It was there someone gave me a paperback copy of the book “Kiss or Kill” — told me they’d recently spent time training with the author, Mark Twight. A few hundred pages later, I bought a plane ticket to Seattle with the goal of climbing Mt. Rainier.

Twelve years later, in the fall of 2025, I came across an essay written by Blair Speed titled Sobriety. The title deserves its place but to me, it felt more like a love story—having more to do with patience and grace and the non-linear way we make progress in life.

I was two-thirds of the way through before I realized it was written about Mark Twight.

The author and alpinist who’s made first ascents in Alaska, the Alps, and the Himalayas. Who started Gym Jones and spent years training tier-one units, accomplished athletes, and movie stars. The same Mark Twight whose writing inspired me to climb Rainier.

When I reached out to Mark, he suggested we conduct the interview in writing. “Send me your questions,” he wrote in an email. “I’ll answer them and then we can talk.” I agreed, and only afterward felt the pressure that came with it—Mark is a serious writer, someone who, “agonizes over sentences and words,” as he writes in one response. I needed to write questions worthy of such effort.

I eventually sent my questions and he sent his answers (below) and afterward we had a long phone call. He seemed curious and thoughtful. We talked military TRANSITION and brain injury, spiritual experiences, and he shared a few stories from his years working with the SEAL teams in the early 2000s—spending time on Denali with a few individuals who are no longer with us.

When I read your early writing, I recognize an internal longing to achieve more—to experience more. Arriving at “enough” seems complicated for certain personality types—something I’ve noticed in my relationships with folks who’ve experienced combat. You tell yourself, arriving at X or Y will be “enough,” only to realize it’s not as satisfying as you thought it would be. Are there parts of your life you would you describe as enough?

I believe I was fortunate to learn early in my climbing career and the writing about it that arriving anywhere or expecting to achieve some condition was tentative, receding, always shifting its shape thus it would never be satisfying. There was no destination that would satisfy beyond (perhaps) the immediate because, upon reaching it, I was no longer the person who identified the goal and set out to achieve it, or experience it. One of my partners once said, “We succeeded and it’s cool because now we can try something harder,” which exposed the mouse wheel nature of all ambition; fulfilling it will never be enough, so-called accomplishment will never be enough. And as long as we are handcuffed to the idea that some particular destination or condition will be enough, and that we will be satisfied and free of all want or desire once we get there, we remain prisoners in a cycle of desire- achievement-dissatisfaction-desire. The Buddha suggested that desire is the root of suffering. Krishnamurti figured it is man’s most precious possession, the flame of life. I say use it but don’t be enslaved by it. Looking for an end-state guarantees dissatisfaction because ‘enough’ isn’t a condition, nor a destination or acquisition, it is life and living it, the process, the growth, the change and reinvention. So to answer the question, being here right now, breathing, feeling, learning, loving, and hopefully, growing is enough.

I reached out after reading a beautiful essay written by Blair Speed. The piece highlights setbacks you’ve encountered in recent years and your seemingly quiet, unannounced response—the center of that being a year of sobriety. Last week I read something that said, “Drinking is often secondary to some primary suffering.” Do you find that to be true of yourself?

I understand the premise and could agree with the statement. Suffering is a loaded term, defined differently by all, if only by degree. The deep-seated remains of an imperfect childhood are different than the chronic frustration of a young adult confronting barriers to opportunity, unrequited love, irreconcilable differences, a lack of agency or tremendous personal loss. It’s loaded too with the expectation that one’s life and circumstances can/should be a certain way. Certainly, squaring the mismatch between expectation and reality is a chronic and ongoing frustration, and alcohol a common means of mollifying our impotence.

In the Bridger Mountains with our Scottish Deerhound, Easton. ©Blair Speed

In some periods of life I used alcohol to substitute for the lexicon and aptitude to address anxiety or anger, frustration or depression that I lacked. As a drug it is incredibly effective at disinhibition so in practice it offered easy access to emotions and lubricated social interactions we, as young men, were never taught to navigate (and its use probably prevented us from learning that skill). Alcohol was the permission slip we needed to first access, then communicate our feelings. It was effective, certainly lazy, eventually habit, dependency, and easily justifiable despite all science and example of its detrimental effects; it is socially acceptable, encouraged even, a bonding practice in some subcultures.

From a writing perspective, alcohol-aided disinhibition offered access to an internal landscape that I was certain was closed off to me in a sober condition. Some nights I could see the faces of the dead, relive conversations, shared action and danger and overcoming, and perhaps more importantly, mourn what didn’t and couldn’t happen, grieve for futures we would never meet together. I doubt alcohol ever helped me address and resolve (or live) with grief but it certainly provided a lens through which I could recognize it, in myself and others. That recognition opened a vein of empathy, allowing me to feel and maybe understand others’ loss and grief. On other nights the alcohol gave me permission to write without reticence, stomping the “What will others think?” argument into the mud, invited me to express my rage and disappointment, to expose and criticize... and reading this shows me suffering isn’t simply to do with loss but that we suffer within the relationship we have with Self, fearful, unfulfilled, and unable to resolve our own internal complications.

What is true about being sober which you did not anticipate?

Long term exposure and use of alcohol led me to the certainty that it was a necessary aspect of the creative process, of writing. One of my biggest fears about quitting was that I wouldn’t be able to write. But I had also reached a point where the alcohol no longer served the creative process and I could finally see it; the number of pieces I started writing but hadn’t the discipline to finish grew to an unignorable level. The cycle started with, “I drink so I can write,” and a lot of that writing was really good, which was a shame because the positive feedback reinforced the behavior. After much ‘practice’ though, the work suffered and made me realize, “I use writing as permission to drink.”

I was afraid that if I stopped drinking I would also stop writing, and it was true for a while because I had unlearned how to write any other way. I had distant memories of good hate-typing sessions done on a 15-hour fast and black coffee but that’s also not the writing I wanted to do, nor am I the man who once did it. I had several starts and stops at the keyboard and no small amount of self-recrimination but I kept at it, knowing it takes a long time to rewrite a habit, and trusting that my creative well is deep and I just need to relearn how to dip in to it. Eventually, there were some good results, and positive feedback, and through it all, unreserved support from Blair. I am no longer afraid that I won’t be able to write.

I also did not anticipate the truth of better sleep and recovery. Seriously, I read all of the science, and wrote and taught around the topic of alcohol in fitness courses for years but never acted on the certainty of its negative effect on... everything. I was convinced by the demon itself that its bad magic wasn’t all that bad, and that, of course, I was different and could handle it. That my distractibility declined was also a surprise.

When I’ve abstained from alcohol, the first few weeks I’ve found I struggle with boredom. “Boredom” feels like a boyish word—something we should mature out of, but I’ve found it can be quite painful. It can bring about an apathy toward life, expose a lack of connection. How do you think about that? How do you do sitting with nothingness, the sort of rawness of the second half or the day?

When we stop drinking we must say goodbye to all of the positive aspects that we believe flow from it. Once upon a time I saw my relationship to alcohol as unconscious and habitual; come home from the office, greet dog, open ‘fridge, uncap a beer, sip and exhale, feel my shoulders loosen, let go, and that ritual separated the work day from ‘my’ day. But one beer led to two and suddenly the next morning wasn’t ‘my’ morning either, it belonged to the beer. Quitting in 2024 felt like liberation. I was locked in a routine that filtered my experience of living, that embellished everything, it added noise to silence (because silence made me uncomfortable), it added action to stillness (because I felt an underlying twitch to be doing something, anything), it filled a contemplative void with somethingness (because nothingness quickly becomes self-awareness and when I am not comfortable with me I don’t want to be aware of me or that discomfort). I used alcohol, sometimes unconsciously and sometimes fully aware, as escape and evasion, it dulled the edge I might otherwise use to excise whatever I didn’t like about myself, which was way easier than addressing that same thing. Without its escape valve to soften things, I must see me and be me, change what I don’t like and celebrate all that I do. No embellishment, no rose-colored lens, just me, the me who can sit quietly (mostly), immersed in the nothingness which is and never was nothing. Quitting alcohol forced and allowed me to confront me clearly, and to be me, with all that that entails. I still practice some ritual, cracking open a can of sparkling water or N/A beer, sip and exhale and it doesn’t feel less-than at all.

Speaking to Department of Energy security personnel at the INL nuclear facility. In that era I always wore a Gold Squadron shirt when I did public speaking gigs. It felt important to honor the Brotherhood, long may it live. © INL

In your earlier writing, we hear from someone who’s certain of who they are. “Barry is a reformed asshole and cynic. He’s considerate of people. I’m not. I’m willing to cut it all away and get what I want” is a line I found in Kiss or Kill... A lot of time has passed since then. More writing, photography, sobriety, loss. How much of that assurance still exists? How much of what you believed about yourself at age 30 would you still agree with today?

That is accurate, “someone who’s certain of who they are,” and I would add certain of what he wanted and needed to do. I offered myself no options. That said I also suspect that young men — even when they lack certainty — front it to reinforce what they are learning to believe about identity and ambition. And it is an education, a process, a test of hypothesis, challenge, action, resolution, all to learn whether we are who we think and if we can become who we want.

I wrote those words in 1992, describing events Barry and I shared in late-1991. I was deeply committed, and had proven myself willing to use the knife socially to remove any form of friction affecting my trajectory.

Things changed during the next decade. I fell in love with someone who was immune to the knife, at least in that context, and I learned to place more value on human relationship than on personal ambition. I can see a shift in the rearview mirror, distinct if small changes in my point of view that happened in the late-90s and accelerated when I quit hard climbing in 2000. In that instant my certainty faded. I could still focus, of course, and chased hard after things I thought might replace climbing, and fill a yawning, hungry void. It took a lot of years to learn that there is no such thing as a “replacement” for climbing (I suspect it’s the same for combat). There are other engaging activities and pursuits, plenty of them, but trying to replace an activity and lifestyle as demanding and transformative as alpine climbing is folly. Age plays a role too. Experience and maturity cannot make up for a decline in physical ability and the softening relationship to risk; after a certain age or era I didn’t need great consequence to hold me accountable in the way I did as a younger man.

Day Two on the Rupal Face of Nanga Parbat. The perfect weather drew us upward, and our skill and fitness allowed us to reach 25,400’ on the fifth day where a storm caught us and a rather epic descent ensued. © Barry Blanchard

My self-assurance today isn’t the certainty of a driven, hungry and inexperienced young man. I know myself now better than I could or did even 20 years ago. I don’t need the constant validation of high alpine tests as I once did. I can stand in front of an audience of any size (as I do with my public speaking gigs) and confidently tell and teach, knowing that what I have learned and practiced is useful, inspiring, and valuable.

Age 30 is a tough period for any young man. I think we are all boys until then. Of course, some mature earlier, some much later, some never but generally there is a huge change in male consciousness that occurs around that time. That was almost 35 years ago for me and I can say with certainty regarding who I was then and now that I am more considerate of others, less selfish, more conservative (another loaded term and my definition likely strays from the classical), more interested in realpolitik than geopolitics, and certainly far more patriotic. From its Founding, and despite our flaws, this remains the greatest country on earth, specifically with regards to opportunity and liberty. I wouldn’t have said that when I was enamored of all things European, and specifically France, where I lived for five years full-time. And by the way, I would never live there now.

What do you consider to be the most important spiritual reference point in your life?

Death. Mountains. I have been my most reverent in proximity to death; the threat of it and in its wake. I have experienced my highest self and strongest connection to the natural world in the mountains.

Heath and Dave a few hundred feet below the summit of Denali, on the lower part of “Pig Hill”, the final slope before reaching the summit ridge.

You’ve performed at the very top levels in more than one domain. You’ve lived an incredible life of doing. How do you think about your way of being? How do you value the two today versus twenty-five or thirty years ago?

The distinction between doing and being is important. As an adolescent, “Who am I?” morphed into, “Who do I want to be?” But as I became conscious I realized the appropriate question was, “What do I want to do?” because through the doing I would become the man who could do that thing, and identity would materialize from action, doing. I started climbing because that’s who I wanted to be: a climber.

Somehow my upbringing gifted me the ability to go deep into whatever I aimed myself towards. After all, full immersion is the only way to access the deep and meaningful lessons offered by any activity. If you want to be transformed by something—by anything—you have to do it as well as it can be done, to commit to it, and maybe, sometimes, back yourself into a corner with no way out but forward. I started climbing and I bet the chips I could afford to lose. All of them. And the deeper I went the more the doing reinforced the being, to the extent that, when I quit climbing the philosophy and habit of full commitment remained and affected everything that came after.

I started shooting competitively (as a surrogate for climbing) and went all in; mentors, classes, dry practice, live practice and a lot of reloading so I could afford it, and the activity permeated everyday life. I was never a good competitive shooter, which I identified as a temperament issue leftover from climbing, meaning, I never shot with the abandon necessary to be truly fast, but the doing taught valuable lessons and developed even more valuable relationships. One mentor relationship led to my first military training gig, and I was on that path for 11-12 years, evolving myself and my curriculum as real world demands on the military and intelligence community shifted. A casual relationship to the doing would not have produced the bonds and friendships that came along with the work because when people who are dedicated and committed see those same characteristics in another person a lot of social posturing and interrogation becomes irrelevant.

After taking a 21 year break from competitive shooting I started again in 2024. After shooting a single stack for so long my mag changes were still smooth but I had lost some overall speed. © Blair Speed

I do realize that I’ve “performed at top levels in more than one domain” but the fount of all of those practices is the same — my way of being — so I don’t see great differences between them. Doing anything well relies on the same foundations: hard work, creativity, sensitivity and awareness, commitment, persistence, curiosity, the ability to learn, obsession and focus, a willingness to be wrong paired with the desire to be and do right, and an underlying motivation to do one’s absolute best regardless of reward because, if the reward is the objective the work cannot be good. I was confident enough to follow different opportunities as they arose in my life, and paranoid enough to work really hard to be equal to them, to do them well, to earn the respect of my mentors and teachers and never let them down. It is true that the hunger of young adulthood wanes in the transition to elderhood, but having satiated that hunger by doing for all of those years has settled my sense of being. When I look in the mirror I am OK with being who I am.

What’s your relationship with risk today? I think a lot of Special Operations types spend years trying to reduce risk, then somehow in civilian life we find ourselves craving it. Is that true for you?

Throughout my climbing career I willingly accepted risks other climbers deemed unjustifiable; forgoing the rope, exposing myself to grave objective hazards, all the while believing safety is relative to one’s consciousness and that if I was tuned-in to the mountain’s rhythm I could do what I wanted without being killed. Eventually, it becomes apparent that such a belief is illusion, perhaps delusion, and that much of the getting away with it depends on luck, which is an account with no balance sheet and the first overdraft is final. That realization didn’t stop me from soloing, I quit because I lost my sensitivity, my deep connection to the mountain. High on a route in the Alps I recognized my emotional preoccupation (with divorce) kept me from being fully present, and affected my decisions. It was too hard to downclimb so I kept climbing but it was the last serious route I ever did unroped. Once I could understand what I had done and survived my risk tolerance changed. When I saw that I had more “anchoring me to the ground” than I once did — marriage, home ownership, a dog, normal life and reasons to live it — I couldn’t go to the mountains in the same way. And for some reason I didn’t miss it; climbing with a dear friend, with partners and the rope, felt natural, it was a logical progression where the sum of us was so much greater than me on my own that the activity itself became less important than those relationships.

Soloing on the Aiguille du Midi in the French Alps. © René Robert

When I was taking big risks in the mountains (and sometimes the risk seemed like the point) I very rarely considered how my death would affect anyone else. It was happening all around, especially in Chamonix, and I spent time with widowed wives and girlfriends, with surviving climbing partners and friends, and I felt the those losses deeply but didn’t project or wargame my own behavior. That happened eventually, with greater maturity and more experience, and my point of view shifted from my own relationship with risk and death to caring more about a loved one’s reaction to, and relationship with loss.

I’m not fearful but I don’t do certain things now. My S4 was parked for two years before I sold it and when asked why I replied, “because I can’t be trusted with it.” There was a period when I was perhaps craving the risk and accountability or perfection that danger demands and I chased it in that car. But it all stopped one night when I hit some ice going 114 mph. The car slid into the oncoming lane, which happened to be dry, tires caught, I corrected, got off the gas, and drove the last 40 minutes into town at five under the limit.

The other risks I avoid these days almost universally involve the behavior of other human beings; when I was racing my bike I covered several thousand miles annually on the road, and did a lot of ‘urban combat’ riding in place like London and Rome and Paris but I won’t now because death is one distracted text away. I rarely shoot on public land because how a lot of gun owners (I won’t call them shooters) handle their weapons is truly fucking dangerous.

Risk and danger used to keep me sharp but I don’t need that anymore.

Steve House recently wrote that you’ve shown him, “the real journey is what we carry back down: the clarity, the restraint, the finer sense of discernment, and perhaps most of all, the courage to remain open.” You’ve recently started writing on Substack, what’s your process for putting that clarity down on to the page?

I don’t really have a process. I mean, it’s important to sit my ass in the chair and try to write. And I do that most every morning. Some days it flows, maybe even an entire essay in one sitting, and some days it’s just notes or fragments but I trust myself and know those notes are seeds that will grow into something more, something useful. I will re-read older work too, searching for the seeds or even a polished gem that might launch or carry me to new work. I wrote a piece yesterday that started from an asshole note I wrote to a fitness magazine editor back in the day, and it is an entirely different tone and piece than what sparked it.

Clarity originates with honesty and is refined by practice, practice, practice. I’ve been writing for over forty years and I am finally starting to call myself a writer. Not always, because even when I try I sometimes can’t write. When an essay is important, I share it with Blair. She reads it aloud to me and every little goof and error and misstep comes through immediately. Sometimes it’s embarrassing but damn, that’s motivating.

I’ll never be the guy who writes 3000 words a day no matter what. I agonize over sentences, words. A couple of different mentors have told me to just get it on the page, write the damn story, and I hear them. But I still allow my desire for ‘perfection’ to get in the way. I want it to be right when I read it back to myself because if it isn’t then a whole swirl of self-worth stuff clouds the next paragraph ... so I fixate on the one in front of me until it’s good enough for me to move on.

Failing to finish a new route on the lower east face of Longs Peak. I think my courage ran out around the place the ice became to thin to climb. I was not prepared to risk the fall onto a tied-off 10cm ice screw. The route was done later and named “Crazy Train” © Cathy Beloeil

In climbing and physical fitness, there’s a return on investment we expect to receive. We show up, we put in the work — we expect progress. When it comes to writing, photography, much of what we call art, perhaps that return is less dependable. Given the years you’ve spent studying effort and performance, how do you think about becoming a more capable artist?

