Episode 29 – Finding strength in vulnerability with guests Gary Hollender and Sheri Lux

MIND BEYOND THE MISSION EPISODE 29 — FINDING STRENGTH IN VULNERABILITY WITH CO-HOST GARY HOLLENDER AND GUEST SHERI LUX

Brian McKenna

You found our podcast. We are Mind Beyond the Mission. This is a podcast about Famils and their Families, and specifically mental health. What goes on in our lives, what goes on in our heads. We’re not talking to you as doctors or professionals, we’re talking to you about living with it and what it’s like. Brian McKenna, 19 years in the Canadian Forces. I’m joined by my partner, Laryssa Lamrock.

Laryssa Lamrock

I’m a Veteran Family member. I’m a proud military brat. My husband served in the military, proud military mom. We’re really excited about this podcast to delve into issues that are important to the Veteran and Family community.

Brian

Join us as we talk about mental health from the perspective of Veterans and their Families.

Laryssa

We’re here recording another episode of Mind Beyond the Mission podcast. Thanks, everybody, for coming back and tuning in to us again. If you have been listening to us all along, thank you. If you haven’t been, go back and start listening to some of our other episodes, and let us know what you think. Thanks for being here today. I’m joined by two new people to you folks. First, I’m just going to mention that my regular co-host, Brian McKenna, has been taking a little bit of time away from work. We have a couple episodes that we’re recording with some co-hosts that are guests, Veteran co-hosts. I’ll be introducing my co-host for this episode in just a minute.

One thing I want to point out for people is that when we use the term “Veteran,” we are inclusive of both RCMP and Canadian Armed Forces Veterans. Just wanted to lay that groundwork because both of the folks that are joining me today are people from the RCMP community. Excited to introduce my guest co-host for today. Over the years, Gary Hollender’s closet has been packed with uniforms. He started at just 12 years old as a cadet with the Seaforth Highlanders of Canada, later joining the Canadian Armed Forces Reserves and eventually becoming an RCMP Constable.

His first RCMP posting moved him, his wife, and their three daughters from British Columbia to Peace River, Alberta, a really wonderful community that embraced them as their own. However, it was also the first place that someone shot at him. Over the years, his career took him across Alberta, Manitoba, and even to Kandahar, Afghanistan. Beyond his regular duties, Gary wore many hats and helmets, volunteering with a special tactical operations team, serving as a tactical medic with the RCMP Emergency Response Team, and working on the community liaison team for protests and other major events.

In his “spare time”, I’m using air quotes, he found his way to give back, volunteering as a firefighter and training Canadian Armed Forces Cadets in Alberta and Manitoba. One of the standout moments of his career was in 2009, when he served as an operational trainer and mentor to the Afghan National Police in Kandahar, when he was seconded to the Canadian Armed Forces and the US Army. He retired from the RCMP in July 2021, though his work continues as a labor relations officer with the National Police Federation. Married for 40 years now, Gary enjoys a life surrounded by his three daughters, six grandchildren, a dog, and yes, two cows.

Gary, thank you for your dedicated service in uniform, and your ongoing commitment to the community, and for joining us today. We’re very lucky to have Gary Hollender join the Atlas Veteran Family Summit in 2025 as one of our keynote speakers. Gary, you moved so many people with what you shared there. Thank you for engaging that. I would love to hear when I ambushed you a couple of weeks ago and said, “Hey Gary, would you mind podcasting with me?” You said yes right away. What made you say yes? You’re here, and you stepped up to that call pretty quick.

Gary Hollender

I didn’t realize it was actually a choice. You’re such a forceful personality. Plus, you do such great work. Really, everything I’ve seen from Atlas is amazing. This opportunity is an opportunity not only for me to give back a little more to Atlas, but to get a chance to talk to Sheri, who’s amazing and you’re going to talk about shortly. It was really an easy choice for me to say, “Hey, these are some terrific people. This is a good way that I can get engaged.”

