Mountie Mentality: With Brad Savage

Transcript

EP89: Mountie Mentality

Teaser:
We're in a world where instant gratification isn't fast enough. Meditation gives me that clarity to pause. Before I make things go sideways. 2018 was my officer involved shooting.

And then 2019 I'm painted with the PTSD brush. It didn't matter how much I tried to cover it. It wasn't going to heal until I got to the source of the problem. nobody's tackling adverse childhood effects And my shooting had nothing to do with what I had going on It was because of the trauma I had as a child recreated itself in my shooting

It's okay to feel whatever you're feeling And I appreciated that I was an example to my kids of, being vulnerable And that it wasn't, dad's just a tough police officer. It's that dad can cry too.

If I never got an email again of the sudden passing of a member that took their life, if I can just save one of those people by getting funding to send them to Save a Warrior, Then it would be an incredible experience.

Intro:
Erin: You're listening to after the tones drop. The mental health podcast for first responders.

Cinnamon: We're your hosts. I'm Cinnamon, a first responder trauma therapist.

Erin: And I'm Erin. A first responder integration coach.

Cinnamon: Our show brings you stories from real first responders, the tools they've learned, and the lives they now get to live.

00:00:48 Erin: Quick heads up before we start. We want to acknowledge that some of the content we discuss on our show can be triggering for some listeners. Some of our episodes may touch upon themes like traumatic experiences, PTSD, suicide, and line of duty deaths. We understand that these topics are sensitive and might evoke difficult emotions. If you are currently struggling with your mental health or have experienced traumatic events recently, listen with caution. Now, if you're ready to proceed, let's begin.

00:01:21 Cinnamon: Hello.

00:01:23 Erin: Hi, sir.

00:01:24 Brad: Hello.

00:01:25 Erin: Today we have Brad Savage with us. He is actually a brother from another mother, no, from another father. I don't know how that would go.

00:01:35 Cinnamon: He has also been sprinkled by the sawdust.

00:01:38 Erin: That is correct. And even more exciting than that too is our first person that we've had on our show that is from across the border.

00:01:49 Cinnamon: Oh, Canada. Like that's all I know.

00:01:53 Brad: You nailed it.

00:01:54 Cinnamon: Thank you.

00:01:54 Erin: Wasn't that beautiful?

00:01:55 Cinnamon: On pitch and everything. Yeah, the rest of the words, I'm at a loss, but I do know the Oh, Canada part.

00:02:02 Brad: That's most of it anyway, so.

00:02:07 Erin: Good. So it's exciting to have somebody that, one, we can completely relate to in terms of having the after, quote unquote, after experiences, but also to understand what it's like for you and is it different in Canada in terms of how you all are handling things? Because I think that's what Cinnamon and I were talking about before we hit record is, what are you all doing differently that we're not doing and vice versa? Or is it the same? And obviously I'm sure that the job itself translates just the same. It's the same runs, the same kind of things that you experience and see and witness, you know? And so we can appreciate that that is part of it.

00:02:47 Erin: And for our listeners, you are a 15-year veteran of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. In addition, you're a husband and a father of four. So you have your hands full in every facet of your life. And I do know as well that you have faced some pretty tough challenges in your life. And that's not just in your professional life, but also in your personal life. And I think that it's really important for folks to hear that part is we spend a lot of time focusing on the results of the job and the things and the impacts of the job and what happens through the job and often forget to highlight all of the other things that are going on outside of work and how that affects us. Just regular old life.

00:03:32 Erin: So obviously we don't have to go into the war stories because what is so cool about you is how you have stepped into this mental health world as a peer support, as an ambassador for Save a Warrior, lead shepherd, which nobody will know what that means that's listening, but if you know, you know, with Save a Warrior. And obviously you're going back and forth to be able to play all of these roles in your life and everybody else's life. So thank you for being here. I'm done rambling.

00:04:00 Brad: Thanks for having me.

00:04:02 Cinnamon: I wanna tell you at the beginning though, because I don't think that when you had sent in your request to talk to us on ATD, I know I wasn't really sure who you were. I know I'd see your name on social media and all of that. But when we figured out you were SAW, I think it was Jake we reached out to directly. And we're like, do you know this character? Is he shady AF or is he legit? Like whatever. And he was like, oh my God, I love him. And so you got the stamp of approval. And so you are a beloved character up the road here in Hillsborough. I mean, if Dr. J. Clark said that he loved me the way he said he loved you, I would want someone to tell me.

00:04:48 Brad: Thank you.

00:04:49 Erin: All right. So now that you know that fun fact, let's rewind a little bit. And can you tell us a little bit about, obviously, I mentioned how long you have been law enforcement, but can you give us a little bit of a background story about what things have looked like for you?

00:05:05 Brad: Yeah, sure things. So I grew up in the policing world as well. My dad was an RCMP officer and was with the RCMP for 32 years. And his dad was a World War II veteran. So service was always something that was really there. But growing up, I actually wanted nothing to do with the RCMP or with policing because we transferred so much. And now I can't imagine living in one place. In 15 years, I've been at five different posts, two on the East coast, and three on the West Coast, two in the Northwest Territories, and one right now I live in Fort Nelson, BC, so mile 300 of the Alaska Highway.

00:05:44 Cinnamon: Canada's big.

00:05:45 Brad: It is, it is. I'm in line with the Southern tail of Alaska.

00:05:50 Cinnamon: So I also wanted to rewind real quick because you said it a couple of times and then I had to download it into my brain and then I had to write it to verify that RCMP, Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Just so we know, because that's at least for us, it's new lingo. So for our listeners, I want to make sure that that acronym isn't flying by. So yes, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

00:06:16 Erin: So in 15 years, you have relocated five times, is what I understand. And what was that constant relocation like for you? And how did that impact your personal life and your professional life and your mental health having to do that?

00:06:30 Brad: It was both really good and really bad, depending on kind of which light I wanted to look at. I love the fact that the organization I work for is a federal police force. So I don't have to reset my service or reset my job. I can transfer anywhere within the country and do the job that I love. But with that also meant when not dealing well with my mental health was if something was going wrong, it's like, well, a new transfer will make it better. Like if I just go do this.

00:06:58 Brad: And in terms of language, we use a lot at Save a Warrior is more better different? Like if I just switch, it's because of this boss, it's not because of me, it's not because of what I have going on. It's this spot. So if I go to another spot, then it's fine. So it's kind of a double edged sword that way, that I've had some incredible experiences and glad that I moved. But it also meant every time I transferred, it was kind of like, okay, I don't have to think about this anymore because I'm not there. So any of that trauma, I can just try and leave there instead of in reality, I was dragging it behind me every post that I went.