In the fitness world I believe the expectations carried into any endeavor are unrealistic, overly influenced by marketing (of methods, supplements, equipment, etc), forums, and the misrepresented experience of others. When “programs” and “diets” allegedly fail they merely fail to live up to expectations. In climbing, the same marketing influences expectations but often it’s the human factors that affect return on investment. “Wait, you mean that despite the ideal training program and the best possible equipment I could still fail because I’m mentally weak and no one can sell me fortitude or rationality?” I don’t believe ours is a rational world where people undertake honest, ruthless self-assessment in order to understand whether expectations are realistic or not because doing so would mean confronting self-image, and examining the promises made by shiny people and their shiny things. Interrogating the latter (honestly) teaches that thirty days of behavioral change cannot overwrite ten years of decisions and actions. Someone wise once told me that it takes ten mindful and perfectly executed reps to overwrite one bad one, and if we apply that ratio to our lives we understand quickly that, to change and improve, we will have to be sensitive, aware, and diligent for a very, very long time.

That preface leads to my reply about becoming a more capable artist … first of all, what does ‘more capable’ even mean? Commercially viable? Yuck. Does my art move and affect? Oh, now that’s more interesting. If someone, and it only takes one, reads an essay like “Twitching With Twight” and suddenly recognizes the prison they accepted and paid to be inside of as such and then smashes those walls or expectations to escape, to reorient towards new horizons where s/he may taste fruit once forbidden by circumstance/ nurture/ marketing well, those words were a valuable and effective piece of art — for that one person.

Capability has to do with personal work and growth and achievement; one may use external testing to validate but an audience is not required because the skill and fitness itself is personal. Generally speaking, making art is personal, but to be effective in the way we tend to define (and measure) it requires an audience, which is something an artist cannot control. Yes, I know that my writing reaches more people when it is personal, shows some vulnerability and even intimacy, is rhythmic, contains memorable, quotable phrases, has a mix of critique, provocation and potential solution, perhaps with a call to action but damn, abiding those ideas as rules puts me in a similar prison as that I described in “Twitching”.

Of course, I have written and edited my words because I wanted to affect the reader in a particular way. I wanted to write that hit single, whether it was honest and true or not, and I was always disappointed with the result, and with myself for having bent the knee so to speak.

Compelling art is made by humans to express their human experience. I believe making it is personal. If they choose to share that art, and it communicates their experience, their emotional condition to other humans then maybe one viewer sees it as a mirror, or as a sign they are not alone or their experience is not isolated or unique. Damn, shared suffering is very humanizing, and even hopeful. Shared hope and potential is the same. If I am human and I can communicate my human experience well, then other humans might resonate with my art, and be moved enough to see or seek or do something they might not have otherwise done … that seems like ‘good’ art. And making any art takes a lot of practice, well, what I mean is, the communication takes practice, trial and error, immunity to or at least tolerance for negative feedback, and a deep well of energy and emotion and experience to draw upon for long enough that the practice may bear fruit.

Any expectations regarding outcome are quite misplaced when speaking of art.

You don’t seem to be a “halfway” type of guy. How do you determine something is worth doing?

I only do what I “can’t not do”. OK, that may be hyperbolic. I’ve tricked myself into half-measures, and DNF’d a number of things that couldn’t hold my attention for as long as it would take to see them through. I may convince myself something is worth doing but time and miles always bring me back to the truth, the truth of Self. And tick-tock, what will be worth doing in what time remains? Time is a good filtering mechanism.

Can you share something you remember about your friendship with Heath Robinson?

When we were on Denali in 2008 there was a weather window in which we could summit. Rolo Garibotti (my friend and fellow guide on the trip) and I decided that launching from the camp at 14,000’ and climbing to 20,300’ and back in a day with a 4-to-1 ratio of clients to guide left us no margin for error. We decided to split the team, climbing with 2:1 ratio the first day, then Rolo and I would take a rest day, and go up again on the third day. The forecast wasn’t solid so the guys scheduled for day three might get screwed. The roster choice had to be fair though so it was either rock-paper-scissors or drawing straws, I can’t recall which.

Heath and Dave right around Denali Pass where the sky cleared during our descent. Long shadows, perfect sunset. It was turning into a long day, 15 hours round trip from the medical camp at 14,000’.

The first group was Rapier, Reeves, Fro and Faas. Heath was so fucking pissed. He was certain the weather wouldn’t last. That first day took 17 hours round-trip. Rolo and I were smoked, and not the superhumans Heath thought we were when he asked to go again in a few hours. We rested and the weather held. Callagy bailed, and Rolo started up with Chuck who got sick at 18,000’ so they turned back. I kept on with Heath and Dave Wright ... and it was one of the most impressive feats of drive and persistence and stick-fucking-to-it I have ever seen. Heath and Dave dug into themselves for something they probably never had to access before. They would take few steps in the deep snow and collapse. Then take a hopeful look upwards to see if the summit came any closer while they had their heads on their knees. No. Damn. More work. More digging. More giving, everything. Effort upon effort. And slowly, certainly, we made our way up to the top. A small part of me believed they would give up because I’d seen that in others, in civilians. But I had been around a lot of Tier One guys in the previous years so the larger part of me knew they wouldn’t, and as long as they kept trying I was going to let them and if we had to be out there all night I would stand with them.

On the summit they stood unsteadily, and held up the unit flag and the flag of the nation while I snapped photographs. And then, despite the fatigue, despite everything they had lived through, and what of it they carried on their shoulders, in a moment when they could be forgiven for stashing the American flag in a pack and heading down, they folded it carefully, properly, proudly. I watched that and I cried. I was proud of them, of our country, and of their devotion to it, and its symbols. We were in cloud and snow flurries on the summit, and I thought the weather might be turning. I knew we could get down if that happened but it would be harder, take longer, and be more dangerous. The boys were spent. They also knew how to keep going, that it isn’t over until it’s over, and you do whatever it takes until you can’t anymore. We dropped off the summit pyramid and followed the wands marking the way across the Football Field, moving through the cloud from one to the next. Suddenly, right above Denali Pass the cloud blew out and we sat down to rest, bathed in warm, late-day Alaskan sunlight.

Heath Robinson on the “Football Field” at around 19,600’ on Denali. The high altitude facial edema is real! The boys were only ten days from sea level so had not acclimatized as well as I would have liked but the weather said, “Go” and we did.

Find Mark’s writing on SubStack “Mark Twight is Équipe Solitaire”

I take in what I can from that distance, looking for some new shape, new lines at the corners of her eyes. You’d think ten years would be enough to change a person, but there isn’t much.

I can’t see much of the man sitting across from her—just an arm in a white button-down, a cuff link catching light, and the gold band on his ring finger.

Already I’m doing familiar math, shifting to see his face. It’s the same math I was always doing when we were together. The kind that began with a look or a comment and then follows you around for days, adding it all up, hoping somehow it comes out even.

A few weeks into the whole thing, she got tickets to Old Crow Medicine Show at the Saenger Theatre and insisted we go on a Monday night. You stood on the porch and waited for her to get home to the house she rented on Carol St.

Seeing her run across the yard, through the rain toward the front door.

Watching her shoes slide across the hardwood floor and hurry as she changed clothes in front of the washer and dryer and yelled “don’t look” in a way that caused you to question if she really meant it.

You go to dinner and the hostess seats you and she looks at the two of you and if she notices anything, she doesn’t give it away—she doesn’t look at you like some kind of mismatched couple. Or anything for that matter.

You’re standing there at the concert and she’s close to you. As close as she can be, really. And she touches you and moves back and forth with her arm inside yours—acting the way any interested person does.

But of course that’s not enough to solve anything.

Across the restaurant, she stands up from the table and moves toward the bathroom. Her husband looks as if he might stand as well and his face almost comes into view but the waiter steps in and I lose it.

I’m not sure it matters anyway. Why after all this time, seeing the man she’s decided on feels like some kind of answer, or like it might solve something.

Eventually the math became more complicated.

Days and nights that show you something.

The night she and her classmates met at the place off St. Charles to celebrate the end of their second year in law school. How she mentioned it to me, but I knew I’d have to work. And you sense maybe she prefers it that way.

How when the day came and turns out, you don’t have to work—how she seemed uneasy about the whole thing, saying “sure” in a way that makes you question if she really wants you to be there.

So, you park and walk in by yourself and the whole time you’re noticing little things—little things you’d be embarrassed to admit you notice, but you do notice. You see her over by the bar standing in a group of people. Twice as many men as women and she sees you and smiles gently but doesn’t rush over.

You add that piece and you tell yourself she must know the feeling of being in a place where everyone has something in common except for you. But maybe that’s not true.

Eventually she comes over and asks how your day was and the look on her face seems genuine so you subtract a little bit and tell yourself not to overthink it all.

You shake hands with her classmates and you can tell they’re also doing math. Recalculating the story they’ve been telling themselves about the type of guy she’d choose to be with.

You stand on the edge of conversations and spin your napkin-wrapped cocktail around and around until eventually some clean cut guy in loafers asks you what kind of work you do.

It really doesn’t matter what you say, and what you do say hangs in the air and you look at her and maybe she isn’t ashamed, but she isn’t exactly proud.

“Don’t feel like you have to stay,” she says eventually and you look around at the direction the night is going and you realize how many options she has. How if you left town, if you allow any space at all, how quickly she could fill it.

Over in the booth, the check arrives and the man whose face I still haven’t seen reaches for it. She takes the final sip from her glass of red wine, sets it down then rests her chin on the top of her hand the way she does when she’s really listening. He’s talking and she’s smiling and eventually she reaches across with her fork and cuts the dessert which sits between them.

The bartender takes my plate, then asks if I’ll have another Blantons. “Yes please,” I tell her “with ice.”

By the end of that summer, when you spent the weekend in Matagorda, both of you knew it wasn't going to work. You'd thought of every option by that point—the idea of long-distance, how she could finish law school and could take the Louisiana bar which has reciprocity in Wyoming.

You can rework the math in different ways, but neither of you really believe it.

So you go on like that pretending. Side by side for three days in beach chairs, not saying much and trying not to think about it.

You don’t think about it except for when she stands and walks toward the water and the sun catches her body and you remind yourself, all of it’s nearly over.

One of those days you come down from the room and you notice her by the pool, talking on the phone to someone, a girlfriend or maybe her mom. And somehow you know she is talking about it—talking to someone, doing the same calculation you are. Her future, what she wants, what she’ll do when she graduates—you can tell because of the way she pauses when she sees you and looks at you over her glasses in a way that says, “everything is just fine.”

And you won’t ask.

You don’t say anything until it’s late and you’ve both had a few drinks. You tell yourself you could stop all the adding and subtracting and lay the whole thing out on the table.

You organize a few words but by that time you're back at the hotel and she welcomes you in the dark and so you tell yourself you'll bring it up later.

And you're looking down at her and it's in those moments — perhaps it’s only in those moments — that the math stops. Maybe it does work after all. Maybe it adds up.

But of course that passes.

She turns away and falls asleep and you start again. Staring at the ceiling fan, watching it rotate.

I pick up my glass, take another sip and notice the way the ice hits the bottom and realize I’ve finished my third. Across the room, they both shuffle out and put on their jackets. She takes her phone from her pocket and stares down at it as they begin to move toward the front door.

I realize, once they make the turn by the host’s stand, there’s a chance she’ll see me. Then it will be her turn. Her chance to notice what she can—the suit I’m wearing and ask herself why I’m sitting here at this bar, alone.

But she doesn’t, she keeps moving, staring at her phone, not calculating anything or anybody, and I wonder if she ever has.

Maybe she’s had it balanced from the beginning.

The couple reaches the door and I hear the waitress call out from the booth. “Sir.”

The hostess catches them. “I believe you left your credit card.”

He turns and walks back to the table and I see him clearly for the first time.

I anticipate some type of clarity but there isn’t much. Nothing at all for that matter.

He looks like a guy, a regular guy at the end of a long day. Tie loose at the collar. More gray in his hair than I expected.

He thanks the waitress, takes the card, and walks back placing his hand at the small of her back as he opens the door.

I turn to see the bartender standing right in front of me. “Another Blanton’s, sir?” she asks.

I look back toward the booth, the empty wine glass and the receipt on the edge of the table.

“No, thank you,” I say. “Add it all up and I’ll settle my bill.”

I sign the receipt and as I stand I notice the couple at the end of the bar. A man in blue jeans and a ruffled sport coat next to a young woman in a black dress. She’s laughing at something he’s said.

I’m thankful to those who’ve taken the time to read these stories, essays, and interviews. After publishing my last story, Anhedonia, I heard from many of you via comments, text messages, and emails - offering encouragement and their own experience with the content. I’m grateful for each of those.

This week it occurred to me how much effort I put into unsubscribing from different online services—streamers, apps, etc. fact that at the end of every edition of the TRANSITION, I ask people to subscribe. While this work remains free of charge, you can support this project on a one time basis by clicking the button below. (The minimum allowable according to Substack.)

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I listen as she pulls from neurology, psychology, and audiology - and translates it into games my daughter can play. Occasionally, I step into the kitchen, fill my coffee, and say hello. She’s friendly. She asks about something she remembers my wife mentioning, then lets the conversation run out and returns her focus to my daughter.

I don’t know how much money she makes. We contract her services through the state. All I know is that she arrives, sets down her bag, and changes the course of someone’s life.

In the military, the standards and milestones for promotion are public knowledge. Service members are told how to advance and encouraged to do so as quickly as possible. Those who ascend fastest, reaching the highest rank in the shortest amount of time, are celebrated and pointed to as examples.

On one deployment, while attached to an adjacent unit, I noticed a different model. When life and death was at stake, away from home when the work held consequence, we seemed to organize according to usefulness. Rank seniority, of which there was plenty, took a back seat to relevance, to those closest to their craft. This applied outside of combat roles as well. Logisticians, mechanics, and corpsmen - all organized according to utility.

We often find ourselves in transition when we detect a distance between where we are and what we believe we’re capable of. When that happens, it’s natural to focus on trajectory. We plot our ascent, we imagine a path toward what we perceive to be a better station in life. We start to explain ourselves through what will eventually be true. We sacrifice the present for what it will produce: the next role, the next compensation band, the place where our true work supposedly begins.

The problem with optimizing for trajectory is that it too often causes us to defer usefulness.

By pursuing distance (sometimes referred to as “climbing the ladder”) we forfeit time where attention and skill should be moving us closer to our most capable selves.

Years pass, titles change, compensation may increase but in the end, we risk having nothing to show for it outside of our retirement accounts. No belief that our life’s work carried any real consequence.

After the Korean War, Robert M. Pirsig struggled to establish a professional life. Years of instability, including hospitalization, left him with few prospects in life. Finally, in 1968, Prisig wrote an essay comparing the act of repairing motorcycles to what he knew about Zen practices - the value a person receives through care, maintenance, and attention to what’s in front of them.

In 1974, that essay became a book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which has since sold more than five million copies.

Transition, choosing a vocation, and deciding how to spend one’s productive years involve countless considerations. Motivations shift, circumstances change, interests appear and disappear as life unfolds.

However, if you’re in the midst of transition now, it may be worth considering a useful path.

At a time when answers to questions of purpose and meaning seem increasingly sought after (now found in airport bookstores and through life coaches,) the most useful appear the least interested.

The speech therapist at the kitchen table, the operator planning the next route - they aren’t searching for these answers because the work itself has revealed them.

Coming down the front steps, the street was empty except for a man walking his dog at the far end by the oak trees that extend over the road like a canopy. I turned left at the fountain by the entrance to Pheasant Run, and it wasn’t more than five minutes—at one of the red lights beside the big box stores on Whitestone—when the cupholder illuminated as a result of receiving multiple texts.

“Big day today,” The first one read. “Your mission is Kirk Ellison. It’s ABSOLUTELY critical we grow the business with LoneStar, and Dr. Ellison is a huge part of that!”

The texts came from Tony Walters.

I dropped the phone in the passenger’s seat and drove with the radio off, convincing myself I was justified in waiting until the sun came up to respond.

Driving north on 183, it’s difficult to know where Cedar Park ends. Starbucks and Whole Foods give way to H-E-B and McDonald’s, then it’s mostly strip malls and car dealerships. Empty lots become empty fields, and before long there’s nothing but power lines and the occasional barn, usually leaning as a consequence of wind.

If there was to be a sunrise that day, it would have happened near Lampasas. But the sky was overcast and the day came on the way overcast days do—dark, and then all of a sudden light, and difficult to know when the change takes place.

By Goldthwaite, what people refer to as “Hill Country” is behind you and it’s flat, making the sky appear larger. At the town’s only red light, I checked my phone again and found a new message, this time from Kathryn, saying good morning and asking that I let her know when I arrived.

I clicked back to the messages from Tony Walters. Your mission is Ellison…

“I’m on my way,” I typed and hit send.

“This one’s huge,” He responded immediately. “Huge for you and one we really need.”

I waited for something—a kind of feeling you expect when moving toward something consequential, but nothing showed up. I was two months into the job and still figuring out the way things worked, the way people speak to one another, and the best way to work with Walters.

Earlier that week, I met with purchasing folks and some of the finance people from LoneStar Cardiology, over Zoom, but never with Dr. Ellison. The interventional cardiologist was scheduled to perform an angiogram and atherectomy at nine that morning and another at the same time the following morning. At the last minute, Ellison agreed to test one of MedAlliance’s newest mid-weight guidewires, and thus it was understood I would be in Abilene to assist and encourage a sale.

I stopped at a gas station across from Abilene Regional and bought a cup of “Premium Blend” on the company card. The sky was a single, unbroken sheet of gray, the kind that takes color out of everything and almost makes you prefer rain just so you have something to look at.

At the hospital, I circled a few times to find a spot, stopping every fifty feet, once for a woman in a wheelchair, and again for an old man in a blue hat with pins and “USS Kitty Hawk” written across the top in yellow letters.

I took the elevator to the fifth floor and studied a wall-mounted directory until I found the words: Cardiovascular Services/Cath Lab - Suite 500. Down the hallway I entered a waiting room with blue polyester loveseats and a TV showing local news and a woman at a desk wearing scrubs, scrolling her phone with one hand and holding a large mug with the other.

“How can I help you?” she asked, setting her phone down.

“I’m here from MedAlliance. Here to observe a procedure scheduled with Dr. Ellison. I think I’m in the right place?”

She lifted the radio next to her keyboard.