Laryssa

I guess that are really grateful to have you here. Who knows, maybe this is your next hobby in your spare time, along with all the other things that you do. Maybe I’ll be fighting for my position as hosting this podcast. Without further ado, really excited to introduce our guest for today. Sheri Lux wrote her memoir, Finding My Fire, in which she chronicles her personal journey of self-discovery and empowerment, turning her deepest pain into a source of strength.

After losing her husband to PTSD, Sheri honors his memory by offering others a window into her heart-wrenching yet powerful story. Through her experience, she reveals how embracing vulnerability and humility can lead to discovering your greatest strength, ultimately guiding you towards your highest potential. Her book is a must-read for all first responder Families. Sheri, thank you so much for joining us. I can’t wait to see where our conversation takes us and, for me particularly, to learn more from you.

As I’ve talked about a number of times on the podcast, I’m the spouse of a Canadian Armed Forces Veteran. I don’t know what it’s like to be the spouse of an RCMP member, and really admire Family members who support folks like Gary in service to Canada in uniform here domestically. It’s a calling for Family members as well. Thank you very much for joining us.

Sheri Lux

Oh, thank you so much for having me. I love giving back in any way that I can. I think the topics that you talk about are so important. I think more people need to be talking about some of these uncomfortable conversations. Thank you for having me.

Laryssa

I think particularly around RCMP Veterans and RCMP Families, I don’t think there’s a lot of platforms for folks to come together and talk about their experiences. To be honest, I don’t know a lot of RCMP Veterans that are coming forward talking about their journeys with mental health and such. I think this is really timely episode for us to be doing. I look forward to the continued work that Atlas will be doing with RCMP, but also future conversations within the podcast. Your husband, Mike, served in the RCMP for about 15 years. I was wondering if you can share a little bit for me and others to learn, particularly what life was like for you and your Family during your time as a spouse of an RCMP officer?

Sheri

Yes, it’s really a very twofold answer for me, because the one thing I loved about being the spouse of an RCMP officer was the Family dynamic of the RCMP. His first posting was a northern posting, and we lived up there for a couple of years. The people that he was posted with, his colleagues, we were just an instant Family. I’ll never underestimate the power of that group of people, especially later on in his career. In the beginning it was very exciting. I was so supportive of him. He worked obviously late nights and all different hours of the day. We just managed, we just made it work.

I actually put my career on hold in the beginning. I had my first degree, and I decided to put my second degree on hold once we started having children. Because, just with his irregular work schedule, we wanted some stability for the kids. That was really important. I was actually a stay-at-home mom for the first few years. Then as the kids got older, and he advanced in his career, and we moved around. Then we ended up in some bigger cities, and I was able to go back to university and get my degree. Then we were just a busy Family of two working parents running kids around.

We felt very blessed. Everywhere we moved, we made new connections and new friendships. There were parts of his career that were very overwhelming, depending on where we were living. When we were in the northern community, the calls that he would go to were a little more traumatic, in a sense, more frequent. There were always many members working together. I didn’t worry about him as much. When we were in the bigger centres, he was doing more highway patrol. There was a lot more worry about him. I knew his backup wasn’t always readily available. Some of the scenes he went to were pretty traumatizing.

It’s a very twofold answer, because on one hand, we are very blessed because of the Family we belong to. On the other hand, it was very overwhelming. Yet, we needed that Family because it was overwhelming. We really started to rely on that Family when his PTSD symptoms started to show.

Laryssa

When Mike started presenting with this mental health injury, you’re saying that you relied on the community for support a lot. What did that support look like from the community?

Sheri

That was very interesting, because by the time I needed to rely on the community, we were pretty far down a scary path. We didn’t realize what was happening in our marriage at the time when it was happening. Mike’s personality was changing, his behaviour was changing, the way he was parenting was changing, his interaction with me was changing. I was taking it very personally because I thought we were just having marriage problems. By the time I reached out to friends of ours, it was actually over Christmas because our Family had, for lack of a better word, we had imploded to the point that I was that desperate.

I had put off reaching out to people for that reason. There was a part of me that wanted to protect him. I didn’t know if I was making a big deal out of nothing. I didn’t know if there was even anything to talk to anybody about. I just thought, our Family, maybe this was just a new phase we were in. I didn’t really put it together that it was directly related to his work. He didn’t either at the time. It was reaching out to his friends that then sparked the more necessary need to get some further help. It was actually in reaching out to his friends that he found that common bond.