00:07:35 Erin: Absolutely, wherever you go, you follow.

00:07:37 Cinnamon: There you are. We call it a geographic cure, right? Like if I go somewhere else. And when you were kind of giving the information about where you were, where you changed to, I'm wondering if you're still staying on the same side of a country, do you have to move your entire family or are you just moving your transfer or your post? Like how many actual moves did your family get involved in like packing boxes?

00:08:05 Brad: My first move would be the equivalent of like Florida to Washington. And then within the Northwest territories are, it was close, but they're fly in remote indigenous communities. So still a full move. And then our next move was going back from Washington to Florida, because we went from Nova Scotia, essentially the farthest you can go east in Canada to the Northwest Territories, almost as far as you can go Northwest and then back. And now in BC, we're just below the Northwest Territories, but right at the top. So yeah, opposite sides of the country.

00:08:42 Cinnamon: So like middle, do they not have law enforcement in the middle?

00:08:46 Brad: Yeah, we just skipped that part. It's the long drive in between.

00:08:48 Cinnamon: Yeah, they're just winging it out there. It's a sovereign supervision where they're just like policing themselves there. You only have these two.

00:08:58 Brad: We like the Atlantic Ocean and we like the mountains. So our transfers are always torn in between the two.

00:09:04 Cinnamon: And that's when we say we mean you and your family?

00:09:06 Brad: Yes. Yes.

00:09:08 Cinnamon: Got it. So when you were doing that, do you feel that has helped you understand a little bit better as a peer support? I don't know geographically, a crime is a crime is a crime, right? But we also know that there's the primary things that law enforcement face is gonna change sometimes based on geography. So do you feel like it's easier to be a federal level peer support when you've experienced the breadth of what your peers are facing because you've been in so many different regions?

00:09:43 Brad: Yeah, absolutely. I've kind of done a little bit of everything and been pretty kind of honored to be in those situations. I started in what's considered big city policing for five years where I had five people immediately to back me up anytime I needed. And if things went south quick, there's another 20 or 30 from separate police forces that could come. So having that knowledge right away was good.

00:10:08 Brad: And then my transfer from this big city was to a community with at most five members, but we normally ran with three. And so it was from one spectrum to the other, and then I'm kind of been everything in between since then as well. So in terms of being able to relate or share my experiences with somebody, it's not that anything doesn't surprise me, but I can at least relate to all of it instead of only being in a big city and not knowing what working in a small indigenous community means for your family and the opposite, it's not, I've only lived in a small town and can't relate to call after call after call.

00:10:46 Cinnamon: That was one of the questions that I had when I was reading your bio was even just being locked in here in Ohio, in the Midwest, there are going to be things that I'm not going to get firsthand knowledge from our clientele or even our friends and colleagues of what it's like to police somewhere like LA, you know, unless I go talk to those folks. So to be able to have that experience under your belt, to really emphasize that peer part of peer support, meaning I've been there, I've done that, I don't know exactly what it was like for you, but I've had that experience for myself to at least understand somewhat of where you come from.

00:11:27 Erin: I'm curious though, because you get to go back and forth, you know, and you are in the States often. What kind of differences do you notice in terms of what we're doing here and what you all are doing there? And where do you see opportunity for development and growth? Or do you feel like they're about the same? Because you said they thought that geographical cure was gonna be the way to help me by moving me around. And of course, timing is everything. But yeah, how have things changed or what have you noticed?

00:11:54 Brad: Police culture, I find is very, very similar. Anything without being political in terms of access to firearms and stuff like that. It's a very different story of I comfortably take off everything I have related to a police officer at my office and drive home without anything, which is a very different story than a lot of brothers that I have down in the States, that it's kind of always that awareness. And I think a lot of that is just from me working in a small community that I know I treat people the way I want to be treated and not that I'm a police officer first. It's people know me as who I am and my family and go from there.

00:12:34 Brad: In terms of the job and trauma, I would say it's identical, especially from going back to Save a Warrior and helping guys there. I would say that the US has an advantage on the military side of things through what DAB offers and I would say huge advantage with Save a Warrior itself. There's a reason I went there is because we don't have anything that comes anywhere near it.

00:12:59 Brad: We have Wounded Warriors Canada, which really started me on my mental health journey, talking about trauma lines, both from the time that my mom was pregnant with me to now, and one bad year with a whole bunch of trauma can be what makes it worse, or it can just be series of trauma over a very long period of time. So that kind of opened my eyes to the idea of what I have going on isn't special just to me that no one else has this experience and that sharing it with others helps a lot.

00:13:33 Brad: And the other thing Wounded Warriors provided was about negative social responses. That the way we react to the people that we're involved with changes everything. And for me, with my major incident that I had, it was one negative social response that spun it into a really bad spiral for me. And I've since developed through the Wounded Warriors Canada how to reframe that. But really what saved my life was Save a Warrior in terms of I thought it was my policing that is what I needed to fix and not trauma that happened to me a really long time ago.

00:14:07 Brad: And it was like putting a bandaid on a really big open wound. It didn't matter how much I tried to cover it. It wasn't going to heal until I got to the source of the problem. So I would say the US has a huge advantage that way for having that program. And I'm just honored to be a part of it.

00:14:23 Cinnamon: As Erin and I talk a lot about our own experience going through Save a Warrior and how it saved a lot of things for us. But going into Save a Warrior, we were, what I would like to say is well-versed on both adverse childhood experiences, trauma, all of that. So my question for all of the other alumni has always been, what was it like that moment when somebody tells you it's not the job?

00:14:51 Cinnamon: The job is secondary to all this other stuff. And I always wonder how difficult that would be to believe if you've never heard that before and how many hours in it takes to get that buy-in when you're like, what? What happened when I was 12 is more important in terms of my recovery than me being shot at? Like what? That doesn't make sense to me. So what was it like for you to hear this information for the first time?

00:15:24 Brad: Yeah. So ACES wasn't new to me going to SAW. I had done it once or twice with my psychologist. And in terms of the ACEs score at that time, from my understanding and the way my psychologist introduced it was I was a five. When I got rostered for Save a Warrior, they talked about my childhood and I was like, yeah, it was fine. And he started talking about like this plan and stuff. And I was like, well, my dad was a police officer. Like if I was in trouble, I got spanked or I was constantly in fear at home. Or if I said something offensive to my mom. Her correction was soap in my mouth.

