#77 Tom Satterly - Delta Force CSM (RET) "All Secure" | Part 3

This week on SRS, we welcome Command SGT Major (R), Tom Satterly to the show. Satterly is a former Delta Force Operator with over twenty years of combat experience. He has participated in operations all across the globe. We're breaking his incredible story into a three part series. Part 3 In this episode, Satterly tells us about the aftermath of Somalia and his career during the Global War on Terror. Then, we get into Satterly's transition out of Special Operations and into his civilian life where his personal war was just beginning. SRS also welcomes special guest Co-Founder & CEO of All Secure Foundation. Jen & Tom share some eye opening statistics around Veteran suicide and give an unfiltered look at what families go through when their warriors come home. They give us this insight through the lens of their own marriage. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: https://lairdsuperfood.com - USE CODE "SRS" https://hvmn.com/shawn https://betterhelp.com/shawn Tom & Jen Satterly Links: Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/tomsatterly All Secure Foundation - https://www.allsecurefoundation.org All Secure Foundation IG - https://www.instagram.com/allsecurefoundation Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/virago_allsecurefoundation Jen IG - https://www.instagram.com/jen.satterly Books - https://www.allsecurefoundation.org/category/books Please leave us a review on Apple & Spotify Podcasts. Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website | Patreon | TikTok | Instagram | Download Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:31Speaker 01

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• 1:00Shawn Ryan?

  Previously on The Sean Ryan Show.

• 1:13Shawn Ryan?

  This is going to be your last interview on Mogadishu and what happened in Somalia.

• 1:27Tom Satterly?

  What hurts me the most?

• 1:31Tom Satterly?

  About the trash bags.

• 1:35Tom Satterly?

  Talking to one of his spouses, his body parts were in that trash bag.

• 1:41Tom Satterly?

  And she can't use trash bags.

• 1:46Speaker 04

  This past weekend, we all reacted with anger and horror as an armed Somali gang desecrated the bodies of our American soldiers and displayed a captured American pilot.

• 2:02Tom Satterly?

  I remember getting nervous, but still like, we're gonna be home for dinner, right? You know, just joking around. And then another RPG, and I remember looking up and seeing it hit the helicopter, the tail of the helicopter.

• 2:12Shawn Ryan?

  You saw it hit?

• 2:13Tom Satterly?

  Yeah, and it just started auto-rotating. I'm like, oh man, no, no, you know?

• 2:20Speaker 04

  These tragic events raise hard questions about our effort in Somalia.

• 2:24Tom Satterly?

  I saw a guy across the street pop out with an AK and aim it up. He either shot him right in the head or whatever. He disappeared in the room, his weapon flew out the window.

• 2:31Shawn Ryan?

  Was that your first kill? The guy on the roof?

• 2:34Tom Satterly?

  Yeah.

• 2:35Shawn Ryan?

  So that was exciting for you?

• 2:37Tom Satterly?

  It was. Because I don't get this detail typically, and it still hurts, you know?

• 2:44Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:45Tom Satterly?

  It's funny, people say, well, tell me about Somalia. Well, let's talk about Somaliana instantly. I feel it, you know?

• 2:52Shawn Ryan?

  Is there anything that could have been done after that operation that could have improved your, your mental state for the rest of your career?

• 3:05Tom Satterly?

  Talking about it. Getting everybody together to talk about it.

• 3:11Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Tom, welcome back for day two.

• 3:19Tom Satterly?

  All right, ready to do it.

• 3:20Shawn Ryan?

  All right, man. Well, we covered your, as much as of your career as we can cover in one day, yesterday. And today, we're kind of getting into some of the, the other side of this coin, you know, and, and what it's like coming into civilian life. But before, before we get post-retirement, I just want to backtrack and I want to talk about, what are some of the things that you're dealing with and some of the things that you're, you're, you're, you're using to cope with, with the experiences that you've had throughout your career? I mean, a lot of guys, you know, a lot of guys resort to booze, a lot of bar fights,

• 4:02Shawn Ryan?

  a lot of women problems, a lot of pills, a lot of drugs. Some of them pushed on you from, I've had stuff pushed on me from units and commands. Maybe you have, I don't know, but, but it's a, it's a ongoing discussion and more and more just unravels as time goes on. So I'm just wondering, what are some of the things you were doing behind the scenes?

• 4:26Tom Satterly?

  All of that, all of that.

• 4:30Tom Satterly?

  And that started towards the end of my career. I couldn't tell you what year, um. You know, hiding the drinking, going home at night and drinking literally all night until I passed out. And returning to work the next day and doing all that. It was, um, you know, struggling to stay on top, struggling to feel relevant, getting older, getting weaker, you know, body's breaking down and all these kids are coming up. And it's just embarrassing to start getting passed in a run or a race or a team event. You're starting to be the last guy in the team event, you know, and it's just that that shameful feeling of, man, I'm not capable of being here anymore.

• 5:09Tom Satterly?

  Uh, so all the drinking started, the suicidal ideation, the worthlessness, the, you know, I just want to crash my tree into the bridge abutment, you know, and just thinking that all the time. Thinking about suicide a lot, but never with a pistol, you know? And so.

• 5:26Shawn Ryan?

  Let me break it down a little bit more because I feel like we're, it's too broad of a spectrum. What was, what was family life after Mogadishu? What did that like? What was that like coming home to your wife?

• 5:43Tom Satterly?

  Cold. I think I was cold. It wasn't one of the great marriages that I had anyway, and it wasn't one of the more affectionate ones. It was just, but I had definitely changed. I know my, my first wife has passed and, and she was close friends with my sister. And so I had this story in my head of her boyfriend came and I cleaned my house out with her and she moved back and I didn't blame her because I was never home. And, uh, it was probably 95, 94, so about a year after I got back from Somalia, we divorced. It just wasn't. My head was in never happening again, right? So I'm always at work, doing the same things at work, never home. And I'd get up, you know, four in the morning, I'd ride my bike to work and then I'd work out and I'd take a shower and eat breakfast and we'd shoot all day, you know, and then

• 6:27Tom Satterly?

  work out and then CQB and then ride my bike home after a workout and just, it's late in the evening and I'm smoked, I go to bed. We didn't talk. It was, I don't know, I didn't have the feelings to talk. I didn't have any emotions, so that just crumbled.

• 6:40Shawn Ryan?

  Did you realize what was happening?

• 6:42Tom Satterly?

  No, I just, uh, I thought about work.

• 6:45Shawn Ryan?

  Was there even any talk of post-traumatic stress, TBI, anything at that point?

• 6:49Tom Satterly?

  Nothing, not a, not a thing about it. Just put your head down and get to work. I didn't tell anybody I was divorcing. It's just, I think my team knew. And I came back from a trip, I think in Israel, and my house was cleaned out. Nothing left but a lawn chair. I actually had to go get the lawn chair out of the shed in the back, and I laid in that for that night.

• 7:11Tom Satterly?

  And thought, well, you know, the next day, it's a funny thing. The next day I got up and my team had come over and helped me roof my house, you know, take off shingles and start this huge pile on the side of the yard and then help me roof the house. Then we took off to Israel. When I came back, a friend of mine who had stayed back for school or something, I called him, I go, "That crazy lady even took the shingles on the side of the house." And he had loaded them up and taken them to the dumpster while we were gone. And he's like, oh, he started laughing. He goes, "That was me, man." I was like, "She took it all, even the shingles on the pile on the side of the house." But nonexistent relationship. And then that was followed up by a two-year marriage. Two-year marriage? Yeah, that was, uh...

• 7:50Tom Satterly?

  She ended up having, and I found out she was having an affair for like probably 18 months, the two years we were married, because I was gone all the time. And again, it was like, "All right, I got it." Later, you know, I got a phone call one day, some guy we were trying to hire at work. He wanted to work at work. She's like, "Oh, I've been having, you know, an affair with this dude." I'm like, "Oh, really? I'll be home in a minute," you know? Looked at the team guys and I was like, "All right, I'm gonna go home and end this relationship, guys." And guess who it was? And I told them, and you know, my friends were like, "That's it, that dude's done." But, you know, that's just emotional talk from my friends. And I just went home and... Another guy at the unit? Yeah, you know, your friends are like, "I'm gonna go crush that dude." I'm like, "Really?" I mean, we all know who we are, right? I mean, when it happens to us, it's different, you know, in question form.

• 8:34Tom Satterly?

  So it's that judgment that we give on everyone else, yet we're doing the same thing, right? Yeah. We're doing the same things at the time. So got married a third time, and that's when I had a child. And I thought that would make it better. That's your son? Yeah. What's his name? Thomas. And I thought having a kid would make it better. And it was one of those, soon as she gave birth, I went to Bosnia.

• 9:00Tom Satterly?

  Gone for three months, you know, and she had postpartum. I didn't know at the time, her mother had to come over and help her. You know, she was having suicidal ideation, trying to take care of this kid. I never got told any of that until later. You know, in that relationship...

• 9:15Tom Satterly?

  Maybe on average. You know, relationship still always gone. When I'm home, I'm training. When I'm home, I'm really not mentally home. I'm thinking about what's next. So again, over 10 year period, we grew apart and that that took me through retirement. And then, like I said, probably about two weeks after the day I retired, I was in a Mont Jordan for a year and a half. So it was one of those. You know, we'll make money and that'll make it better. And I still didn't try to get help. I drank everything in Jordan. You know, it was just all the guys with me, all SF guys retired, all the same, everyone the same, hiding it, drinking it away. Every now and then you'd hear little stories and you're like, oh, I kind of get it, you know?

• 10:00Tom Satterly?

  And back to drinking it away.

• 10:01Shawn Ryan?

  When did you start the, when did you start the medications and the coping and with it when you were in?

• 10:12Tom Satterly?

  Uh, one time, one of the docs called me in the office and I was having issues at work, like I couldn't focus, I never slept. I was just always wired, just wired. And I, and I started noticing I'm wound tight. I went and talked to one of the docs and told him how I was feeling. He's like, oh, here, Prozac, you need this. Congratulations, you lasted longer than I thought, you know? And I was like, oh, what is everybody on Prozac here? And I started taking it. And that's the first time I started taking naps in the middle of the day. I'm like, man, I need, I need to sleep. And I just started feeling like a zombie. So I think two and a half weeks after taking it, maybe a little longer, I just stopped taking it because I didn't like it. And I think a couple of weeks later, I went and told the doc, he's like, how you doing? I'm like, I quit taking this shit.

• 10:57Tom Satterly?

  He's like, you, you need to taper off that stuff. Well, I go, I could just quit it, you know? And I had, I had issues after quitting it, but um, I didn't want it, I didn't want to feel that way. You know, I felt like I was, you know, dulling my blade or something. So I didn't want to take that, so I refused. I didn't, I didn't look for any treatment after that. I thought, well, it's just gonna make me asleep, make me a zombie. I don't wanna be that zombie. I need to be awake and do my, do my thing. So I didn't take anything after that until after I met Jen and until after I nearly ruined everything with her. You know, I, I used to tell her, you know, don't tell me I'm at rock bottom. Well, how did you meet Jen? How did I meet her? It was at work.

• 11:40Tom Satterly?

  We were actually, I was retired and I passed the Amon Jordan time and into contracting. And we were making a video for another operator who was doing, um,

• 11:53Tom Satterly?

  like an event, you know, a fun event kinda thing. Um, where special ops guys come in and teach you how to put on your kit, teach you how to wear it, teach you how to CQB, and then you go in and you shoot zombies, right? It was kinda fun. It was like doing a RMTs but with zombies, you know? You didn't really have to die. We did that for a bit. Um, I met her filming for it, like shooting a reel for it. And I didn't really know who she was. I didn't really pay attention to her. I was in a miserable 268 pound state, you know? Knowing I was 268 pounds, telling myself it was muscle, but knowing I hadn't worked out in a year and a half. So I was just trying to stay relevant, but I didn't care about anybody. And somebody brought her in, it's like, hey, this is, uh, you know, Tom from Black Hawk Down. And, uh, I just kinda looked, hey, and looked back and that was it.

• 12:36Tom Satterly?

  And I think they came later and like, we're gonna go to the hospital. We here at Sauna, do you wanna come? Like, no. You know, I just sat there on that couch, like, whatever. Filmed the whole thing. Um, got back and one of my friends is like, did you see that hot chick? You know, and I'm like, which one? The Asian? Cause I, I remember like two girls there. I don't, I, you know? He's like, no, no, no, this one. He pulls up a picture and I'm like, oh. Saw it on LinkedIn. I sit in her, staring in her picture and I was like, man, she's gorgeous. How'd I miss that? You know? How did I miss that? My eyes and head were down. I was just miserable.

• 13:08Tom Satterly?

  So I linked into it, you know, and at some point she accepted it. And the next time we got together to do more filming, it's like, hey, my pickup line was, hey, I linked into you, you know, it's like one of those, how cool is this? I had no game, I had no game, been married my whole life, even multiple times, but I had no game. And just kind of started talking, we started working together filming, I'd help her film, you know, if the helicopter's coming in, her shirt flies up, I'd hold it down kind of thing, and making sure she stayed safe from the explosive charges, and I'd sit her up like, stay right here behind this iron beam, that wall is gonna blow open soon, and the team of SEALs are gonna come through, and you're gonna video the whole thing after the smoke clears, but don't move from this spot, and I'll tell you when the countdown's coming, you know. I'd run around, make sure everything else was set, the teams would move up, and I'd

• 13:53Tom Satterly?

  go and I'd grab her and just hold her behind while we get the best shot possible. Just kind of grew from there, got to know her more, appreciated her work ethic, you know, when I'm walking around as the leader of the target, and all the other role players in OP-4, you know, the SEALs are gone, or the SF guys are gone, and now I'm picking up brass, I'm picking up targets, I'm cleaning up this warehouse building, and she's right beside me picking up brass with me, picking up, you know, flashbangs off the ground, making sure we leave nothing behind. And we popped out, and all my role players and all my leaders are just telling stories and cracking jokes, and here this camera lady is following me around, working still. I just screamed at him, I'm like, you know, I didn't scream at him, I think I shamed him a little bit with, if I'm picking up brass and you're telling jokes, you're wrong.

• 14:37Tom Satterly?

  I go, if the camera lady's picking up brass, you're way wrong, you know, they were like all embarrassed and started picking up shit, you know. It's one of those things, I just started to protect her on target, you know, and then it kind of fell into, she's really cute, you know, and then I think, I think, she might correct me, because my memory's shit, I think one night in the Conex at Fort Benning. Film on the Rangers, we ended up in Conex for a long time staring out a window from the corner. I think I probably touched her hand with my hand like, you know, like, whoop, sorry. That's okay. And I'm like, oh, really? You know, I think I kissed her for the first time in that Conex because it was dangerous and fun and, and it kind of went from there.

• 15:16Shawn Ryan?

  That's cool, man.

• 15:17Tom Satterly?

  Yeah, it was, it was unexpected, but, but fun. And she was so nice. I kept thinking, what do you want? You know, like, what do you want? What, what's the hook here? What's the catch? Because when you're nice, you want something. Because I wasn't around niceness a lot. And so it was attractive, but also like, what is this? You know? So it made it more interesting.

• 15:36Shawn Ryan?

  How long have you guys been married now?

• 15:39Tom Satterly?

  Oh, eight, eight years.

• 15:43Shawn Ryan?

  Let's go, I want to pick up here, but let's go back just a little bit to Amon Jordan. Because that sounds like that was kind of the start of what really turned into the downward spiral. Am I correct?

• 15:56Tom Satterly?

  Yeah, I'd say it was the flow through. It was a good connector after I got out. Had I stayed with that, like, a lot of guys get out and they look for that thing. They'll go OGA, they'll go to contract work. They want to keep going. I wanted to train and teach. I didn't want to keep doing that because a lot of guys had died doing that. I'm like, I don't want to just show up in a country and I'm standing next to a former cop and somebody else I don't know who needed to make money too. And I'm like, all right, let's go. And I'm like, I don't know you guys. I don't want to do that.

• 16:21Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 16:22Tom Satterly?

  So when that job came up in Amon Jordan, it was, it was one of those, oh, it's on a range, it's teaching, SF guys flow through there a lot, you know? So that'll be fun. I get to see some of the guys again and train them as they go into Iraq and coming out and training. And so that was good. And then that turned into a, General Harold had pulled me aside. He said, hey, we want to start up a new program for the Prince. And we want you to train the Jordanians to be special forces qualified. So I designed a four month course of, you know, we didn't do the medical stuff other than basic medical, you know, and shooting, heart humping, you know, LAN nav, CQB, and things like that. Taught them as much as we could through the ITARS, making it legal, obviously.

• 17:05Tom Satterly?

  And that lasted a good year and a half before the money dried up, you know, whoever siphons off the top, whatever the hell. Money dried up and so they turned it into, well, let's teach a ranger course, you know, but we won't get the barracks, we won't get this and that, you have to buy all this other stuff because the money's lower. So, put them up in tents up on the hill, had everything set up for these hundred ranger, you know, wannabes to come through, and then that went away. And then Gary, uh, went back for medical reasons and a new general came in and since I was in charge of all that and a new general came in, he wanted to bring in his old sergeant major. So they'd, uh, let go of a SAS guy who was expected to take everything over. And then the general called a meeting with everybody. Everybody was like, oh, Tom, man,

• 17:50Tom Satterly?

  you're gonna get promoted, you're gonna be the dude that runs this whole thing, this'll be awesome, you know? And I'm like, I just wanna run this program. Oh, you're gonna be the guy that's running all these things. And I went in there and sat down and, uh, picked up my notebook, ready to listen to what he had to say. And he said, uh, our company no longer needs you. Um, appreciate your time with us. Any questions? And I closed my book and I set it down. I looked down and I go, I guess one, why? You know? His answer was moving in a different direction. I go, alright. And I stood up and turned around, he goes, you have anything else? And I just walked out the door. And there was a third group was there and I knew a bunch of guys in third group and a good friend of mine was there. Packed all my shit in a bag real quick. They wanted a turnover from me, you know? Packed all my shit in

• 18:34Tom Satterly?

  a bag. Looked at Joey and I go, can you throw this in your ass? You go, I'll get it back from you at Fort Bragg. He goes, you know it, brother. I go, hey, I have all your training schedule, but it's leaving with me, I'm sorry. Take it up with the, uh, with the people here. And he's like, what happened? I go, I'm leaving, man. He's freaked out. He was so mad because he knew everything was gonna go to shit, you know, we'd set it all up. So he ended up finishing their time out, brought my stuff back. I got on a plane that night and flew back. And everybody like, where'd you go? And I go, all my stuff's in a bowl, man. You no longer needed me. I'm a contractor. Later, you know? I owe you nothing now.