As hard as that was, and he was actually quite angry at me for reaching out to them. We had to get over that hurdle a little bit. Once they connected, and he all of a sudden had this sense of support, and it was a sense of community, and it was just amongst his peers. That’s when I started to realize how invaluable it was to reach out. Then that actually spidered out a few different tentacles of where we began to reach out to other people who would then lead us in different directions for other supports. It definitely made us feel less alone and less crazy as a couple, because we started to understand that we were dealing with something that was a little bit bigger than anything we thought.

Gary

I think this is an important point, especially for all those people listening, Sheri, is that often you don’t recognize what’s coming down the road. Members go out, they join, their Families often join themselves for this greater good. “I want to serve, I want to make a difference.” Along the way, it’s like walking in a field. You pick up little things all over your clothing, and when you get home, you drop those back off, and the Family picks them up.

All those things that Mike was going through have a tendency to rub off on you, rub off on the kids. Suddenly, you’re wondering, why is it so cluttered, or why is it so dirty? It’s all of those events that have come across, all those things. He won’t recognize them either. The fact that what you went through is so close to other people is an important thing for people to recognize. The fact that you reached out and talked to other people, did you get much support from the RCMP? Was it more just among the close friends and the unit or detachment?

Sheri

I do feel quite blessed. We did get quite a bit of support with the RCMP. Mike was — he started his therapy and it became a lot more regular, and the kids and I were in therapy — that was very, very helpful. It eventually led him down a path where he went away for a more severe treatment centre. He left for two months and he did rehab. It was a live-in centre. That was quite difficult for the kids and I. I was teaching at the time, and I had to start my new classroom. It was the beginning of a school year, and dad was gone for two months. I was mama and dad while I was juggling hockey and all of that.

He came out of that program a completely different man. He was on top of the world. It was the RCMP that led him in that direction. For that, I was so grateful. So was he. He came home an incredibly healthy version of himself. He had developed this robust gym routine. He looked different, he looked healthy. He talked healthy. He ate healthy. It was just incredible. While he was gone, I was also doing my own work on myself. It was interesting because after he came home, he was very motivated to be a voice for other people. That was very important to him. He felt very lonely and very isolated before he went away.

The connections he made in group therapy were incredible. I’ll never forget when he said to me that I — I remember this because I was so angry when he said it, but he said that I had a problem too. That was when he started telling me about my codependency. I had never heard of codependency before, but it was something that, he was struggling with alcohol. It’s something very common among spouses where there’s an addict in the relationship, the other spouse will often pick up the slack. They’ll often enable, but not even realize they’re enabling. They think they’re protecting the Family. They think they’re protecting the kids, the spouse. They think they’re picking up slack, acting like both mom and dad.

They think they’re just running the ship. I agreed to also go away for treatment for that, which the RCMP was incredibly supportive. That was absolutely life-changing for me because it was there that I learned about the injury that happened to his brain because of the PTSD and how that led to the addiction. It gave me a deeper appreciation for everything he had gone through. In that sense, the RCMP, I feel very blessed. In terms of the people, the people, the boots on the ground were incredible. The people that would come and surround us, check on us, his friends, all of that was great.

It started to get — I saw Mike struggle a little bit when people were trying to be helpful to him, but it actually started to activate some of his PTSD symptoms. When people heard that he had gone away for treatment, he wouldn’t get invited to as many events or get togethers or things like that. I recognize that people thought they were supporting him by not inviting him to something where there would be maybe temptation, but what they didn’t realize was, behind closed doors, it led to a lot of insecurities and a lot of paranoia.

It was this cat-and-mouse game of trying to stay on track and trying to feel supported among members. He also understood that a lot of people didn’t understand what he was going through to the depth that he understood it. The people were fantastic. The organization, they definitely have their policies and their procedures that they will — I don’t want to say hide behind, but a lot of people’s hands are often tied because it’s policy or procedure. I saw Mike go through a lot of that as well. For our Family specifically, I do have a lot of gratitude for the supports that we did receive.