00:15:58 Brad: And that's not, I don't hold anything against my parents for that. That was just, they knew what they knew. But then I also thought that's just what you do. And then that kind of changed my perspective of my parenting that I thought I'm never gonna lay a hand on my kids, but then that didn't mean that I wouldn't raise my voice. And it was the same kind of fear, just not physical. It was mental instead that I've now tried to fix.

00:16:25 Brad: Going to SAW for me was different as well. I applied in November of 2019, was set to go in January of 2020, but kind of had it that no, it's policing that did this to me. So my job is going to pay for me to get there. And so I was kind of putting it back at my supervisors and upper management to pay for my ticket there. And that was kind of my hill I was going to die on. So I ended up putting it off until March 2020. That still didn't work in terms of getting it paid.

00:16:57 Brad: And a friend of mine that I had actually suggested to go to Save a Warrior took my spot in January. And when he went, he was like, just go, take care of yourself first, and then go back and try and get a flight paid for somebody else, but you got to go. So I was like, okay, I'll go in March. And then COVID happened.

00:17:14 Erin: Right. I was like, wait, wasn't that when we all shut down the world? Ugh!

00:17:20 Brad: Two weeks before I was supposed to go to Save a Warrior, COVID shut down the border. And then it was a really long time until the border opened. And then even then it was you had to have a COVID test within 72 hours and all kinds of hoops that I had to jump through. But I applied in November. I was rostered in November of 2019. I didn't go to Save a Warrior until November 2021.

00:17:43 Erin: Oh, my gosh. So what was it like for you knowing that you had this opportunity in your pocket, having a friend that had already gone through knowing that your mental health is teetering here and everybody being locked down, which adds a whole other level of crap. How was that for you? How did you manage to like hold on by your fingernails for that whole time?

00:18:02 Brad: I would say my biggest thanks without knowing what was happening at the time would be Adam Carr and Jake Clark, because they started the morning and evening meditations. And I didn't know what it was doing. I just knew I kind of liked it and was like, well, it's going to be part of Save a Warrior when I get there, I'll start doing this reading list because I had it in my head that I wasn't a reader and didn't like reading. But I was like, okay, if I want to go to this program, I have to read these books. And Change or Die, the book was incredible. That really started changing my outlook on things.

00:18:38 Brad: And yeah, I had this incredible fear of Jake and just his presence as a person online that I was like, I'm going to watch Carr in the morning because he's super chill, is going to sit in his chair. I didn't know what it was about both of them, but there was something I wanted every time I sat down to watch them that it was like, I was talking to my boss when I was working saying, look, I need 25 minutes. Can I just go into this conference room? And it was like, yeah. So I was doing it at home, at work, whenever I could. And I would say that was a huge part of kind of what got parts of me open to the idea of what could change.

00:19:17 Erin: That's really interesting. You obviously were open and vulnerable with your boss enough to say, hey, I need this 25 minutes. Did they notice any differences in you simply through one, the surrender and the willingness of doing this program, but also that willingness of doing the meditation twice a day? Did they notice any difference in you?

00:19:38 Brad: They would probably say yes, but I don't know if they can necessarily put a finger on what it was, because everything was like, my whole world was different. 2018 was my officer involved shooting. And then 2019 was okay, I'm now painted with the PTSD brush. So I was kind of that fear to members of this is a possibility that can happen to us. Officers involved shootings are way more common. And I'm not going to say brushed off, but

00:20:15 Brad: So especially for junior members, a lot of them were afraid. Like they thought, no, because I know him because we work in the same office. Like if that happened to him, then that could happen to me. Then I started getting into the peer support role at that same time too. So then it became easier because I was involved in such a high level incident that people trusted to talk to me because they thought, okay, well, he's been through all of this. I can unload all of this to him.

00:20:44 Brad: And so it was like, I could kind of take on anything when in reality I was burning out like crazy because I was working as much as I could and helping as much as I could. If I could help somebody else's problems, then that meant I didn't have to deal with my own. So it was rarely noticed. There's one lady in the peer support role that would constantly check on me that she's like, you take on an awful lot. And I'm like, no, I'm good.

00:21:09 Brad: And it was like, she could see exactly what was going on. And it was like, I can't talk to you because it'll come out if I do. And it was like, I just need to keep working. I'll keep working over time shifts and I'll keep helping other people. And then that way I don't have to deal with my stuff. And I would say really that that was just, keep doing something else is probably what got me to the point of getting the SAW. Cause I think if I had stopped, then I wouldn't have made it.

00:21:34 Erin: It's like this double edged sort of, that's what got me to SAW, and that's also what got me to SAW, right? It's like going full speed ahead nonstop is gonna burn anybody out, and also it's the one thing keeping you alive. Isn't that interesting how that goes? And that you became kind of like the poster child for the superhero, right? Almost in a way like, if this guy can go through this, I can bring him all my problems. But then inevitably, now you're carrying around all your problems, and you're carrying around everybody else's problems, and trying to keep your family together and everything else.

00:22:04 Cinnamon: And to outwardly look like you can handle helping as much as you actually want to help, which we oftentimes want to help way more than what we're actually able to help. So we're masking the decomping that we're going through because we're getting overwhelmed and we're putting off our own care. So there's that mismatch of what we wanna do and what we can actually handle doing effectively without our own demise.

00:22:34 Cinnamon: I had a question. So one of the things that I thought was really unique in what you wrote, because in looking at your bio and the things that you experienced up to 2018, as well as that abbreviated period of 18 to 20, that's a lot. You endured a lot, both personally and professionally, but then going through SAW, you come back and you're like, yeah, it's not unique. Like my experience struggling, everybody's got shit.

00:23:04 Cinnamon: So how has that helped you and how have you been able to convey that as a peer support without sounding like you're minimizing or you're insensitive? Because I think that's one of the hard parts of this is recognizing like I hear you and I know you've suffered and also guess what? Welcome to the club. We're all in it.

00:23:28 Brad: I think the biggest thing for me is I try to lead by example. Starting in policing, it was like if you had a bad call, it was either, okay, let's go for some food or after shift, let's drink. And that was the culture of this is how you deal with trauma is either through your stomach or through alcohol. And I would say police by far are the worst in terms of war stories.

00:23:52 Brad: My wife used to hate going to social gatherings because all we did was talk shop. It was, I remember this call and it was the gorier, the detail, the better and just became sort of a pissing contest. Like we think it's like, oh no, we're just, we're sharing and we're talking and it's healthy, but all we're doing is just traumatizing one another through our own traumas of, oh, you think that was bad.