• 19:05Tom Satterly?

  And so I packed up and that's when it kinda really hit me. Like, here we go again. I felt like another admin betrayal. Like, I'm getting ready to get promoted to the top. And you just let get let go. And all the guys behind you are emailing you, "This sucks. This place sucks. They're really blowing it." And then it all shut down within about six months. Damn. It all shut down. And so my days turned into sleeping all day. And watching TV all night while snacking and drinking and sleeping all day. And then ended up moving out of my bedroom with my wife and moving into the spare bedroom. Cause it was one of those, "You're keeping me up and I gotta work." I'm like, "Okay." And I just moved into the spare bedroom across from my son's room and uh, I'd lay in there all day and then watch TV all night.

• 19:49Tom Satterly?

  Until I got that call to go do, "Hey, we're gonna video this uh, thing for zombie killing and we need some special ops guys." I'm like, "What's it pay?" Cause now I'm just looking to make some money, you know, and I'll do anything to do that. How old was your son at this time? Hmm. Five, six, no. Um, what year is this?

• 20:11Tom Satterly?

  Wow, he's four, five?

• 20:16Tom Satterly?

  Hang on. What? Eleven? So yeah, my son was eleven. Eleven years old? Wow, yeah. What was your relationship like with your son?

• 20:28Tom Satterly?

  I'd tell him I loved him.

• 20:31Tom Satterly?

  I think I tried to teach him too many lessons at eleven years old. I think that made me hard on him. Like, if he slept in too late, you know, I'd try to wake him up. If he slept in again, I'd... And then one time I come in there banging pots and pans, he freaked out and woke up like, "That's what, you gotta get up." You know, what was I doing, right? I was using the tools that I knew from basic training and from being violent and aggressive to try to teach him lessons at eleven years old. And though I told him I loved him, you know, I didn't show it really. So I think he picked up on that. And that, that broke my heart, along with a lot of things coming back from deployments. When he's younger and trying to hold him and he freaks out cause he'd annoy him, he's crying and wailing and I mean, all that painful. Your son doesn't know you and it's your fault.

• 21:15Tom Satterly?

  He felt like a complete stranger? Yeah, yeah. And he felt like you were a complete stranger? Oh, for sure. He's twenty-three now and we're still...

• 21:24Tom Satterly?

  Working back into it. We talked the other day and he's like, hey, you know, I'm getting better socially and, and, you know, and I understand the things you went through now. And I appreciated it. And I appreciate, um, everything. I'm like, well, you know, we'll just hopefully could work this into another relationship as two adults. And so that's what we're trying to do now. And it's all my fault for being gone, you know, and I just tell people it's choices you make. I couldn't connect with him. He was too young, different, you know, points of view, different places in life, and I never considered that, like, you're a boy, you're my son. And I'm trying to connect with you. Why didn't I just get down on the floor and lay there and you could have climbed over

• 22:05Tom Satterly?

  top of me as the mountain, you know, or just to play with him, um, instead of trying to build some boy who could care for himself early on in life, you know? My, my mind was, my job is to make you able to survive alone. And that's how I handled it. So it wasn't very fatherly. Wasn't nurturing from my side. And I don't think he got it from his mother, who was probably hurting, obviously, at the time, and dove herself into work as well. So I think he was kind of parentless a bit.

• 22:36Shawn Ryan?

  When did you realize, when did you realize you needed to take on a different role and start to mend that relationship?

• 22:44Tom Satterly?

  I think when he came to live with Jen and I. And then I immediately went off on another training trip, like to New Mexico. And I was gone for a bit and he started acting out, smashing his computer, punching the wall, cutting a little bit when Jen was home and I'd get phone calls, hey, your son did this. And I'd get him on the phone, I'd go, what's your deal, man? Hear him on the phone again instead of flying home. And, and yelling at him to stop, like, that'll work. Stop acting like a fool, you know? And still never considered it was me that made him act out like that. And Jen would try to talk to him, you know, your dad's, does a lot, you don't know what he did, you know, and yada, yada. And he goes, and I don't care. I just wished you worked at Home Depot so I could see him.

• 23:36Tom Satterly?

  When I heard that,

• 23:39Tom Satterly?

  that he didn't care what I did, and I thought, man, he'd be so proud of me. He didn't care, he just wanted a dad. That's when I knew that's really screwed it up.

• 23:51Shawn Ryan?

  What were,

• 23:55Shawn Ryan?

  what was your first step to fixing it?

• 24:01Tom Satterly?

  Leaving him alone. I really tried over and over again on texts. He went back, he stayed with us for a year. And he went home to visit his mom, which he said he didn't want to. You know, I'm stay here, I don't want to go back. And I made him go back to visit his mom. It's your mother, you know, go visit your mother. And she's probably freaking out.

• 24:19Tom Satterly?

  And I had a feeling. I said, you want to take anything with you in case you change your mind or anything? He's like, no, no, and he left stuff there. He went home and sometime towards the end, I think we got a call or a text and think I'm going to stay here and go to school here, you know? I'm sure I wasn't getting talked about nicely back home.

• 24:38Tom Satterly?

  I said, all right, um, we'll pack up your stuff and send it to you, you know? And we did and

• 24:45Tom Satterly?

  and I kept texting and calling and texting and calling. He was ignoring it and I got some advice from Jen and then I decided to let him be for a bit. Let him determine what he wants to be, but let him know I'm there every now and then and not expect an answer, not expect a solution right away. And that's been, that's taken years to get to where he calls me now without, you know, it used to be a text, hey, happy Thanksgiving. And about Christmas, I'd get a thanks, Dad, you know? Kind of one of those, like, I'm so busy, right? And I'm like, oh, I played that game before, I understand.

• 25:18Tom Satterly?

  To now, he calls me out of the blue and just wants to chat with me about how he's doing with his job and stuff. And it's, it's really, really gotten to my heart and really made me a lot happier. Uh, more, uh, confident inside that I can mend this and we can get together.

• 25:37Shawn Ryan?

  Is there anything you

• 25:40Shawn Ryan?

  you want to say to him right now?

• 25:46Tom Satterly?

  Yeah, that I love him more than anything on this planet. And that I'm sorry that I wasn't there for him. But I'm here now, and I want to be here for him.

• 25:57Shawn Ryan?

  I'm sure he's gonna hear that.

• 25:59Tom Satterly?

  I hope so.

• 26:00Shawn Ryan?

  He will.

• 26:03Shawn Ryan?

  Let's go back a little bit farther to, I think it was 2002, where some guys came home and murdered their wives. How did that impact you?

• 26:21Tom Satterly?

  To be honest,

• 26:24Tom Satterly?

  looking back, I don't think I took much stock in it.

• 26:31Tom Satterly?

  I think the feelings were, oh, man, the unit's gonna look bad. Yolo, that's bad for the unit, was probably my thought.

• 26:39Tom Satterly?

  A little thrown in, all those kids, you know, my God, you can imagine. But then, that's probably the extent of it. Like, oh, man, the unit really looks bad, you know. And then those poor kids, and then that's it. I didn't think about, man, what were they going through behind closed doors? What was that relationship like for that to happen? I mean, what brings people to that? And that was the first time, I think, we'd ever experienced anything like that.

• 27:05Tom Satterly?

  But still, I didn't take many stock in it. And I couldn't tell you what the unit did about it. I couldn't tell you.

• 27:11Tom Satterly?

  I just don't know.

• 27:13Shawn Ryan?

  When did that hit you? When did that, when did that hit you that, okay, something's going on that we don't know about?

• 27:20Tom Satterly?

  For me or the unit?

• 27:21Shawn Ryan?

  For the, for the, I mean, that was in 2002. That was early, you know? I think, didn't you retire in 2013?

• 27:27Tom Satterly?

  In 10.

• 27:28Shawn Ryan?

  You didn't put much stock into it?

• 27:30Tom Satterly?

  No, and you know what? Still, they don't put much stock into it. You call organizations and offer up a retreat free. We'll fly you in, you know, just come on, just show up. And organizations like we have our own thing. We do our own thing. I'm like, you know, I came from this organization. What, what thing are you doing there? You know, because everybody's calling and wanting these, but I offered it to the organization. Like, we're doing our own thing, you know? And then another suicide, another thing that goes wrong. It's like the organizations that are higher up try to hide the negativity so they don't get looked at poorly, you know, or regulated or whatever would, would happen. So I think we internalize a lot of that stuff and hold on to it and keep it at the lowest

• 28:13Tom Satterly?

  level possible. Which means we don't run it up, the flagpole, which means they don't get the statistics, which means they're not really aware of what's going on at the higher levels. Or they're also complicit and they know and they don't do anything about it. So they're still, to this day, just dipping their toe in the water on what to do with this. And that's why they're so behind. You, you know, the military, the government, and they're, it's like a big ship in the ocean. Once you turn it, it's going to take a long time to fully turn around and go in the other direction.

• 28:42Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 28:43Tom Satterly?

  It's just a big, slow process. And then there's money, right? Then there's money.

• 28:48Shawn Ryan?

  What? There's just so many aspects to getting out, you know? And so what was? I mean, I've, I've been in the SEAL teams, I've been in the agency, I've interviewed guys from just about every unit there is. And I will say that as toxic as, as toxic as I think the SEAL community is, I think that the Delta community is definitely the most toxic from my, from my vantage point. And I've interviewed a number of you guys. Nobody seems to leave there on good terms. If they do leave there on good terms, terms go to shit later on. And, um.

• 29:30Shawn Ryan?

  I'm wondering, what is the interaction between you and the unit? And some of your old teammates, friends, you know, a lot of us consider them family. What was that like when you left in Jordan? And you're hearing the guys, everything from the way you left to hearing the guys go on and do more missions and more missions. I mean, I know what that's like too. How did that affect you?

• 29:58Tom Satterly?

  It broke me down. It was like a boot in the ass on the way out, you know, jumping off that fast-moving train and you get assisted with a boot in the ass. And then you realize that train's gone, your tribe's gone, everything you did is gone. And you feel betrayed at the end and it just crushes everything you've ever done. I felt completely worthless. I felt like a fraud. I felt like I'd let the unit down still. I let the unit down, man, you know, how dare I? And it was never self-directed feelings, you know? I don't think any of us had those out there. It's all cutthroat. It's all comparison when you're out there. How good is that person? I need to do that. I need to be better than that.

• 30:40Tom Satterly?

  The competition was relentless and it just drives you through the roof. And I realized every day, I told myself I needed to be better. My mind hears, you're not good enough. And so I just didn't realize down the road that, man, I'm putting a lot of pressure on myself. I'm trying to do these things, you know? Even though I'm no longer in the unit, I'm still trying to be better than whoever's around me as much as I can. And I don't think I was being a good leader. I was running the whole organization, but when you bring in the right people, they run themselves pretty much. I think I was burning out. I was getting tired, you know, probably overdrinking. Well, I was overdrinking. It's probably what making me was tired and I didn't have the love in the job anymore.

• 31:22Tom Satterly?

  It was just going downhill and I just could feel myself sinking into this hole in the earth and just going away and being irrelevant. And I was grasping for relevancy. I was grasping for attention. I was grasping for someone to look at me and say, hey, you're okay. You're good to go, you know, you're cool. And when you leave, nobody does that. Do I have friends in the unit now?

• 31:49Tom Satterly?

  No. Do I know a lot of people from the unit? Yes. Do I have acquaintances? Yes, I have very few friends from the unit that I talk to. I check up on a lot of people.

• 32:03Tom Satterly?

  But whether it was the book that came out and people were pissed for not knowing what was in it, right? Unless they read it, then they wouldn't be pissed. Or for just the loyalty to the unit. Or, you know, when the older guys, when they got out, it's just they kind of move on with their lives after a bit. And so there's the transition of getting out, you're listening to the news, texting your boys, is that, who's that? Is that you? Who got killed? You know, was that us? You know, wondering, trying to stay relevant to,

• 32:31Tom Satterly?

  you know, no more texting, no more connection, no more, you know, that, that brotherhood is gone. The train's moved on and you move on with your life and other guys move on with their life. To where I don't even want to go back to the unit. I hadn't much for the annual informals and formals. Just sick to my stomach. Just sick to my stomach to go back and think what's going on. Even going back to Fort Bragg makes me sick to my stomach. I could feel the testosterone. I could feel how I felt back then. We don't, when we go back now, we stay out in Southern Pines. I just, I have to get away. I can't be around 82nd dudes, military guys that's stacked on top of each other, drinking and just, I can't be around that environment, um, anymore. It's just toxic to me.

• 33:13Tom Satterly?

  So I choose to stay away from that and enter into a more calmer, gentler life. And that's helped a lot. That's helped a lot. Giving up who I was and, and accepting who I can be. And not thinking I've peaked, you know, I'm, no, I'm going to peak doing this. I think I've saved more lives doing this than I never did working. I think you're right. At least American lives. Yeah.

• 33:40Shawn Ryan?

  Let's move on past we had covered talking to Jen. You guys bet had your first kiss in the Conex box.

• 33:48Tom Satterly?

  How romantic.

• 33:48Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 33:51Tom Satterly?

  At night and it was hot as hell. Yeah.

• 33:53Shawn Ryan?

  But um, how did that, I mean, I know that you guys started off pretty rocky, correct?

• 34:00Tom Satterly?

  Very rocky. Like rock stars, partiers. I mean, we were probably using each other, you know? I think we were using each other, not knowing what it would be.

• 34:10Shawn Ryan?

  She was a partier too, huh?

• 34:12Tom Satterly?

  Oh, yeah. She didn't deny anything we were gonna go to. She hung in there, actually. Hung in there. Um, and that was impressive. You know, she would hang in there with us and still give it to the guys who were doing wrong, you know? When they wanted help. I mean, she wouldn't be one of those wagging fingers at people, but just kind of make you think about what you're doing, you know? And that's what attracted people to her, to start talking to her about what's wrong with me, by the way. You noticed it. What's up? You know, why do I feel this way? More like a den mother for the guys, you know, the SEALs on target, the controllers, and the SEALs who stayed around and had seen her before on a different, you know, set up a different iteration. Hey Jen, they always remember the blonde haired girl, you know, hey Jen, I was with her, you know? Nobody wants to talk to Tom, but that attracted people and her demeanor.

• 34:56Tom Satterly?

  And they just start sharing their stories with her about their family and wanted to propose to their girlfriends and, and, and she got to know them and then they wouldn't come back from deployments. She'd ask around, hey, it's team, team four, where's, you know, where's Bob?

• 35:12Tom Satterly?

  Nah, but Bob didn't make it, you know? Where's Mike? And Mike didn't make it. He was with Bob, you know? And it just happened over and over again. And it just, one of those days, you know, as our relationship grew, she decided, I can't, I can't prepare people to go to war anymore. I have to help them come home. So she pulled out of that job and started working on her nonprofit, building it from scratch, not knowing what we were doing. Uh, well, I, I continued to work so we could eat food while we did it and then, uh, started from there, you know, just trying to help others.

• 35:44Shawn Ryan?

  It, what, at what point do you think you hit your lowest?

• 35:50Shawn Ryan?

  What point in time did you hit your lowest point? Was it after meeting Jen or was it before?

• 35:58Tom Satterly?

  My wedding night.

• 36:00Shawn Ryan?

  Your, your wedding night?

• 36:04Shawn Ryan?

  What's there about it?

• 36:05Tom Satterly?

  I screwed that up too.

• 36:10Tom Satterly?

  The wedding day was going well, Savannah, Georgia.

• 36:15Tom Satterly?

  Our small group of

• 36:17Tom Satterly?

  former employees would be there, they were around. We decided to get married on Tybee Island, get on Tybee Beach at sunset. And we didn't want anybody there. We didn't want our friends there. We didn't want them on the beach. We wanted to private. We'd link up with you later, you know, and have drinks.

• 36:33Tom Satterly?

  So we got dressed early, drove down to Tybee, probably had a drink before we left. Pulled over to another bar that we used to hang out, you know, that shot, pulled down to another bar on the way. Probably both of us were nervous as hell. Because we were planning on getting married overseas somewhere, a destination wedding, Bora Bora, something like that. We were looking to buy a house together in St. Louis, because I still lived in Savannah.

• 36:58Tom Satterly?

  And they wouldn't give us the loan for the VA unless we were married. And it was supposed to close on a Monday, blah blah blah, so I had to go to the courthouse and get a marriage certificate on a Friday, so the next Saturday we could get married and then Monday we would close kind of deal. It was so, ended up all being rushed, so there was stress there. I learned out later, you know, the stress of changing jobs, the stress of buying a home, the stress of getting married all at one time, you know, it was just all piled on us.

• 37:24Tom Satterly?

  We had another drink and then we went on down for the ceremony. And there was a photographer and a priest or a chaplain, whatever, who it was down there. Beautiful sunset ceremony, it'd been raining before that, so the beach had cleared. We were the only ones on the beach and the rain cleared up and it was a nice little orange sunset. We got some beautiful photos, got married. And then went and met our friends.

• 37:45Tom Satterly?

  And that's when I, you know, I don't remember a lot of it. I ended up talking to one of our other employees' wives all night, I didn't even remember that. I didn't even consider what was happening. It was just another day for me, right? Just another day. And I ended up getting drunk. And I didn't do the first dance with my wife, all the traditional things that she wanted. I was like, whatever, what is that? I didn't consider it. She got mad, obviously, started to tell me about it. And of course, when you shame me or tell me I'm wrong, you know, I go straight to rage. So I was screaming at her as we're walking home. We enter the lobby. I don't even remember this. I heard it later that one of the person, people in the lobby are like, are you okay? Cause I'm yelling so loud, cause I don't, I don't care anymore. Right? I don't care where I'm at. I don't care what I'm saying. I'm talking, listen.

• 38:31Tom Satterly?

  Made our way all the way up to the bedroom. I think I threw a makeup case across the room, um, screaming and yelling. And I end up waking up on the floor the next morning. And I'm like, oh shit. That probably didn't go well.

• 38:46Tom Satterly?

  And she came out of the bathroom and sat on the bed and she said, well, and she's holding our paperwork. We hadn't turned it into the courthouse yet, cause it was a weekend. She said, I'm gonna hold on to this. I may not turn it in. I'm gonna fly home. We're gonna think about this and this may not last. And I

• 39:04Tom Satterly?

  crushed me inside. That man, I blew this. I had this and blew this one in a day, basically, in this day.

• 39:13Tom Satterly?