Laryssa

There’s that adage, people don’t know what they don’t know, or, to those that don’t understand, no explanation is possible to those that understand, no explanation is necessary, that kind of a thing. It sounds like there are people in the community that wanted to support you and Mike, but maybe because they hadn’t lived it personally, they might not have understood the best way to do that. If there are people within the community that want to support someone with a mental health issue, do you have any thoughts that you would share with them?

Sheri

I thought about this a lot. Obviously, writing my book, I’ve done a lot of deep dives into this. Sometimes I think we overcomplicate things. I truly believe, and even in everything I’ve seen moving forward, because in the eight years that my husband has been gone, I have seen his friends, his personal friends now struggle. I’ve seen some of what they’ve gone through. It’s very interesting to have them — I’ve stayed connected with them the whole time, but it’s very interesting to see their perspective now switch when they talk to me because they have this deeper understanding.

They now speak the same language. The common theme around it is we just need to normalize that not everybody is always okay. We need to normalize taking off the masks. Our Family, we were pros at putting on a mask and going about our day and keeping everything superficial. Then when we came home, everything blew up. We normalized that. Since the time has passed and there’s been a lot of healing and a lot of reflection, and everything we’ve gone through from the days of when Mike was struggling with PTSD to I was a grieving widow with two kids.

The common theme that always comes up is we just need to be there for each other. We need to start normalizing uncomfortable conversations and even being okay with being uncomfortable and just allowing space for that because everybody can relate to that in one way or another. The other thing that I think is very important is the need for education before the operational stress injury occurs because I had no idea that that was even a possibility of the reason why my Family was going through what it was going through. I had no idea.

Then when we were in the middle of it, wasn’t the time to start learning about it because we were in survival mode, all of us. It’s not the time where you’re open for educational pieces and things like that. Unfortunately for us, it had gone on for quite some time. It’s pretty hard to reign that back. Yes, I think normalizing, I think having that self-awareness, checking in, and just saying it’s okay if you’re not having a great day. If people were just a little bit more understanding or let’s go for coffee or let’s talk about that, I think so many people hide their experiences for various reasons. Yet, when you start to open up, you realize that everybody can relate on some level if we just take those masks off a little bit.

Gary

One of the hard parts in that conversation, like when you mentioned about friends and stuff pulling back, one of the hard parts is, as a member myself, often when you talk about somebody that is obviously struggling, you fear it yourself. You fear that maybe it’s going to bring up something in yourself. You might also be going through some of those same things, maybe not at the same stage. You wonder how this is affecting your own children, your own spouse, how those are going to go. Often, we talk about having frank conversations. We talk about these things more open than we ever did before, but we’re definitely not there. That’s it.

It’s a great point because until we can comfortably talk about it like we would talk about a broken leg or, as bad as it sounds, cancer. We used to be very fearful. We kept it in the closet talking about cancer, almost like we could get it from the person. Same thing with this. Now that that’s out there on the table in so many conversations, being that voice like you are, writing a book like that, being a strong individual, that also rubs off on other people. People that hear or see this, read your book, to be able to say, “Hey, if I talk to somebody, am I going to crumble inside?”

Oh no, I can see where people have got through this is such an important point for every member of that Family. As a member, I’ve gone through my own struggles, but I know it’s affected my wife. I know it’s affected my kids. I try and pay back now for those things, but I don’t know if I’m ever going to fix those things. It’s a scary thing to see these things. This is our second conversation, and it makes me feel better about some of my stuff just talking to you. Just listening to you helps out on those things.

Sheri

One thing I was thinking about recently was when someone is trying to better their physical health, everybody supports them with that. If that person needs to change their eating habits or they choose to quit drinking because they don’t feel so good, and they choose to prioritize time at the gym, and they choose to spend their time differently, maybe they go hiking or maybe they go for walks now, maybe they play tennis. When you look at someone who has put their physical health as a priority and you see the six-pack or you see the muscles, everyone congratulates them. Everybody says, “You know what —” They don’t realize the self-discipline that goes into that.