00:24:13 Brad: I did this where I try really hard not to give somebody secondary trauma through my stories that I say, I touch on this is what happened, but I deal with it by meditating, I deal with it by making sure I take my uniform off so I'm not bringing that home, that I stay in contact with my kids, that something as simple as having the Life360 app makes my family happy because they can see me move on a map because they know I can't necessarily answer a phone call or send a text message, that it's just about sharing my experience without sharing my trauma.

00:24:50 Erin: And I was gonna say, because you use the term secondary trauma, and I don't know that people really are familiar with what that means necessarily, but you had some kind of understanding about it. And can you describe what that is and how you noticed, you just touched on how you noticed it affected your loved ones, but just for people to hear it from you and not us.

00:25:09 Brad: Yeah, so for me, secondary trauma is if I talk in detail about my officer involved shooting or any of the things that I've experienced, if anyone else just in of itself, just talking about that, especially with detail of like, I saw this body or I saw this crash and this person was like this. Going into that detail, one doesn't help the story, but two, it unloads and it almost shares, it copies the trauma because you don't get rid of it, you still have it, but you're also giving the trauma to somebody else that didn't need to know.

00:25:42 Brad: So our biggest thing that I find in my line of work is our dispatchers, our dispatchers and our front desk clerks that are going through recordings that are hearing a 911 call, but don't get to see the result. They only hear the bad that they get all of that. But publicly will not say like I have it as bad as a police officer does because I'm just sitting at my desk. But it's the same thing. If anything, I find it's worse because as a police officer, I get the bad call, but then I get to go and make it better or at least try and comfort people. And I get that connection where they're just lost in the, can you give me an update when you're back? And we do a crappy job of supporting them in that sense.

00:26;27 Brad: But yeah, secondary trauma for me is just giving details that don't need to happen, and then pushing that trauma onto somebody else that we think as police officers, we want to hear details like we're investigators, we need to know more. And so we constantly go after it, but we shouldn't like it's so damaging and detrimental.

00:26:47 Cinnamon: One of my issues with the work that we are supposed to be doing in the aftermath of things like that, right now there's two primary methodologies when we come to post-critical incident and management. And I am a firm believer in peer support, but I was in a group training for the other one. And I don't know if they do it, I would assume because it's an international organization, they're doing it in Canada too.

00:27:15 Cinnamon: But I was in a group training and my trainer who had been doing this method for over two decades, at my experience getting into the service was with a line of duty death and I didn't come in until a year plus after it had happened. And so they were involved not in peer support debriefing, but in the other type of debriefing. And so I asked the question to the trainer who's doing this for multiple decades, I was like, why is it where you mandatorily sit around and have to tell what your perspective was?

00:27:55 Cinnamon: Because if I've got a guy at the pump, having to listen to what it was like for the guy that carried out the body after he found it, that doesn't sound like a good idea to me as a clinician. And I will never forget his answer, and this is why I do not do this work anymore. He said, in a very condescending way, well, Cinnamon, they're gonna talk about it after we leave, so they might as well talk about it in front of us.

00:28:19 Cinnamon: And I was like, did we think about teaching them about secondary trauma and why we don't do that? Like, we're going to accommodate the problem and go ahead and continue the problem rather than teaching them why it's a problem. And I'm trained in both the individual and the group intervention for this particular methodology, and you will never see me participate in it because of the way that that question was answered. Because I just, I'm not a believer in perpetuating a problem because you don't know how to solve it. So I'm gonna get off my high horse now because I don't even know if I gave you a question, but if you got an opinion on it, I could hear that too.

00:28:59 Brad: We also have both that you're talking about. So I used to be and still am part of peer to peer. And then peer to peer in the province that I'm in, in British Columbia has kind of advanced to what's called PSRT. So Proact and Support Response Team. And the huge thing that the incredible people that are involved with starting this program up is they're changing it from everyone sits in a room and talks about every detail that they did. It used to be, okay, what's your name? What's your role? What did you do?

00:29:31 Brad: And you go around and people would leave there going, I never want to do that again. All I did was take a photo of the road or I responded for one minute and then got called off to a different call. And now I heard all this detail and like I don't feel comfortable. And what do I do now?

00:29:49 Brad: Where now as PSRT, there's two different things. One, we call somebody right away or as soon as possible to just check in with them, let them know what's available to them in terms of seeing a psychologist, in terms of talking to anybody. And then it's what's called a support session. So very similar group setting, but it's what's your name, potentially what's your role, but we will not talk about the details. You won't talk about what you did. You won't talk about what you saw. You talk about what you felt.

00:30:20 Brad: So you have the potential to have, say me, a 15 year member talk in front of some members that has less than a year service or a couple of years service. And I say, I went to this call and I was terrified. I texted my wife saying, love you, because I didn't know if I was going to make it home or not. And then luckily it all ended fine. And the first thing I did when I went home was hug my family.

00:30:44 Brad: It lets the junior members know, or really anyone, it just shares that expression of, well, if he was afraid, then that's okay that I felt that. Because we have so much guilt as police officers that, and really so many different roles, but especially for me as a police officer, that it's like, no, I'm supposed to save people. I'm supposed to run into things. Like I can't be afraid. I'm a police officer. And to actually put an emotion to that, that's other people have that shared vulnerability and then it doesn't cause trauma. It connects the unit that much more. And yeah, they're pushing it and hopefully that's the new way that things are going.

00:31:23 Brad: But that's kind of been mental health at its core is that no one talked about going to a psychologist before and now that's coming a lot more common of like, oh, who do you go see? Yeah, I had this appointment before it was like, oh, I have to go. And you wouldn't talk about it if you went to see one because if you did, then you know, you might not be trusted or people think you couldn't handle a call. Yeah, it's moving in the right direction.

00:31:46 Erin: That's incredible. Because obviously, we know that being in touch with one's emotions is one of the first things to go because it's a self protection mechanism. And so for you to come from that standpoint is a very valuable tool to say, okay, what are you experiencing right now emotionally? And we hear in a joking manner, often it's like I have two emotions, fine and angry, and there's no other spectrum.

00:32:10 Erin: And so to be able to be in relationship with how that experience affected you in the way that it made you feel is so much more powerful than just going through the war story of I saw worse than you. And then just still sitting there holding onto it. And then everybody else is hearing it. And the reason I did bring up the secondary stuff too is because, and as you know, a lot of folks don't go home and talk to their loved ones about what they've experienced. They're trying to protect them and I respect that, but that doesn't mean that you don't talk to your loved ones, right?