  I blew it again.

• 39:16Tom Satterly?

  And that was my worst day and the start of my best life. Cause that's one of my

• 39:27Tom Satterly?

  that's when I made the promise to do something. That's when I was below rock bottom. That's when I realized I had crushed the person that I love so much. And it knew that I had loved her that deeply. And I crushed her and I saw in her face. I felt like nothing.

• 39:47Tom Satterly?

  That was my worst. How long did she go home for?

• 39:52Tom Satterly?

  Well, she lived there, so she, she told me on a Sunday, we sat on a bench on the beach and we talked a long time.

• 40:02Tom Satterly?

  And she said, I'm just gonna go home, think about this and I'll let you know. Um.

• 40:08Tom Satterly?

  And then she, she, it wasn't long. I, I don't know if it was Sunday. She told me that she probably wouldn't, but she would think about it if she let me sit on that for a couple of days.

• 40:18Tom Satterly?

  And she finally told me, you have to get help or I'm gone. You have to do something or I'm leaving.

• 40:27Tom Satterly?

  And then with my back in the corner, I came out fighting. You know, I, I went and found a counselor that, that day, Monday, I think that Monday, I made an appointment and it was Eric Clapton's old coach or whatever. And he knew, I mean, he knew what was up. And for the first time I was told, you know, I had post-traumatic stress. I wasn't an alcoholic. I was a problem drinker. You know, I was a, that it could be, I could be helped and here's some tools to manage your anger. Cause it was all anger management for me. That's what I thought.

• 41:00Tom Satterly?

  And so that started me picking up these little tidbits of what to do if I started to get angry and I'd go back to work and, you know, my coworkers like they always talk, don't talk to Tom before 11. He's grumpy, you know? Just don't talk to him. And I was because I was drunk the night before and I'm hung over at work and I'm about 11. You know, the deal. I'm like, oh, okay. Maybe I'll drink again tonight after promising I'll never drink again.

• 41:21Tom Satterly?

  And they started noticing a little change, you know, it's like talking to Jen, like what's up with Tom? He's coming up with these weird sayings and not getting mad and, and he's a little bit different. And it felt good. It felt better, you know? So Jen obviously decided to stick around and then she got busy. I'm okay. What's next? What's next? You're not done yet. You know, I'm like, I'm all better now, right? I'm not angry, but she knew I wasn't.

• 41:47Tom Satterly?

  So we went into the transcendental meditation, right? And that was just a little woo-woo for me at the time. A little early for that, but it worked. It helped slow me down again. It helped bring me back in again.

• 42:00Tom Satterly?

  And then I started doing other modalities, which helped me sleep a little more, you know, managing my drinking from drinking at all to, to, to working into where we make rules.

• 42:10Shawn Ryan?

  When you were drinking, I want to, I want to go into all the things that helped you because it's, it's, you know, it's like a puzzle, putting it all together. It all works in combination, I think.

• 42:21Tom Satterly?

  Yeah.

• 42:22Shawn Ryan?

  But um,

• 42:25Shawn Ryan?

  I

• 42:28Shawn Ryan?

  People don't understand that are listening. I understand all the guys that the similar backgrounds, you know, they understand.

• 42:40Shawn Ryan?

  Families understand civilians, they don't understand, and that's the majority of this audience. So what was, what was just a normal day in the life of Tom Saturday? How much were you drinking? What pills were you on? What time would you take them? What was the cycle?

• 43:00Tom Satterly?

  Wow, I don't know how many Percocets I was on. I was in so much pain that I would take them. And it was in a culture of, I'd have jars of Percocets. You can get them. You know, and I took the biggest ones they had and you're in that culture of, ah, my back hurts. Hey, man, you got one of those pills, right? You know, everybody's back hurts when you have Percocets.

• 43:23Tom Satterly?

  And it felt good to take them because I was in pain every minute of every day. And when I'd take a Percocet, it was, oh, what's different? Oh, I'm not in pain. Oh, I'm happy, right? I'm high. I, you know, and then I'd drink on top of that. So I'd take Percocets all day.

• 43:43Tom Satterly?

  And then alcohol would start.

• 43:44Shawn Ryan?

  For pain and for?

• 43:46Tom Satterly?

  For pain and it just, it felt me, made me feel better.

• 43:48Shawn Ryan?

  Numb you out?

• 43:49Tom Satterly?

  Yeah. And I took more than I should have, that's for sure.

• 43:54Tom Satterly?

  I'd forget I took Percocet and I want to feel a little better. You need that bump, you know? I'm smoking marijuana. I was drinking from as early as in the day as I could

• 44:05Tom Satterly?

  to as long as I could, or when I, when I had to end it because I just don't remember. You know, I just passed out or one of those catching a cab the next day and going around looking at everywhere you've been, checking receipts to find your car because at least you were smart enough to take a cab home that night. Um, just not knowing where your car was and it just started hitting me that, man, I do have a problem. You know, if I gotta chase receipts the next day to find my car, what's happening to me?

• 44:34Tom Satterly?

  Now, the Percocet, you know, it's just, it was a cycle that was accepted in that culture, pushed in that culture.

• 44:44Shawn Ryan?

  What about sleeping pills?

• 44:46Tom Satterly?

  Oh, yeah, gobbling up Ambien and Valiums, yeah. That's the counter at night. I'd probably take two, three Ambien at night going, that's four, six, you know, four, eight, twelve hours. I'd pop two Valium. I'd wake up and chew another Ambien, hoping it would hit me quicker and just laying in bed with my eyes open. Miserable, I couldn't sleep. Roll over, close my eyes, thoughts, just miserable, couldn't sleep, you know. I was drunk. And I'd just roll there and lay there until I'm hungover. And then probably about four, five in the morning, I'd close my eyes and be like, ah, finally. Wake up at seven. Just miserable, go to work. If I wasn't late, and just not talk until eleven. Then go get some lunch in me and like, ah, Tom's back, you know.

• 45:29Tom Satterly?

  Percocets make me happy. And that went on for a long time. The Percocets started a long time ago from the surgeries.

• 45:38Shawn Ryan?

  What about pick-me-up in the morning? Adderalls, cocaine, anything like that?

• 45:42Tom Satterly?

  No, I, uh... In Jordan, I'd have some coffee, which I didn't drink coffee, and I'd dump a little Kahlua in there on the way to work. And I don't even know why, because it didn't do anything, but you know what I mean? As much as I drank a little, but I think it was the, I'm having a little drink, you know, so that's, that's good. Or maybe it was the party time, even though I was working, it was like a good time that we're gonna have here.

• 46:08Tom Satterly?

  And then I realized, I can't do this as a leader in front of these guys, because it, it creates an environment where it's okay for everyone else to do this, you know?

• 46:17Shawn Ryan?

  How long did you stay in that cycle for? How many years?

• 46:21Tom Satterly?

  Hmm. Ten?

• 46:24Shawn Ryan?

  Ten years?

• 46:25Tom Satterly?

  Maybe more.

• 46:28Tom Satterly?

  Ten's a good number.

• 46:31Tom Satterly?

  Yeah. I'd fight you a little higher if I had to.

• 46:38Tom Satterly?

  That's a long time. It took a long time for awareness. And then when the awareness came, it took a long time for acceptance. There was more denial than acceptance.

• 46:49Tom Satterly?

  And then a slow acceptance speed.

• 46:55Tom Satterly?

  And then more awareness of more things, and then more acceptance. And then the slow process of what do I do? And roll into that, and which one do I do? And what's working? And who's just selling something they say works?

• 47:10Tom Satterly?

  To just deciding that, why shouldn't I do everything I can possibly do? And never stop doing it. Until I get where I need to be, you know? If not, I'm gonna quit. And then that's where I die. When I quit trying, that's where I would have died back then.

• 47:31Shawn Ryan?

  Your wife Jen has kids too?

• 47:33Tom Satterly?

  Yes.

• 47:34Shawn Ryan?

  When did you get introduced to them? And how were those relationships back then?

• 47:41Tom Satterly?

  I think they were four and six, five and seven-ish. And when they were younger, very accepting. It's just a friend, mommy's friend, you know? And then there's daddy still, you know? They visit daddy, mommy's friend, visit daddy, mommy's friend.

• 47:56Tom Satterly?

  Never spoke poorly of their father, it's their father, you know?

• 48:00Tom Satterly?

  And then when they were younger, it was like, ah, we're having fun. And you know, we're together. And then as they get older and they understand, I think the pain eases in on them. The divorce moves in on them, and they start understanding more. Up to the point where I wrote my book, and she wrote her book. And I'm pretty sure, well, I know they read them.

• 48:18Tom Satterly?

  And then as children, you know, they have to work through that. And some of that comes out in anger when they're in trouble.

• 48:26Tom Satterly?

  Some of that just came out in sadness and other issues. And they had to work through that, right? We had to get them to work through that with coaches and counselors as well along the way. Knowing that we couldn't, you know, even though we do this, you know? We can't do this here, we have to have someone else do this.

• 48:43Tom Satterly?

  To where they grew up, grew through it and understood, you know. All right, there's a lot of people out there divorced. This isn't the end of life. I can make it through this. My mom and my dad still are friends and still talk all the time. They're still very cordial. I mean, they're friends. I mean, he's a nice guy. I mean, I consider him a friend. I know him and he's a nice guy, you know? I mean, it just, nothing bad about that.

• 49:05Shawn Ryan?

  I'm talking about your relationship with those kids.

• 49:08Tom Satterly?

  Yeah, I, I was hands off for a bit. I knew who I was.

• 49:12Shawn Ryan?

  Were you in the cycle when you met him?

• 49:14Tom Satterly?

  Oh, yeah, deep.

• 49:15Shawn Ryan?

  How long were you in the cycle after you met him?

• 49:20Tom Satterly?

  Six, seven years.

• 49:22Shawn Ryan?

  So till about 10, 11 years old?

• 49:24Tom Satterly?

  Yeah.

• 49:25Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah?

• 49:26Tom Satterly?

  Yeah, um, so me and her son have a good relationship and me and her daughter are getting into a good relationship.

• 49:35Tom Satterly?

  Heard her more, I think.

• 49:36Shawn Ryan?

  Um, how so?

• 49:38Tom Satterly?

  Just her age, she's a daughter of a man and here's a new man. Um, she's smart. She picks up things and she's, she knows how to, uh, air it.

• 49:50Tom Satterly?

  And using it, you know, well, you got a divorce, you introduced him too soon. And it kind of affected me and I'm like, how much is this? Are you reading books or how much is this is a true feeling coming out? Either way, it's true, you know? And it was, uh, eye opening. So I was a lot of hands off, knowing how I could react.

• 50:08Tom Satterly?

  Going through Jen, like, hey, relay this message, right? And putting her in this stressful, you know, rock and hard place. Going to tell her kids this and that and. But I had to stay out of that. I know I couldn't manage it, you know? One day it's Thanksgiving or no, it's, it's Luke's birthday. Grandma, grandpa are over, kids around the table. It's very stressful for me. Happy times are very stressful for me back then because I was jealous of it. I wished I could have that and I didn't. And so I tried to manage it, I guess, is the only way to look at it. And so Claudine and Luke go at, you know, they're brother and sister, they go at it. Um.

• 50:44Tom Satterly?

  I think Claudia was getting a little antsy, a little amped up a little bit. And I looked at her like, this is Luke's birthday. Can we just have Luke's birthday, you know, or whatever it is? And it starts ramping up and they're fighting again. And I, he was like, gee, you know, Jesus. And I said something like, can't we just, you know? And everybody in the room's like nervous. I didn't say anything that bad, but I think everybody felt me welling up and getting red, turning into that, you know, my call sign crawler instead of Tom. And it was one of those, I realized, oh, I do get big. I do change, you know? And I, I don't want to say things like this in front of the family. And I kind of just removed myself. And for a while I would always just stay very quiet on holidays. You know, eh, eh, eh, have fun, you know? And try to be there, not realizing that it's obvious when you're not happy.

• 51:26Tom Satterly?

  You're just sitting there for the moment. To just finally easing into it later in life and letting it happen when it happens versus trying to force it. And I actually think on this last vacation we took, it really was a bonding, a bonding trip because I kept my mouth shut, completely shut. Did the things I needed to do and walked away from the things I didn't want to do so they could have fun doing them. If like, if they wanted to go shopping, I'm like, ah, uh huh. I'm gonna go over here and watch street performers, you know? And we have that relationship where, okay, we all don't need to be together. You go have fun here, I'm gonna go watch these guys juggle knives and swords. And when you're done, let me know, we'll find each other.

• 52:08Tom Satterly?

  And um, to the point where I, to tell you how life-changing it was for me that trip, was Claudia was having conversations with me. And I remember staring her in the eyes and having that conversation and realizing as we were having it, I'd never looked her in her eyes for longer than a second. It's always at the ground, like in shame for me. And I got nervous, because, oh my God, I'm looking at her eyes, is it too long? Is it weird? Oh, my gosh, because it was new to me. And I remember telling Jen about it later, like, oh, it was so weird, I didn't know what to do. But it made me so happy that we were connecting and having this conversation about something in London. I don't even remember what it was.

• 52:53Tom Satterly?

  And it was just, we started talking more, and I was listening more, she was listening to me more. And I knew she was listening, because she's always been a listener, with no information that she's listening, unless you know her enough. But she's always listening. So that time I knew she was listening to me. And I thought, all right, this is the start of something really good now.

• 53:13Shawn Ryan?

  That's good to hear, man.

• 53:15Tom Satterly?

  Yeah, it feels good.

• 53:20Shawn Ryan?

  How many people, other than Jen, were telling you that something needs to change?

• 53:35Tom Satterly?

  Zero.

• 53:36Shawn Ryan?

  She's the only one? Why do you think that is?

• 53:41Tom Satterly?

  I think people were afraid of me. I think people didn't want, family didn't want to say it, and family didn't know. I don't think my family knew. And I think I hide it, I hid it a lot from people. And I know my brothers did never bring it up, because it's a mirror. It's a mirror for them. So when Jen did it, it was obviously out of love, out of strength, out of stubbornness. And it was a shock to me to hear it straight up, hard-hitting, something's wrong with you, and if you don't start now, I'm leaving. I won't subject myself to this, because I'm a human too, you know? I don't, I don't need to be treated this way.

• 54:24Tom Satterly?

  So that kind of forced me, thankfully, into taking action.

• 54:29Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think there's anybody else out there that could have called you on your bullshit that would have made you change, that would have made you start looking for answers, looking for help?

• 54:41Tom Satterly?

  Yeah, there were people I would have listened to. Who? Uh, my former boss at the company we helped cofound.

• 54:50Tom Satterly?

  Had he said something, you know, just knowing who I am, I would have taken it as a work thing. And I would, oh shit, I'm acting this way at work, I'm a loser, right? Not home life, but work life. Had he said something directly, you know, I found out later he aired out things to Jen, who would air out things to me, who I thought was coming from her. And then later it was like, no, he was saying those to me, to you. And I'm like, what the hell's wrong with that dude, right? Why wouldn't he say something to me? Man up. I'm not gonna punch you, and if I do, it won't hurt that long, right? Just tell me. I mean, just man up and tell your friends. Yeah. They need some help. You know, but we don't wanna hold that mirror up. Cause then we would have to go get help. And it happens a lot with people that reach out for help. Immediately, they're connected to help.

• 55:36Tom Satterly?

  And then they freak out.

• 55:38Tom Satterly?

  And then they don't make the calls. And then I have to cut them away. And then you get the hateful emails about how you're a quack and your system doesn't work. I'm like, no, nothing works if you don't do it. You know, bicycle lay there forever unless you pedal the damn thing. So the accountability's not there. The awareness of I need help, you called, you emailed, but the accountability's not there. They don't wanna admit it, they don't wanna put in the work. And so they shy away from it, make all the excuses, you know? I'm fine, it's quack, I'm gonna go help other people now. I'm like, oh no, you know? I think helping veterans is what will help me. And I'm like, okay, I started out in a soup kitchen, right? Helping people after I did the anger management while I was doing it. I was, it opened my eyes to other people and humans that needed help.

• 56:22Tom Satterly?

  I just thought, oh, you need food? Go get a job, man, you know? I saw the human in those people, and it really opened me up. And I knew I can't go help people, right? I wouldn't take advice, marriage advice, from somebody who was never in a relationship. I wouldn't take financial advice from somebody who was broke all the time, right? So I wouldn't want another veteran taking advice from me or any other veteran that's broken at the time. Because I'm gonna get bad advice. And that bad advice is gonna take me down the wrong hole. So I would ask other people who are helping other people or want to help other people to get help first, right? At least check it out. Go talk to licensed clinical social worker. Start talking honestly and then find out if you have a problem.

• 57:04Tom Satterly?

  Because if you're telling yourself you don't and you're all fit as a fiddle, you're probably not. I have a room of 300 people and I'll be talking on stage. And how many people have a perfect relationship? No hand ever goes up. Okay, how many of you are in marriage counseling? Two hands might go up. All right, for the other 298, why aren't you in counseling? Why are you gonna wait till it's broken to maintain something? They teach us that. If it's broken, it's more expensive, takes longer to fix it. Versus if you maintain it, it lasts longer and it's always stays stronger. It's that awareness of, oh, I don't have to work on my relationship or myself until I'm really, really broken or divorce is coming. It's too late then, right? It's a lot harder to get back up. So start now.

• 57:49Tom Satterly?

  Just do the check-ins and make sure your relationship's in the right way and make sure your head's in the right space.

• 57:56Shawn Ryan?

  That's good advice. There's one more thing that I wanna hit. It's a dark subject and that's, I know you had at least one suicide attempt. Are there more? How many?

• 58:14Tom Satterly?

  I don't know.

• 58:15Shawn Ryan?

  Did you always have it planned out?

• 58:18Tom Satterly?

  No, it was anger-based.

• 58:21Shawn Ryan?

  What would trigger it?

• 58:23Tom Satterly?

  Shame. From something I did. From hurting Jen. Yeah, and hurting Jen in any way would, would... When put into my face, when brought up, or when I calmed down and realized, I would feel so horrible that I wanted to get away from it so fast that I started to tell myself milliseconds, you're worthless. Your time here is over. You've done your job. You're a warrior. That's all you're here to do. Don't ruin this woman's life.

• 58:58Tom Satterly?