I wish we would grant that same grace to mental health because when someone is going — they’re on that journey, just because you can’t see what they’re going through, doesn’t mean they’re not still making small wins, and doesn’t still mean that they don’t still need those supports. Maybe instead of going for a beer after work, they grab a coffee and go for a walk down by the river or whatever. They just change those little small things, but those little small things are actually big wins on a bigger goal that they have.

We don’t quite celebrate those wins with mental health like we do with the physical health. I wish we could see more strength in being vulnerable because it takes a lot of guts to be vulnerable and to say, “You know what? I’m actually not okay. I’m not okay today, and I need someone to talk to.” Sometimes just giving it that space, someone just giving it that space where they say, “You know what? Let’s go grab a coffee. You know what? I’ll call you in 10 minutes and let’s have a quick chat.” Just that little thing. That’s why I say sometimes, it’s so much simpler than we think it is. It’s just knowing you have these people that you can reach out to.

As soon as you reach out, all of a sudden, it becomes a snowball effect and your relationship has deepened. There’s more value there. The masks start to come off. They start to also share their experiences and, all of a sudden, you’re not so lonely. That was one thing I noticed with Mike. When I reached out to his friends, there were a few friends that actually came forward to sit down with him right away, immediately. Those men sat in our basement for hours, and they all started unraveling their messes. Mike realized he wasn’t the only one, and he didn’t have to go through that alone.

As hard as it was to reach out to people, and I was embarrassed, he was embarrassed. We felt like failures on all levels. It was the only hope that we had to even get back on track, even just a little bit, because our experience wasn’t so isolating, and we weren’t so crazy. There were other people just like us. The silly thing about this is these are people that we would do dinners with and our kids would play, but we’re not talking about this stuff.

Laryssa

No one’s talking about it.

Sheri

No one’s talking about it.

Laryssa

You have allowed yourself to be vulnerable in sharing your experiences, and I appreciate the awareness and, in a way, maybe building Mike’s legacy or your experience. You’re leaving a legacy there because I think it does take a lot of courage to talk about your own journey. If I can ask you, I am a little bit curious, and I hope this isn’t insensitive, but when we chatted before, you talked about Mike’s funeral and the fact that there’s a huge community that turned out for that. There was 600 plus people that attended his funeral, and one of the things that’s crossed my mind is the complexities of you and your Family grieving in such a public way and wondering if that was helpful to you or if it’s — yes, how that might’ve been. It must’ve been overwhelming.

Sheri

Yes, that was definitely a very overwhelming time. That week is a bit of a blur. I do remember it being a big deal. I didn’t understand it at the time as much as I do now, but for the RCMP to recognize his death as an operational stress injury, his PTSD, which then led to his death. At the time, I didn’t, obviously, know any different about any of that stuff. That wasn’t my wheelhouse. That wasn’t anything I really paid attention to, but looking back now, that was a big deal, and it allowed Mike to be honored in the way that I feel he deserved to be honoured.

He tried really hard, and it was incredibly painful to watch him go down that road. When 600 people showed up for this funeral, which the funeral itself was overwhelming. There’s uniforms everywhere. There’s people from Ottawa. Everything about it was overwhelming, but there was people standing in standing-room-only areas. I was shocked because we only had about 200 people at our wedding. It was a testament to the Family aspect of all first responders that were there. They saw themselves there. I understand why they’re there. I understand that Family community that is built among all first responders in that sense, but it was very overwhelming and especially trying to move forward with my life.

The other thing I would like to make a note of is we actually made his funeral about PTSD awareness. We spoke a lot about that. That was very important to all of us. By all of us, I mean me, his Family, his friends, everyone there, his tight circle, that we were all supporting him. It was very important for us to make his funeral about PTSD awareness, and through that, people would reach out to me in the community, which I don’t want to take that away. I think that’s important to reach out to people, but in the stage I was at, having just buried him and having to juggle the kids and their grief and if I was having a good day and my son wasn’t, the whole household.

It was, you’re not just worried about you. You’re only as good as the saddest person in the house that day, to be honest, and we’re constantly pulling there for each other. I would be at a hockey rink watching my son play, and for a minute, I would just be checked out and I would see the way people would look at me from across the rink, and then it took me a while to figure it out, but okay, they recognize me. They know who I am. I don’t know who they are, but they know who I am.