00:32:43 Erin: And so having you kind of define what that means for you is really important because I don't want people to not go home and talk to their spouse, but I do think that there's a lot of ways they can communicate without telling them those vivid details that can cause that secondary trauma. So thank you for bringing that up.

00:33:04 Brad: Absolutely, especially with the loved ones. That's one thing I didn't completely touch on is when I first started, it was like, you don't say anything. You don't talk at home because they're never gonna let you leave the house if you do. But then that also hugely impacted my relationship with my wife and kids because I just come home, I'm dealing with this call and can't process it. And then I snap at the kids for no reason or I'm annoyed with my wife and she's like, how was work? Mine was fine.

00:33:34 Brad: Where now we have that open dialogue and like, I had a really bad call. And a lot of times she just listens or she says like, what do you need? Like, do you need some time alone? Do you want to do something like work on a puzzle, go for a walk, do whatever? It's kind of like, do you want support or do you just want space or a combination of both? And it's her worst fear and her imagination has been worse than every single one of my calls that I've ever been on. If I say I had a bad call, she thinks I was held at gunpoint or captured by someone, that kind of stuff.

00:34:10 Brad: That just by saying, no, it was like this guy tried to kill himself and it wasn't good. Like it at least gives her a little view without giving her trauma that I'm not saying like, yeah, this was this detail. This was this, but I'm not giving her nothing that she's just sitting there with her imagination and thoughts of like, oh, it must've been so horrible. Which I find can also cause just as much trauma if you share nothing.

00:34:34 Erin: Well, and then it's like the dispatcher side with the spouses. All they're hearing is story. And so they're creating this visual and this movie in their mind, and it's always gonna be the worst case scenario. And going back to what you were talking about with the dispatchers, we are going to be on a panel this afternoon for a online conference that is catered towards dispatchers called Dare to Be Great. It's the IM911 movement, and it's a great group of folks because what we have found is that they often do get kind of brushed under the rug.

00:35:09 Erin: And of course, it's definitely changing. So even in the last year, we've seen it change tremendously. But I guess I'm kind of likening that to when we don't actually know how to visualize this in our mind to make sense of it, it's going to show us the most horrific things every time. Which unfortunately, dispatcher side, they hear it. And I don't know how they do it, honestly. But because they're kind of in the mix and might even show up a little bit differently than I might for a spouse who all they have is like, they have horror movies to like compare it to in terms of not it not being a norm for them. So thank you for touching on all of that. I appreciate it.

00:35:48 Cinnamon: So you said a statement and I don't want it to just be something that gets lost in all of it because you said it and then you explained what it is because I think if we just heard it and you didn't talk more about it, it may have left some of our listeners confused. But you said I want to share my experience without sharing my trauma. And we didn't ask what that meant. You just went right to it and were able to like, again, it doesn't have to be the gory details and it doesn't have to be absolute silence with, and I'm fine, but I'm going to stomp around here like an asshole.

00:36:25 Cinnamon: It's acknowledging that I am not in my normal post-work space because I had a bad thing or a bad run happen. This is a little bit of my experience without going into the, and honey, I was terrified that I was never gonna make it home to you and the kids. And he had a gun up, you know, like whatever that is, like there is that middle point and we are not great at teaching it, learning where it is, how to execute it once we get home. And so I love that now we've got a new way to phrase it, sharing your experience without sharing your trauma. So that's yours, coin it, maybe put a little trademark in a C, copyright it, share your experience without sharing your trauma. Put it on a shirt.

00:37:16 Erin: I'm always about putting stuff on a shirt.

00:37:17 Cinnamon: We're all about t-shirt making.

00:37:18 Erin: Because of course we can really, really value the gifts that meditation brings to folks. You know, we're obviously trying to pass this information on to all of our clients and give them tools and resources. And a lot of them look at us like, you want me to meditate? I don't know. I don't have the right clothes for that or whatever their story is around meditation. But can you touch on how it has helped you in your mental health journey and maybe what other tools you're utilizing outside of meditation to be consistent? Because obviously it's not a one and done thing, right?

00:37:53 Brad: Absolutely. So I was the absolute skeptic when it came to meditation, when it was first brought to me and then talking about doing it every day. And it was like, what could this possibly do? Like when I first heard about it, if you had asked who I was, I'd tell you I'm a police officer that I'm an RCMP. And then I'd be like, oh yeah. And I'm married and have kids. My identity was my job.

00:38:22 Brad: That was first because I had to be, I had to dominate anything that I went to because if not, then I was afraid and members might not trust me or I had to be that top cop. I had to try and get the most stats. I tried to kind of have the most arrests or take the most calls because if I was considered less than somebody else, then it was going to be bad. So just with that kind of identity issue alone is that I love my job. I love being able to do what I do, but I'm a father of four, a husband, and so many other things in between. And I happen to work as a police officer for the RCMP.

00:39:06 Brad: It doesn't take the importance away from my job, but it changes how I do things. And even when bad things happen at work, because that's so low on who I am as a person, it doesn't then impact who I am. Like if I messed up at work and my identity was being a police officer first, then like, well, that's who I am. Or if I'm injured or if I get put off work, well, that's all I am is a police officer and I don't have that now, then who am I?

00:39:34 Brad: And so that's where I was at when meditation was first introduced to me. And I literally joked and would say that meditation is stupid and it's for hippies. And like, that was my mindset was, yeah, I'm not going to go near a singing bowl and sit in a circle and wear big, biggy pants. Like it just wasn't happening. And that was the only perspective that I had for meditation.

00:39:59 Brad: And then I tried it and you know, it's tough because how does Dr. Clark put it? We're in a world where instant gratification isn't fast enough, I believe is how he said it. And it's true. Like I tried meditation and I was stumped, didn't do anything. Like I kept thinking about all this random stuff that happened a really long time ago. And that doesn't make sense because that's not supposed to happen in meditation. So I don't know how I feel about this.

00:40:25 Brad: But then it kind of kept drawing me back. And because I had the advantage of being accepted to Save a Qarrior that it was like, okay, well, I'll kind of keep an eye on it and I'll try it and just keep going back to it knowing like, it's like anything, it's not gonna be super easy. It'd be like if you never saw a bicycle before in your life and then as an adult, you're like, here, do this, that you got to keep working at it and you got to keep trying. And it's been life-changing for me, but even though it's been life-changing, I still don't do it.