  That day, we were working together. It was alright, I was feeling down. You know, I wasn't talking to my son, I was trying. I was divorcing, I knew that that was gonna be another casual windfall for somebody else other than me. I knew what was coming. And I'm still trying to work. And we wrapped up that day. I had two friends in the backseat, right? We'd been riding for a while together. And they didn't know. They didn't know I'd been down that day. They jumped out of the car in the parking garage, like, "See you at the bar," like always, you know? And Jen, I found out later, knew that day, all that day, that I was off. I wasn't the jovial self that I normally was. I wasn't charismatic, I was just kinda quiet.

• 59:43Tom Satterly?

  That whole day was my son's... Thoughts of my son were weighing on me. Not the fact that I was getting divorced, the thoughts of what a shitty father I had been. Um, and here I am again, right? Leaving his mother. And we got to that garage, and my two friends took off. And then Jen, I normally helped her carry stuff in. Um, she was starting to grab her bags, and I said, "I gotta make a phone call." You know, in the parking garage, I'm gonna make a phone call. And I just said that to get alone. I just needed to be alone. As soon as she turned the corner down the hallway, you know, from the parking garage, I pulled my pistol out. And when I charged it, and you know, I was looking around like I'm getting in trouble, and I didn't wanna be seen. And then I remember thinking, "Oh, the poor people in the rental car company that fines

• 1:00:27Tom Satterly?

  of this car." And I remember thinking, "I hope I do this right." Because I don't wanna end up, you know, just screwed up and have somebody have to take care of me and wipe my mouth all the time. And I just, uh... My phone starts vibrating and ringing, and I'm ignoring it. And I'm just... I'm not thinking of war. I'm not thinking of anybody that died. I'm just thinking of what a loser I was. And I was hoping I could do it, you know? And the phone kept going off, and I finally picked it up to look like, "God." And all I saw was a bunch of stuff, a bunch of missed calls, and I saw something, something really...

• 1:01:03Tom Satterly?

  And when I saw you're late, I went right back to work.

• 1:01:07Tom Satterly?

  Like, I'm never late. I'm never, ever late. You know, plus minus thirty seconds anywhere in the world, right? And I'm like, I'm never late.

• 1:01:14Tom Satterly?

  Clear my pistol, put it back in my bag and grabbed all my stuff and we're running down, you know? Like, what am I late for? And she's like, well, let's just go have a seat, you know, and talk.

• 1:01:22Tom Satterly?

  We went and sat in the corner. Everybody else is getting drunk over here. We went and sat in a dark corner and just talked for a long time. I didn't tell her. I didn't, I didn't want to tell her. I thought, I'll never do this again. I was crazy. I was terrified me. It literally terrified me, thinking of how close I was.

• 1:01:42Tom Satterly?

  And, uh, I think two months later, I told her and it really struck her. It really struck her. And that might have been the breaking of her wanting to help people. It might have been like one of the, one of the push, things that pushed her over the top.

• 1:01:59Tom Satterly?

  And then there's been times, I mean, obviously I got to work after our, our wedding night, but,

• 1:02:06Tom Satterly?

  you know, it's a long process. You gotta be diligent, you gotta be patient. And I wasn't patient. I wasn't getting well quick enough. Uh, Jen was new to it, so every time I did one thing, she wanted me to do another. And then she'd ask another. And to me, I'm hearing, I'll never be good enough. She keeps wanting me to do more, which means I'm not getting there. And I just, fights would break out over, I don't know. I couldn't tell you what they were for. They were stupid. They're all stupid. Um, but I would go to shame, embarrassment, and then want to end it. You know, screw this, I'll just, ah, and I'm banging a pistol off my head. I've grabbed it from underneath the couch or underneath the mattress before, going to the lockbox and just smacking it off my head, just banging it off my head, screaming, ah, I just want to do this right in front of her.

• 1:02:51Tom Satterly?

  Never considering what I was doing to her.

• 1:02:56Tom Satterly?

  I didn't care about me, and I cared about her, and I hated me for hurting her.

• 1:03:03Tom Satterly?

  She's that cycle, you know, how do I break this cycle, not on the bad side?

• 1:03:09Tom Satterly?

  And we just kept going, we just kept going, and her patience just kept pushing and pushing, and her kindness and love, no matter how much I pushed her away.

• 1:03:20Tom Satterly?

  She came back strong, and she kept offering different alternatives, and I just kept taking them.

• 1:03:27Tom Satterly?

  Even to the, even while we were going through this, people on Facebook and social media were like, "You guys are the best couple, you know, blah, blah, blah, you're the, you know, the epitome of relationships," and I'm like, "Don't you know what Facebook is? Take Facebook and apply it to your life." We don't get on there and go, "Man, we're fucked up, we fight all, I'm sorry, we fight all the time, you know, and we scream at each other." I mean, we kind of do now, and we did in our books to open people's eyes, but back in the time, it's just happiness, right? Everybody does happiness, the good side. So I think that's hurting people not realizing there's a bad side too, and that side needs the attention. The good side is getting attention, the bad side needs attention.

• 1:04:07Tom Satterly?

  That's where we need to pay attention. So we're honest about everyone, hey, our life isn't like you see. We post other things now, we talk about other things now, but be aware that our life is not perfection. We're not those people that get on stage and talk about the things we're not doing, and we're also not those people who are perfect. I think we were told one, I know I was told one time, we were told that, "I'm gonna video you guys talking to each other and fighting, and I'm gonna play it back for you so you realize what you say on stage you don't do." Thinking, you think Brene Brown's perfect, doesn't feel shame? Think Tony Robbins doesn't feel like shit sometimes, you know, or does counter to what he preaches? We all do, but we get back on the horse and we try our hardest to get back, you know, in the race. There's a lot of judgment out there, and I'd rather there be more curiosity as to how to get here.

• 1:04:56Shawn Ryan?

  I think we should take a break. And when we come back, we'll bring Jen on. I want to get her side of this. That'd be the better side. Thanks.

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• 1:06:18Shawn Ryan?

  Jen Satterley, welcome to the show.

• 1:06:20Speaker 05

  Thank you, Sean Ryan. Appreciate it.

• 1:06:22Shawn Ryan?

  So, we've had a very extensive conversation with your husband. And we just got through one of his many suicide attempts where you actually are the person that stopped that, that saved him. And so, I'd like to hear your perspective of that day.

• 1:06:42Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 1:06:43Shawn Ryan?

  Actually, yeah, let's go, let's start with that day.

• 1:06:46Speaker 05

  We had known each other for a few weeks at this time, just kind of started dating-ish. We were so work-focused and got to know each other that way.

• 1:06:59Speaker 05

  You know, that day, he's normally like starts off rough in the morning. I think he probably talked about, people don't talk to Tom before noon, kind of thing, but this day was a little bit different. He stayed in that space throughout the entirety of the day. So, um, not focused. He's so tired at work. I mean, this guy was flawless, what it seemed like, um, on targets, and he was missing things. He was messing up. So he just seemed like this isn't the normal Tom that I'm used to seeing. Did I think he was gonna try to take his life? Of course not. I just noticed something was off. Something was different. And quite honestly, it was like 110 in Canton, Ohio. It was just, and we're smoked out with all

• 1:07:44Speaker 05

  of, they're all kitted up in all of their gear. So he said, I'm gonna make a phone call. And I thought, in like 110 parking garage? Like, this really is not adding up now. He's got a hotel room all to himself. Um, he could go in that room and make a phone call. Why is he hanging out in this parking garage? So I walked away from the car. I went with the other two Green Berets. And halfway to the room, they were helping me carry my photo gear. Um, the one guy had set it down and he's like, hey, I'm just gonna go shower real quick. And I'm just gonna go down to the bar right away. I'm not even gonna wait for everyone. I'm just gonna, you should just come down after. And I said, you know what? I'm gonna try to get ahold of Tom. And then I'll just wait for him and come

• 1:08:28Speaker 05

  down with Tom. And he's, okay, sure. Um, so I went to the room and I started unpacking my gear and just everything inside my spirit was like, something's not right. So I started texting him, you wanna meet me, you know, Teddy said he's gonna go to the bar early. Let's just go early. Nothing. Hmm, he's usually very, very responsive. Another text, nothing. Another text, nothing. And by this point, I thought, he's not on a phone call. And

• 1:09:01Speaker 05

  Knew something was off. I was just about ready to go to the parking garage. And for some reason, I don't even know why, I told him he was late. He wasn't late. I mean,

• 1:09:14Shawn Ryan?

  He wasn't late.

• 1:09:15Speaker 05

  No, we had hours before this meetup. And so I, people asked me why I said that to him, or how did I know? It was divine. I, I know that now. That it took something like that to stop him.

• 1:09:32Shawn Ryan?

  You guys had only known each other for a couple of weeks up to this point in time. You're busy as shit. You have a bunch of camera gear. You're trying to manage an entire film project for what? The US Navy?

• 1:09:43Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 1:09:43Shawn Ryan?

  And this is what's on your mind? This is what's sticking?

• 1:09:48Speaker 05

  For sure. For sure. Humans first, always.

• 1:09:51Shawn Ryan?

  Some guy's gotta make a phone call that you know him for a couple of weeks and it's in your head.

• 1:09:55Speaker 05

  It was in my head. I had, um, I had suicide attempts when I was younger. 14, 15. Um, I don't know if it was something, just we joked that our trauma was attracted to each other. And I don't know if it was instinct. I'm assuming it was God stepped in and said, tell him he's late. Cause that's what stopped him. And people, you know, the hardest thing he's ever told me was you're my savior. You saved me. And that broke me.

• 1:10:24Shawn Ryan?

  He told you that?

• 1:10:25Speaker 05

  Mm hmm. And I said, if I save you, I can also destroy you. Like I'll miss it one time. You won't get that text from me that says you're late. And so there was this tremendous wait for years that I thought I could keep him alive. And I watched him bang guns off his head. I was on my knees begging him not to pull a trigger, literally thinking, I'm gonna watch.

• 1:10:50Shawn Ryan?

  How would that start?

• 1:10:53Speaker 05

  In the stupidest way possible, every single time. And that's what makes it feel so insanely crazy. Is that this is over nothing. This is over a cup in the sink. This is over socks left on the staircase. This is something that has embarrassed you just this big of going, hey, you're overreacting. I'm overreacting now? You're telling me? Now I've embarrassed you, I've shamed you? But that's not the conversation we're having. It's still, you're a shitty mom, or you're a shitty wife. You know, into the cycle of, I'm going to destroy you. And I'm going to take you down to nothing. And then, once he would do that, it would be this aha moment of, what have I done?

• 1:11:37Speaker 05

  Complete shame, embarrassment, pain. And I think the worst part is, I could see it. I could see it on his face, that he was in so much pain, what he just did to me. And so immediately, I would go into repair mode. Don't worry about it, it's fine. We'll talk to a therapist tomorrow. Just get some air, just go for a drive, go punch a bag, call a friend. You know, because I knew he was this close, many, many times. And there was a time where he had his finger on the trigger, just once.

• 1:12:09Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, you would see him actually, holding a pistol.

• 1:12:12Speaker 05

  To his head.

• 1:12:13Shawn Ryan?

  Banging it on his head.

• 1:12:15Speaker 05

  In tears, saying, let me just do this.

• 1:12:17Shawn Ryan?

  How many times did that happen, do you think?

• 1:12:21Speaker 05

  Six, seven? I mean, I got to the point where I started hiding the guns, soon as I could feel something was off that day. And then that would piss him off. Where are my guns? Well, I don't think you should have them. You know, last week, I saw you banging it on the side of your temple. Asking me to give you permission to end it. I'm never gonna do that. Never gonna let you. I'm gonna fight for you, fight for us, until the end. And so, I think the last time, I literally was on my knees. We were in the bedroom. And he always told me, and I knew this for 10 years, you never put your finger on the trigger unless you intend to pull it.

• 1:13:07Speaker 05

  And so all these other times, he had the gun in his hand. But this time, he put his finger on the trigger. And soon as I saw that, I thought it was done, truly. I thought I was gonna watch him pull it. And I know many other unit wives that had to watch that. So I literally thought in that second, like, this is my time. This is where I watch him die.

• 1:13:29Shawn Ryan?

  What stopped him?

• 1:13:32Speaker 05

  I fell to my knees, literally was grabbing him by his pants. I knew not to try to take the gun. I was scared to touch it, that he might react. And I think when he saw me fall to the ground, just sobbing, begging him not to. He, it's like this recollection, like Tom came back. Because Tom's often gone when this would happen. He'd go somewhere else. Crawler came forward and the guy I knew and loved was gone, just gone. His eyes would turn black.

• 1:14:03Speaker 05

  And then they would turn blue again. And when I saw him see me on the ground that way, he fell to the ground too, put the gun to the side. And he said, "I'll never do that to you again." And he didn't.

• 1:14:16Shawn Ryan?

  That was it?

• 1:14:16Speaker 05

  That was it.

• 1:14:18Shawn Ryan?

  Where are the kids when this is all happening?

• 1:14:21Speaker 05

  Thank God, never at our house. And truly thank God. For some reason, he wouldn't really start it when they're around. I think, I think he knew they're my, they're my hard line. They're not gonna see that. They're not gonna be put into a situation like I had growing up. And you'll be gone before they will be gone. So he was always very careful around my kids, always guarded, hands off. To the point where I'm like, you could come out of the bedroom at times. Like, you don't have to lock yourself away. But thank God, none of that ever happened in front of them. But I know there are many military families that it does, many.

• 1:15:06Shawn Ryan?

  What did it feel like? When did he tell you about that one day in the parking garage?

• 1:15:11Speaker 05

  It was like a, it was this odd night, like we were out probably drinking. And he's like, hey, you know that night that you, you know, we went and sat? Because it was kind of like the first night we sat by ourselves, like isolated ourselves from the group. He came into the bar, I could tell. He just was disheveled still, he didn't, didn't look right. And so I said, why don't we just go like sit in the corner? Because it was loud and, you know, we were working with a SEAL team. So we had the Green Berets that we were contracting with, all the SEALs were coming like, so it was starting to become really chaotic in full. So like, at that point, I'm like, we can go over there and nobody will notice. Like we've tucked away. So that's what we did. And that night, we really got to know each other.

• 1:15:54Speaker 05

  So it was a couple of months later, it's like, you know, that night when we tucked away? I'm like, yeah, you were off that day. He said, you saved my life that day. And I said, I mean, I kind of laughed like, haha, I did what? He said, no, I sat there with a gun. And your texts telling me I was late stopped me. And I don't know if I believed him at first, like it seemed too big, like it took me a minute to grasp that. And then it took me to a very, very scared place for many years. I didn't want to be a savior. I didn't want that pressure, but I loved this man so deeply that there was no way I was going to let go of him either.

• 1:16:38Shawn Ryan?

  At dinner two nights ago, I guess now, you had mentioned the first time that you met Tom, who sounds like a complete disaster. And so I'd like you to, I'd like you to tell that story.

• 1:16:54Speaker 05

  Yeah, I actually called him a SEAL.

• 1:16:57Shawn Ryan?

  I could see how that would turn into a disaster.

• 1:17:01Speaker 05

  I knew very little about special operations. My dad served Air Force, but he was out before I was born. My brother left when I was 10 for military. So of course, my family had a deep love and very patriotic. But I didn't know anything. My dad never talked about my brother, never talked about it. So when I was called up to do this job, I said, no, I don't. I don't want to do that. I'm working in fashion. I'm doing sports. I'm doing all this other stuff. I'm in commercial advertising. I'm fine. I don't need to go work with special operations, a bunch of like testosterone dudes that I don't even know what they do. And by the way, I've never held a gun in my life. Like, I don't know anything about this. You're gonna do better. I even gave them names, like, call this guy, call this guy, call this guy.

• 1:17:43Speaker 05

  Former Ranger was my client, so I was voluntold. Like, no, you're gonna go on this one. And then you don't have to go back. Like, you could move back on to another project. So I kind of didn't want to be there. I was like, let's get this over with kind of thing. I was walking down the hall and the guy who owned this company was a former unit member. And so he stops like really dramatically and he said, have you ever seen Black Hawk Down? And I'm like, yeah, it's been a minute. Like, it was 2001, right? And he's like, yeah.

• 1:18:19Speaker 05

  Side note, my former place that I used to work at were all guys. I was the only female designer there. And Black Hawk Down had come out that year. So constantly on our big, big, big screen, like our movie theater size screen, where we'd show our commercials, it would play 24/7. So like, I had this thing in me when he's like, do you know Black Hawk Down? I'm like, oh my God. Yeah, I'm really well versed in it. Yeah, I know that movie. It's great. I used to have to tell them, can you turn it down? Because the clients are hearing gunfire in the background. And nobody's shooting guns here. So I kind of made a little joke like, yeah, I know it. And you're about ready to go meet two of the guys that were... I was like, oh my gosh, wow.

• 1:19:03Speaker 05

  My mind's like Eric Bana was in that. Like, I start thinking about all these really cute guys. They're like, oh, okay, I'm gonna go meet some of the guys from Black Hawk Down. And I said, he said, you know what Delta Forces, right? Because these guys were not in the Ranger group, but in the Delta group. And I go, yeah, that's like a Navy SEAL, right? And he stopped me and he goes, excuse me? And I go...

• 1:19:27Speaker 05

  I go, what? Like they're like the Army SEALs, right? And he said, we'll have a history lesson and I'll catch you up after this. He never did, but it was his way of telling me like, you don't know what you're talking about. Better zip it. And I took his advice because for about three and a half years, I kept my lips zipped after that. Um, but I walked in the room and Tom's sitting there and he's like way overweight, kind of ruddy red from drinking all the time. And I looked down and I was like, oh, that's not Eric Bana or one of the other boys from Black Hawk Down. And then I thought, wait, it's been like 10 years since that, 20 years since the actual event.

• 1:20:08Speaker 05

  Yeah, these guys are going to be older now. Um, and there was a haunted, so it was at a place where there was this haunted hotel in the Saint Asylums in Indiana, ironically where he was born is where we met. And I said, hey, like, let's go check out this haunted house. This like unit guy, like he cares. And he's like, nah, it's okay. Like I'll hard pass that. And so I don't know, I didn't think much of him. He didn't think much of me, clearly didn't even know who I was. So it really wasn't until we started working on a few iterations where he actually started talking because he was super quiet at first. And I think he said his awesome first line was, I friended you on LinkedIn. Yeah, cool.

• 1:20:52Shawn Ryan?

  Congratulations.

• 1:20:53Speaker 05

  Congrats. I'm glad we're friends.

• 1:20:57Shawn Ryan?

  What was it about Tom that that really got your attention?