There was a couple of times I had spouses come up to me when I was in the stands asking me about all the symptoms of Mike, and I found that to be a little overwhelming. Of course, now I don’t mind speaking about that, but at the time — I saw people grappling. I saw the need for them to talk about it because I saw the panic in their own Families in the sense of they could recognize something. One thing that, at the time, I was very, very frustrated with was after Mike’s funeral, there was about eight members that had put themselves into rehab.

Of course, that’s wonderful. That is absolutely wonderful. I found it so frustrating that some of those people were some of his acquaintances and friends, and again, they weren’t talking about it. It was so maddening to me that everybody was so surprised that Mike was going through the struggles he was, because we hid a lot of his PTSD. A lot of people did not know what we were going through as a Family. To see all these people see themselves in our story, and then start to make the necessary improvements and concessions and just reach out to the people they needed to reach out to, just validated everything that I knew to be true and that people need to start talking about this more.

Gary

I guess the biggest part of the story we really haven’t delved into yet is you’re your own person. You’re not just an accessory for Mike. The kids are not just accessories. The force didn’t issue him a wife and kids when he got to the right point in his career. Like everyone, you have to have taken a step forward from the moment he died. Some of that was the funeral. Can you tell us a little about what the rest of those steps have been up to this day?

Sheri

I found immense healing in the arts. I dove into the arts when Mike was struggling. It was my way of being home without being home. I could go downstairs and I could paint. I got into painting and I got into making candles. It was my way of checking out from my life, to be honest. I was living in the bathtub surrounded by candles, confused about my life. One thing led to another, I was burning so many candles, I just started teaching myself how to make them. Then I would disappear in the basement and start painting. It sounds so simple, but the arts have been so healing for me.

I’ve been pretty vocal about sharing that because I ended up branding some of that into my company. The interesting thing with that is I have had people reach out to me who have done the same thing. I have people that haven’t played their guitar since they were 12 years old, and they picked it up, and now that’s how they spend their time healing at home, is they’re back writing songs on the guitar. One of Mike’s really good friends, after Mike passed away, he’s a prime example. He got back into his music, and he started writing songs to process his grief and his pain, and he would send them to me. It was just this beautiful transformation of energy of how somebody can turn that pain into something powerful. It literally feels like a transformation of energy.

For me, diving into the arts has been big, journaling has been big. That’s how my book ended up being written. I didn’t sit down wanting to write a book. That was never my intention. I started journaling just to process some of the things that I thought were important that I had learned along the way. I’ve stayed true to myself. I’ve lost myself in this whole situation multiple times. Being an RCMP spouse, I lost myself a little bit in the beginning and found myself again when I found my career, and then lost myself again when Mike was struggling and had to find myself again as a widow. It’s really been this evolution and this process.

I consider myself an ongoing work in progress. I’m very fearless now in my life. I don’t shy away from uncomfortable topics. I don’t shy away from things that scare me. I moved to a brand new city with my son as a fresh start. I wanted to just start over. It’s been the best thing I did, the scariest thing I did, but the best thing I did. Even case in point, I just started this past month as a real estate agent here in Calgary. I’m constantly moving forward, trying to evolve and find myself. Every time I grow those leaves and branches on my tree, it always takes me back to my roots, and my roots will always be with Mike and the Family that we built. I don’t take one day that I had with him for granted. I will always be an advocate for other Families for that reason.

Gary

I think one of the things I think of when I listen to this is we should know better. As police officers, we go to collisions. I’ve been to many deaths that people have done themselves through suicide. They’ve died through that injury they’ve had. So many different things. You would think, in policing, we’d be better at this, but we’re not. We push it down. We hold it in. We, like you say, you try and manage through the day. Such resilient people that you try and move past things. You try and take on both roles while the other one struggles. You find some ways to treat the symptoms, but not necessarily the actual injury that you have to the point where you need it.