00:40:56 Brad: Dr. Clark called me out on it last week when he was like, when you meditate last, I was like, couple days ago. And he's like, dude, and I'm like, yep, I know. And I was like, hey, I give you my word, I'll meditate tomorrow and I'll stay on top of it as much as I can. He's like, okay. And it's funny because it's been better. Like what we think is good, like it's like, okay, I'm here now, that's fine. I can give up on all this other stuff I've been working at to get here. And then it's like, I slowly start going down but don't notice it. Where if I just meditate every day, that in itself will keep me there.

00:41:32 Brad: Like when I had the rostering call for Save a Warrior, it was Brian Haggerty and he literally told me, you could just meditate every day and you wouldn't need to come to Save a Warrior. And that's what hooked me on going to Save a Warrior was like, this guy's talking me out of coming. If I just do something else, like I need to go, like I need to figure out what this is, but it's incredible.

00:41:56 Brad: And for me, the easiest way for anyone, any of your listeners that have kids, that moment where one of my kids does something and I go to take a breath to yell, meditation is what stops that gap. I am not perfect. I still have my issues and still have my little snap episodes, but meditation stops a lot of them.

00:42:21 Brad: And meditation also gets me to pause after it happens or to listen to my wife saying like, that was a little too far or like they were just having fun that I can then go back to my kids and say, sorry, I got mad and I shouldn't have. And I just wanted to say that I shouldn't have done that. Instead of before, if I snapped at them, it was like, no, I did it and too bad. Like it's my way and that's it. Even if I'm wrong, I'm still right right now and I'm not gonna give into that. And yeah, meditation just gives me that clarity and that ability to pause before I make things go sideways.

00:43:00 Cinnamon: You know, the other day, I saw our friend, LT, post something on Facebook and I copied and pasted it right into my notes and I've probably sent it to six clients since then. And I'm just gonna read part of it because I think it speaks into, you know, I've had people return from SAW and they're like, you know, it was great, but now I'm afraid this stuff is never gonna go away. And you're like, oh, stop being afraid. Like, it's not gonna go away.

00:43:29 Cinnamon: It's your past experience. Like you didn't get cured. This is a daily investment in your recovery. And if you stop doing the things that helped you get where you are, it's like the same folks that stop taking their antidepressant because they feel better, right? Like the logic of like, oh, I don't need it anymore. And that has nothing to do with the commentary of like antidepressants and all that.

00:43:54 Cinnamon: But he says, once I become aware that I have these traits active in my life, I became aware that those were a behavior of mine deeply rooted in my way of being. And simply being aware of something isn't integrating it. It's more or less just being aware of it, sort of like a cancer. I can be aware that I have a cancer, but me being aware of it doesn't make that cancer go away. I would then have to go to treatments, get it removed, et cetera. Otherwise, I would just be aware that I have cancer. I'm not doing anything about it other than being aware.

00:44:20 Cinnamon: Transitioning from a behavior that requires deliberate thought and awareness to one that becomes automatic and performed with minimal effort requires repetition and practice. I'm not going to get into his undercover work, although he does use the word behoove and it's hilarious. So, for me, that's the way that it is with all of the work that we do to make ourselves well. You have to remain spiritually aware and conscious.

00:44:46 Cinnamon: It is said the conversation at Save a Warrior provides access to a world. And I'm telling you that access requires maintenance. Otherwise it gets overgrown with weeds and I go back to my old way of being. I don't wanna go back to my old way of being so I do the fucking work.

00:45:04 Erin: That all sounds about right.

00:45:05 Cinnamon: And I think that is one of the most challenging parts of any of this is it's all good when somebody is coming to your lodge and getting you up at the morning and making you, you know, they're holding coffee as hostage for meditation, and you're forced to figure out that this is good, but then you have to go home and be an adult and it requires self-discipline. And it's not just gonna be that you have time for it, you actually have to create it, right? Like there is not time for that.

00:45:35 Cinnamon: It's time that you have to create for that and to think that you can get this glow and then go back to doing the same thing you've always done and keep the glow. I mean, that's like washing your face once and then wondering why your skin doesn't look so good if you've never washed it again. So I think that's one of the easy part sometimes is becoming aware. It's then continuing the practice that keeps that peace of mind. And I think we're all guilty of it. And it really, it's the self-care that isn't getting your nails done, it's the self-care that is hard and we don't like and all, you know, require self-discipline.

00:46:15 Cinnamon: And I don't know if we put enough emphasis on the maintenance to accessing that world because then the entrance gets grown over with weeds if we don't continually do it. And yeah, so I just thought I would share that because well, we are part of the LT [inaudible] fan club.

00:46:33 Brad: Absolutely.

00:46:34 Cinnamon: And you spoke into what you were saying. But if you haven't seen the post, you'll have to go look. Because him using the phrase, it behooved me is one for the ages.

00:46:45 Brad: I love reading his stuff. And yeah, it changes the outlook on like instead of holding it as I used to be this really horrible asshole. So at least I'm not that horrible asshole anymore. It's like, why? Why is my standard my worst day? And as long as I'm not my worst day anymore, then at least, well, that's okay. So I don't have to do this now.

00:47:03 Brad: What if my standard could be like, if I actually stay on top of this? And the way I challenge myself is by you talking about me being a lead shepherd, is I'm helping other men go through the work. And so weekly, I have to stay accountable to these guys. And I challenge myself constantly of like, okay, next Wednesday when I talk to these guys, can I look at them through FaceTime or through Google Classroom and say, hey, I'm going to call you out on your bullshit and say like, you're doing great here, but let's focus on this.

00:47:36 Brad: Or, you know, if I'm having a bad day, instead of going like, no, I'm going to push through it because I'm tough, I don't need to reach out to anyone, I'm going to do this. Then it's like, one, why would I fight through it so hard? But two, why would I take the opportunity away from somebody that I care about to call and say, hey, I'm having a bad day and let them support me instead of me being like, no, I'm the lead shepherd. They look to me. I can't go to them and say, hey, I'm having a bad day or I'm going through this hard time right now.

00:48:09 Brad: It's constantly in our culture of wearing a mask of you get this perfect smile and that's it. And like, no, my life is perfect as long as you only look on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and not in my actual house that it's just constantly, okay, how could I be just a little bit better today instead of going like, well, yeah, it's good enough.