• 1:21:02Speaker 05

  He was a bad boy, to be quite honestly. I mean, I had spent many years as a party girl, um, a lot of untreated trauma, I realize now, but I went into mom mode for a very long time and I was the total soccer mom and it felt inauthentic, I guess, in some ways, never about my children. I adore my children. I get a lot of shit for how much I adore my children. Um, but I think being raised in an abusive household, I overcompensated the other way. Um, but when I went out with Tom, I wasn't mom anymore. I was back to Jen.

• 1:21:42Speaker 05

  And back to reckless party girl. And I had a lot of fun. Quite honestly, I had a lot of fun.

• 1:21:52Shawn Ryan?

  Well, this is almost

• 1:21:55Shawn Ryan?

  contradictory of itself, you know? Because you fixed him. Or you're a big part of fixing him, so... But you're having fun being back in

• 1:22:07Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:22:07Shawn Ryan?

  in that mindset. So so you had to sacrifice a lot because you're having fun to to get him better. So at what point did you decide we both need to clean this shit up a little bit?

• 1:22:25Speaker 05

  Before our wedding.

• 1:22:26Shawn Ryan?

  Was it because of Tom? That you decided?

• 1:22:29Speaker 05

  Yeah, because I lived this total crazy weird double life for a very for the I embedded for about three and a half years as combat camera on stateside missions. So for those three and a half years, I'd go away for two weeks, come back for two weeks, go away for four weeks, come back for a week, gone for two weeks, back for a week. So I was constantly moving to either a different team, a different RMT, different training cycle. And then I started to get why the guys wanted it. And wanted to go back. Because then that started to happen to me. I'd be home for three days and I'm like,

• 1:23:02Speaker 05

  alright, what teams got, you know, even if I wasn't assigned to that team, I would call my boss like, hey, you want combat camera? Yeah, I just, I just got home. Nope, put me on it.

• 1:23:12Shawn Ryan?

  So you got addicted to it?

• 1:23:13Speaker 05

  I did, for sure. I ate the camaraderie, the embracing the suck, like, because it sucked. I mean, we're in warehouses with

• 1:23:25Speaker 05

  I don't know, it feels like 150 degrees and you're there for 16 hours and everybody hates life and then you all have a great time and high five after and it felt good to be part of something bigger. It felt good to be part of something that I felt like these guys are making a difference. And I'm a super, super, super small part of it. But I'm part of it. Of these guys going out and doing what nobody else wants to do, by the way. I spent my life as a creative. And at that point at 38, I'm like, I got to be a creative. I got to be an art director and a filmmaker. Instead of going off to war. Because I could have gone off to war and done none of these things. But I got to do my job because these men and women are doing the really shitty, hard jobs.

• 1:24:09Speaker 05

  So I became super appreciative. All the Hollywood stuff, all the

• 1:24:16Speaker 05

  Lies that are told about you guys started unpeeling for me bit by bit by bit. And I'm like, they've got it so wrong, so wrong. These guys are humanitarians. They're meant to be treated like and talked about like they're monsters. Humanitarians. They're the best of the best and the strongest of the strongest. So I quickly wanted to be part of that tribe. I saw the love of the brotherhood, frankly, and I was brought into that just in a little bit. It felt good.

• 1:24:51Shawn Ryan?

  You had mentioned at dinner, it sounded like there was an exact moment where it all switched for you. And it was a Green Beret that said, you tell it.

• 1:25:03Speaker 05

  Oh, gosh, which one?

• 1:25:04Shawn Ryan?

  That we're humanitarians.

• 1:25:06Speaker 05

  Oh, God, I love that. He really, so I didn't know the mission of the Green Berets. Like, oh, they're door kickers, right? Like, that's what they do. They go in, they're badasses, they fight at war and they come home. And when I started working with them, they're like, there's the chaplain, there's these people and these. And they started going through the different teams. And I'm like, what do you guys do? Like, what's your mission set? And he said, to free the oppressed. You know, we go in as nation builders. We were humanitarians. And I looked at him, I said, what? He's like, yeah, we build nations. We go in and we help the oppressed. We free them. That's our job. And I said, nobody's ever put it that way to me. You always hear fight for freedom, but no, no one had ever put it that way.

• 1:25:49Speaker 05

  We're the humanitarians going in, trying to stop the bad guys to build the new so that the good guys in that community can thrive. And that's what you guys do.

• 1:26:01Shawn Ryan?

  Pretty cool. Pretty cool how it switched for you like that.

• 1:26:05Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, I became the biggest fangirl. I mean, the amount of respect and love that I developed. For our warfighters and their families. I mean, it took me a while for families. So I spent three and a half years working with teams. But then I started, quite honestly, it came with a SEAL who said, can you talk to my wife? Here's her phone number. And it didn't go so well at first because she had a female calling saying, I'm calling about your husband. And it really threw her off. I don't do that anymore. I don't call spouses, you know, cold. But that's how it started. And I started talking to spouses who were like, I'm not getting the same guy. He's leaving for deployment and pieces of him aren't coming back.

• 1:26:49Speaker 05

  And so when he's gone, not only am I praying for him to come home, but I'm praying for like all of him to come home.

• 1:26:59Shawn Ryan?

  Let's talk about your wedding night. Tom doesn't remember much of it, but I'm sure you do. What happened?

• 1:27:07Speaker 05

  I, you know, I started down the same road as him, doing shots. Wasn't so smart. We were both stressed out. We get to the bar after and a lot of work friends, right? So all the military element comes in, not their fault. They weren't shoving drinks down our throat. We did that. But I think at that time still is very permissible. Like you're gonna drink, you're gonna be reckless, you're gonna have fun. And that's still the phase that we were in at that time. And so I think I looked over at Tom, maybe on his fifth shot. And I had stopped and I looked at him and I said, hey, like, it's probably good for the night. That was not received well.

• 1:27:51Speaker 05

  I think he kind of went the opposite, like, don't tell me to stop drinking. And so he started drinking more and more and more, to the point where we ended up at a second, like rooftop bar. We sit down and there's a band. I love to dance. Like, that was always the joke with the guys because I'm like, ooh, put on some music. And, and so everybody, you know, these guys take me to this bar because they're like, oh, we'll get Jen dancing. You know, it'll be fun. And he sat down with the co-owner. We had a, started a special operations training company. So the third party to that, he sat down with his wife and spent the entire night chatting with her in the corner. I felt completely betrayed, like, small, invisible.

• 1:28:35Speaker 05

  Like I made a mistake, quite frankly. Because I thought this is gonna be our life. This train wreck, right now, is gonna be my life. So as we were walking back, I said, "Do you know you didn't even talk to me tonight? Nonetheless, dance with me, or kiss me, or anything? You spent the entire night in the corner, talking to her. Like, that's really weird, right?" Oof. It just, it was full explosion. Because I think he realized in that moment, "Oh, my God. You just embarrassed the crap out of me. I'm ashamed." And so he literally was yelling at me so loud, walking down the street in Savannah. I'm in a wedding dress.

• 1:29:19Speaker 05

  He's in his outfit. I still have my bouquet. So here, people are honking and waving. I have tears. We get into the hotel, the Hilton, and the manager comes over, because Tom is yelling at me so loud, going up the escalator, that he meets me to the other side and said, looked at me a mouth, "Do you want me to call security?" And I said, "No." He said, "You sure?" And I said, "Yes." And he says, "I have your room number." Meaning, "I'll be listening." No one's ever done that to me in my life. Said, "I'm watching out for you." A manager of a hotel. I became embarrassed, ashamed. Like, what situation am I in? That somebody is stopping me, saying, "I'm here to help you," from your husband.

• 1:30:03Speaker 05

  We got into the room. There was a makeup case and things by, and he just started tossing them, just started throwing things across the room. In the back of my mind, I'm thinking of that manager, too. Like, "Oh, my gosh, that manager's gonna hear. He's gonna hear this. Shh, Tom, Tom, Tom." So I'm telling him to be quiet, and, "Don't worry about it." You know, he grabbed me a few times, threw me to the ground. And on the third time, he had kind of thrown and pushed me, he pushed me hard. To the point where I thought, "This could get dangerous? This could get deadly?" He's raging. He's full-on in a space where I'm afraid of him now. So I locked myself in the bathroom. I didn't sleep all night.

• 1:30:45Speaker 05

  I sat up, all night, just thinking, "If I leave him, he will pull the trigger. For sure. For sure. I cannot leave him. I can't leave him like this. And I can't stay. So what do I do exactly?" And I didn't have an answer. I just waited till he woke up and kind of looked at me and I was holding the certificate and I said, "I just don't know if we should turn this in." And it wasn't a threat, it wasn't like a, "I'm gonna try to trick you into this." I legitimately thought, "I just made a big mistake." "I have two small children, I can't bring you into my home like this."

• 1:31:28Speaker 05

  And so, we sat on a beach for a few hours. He asked to hold my hand, I said, "No." He respected that, he said, "Can we talk?" I said, "No." So for about two and a half, three hours, we just sat there staring at the water. And I prayed, I asked God to fix this for me. And I wasn't a, I don't wanna say I wasn't a believer, cuz I was, I always believed in God, but I was not a practicing person in the spiritual way at all. But I felt a calmness come over me. I reached over and I grabbed his hand and I said, "If you get help on Monday, I'll stay. But you have to get better, or I have to go." You understand that, right?

• 1:32:12Speaker 05

  Like, "I have to go if you can't get better. It's not safe for me to be with you. It's not safe for my children to be with you. It's not safe for your child to be with you when you behave this way." He said, "I understand." And on Monday, he had an appointment. And I had hope.

• 1:32:28Shawn Ryan?

  How long did it pass? How long, how much time had passed before he saw him again?

• 1:32:34Speaker 05

  Three weeks.

• 1:32:35Shawn Ryan?

  Three weeks?

• 1:32:36Speaker 05

  It was three weeks.

• 1:32:37Shawn Ryan?

  He got married, and then he didn't see her husband for three weeks?

• 1:32:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, it probably could've been longer. He was offered to do part of our contracting elsewhere, and he decided that probably not a good idea. Decided to move to St. Louis at that point. So, I flew out to Savannah, helped him pack his stuff. He was gonna come a few months later, but he said, "I need to be with you now. I need to do this with you."

• 1:33:00Shawn Ryan?

  How much improvement had he seen in three weeks?

• 1:33:05Speaker 05

  He was playing a good game for a while, but it was a game. He had not fully bought into this healing stuff yet. So I saw the Tom who was trying really hard, like what he thought healing looked like or to be healed looked like. He was reading books and quoting like, you know, the four agreements all the time. And I'm like, hmm, maybe he is getting it.

• 1:33:26Shawn Ryan?

  It's a great book.

• 1:33:27Speaker 05

  It is a great book. And quite honestly, people at work, he'd come in. He's like, you should not take things personally. And he would quote these things and they're like, who is this guy? Like, what? They'd look at me like you brought, literally, I've had many people told me I broke him. I'm like, what? That he's like healing? And he's not a jerk all the time? If that's breaking him, then okay, I broke him. I made him do yoga. Yes, I did. It's okay. He's still a badass.

• 1:33:56Speaker 05

  But it was about three years before I saw true change.

• 1:33:58Shawn Ryan?

  Three years?

• 1:33:59Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:34:00Shawn Ryan?

  What?

• 1:34:03Shawn Ryan?

  How many things did he try in three years?

• 1:34:06Speaker 05

  Transcendental meditation. We did pharmaceutical supplementation, which helped him a lot. So getting all of his biology kind of right, that's where we focused first was I started reading everything I could about PTSD. And I was like, okay, this is what PTSD is. And I remember calling him like, here's the checklist. And they have 36 things on here and you have like 45. I added some like, you definitely have this. He's like, no, I don't. The army didn't give me PTSD. And I said, what do you mean they didn't? I'm like, I've seen Black Hawk Down. There's no way you came out of that okay. Like, there's just no way. And we never really talked about Black Hawk Down just one time. He said, no, I only have like 10% disability. Kid you not. And he had nine surgeries.

• 1:34:50Speaker 05

  So we found a woman named Peggy through a friend, and he was requalified at like 220%. And he absolutely was checked with TBI and PTS. Understanding that diagnosis or how to tackle it gave us a starting place of, wait a minute, this reckless behavior, acting this way is part of it? I always thought I was a bad teen. Like, I was just a bad kid. And then I'm like, wait, some of the same behavior these soldiers have was the same behavior I had. Totally different set of trauma, totally different set of circumstances, behavior very similar.

• 1:35:30Speaker 05

  So in healing him, I healed myself, for sure.

• 1:35:33Shawn Ryan?

  When did you guys decide to...

• 1:35:36Shawn Ryan?

  When did the idea of the All Secure Foundation start?

• 1:35:41Speaker 05

  It was two things, really. I was on the last exercise I would do. It was four weeks. It was with the SEAL team and I didn't want to be gone that long anymore for my children. By this time, it had been almost three and a half years in. And I thought, what am I doing? Like, I need to be at home. I want to be at home. So that exercise for me, as a mom, did it. I'm like, I can't keep going like this. So family was a priority. And I thought, well, what am I going to do when I put my camera down and I'm done with this? And I told Tom, I said, you know what? We've helped all these guys go to war. Like, but nobody's helping them come home. It's like what I keep hearing. And on that last iteration, two SEALs were killed previously.

• 1:36:25Speaker 05

  And so this team was the team that had come back. One of these guys is 28 years old. He looks 45 to me now. I saw him on an iteration a year and a half before. And I could just see it on all of their faces. It was so heavy. And so I asked one of the guys who I knew closer, I said, how are you doing? And he was, yeah, it's good. And I go, no, how are you? How are you doing? How are you grieving? And once I said that, he just looked at me and he said, we don't do that. I said, you don't grieve? No, there's no time for that. It broke my heart. It broke my heart. I know these men love these other men. And to have them say, we don't grieve? Talk about an unrealistic expectation of a human being.

• 1:37:08Speaker 05

  Their commander had become friends with Tom. We had done a few iterations, so I knew him as well. And I asked Tom, would it be out of place for me to call him? These guys are suffering. Nobody's doing anything for them on the teams. Even I had asked a few other guys, you guys at least talking to each other? I get it, like, the organization's not doing anything. You guys going out and getting a beer? Are you talking about it? That's not what we do. That's not what we do. That's what I kept hearing. Called the commander and I said, your guys are really... I'm just coming to you. Maybe out of place, I don't know. But I've talked to like four guys on your team and they're all really messed up about this. And nobody's talking and nobody's helping them. He said, we have behavioral health. They know where to go. That was it.

• 1:37:51Speaker 05

  I told Tom, I said, "This is unnatural. It's unnormal. This is not the way humans are supposed to survive." And, and nobody's training them. It's not that they need to know. It's not that they're broken. I hated that. Like, "These guys are broken." Well, no shit. If you saw the things that they saw and did the things they did, which is completely incomprehensible, by the way, to most civilians. We have no idea. And by the way, the movies don't get it right most of the times. Some of them do. So, I didn't go to combat, but I spent years and years training with them. And even the training cycles were completely traumatic and stressful. I, the very first one on a SEAL died by the truck rotating and flipping. And on day one, they're like, "Training's over." And I remember asking Tom, like, "What happened?"

• 1:38:36Speaker 05

  And he said, "Well, someone was killed." And I said, "Here?" "Oh, yeah, a vehicle rolled." On my very first exercise. And I thought, I asked him, I said, "God, how often do people die in training?" He said, "All the time." People have no idea. So, I said, "Listen, they're not broken. This is biological. This is a total biological..." Because then I started learning about PTS. So, I'd start telling all the guys on target, like, "Hey, hey, go, go get natural pharmaceuticals. Start sleeping right, you know? Do these things. Talk to a therapist." And really loved kind of that process of talking to them. And they're like, "Hey, can I call you when this exercise is over to see what Tom's doing next?" "Yeah, yeah, yeah, here's my phone number."

• 1:39:19Speaker 05

  And then I would spend 11 hours a day on the phone. Just, "Next dude, next dude. Can you talk to this guy on the next team?" "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah." "Try this, try that. Go to meditation, do this." And I said, "We need to do this. We need to help train people on how to come home." And Tom's like, "You mean a nonprofit?" I'm like, "Yeah." He's like, "You're a marketing and a film girl." And I was in the unit, like, "What do we know about nonprofits?" And I'm like, "Everything's figure-outable. We'll figure it out." Like, "You just said it. You were in the unit. You did harder things. We'll figure this out." And it took a few years, but we did.

• 1:39:59Shawn Ryan?

  You have, you're like an encyclopedia of statistics. When it comes to PTSD and, and all of this stuff, the suicides. Can you go through some of the

• 1:40:13Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 1:40:13Shawn Ryan?

  statistics that really resonate with you that you think will, will capture some attention?

• 1:40:20Speaker 05

  The first time I heard was on an exercise. Well, you know that there are 22 veterans a day that take their lives. And I said, no way. I argued with the guy. I said, there's no way 22 a day. I said, I wouldn't know about it. Like, I'm plugged in now with this community. So my, you know, my boyfriend has PTS and everything. And I even knew he had suicide attempts. Not only that, as I started to get to know Tom's friends, I'm like, I know this is deeply personal, but this would really help me with like my research and what I want to do. Do you ever have suicidal ideations? Is it okay of me asking you that? Every single one of, every single one of Tom's friends said yes. Not a single one said no.

• 1:41:04Speaker 05

  And I was starting to hear, not just once a day, but like 100 times a day, I think about it. And so I started telling my civilian friends, do you ever hear this number, 22 veterans a day take their life? Every single civilian friend of mine had the same reaction. That's not true. That's too high. There's no way we would know. We would know about that.

• 1:41:24Speaker 05

  So I called Mission 22. And their name is Mission 22. You got this 22 a day. Where did you get that number from? And they were very gracious and they talked to me a lot as we were starting up our foundation. Well, this comes from VA statistics and numbers. So I started poking at the VA and it's really, really difficult to get numbers. And for a number person who likes to have that line, I started realizing, well, it depends on who you ask now. You know, just on TV recently, I heard 17 a day, which is grossly underestimated. So I started doing more research and I'm looking into that. And I looked at the VA piece from 2014 and they left out several states. And then I started asking for additional research and nobody had it.

• 1:42:07Speaker 05

  Even the organizations that Tom and others were in, do you have statistics on this? Do you have numbers on this? Do you know what's going on here? Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. Well, just this last year, I talked to a man, Jim Lorraine, and, and we were chatting about the numbers and he's like, well, it's actually 40 for a day. And I said, what? Twenty-two days insane. It's over eight thousand. Now you're telling me it could be up to sixteen thousand a year? A year? That's like, we went to war because of nine eleven. There were over twenty-six hundred people that died. So that would be like, I don't know, four or five nine elevens happening every year? Just to our veteran population? Every single year, that happening? If that were kindergarten teachers,

• 1:42:53Speaker 05

  people would be paying attention. But to say there's sixteen, up to sixteen thousand suicides a year?

