:48
  hopefully when I get my degree I'll get a big boy job and be
• 1:10:51
  able to make money and but hey, I can plan it all I want and
• 1:10:56
  it's not up to me. So who knows where I'll be next
• 1:10:58
  year. Follow those.
• 1:11:00
  What does my friend say? Follow the God winks.
• 1:11:02
  Throughout the day. I love that my.
• 1:11:03
  Friends always say that, well, I'll be like, I'll text and I'm
• 1:11:06
  like, Oh my gosh, I saw this dove right when I was thinking
• 1:11:08
  about this and they're like twos and threes.
• 1:11:10
  He speaks in twos and threes. Pay attention.
• 1:11:13
  I love it. I'm like falling.
• 1:11:16
  I love that. Well, Alfred, I want to say one
• 1:11:20
  more time very happy birthday. I hope you have a wonderful rest
• 1:11:25
  of your day. And I hope when this goes live,
• 1:11:28
  you just see a bunch of Bing, Bing Bing singles coming in.
• 1:11:31
  I love it because I know it's a awesome, awesome book.
• 1:11:35
  I loved it, cried, laughed, loved, loved all of it.
• 1:11:39
  So. Thank you so much, that means a
• 1:11:40
  lot to me. I appreciate everything you're
• 1:11:42
  doing, you know, keep up the show.
• 1:11:43
  I love it. I'd be excited to see all your
• 1:11:45
  new episodes and stuff, so it'd be awesome.
• 1:11:48
  I appreciate the support and we will talk to you soon, no doubt.
• 1:11:52
  Thank you very much. You great.
• 1:11:53
  Have a big day. Thank you.