00:48:29 Erin: Boom. Yummy nuggets. You've said a lot of things that I'm like, yes, hitting the nail directly on the head.

00:48:35 Cinnamon: And you make it so much easier when we don't have to prompt you with questions that you just like, it happens to be your perspective. I'm like going through and hitting strike out on all of our questions that you've answered without us having to ask them. So cool, thanks.

00:48:50 Erin: Yeah, absolutely. Is there anything that you feel is important for our listeners to know that maybe we didn't touch on that I'm gonna break this down into two questions, okay? Is there anything important that we haven't touched on that you feel is important for our listeners to know. And two, moving forward, what are your hopes for this culture and the mental health and the growth in the mental health culture and for first responders, both there and here? And how do you see being up here and staying connected in Save a Warrior cultivating those hopes and dreams for you?

00:49:21 Brad: Question one, anything missing? It's really common for any type of first responder, but military and first responder to talk about trauma and only relate it to their work. So for me, you touched on it briefly, but I don't mind sharing either. I lost my dad in 2015 to his third bout of cancer. I've lost three grandparents now and my niece was murdered in 2018. So personal loss has been what seemed like a constant and what I've thought of as I'm just meant to be alone. I meant to lose people and created that internal mindset of, I can't get close to anybody because I know I'm gonna lose them.

00:49:59 Brad: And it was separate from work. Work, you expect the bad calls and you go to them, but then you go home, where I kinda had it in both worlds. And that's where I thought I had that, I'm unique, I'm special, I'm different. No one has it as bad as I do. And for me, it was the personal loss was worse because I treated it like work.

00:50:19 Brad: I did the next of kin for my niece with my brother. And I shut off all grieving, all emotion that I felt because I needed to be the strong one in the family. I needed to take care of my brother and take care of my mom and be that go-to person that I brought work with me into my home life. And then similarly, it's been my first loss since SAW when my grandfather passed away. And it's the first time that I've probably actually let myself cry at a funeral.

00:50:51 Brad: That it wasn't like, no, I have to be the tough one, that it's okay to grieve. It's okay to feel whatever you're feeling. And I appreciated it, that I was an example to my kids of being vulnerable and what you can be and that it wasn't, that's just a tough police officer. It's that dad can cry too. And it's okay that my kids cried and that they didn't need to stand up because the pastor or the priest said, all rise. It was like, no, let's sit here and let's just be with this. Don't shut it down.

00:51:25 Brad: And I find on the personal level that that has been the greatest gift that I've had is actually being able to feel things both for myself, but both, but is setting as an example for how my kids can process things that I would never want them to go through the experiences that I have. But if they do, I want them to be able to process it and not just put on a face because our culture says you have to be fine and you have to keep going. So I would say that would be question one.

00:51:58 Brad: Question two of what I would like to happen. I'm an ambassador for Save a Warrior. I would love to try and set up funding and get us there. Dr. Jake Clark has been an extremely amazing human being to me and a very, very dear friend that he's actually said, like, why don't you just do it there? And I wouldn't want to even try to replicate what an incredible community we have, let alone the efforts that would need to start that we are neighboring countries.

00:52:32 Brad: Jake likes to laugh and say, I took a canoe, a team of sled dogs and a train to get to Hillsborough anytime I go. But I drive six hours and take three flights to go to Save a Warrior. And I do it at least twice a year. And I love it every time that I go, being able to impact somebody's life the way that Jake impacted mine. And I would love to be able to do that for my police force. I find that's my biggest struggle of when a member talks to me saying, what do you do? And I essentially can tell them, you know, like we have Wounded Warriors Canada, which I'm not taking anything away from their phenomenal group and organization.

00:53:13 Brad: But nobody's tackling adverse childhood effects and that my shooting had nothing to do with what I had going on. It was because of the trauma I had as a child recreated itself in my shooting that I was never going to get over my shooting as much as I talked about it. And so those courses and my psychologist help, but Save a Warrior is what saved my life. And if my dream would be that I have funding to get Canadian seats back open.

00:53:43 Brad: If it was as simple as this, if I never got an email again of the sudden passing of a member without any explanation in the email, knowing full well that a member took their life, that if I can just save one of those people by getting funding to take them, to send them to Save a Warrior, then it would be an incredible experience.

00:54:02 Erin: Did you anticipate your answers creating tears on the other side of the screen?

00:54:10 Brad: I didn't, I appreciated it. And I looked at Erin more than Cinnamon because I was like, I need to finish the sentence before I feel this.

00:54:21 Erin: And I'm usually the crier. I am usually the one crying, not her. She's always the stoic one. And I'm like, but what was that, Cin? What was it that touched you so deeply that caused that emotion? Because those answers were very beautiful and profound.

00:54:35 Cinnamon: I mean, I think that when we're doing the counseling work, we have to put up these walls and be completely focused on what the person is saying and not engage in transference or counter transfer, where I'm bringing my own life into it. And so when we hear these things in this format, we can finally let down those walls. And when you said that your niece was murdered, that was sufficient, thank you. But then when you followed up and said that you were the one that did the family notification.

00:55:11 Cinnamon: Like Erin can speak to my absolute adoration, devotion, and love of my nephews and my niece too, but my nephews and I were basically raised together. And they're very much part of my life. And so thinking, you know, oh, my niece, well, okay. But when I thought about what it would be like to know that somebody had the fucking audacity to think that they could take the life of this person that I loved so much and that my family had loved so much and that we anticipated their arrival and we've watched them grow. It made me think about what it would feel like and then the fact that you've actually gone through that, like I got sad and mad and heartbroken for you.

00:56:00 Cinnamon: But also that split second of what it would be like losing Zach or Logan or whatever. And that's the part that you're sharing your experience. You didn't share your trauma. You shared your experience, but it allowed me to tap into both of our humanities. And that's the epitome of empathy, is to not just float on the surface of like, okay, there's another fact about Brad is that his niece was murdered. To be able to sit in that and think this is something that he had to go through, and it's not like an event that you just experienced.

00:56:44 Cinnamon: I worked with someone who was like, I don't know when I'm gonna move past this. I don't know when I'm gonna put it behind me. And I had to explain like, oh honey, if you look behind me, there's a whale tail. There's a couple of certificates. There's a bunch of shit on those shelves and not one damn thing is one of my traumas. It is not behind me. It is with me every moment of the day. And it doesn't mean that it gets triggered anymore. I think for the most part, my traumas look like wisdom and they've moved from triggers to wisdom.