• 1:43:01Speaker 05

  I haven't seen a news report about it. I haven't heard people really talk about it. And I don't know why. People have asked me, why do you think it is? Is it the assumption there were fighters and this is the natural progression? Well, that's sick. You knew what you were signing up for at eighteen. No, you didn't. And by the way, even if you did, that means that it's okay for you to take your life because of the trauma that resulted in it? It makes no sense to me. Makes no sense. There's no... If there were one a day, it'd be too many. But forty-four is...

• 1:43:34Speaker 05

  I don't know.

• 1:43:35Shawn Ryan?

  How many veterans have killed themselves since nine eleven?

• 1:43:39Speaker 05

  Up to, well, again, the numbers can be quite skewed. I've heard anywhere from sixty-five to a hundred and forty thousand. In the same amount of time, we've had roughly six thousand deaths by killed in action. So the enemy, as you can see, they're not touching American warfighters. American warfighters are taking themselves out.

• 1:44:00Shawn Ryan?

  They actually made a propaganda video about that.

• 1:44:03Speaker 05

  Did they?

• 1:44:04Shawn Ryan?

  I saw it. Yep, came out

• 1:44:09Shawn Ryan?

  probably seven, eight years ago. They actually, they talk about it.

• 1:44:17Speaker 05

  I mean, I know you're the interviewer, but how does that make you feel when you learn that statistic?

• 1:44:26Shawn Ryan?

  It...

• 1:44:31Shawn Ryan?

  Brings me to rage. But that's be- that's probably because, um. I mean, Tom had described that earlier too. Sadness turns to rage. Anxiety turns to rage. Any, any emotion other than happiness, pretty much, just goes straight to rage.

• 1:44:50Speaker 05

  For sure.

• 1:44:50Shawn Ryan?

  In resentment. And. When I hear things like that and I hear civilians don't know, they don't really care. Canadians are doing veteran assisted suicide. Wouldn't surprise me if that comes into the US. I don't, I mean. I got my benefits from Peggy Matthews too. I won't even step foot in a VA. After those initial, what do they call them? The, the exams that they give you. I think I went back one time. And, uh, I never, I just don't think they have your best interest.

• 1:45:33Speaker 05

  We were there one time too. We left mid appointment.

• 1:45:36Shawn Ryan?

  Peggy even told me, don't ever, don't ever go in there. And, um. I mean, it just, I don't feel like it's in the VA's best interest to keep us alive. It costs money.

• 1:45:47Speaker 05

  I agree.

• 1:45:48Shawn Ryan?

  You see the staff that they hire. Shit, I mean, you go to the doctor. I remember, I remember the time that I did go. I went to a doctor who barely spoke any English and she was wearing sweat, a sw- a sweatsuit, like sweatpants and a sweatshirt.

• 1:46:04Speaker 05

  Showing up to give her best.

• 1:46:07Shawn Ryan?

  You're my doctor. Didn't even know what a seal was. Didn't care. Didn't wanna know, wanted to know why I didn't go to medical. You know, after the mission and it's, it's, there is no medical lady.

• 1:46:23Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:46:23Shawn Ryan?

  And, and you can't get your drugs prescribed anywhere else. They feed you the drugs that you don't need. You know, and it's, it's like, okay, so you want me to die. You're gonna over prescribe me with painkillers, benzos, whatever, sleeping pills, whatever you can get your hands on.

• 1:46:43Speaker 05

  For sure.

• 1:46:43Shawn Ryan?

  Give them to me, get me addicted.

• 1:46:46Speaker 05

  And then later.

• 1:46:47Shawn Ryan?

  Yep, see you later. I mean, so essentially, we're already doing veteran assisted suicide right here at the VA because that's what they do is pump you full of drugs. Maybe it's gotten better. That was, I mean, that was,

• 1:47:02Shawn Ryan?

  it's getting close to 10 years, you know, so maybe there's been some improvement. I don't know.

• 1:47:08Speaker 05

  We walked out of the only one we went into. Tom was on 14 pills. And doing nothing for him except for everything wrong. And then I started Googling and I'm like, why are you, how long have you been taking this pill? And he was like, 14 years. I go, oh, it says on here for short term, six month usage. And he's like, what? And I showed it to him and I'm like, we gotta get you off these pills. And we go to the appointment. I tell the doctor, first of all, I said, well, he was in the unit where the amount of cancer and, and rare diseases coming out of there

• 1:47:42Speaker 05

  is relevant information to a doctor. And I said, he served in the unit. He goes, I don't see how that's relevant. I don't see why that matters. I'm like, he spent 20 years in combat. Filthy places, training in places with asbestos, all kinds of things. How do you not find that relevant? And then I looked down and he starts writing a script. Right after we said, we want to get him off these pills. He said, here's two more.

• 1:48:09Speaker 05

  You could pull this one off and take these two. And I go, stand up. And Tom stood up and we just turned and walked out. I'm like, we're leaving. Never went back and he got off all 14 pills. Became much clearer, much better after he did, for sure.

• 1:48:28Shawn Ryan?

  It, it enrages me and I, I don't go there very often, you know, because of that, but um, and it's, it's, I mean, I found other ways, you know, Peggy Matthews, my doctor.

• 1:48:44Shawn Ryan?

  Psychedelics.

• 1:48:46Speaker 05

  For sure.

• 1:48:47Shawn Ryan?

  Therapy. Well, I just started finding other ways to treat myself rather than the...

• 1:48:55Speaker 05

  But you took it upon yourself and you took the effort and you made it. And I think that's what's so necessary is that in the part with Tom saying that you saved me, I'm like, I wish I had that power because then I'd just go around and save everyone. I'd be like Jesus, like, all right, I'm gonna walk on some water, everybody's good. I don't have that power. There's already been a Messiah. All I can do is say there's a better life than the one you're living right now.

• 1:49:20Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, I think a lot of guys find, I think, I don't know how to say this, but I think, myself included, it takes, for me, it took seeing how many lives I destroyed that loved me. Everybody around me, I destroyed. Every relationship around me, my family, ex relationships, friends, you know, and I saw, I saw the eggshell syndrome without knowing what eggshell syndrome is, which you guys were talking about the other night. And it,

• 1:50:04Shawn Ryan?

  you just realize you're a monster. I mean, just beating the shit out of people at bars for no reason. I mean,

• 1:50:14Shawn Ryan?

  it just got to be, it's humiliating.

• 1:50:19Speaker 00

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• 1:50:49Shawn Ryan?

  It's humiliating. And you don't realize how abnormal that shit is until you leave, until you leave the unit or the team or that, that culture because that...

• 1:51:02Shawn Ryan?

  Probably get a lot of shit for saying this, but that's the culture. You know, you show up, you get, you work hard, you play hard.

• 1:51:10Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:51:10Shawn Ryan?

  You play at least as hard as you work.

• 1:51:12Speaker 05

  For sure.

• 1:51:12Shawn Ryan?

  And what are you immersed in? You're immersed in violence, womanizing, booze, and, and.

• 1:51:20Speaker 05

  And rewarded for it.

• 1:51:21Shawn Ryan?

  Yep.

• 1:51:22Speaker 05

  You get a medal for it. You get a lot of pats on the back when you bring the girl home.

• 1:51:26Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:26Speaker 05

  And a lot of raised eyebrows if you don't. If you're not drinking, if you're not bringing someone home, if you're not playing that warrior reckless lifestyle, then something's wrong with you. So, yeah, I got it.

• 1:51:36Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, the team doesn't trust you if you don't drink.

• 1:51:38Speaker 05

  Well, 100%. We just had a retreat at four active duty Green Berets. Each of them opened up on the very last day because one of them said, so glad that this was not like an alcohol infused weekend. Thank you for not bringing alcohol. Now, Tom and I in the organization won't say, okay, we're done at seven. We're not babysitting you. We're not going, go to your room and don't drink. But we encourage people, like, do something different. If it's not working for you, do something different this trip. And when they come to our dinners, there's no alcohol. And, and so he said, you know, normally, even though I don't drink and I'm trying, trying this sober thing, I get so much shit from my teammates for not drinking that I end up drinking just to shut them up. And he's like, I'm really trying to be sober.

• 1:52:23Speaker 05

  The three other dudes at that table all did the me too, me too, me too. And I was so grateful they had that moment together. Cause that's leadership. I can go back now and say, I'll go to the bar with you, but I'm gonna drink a water. No big deal, man. No big deal. You know, misery loves company. And you've got a bunch of miserable people. They're all gonna try to tear the tower down next to him, even though there's love there. I get it. I mean, people have asked me, why were you able to forgive Tom so quickly for his infidelity? And I said, because I saw the culture he was raised in from the time he was 19 years old and he stayed there till he was 46. I saw how he was raised and how he was raised was it's normal to drink and drink it all.

• 1:53:06Speaker 05

  It's normal to womanize, get them all. I, I, I saw it on trips. I saw it on iterations, like three and a half years of that, I got it. So I was able to forgive him, saying, I got it, but that shit's not gonna happen again. That's done. That part of the warrior lifestyle is not coming into this marriage. Cause I'll end it. That'll be it. In fact, when he proposed, I'm like, I don't know if I want to be a wife. I just don't know. I see how a lot of guys talk about the wives. Why would I want to be that?

• 1:53:37Shawn Ryan?

  What did he say?

• 1:53:38Speaker 05

  It'll be different with us.

• 1:53:42Shawn Ryan?

  How long did it take for it to be different?

• 1:53:45Speaker 05

  About five years.

• 1:53:48Speaker 05

  A lot of... I only threatened him once that I would leave him. And that was our wedding, the day after our wedding. Never threatened that I would leave him again. I didn't want to leave him. Loved him intensely, still love him intensely. But the demons that had gotten really big became really scary and really dangerous. And so there were moments of, I'm not gonna leave you, but we're gonna get separate apartments. You're gonna move out for a minute so that I can remain safe while you're healing. And I think the frying pan came to, I'm gonna get an apartment, I'm just gonna leave. And I'm like, here's your keys. You want me to help you pack? He was like, oh shit. This is real.

• 1:54:32Speaker 05

  I'm like, yeah, this is real. Not just because I wanted a better life that I felt I deserved, but because I knew, I... When Tom was good, he was so good. When we were good, we were great. And all the good moments, because people would say, why did you say? I'm like, because our good is so good. Our good is so great. It's amazing. It's the best I've ever had. We are each other's best friends. And I've got his back. And that meant good times and bad. And there were plenty of bad. I never threatened that I'd leave him, though.

• 1:55:07Speaker 05

  But he knew there were moments where, like it...

• 1:55:09Shawn Ryan?

  It was close.

• 1:55:11Speaker 05

  And he was miserable. He doesn't want to live that way either. He just doesn't know how to get out of it. And he thought, I'm stuck this way forever. I guess I'm just broken this way forever, and it's not true.

• 1:55:21Shawn Ryan?

  What was your biggest fear? After that wedding night, what was your biggest fear?

• 1:55:29Speaker 05

  I quite honestly was afraid he would hurt me unintentionally. In a way that it would shame him so much that he would take his life. That it would be a situation that we know happens. A warfighter hurts their spouse, um, and hurts themselves. And, and it's more common than you think. It's the leading cause of suicide in veteran community is after a family disturbance, they take their life.

• 1:56:00Shawn Ryan?

  Is it really? I didn't know that.

• 1:56:03Speaker 05

  It's the highest percentage by far, by far, is after a family disturbance, 90% alcohol or pills are involved as well. So that tells me warfighters don't want to take their life. If you have to be so drunk or so high to do it. I've talked to I don't know how many now, hundreds of guys. I've heard all of their stories. Each one unique, each one painful, each one different. But the similarity is none of them wanted to do it. They just felt like I'm a monster. I'm ruining my family's life. My kids hate me. They're afraid of me. Maybe I put my hands on them, um, maybe not. Maybe it's just that I've isolated so much that they're all done with me. Now I'm not a warfighter. I have no purpose. My family hates me. Bye.

• 1:56:48Speaker 05

  But it's going to take a fit of Jack to get me there.

• 1:56:53Shawn Ryan?

  Tell me about, so you guys started about this nonprofit, the All Secure Foundation. How did you decide what you were going to focus on?

• 1:57:02Speaker 05

  It was really tough because at first I was so excited and I started using. So the last iteration I had gone on, and then there was one more exercise where I was in combat camera, but Tom was on it was with PJs. And so I said, can I come fly out and just watch the exercise, talk to the boys? He's like, yeah, come on out. So I went out and I just used that as basically my research time. What I started to find out was I started asking the guys, do you need help with fitness? Do you need help with mental health? Do you need help in giving them all the PTS boxes? And what happened is the last SEALUP iteration and the last PJ iteration, nine out of 10 guys said, I'm a terrible husband. I'm a terrible father. I don't know how to put the monster back in the box. That's what I need help with. Nine out of 10 said, I want to be a better person at home.

• 1:57:47Speaker 05

  So I said, that's where we need to focus. And then really, kind of what capped it off was, we ended up helping a warfighter get into Warrior's Heart. That's an organization that helps people with PTS and TBI, but you also need to be either a warfighter or law enforcement. So it's very specific to the community. Helped get him fully funded, paid for. He's in the facility. Tom and I are feeling really good about it. He's a friend of ours. He's getting sober. But about two weeks in, I'm like, who's checking on his wife and kids? How long is he gonna be in this program? 14 weeks? I'm like, 14 weeks? How's he leaving his job? How's he providing for his family? Like, he's a contractor. Are they okay? Nobody knew. Nobody knew. None of his friends, and I wasn't really good friends with his family, but I ended up finding her on Facebook.

• 1:58:32Speaker 05

  And I reached out, "How are you doing?" She's, "I am terrible. I'm in the worst spot of my entire life, ever. My husband's cleaning up, and I just found out about the affairs, about the money gone. He's feeling great. I feel like shit, and nobody's helping me. Nobody's helping me and the kids. So I'm out here alone. After 25 years of deployments, he's gonna go get better, and I'm stuck here again." And that was the moment I said, "No, no, no. We don't focus on the warfighter. We focus on the warfighter and their spouse. And then eventually, we'll get to the kids, and we can figure out HIPAA. But we gotta start with both." And so, at our organization today, if a spouse, a divorcee, Gold Star, anyone calls us and says, "My warfighter's not here.

• 1:59:17Speaker 05

  They're not willing to get help. They don't want to get help." Whatever it may be. Fine, come on. This organization is equally built for you.

• 1:59:25Shawn Ryan?

  How long did it take for you guys to put all these things in place? I mean, that's a... You've gotta narrow it down to the family, you know? So now what?

• 1:59:34Speaker 05

  So we started with the therapist that Tom and I had worked with. She'd never worked with military before. She got us. She got us quick. Um, we probably wouldn't be married without her, quite honestly. Um, so one day she had said something to us. Um, she had done an exercise with Tom and she asked him to take the anger and remove it from himself. And I could see he was like, oh, great. We're going into this like really woo woo therapy thing. I could almost see an eye roll. And she's like, can you take the angry part of you and put it in the chair next to you? He's like shifting like, okay. And then she started asking him to describe the anger. What does it look like? And he described crawler. He described his

• 2:00:16Speaker 05

  call sign, fully kidded out. Then I could see it was starting to work. And she's like, what do you have to say to him? If he's the anger, if he's bringing the rage into the house, what do you want to say to him? And I'm kind of waiting for a smart ass, typical Tom answer. But then I could see that he was actually doing what the therapist said. He was doing his best and trying to visualize this. And he got really teary eyed. And he just said, I don't need you anymore. Thank you for keeping me alive over there. Thank you for helping me bring my brothers home. I don't need you anymore. I got it. And the way it changed for us at home after that is that I could start using the language of crawler. And we agreed in the therapy room, I would never use that, hey, you've

• 2:01:00Speaker 05

  been an asshole crawler, you know, never ever use crawler. I love crawler. I respect crawler. Crawler is needed in this world. He's just not needed in my kitchen. He's just not needed dealing with the kids. So it's always out of respect. But when I would see him get big, get red, get rage, I would have a language, a point of stopping that saying, I don't need crawler to go tell the kids to clean the room. I don't need crawler to go on a date with me tonight. I want Tom back. And at first it was a screw that and that's not working, you know, resistance to that change. I would say two weeks in, really quick, when I said it again.

• 2:01:39Speaker 05

  It's kind of getting intense here. Crawler showed back up. Screw that. Doors are slamming. He comes out two minutes later out of the room. Not two hours, not two days. Two minutes and he's like, "You're right, but I can't put him back in the box." I said, "That's okay. We've identified it. What do you need to do?" He said, "I need to go for a drive for a while." "Bye. Come back in an hour or 10. I don't care. It's fine." You know, this biological response that you had to 20 years of living of really difficult, I mean, that's putting it mildly, right? Intense life is going to have an effect on you. That's normal. That's the normal part, is that it affects you. Scary if it doesn't.

• 2:02:24Shawn Ryan?

  So you got the therapist in?

• 2:02:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, so, sorry, we got the therapist in. This was in 16. We became a 501(c)(3) in 17 official. And we started with coaching. So let's just get the guys in. We'll get them to Stacy. They can help these couples in the way that we've been helped. That was, that's the goal. Right now, we just brought in our fifth. So we have five licensed clinical social workers that are all coaches. And we do programs. So we have a marriage retreat that we absolutely love. We take 10 to 14 couples at a time and they could, we cross them. So we'll have a SEAL, Green Beret, Marsoc, PJ, NCOs, officers. And we tell people on day one, "Nobody gives a shit about what you did.

• 2:03:08Speaker 05

  Don't talk about it unless it comes up later and you're hanging out. But this room is for warfighters, no matter where you served or how you served or how long you served. We're here to deal with the shit afterwards, how it made you feel. And we're going to work on it as a couple. We're going to do this together." That's your forever battle buddy, by the way. Let me introduce you to her. The one that's been sitting there for 25 years, holding down the fort. It's her time to heal now, too. It's going to take her a little time. She's used to a different version.

• 2:03:37Shawn Ryan?

  What do you, what is the response like? I mean, I don't think, I wasn't married when I was in. And, um...

• 2:03:46Shawn Ryan?

  Does it hit them? Do they know? Like shit, I didn't think about that.