“Ms. Betsy?” she said, bringing the radio to her mouth.

“Yes Ma’am?” answered the voice on the other end.

“There’s a sales rep up here.” She released the button and made eye contact with me for the first time. “What’s your name, sir?”

“Thomas Waller,” I said. “Tom Waller.”

“Tom Waller. Saying he’s here for Ellison’s nine A.”

I considered what things might look like on the other side of the radio - doctors, nurses, anesthesia teams - preparing to do a job, to perform a life-saving surgery. Then hearing the radio, letting them know they would now be joined by someone who’s come to sell them something.

“Send him on back,” the voice said.

Through the next set of doors, bright light shone on sinks and stainless-steel tables, and the smell of disinfectant felt familiar and distant at the same time. Seven people were in the room, all but one wearing maroon scrubs and for better or worse, none of them seemed to notice me. The man without scrubs looked to be two decades older than the rest and typed on a laptop mounted to a cart. That’s Ellison, I thought. He was tall with thinning gray hair - not far from what you come up with if you imagine a mid-sixties cardiologist.

I looked around at the equipment and the prep work and how recently I’d been on the other side of all this. Focused, with a job to do, in rooms just like this, only usually in a tent instead of a hospital.

“You Tom? From MedAlliance?” A voice interrupted my daydream.

The man I assumed was Ellison was now standing behind me.

“Yes sir… Dr. Ellison?”

“You got it.” The man said, extending his hand.

“Thank you for having me… For allowing me to attend.”

He looked at me over his glasses and I could tell I didn’t match the profile he was expecting. “No problem at all,” he said. “Like I told…” He paused. “Whoever I’ve been talking to. We’re always willing to test new equipment, but we’re also pretty happy with our current set-up.”

“Sure,” I said. “I understand that.”

As soon as I spoke, I thought of Tony Walters. What he would want me to say instead.

“Where you in from?” Ellison asked.

“Cedar Park… Austin.”

His expression changed just enough to register disappointment. As if to say “that’s too bad,” but would not on account of having just met me.

“You grow up in that area?” he asked instead.

“Just moved there in June.”

“I see,” he said. “And before that?”

“Kentucky originally. But I lived in North Carolina for about twelve years. Outside of Atlanta, briefly.”

He nodded, as if there was more he wanted to ask if time allowed. “Have they run you through the procedure plan yet?”

“No sir. And I’m happy to help with setup.”

“Standard angiogram/atherectomy. Patient’s seventy years old and I believe he came to us from VA. Femoral claudication, significant enough to treat. I’m surprised he waited so long to come in, but you know how these guys are. We’ll do an initial run, see how it looks with contrast. I’m sure you see a lot of these.”

I nodded in a way that withheld whether or not that was true.

“We’ll run your guidewire, remove as much plaque as we can, then decide on a balloon. It won’t be enjoyable, but shouldn’t be too bad. Most of these guys have pain tolerance like a rusted fence post.”

In sterile overclothes, I moved into the operating room and stood as far out of the way as possible. A green curtain hung vertically at the patient’s waist, dividing his upper and lower body. I watched him as he answered questions from one of the nurses, caught somewhere between anxiousness and whatever sedative was running through the plastic tube in his left arm. On the other side, blue light from a fluoroscope monitor shone on layers of draping and a tray of tools suspended above the man’s groin.

One from the group scanned the patient’s wristband, triggering a series of spoken affirmations. “Today is November ninth, twenty-thirteen. The patient is James Cantrell.”

Listening to the ripping of tape and the snap of latex gloves, it occurred to me the utility of everyone in the room except myself.

I watched the patient’s hand tense as he realized it was time.

Within seconds, Ellison located the artery and released contrast which immediately illuminated the many monitors mounted on the wall. A bright blue glow, thick through the main artery, then thinned and narrowed as it traveled farther downstream.

“It’s cold,” the patient said, breaking the silence in the room.

“That’s normal,” the nurse nearest him replied. “You’re doing great.”

A sheath was inserted and more blood began to flow from the insertion site. Not the bright kind you’d see when your child scrapes their knee on concrete, but the dark arterial kind I’d forgotten about, the kind I saw almost every day during my time in Ghazni.

Ellison was focused, his eyes back and forth between his hands and the monitors as he advanced the guidewire. The patient seemed uncomfortable but was managing well. Once the guidewire arrived at its destination, Ellison motioned with his hand and an air compressor kicked on, activating a suction pump and the drilling mechanism.

The man’s jaw tightened.

“You’re doing great.” Said the woman who’d spoken earlier.

Seeing the look on his face, she motioned toward another person, who then took a syringe and attached it to the IV line. “Ketamine. Point two-five milligrams per kilo per minute,” she called out.

I saw Ellison say something to the woman beside him. Though I couldn’t hear it, seconds later, she was moving toward me.

“You’re the sales guy, right?” She didn’t wait for me to respond. “He wants to see you.”

The patient was speaking continually at this point. Loud and aggressive, most of it unintelligible. Every so often a word surfaced. A woman’s name, Sarah, and a lot which seemed to be in another language. The word “Mekong” being one I recognized and feared that he was somewhere, transported back to the Vietnam War.

“I want to show you this,” Ellison said with his back to me. “When you back up this way. See. The way this is designed, it has to expand—it presses against the artery wall.”

I studied the monitor but it was difficult to see exactly what he meant. “Unless you can tell me how to avoid that?”

This was my opportunity. To say something intelligent, if only I better understood the problem.

“That makes sense,” I said.

The patient was shouting at this point, resisting something or somewhere he didn’t want to be. I looked at the faces of the others in the room and found it strange how normal it all seemed.

“When we did the initial training,” Ellison started again. “I raised this issue. I was told to keep pressure on the sheath and back it out that way. But that still creates expansion and contributes discomfort for the patient—as you can see.”

I shifted so I could see the patient’s face.

“Is that helpful?” Ellison asked. Bringing my attention back to the monitor.

I should have been paying better attention.

“Absolutely, it makes sense,” I said, realizing this trip to Abilene would not result in a sale. Every detail of which would have to be explained to Walters.

Once everything was removed, a collagen patch was placed and one of the nurses signaled toward a group waiting beyond a wide set of metal doors. Lights came on and they wheeled the man toward the hallway. Ellison walked toward the room we’d come from and I wasn’t sure what to do so I followed, taking my time, removing gloves and placing my garments in a bin marked HAZARD.

“I think that went well,” Ellison said when he noticed me. “Took some risk off the table.”

I thought about the ketamine—how it had taken away the man’s pain in one regard, and at the same time broke something loose in another.

“I agree,” I said. “Big improvement.”

I checked my phone as Ellison stood scrubbing his hands at one of the sinks.

Two texts and a missed call from Walters. “Call me after surgery. Want to hear how it went.” And another, twenty-six minutes later. “Procedure over?”

“You’ll be here tomorrow as well, is that right?” Ellison asked, still facing the sink.

That had been my plan. But that was also when a potential purchase was on the table.

“If that’s alright,” I responded. “I don’t want to intrude.”

Part of me hoped he’d say no.

“Absolutely. What other procedures are you observing today?”

The rest of the day amounted to a burrito, a hotel room, and an attempt to exercise in whatever passed for a gym at the TownePlace Suites.

“I just have a few other meetings,” I said, telling myself it wasn’t a complete lie.

“Well, whereabouts in North Carolina did you live?” he asked. “My wife’s family is from a place called Wilmington.”

“Fayetteville, mostly. Which isn’t too far from Wilmington, ninety minutes or so.”

“And how’s selling med devices up that way?”

I considered lying. Telling him it was “great” but instead opened myself up to a new line of questioning.

“I was in the army until the beginning of this year.”

“Is that right?” he looked up from his laptop in curious approval. “We had a guy here, really great guy, I can’t think of his name… Went to West Point. Dr. Chapin, Michael Chapin? Does that name sound familiar?”

I produced a look which conveyed there might be a chance I knew a Dr. Chapin who went to West Point, despite there being a few hundred thousand people in the army. “Don’t think I know anyone named Chapin.”

“Well, how long did you serve?”

“Just short of twelve. Eleven years.”

He crossed his arms. “Well. I’ll tell you, ask anyone around here, I have so much respect for the military. Come from a military family and every year our office supports the big rodeo they do in San Angelo. Especially right now, with everything going on. The stuff I see on the news.”

“Maybe you can’t say, but did you ever have to go to Iraq, Afghanistan?”

He seemed genuine, but I also sensed pity.

“Afghanistan,” I told him. “Few times.”

“And what’d you do in the army? I mean, what was your job?”

“I was an eighteen-delta. A medic, basically.”

He looked around as if he were close to making a connection. “A medic,” he said mid-thought. “I can’t imagine the things you’ve seen. Being a medic and a—” He stopped, weighing what he thought he knew and what he thought he should say. “You know what. Do you have dinner plans tonight? Where are you staying?”

“Right across the street,” I said. “TownePlace Suites, I think it’s called.”

“I’m supposed to have dinner at the golf course tonight with Greg Alderman. He’s one of the VPs at LoneStar. It’s a work thing, but his nephew is at West Point right now and I bet he’d love to meet you. Be a great person for you to meet. Why don’t you join us? I can introduce you.”

I stood silent longer than I should have, weighing the ask. I had nothing better to do, but felt like I might be signing up to answer more questions and to tell stories. I thought about Walters - the call we’d have later, explaining that Ellison has issues with the guidewire and likely won’t be buying anytime soon. I could tell him I’d been invited to dinner with Ellison and a vice president from LoneStar and whether that might change things.

“You sure?” I asked.

“It’d be an honor to buy a person like you dinner and a glass of whiskey.”

I pictured myself in my hotel room, a view of the parking lot, and the sound of announcers covering an MLB game as I sat on the bed and ate from a styrofoam container.

“Okay, what time?” I asked.

“Seven. Abilene Country Club.”

I took the elevator back down to the lobby and crossed the parking lot to my truck. I considered calling Kathryn, then decided to call Walters first as it would be the less enjoyable of the two conversations.

He answered immediately, “There he is. How’d it go? How are we looking?”

I find it strange the way leadership talks, as if we’re selling hot dogs. As if a surgeon is likely to stand up from the operating table, peel off their gloves and say, “Someone write this sales guy a check.”

“Everything seemed like it went well,” I told him, hoping to ease into it.

“And Ellison’s happy with the wire? He wants to move forward?”

“I think we’ll have to see. He had some technical concerns. The way the sheath and the wire interact and press against each other. He told me it was brought up during MedAlliance training days.”

“Well, did you talk him through all five points of performance?”

The question felt ridiculous enough that I didn’t mind lying. “I did, but he seemed to have his mind made up. Says the way it works, it causes pain for the patient.”

“That’s not true,” he said, frustrated. “Patient is under anesthesia anyway!”

A silence followed. I wasn’t sure how to respond; neither of us is a doctor, and the man was clearly in pain.

“I’m having dinner with Ellison and someone named Greg Alderman—at their country club. Maybe we’ll talk about it more.”

“Greg Alderman? Chief of Medicine Greg Alderman?”

“I think so. Ellison said he’s a VP?”

“He’s a founder—oversees the entire year’s budget. That’s who you’re having dinner with? We’ve been trying to get to him for eighteen months.”

“Ellison invited me to dinner with himself, and a Greg Alderman.”

“It helps to know who these people are ahead of time. The economic buyer, and the key decision maker.” I could tell he was upset and likely had a lot riding on this sale. “That way, when you’re invited to dinner, you go in with the right talking points, have the right pitch prepared.”

I don’t plan on delivering any “pitches,” I thought to myself.

Driving into Abilene Country Club you pass large ranch-style homes with half-circle driveways and four-car garages. Eventually, there’s a guardhouse with lights shining from the bushes, but no guard. I parked my truck next to a dozen vehicles- luxury SUVs and oversized pickup trucks, all of them immaculately clean.

The sun had just set, but there was enough light to see far across the flat ground of the golf course—water sprinklers running on fairways, tennis courts, and an outdoor pool. Inside, the foyer was lined with photos in wooden frames of past golf tournaments and there were trophies and mounted deer, and the whole place had a look of honey-stained wood that felt Texas enough to be a set piece.

Right away I spotted Ellison with a man of similar age, both wearing sport coats and cowboy hats, seated beneath a chandelier made of deer antlers.

“There he is,” Ellison announced as soon as he noticed me. “Greg, this is Tom, the MedAlliance rep I was telling you about. He attended my atherectomy this morning.”

I reached out and shook the man’s hand. “Pleasure to meet you.”

“Kirk here was telling me you served in the army? I’ve got a nephew at West Point. True you were in Special Forces?”

I nodded and caught Ellison’s eye. He looked apologetic.

“That’s right,” I said. “Until the end of last year.”

He shook his head, “Must be a tough son of a bitch then.”

I noticed the waitress approaching our table and stayed quiet long enough that the moment passed.

“What can I get you gentlemen to drink?”

“I’m thinking about this Antique Weller 107. Don’t think I’ve tried that one. That any good?” he asked the waitress, a young woman not older than twenty-five with dark hair and septum piercing.

“I’ve not had that one - but I can ask the bartender if you like?”

“That’s okay, I’ll try it,” he told her. “How about you, Kirk?”

“I’m going to have the usual. Woodford 12 Year, and I’ll take that with a single ice cube if you don’t mind?”

“Sure.” She said, shifting her eyes toward me.

“I’m good with water.”

I noticed the pause I’d felt before previously in the eighty-four days since my last drink. The disappointment and confusion when people realize the story they’ve been telling themselves about you doesn’t quite fit.

“You’ll enjoy that Weller,” Ellison said. “Did I tell you Sharon surprised me with a bottle of their single barrel on my birthday this year?”

“No kidding? I bet that’s something.” Alderman answered in a way that revealed there was something else he’d rather talk about. “So, Tom, maybe you can’t say, but what was the worst place you had to go being in the Special Forces? Can you even say?”

“I only deployed to Afghanistan, so I suppose it was the best and worst,” I told him, smiling politely.

“And what would they have you doing over there? What’s a typical day?”

Some answers are well-suited for wealthy Texans who wear shiny boots and eat steak at golf courses. But there’s also truth. Sometimes the two things overlap, but more often they don’t, and disappointing people rarely feels worth it.

“Nothing all that interesting, honestly,” I said. “A lot of routine—training, meetings, more clinical stuff than you might think.”

Alderman smiled, giving me the benefit of the doubt, though I suspected he knew I was being more evasive than modest. “That’s usually how this goes,” he said. “The guys who do the most. The stuff you see in the movies—they’re always the most humble about it.”

Ellison jumped in and asked if I’d seen Zero Dark Thirty and Lone Survivor, neither of which I had.

We ordered our steaks and they asked me a few more. What I thought about different rifles they owned, and about my time in training, and what things might look like for Alderman’s nephew once he graduates from West Point.

“Do you like to hunt, Tom?” Alderman asked just as my eyes settled on the collection of exotic deer mounted above the fireplace.

“A little bit, haven’t had too much time to get too into it,” I told him. I imagined what his response would be if I told him the only hunting I’d done was in the Hindu Kush, and not for animals.

“You know, I have a property, a ranch up in northern New Mexico. Last year, we had this group. I’m trying to think of the name… Hunting for Heroes, I want to say. They came out and I believe every single guy who attended killed something. I should connect you with those folks.”

“Really?” I said. “I’d appreciate that.”

They ordered another round of whiskey, and another one after that, and I wondered if my newfound sobriety was really a good thing. The remaining glasses on the table, ice melting in a quarter inch of whiskey—I knew it was all it would take to feel more comfortable. Feel less uncomfortable.

When the bill came, Ellison took reading glasses from his shirt pocket and found his credit card, which I noticed belonged to LoneStar. “You know I’ll tell you Greg… This morning, using MedAlliance’s newest guidewire with Tom here — I think I’m the most comfortable with that model. I think we’d be wise to place an order.”

I thought back to the procedure, to the patient.

“Is that right?” Alderman said, looking at me while he put on his jacket. “That sounds like a damn good idea.”

It was 10 PM by the time I started the drive back to the TownePlace Suites.

I called Kathryn who answered and let me know she was only a few minutes away from falling asleep.

“How was your day? How was everything?” she asked.

“Good enough, I suppose.”

“Tell me about it!” Kathryn has a kindness about her, a positivity and enthusiasm that makes people feel good about themselves.

“Procedure went well. Pretty sure the guy was a Vietnam vet. Ended up going to dinner with the physician and his boss at a golf course. Country club type deal.”

“Wait. The doctor invited you to dinner?”

“Yeah. We got to talking about the army. His boss’s nephew goes to West Point, so he invited me.”

“And, what did he think about the device? Are they going to buy?”

“I think so. During the surgery he brought up some issues he had, but right as we were leaving dinner, I guess he changed his mind.”

I parked my truck and walked through the empty lobby, past the front desk toward room 114.

“That’s great! So, that means we get your bonus!?”

“I guess. It’s hard to understand completely, but I guess that’s what that means.”

“Baby! That’s amazing. I’m so proud of you, but you don’t seem very excited?”

“I am,” I said. “It’s just been a long day.”

“And we can use some of that money to do the kitchen like we talked about?”

I paused. When we bought our new house we saved money by forgoing most of the premium add-ons they offered. Higher-end cabinets, backsplashes, light fixtures - none of which I really care about, but Kathryn does. Instead of buying them from the homebuilder, we agreed to save for a year and eventually hire someone to make the upgrades. “I guess. If that’s still what you want to do.”

I swiped my key card, entered the room, and sat on the edge of the bed. “I think I’m going to shower and go to sleep,” I told her. “How was Tommy’s day?”

“Good! I got onto him this evening for throwing his mac’n cheese at the dog, but overall good.”

I told her I would be home after the next day’s procedure and we said goodnight.

I took a phone charger from my bag and plugged it into the socket above the bedside table. I set my alarm and noticed an unread text that must have come in while talking to Kathryn.

From Tony Walters. “Hey. How was dinner?”

I lay back on the bed with my shoes still on and thought about how much new cabinets cost while listening to the hum of the air conditioner. After some amount of time, I turned off the light.

Ben Davis is a Navy veteran living in Golden, CO where he serves as ED of the Veterans’ Outdoor Advocacy Group and writes both fiction and non-fiction which can be found on his Substack, “The TRANSITION” by clicking the link below.

The art in this story is from Ed Hopper.

With that, this year’s goal was to contribute essays on life’s transition periods more broadly - why they’re often disorienting, and how we so often fail to recognize them until we have already passed through, sometimes landing in places we’d rather not be. (And to do all of that without providing “how-to” or self-help advice.)