When you see people succeed in these cases, it’s just so amazing, the resilience, because you and Mike were equals in a relationship, and you both struggled. You both sought out your treatments. You both move forward so well. I think that’s an important thing that everybody realized that somebody marries a cop, they figure, “Oh, well, he’s probably got it on track. He probably knows what he’s doing. There’s this big red machine out there. They’ve got to have had this figured out. They’ve been here since 1873.” Yet, we still see where your impact is going to impact so many other people in a positive way.

That’s great to hear. That’s great to see. I just wish we were a little further down the road of having those difficult conversations. All of that to say, if you could tell somebody out there, a spouse or a member, one thing, one thing today, what do you think the most important thing would be? I think I’ve heard it a couple of times here, but I’d really like to hear.

Sheri

If I could share just a short little story that has completely changed my perspective and my kids’ as well, because my kids were a part of this experience. About two years after Mike had passed away — and I do write about this in my book, but I’ll share it here. About two years after Mike had passed away, my girlfriend had called me and said, “There’s this medicine man coming to the city, and I think he could be really good for you and the kids in helping you process and heal.”

I was pretty deep in my grief cocoon at the time, and I was trying anything at that point. Why not? I called him, and he managed to fit me in. He was only in town for a couple of days. He said, “Absolutely, bring the kids,” and I did. It was the most beautiful — ceremony isn’t quite the right word, but it was the most beautiful experience in the sense we sat in this small room, and he saged it, and there was candles going, and it was dimly lit. He was doing these chants, and it was so soothing, and it felt so healing. He really didn’t know much of our story. He knew we were grieving, and he knew I was here to try and heal and just get some answers.

He recognized that Mike was struggling, and he explained PTSD to us in such a way that I will never forget. He said PTSD is the equivalent of when a first responder goes to a job, and they see something traumatic at that job. They leave a piece of them there, and if they don’t take the time to just stop and pull that piece back in and heal that piece, they will leave fragments of themselves at every call they go to, and that will start to show up in their life as flashbacks and nightmares and personality changes that they can’t explain because they’ve left so many pieces of themselves that they don’t know who they are anymore.

We left there, and my kids, I’ll never forget this. For the first time, they really understood that their dad was a hero, that their dad was so busy saving other people, he forgot to save himself in that sense. Again, this was something that I think is so valuable to be shared before people get the injury, so that they have this tool to pull that in. It goes back to what I said, my biggest takeaway just mirrors this in the sense of I think people need to find strength in being vulnerable. I think that should be the new flex. If you can be vulnerable and know that from that space, there’s going to be immense healing, and that’s going to make you stronger, a better husband, a better father, a better friend, I think that needs to be celebrated and recognized.

Laryssa

That’s really beautiful. You just gave me goosebumps talking about that, Sheri. I think I’m getting — I have not had the chance to read your book yet. I am not only a Veteran Family member, but a first responder Family member. I will be reading your book. I haven’t had a chance to do that yet. I think I’m getting a sense of the title, Finding My Fire. Thank you so much. Truly, thank you for sharing your journey and willing to be vulnerable. I’m hoping that this conversation will help validate other Family members and empower and encourage someone to take that chance to reach out. Yes, thank you very much.

Sheri

Thank you for having me.

Gary

Thank you.

Brian

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Mind Beyond the Mission.

Laryssa

If this conversation resonated with you or helped you in any way, I encourage you to subscribe to Mind Beyond the Mission wherever you listen to your podcasts so you’ll be the first to know when our next episode comes out.

Brian

If you know someone who might relate to what we’ve shared or could find it helpful, please feel free to send it their way. We’re all on the same team.

Laryssa

Plus, we’d love to hear what other topics you’d be interested in us exploring in future episodes. Brian and I have a lot of ideas and subjects we plan to dive into, but you, the listener, have probably experienced or thought of topics that haven’t crossed our minds yet.

Brian

Please reach out if this is the case. We’re on social media @atlasVeteransca on most platforms. Please feel free to tweet at us, send us a message, or leave a review on this episode, and let us know what else you’d like to hear us talk about.

Laryssa

Brian, it’s always a pleasure having these important conversations with you. Looking forward to next time.

Brian

You got it, Laryssa. Take it easy.