• 2:03:51Speaker 05

  We had a unit guy show up to one of our retreats and he's one of our big volunteers now. He didn't believe he had PTS when he showed up on Friday.

• 2:04:01Speaker 05

  He said, "I'm here because Tom was my boss. And you guys were looking for people to fill the retreat and I thought, quite honestly, it'd be a good weekend to see Tom. I haven't seen him in a few years." He came on our retreat, he didn't talk the entire time. Some people will share, "Hey, this is happening at home." And then you get, "Yeah, me too, me too, me too." We see a lot of elbows flying, which is a beautiful thing. Because it's the first time most of these couples realize, "I'm not alone." This happens more often than I even imagined. I'm not crazy. There's a way to the other side of this. We can make it through. But this guy had said,

• 2:04:36Speaker 05

  "I operated at the highest level for a very long time. And to me, PTS was the veteran under the bridge. Or an alcoholic. I don't drink. I don't have a problem drinking. I don't have a problem with rage." Well, his problem was isolating. His problem was not being present. So, some people will look at PTS and they'll say, "Well, I don't rage." Or, "I'm not an alcoholic, so I don't have it." But then when we started going through the other symptoms and other things, the anxiety, the depression, the loss of joy, the things that can show up, he identified with those pieces. So on Sunday, he raised his hand and he said,

• 2:05:13Speaker 05

  "I have PTS. I didn't realize it. But now that I know, now I know how to fight this demon." He sent his wife home when he got home. It's one of my favorite stories. He said, "I knew I had to clean up my life. And I had to get rid of certain people and certain things. And it was going to make me an asshole while I did it. I was going to clean up my diet. I was going to get rid of processed foods. I was going to do the supplements that you guys talked about. But I just had learned about eggshell syndrome and what I'd been putting my other two wives through." So much so that he gave his ex-wife my book. Just as a, "Sorry. Sorry I did this to you." She wrote our organization.

• 2:05:53Speaker 05

  She didn't even write him back and said that it was really powerful to get that from him in recognition, finally, after 20 years, of what was happening inside the home. So people absolutely wake up to it's not relegated to the vet under the bridge or the alcoholic or the pill popper. It can be many different forms and it can come in many different ways. It's biological, it's not your fault. If you broke your arm in Iraq, there's a process for it. They would treat it. It's the same thing. You see a big traumatic event, the sooner you deal with it, the sooner you triage it, the better. So that's why Tom and I go and speak at bases. We talk to these guys that are brand, not even Green Berets yet, they're in the Q course. They look like my son's age, it freaks me out.

• 2:06:37Speaker 05

  Quite honestly, I'm like, I'm calling your mom, does she know you're here? But we talk about, listen, when you go to war, this is the reality of it. This is what you can feel when you come back, kind of like that psychiatrist did with Tom. You might experience these things. And we see a lot of guys on their phones or ignoring us, like, oh, this old couple talking about. But my hope is that that day when they're raging and they're feeling like I'm so broken, what's wrong with me? They'll say, Tom talked about that. Wait, this is normal. I could go get help for this and I'll be better. Because that's the truth.

• 2:07:14Shawn Ryan?

  How many couples have you guys helped so far?

• 2:07:18Speaker 05

  Last count, it was over 1,500.

• 2:07:20Shawn Ryan?

  1,500?

• 2:07:22Speaker 05

  That's couples, we also do individuals. So if there's a warfighter listening in special operations, he's not in a couple or divorcing or divorced, our organization's for you as well. So individually, we've probably helped well over 5,000.

• 2:07:37Shawn Ryan?

  5,000 people?

• 2:07:40Speaker 05

  The funny thing is, once you get to work and people find out who you are, we made it super, super easy. Connect with a coach button on our website, boop, within 24 hours, they're talking to somebody. We're not waiting four months, you're not waiting six months. Quite honestly, when somebody hits that button for help, we know we have a short window to get them. We know we do. Usually it's 11 o'clock at night when we get those messages, those reach out for help. We want to get them right away and say, we got you. And we don't do it all at all, Secure. We specialize in couples, emotionally focused therapy. That's what we focus on. But we're connected to all of these other amazing nonprofits. So, somebody comes forward and says, "I want the SGB shot." Or, "I want to do psychedelics." Or, "Can I get some information about traumatic brain injury?"

• 2:08:25Speaker 05

  We want to be their partner, their triage partner. Okay, what is the thing? Where are you bleeding out first? My relationship, alcohol, pills, whatever it may be? Then we know, okay, have you looked into these options first? Have you looked into psychedelics? Have you looked into SGB? Have you... Why don't you talk to our coaches first and look at an assessment with them? You'd be amazed how many people will come through our system. They do five sessions with us and they're like, "Got it." Nobody's training them. You guys are incredibly gifted, smart, talented leaders. Just need to be told what direction to go. That's it.

• 2:09:00Shawn Ryan?

  Man, that's amazing.

• 2:09:01Speaker 05

  Simpler than we make it.

• 2:09:02Shawn Ryan?

  How long have you guys been around as a nonprofit?

• 2:09:05Speaker 05

  Since 17, since 2017 officially.

• 2:09:07Shawn Ryan?

  It's only six years. 5,000 something people in six years.

• 2:09:12Speaker 05

  Yeah, maybe more.

• 2:09:14Shawn Ryan?

  Congratulations.

• 2:09:16Speaker 05

  Thanks.

• 2:09:17Shawn Ryan?

  What do you guys need? Do you need... What do you need? Money? More therapy?

• 2:09:22Speaker 05

  Well, we can always use money. Quite honestly, we have an admin donor, which I'm really, I'm super proud of this company. They kind of wish to remain anonymous. I might get them to peek their heads out. They're a really good Missouri family. They're our admin partner. So, they cover our salaries, admin, all of that stuff. They're our business partner. Running a nonprofit is a business. We have staff, we have people that work for us. They help us to cover those costs. So that when people donate to our organization, 100% of that is going to go to a coach or to one of our programs. So, it's going directly to a warfighter family. We always need more money because our therapists and our coaches are expensive. We cover those costs. The veteran doesn't pay anything. So, we always need more money.

• 2:10:06Speaker 05

  With more money, more therapist, more development of new project, um, programs. The program I'm super passionate about is getting our teens in. I don't think many people know, but children of combat warriors who have PTS are twice as likely, at least, to take their own life.

• 2:10:25Shawn Ryan?

  Twice as likely?

• 2:10:28Speaker 05

  I've heard...

• 2:10:30Speaker 05

  The statistics are so tough. Um, but I know twice for spouses as well. So for a spouse who's married to a combat warrior who has PTS, she's twice as likely to take her life as well. I think the Pentagon gave a whole 200 deaths on 2019 to spouses, but we know that number's far, far greater. We've actually been touched by families of Tom. Tom knows these men whose sons have taken their lives with their guns.

• 2:10:58Shawn Ryan?

  Do you guys reach out to the SEAL teams, the unit, the groups? What are they, what is the response? Do they hide it?

• 2:11:06Speaker 05

  There's two responses that we get. If we get a good leader, we get a great response. Hey, can we show up? Can we come talk to your boys? Yeah, let's look at the calendar. Let's look at the schedule. Let's see what we can do. Donovan and Bank is making a ton. They're a nonprofit, former Green Berets. They're making a ton of connections. They were in, they were just recently out. So they're all over the place and I, I'll tech in with them on how leadership's taking it. We've seen both. I mean, I literally had a general told me I was full of shit because he didn't like my numbers. He didn't think they were accurate.

• 2:11:44Speaker 05

  So I asked him for his numbers, you know, because basically what we, we come forward is, listen, your relationship is critical. It's life-saving, actually. I think one of the hardest things Tom told to a SEAL, he went through the Navy SEAL Foundation and spoke to one of the teams. And he said, how many of you guys would run out onto the battlefield and take a bullet for your friend? Of course, all, I mean, I think they were seeing a CAG guy show up, so they had to expand the rooms and it was just huge. I think they were coming in for war stories and he didn't give them any. I think there's probably a few disappointed guys in the room, but he's like, how many of you would do that? Every hand. You're looking across, oh my gosh, all these SEALs. Yes, yes, yes, me, of course. And he said, how many of you are going to take a key from a guy when you know he's drank

• 2:12:29Speaker 05

  the bar down? You're going to take the key away from him at night in that bar? Who's going to do that? Quiet. When he's picking up that girl, you know, he's got a wife and two kids at home and when that wife finds out, she's going to leave him? That's loading a gun for that dude. We know statistically 89% are going to take their life after something happens at home, divorce, an embarrassing thing. So you're willing to die for him overseas, but you won't help him at home. How's this making any sense? Like, how are we having each other's back? That's either received really well or not well at all. Depends how healed you are. So when I approached this general and I said, I need the divorce statistics from you guys in special operations, knowing that if 89% are taking their lives after a

• 2:13:14Speaker 05

  family incident, how many divorces? How's divorce playing with war? We don't have those numbers. Yet, the highest rate is after a family incident and you're not even, you're putting your money and your time and your effort over here, when that's 4%.

• 2:13:32Speaker 05

  It makes no sense. And so, research and numbers are critical because it helps, here's where the money needs to go, here's where the attention needs to go. This general stepped out on his own after, probably he was embarrassed that on Friday night, he had to have his CSM call me and say, we don't have numbers on divorce statistics in special operations. I said, might be a good time to go get those, seeing how the numbers line up. They went and did their own research. One of the guys on her retreat this year said, guess what? That general did research on family after you were there. I'm like, amazing. What did they find? 39% of suicides happen after a family disagreement. 4% for all other.

• 2:14:14Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 2:14:14Speaker 05

  He goes, you are right. I go, it's not my numbers. It's their numbers. I'm just bringing them to you guys to say, pay attention, put your money and your time and your effort over here. No longer can you go to war and say the family's fine.

• 2:14:27Speaker 05

  It's not. They have to face the facts and whether they will or not, I guess it's up to leadership.

• 2:14:35Shawn Ryan?

  Do you feel like the majority are taking it seriously?

• 2:14:38Speaker 05

  No, I do. I, I've heard some guys come up with some pretty stupid excuses and they're the ones that are super unhealed and super in a bad place.

• 2:14:50Shawn Ryan?

  I meant the commands.

• 2:14:54Speaker 05

  Um, I have seen some, so in 2013 is when I first met Tom and worked with Tom. 2023 to then is drastically different. I don't have to educate people on PTS anymore. I used to have to go on, this is the amygdala and this is the hippocampus and the part, this is fight, flight or freeze. I used to have to literally explain what PTS was when I'd go in to do my briefings. I don't do that anymore. People get it. We've dropped the D in our organization. Post-traumatic stress injury, we don't identify it as a disorder. You can heal from it. It's not a life sentence. It's a biological injury. I think they're getting that. What I don't think they want to spend their time on and money and effort is on the families.

• 2:15:39Speaker 05

  No. They want to train. They want to buy Gucci gear. They want the equipment. We still see that, yes. In fact, we just asked a company, um, where's your POTIF funds? And they go, zero, we don't have any. And what's that? And who's that? And preservation of the force and family. And no, we don't know what that is. Tom goes, what's your training budget? Two million for this? Okay, so all your money is going to your guns. None of it's going to the thing that's going to end up killing you.

• 2:16:07Shawn Ryan?

  Damn. That's pretty sad.

• 2:16:12Speaker 05

  And hopefully something will be done about it. That's why we're here.

• 2:16:15Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I'm sure a lot of them are listening, you know? But, uh, you guys better start making moves if you are listening. You know, I hear, you hear officers all the time and senior enlisted, oh, we don't want to do this off. We might lose somebody. We might lose somebody. I don't want to lose somebody. Well, you're [bleep] losing people left and right. So get off your ass, put your [bleep] ego aside and do something. You're the only [bleep] ones in a position to do something. So do it.

• 2:16:48Speaker 05

  Truly.

• 2:16:50Shawn Ryan?

  Shit makes my hair stand up. I get so angry thinking about it, but, um...

• 2:16:56Shawn Ryan?

  Well, Jim, what did we not cover?

• 2:16:59Speaker 05

  God. Spiritual.

• 2:17:01Shawn Ryan?

  We'll get to that.

• 2:17:03Speaker 05

  I think for the organization, I mean, you ask what we need. We always need money. With more money, we have more programs, more coaches, more people we can help. And then the awareness of your show. Quite honestly, it's been awesome. Even just the little Instagram, we had a lot of connect with the coaches last night. That's our goal is to get folks from the community to hit that button.

• 2:17:23Shawn Ryan?

  Good.

• 2:17:23Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:17:25Shawn Ryan?

  What, I do have one other question. Where are your guys' retreats? Are they always at the same locations?

• 2:17:32Speaker 05

  We have done them. Johnny Morris at Bass Pro Shop, he's a huge supporter of ours. We love Johnny. We started our retreats, did them every year at Big Cedar Lodge out in Branson, Missouri. We are looking to develop our own camp home front. Maybe in Montana, somewhere in the mountains. That's in development right now. But what we're doing in October, looking to build in Nashville and then do a West Coast, maybe out by the Seals, is to bring the information to them. That's immediate, like almost triage. So we're taking 150 versus 24 and we're bringing in speakers over a two-day event for couples, individuals in the in the special operations community.

• 2:18:15Speaker 05

  We have some phenomenal speakers standing up and and sharing how they made it through. Operators, field experts, couples saying, "Yeah, I struggled here and this is how I got through." And because it's so different for every person, we want to hear multiple perspectives. We want to hear from a SEAL how he started sleeping again and how that changed his life. I want to hear from a Green Beret who had done psychedelics and how that helped him find God. We need to bring in so many different perspectives and we could do that over these two days. And at the end of the day, our goal is for that couple, every couple that's there is to say, "This is my forever battle buddy. I got your six, you got mine, good. No more of this worst wife, first wife, dependopotamus.

• 2:18:59Speaker 05

  No more of this toxic culture in marriages can exist because it's killing them. It's killing you guys."

• 2:19:07Shawn Ryan?

  Man, you guys are making a lot of waves. It's awesome. Congratulations. And Jen, I just, it was an honor to have you here. And thank you for sharing all that. I know some of that was probably not easy to get off your chest. But thank you. And a lot of good's gonna come your way when this releases. I know it will. So we've got an awesome audience. These people care.

• 2:19:34Speaker 05

  Credible audience. Really appreciate you having us on. I know it'll make a big, big difference for a lot, a lot of people.

• 2:19:40Shawn Ryan?

  My pleasure. All right, let's take a break.

• 2:19:46Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you for listening to The Sean Ryan Show. If you haven't already, please take a minute, head over to iTunes, and leave The Sean Ryan Show a review. We read every review that comes through, and we really appreciate the support. Thank you. Let's get back to the show.

• 2:20:07Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Tom, I promise this is the last segment.

• 2:20:11Tom Satterly?

  I gotta follow my wife. That's hard.

• 2:20:13Shawn Ryan?

  You ready?

• 2:20:14Tom Satterly?

  I'm ready.

• 2:20:14Shawn Ryan?

  All right. So talking to your wife and you after Jen was just on here, I didn't realize that All Secure Foundation is helping, it's not just veterans, it's active guys. Sounds like there's a lot of active duty guys. And so we had talked about how none of the information gets out. You guys don't keep records. I think it's really important that you elaborate on that because we've got a lot of active guys that watch this show. You know, and so they need to know that their information is safe. It's not gonna get out. And so I just want you to go into that for a minute.

• 2:20:55Tom Satterly?

  Yeah, that's one of the biggest worries. And that was one of the biggest worries that I had and other people had. If I open up, Command won't trust me. There's something wrong with me. The psychs will say something. I'll lose my clearance. I'll get pulled. I'll lose my job. We said, "That's bullshit." That's bullshit. Your commands are here to help you because the commands will be like, "We're here to help them. We're here to take care of them. We're here for them, and we believe them." And then we start hearing from Command and some other mid-level leaders like, "You need to self-assess. You can't get a DUI and then say a post-traumatic stress. I can't help you then. You have to self-assess before you do something horrible or negative."

• 2:21:30Tom Satterly?

  A lot of these guys won't come and get help. So they won't reach out. They're afraid we're going to talk to their command. So they don't go to their shrinks. They don't go to local shrinks because they keep records. So we have coaches. And our coaches are not required to hand out or maintain any records. And I've been approached by two or three different organizations from people who are going through, like drying out, you know, camps or checking into other hospitals. And they've requested paperwork. And absolutely won't hand it to them. And legally, we are not bound to hand them any information because we don't provide counseling. We provide coaching. And so your records are safe. Your name is safe. You hit connect with the coach button on our website. And it goes straight to GNI.

• 2:22:14Tom Satterly?

  And then it goes directly to a coach who won't give out your information. And GNI would never get out of anybody's information. So the active duty has started flowing in more with that trust. And I hope that word of mouth goes out that, hey, you can be trusted. They can be trusted not to tell anybody and they're not sharing your stories and names around the world. And people have started reaching out more that way, knowing that they can trust us not to share who's asking. A lot of spouses are actually reaching out too because their husband's like, don't reach out because they'll ask. And then they'll talk about me and then they'll know about me. So they know as well.

• 2:22:45Shawn Ryan?

  Are you guys the only ones reaching the active duty? I've not heard of anybody else.

• 2:22:52Tom Satterly?

  I don't know. Um, I would hope not. I would hope we weren't the only ones. I think maybe active duty, some people feel is relegated to active counseling, active counselors.

• 2:23:09Tom Satterly?

  I think other organizations offer help, but there's a real fine line between if you're active, what help you can go get. So people are seeking it on their own behind the scenes, you know, and possibly doing illegal things in order to get their own help. That's how difficult it is. When active team guys and special ops guys have to go behind the scenes and do psychedelics or do other treatments because they know they need help, that tells me their organizations are not helping them.

• 2:23:37Shawn Ryan?

  Very true.

• 2:23:39Tom Satterly?

  So we think, when we spoke at Congress, we talked to some staffers. And they were talking about how you're talking about the VA. You're trying to approve, get this thing approved for the VA biomarkers where they could determine through biomarkers who has post-traumatic stress because they were worried about some people are faking it, you know, and that's money, right? That's money to someone faking it. And then others who won't claim it. So, okay, you can get a, you can take a blood draw, find these biomarkers that'll tell you you have post-traumatic stress. So we went and spoke about post-traumatic stress, how it affected our lives. Both of us spoke. And they ended up passing that, maybe two and a half years later, they got that bill passed, just recently.

• 2:24:16Shawn Ryan?

  That's awesome.

• 2:24:17Tom Satterly?