It’s not lost on me, when it comes to subscriber counts and monetization, publishing more content would likely be in my favor. Regardless, I try to avoid writing anything that feels duplicative or like something that’s already been said. For that reason, I’m immensely grateful to those of you who choose to be paid subscribers.

Taken New Years Eve 2025

I spent a lot of 2025 writing fiction, the medium where I feel at my best and closest to the reason I began writing in the first place. I plan to write more fiction in 2026 which I look forward to sharing and hope - at some point - to announce the publication of a debut novel.

Lastly, the emails, messages, and conversations that come as a result of this website mean more to me than I have time to explain. Despite sometimes wondering “what I’m doing”, receiving responses from readers make it seem worth doing.

The most read essay this year was “What We Already Know: Why Intuition Often Outperforms Data During Life’s Most Defining Periods.

Thank you to Sebastian Junger, Sarah Damoff, Cory Richards, Brooke Bartlett, Ian Johnson, Shannon Connell, Casey West, Phil Klay, and Brad Geary for agreeing to be interviewed this year.

Here are my favorite exchanges from the TRANSITION Interview Series in 2025.

From Sebastian Junger:

Much of your professional work has been abroad and much of it pretty adventurous – dangerous by comparison. How do you find the time between those adventures, participating in regular life? Do you still long for that kind of work?

I got out of war reporting at age 50 when my friend and colleague that I made Restrepo with was killed in Libya. He was hit with shrapnel from a mortar and died in the back of a pickup truck.

After that, my marriage fell apart, several things happened, and I had to sort of reset the odometer. I got married again and eventually started a family.

Had I TRANSITIONED out of that life at thirty, I might have missed it enormously. But, as you go through life, different things are meaningful at different ages.

If you’re living a quiet, sedentary life at twenty, you might be missing out on some young man stuff - young woman stuff. If you’re still dodging bullets at sixty, you might be missing out on some old man stuff. Right?

The world’s a beautiful place. If you’re always chasing war, or if you end up with a bullet in your forehead, it’s not such a beautiful place.

If you can’t appreciate the beauty and the profound nature of the world in its quiet forms, then appreciating it in its more dramatic form is kind of bull shit. You’re missing it.

From Corey Richards:

Is there a point at which you, or people in general, look so intensely inward that we start to go backwards? If we constantly triage ourselves or talk about past trauma, are we at risk of reinforcing it?

Definitely. I’m not a social scientist or clinician, but it seems we live in a culture that focuses on self in a way that it never has before. Over the last decade, we’ve become increasingly interested in our own wellness in a unique way. There are benefits to that.

There’s also the potential to reinforce a lot of negative ideas. Deficit, flaws, a general brokenness, right?

We all know what trauma looks like now. More people are studying trauma, it’s normal to talk about trauma publicly, and there’s a tendency for people to identify with trauma.

Trauma bonding and using trauma as an identity to navigate the world.

Understanding trauma is beautiful. And I’m really happy we’ve stepped into a place of better understanding. But leaning on it as an identity becomes less helpful.

I think this is a limitation of conventional talk therapy. Too much reinforcement around why we’re fucked up.

Essentially, Freudian theory in a nutshell comes down to, “It’s your parents’ fault, forgive them.” (laugh)

You know? That’s it. I’m oversimplifying it, but in the end, it’s not REALLY your parents’ fault, so to speak, but that’s the gist. And if you keep going down this road, digging into, “well, mom was this way and my dad did this,” it never ends.

At some point, the whole idea is to let it go.

Instead, the internet tells us to lean into the conversation, and then you find yourself on a treadmill, so to speak. “I thought I was doing the healthy thing, and now I think I actually feel worse.”

From Capt. (Ret) Brad Geary:

Given all that’s happened in the last two years, when you weigh all the good days and some of the tragic things you experienced - Extortion 17 for example - have you had the time and space to surmise the experience holistically?

Do you still view it as a good thing? Something you would recommend young men/women dedicate their lives to?

Yes, absolutely.

It’s the best place in the world to work. I believe that. The culture, being around high-performers and people who are excited to come to work. The value system. The type of person who is always asking, “Am I carrying more weight for my teammates than they’re carrying for me?”

That’s rare, and it’s really a privilege to be a part of it. But it can be intoxicating in a bad way.

I used to tell every graduating class, the SEAL teams are incredible, you’re going to immerse yourself in this job; HOWEVER, don’t make the mistake of letting it become your only sense of self-worth, your identity.

One day it ends.

​Very few people are James Mattis, who spent an entire adult life in the military. In the end, the Navy is going to show you the door, and when that day comes, who are you going to be without the the military? Where’s your family? Where is your relationship with your kids? Play the long game and invest in them now.

​What kind of person can you be in the second half of your life?

From Phil Klay:

The skill of a great writer is to take you into a world that feels urgent. Where we feel the human stakes of a situation. The reason you're doing this interview, the reason you and I are talking is because there is something that feels really urgent to you, now, that isn't necessarily about the grand drama of military action overseas, but something more subtle about the experience of coming back, reflecting on your life and merging back into our chaotic American reality.

From Casey West:

Do you get bored these days? You’ve lived a high-intensity life.

No. Being so close to death, I have so much appreciation for life.

It’s going to make me tear up to explain it to you… I have so much joy in life, and I think even though I’ve had a hard life, I really appreciate life. And I mean that.

In Afghanistan, we would take these platoons in, drop them off – we’d take in 10 guys, brothers, friends, guys who just signed their life away to the military. Five hours later, we’d pick up 9 or less, maybe.

All the bad shit I’ve done? And what did that guy do to deserve what happened to him? Nothing.

We can’t lose sight of that. So, I stay focused on that, and I’m just appreciative.

Art by Agnes Cecile titled, Lines Hold the Memories.

In 2022, while in command of SEAL training, a candidate named Kyle Mullen died shortly after completing “Hell Week,” prompting a broad investigation into the program, the risks associated, and the level of medical oversight.

In the aftermath, Geary faced a series of inquiries and investigations that put his career, retirement, and SEAL Trident at risk. Those proceedings were ultimately dropped in 2024 in part because performance-enhancing drugs had been discovered in Mullen’s vehicle, a discovery that became central to understanding the tragedy.

In this interview we discuss the changes in culture and problem solving Brad witnessed during his time in service, retention, leadership in the face of risk, and the consequences produced by the way senior leaders respond to tragedy.

Thanks for your time, Brad. I don’t think we ever crossed paths in the Navy. My guess is that you were the Executive Officer(XO) at BUD/s not long after I left. In 2012.

That would make sense. I left the east coast in 2012. Not long after Extortion 17, I went to Basic Training Command/BUD/s for the first time - as the XO from 2012-2014.

So I bet we just missed each other.

And eventually you come back to BUD/s as the Commanding Officer? Just recently?

That’s right, after I was XO I went to DC for Joint Interagency Task Force, then to SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team One as the Commanding Officer (CO). After that, I was offered a bonus CO tour, putting me back at BUD/s.

I’m sure you’re aware of what happened after that… But that’s sort of the second half of my career.

Given all that’s happened in the last two years, when you weigh all the good days and some of the tragic things you experienced - Extortion 17 for example - have you had the time and space to surmise the experience holistically?

Do you still view it as a good thing? Something you would recommend young men/women dedicate their lives to?

Yes, absolutely. Despite the way my career ended, being a Navy SEAL and a service member was a very rewarding experience overall.

If you look at just the BUD/s scenario, everything that happened, it was the most rewarding and the most costly tour of my career. That said, I would go back and do it again in a heartbeat.

I’ve told many leaders, many young officers, “When you’re in command at BUD/s, it is high-risk, but it’s worth it.”

The training takes individuals from the street and subjects them to some of the most rigorous military training in the world. There’s a lot of risk and a lot of fulfillment that comes with that. But, being able to shape the future of Naval Special Warfare’s (NSW) culture and metaphorically hand them the future of the SEAL teams… It’s amazing.

The SEAL teams are the best place in the world to work. I believe that. The culture, being around high-performers and people who are excited to come to work. The value system. The type of person who is always asking, “Am I carrying more weight for my teammates than they’re carrying for me?”

That’s rare, and it’s really a privilege to be a part of it.

Happy to hear that, and I think it is rare.

It can be intoxicating in a bad way.

I used to tell every graduating class, the SEAL teams are incredible, you’re going to immerse yourself in this job; HOWEVER, don’t make the mistake of letting it become your only sense of self-worth, your identity.

One day it ends.

​Very few people are James Mattis, who spent an entire adult life in the military. In the end, the Navy is going to show you the door, and when that day comes, who are you going to be without the SEAL teams? Where’s your family? Where is your relationship with your kids? Play the long game and invest in them now.

​What kind of person can you be in the second half of your life?

I couldn’t agree more. There’s not a real need to answer questions like that when you’re a young person in the military. And that’s tough.

I think in the veteran space, we have many great resources that help with pragmatic TRANSITION - getting a job - but what you’re talking about is a lot harder to solve for.

When I was young in my career, I found myself on a flight from San Diego to Virginia Beach with someone who was a very high-ranking member of the SEAL teams. We got to talking, and he expressed concern with the popularity of the SEAL teams, its effect on the type of candidate coming into BUD/s, and the optionality these people have in life relative to fifteen years ago.

You look at your average BUD/s class, you’re likely to have extremely accomplished athletes, sons of politicians, and executives at Fortune 500 companies. That wasn’t the case pre 9/11 or prior to the Osama Bin Ladin raid, perhaps.

I’m curious to hear your thoughts on this. Seems you’re uniquely qualified to speak to this.

It’s a great question.

There was a time when the number of candidates with college degrees really increased. For whatever reason, as the brand became more popular, more college grads were enlisting.

And it’s true that the program today attracts people who have many options in life. However, I think we tend to focus on the wrong thing there.

The truth is that older candidates statistically perform better at BUD/s on average. College degree or not.

But what we really want to know is what happens down the line? What happens when these people with options are 8-10 years in — they’re getting married, they’re settling down, maybe having kids.

Are the teams providing me with opportunities? Do I have a ten-year plan? Am I still developing as a person?

​This generation is smart enough to ask questions like that.

Money is a factor, but I don’t think it’s the biggest factor, or even close to.

​Guys want to know, is this a meritocracy? Will I be rewarded for the investment I’m making here? As a SEAL, as a leader? And lastly, is the community investing in me so that when I get out, I’m able to succeed as a professional, as a father, as a husband?

All of that matters more than money, from what I observed.

We’ve moved away from some of the programs that I think really helped in many ways. Programs where you could get a degree from Harvard or UPenn – certain programs where the Navy was saying, “you’re investing in us, we’re investing in you.”

Do these young folks have many other opportunities in life? Sure. But they’re still the type of people willing to take less money for something that satisfies them as a person, as someone who serves their country.

​I think that’s right. I also think combat plays a large role here. For better or worse.

Absolutely, it is. If that’s the primary driver, the main thing you want out of your career… Well, there’s no guarantee.

You know what else I’ll say, this generation, the classes graduating from BUD/s today are much more intolerant of bad leadership than my generation was. When I was a young guy, if you had a bad commander, a bad boss… You just dealt with it. There was an understanding that you win some and lose some.

We were guilty of allowing that in our community.

This generation has much less patience. They’re not willing to do back-to-back tours if they’re unimpressed by the leaders above them. I saw that firsthand.

That’s good. People, and certainly those in the special operations community, want to see their lives and abilities going up and to the right. If that wasn’t true, they wouldn’t be where they are. Plateaus and any stagnation can really turn people away.

You’ve witnessed two and a half decades of warfighters. What would you say are some of the attributes possessed by your own peer group that the current generation lacks, and vice versa? What is the youngest generation doing that previous generations could benefit from?

It’s important to talk about.

You know, my generation had this absolute resiliency and just unrelenting hardness. I believe that in the first half of the GWOT, we really showed resolve in finding the enemy, gaining the upper hand, and completing the mission in whatever way necessary.

For example, I recall a time when we used helicopters to get to every target. A few months into that, we are way too loud, we’re waking the enemy up, and essentially, we rarely found who we were looking for because that tactic was flawed in many ways.

​Well, eventually someone says,“Why don’t we try something else?” So we did. We explored just about every option out there. In some cases, we hiked over the top of 10,000 ft mountains in the snow throughout the night just to sneak up to a target. The way my generation responded, was like, “Okay! Let’s do that.” No matter how difficult it was.

And there’s some value to that mindset, right? Well, what happened? Now we’re hiking over mountain ranges, through rivers — these hikes that would last all night long. Ten hours before you even get to the target. Very problematic.

So what effect did that have on the mission? A different one. We accomplished the intent, but often times the solution creates a new set of problems.

I sense that this current generation - is much more inclined to innovate and solve those new problems. They ask a lot more questions. They’re much more impatient when it comes to what they sense is wrong. Whether it’s moral or ethical, or tactical. This generation has much more courage when it comes to raising their hand and saying, “I actually disagree with that,” or “Hey, I think this is wrong.”

Some people take offense to that. Call it hubris, but I really don’t think that’s it. Done the right way, it’s high EQ, high moral courage, and it can save lives and add value to the mission.

That “roger that, sir!” mentality - it got the U.S. military a long way. It had its place, but I don’t think it’s applicable everywhere.

​That’s interesting. I wonder how much it’s tied to what we were talking about before, the places in America that these people arrive from. Is that part of it?

I think so, but it’s not totally new.

I’ll tell you a story about a time when I was a young lieutenant and I had the opportunity to augment a Tier One unit.​

I’ll never forget being in the briefing room and hearing these reconnaissance guys reject a mission because they’d done a risk assessment and come to find out, the mission was a bad idea.

That’s true professionalism, I remember thinking.

Rewind fifteen or twenty years, and it might be a rumor, but it’s a popular story: a young officer allegedly pushed back against the airfield seizure in Panama. Guy raises his hand and says, “Hey, if the objective is to stop Noriega’s aircraft, we can just blow it up from far away.”

​They fired that guy.

“Negative, you’re going to walk across the airfield, cross open terrain, and assault the airplane.”

Well, you can look up what happened.

What do you hope to accomplish in your post-Navy life?

Oh man, I think a lot about this question.

First and foremost, I want to create a life where the past doesn’t define me. I can tell you I spent 25 years as a SEAL thinking about leadership, leadership style, and what it means to be a leader.

Strong leadership principles should transcend industry, and I’m excited to test that. I’m excited to continue to grow as a leader.

I want to establish roots at this point; I’d like to have a place to bring my kids back to. That’s one of the downsides of our lifestyle; we feel like sojourners, because we are. I think we did nine cross-country moves over the years, and my kids don’t really have a place they call home.

Whatever we do as a family, we want it to be God-glorifying and consistent with who we are.

I’ve spoken to officers from my own generation who are coming up on command-level leadership. One in particular I spoke with recently has only a few years until retirement - two or three young kids, and there’s a fear that when it comes to military leadership, success in recent years has everything to do with how many people get DUIs and arrested on the weekends and it has less to do with leadership acumen or ability.

That’s inconsistent with what their superiors were measured against when we were focused on Iraq and Afghanistan.

How do you think about terms like “total accountability” and this concept of people having their careers judged based on garrison-type events? When I think about this topic, I think your response to the death of Kyle Mullen is part of this.

I am very much a proponent of the idea of “Command.” But, before my case, I think I had a misguided and even unhealthy perspective about “The Commander is ultimately responsible. The buck stops with you.”

​Yes, the CO is responsible.

But, the Navy has abused that concept and uses it inappropriately. The whole, “The CO goes down with the ship…”

I can’t tell you how many people said that to me during my case. But…my ship wasn’t sinking.

We’ve manipulated a good thing into something that allows the Navy, as an institution, to absolve itself from ever being at fault for anything.

These days the typical response from a Public Affairs Officer is, “Well, something happened and we relieved the CO for ‘lack of trust and confidence.’”

What does that tell you? It sends a message that it wasn’t an institutional problem; this is a single bad leader problem.

I heard this directly during my case. It’s much easier to say, “Captain Geary is a failure,” than it is to say, “Our institution created dangerous conditions and implemented bad policies, which we knew about. We tied our leaders’ hands, we ignored warning signs, and this is a problem we have to solve as a Navy.”

Instead, they say, “Captain Geary fucked up, and to fix the problem, we replaced him.”

But what message does that send to our young aspiring leaders? It disincentivizes the 12-yr officer who is weighing the pros and cons of staying around to compete for command leadership.

The second problem is that now, leaders are incentivized to spend all their time looking for and eliminating risk, which is a false notion and a fool’s errand. Risk will never be eliminated - it must be managed. But everything the military does these days is focused on reducing risk. Forget about developing people – making them the best they can be.

When that’s the mindset, as a Navy, we are going to spend 100% of our time just trying to stop something bad from happening.

Well, that’s not going to work in a wartime environment where it’s literally our job to make bad things happen. Inadvertently over time, we’ve created a culture that in peacetime directly contradicts what our wartime function is supposed to be. In other words, we’ve lost our way as an organization. Our stated values are incongruent with what behavior we actually incentivize and disincentivize.

I hadn’t thought of it that way. It is a way in which the highest levels of DoD leadership are likely exempt from any wrongdoing, ever.

It’s a pattern and it’s a problem.

It’s a problem we have to solve if we want the best young men and women in our country to raise their hand and lead in the warfighter industry.

You have to show young leaders that when they accept reasonable risk and they manage that risk, the Navy will have their back. And when that 1% scenario comes around and something terrible happens, we’re not going to hang you.

Did you feel bound and like your hands were tied as the CO of BUD/s?

100%. We asked for the authority to test for steroids for over decade. Right when I’d gotten there in 2012 as Executive Officer, there had been a recent steroid problem. People found out, some guys got kicked out; whatever. The problem goes away for a while, and you don’t hear about it, and then a few years later, what happens? It comes back.

Of course it does. If you look at the popularity of steroids in our country and you look at BUD/s training… It’s not at all crazy that the students may opt to use steroids to get an edge. And we also know how dangerous that can be.

We asked for authority to test for over a decade. Not only were we told “you can’t have the resources,” we were told, “you don’t have the right to test. You can’t go into someone’s bodily autonomy and look for these things.”

Now, if you had a reasonable suspicion, you could test a single individual. But it can’t be broad. Can’t be part of the program. This is what we were told.

We were told we couldn’t search vehicles, which is ultimately where the evidence was found in Kyle Mullen’s case.

There were other issues, for example, in the autopsy, Kyle’s heart measured 63% larger than it should have been.