00:57:15 Cinnamon: But if our hope in doing this work is that we're going to help people move past it, we gotta work on our metaphors, man, because it misleads us into thinking that we're going to get to a place in our life where it feels like what it felt like before it happened. And I don't think that that exists. And if I said to somebody, well, you know, you're never going to go back to what it was like before you had this experience. I think they would say, oh yeah, I know, I know. But that doesn't mean that they still don't think putting it behind them or getting past it looks like living a life as if it never happened. And so we're always going to be disappointed if that's our belief.

00:57:57 Cinnamon: Because how many Christmases have you had to go through without your niece being here? Like, she's not gonna show back up and that doesn't go away. And so in part of sharing that experience and not necessarily sharing the trauma is it was an event and I'm not necessarily, you know, tearing up about it every day, but I still have moments where it feels like shock and that doesn't mean that it doesn't come up on a regular and especially this time of year when we're having these holidays and there's never going to be closure at that table setting.

00:58:36 Cinnamon: To be able to help people that way without being like, this is what happened to her. And this is all of the details of it, but just to be able to, again, tap into each other's humanity. That's what I think this work is because you guys all see so much shit and I know that there is a sensitivity level that when we come home, there's also the barrier of like, oh, that was your bad day. I am so sorry that the cable went.

00:59:09 Cinnamon: And so I think that's part of that too, is recognizing that everybody's bad day is everybody's bad day. And it doesn't do anyone any justice to say, oh, your cable went out? Well, let me tell you about this five-year-old we found who was sitting in his own shit after being human trafficked for the first four and a half years of his life. You can't compare apples and oranges, but then I think I went off on a tangent because the original question was what was touched you? And I'm like, oh, it made me sad that his niece died.

00:59:40 Erin: But you also in that tangent you said, my trauma looks like wisdom. Today, my trauma looks like wisdom. And that is another t-shirt.

00:59:54 Brad: If I could touch on two other things as well. First, Cinnamon, it feels like I know you because your name has been mentioned so many times at Save a Warrior when it says, and how did you find out about Save a Warrior? That I wanna thank you for bringing the people that are in my life currently because you got their ass in that seat, that from talking to them, you are extremely convincing with getting them there.

01:00:21 Cinnamon: Honestly?

01:00:23 Brad: Yeah. There's one individual I'm thinking of who makes me look tiny, but man, is he full of love and happens to be a SWAT officer in a certain large city. I just thank you for everything that you do and to know the countless lives that you have saved by getting them to that program that I don't know if I've heard a cohort that your name hasn't been mentioned in. So I wanna say thank you for that.

01:00:49 Brad: And Erin, for the first question, one other thing, because it was never something I thought was an issue for me that I wouldn't want to forget about sharing is suicidality. Because when I went to Save a Warrior, some of my brothers talked about holding a pistol to their mouths every morning, debating if they're going to pull the trigger. And I remember being like, man, I'm not that bad.

01:01:10 Brad: Even now, I hold resentment thinking with myself, but I still have grace for myself thinking the fact that that was my thought process, instead of having compassion and caring for the brother that's sitting in that seat of what he goes through every single morning when he has that thought process, was I thought like, man, things were pretty good for me, I guess. I've never thought like I'm going to shoot myself in the head. But suicidality looks so different for so many people. And for me, it was, well, if I die at work, my family's better off. If I get in a car accident and something happens to me or if I die in a fire or if this happens to me, my family, then I'm not the monster that I portrayed myself as being with them.

01:01:53 Brad: If I just wasn't here and that's where alcohol kicked in with, you know, maybe something will happen if I'm drunk or maybe things will get worse and if they get worse for me, then they'll be better off. And really they're the same thing without taking away anything from somebody else that has a rope around their neck or has downed a bottle of pills. They're just one step off from one another and they can all lead to the same thing that I think we look to publicly as a culture at the idea of like, no, to be suicidal, you need to cut your wrists or you need to swallow pills. And even then as a culture, we go, well, they don't really mean it. They want attention and it's, they take away from it.

01:02:35 Brad: Like I was suicidal. I never admitted it until I got to save a warrior. And even then it was probably coming back for the first time as a shepherd that it was like, yeah, but for me, it looked like my family's better off if I'm not here. But all of that led to, well, if that's the case, that means I've died somehow, whether by my hand or somebody else's. And the biggest thing is just how important you truly are and whatever level you are at in terms of those thought processes is, you know, there's people that care about you.

01:03:07 Brad: And what shook me the most with Save a Warrior is Dr. Clark saying, if no one's told you, I love you today, I love you. And that how a human being that has never met me before could say that. And it's true. Like if anyone needs to reach out or to talk to somebody, then I'm available. Like if you don't think you have anybody, you have me. And the Save a Warrior community is what saved my life. So thank you to you both.

01:03:33 Cinnamon: And another one bites the dust.

01:03:35 Erin: I'm like, okay, now I'm tearing up. Brad, thank you so much for taking the time to meet us, and share your story. And I'm gonna write down all of the t-shirts that must be made out of this one particular recording session. And I will say we are jumping into this other thing here very, very shortly. And I'm gonna go meditate right after we get off, because I am watching myself be very distracted and I'm having a hard time being present today.

01:04:04 Erin: It's been a couple weeks, an interesting couple weeks, but just listening to you talk about meditation. And I'm not going to lie, I've been off my game and I can feel it and I can see it in myself. And so thank you for reminding me of all you got to do is go meditate and it doesn't even cost money. Right. You don't have to put on different pants. You don't have to shower.

01:04:26 Cinnamon: I'm always looking for things I can do without having to shower.

01:04:28 Erin: That's why we both work from home.

01:04:29 Erin: But thank you. And I can't wait for the internal community of Save a Warrior and those who have yet to come to hear your message today, your message of hope and what's possible. And that's the most important thing. And I would love to see the funding come your way too for more brothers, sisters to come this way.

01:04:48 Brad: Thank you.

01:04:49 Erin: We'll see what happens. Just the beginning, right?

01:04:55 Erin: Thank you for joining us for today's episode of After the Tones Drop. Today's show has been brought to you by Whole House Counseling. As a note, After the Tones Drop is for informational purposes only and does not constitute for medical or psychological advice. It is not a substitute for professional healthcare advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Please contact a local mental health professional in your area if you are in need of any assistance.

01:05:22 Erin: You can also visit afterthetonesdrop.com and click on our resources tab for an abundance of helpful information. And we would like to give a very special thank you and shout out to Vens Adams, Yeti, and Sanda for our show's music.