  While we're up there, it's all VA, it's all VA. The staffer said, we want to take you to our congressman, who's now dead, but want to take you to our congressman, and we want this in the DOD as well. And it made sense. If you take care of them while they're in, it won't be as bad when you get out. We've always been preaching it, so we were happy when they said the DOD wanted to pick it up. I doubt that happened. But the VA got what they needed out of it. And we started determining that helping active duty, keeping them stronger while they're in, helping them stay healthy, will give them a healthier family relationship at home, which will give them a better team time, their people can trust them. They can hopefully spread that to the team, the positivity versus the negativity. And then when they do get out, that transition's a bit easier. They've already had that connection with mental health.

• 2:25:02Tom Satterly?

  They don't feel embarrassed to reach out. And then they continue to reach out and they continue to heal. So it's not like we're starting at ground zero, 10 to 15, or 13, or even hopefully two years after retirement when they've hit rock bottom. Hopefully, they know the process and they'll step right into it easier.

• 2:25:18Shawn Ryan?

  Man, that's amazing. There's something I want to talk to you about, and it's, it's, it's getting better. And it's, it's for the operators that are getting better and, and...

• 2:25:34Shawn Ryan?

  I feel like that there is more to this than trauma too. I think there's a big sense of self-worth that is lost, sense of purpose that is lost. And I think that a lot of the guys that are coming up from the, coming out of these, you know, tip of the spear units, it's really hard to reinvent yourself. Would you agree with that?

• 2:26:01Tom Satterly?

  A hundred percent.

• 2:26:03Shawn Ryan?

  And?

• 2:26:04Tom Satterly?

  Yeah.

• 2:26:05Shawn Ryan?

  I know I struggle with that a lot. I know a lot of guys struggle with that. It's that, I mean, you're coming, it's like being a pro, a pro athlete, and then it's gone. Now what the hell do you do? And so, how did setting up the All Secure Foundation help you with all of that?

• 2:26:26Tom Satterly?

  The giving back, the helping, the teaching, because we don't help. I use the word help. I didn't want help. These operators don't want help. So we use the word teaching. Come learn a new skill, or come get retrained on your old skill that you've had before. You've lost those talents. You replaced them with other talents, violent ones. So we don't like to say help anymore, but come get training.

• 2:26:51Tom Satterly?

  And the question was?

• 2:26:53Shawn Ryan?

  I'm sorry, maybe I worded that wrong. I'm not asking what All Secure Foundation does for these guys. I'm asking, and it could be anything. It could, you could replace the All Secure Foundation with something else that maybe you would have, that you did. But it seems like that's the most significant thing that you've done since you've left, and it's very significant. And so what I'm asking is, finding that new sense of purpose, and knowing how important the mission actually is, have you seen more improvement just in that alone? Just in the new sense of purpose, the new, your new life's purpose? I mean, how has that helped you?

• 2:27:31Tom Satterly?

  My new tribe.

• 2:27:32Shawn Ryan?

  Your new tribe.

• 2:27:33Tom Satterly?

  My new family, my new thing, a reason to live, hope. Not just sitting there wondering what I've been, but how will I be better now? Instead of sitting in my misery, thinking of all the things I did, you know, that last high school touchdown pass I threw. Did I peak in high school? Am I going to live that the rest of my life?

• 2:27:51Tom Satterly?

  Said, I can't, you know, I did something pretty good. I thought it was great. It was amazing. I left it, you know, a little bit bitter sometimes, whatever. None of that matters unless I, I sit and wallow in it for the rest of my life. And I sit and live in that dream, you know? And I always describe it as you're driving a car down the highway. You're going 200 miles an hour. Do you want to look in the rearview mirror, which is only that big? And that's all your past and live right there? Cause you're going to crash that car. Are you going to look through the windshield, which is 10 times or a hundred times that size? And it's heading in the direction you want. And you're in the now, going in the future through the windshield. If you're looking ahead, you probably won't crash. That means you're on it. You're aware of what you're doing and you know where you're going.

• 2:28:33Tom Satterly?

  A lot of guys focus on that rearview mirror and they're like, I did this, I did that. And I'll never do that again. If you keep saying that, you won't. If you devise a plan and use all the tools the military gave you, you know? You never planned in the military, right? You don't know how to plan something. You don't have contingency plans, you know, your primary, alternate contingency emergency plans. You always had four or five different plans. And then when those failed, you fell back on the SOPs you practice every day. Use that. Use that for everything. Use that for your new future. Do a little assessment on what do I want to do? What makes me happy? What needs done? What hole needs filled? And everyone calls us, I want to help. I want to help you. How can I help? I used to say, well, uh, uh, I'm thinking, you know? And now I'm like, I don't know. How can you help?

• 2:29:18Tom Satterly?

  What do you do? What do you want to do that you can do well? And then they pause on that. Uh, okay. Think about what you want to do, what you can do. And if you can do it well, and hit us back. Find out what you want to do. Find your passion. Guys are like, I don't know what to do. I don't know. You know, and Jen's like, what's your, what do you do? What's your passion, you know? Well, I play music. Okay. Why don't you play music? Well, the guys will laugh at me. She goes, who gives a shit? You playing for them? You're still living in the, in the past, worried about what your guys are going to do and judge you. Take that passion and ignite it. Turn it into a job. Turn it into a career. Turn it into something you love. But don't lay there and die. You know, the greatest failure is a failure to try.

• 2:30:02Tom Satterly?

  So, once you stop trying, that's exactly where you'll stay forever. That's what I would say too, you know? I mean.

• 2:30:12Shawn Ryan?

  A lot of these guys aren't, they're not gonna know what their passion is because their passion is work. It's going to war, it's training, it's being with the guys, it's, it's, it's the lifestyle. There's no time for any other passion. And so, or hobbies. I mean shit, I still don't have any hobbies.

• 2:30:29Tom Satterly?

  I don't have hobbies.

• 2:30:29Shawn Ryan?

  To be honest with you.

• 2:30:30Tom Satterly?

  I was terrified you guys moved my hobbies around, I had to make one up.

• 2:30:33Shawn Ryan?

  That's funny because when I met my wife, she, I told her the, my most feared question was, what are your hobbies? Cause I don't have any.

• 2:30:40Tom Satterly?

  Right.

• 2:30:41Shawn Ryan?

  Uh, yeah, I like to get shitfaced, to get in bar fights. Those are my hobbies.

• 2:30:45Tom Satterly?

  Yeah, I do dishes and get shitfaced.

• 2:30:46Shawn Ryan?

  Same old thing, you know, but, um.

• 2:30:48Tom Satterly?

  Cleaning.

• 2:30:49Shawn Ryan?

  But, um, it takes a minute, you know, I mean, I'm just, I'm, I'm gonna talk about myself for a minute, but I mean, if you would have asked me when I was in the SEAL teams, if I'd be sitting here interviewing people, uh, for the rest of my life, I'd have told you, you were out of your fucking mind, you know?

• 2:31:07Tom Satterly?

  Okay.

• 2:31:08Shawn Ryan?

  I don't even like talking to people.

• 2:31:09Tom Satterly?

  Right.

• 2:31:10Shawn Ryan?

  But, um, but that's what it, that's what it developed into, you know, and, and it just took trying all these different things. I didn't realize, I didn't realize how much I enjoy creativity. I mean, I built this entire set. I learned all the camera stuff. I picked the angles. I do the edit, I did the editing at the beginning. I did the trailers. I did all of that and it just grew into this, it grew into a new passion and that's, as you know, that's what I do today.

• 2:31:40Tom Satterly?

  The number two passion.

• 2:31:41Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, and, um, it just takes a minute, but you have to, I guess what I'm saying is you have to get out and you have to try new things. Otherwise, you're never gonna replace the void that you're feeling right now as you leave the unit, or you leave the team, or you leave the group, or whatever, whatever, your law enforcement agency, federal agency, it doesn't matter what you've immersed your life into. When you leave that, you have to try new things, otherwise you'll never fill the void.

• 2:32:10Tom Satterly?

  Right, and don't try to fill it with the exact thing, or something as big, right? Don't start there. Cause you'll feel like I'll never do something that big. I never thought I'd do anything that big again. When it's explained to me, you're probably saving more lives now than you ever would have done. You're probably helping more soldiers and warriors than you ever helped before. And I look at that thinking, alright, that's better than, I'm not doing my job anymore. I'm not, you know, kicking down doors, or, or leading men kicking down doors and punching paperwork, which I hate, you know, it's just...

• 2:32:41Tom Satterly?

  I didn't want to live in the past anymore. And that's our struggle is to pull people out of the past. Pull those guys out of that drinking cycle, that that team room cycle, that that's all they know and that's all they want to hold on to.

• 2:32:52Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, not probably. I don't think it's probably you probably saved more. I think you have definitely. I mean, your wife Jen just came on and said it's over. I think she said it's over 5,000 couple, 5,000 people that you guys have put through the All Skier Foundation one in in one way or another. And so there's 5,000 something people, plus their families, their kids, their friends. You know, and and the impact just spider webs out to where you can't even, you can't even trace it.

• 2:33:26Tom Satterly?

  And why I do this now? I did it then because of Jen, right? Good looking girl, starting up a thing, we're gonna get married. I started rolling into it and then you get the letters. You get the thank yous. We have a letter on our refrigerator that was sent to us written in crayon. Little flower on it.

• 2:33:52Tom Satterly?

  It said, thank you for saving my mommy and daddy.

• 2:33:57Tom Satterly?

  That's why I do it. I do it because a wife stood up in a retreat and we make people write letters to each other. And say, one word, pick one word and don't use brave and courageous, right? One other word that describes your spouse. And tell them what you want to tell them. The spouse stands up, maybe our last retreat that we held and says, thank you for these letters. Been married 30 years and I never knew my husband felt any of this. I'm going to frame it. I'm going to show my children, send them copies because none of us ever knew he felt this way about us. We did that with one letter. And to me, that's changing an entire generation of people.

• 2:34:42Tom Satterly?

  And that's why I do it now.

• 2:34:45Shawn Ryan?

  It's a damn good reason, man.

• 2:34:50Shawn Ryan?

  I think there's one key component that we haven't spoken about yet. You found God about a year and a half ago.

• 2:34:59Tom Satterly?

  Yeah.

• 2:35:00Shawn Ryan?

  Let's talk about that experience.

• 2:35:05Tom Satterly?

  I grew up Lutheran, right? I was sent to school 1 through 8, church every Sunday, every Wednesday. Studied the Bible, you know.

• 2:35:15Tom Satterly?

  Finished high school and then joined the military and all that happened. And I, I didn't ever give up God.

• 2:35:23Tom Satterly?

  I gave up everything I was supposed to do while knowing God.

• 2:35:29Tom Satterly?

  And probably, well, I kept that until about a year and a half ago, thinking, I'm going to hell anyway, right? I've, I've killed people.

• 2:35:40Tom Satterly?

  And, and I told Jen that. I was like, you know what? I've killed people. I don't, thou shalt not kill, you know? I've done that. That's, that's a commandment. And she brought it to my attention because she's reading the Bible and studying the Bible. It says, thou shalt not murder.

• 2:35:58Tom Satterly?

  And I never knew that difference.

• 2:36:02Tom Satterly?

  And that literally gave me hope that I wasn't damned, that, you know, God hadn't rejected me. And I know, you never, you know, blah, blah, blah, and ask for forgiveness and you're good. It's hard to tell yourself that.

• 2:36:15Tom Satterly?

  And I started feeling better, you know? I started reading more. I, I started listening to podcasts, you know, describing the Bible. And I started texting her, you know this, you know that? She's like, yes, I know you've done, yes, I've read that and I know. And it just kept bringing me up and up and up.

• 2:36:32Tom Satterly?

  And if that's all that does, then that was amazing in itself. And just feeling that connection again with God and praying to God and feeling the differences that it makes and seeing the things that come from it. And just having those feelings.

• 2:36:49Tom Satterly?

  Was a big change back for me, going back to who I was. Calming me down, letting me find a space to, to talk to somebody. You know, just vent and know they're hearing me. And then to feel that passion later and that love come over you. And it's just some things I've seen.

• 2:37:10Tom Satterly?

  That have shaken me to the core like, okay, these messages are out there, right? They're not just happening. What kind of things? God, just the numbers, different numbers I see all the time, thirty-three, forty-four. I never would have noticed, you know, ever. And then I look up, what do those mean religiously? And everyone's, ah, it's crazy, you know? If it's crazy, okay, it's crazy, but it's happening and I see it. And it's not just happening to me. And then things, um, sitting in a hot tub one night with Jen and looking up through our backyard into the dark and we have these, you know, the candles you stick in the ground, the tiki torches or whatever. And one was just shaking back and forth. And Jen's like, what's, what's going on up there by, I mean, little up by our upper deck? And there was no wind blowing, it wasn't raining, it was still. And this tiki torch is shaking back and forth.

• 2:37:56Tom Satterly?

  And I looked up at it and I was like, oh God, that's weird, what's going on, you know? And we'd been talking about, um, something deep in the hot tub. I can't even remember what the topic was. And this was, to me was a sign. I looked up and I looked at it and I was like, oh, come on, you know? And then I looked around, I'm like, that's no wind blowing. What would be making that shake? And I just screamed, stop! And it literally stopped, dead in its tracks. And I looked around, I go, no freaking way. I go, okay, I'm inside now, you know? And it was one of those things that made you nervous at first, scary at first. And then you realize at the time, it was like, we were talking about something that broke us from that conversation and stopped it. And I don't think we ever re-entered it and it just brought us to another connection of what was that? That was a message, wasn't it?

• 2:38:42Tom Satterly?

  To looking at things, like my, both my parents are deceased now and my father, you know, the cardinal connection, red, red birds. And I'd never seen a cardinal in our yard, even though we're in St. Louis where the cardinals are, apparently.

• 2:38:54Tom Satterly?

  And now they flood through our yard. They're all the time flying up around, just talking. "Oh, hey Dad, what's up?" You know, and it just makes me feel better. To where my dad was into owls, owl rings. He always wanted an owl ring his entire life, they couldn't afford it. And shortly before he died, my mom finally bought him one. You know, they had the money. And I have that ring at home, and now we've had owl landing in our backyard every night. Thank goodness he's eating our moles, but he lands in the backyard every night and just kinda looks around and we talk to him, you know? To now, there's two owls that come up and sit every night on a branch and hop down in our yard and hop around, look at us. We put our dogs inside so they don't chase them. And then they just hop around our yard and fly back up in a tree and stare at us and start squawking and screaming.

• 2:39:37Tom Satterly?

  And I'm like, "This is crazy." This is crazy, and if you ignore these messages, you might as well ignore every message, right? From anybody. And I just started getting that overwhelming feeling of people... Well, society nowadays seems like they're turning away. And nothing good's coming from it. Right? Nothing good is coming from it. And when you have a book that's been written, and it's the oldest book that this many people still follow and believe, how can you deny that? Right? Nonbelievers, why bother? Why waste your time? It's not my job, right? God did that, there's preachers to do that.

• 2:40:20Tom Satterly?

  And if you're a nonbeliever and you wanna believe, by all means, believe, start, do some research, whatever it takes. But I don't waste my time on nonbelievers, I'm not that converter guy, right? I'm not the guy that goes out and preaches and, "Hey, you know, every time you come up to me, I'm not gonna talk about God to you." There's people that make me nervous like that and overly religious. I don't wanna push people away. If people are curious, I'll talk to them about God, what I know, and how it makes me feel, and why. But I no longer have that feeling like I'm going to hell. I feel like I've been forgiven. I know that I've been forgiven. I've come clean on things, and I feel good about it. And that's a better future for me, a better outlook for the future for me, and I appreciate it.

• 2:41:05Tom Satterly?

  And I talk to God more now.

• 2:41:09Tom Satterly?

  And it's more about things of family related and hopefully you're still making the right decisions. And, and, um, and I literally asking if he ever needs any help, let me know, you know, so. Kind of having that relationship.

• 2:41:24Tom Satterly?

  Probably a lot of people freaking out right now, too, hearing me say that.

• 2:41:27Shawn Ryan?

  Well, maybe, but.

• 2:41:30Tom Satterly?

  People that know me.

• 2:41:31Shawn Ryan?

  I think that, uh. You know, I mean.

• 2:41:37Shawn Ryan?

  What do they say, attraction's always better than promotion? And, uh, I think just by talking about your relationship with, with God.

• 2:41:49Shawn Ryan?

  That's enough to make somebody come to him. Maybe not everybody, won't be everybody, but. You got a lot of people to look up to, man. A ton of people, whether you like to hear that or not. Veterans, guys at the unit, guys wanting to go to the unit. I mean, people are gonna hear your story and they're gonna want to join the army. And some of them will wind up at the unit because you just sat in that chair. You know, and the same thing's gonna be with people coming to God. Yeah, a lot of people are gonna dismiss it. They won't want to hear it, but there'll be a handful that that's all they needed. They just needed to hear Tom Satterley talk about it.

• 2:42:34Shawn Ryan?

  And I do think there is a, there's one thing, I mean, who do you think intervened? That night in the parking garage or that day in the parking garage?

• 2:42:43Tom Satterly?

  Yeah, God, he does everything, so.

• 2:42:47Shawn Ryan?

  There are no coincidences, right?

• 2:42:49Tom Satterly?

  No, he didn't want me dead. He knew there was more for me and I know that now. I know that now, that my days weren't over, my, I hadn't done my best yet. And he kept me around long enough to see that.

• 2:43:03Shawn Ryan?

  Do you feel like you're doing your best now?

• 2:43:06Tom Satterly?

  I'm trying. I'm always trying to do my best. Is it my best? Hmm, no, I'll always keep trying to do better.

• 2:43:16Shawn Ryan?

  Well, Tom, it's been a hell of an interview, man. It's been a long one and, um.

• 2:43:23Shawn Ryan?

  I just want to say I know that.

• 2:43:27Shawn Ryan?

  I know it took you 20 years to even talk about what happened in Mogadishu.

• 2:43:34Shawn Ryan?

  To come out publicly and talk about that and, and I know you're tired of talking about it and I just want to say, man, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart, it was a real honor to be able to get you here, to talk about that, to document it, and then everything that came afterwards and, and I just wish you and your wife Jen the best of luck. And you guys are doing amazing things and thank you for your time. Thank you for being here and it's an honor to get to know you.

• 2:44:07Tom Satterly?

  Thank you. I really appreciate you having us on and giving us the opportunity to share with more and reach more people. This is the opportunity we've been looking for, to reach as many people in need as we can. So, thank you.

• 2:44:19Shawn Ryan?

  Honor's all mine, brother.