And so, obviously, everyone wants to know, how did we miss this? How did this not show up somewhere in the multitude of screenings these guys are getting?

Well, come to find out if you look at Kyle’s physical from before BUD/s, there were clues, mentions of gynecomastia… Things that were never communicated to BUD/s. Things that put these sailors’ lives at risk.

And I’ll tell you that in the time since Kyle’s death, despite the many ways they came after me, they’ve invested a ton of money into cardiovascular imaging technology. You know how it goes, someone dies, and then all of a sudden, “Here’s all this money to start doing the right thing.” Having that has prevented numerous candidates from starting Hell Week - scenarios where this new technology has identified major heart defects and issues, whereas previously, they would have just proceeded with training.

The point is, many, many people at the ground level were speaking up about steroid use - how risky it is - and for the most part, those concerns were silenced.

Red tape and breakdowns in communication.

And following Kyle’s death, instead of saying, “The Navy made mistakes and we will never let this happen again.”

Instead, they said, “Brad Geary. We can tell people he was responsible.” Insiders admitted to me that in closed-door meetings at the Pentagon everyone acknowledged drugs were the primary cause of his death. But as soon as the doors opened, it was a hunt for accountability.

To be fair, they did finally allocate authority and resources to address the issue. We’re now increasing our medical screening technology. We’re testing the students more. But these were things we had been asking about for a long time.

I’ll ask you one more. Something which I think makes the SEAL teams, and the U.S. military great, is this idea that for most, what truly matters is when you look in the mirror, when you lie down at night, were you a worthy teammate?

When it comes to a high-stakes, high-consequence mission, do the guys to my left and right want me to be with them?

You led at a high level… In combat. We’ve just met, but I know some guys who worked for you, and they have nothing but great things to say. By many definitions, you did the job the right way.

When you were going through everything, congressmen and lawyers getting involved, going on the Shawn Ryan show - did it ever occur to you to give up? I know you’re not a quitter, but you could have just walked away, let it be, and moved on with your life.

I offered to.

When the whole thing started, even before the investigation and all the lies, I told my boss, “I get it. I’m in command, I knew what I was getting into. I love the Trident so much, I love the Teams, if we need a fall guy, I’ll do it.”

And the response was, “No, no, no, Brad. Don’t worry, everyone knows this was caused by drug use. This is difficult for everyone, but you’re going to be fine.”

Fast forward, and they began to lie about things. When they refused to take responsibility for this and acknowledge that drugs were a contributing factor, well…something or someone has to be responsible for his death. When the Navy dictated the evidence must be excluded… Okay, then what was it? Thus began the hunt for a scapegoat.

I had a problem with that, but generally, I was still willing to let the process unfold. I stayed silent for over a year while I watched the Navy continually bend its core values, and ultimately break them. Even at the expense of my own career. It wasn’t until I was charged with Captain’s Mast the second time that I was able to see the unredacted copies of the investigation, and then I saw the names of many of my guys - doctors, corpsmen, instructors - good people who served honorably that the Navy recommended be taken down with me. Alleging they were responsible for this person’s life. It just wasn’t true. It was a false narrative built upon the Navy’s failures…the Navy’s lies.

As their Commanding Officer, I was responsible for these people, just as much as I was responsible for Kyle. That’s when I told my wife, “We can’t just let this play out anymore. We can no longer afford to trust the process.”

That makes sense. Hard to hear.

It was heartbreaking. Kyle’s death, the way it all played out, it’s all awful. You know, the whole time, I never wanted to hurt the brand; I didn’t want any more negative attention on Kyle; I didn’t want any of it.

Around this time, I asked the Force Master Chief over to my house. We had whiskey in the backyard.

I showed him my cards, all the evidence I had, all the emails I’d received from insiders who sent me evidence of corruption. And I said, “Look, my lawyers are telling me this is a slam dunk case. Let’s not hurt Naval Special Warfare. We need to stop the lies.”

​And I said, “Look, if this doesn’t stop, I have to take action. I refuse to stand by and trust that the Navy is going to do the right thing, especially when they’ve shown they are doing the wrong thing.” I told him, “I believe I have been ordained by God Almighty to take this stand at this place at this time. Does it sound like I will back down from these principles?”

​He replied, “No.” So he leaves, tells me he’ll talk to the Admiral, and then nothing changed. They blew me off. I think they thought I would fade off in the background.

​That’s when I took it to the House and Senate. Shortly after that, Shawn Ryan reached out. After hearing about the case, he prioritized me above everything else he had going on.

I eventually got access to additional emails and found one from our Admiral to the Secretary of the Navy or the CNO, which basically paraphrased said, “I think at this point we’ve taken this too far. I recommend we let Brad retire. This is not good for anyone.”

And the Navy blew that off also. Just ignored that advice. I’m not sure what they thought would happen. The Navy raised me as an Officer in accordance with “Honor, Courage, and Commitment.” Then, Naval Special Warfare trained me to fight. What did they think I would do? Did they really expect me to roll over and let them betray our core values in plain sight?”

​Are the folks pushing this SEALs? Or is this the big Navy?

The politicization of the military and Senior Naval Officers are the villains in this story. Senior SEAL Offices were the ones who stood by and let it happen. They failed to have moral courage when it mattered most. I’ve never said their names publicly because that’s just not… I just don’t feel like that’s a good thing to do. The Navy deliberately demonized me with the public and NSW ducked boat and watched it happen. But…I won’t return evil for evil.

Even after we had support from dozens of Congressional Representatives and Senators, the Navy continued to come after me. That’s when I went back to the Senate and Shawn Ryan a second time. I had the unanimous blessing from my family. Basically, our position was, “We’ll take this as far as we have to.”

​I want to get back to your comment about the guys to my left and right and those under my leadership. You’re absolutely right. That is what matters. That is what matters to me. And so while I did think it was worth fighting, I never lost sight of that. A lot of people under my command wrote letters and spoke up in support of me, and that gave me the power to fight from a position of, “Whatever comes of this, I’m comfortable with what I’ve done.” Their words…their testimonies, showed us they felt what I intended with my leadership philosophy. They felt my love for them.

​Good for you. I really enjoyed this. I hope as you move on into your next life, the whole case, that whole part is just a chapter of life and not the first thing you think about when you remember your career.

I appreciate you saying that. Kyle Mullen, just like the SEAL Trident, it’s a foundational part of who I am today, but neither of them define me.

​Thanks for having me. I appreciate your writing; you have a gift. I started following along a while ago. Thanks for having me.

Her essays and stories have appeared in Oprah Daily, Porter House Review, Ruminate Magazine, and Open Global Rights and she holds a degree in Family Studies and a Child Protection Certification from Harvard University.

In our conversation, we talk about humanity inside addiction, the limits of forgiveness, and the difficulty of ending the cycles we inherit.

Thanks for doing this. It’s a pleasure to talk to you.

Sure. The interviews you sent me from this series are amazing. I really appreciate you having me.

Thank you. Thanks for reading.

The Bright Years is your debut novel. What was your experience with writing prior to this story?

My background is in social work. I started working with foster families at 17, volunteering, and kept going from there. I worked in residential treatment and as a foster parent myself.

I’ve also done a little bit of work on the courts side of things.

In 2020, I read a novel called Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli, which is about a family set against the backdrop of the crisis on the southern border. What that novel taught me was that, regardless of what you’re interested in, you can do anything with fiction.

The artful language and the way the novel showed this part of America that you would otherwise read about in the news or in non-fiction - it was enough to encourage me to write.

But aside from that, I have no formal education in writing. I studied Family Development in college and got a Child Protection Certification. All social work type stuff.

That’s very impressive. To be able to write an entire novel and then for it to become a national bestseller.

Well, I wrote one manuscript before The Bright Years. It was about the foster system, something I care deeply about, but by the end… It had too much of an agenda.

In writing that story, I learned two things: I could write a book. And that with fiction, it might be better for me to ask questions, more than you really want to answer them.

How long did it take you to write the story? And did it change much from its original form?

It was initially titled The Bright Letters. This was 2021.

The first draft was fully epistolary.

At that time, I was working, taking care of kids, living my life, so I set it aside for about 6 months after I wrote it.

Looking back, you know, I think you can write something and not necessarily want to share it. At the very beginning, I never thought about readers or what a publisher might want.

Anyway, I returned to the manuscript after a few months and thought… Maybe there’s something here. Maybe this is something people would be interested in.

I queried a few agents, received some feedback, and a few times I heard the same thing. Agents saying, “You know, this is a beautiful story, but I can’t sell an epistolary novel.”

So, I experimented with writing a few chapters in first-person present. I was hesitant at first. I was really only willing to change the story if it meant the work improved.

Then, in the fall of 2023, I signed with an agent, and within a few weeks, several major publishers were competing for the manuscript.

I think what stood out most to me about The Bright Years was how honestly the characters are depicted. Their thoughts and their decisions. You write these characters as complete people… Including the parts, the imperfect parts, which most would prefer the world not see, but are nonetheless true.

Is that something you set out to accomplish?

Yes. I think honesty… You know, as a reader, and even in songwriting, photography, whatever the case may be, I think we’re very drawn to honesty in art. We all want to see something real, something true.

It can be difficult. Characters often represent different things, different ideas. You, as the writer, can come up with ideas for who these characters are supposed to be.

But I think what readers appreciate is the most honest representation.

What’s the most common experience? That’s the only way you connect the story to your own life.

Absolutely. Speaking of common experience, I don’t want to attach a label to your book, but it does seem that popular or contemporary fiction is often set against some dramatic point in time — someone’s been murdered or a natural disaster has struck.

Your story is really about common people, common circumstances—people who might be sitting in this coffee shop right now.

You’re right, it’s a character study.

Sometimes you hear people use the terms “literary” vs. “commercial”?

And the two are often marketed in very different ways. Where they sit on the shelf in the bookstore. Is it written for awards or morning shows?

These are all sorts of questions that circle around in the publishing process.

I appreciate you noticing that. Even as we were pitching the story, I wasn’t sure where The Bright Years fit.

At some point, you have to set all that aside. Tell the story you want to tell.

The book has some beautiful scene descriptions. Very simple, very poignant scenes which, for me, brought back a lot of memories - some of them pleasant, some unpleasant. Are those things you collect as a mother or as a social worker - from your own childhood? How do you get those to the page?

I love language on the line level. I love imagery, reading poetry.

I’ll wake up in the middle of the night with a phrase or pull over on the side of the road and write something down.

But also, I really try to inhabit the character. I try to write characters where that’s possible. Trying to make them the most realistic I possibly can.

Like we talked about before.

You know, recently I’ve been thinking about this idea… I grew up with my mom. Single mom, who was blind. I would describe the world to her as a child. Not just, “Oh, the sky is blue, and the sunset is pretty.” Also, interpersonal things.

It was her and myself and my younger sister and we would be out doing something completely normal… At the grocery store, I would whisper to her, “Hey, this person is getting very upset with this other person.”

Looking back, I was doing that as a very young child. Maybe I learned to pay attention in a different way.

I think that’s shaped my writing. Shaped my view.

I was thinking on my way here, The Bright Years does a beautiful job of explaining a handful of otherwise difficult human dynamics. One of which is this breakdown in communication, which often exists when a person’s been impacted by someone else’s addiction or alcoholism - someone who’s caused them trauma, I suppose.

Despite that happening, you’ll find that people will still care deeply for that person - that family member.

You try to justify and explain that to someone else, and it’s difficult. Admitting that you still care about or still have a relationship with someone who’s caused you a lot of pain - I think a lot of people feel shame and guilt around that.

It feels like something that’s often true, but shouldn’t be? It’s not logical, really.

But by the end of your book, it’s easier to see how that can be true. How it comes to be.

You’re absolutely right. That’s a good way to put it.

Was that something you were trying to depict?

(laughter) Not at all.

Originally, this was a mother-daughter story. Lillian was going to carry the weight of her story, having placed a child for adoption. Then, as she’s raising Georgette, she realizes… I want to tell her one day, tell her she has a brother.

The dynamics around that. How does she navigate the whole thing? Then you would see Georgette’s perspective. Receiving this information, trying to make sense of it.

And so, at the heart of the story was always discovering parents as people. That part has always been true. The intangible things we inherit from our parents.

Initially, I was trying to get the character’s father, Ryan, off the page. And I’ll tell you, as I was doing that, it felt like everybody I’ve ever known who has experienced addiction or alcoholism was tapping me on the shoulder - through this fictional character, saying, “give me more humanity than that. Give me a voice.”

“Don’t make me a stereotype.”

So it’s interesting to me that you ask that.

I don’t have personal experience with alcoholism, but I’ve seen a lot of it through foster care. While I was writing the book, I sat down with a handful of very generous people - people who shared their experiences with me. The number one thing I took from that experience has a lot to do with what you’re saying. Alcoholism can ruin lives, but at the same time, the love and affection in that relationship does not always go away just because someone becomes an alcoholic.

Even if you wish that were true.

I really wanted that… That humanity to be part of this story.

I found myself rooting for Ryan despite his choices. Maybe that says something about me, but I think it’s also a testament to how complex these relationships can be.

Have you found that the message you intended to convey is consistent with the message readers are receiving?

Yes. But it’s worth stating that the message only revealed itself to me as I was writing.

There’s me as the writer and my interpretation of the world, my having worked with foster families. But one thing I learned as a writer is that it helps not to have a message. To just follow the character’s journey. Not to force it.

Maybe I just need to become a more mature writer, but it was during writing and even after writing that the message became clear.

And what is that message?

Forgiveness. That forgiveness is complicated.

The fact that forgiveness does not mean we’re saying, “everything is okay,” and we just go on. It’s about the need to say, “it’s not okay,” and then figuring out where you go from there.

When people still love each other. How do they do that when there’s been pain and a lot of bad decisions?

I think the most important question in the story is when one of the characters asks, “What’s the difference between an excuse and a reason?”

That question… In the generational cycle, that is so often there.

It’s also about the idea that we all enter the world under different circumstances—some with advantages, others with the odds stacked high against them.

But at some point, we become responsible for our actions, we take agency, we become adults. That cycle we inherit — we either continue break it or we continue it.

That choice depends on many factors. And it’s messy - hardly ever clean.

I hope the story helps illustrate the way people make that decision.

Does that make sense?

Perfect sense. It creates a more gracious, more complete way to look at these situations.

Tell me, the book you wrote, tell me what it’s about.

It’s also a character study. A love story/Americana novel about folks I would sometimes brush against in the military. The protagonist is between community college and laying concrete after high-school and so he decides to join the army, somewhat spontaneously.

In 2006-2007, if you made a decision like that, there’s a very good chance you would find yourself in some very intense combat… In Iraq — many of these folks less than twenty years old.

The majority of the novel takes place once he gets home from Iraq and much of it is told through the POV of his wife/girlfriend. He tries to re-assimilate and ceate a life for himself after having experienced a lot of terrible things at a very young age.

In the end it’s really a nod to veteran spouses. I wanted the story to depict how much veteran spouses have done for our country.

How lost most of us would be without them. Myself included. (laughter.)

That sounds super interesting. I’ll be excited to see it come to life.

Thank you Sarah and thank you for doing this. I really enjoyed your novel and it was a pleasure speaking with you.

You can find more about Sarah at https://www.sarahdamoff.com/ and on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/sarahdamoff/

And if you enjoyed this interview, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

He is the first American to have climbed an 8,000-meter peak in winter. Climbed Mt. Everest without supplemental oxygen, and as a National Geographic photographer, his work has spanned every corner of the world - including a self-portrait he took just after surviving an avalanche on Gasherbrum II which became the cover of National Geographic’s 125th-anniversary issue.

He’s completed numerous first ascents and photographed human stories on every continent. But it was in a tent beneath the world’s 7th highest peak, Dhaulagiri, that he decided to let it all go.

In our conversation, we discuss his book The Color of Everything, the challenges of starting over, identity, psychedelics, and a longing for risk amidst everyday life.

I enjoyed your book. It was helpful and the writing felt unusually high-quality, especially for a memoir.

I’m grateful for that feedback. It makes me happy because you go out and write these stories, and sometimes you wonder, does anybody give a shit about this?

So I really appreciate that.

I know what you mean.

This interview series is about life’s transition periods. It started mostly to do with veteran transition but has since expanded beyond that in many ways. In “The Color of Everything,” we see your career as a climber and photographer come to an end while lying in a tent beneath the world’s 7th-highest mountain. I assume there was a lot that led to that happening.

I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the months or weeks leading up to that day?

You’re right. Nobody’s ever asked me that question.

I think we remember much of the past in snapshots - where something happens, and because of that circumstance, everything changes.

More often, what happens is a series of a million little moments that lead up to some transition - some final action we take.

Looking back, what took place on Dhaulagiri (Nepal, 26,795 ft) marked the culmination of a three-year period during which something was shifting within me. As much as I loved photography, fundamentally, it wasn’t in alignment with what I wanted anymore.

Neither was climbing in a way.

I had been really focused on doing a new route on Everest, and I was very focused on being “Cory Richards” in a sense. Cory Richards, the pro-climber and National Geographic Photographer. I was deeply concerned about living a life that supported the myth of who I was supposed to be.

That’s not to say there wasn’t a lot of value in the life that led up to that point. But I did know it wasn’t working. I knew something had to change.

Even in my awareness of the necessary change, there was still fear about not knowing what would be on the other side of it. If I’m not the mountain-climbing photographer guy, then what will I be? And what’s that transition going to feel like?

The shift from Everest to Dhaulagiri occurred at the last minute because the north side of Everest was closed due to COVID. So, things keep getting pushed around, and the training kept getting extended.

I was exhausted, and looking back, in all the years I spent climbing 8,000m peaks, from the end of one expedition to the beginning of the next - all of it was, sort of a long meditation on my own mortality.

I was constantly thinking about the multitude of different ways I might die.

And as you probably know, when we constantly conjure those scenarios in our minds, we’re living them in a very real way where our brain chemistry matches a version of what the real experience would be. Am I making any sense?

Sure.

If you’re driving around, thinking through a fight with your spouse, you experience a piece of the real thing, emotionally. Even physically, in many cases.

So for years, I’m in this constant meditation of my own mortality.

So, that’s all going on in the background, and then we get to base camp, and my mind starts to speed up into this hyper-stimulation hypomanic state, which I didn’t really recognize. Everything sort of fractured.

In many ways, our minds and bodies are brilliant in their ability to adapt.

Eventually, the stress we store in our bodies will push us to change. Or at least it creates a scenario where we’re asked to take the invitation. If we constantly refuse that invitation, your physical body might create a scenario where you feel pushed into it.

Sometimes we call that a nervous breakdown or panic attack - terms that indicate our bodies are telling our minds, “Look, we have to make a change here.”

Did I answer your question?

Absolutely.

I was walking with a friend last week on Torrey’s Peak, and we were discussing other vets we know and what they’re up to. We end up agreeing on this idea, which is, to the extent that you’re able to see your having been a SEAL as just a chapter of your life and not this singular thing where then for the rest of your life you see yourself as this former military person - it seems to me, the better off you really are.

In some scenarios, that may be unfair and easier said than done. But it does seem true.

I’m curious, in your success with this book, doing podcasts, speaking about your life so openly - has it been challenging to move forward beyond that time in your life? I suspect talking about mental health constantly has an impact on your mental health?

It’s been very challenging. Again, great question. These are some of the better questions I’ve had. Most thoughtful.

I make the joke all the time, “I’m really sick of Cory Richards.”

You write a book about your life, and in some ways, it closes a chapter, but in others, it opens those chapters for everyone else, especially a book like “The Color of Everything.”

So yeah, ‘I’m very sick of myself,” but I think really what that means is - I’m ready for this to move into the next phase of life. And I know people in the climbing community say, “Cory, can you please shut up about this avalanche?” And I want to. I don’t want to keep talking about it, but I think this is the situation I put myself in. (laugh)

That was one of my thoughts when I finished the book. We’re following along through childhood, through these different parts of life - the reader begins rooting for you in many ways, and then you get to the end, and I was thinking… The release of this book itself will create a level of success — and that will end up being part of this story.

Is there a point at which you, or people in general, look so intensely inward that we start to go backwards? If we constantly triage ourselves or talk about past trauma, are we at risk of reinforcing it?

Definitely. I’m not a social scientist or clinician, but it seems we live in a culture that focuses on self in a way that it never has before. Over the last decade, we’ve become increasingly interested in our own wellness in a unique way. There are benefits to that.

There’s also the potential to reinforce a lot of negative ideas. Deficit, flaws, a general brokenness, right?

We all know what trauma looks like now. More people are studying trauma, it’s normal to talk about trauma publicly, and there’s a tendency for people to identify with trauma.

Trauma bonding and using trauma as an identity to navigate the world.

Understanding trauma is beautiful. And I’m really happy we’ve stepped into a place of better understanding. But leaning on it as an identity becomes less helpful.

I think this is a limitation of conventional talk therapy. Too much reinforcement around why we’re fucked up.

Essentially, Freudian theory in a nutshell comes down to, “It’s your parents’ fault, forgive them.” (laugh)

You know? That’s it. I’m oversimplifying it, but in the end, it’s not REALLY your parents’ fault, so to speak, but that’s the gist. And if you keep going down this road, digging into, “well, mom was this way and my dad did this,” it never ends.

At some point, the whole idea is to let it go.

Instead, the internet tells us to lean into the conversation, and then you find yourself on a treadmill, so to speak. “I thought I was doing the healthy thing, and now I think I actually feel worse.”

I started writing mainly because I had made the mistake of thinking… If I’m no longer a SEAL and I’m going to take a corporate-type computer job, I can do that during the week, and then on the weekends, I’ll go backcountry skiing, climbing, etc., and reconnect with some of what it felt like to be in the military.

That didn’t work very well, as you can imagine, and writing became a thing that existed all seven days a week, preventing this high-highs and low-lows scenario.

In making that change, while positive, it still created a void of risk and connection to the presence you feel when you’re doing something in the mountains, and often in the military.

I’m curious, in your departure from climbing and photography, do you miss your relationship with adventure and risk? Do you struggle with boredom or apathy as a result?

The short answer is absolutely. When I was traveling nine months out of the year and going to crazy places, living in tents and nearly dying half the time, it was exciting, and my mind was really occupied.

Living in LA can feel pretty fucking boring. Recently, even this last week, I noticed I was looking for ways to make things more exciting, and they’re not always healthy.

But that’s a consequence of my decisions. The travel and the 8,000m peaks - those come with a lot of hazards as well, mentally and physically, as you’re aware.

I try to be careful not to make myself into a victim. I mean, the military, at least, has the potential to help people. I was taking pictures and climbing mountains. (laughter)

It serves a purpose in its own way though. Creating art. Inspiration.

It’s like looking for candy. What’s the thing that’s gonna make life feel less fucking bored?

I actually think about soldiers a lot. I think about people who have been caught in conflict, and I never want to equate my life to that - it’s a very different thing. I don’t want people in the military to ever think that I’m trying to borrow from their experience. However, I do think there are many similarities between climbing and combat.

I wasn’t there to defend anything. I wasn’t fighting for anything other than myself. But the psychology of it is very similar.

We all have a longing to be in a place where hyper-vigilance is required, where there’s a reductionist mentality, where, you know, the beginning, middle, and end of your existence is dependent on making it through something tremendously hard, potentially traumatic, and uncertain.

Does that make sense? I don’t want that to come off the wrong way.

It doesn’t come across as the wrong way, and it does make sense. It’s a comparison I’ve thought about many times before. Do you see a future where you return to mountaineering?

Yes. I want to go back and climb sometime in the next year and a half, back to the Himalaya.

I’m dying to go back. And the odd thing is, I think I want to go back and do everything solo. You’d think I’d like to be connected at this point, but I actually love being in the mountains alone. I think there’s something about it to me… There’s a lot of depth to it.

I’m happy to go climb on teams too.

I’ve also engaged in other high-risk activities. I started a business that has its own sort of risk profile. I find that interesting. I’m always thinking about ways to find fulfillment without the high-stimulus component, because as I’ve figured out, you’ll never be satisfied there; you’ll always be going back for more.

You have kids, right?

Yes. Two girls.

I assume that occupies time, although it might feel mundane. How have you filled that space? Through writing?

Well, my youngest daughter is deaf, and that’s given me something important to pour into - something to focus on. Writing has helped.

I still ski and climb occasionally, but I’m not looking to extract anything from it. Joy and fitness, I guess. Spending time with friends. I try not to use it as a drug to help me get through the following week. (laughter)

Wow. That’s a beautiful story.

Thanks. It’s not lost on me… Most days.

I was never that serious, though. Just a hobbyist. You abruptly transitioned away from being a top National Geographic photographer and a pro climber. Can you speak to that? I know your plan was to make films, but that’s not something that happens overnight. How was it starting over, generally speaking?

It wasn’t easy. Looking back, I think I was the one standing in my own way.

I think I had this idea of exceptionalism, which sometimes I recognize in high achiever types. Special Ops, maybe. These people, myself included, can sometimes have an attitude, which is like, “Well, I’ve done something at such a high level, why should I start over at this point if I can’t accomplish or achieve at that exact same level?”

A lot of that is ego, I think.

But I also think contemporary culture suggests everyone should be doing things at an incredibly high level. That’s what Instagram tells us, “Look at all these incredibly talented and beautiful people. That’s what you should aspire to.”

And as a consequence, people will not get started on what they could be great at. Instead, we end up sitting on the sidelines with our phones in our hands.

How was the process of getting the words down on the page? Had you written anything long-form previously?

I find writing to be pretty humbling.

Given the nature of the book, the process was pretty transformational. It unlocked a broader understanding of myself. Opened my mind to another piece of me that I had not explored before.

There’s another aspect to this, though, and people will either love it or hate it if you include it in the interview. I know the book is good, objectively. But I also know I didn’t really train for that. I didn’t study it. It just happened. And while that’s great, it’s cause for concern in terms of my future as a writer.

It’s a little embarrassing. Is the book enjoyable because I comprehend the craft? Like a Stephen King novel? Or is it just because of the contents?

I was committed to the project, and I pulled it off, but that’s certainly not to say I could do it again. And I don’t take that for granted. And maybe I haven’t really written in the last year and a half because of it.

I’m not experienced enough to know for sure, but I think there’s a little bit of that in every writer. Anyone who’s written anything that was accepted broadly, you’re wondering - was that a whim? Could I ever do that again?

Psychedelics have really emerged into the veteran mental health conversation in the last three to five years. Generally, it seems to be a great thing, with far more positive stories than negative ones. However, lately it seems we’re seeing examples that show this is more nuanced than what we might be led to believe through social media.

Can you speak a little bit about your experience and some of that nuance?

Absolutely. I’m very hopeful about psychedelics. I think there’s a tremendous amount to be gained from them, and I think these stories - the testimonies you see on social media - they’re mostly true, or at least they’re true for that individual at that specific time when they’re speaking about their experience.

What I would suggest, though, is that healing is a long-term process. It’s not as simple as ingesting something and believing because we feel better, we’re healed.

Neuroplasticity works both ways, right? The beauty is that we can change the way our mind works, but that doesn’t change the fact that when a person exercises their mind in a certain way for decades, they still have deeply ingrained neural pathways that don’t go away instantly.

Give it six months. Give it a year. Give it two years, because what’s very likely to happen, what I see happen all the time, is that people have these experiences, but their behaviors don’t really change. They change short-term, but then there’s a creep that comes back in.

The trick is to use the short-term gain to reinforce positive behaviors, which then add to the long-term benefit of real change.

What I hear all the time is, “I did psychedelics and it was like doing 10 years’ worth of therapy.”

No, it wasn’t. It feels that way, but what is really happening is you’re getting new insights into things, but that is not healing itself.

Like I said in the book, it’s like having a dream where you learn how to make fire. And then you wake up and you go around kind of arrogantly, thinking, I can make fire with sticks. Bullshit. No, you can’t. You got the information. You got the roadmap. Now you have to go find those sticks. You have to practice. You have to go do it in real life.

Over time, if you’re committed, you will make fire, but it’s not because you spent one weekend in Mexico. It’s because of what you did after. And if you do nothing after that, over time, the healing process will cease. Unless you’re working very, very hard, every day to integrate and reinforce the changes they want to make.

Very well put. An important message that seems somewhat intuitive… Unless you believe in magic or something like this.

Well, you’re right. It is often presented that way.

And look, there’s some bullshit out there too. I know people who’ve done ayahuasca fifty times, and they’re still just dickheads. (laughter)

All this stuff, people can really talk the talk; they know the therapy speak, they know the sort of healing wellness talk track. And yet their actions are completely misaligned with what they’re saying.

The truth is, I’ve been that person; I was that person for a long time. I learned the language; I sounded legitimate, but my essence and integrity were wildly different from what I was saying.

I think your honesty is helpful and refreshing.

With the veteran community, a certain percentage of these folks are looking for a way to avoid a crisis. If it’s a way for people to escape an otherwise burning building, then that’s a good thing.

Without a doubt.

It saved my life. I was suicidal, and it pulled me right out.

Does that mean it hasn’t come back? No, it just means it set me on a journey.

There are two ways to change your mind. Only two. One is through repetition, and the other is through intense experience. All these psychedelics do is provide an intense experience.

The hope is that it’s intense enough to change the way the brain functions. You have a transformative traumatic experience, and it pushes the person into repetition.

You’ve talked about the desire to constantly want more. A metaphor where we’re constantly trying to ascend a ladder - be it in career, mountain climbing, writing, whatever the case may be. Some of us reach the top of that ladder and look inside the box, only to realize the box is empty. Even though we’re told this is the case, we still work very hard to climb the ladder.

I think that’s a great metaphor and something that many people, including myself, experience. Has stepping away from photography and climbing been a way for you to stop climbing the ladder? Or have you found new ladders to climb?

Well, in general, I think I’m just more okay with the idea that I’m going to climb the ladder.

It’s a fundamental human drive. If history suggests anything about my life, I will keep climbing that ladder, and the box will be empty, and that is okay.

I know that I’m going to do it. The point is just to be aware that you’re fucking climbing the ladder.

That’s a refreshing approach. I try to remind myself to enjoy the process of climbing the ladder.

I think telling people, “don’t climb the ladder,” is sort of a pipe dream, you know? ​​You often hear people with a lot of money tell you that.

Climbing and photography validated my existence in a way. Questions I had about masculinity. Being that guy, the explorer, it answered some questions about my value, and now that is put to bed in many ways.

That’s a good thing in my opinion.

So to say, “the box is empty.” In a literal sense, it is. There’s nothing at the top of Everest that’s going to provide complete fulfillment. But the pursuit, the climbing of that ladder, did serve me in many ways.

And that’s not to say I don’t still have questions about my value as a man and as a human being. I have other questions. What is my value as a potential husband or partner as a father?

My point is that the box IS empty. But I don’t think climbing the ladder is a pointless pursuit.

I really appreciate your time and your honesty. I look forward to seeing what you come up with next.

I enjoyed this. I appreciate your interest in talking to me. Keep in touch.

Learn more about Cory through his memoir “The Color of Everything” which I highly recommend, and through his collection of photos “Bi-Polar: Photographs from an Unquiet Mind”

After his imprisonment at Auschwitz, psychologist Viktor Frankl observed that a prisoner’s survival depended less on starvation or physical condition and more on perspective - how they understood themselves and their circumstances within the larger world.

Whether they believed they still had purpose beyond their imprisonment.

“The more one forgets himself—by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love—the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself. What is called self-actualization is not an attainable aim at all, for the simple reason that the more one would strive for it, the more he would miss it. In other words, self-actualization is possible only as a side-effect of self-transcendence.”

He later wrote in “Man’s Search for Meaning.”

Frankl, who was eventually liberated, credited his survival to this ability to transcend his horrific circumstances. His perspective remained that: his current station - his life in the camp - was not the end and that he would one day return to teaching and studying psychology.

“I saw myself standing on the platform of a well-lit, warm and pleasant lecture room. In front of me sat an attentive audience on comfortable upholstered seats. I succeeded somehow in rising above the situation, above the sufferings of the moment, and I observed them as if they were already of the past.”

I stopped taking a medication called Effexor earlier this year.

A serotonin-norepinephrine re-uptake inhibitor. An antidepressant in lay terms.

The process was uncomfortable and came with a level of physical discomfort I did not expect. I cut the dose in half six times over seven months, each step resulting in a few days of heavy introspection - looking inward through a magnifying glass - likely accessing what the medication allows a person to avoid.

To get through it, I exercised, wrote, gave up alcohol for stretches, and explored psychedelics. I read articles and listened to podcasts about neurology and happiness, trying to think my way through it all.

Some of it helped, some of it did not, but all of it encouraged a lot of introspection and a lot of examination of one single thing… Me.

The day I took the last capsule, I was in Valdez, Alaska, with my partner from the Veteran’s Outdoor Advocacy Group (VOAG) and three friends. The mountains near Valdez rise 6,500 feet straight out of the Pacific, with its shores only about fifteen miles away.

We walked on glaciers and up steep snow toward unnamed peaks of the Chugach, skiing two or three runs each day before returning to the rental car parked on the highway.

One downside was that the majority of the trip was experienced through thick fog. The clouds coming off the ocean hang low in the sky, and the white fog against the white snow sometimes made it difficult to see more than a few yards ahead.

On the final day we talked a lot about VOAG, its nuanced mission, and our conviction in progressing our work despite the sheer size and scale of the problem. Sometime just below the day’s high point, the clouds broke and for about an hour it was possible to see just how vast and enormous the landscape really was - peaks stretching on, one after another, as far as you could see.

Subconsciously, the conversation together with the landscape was enough to cause a change in perspective. A realization of being very small amidst a very big world. A kind of transcendent feeling.

The next day I elected not to take the medication, and that was the end of it.

While I would argue that looking inward can be profoundly helpful, I learned this year that perspective, seeing ourselves in the context of the greater world, might be just as important.

The TRANSITION is not medical advice. Discontinuing prescription medications should only be done in consultation with a physician.

His short story collection, Redeployment, spent time on the NYT’s bestseller list, won the 2014 National Book Award for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Award.

President Obama once mentioned the book during an interview stating:

“Over vacation, I read a book of short stories by Phil Klay called Redeployment. It’s quick but powerful and, for me, painful set of stories about the experience of veterans coming home from Iraq. And it is a reminder of the incredible sacrifice that our men and women in uniform make, and the challenges our veterans face when they come home.”

Klay’s subsequent works include Missionaries, a novel exploring the intersections of modern conflict in Colombia, Afghanistan, and Yemen, and a 2022 essay collection Uncertain Ground.

It was a real pleasure to speak with Klay, someone whose writing - I believe - has given language to the realities of military service and has helped translate those experiences for families and for America at large.

What was your relationship with writing before serving in the Marine Corps?

I always loved books. I've always been a big reader. I studied writing in college. But the big thing for me – when I came back from Iraq – there was a shift in how I thought about writing.

Before, I was working on my craft, I was trying to be a good writer.

When I came back from Iraq, I wanted to write something true, something honest.

There was something deeply important for me to say, but I wasn't sure exactly what that was. The only way I could answer that was to write stories.

And you attended Officer Candidate School after studying at Dartmouth?

Yes. Actually, the summer after my junior year.

What was the response – the going opinion amongst your friends and classmates when you told them you planned to become a Marine? Was that a pretty contrarian idea around campus?

A little bit. A lot of people respected it. I graduated high school in 2001, so 9/11 happened weeks after I started at Dartmouth, so quickly, you have this new war going on and then in 2003, another one.

One professor, I remember, thought I was throwing my life away.

I had a professor who was sort of my mentor – we're still in touch today – the poet Tom Sleigh, who said, "Okay, if that's your plan, you have to read the greatest war stories of all time." And so he had me read Hemingway's Short Stories, War and Peace, David Jones' "In Parenthesis," and Isaac Babel.

"Redeployment" to me was a beautiful observation of what happens to human beings when forced into combat. Sort of a look at the dilemmas warfighters face both in war and when they return from war.

I'm curious, in writing those stories, did you ever find yourself nostalgic?

Yes. For sure. A lot of veterans, even if they have complex feelings about the war they served in, can find themselves nostalgic for parts of it. That's true even for people who had radically more intense experiences than I had as a staff officer.

There's an essay by a French Jesuit named Teilhard de Chardin. This guy was an important theologian, scientist, made some anthropological discoveries, but he also served in World War 1.

He was on the front line, stretcher bearer - he saw a lot of the horrors of the war.

Well, anyway, he wrote an essay titled "The Nostalgia of the Front" in 1917, right in the middle of the war. He describes being sent back from the front lines. And this feeling that comes over him, where, while he's been at the front, all he's wanted is to leave. He doesn't like violence, and suffering, and death – like any normal human.

And yet, the second he leaves, all he wants is to go back.

The essay is about why? What is it about the front that holds this appeal, even though he's not a psycho or a natural warrior? It's a remarkable essay about what life was like at the front, being in proximity to something of such intensity.

Along with Ernst Junger, he's something of an outlier among great writers discussing the appeal of World War I, but you do see those feelings echoed in the letters of ordinary soldiers. This intense connection with war as a pivotal experience in their lives. It's not a simplistic thing.

That's right. Something I've thought a lot about myself. Is it in our DNA? Does it speak to a sort of mundaneness of our everyday lives?

Even if you separate out combat, there's a way you exist in the military. Sebastian Junger talks about this. America has a crisis of loneliness, where we're more disconnected from each other, less bound together by social institutions than ever before.

Whether you believe that or not, the military doesn't really have that problem. You're very connected in this intense way. There's a sense of purpose and common understanding of goals.

It's easy to see why a person would feel nostalgic.

Do you feel nostalgic about your life in the military?

Yes. Probably a bit less with every passing year.

I remember experiencing this evolution between deployments. You'd get home, and you'd be so happy. "Thank God we're back." You know? Then there's sort of a middle period of indifference that lasts a few months, and then you start really looking forward to the next one.

I'm sure that's not true of everyone. I have kids now, and so I suspect things would be different.

Going back to "Redeployment."

I remember being struck by how brutally honest some of the scenes were. The dialogue, the culture, the sort of realism around the way the soldiers behave around one another. You didn't pull any punches, which I appreciated.

Thank you. I tried not to lean into ugliness or shy away, but simply, as a writer, say, "Look, this is the dynamic." And the reader is supposed to respond to that.

That doesn't mean every reader will necessarily like it. And that's okay as well.

There are plenty of things that happen in that book which are… immoral, let's say. But that's the reality.

When you sent the book to the publisher, did you foresee the impact it would have? I'm not trying to test your ego, but I'm wondering, to what extent were you surprised by how well it was received?

I was proud of what I'd written, because I thought I had written what I wanted to say, as honestly as I could. That was important to me.

Originally, I'd been working on a novel. I'd written a few chapters, and if I was going for a big reception, I should have kept going. People will tell you that short story collections don't sell.

But I didn't feel like the novel was expressing the thing that was on my mind. So, I wrote the first few short stories, basically for myself. It was a way to say the things the novel couldn't.

Eventually, I realized the short stories were what I actually cared about, and I abandoned the novel. But I ended up getting incredibly lucky. Granta published the title story, and two editors at Penguin took an interest—Scott Moyers and Andrea Walker. At that time, there was a lot of interest in fiction by veterans, and they bought the collection.

As for the reception—I hoped it would resonate with people. I was confident that I was a good writer. More than that, I knew it was the thing I wanted to say. But it becoming a bestseller and receiving the National Book Award and having the president talking about it on CNN?

That was insane. I was beyond surprised.

You teach an MFA program now; do I have that right?

Correct. At Fairfield University.

I have a lot of veteran students. We do a low-residency program. So, most people work, then they'll come in for residency during the summer or the winter. They can do an intensive 9-day program and work with a mentor virtually over the course of the semester. About a third of them are vets, which is great. It's a genuinely wonderful experience, working with folks and trying to help them figure out how to write what they need to.

I see, that's great. Most of your writing, while maybe not autobiographical, is based on a lot of lived experience.

How do you navigate that part - when advising your MFA students? If a young person has the goal of writing novels, would you advise them to go out and do something? "Live a life worth writing about," as the saying goes?

No. But it is something I've thought a lot about.

There are some great writers… One of the best writers in American history, Flannery O'Connor, grew up in a small town in Georgia, got an MFA, then moved back to Georgia and died fairly young.

She said, "The fact is that anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days. If you can't make something out of a little experience, you probably won't be able to make it out of a lot."

The world is a fascinating place, and getting experience is great. But often I find people who have these dramatic experiences, they can think that the experiences themselves are enough. And that's not actually the case.

Let's say you're at a bar and one guy says, "Last year I was captured by pirates," and the other guy says, "For a long time I went to bed early." Well, you're probably going to sit and talk to the guy captured by pirates. Right? But when these two set their stories down in a book, one of them is going to give you a disposable memoir, and the other guy is Marcel Proust, one of the greatest novelists of all time. Proust doesn't just have exciting incidents; he can connect to you as a human on the most profound level.

Now, personally, I like an exciting story along with great insight. Dostoevsky is as insightful as Proust but also helpfully throws in axe murderers and detectives and nihilistic political terror cells plotting revolution. But the ax murderers alone don't make the fiction come alive, and change your sense of yourself as a human being on this planet.

That's a great way of looking at it. Great advice for people who write about conflict.

The skill of a great writer is to take you into a world that feels urgent. Where we feel the human stakes of a situation. The reason you're doing this interview, the reason you and I are talking is because there is something that feels really urgent to you, now, that isn't necessarily about the grand drama of military action overseas, but something more subtle about the experience of coming back, reflecting on your life and merging back into our chaotic American reality.

You're right. It seems a lot of the novels we think of as "literature" really excel in the area you're describing. NOT the "captured by a pirate" moment.

It's been twenty-two years since the War in Iraq began in 2003. I think for many vets, many people, our view of America's foreign policy has changed a lot over time, and maybe that was top of mind last week when the U.S. bombed Iran.

I'm curious, since writing "Redeployment," have your opinions shifted dramatically?

Definitely, I was in Iraq during the surge. When I left Iraq, violence had really decreased in Anbar Province. The idea, in a way, was, look, 'we won' or 'we're winning.'

My views back then on what we achieved are very very different than my views after the rise of ISIS, after speaking with women taken as slaves in a town that endured a genocide. That darkened my view, naturally.

Still, at no point have I ever been a pacifist. I've written plenty of op-eds that are critical of the way America has waged war over the last couple decades. But even as I was critical of aspects of it, I'm glad we waged the counter-ISIS campaign.

You brought up Iran. I would say one thing that is concerning is that so much authority has been vested in the executive. There doesn't seem to be much congressional oversight left.

That gives me a real reason for pause.

I agree. It's almost hard to define exactly what the executive branch cannot do. Seems there are so many exceptions and caveats when it comes to overseas involvement.

I don't talk to too many special operations folks about this topic, but it seems the tide is turning a bit.

Well, that community has just been worked like crazy.

Americans got sick of large, endless conflicts. But the American public has this almost schizophrenic view where, 'we don't want to be in these forever wars, but we do want to kill the bad guys.'

So, the solution to that… It's special operations and drone strikes.

I remember when Obama proudly announced the end of the war in Iraq. But then ISIS popped up, and he wants to do something about it. So, we start ramping up troops in Iraq.

Then it's like, are we back at war? Well, no, according to the White House, because that would be politically unpopular. So they did this awkward dance of assuring the public that we were both fighting ISIS and not at war.

I remember one quote from the white house press secretary that was something like, "We're not sending any more troops into combat, but sometimes they end up in combat situations." (Laughter.)

That's exactly right. That strategy seemed to bleed into everything. Somalia, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Iraq.

One thing I've been thinking about this year - have we as a community, the veteran community, in all our trying to help, heal, and care for ourselves, have we created an overdone "broken vet" scenario in America?

It's a fine line to walk. The public image tends toward one of two extremes: either 'broken vet' or the Navy SEAL badass who not only killed lots of bad guys but can also tell you how to run your business.

I think it's important to talk about the personal cost. The experience of war puts people into contact with intense and often sad things. Killing, exposure to evil, leaves its mark on people. The other side of that coin is that many of these individuals possess a lot of talents, grit, and skills that can really benefit the world. Hard experiences can leave someone stronger as well, even if it leaves a mark.

I think it's a mistake to put vets in any one bucket or the other. I know people who struggle with PTSD who are incredibly bright, productive, and above-average members of society.

You want understanding. But you don't want pity.

That's right. I worry about its effect on recruiting. We seem pretty far from a world where non-vets would look at a career in the military as a path to prosperity and well-being, where they would advise their children to join the Army.

Sure. There's a lot there though. I think older members of our society placed a different value on sacrifice and service. And it wasn't because there were fewer consequences.

If you read war literature from the renaissance era, it's interesting because writers will talk about horrors, nightmares, and a lot of the things you'd expect in anti-war literature. And yet they place a very different value on their experiences, as did the society they were a part of. What we ultimately need is a richer public conception of service and sacrifice.

What's next for you?

I'm writing a book right now, set in the 1970s. It's based on my family history.

My grandfather was a career diplomat; he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of Henry Kissinger. It was a pretty controversial award. It was a peace prize for a peace treaty that didn't actually end the war. And then he was ambassador to Czechoslovakia, and during that time, my grandmother was asked to pass messages from the Vatican to the underground church.

It's an interesting story, but I'm thinking about that time because it resonates with today. You've got a failed war, a political crisis, you have the evacuation of Saigon, this very public image of American failure, and then my grandfather was posted to a communist country to represent America and advocate for human rights, right at a critical moment for dissidents in Eastern Europe.

How cool. I look forward to seeing it finished.

Thank you so much for doing this. I respect your writing and the impact you've had on our community. Good luck with your new novel.

Thank you. I really enjoyed this.

When we prioritize “being” over “doing,” - we derive answers from what we’ve known all along.

I walked away from my job at the end of 2024. My youngest daughter was diagnosed with profound hearing loss, and within weeks, the job’s travel demands came into conflict with the care she required.

Despite my daughter, intuition had long told me the job wasn’t the right fit. I wanted more time to write. More time to finish the half-written novel saved to my desktop.

That was eight months ago. My daughter is thriving, she’s achieving new milestones, and the novel’s been finished for weeks.

Therefore, on a recent trip to Fraser, CO, I couldn’t help but feel guilty being there. I questioned whether it was irresponsible, indulgent. Whether it was a relic of a past life that I should no longer be paying for.

During the early part of that trip, I was consumed by the question of what to do next. What the future holds, professionally. I weighed the benefits of returning to the corporate world. Then I’d spend hours convincing myself of the downsides. What would focusing on writing full-time look like? How much would it cost?

More than once, my wife would catch me, distant, looking anxious - my mind elsewhere - contemplating the future as if playing a game of mental chess. Every piece spread out, trying to see three steps ahead.

Amidst TRANSITION, amidst big decisions, there’s comfort in breaking it all down. Data-analysis. You inject logic, you circle the facts, and assign probabilities. It feels productive that way. Like an equation that can be solved once we define every variable.

In one of my all-time favorite stories, “On the Rainy River,” author Tim O’Brien reflects on what he describes as a “moral emergency,” more than twenty years later.

When he’s drafted to the Vietnam War in the summer of 1968, O’Brien rejects the idea immediately. He responds by stating the facts. He comes up with a dozen reasons why an exception should be made - all the reasons being drafted is an injustice. Why Vietnam itself is an injustice.

“I remember opening the letter — feeling the blood go thick behind my eyes. I was too good for this war. Too smart, too compassionate, too everything. I was above it.

The war in Vietnam seemed to me wrong. I saw no unity of purpose, no consensus on matters of philosophy or history or law.

After days of thought, O’Brien considers making a run for Canada. Deserting.

“In the beginning, the idea seemed purely abstract. The word ‘Canada’ printing itself out in my head. I’d borrow my father’s car, drive aimlessly around town, feeling sorry for myself, thinking about the war, how my life seemed to be collapsing.

For weeks he weighs his options. The consequences of going to war - the shame and guilt of deserting.

“I could see my father’s eyes as I tried to explain myself over the telephone. I could almost hear his voice. Run, I’d think, then impossible, it was a kind of schizophrenia. A moral split.”

In a near panic, O’Brien drives north toward the Minnesota-Canada border. Toward the Rainy River, the line of demarcation between one life and another.

There, he finds himself in solitude, in wilderness, suddenly more available to his thoughts.

“The land was mostly wilderness. The country unfolded in great sweeps of pine and birch and sumac. Though it was still August, the air already had the smell of October, football season, piles of yellow-red leaves, everything crisp and clean.”

Eventually, O’Brien finds himself at the Tip Top Lodge, where he meets an old man named Elroy.

Being at the lodge, O’Brien’s internal debate becomes less an intellectual exercise and more a consult with his intuition, his conscience - what’s already inside himself. What he already knows.

“I'd been over and over the various arguments, all the pros and cons, and it was no longer a question that could be decided by an act of pure reason. Intellect had come up against emotion.

In total, he spends six days with Elroy.

“There were no boats on the river, and the wilderness seemed to withdraw into a great permanent stillness.”

On the sixth morning, O’Brien and Elroy take off from the dock on Elroy’s boat, headed north.

“At some point, we must've passed into Canadian waters, across that dotted line between two different worlds, and I remember a sudden tightness in my chest as I looked up and watched the far shore come at me.

There was the wind and the sky. I tried to will myself overboard. I did try. It just wasn't possible.

I would go to the war—I would kill and maybe die—because I was embarrassed not to.

Elroy remained quiet. He was simply there, like the river and the late-summer sun. "Ain't biting," he said. Then after a time the old man pulled in his line and turned the boat back toward Minnesota.”

Later, during the second half of the trip, I spent at least an hour each day walking. Sometimes alone and sometimes a few feet behind a six-year-old, answering her questions and thinking amidst the endless miles of trail and fire roads that exist between the Town of Fraser and the Continental Divide.

There, amidst near solitude, the lens of decision making began to shift. Pragmatism became more difficult to connect with, while intuition became much easier.

Like in “The Rainy River,” maybe the answer isn’t in more data, or more research. Perhaps it’s something already known.

In writing this, I realized the decisions I’m most proud of, the ones most impactful, were all based in almost pure intuition.

Like many, I married my wife based on intuition.

I dropped out of college and joined the SEAL teams, entirely on intuition. To this day, I can close my eyes and remember trying to justify that decision to my father. Desperate for some statistic or some data point that would convince him it was a smart move.

There wasn’t one. If anything, the data would say don’t do it.

I think many would agree, during TRANSITION, intuition is often the last thing we consult. Something we consider only after the data has been collected and we still can’t find the answer.

“What’s your gut telling you?” we ask when someone has exhausted all forms of logic in trying to solve their problem.

I’m not saying we should ignore logic, or that every decision should be made based on gut feel.

What I am suggesting is that intuition is immensely valuable. It’s also subtle and requires effort to even hear from.

What we already know about ourselves should play a role in the way we navigate TRANSITION.

Intuition appears in finite amounts, at unexpected times. When we prioritize “being” over “doing,” we’re able to derive answers from what we’ve known all along.

This essay is part of a four part series titled, “Why it’s Difficult and Why You Should do it Anyway”, which draws from the work of philosophers and artists, applying their ideas to the quieter, less visible aspects of TRANSITION. If you enjoy reading, I encourage you to read the series in it’s entirety which can be found here. Also, The TRANSITION is not medical advice. If you require diagnosis or treatment for a mental or physical issue or illness, please seek it from a licensed professional.

When despair follows circumstance, it feels acceptable, logical even.

When the opposite is true, when you find yourself in a downward trend with no correlation to the world around you - that's something different. Something more painful.

When that is true, you might start to question existential topics - the character you call "self" and how much interest you have in being that character. The tide of indifference rises and the places you usually turn to for joy become increasingly out of reach.

Perhaps someone else will name it before you do. Other times, you go through the motions, trying what's worked in the past - exercise, maybe a drink - and when nothing lands, you finally admit what it is.

To many, a depressive episode can sound like a run of bad days. But it isn't that. It’s a change in the colors of life. A greyness that visits for a day, sometimes three.

You work hard at prevention. Stack the deck such that all of this happens less often. You find peace that way. Progress.

And when a season passes in depression's absence, you're encouraged - you claim victory.

From there, you likely spend even more time on prevention - pursuing better, more effective strategies. You become informed on the latest research, you consider prescription medication, red-light panels, mood trackers, and research psychedelic retreats.

All of it an effort to outmaneuver. Inputs and routines. Stacking sandbags around a house as if it might persuade the next storm to strike elsewhere.

What if, in our pursuit of preventing the next storm, those sandbags eventually become something which hold water in? Prolonging, even increasing the damage the next storm brings?

Philosopher and poet David Whyte, in his ten volumes of poetry and countless essays, suggests that much of life, "Despair" included, be observed as a season - not intended to be conquered, but passed through.

Rather than a solution, Whyte suggests something of a reframe in how we respond to depression. Less clinical, less preventable - more an outcome of our failure to allow the seasons of life to pass through us.

"Despair," he writes, "Turns to depression and abstraction when we try to make it stay beyond its appointed season and start to shape our identity around its frozen disappointments… When the season is allowed to turn, despair cannot survive."

From "The Blessing of the Morning Light," I take away the idea that rather than prevention and avoidance, perhaps we accept and observe - reimagine "despair as a difficult, but a beautiful necessary” - that with each passing season, new light, and a new form presents itself.

"We take the first steps out of despair by taking on its full weight and coming fully to ground in our wish not to be here. We let our bodies and we let our world breathe again. In that place, strangely, despair cannot do anything but change into something else, into some other season."

I don’t blame anyone for questioning the practicality of this reframing. The promise of eventual spring means very little when you're shivering - stuck in a snowstorm.

What we can do, however, is apply Whyte's views to our understanding of future storms. Accept that, despite all prevention, the next season of darkness, the next storm will likely visit, and in trying to control it, we may very well prolong its duration.

With less control and more observation, it’s possible, depression begins to leave a different mark. One we can derive value from. Refinement, re-ordering - a clearer sense of what is true.

Observing, rather than relentless avoidance provides a new perspective and perhaps best of all, alters our view of future storms. Lessens severity.

These seasons, while deeply painful, provide realizations that very often lead to TRANSITION. Clarity and increased conviction when it comes to careers, relationships, and the way we choose to exist in life.

For many, episodic depression won't be something you ever prevent or outmaneuver. But they can be outlasted.

Whyte, D. (2014). Consolations: The solace, nourishment and underlying meaning of everyday words. Many Rivers Press.

Casey comes from a generation of Americans who witnessed 9/11 at a young age and chose to do something about it. Enlisting in the Marine’s at 17 led him through combat, addiction, betrayal, and ultimately, a diagnosis few survive.

This conversation captures TRANSITION in its rawest form. From a life shaped by violence to one of service. From questioning his will to live to the deepest appreciation for life itself.

I hope you enjoy

It's great to meet you. You were a helicopter gunner, a door gunner in the CH-53? Why did you decide to join the military in the first place?

I'm thirty-four now, so fifth grade when 9/11 happened. I remember listening to it on the radio; everyone was crying. I remember thinking, someone attacked us – I have to go make sure that never happens again.

I decided that in fifth grade.

And so you went. Right after high school? Where did you grow up?

I grew up in Richmond, VA, for the most part, and yeah, I joined at 17.

Barely made it. I had to fight pretty hard just to get into the Marine Corps.

I had this alcoholic stepdad I was dealing with at the time, violent childhood, I'd been kicked out of the house, all this shit.

But I finally made it.

Was Aircrew, helicopters, being a door gunner, something you sought out?

Not really, I watched Black Hawk Down as a kid. That was a lot of it.

I was in Mogadishu once – got to go see the crash site and everything. I wonder how many people have joined the military because of that movie.

So, you start as a mechanic and then become a door gunner? The door gunner in a 53 has a pretty big job right? The way the helicopter sets down, the pilot can't see very well. Is that right?

Exactly. We're the side mirrors and the rearview.

When the bird's landing, the pilot has no visibility as to what's happening behind them. One pilot's on the sticks, the other's watching instruments. It gets pretty complex, low-light, brown outs. You have night vision, but you know how it goes, "this part of the ground is a little darker than that part."

Then you add in combat. Rockets being shot at the helicopter, machine gun fire, they would put IEDs in some of the landing zones. It's a lot.

On top of all that, you have mechanical shit. It's not just IEDs; some fluid leak or a missing bolt can take you out.

Did you enjoy it? Did you enjoy combat?

Well, the first deployment, I was a mechanic. Working on the base, working on the aircraft, getting my qualifications taken care of. On my second deployment, I was on the bird. Flew 94 combat missions.

It's a rush, you know? Parts of it I loved. That second deployment we were much more busy. At the time, you had the drawdown – Obama was pulling people out. We had a much larger area of operations and a lot fewer people to cover it.

A lot of guys were getting fucked up at that time. I remember this unit of Australian guys… Their whole operation got shut down because, basically, all of them died.

We were doing a lot of narcotics operations. Afghanistan has a lot of opium, right? Tons and tons of Afghans – farmers – make their money off those opium fields. Well, when the Taliban said "No more. No more opium exports."

I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I'm telling you, so much of what we were doing was concerned with who controls those fields. And a lot of people got killed because of it.

And was that part of the reason you got out? Ethical concerns?

No. I had a lot of questions. Some of it bothered me, but that's not why I got out.

I loved the Marines. Looking back, I was addicted to the fighting part. That feeling, the intensity, the mission.

I had a wife at the time, also a Marine. While I was deployed, she decided she no longer wanted to be married, and she knew how to manipulate the system to make me look bad.

I don't want to talk bad about her now, but basically, I got home, I'd been in all this combat, and all the sudden, I'm in this battle with my wife, looking at divorce, dealing with the big Marine Corps, and literally weeks later, I was watching people die on the battlefield.

I was so angry. None of it made sense to me. I'm supposed to be doing all the things you should be doing after a combat deployment, and instead, I'm looking at all this disciplinary shit.

I started drinking and doing drugs. I'd take off for a week at a time, going back to Richmond. Anyway, I was at the end of my enlistment, so basically, they said, "Your time is almost up anyway. Just do what you need to do for a few weeks and you can leave the military."

I'm sorry to hear that. That's not a common story, but unfortunately, it's not uncommon. Did you have any ideas for what you might like to do with the rest of your life?

I had zero plans. I thought I was going to die on that deployment. I wanted to, really.

Why is that? Or, what makes you say that?

I had such a rough childhood. I survived child abuse, voilence, drugs. I had friends who got killed, committed suicide. I didn't really expect to be alive as an adult.

Then I'm in Afghanistan - you see good human beings getting killed. You start to wonder, 'Why do I deserve to live, and these guys don't?' You think about home, what home life is like, how it's sort of combat in its own way.

I thought dying in combat… It'd be a lot better than some of the other ways to die. You know?

So, what did you do when you first got out?

I moved back to Richmond. Bartending. I thought maybe I'd become a psychologist, maybe try to help other people with bad childhoods. I had no idea what to do.

I started drifting. I met a guy who was a Marine and also happened to be part of the Mongols, the motorcycle gang.

He took me under his wing in a way. Just like that I'm inching toward that life. The criminal underworld. (laughter)

I can guess, but what enticed you about that world? What's the best thing about being in the Mongols?

Camaraderie.

You go from ripping around on helicopters to ripping around on motorcycles.

I was on that bike all the time. I rode from Richmond to Rosarita and back. Everywhere.

I could go all around the world, knock on someone's door, and he'd welcome me in his house - that's my brother you know?

Now, are we really brothers? No. Turns out, a lot of that is surface.

What's the worst part about club life?

That life is really cutthroat. A lot of politics. I got kicked out because I was… I was a warrior, as they say. I wasn't a politician.

Skipping ahead, but I got promoted to "Mother Chapter." The top-level which sort of manages each of the local chapters. So, as you can imagine - it was more combat, really.

You're constantly watching your back. You're in a club that claims to be a brotherhood… But you've seen the tv shows and that shit. You're constantly watching your back.

Is it possible to be in a club like that and just hang out? Not be involved in the politics and whatever crime might be going on?

Oh yeah. Absolutely. Just like the Marines.

That's most people. Most people want to look cool and hang out at the bar, drink beer, and this kind of thing.

1% clubs man...To be honest, a lot of it is a joke. You start to look deeper, see everything that's going on. It's hardly brotherhood. They get these guys that need something, they need family, they're hurting… Just like I was… And they exploit these people.

How long did it take you to realize that?

Few years. I started prospecting in 2016, and I got kicked out just under three years later.

I was seeing things that I couldn't let go. Things I wasn't okay with. I started asking questions about different things, and that's what started my demise.

Is it life-threatening to get kicked out of a motorcycle club?

Can be. Depends on why. If you're a threat to the club - definitely can be.

I just met you, but you seem like someone with a lot of awareness, someone who thinks a lot about the morality of organizations and war. I can tell you've given a lot of thought to this type of thing. Is that retrospective? Did you think about these things while you were participating?

Some of it. When I started getting sick, obviously, you start to think a lot about the meaning of life.

And were you sick while you were still in the Mongols?

Really sick. I started having hallucinations in 2016 - no idea I had a brain tumor.

I went to the VA in Long Beach, they told me I had PTSD, schizophrenia – basically told me it was all psych problems.

I was telling them, "I'm not crazy. I know I'm not crazy."

I was on death's doorstep. In so much pain. Migraines. I lost sixty pounds. Really sick.

To deal with all that, you know, I was still in the Mongols. I was basically welcoming death. A couple times, I'd go 120 mph down the Pacific Coast Highway. I had overdoses. I would take so much Xanax and pain medication that I would just be passed out for days.

Had no idea I had cancer. The whole was divine. It's a miracle I survived that last year when I was getting kicked out of the Mongols.

And the VA, they didn't think to give you a brain scan? They weren't taking you seriously, or what?

No, they didn't take it seriously. They wanted to treat the migraines. I had other injuries, shoulders, abdominal injuries… Other things that distracted from the real issue.

At this point, I was out of the gang. Still sick all the time, with constant migraines. But I moved to Texas, and I was working on this farm. I started eating healthier, doing meditation, this kind of stuff. When I got away from the club life, all the drinking and drugs and all that, I thought I'll start taking care of myself and that will take away my pain.

Finally, in 2022, they found the tumor, and I was diagnosed with Glioblastoma.

And what did the oncologist tell you? Were you expected to survive?

They told me, "You might have thirty days, you might have three months."

They said with chemo and radiation, I could maybe make it 12 months.

When they pulled the tumor out, it was encased in cist, which prevented it from spreading through the rest of the brain.

What's interesting to me is that in a few years’ time, you go from someone who's doing recreational drugs and, as you said, speeding down the highway to someone who is now extremely dedicated to taking care of their body and mind.

Did the cancer diagnosis shift your perspective? To think, okay, I really do want to live, and I'm going to beat this?

In a way, you're right. These guys told me I had terminal cancer; they told me I was going to die. I saw it as a challenge. I took control of my health. And it's a process; I'm still working on it today.

But yeah, it's all connected. I shouldn't have survived childhood; I shouldn't have survived Afghanistan – flying around getting rockets shot at you. I shouldn't have survived the Mongols.

So, when the doctors told me I wouldn't survive cancer… I thought… We'll see.

I know you've embraced a lot of lifestyle changes and researched your own healing methods. Do you feel like you just have the intuition to know where to embrace standard cancer treatments and where to chart your own path?

I try to educate myself about everything.

I lost a lot of trust in the medical system, obviously, given how long it took the VA to take my symptoms seriously. People have been rude; I've seen doctors become very disrespectful if you even question their chemo protocols and whatnot.

I just pay attention to the details. I ask questions. I started to look at… How does fasting affect the body? How do alcohol and various substances affect the body, and how does all this work?

And now, this is my purpose. Helping other people, inspiring people. Vets.

What does today look like for you? You look healthy. What are you looking forward to in the future?

It's still a battle. Every day, I'm working on my health. Working getting on being a better person.

I want to start a non-profit. I'm not sure if you're aware. The aviation community has the highest incidence of cancer of any profession, by a long shot.

They've got all that imaging and radar systems in those aircraft. The FLIR system and all that shit puts off a ton of radiation. That's not even considering the toxins you're exposed to working on helicopters.

So, I want to start something. Help our guys. Help other people with Glioblastoma.

That's amazing, and I have seen some research on aviators and air crews and the level of radiation exposure.

Some vets will read this. When it comes to health, what would you say is fundamental? Maybe three core changes people can make? There is so much health and wellness advice available right now - it can be overwhelming.

It's incredibly overwhelming because everywhere you look is another expert saying, "Do this, or don't do that." It's not realistic.

So much of it, the physical side has to do with detoxification. Diet. You have to look at what you're putting in your body – be it sugar, alcohol, or processed foods. It all matters. Then you have detox techniques – fasting, sauna, cold plunge, things that repair the body.

Then, on the mental health side. Pay attention to the energy component. Everything you interact with has energy. Music, the news you watch, your relationships, the outdoors, workouts, it all gives you positive or negative energy.

A lot of people will say they're unhappy or depressed, but at the same time, they're subjecting themselves to so much negative energy.

Do you get bored these days? You've lived a high-intensity life.

No. Being so close to death, I have so much appreciation for life.

It's going to make me tear up to explain it to you… I have so much joy in life, and I think even though I've had a hard life, I really appreciate life. And I mean that.

In Afghanistan, we would take these platoons in, drop them off – we'd take in 10 guys, brothers, friends, guys who just signed their life away to the military. Five hours later, we'd pick up 9 or less, maybe.

All the bad shit I've done? And what did that guy do to deserve what happened to him? Nothing.

We can't lose sight of that. So, I stay focused on that, and I'm just appreciative.

Casey, thanks for doing this. I have a ton of respect for you and your story. Keep going.

You too. I enjoyed it.

Shannon Connell is the founder and CEO of the Invisible Wound Foundation, whose mission is to - “Advance science to prevent, diagnose, and treat traumatic brain injuries among special operations forces.”

In the pursuit of well-being and our efforts to decrease veteran suicide, we too often accept brain injury as an unavoidable cost of military service.

The reality is, more can be done. More can be done to improve diagnostics, develop treatments, and create policy that reduces the likelihood of repetitive blast injury.

Shannon and the team at Invisible Wounds are willing to take that on.

I hope you enjoy our conversation on TBI, the culture surrounding brain injury, research, and what it will take to move the needle.

Thanks for doing this, Shannon. You have a PhD and have led an impressive career. I'm curious how you arrived at Invisible Wounds? Why Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) research?

I started my career at a large corporation, Procter & Gamble, where I traveled a lot. At 25, I was working in Guangzhou, China, managing brands in the hair care industry. I loved it.

Eventually, work took me to Venezuela, Brazil, Mexico - throughout South America. I also started my own company on the side. I was interested in Chinese antique furniture, collected a lot of it, and eventually started importing it with my brother. We called it "Asian Accents."

After 10 years at Procter & Gamble, and many years spent working abroad, I took a job in Houston with Shell Oil. Shortly after, I hired consultants to conduct a market analysis, and one of them was a professor at Rice University. One day, he asked me if I'd be interested in doing a guest lecture in the MBA program. I did that a few times, and eventually it led to a faculty position. I spent the next eight years teaching in the Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice. A tremendous opportunity to learn, teach, and develop my academic chops.

I was an adjunct professor while working at Shell at the same time. Still traveling a lot. At some point, there was some pressure to take a job in London. At the same time, Rice was encouraging me to get a PhD, and I remember thinking… Nobody has time for that.

Eventually, I decided to take a step back. Move back to Chicago, the Midwest, back to my roots.

What I realized in doing that is what I really enjoy is collaborating with people to solve complex problems. So, I decided I would pursue a doctorate in Organizational Psychology.

I wanted to study the way organizations solve complex problems.

And in large measure, as you well know, Invisible Wounds Foundation is focused on addressing a VERY large, very complex problem.

Good for you. And so in your opinion, what makes TBI, and specifically military TBI a complex problem? Is it getting the attention it deserves?

No. I don't think so. The attention it gets is disproportionate to the scale of the problem.

I would argue that it is not receiving enough attention. That being said, I think it is getting more attention now than it has in the past. But, if we look at the numbers around veteran suicide and our ability to understand repetitive blast exposure, concussion - all the brain injuries our military members are exposed to - I don't think it gets near enough attention.

There is a lot of meaningful work being done, but so much of it is downstream, addressing symptoms. Sleep disorders, depression, self-medication. That's important work – my own family has benefitted from that work. But it's mostly, "How can we make you feel better right now?"

We owe it to ourselves to understand the root cause. Many organizations are hesitant to tackle it because it seems impossible. It's also incredibly expensive.

All kinds of reasons to stay away from that side, but we need to stay with the problem and not turn away from a seemingly impossible challenge. And it can be even more daunting to think about addressing at root cause, upstream, where it all starts.

When you say "upstream," we're talking about at the point of injury? Within DoD? I suppose there are enemy-induced injuries, and there are training-induced injuries. You're referring to the training we subject ourselves to?

The Department of Defense (DoD) and the military are critical components in all this, obviously, and they are aware of the issue. But they also don't move very fast. There's also a lot of turnover in that organization. People come and go. New administrations, new leadership.

So, who is going to fix this? It doesn't have to be the non-profit or private sector, but I'll say there are numerous examples where the community affected comes together and creates systemic change. Or, at a minimum, re-invent their understanding of the problem.

This has been a problem for decades - billions of dollars have been spent. And yet here we are. We're still not having the conversation about the lack of FDA-approved diagnostics and a whole host of other treatment interventions that require further research.

We have a very experienced Board of Directors. People like VADM Szymanski (ret.), Frank Larkin, and Dr. Brian Edlow with a lot of years in this space who've been able to access conversations with leading experts. I often hear things like, "A lot has been done, but a lot more needs to be done." To that I always ask, “what do we mean by MORE?”

There’s a belief that this breakthrough solution will come at the intersection of public and private funding - in cooperation with the DoD, VA, NIH. But that won’t happen on its own. It requires leadership, coordination, bringing people and organizations together to generate a common agenda - a collective impact.

That's hard to disagree with. Perhaps I'm thinking about this incorrectly, but all the treatment and diagnostic interventions are certainly complex. However, at least to me, the way people are getting injured - it really isn't that complex.

My guess is that most operators can think of three or four examples, certain days from their careeer, and they know… That was too much.

Is there mystery as to what's causing these injuries?

I suppose it's not ideal for the Special Operations brand to acknowledge awareness of how this hapens. To admit how harmful some of the training can be.

It's not great. However, it demonstrates a level of compassion and leadership if you're willing to discuss it. At least it provides agency and honesty to the community.

We all take risks based on what it is we're looking to get out of life.

For a lot of you guys, it's helpful to be aware of these things. I think that transparency would create trust and, eventually, a culture shift that would allow us all to openly acknowledge the cost of combat.

Doesn't have to be one or the other. Let's show a level of care and ownership in such a way that tells service members, "This is what we're working on. This is how we're mitigating these risks."

Until there's more transparency around the topic, it's hard to progress the science. To make any advancements, people need to understand why those advancements are necessary.

That's exactly right.

I think folks like yourself, David Phillips, people who are bringing this topic to the forefront. We need more of that.

In most cases, you have to acknowledge a problem in order to collect the resources necessary to fix it. Right?

How much of this conversation, how much of what we're talking about is cultural? In the sense that perhaps there's a hesitation for vets to even consider themselves worthy of care?

When I checked into the SEAL team, the way the timing happened to be, the whole team was still in Afghanistan; they had about three weeks left on their deployment.

Two SEALs from that rotation were killed on that deployment, and in retrospect, that had a tremendous impact on our culture as a team – the way we trained, the way we carried ourselves, the entire world was set against the backdrop of going back to war and that some amongst us might not come home.

It shaped everything. And part of that is the way you think about pain, injury, these types of things. A lot of things.

How does my circumstance compare to those I serve with? I think a lot of people are asking that question when it comes to brain injury.

I wonder if the military could do a better job here?

You hear of these suicides, and sometimes it's not the case that they have a single enemy-inflicted injury. Sometimes, it's the case that they have a dozen repeat exposures. You wonder if these guys feel legitimized in asking for help?

Yes. You've probably heard the saying, "You can play hurt; you can't play injured." While I think that's true of broken bones - it's not the case when it comes to the brain.

Unfortunately, you can play injured; many, many operators are playing injured.

Right. I've not thought about it in that way. If you snap your femur, you're out, but there is this ability to endure the day-to-day after concussion.

And that opens you up to more injury and repetitive exposure, and that's where we can really start to see someone lose themselves. Unfortunately.

Things compound. I know folks go on for a decade like that.

It doesn't always take you away from everyday tasks. It can be a dull pain for a long time.

That's why the need for TBI diagnostics is so critical. We can do a better job treating if we know when and what to treat.

All of the prevention, all of the changes to DoD policy, the rockets, mortars, breaching, all of that - it all requires knowing what's happening. When a TBI has occurred.

Are there diagnostics or tools that you're excited about that are not FDA-approved?

We see all kinds of things related to biomarkers, saliva testing, ocular, auditory – these solutions feel within reach. I think, ultimately, a wearable solution is exciting. There are so many variables when it comes to what's happening during a blast exposure. The power of technology telling us what has occurred to our brain, the mechanism and location of injury, and immediate possible interventions to treat and perhaps reduce the extent of the injury – this is exciting to me.

Two operators can stand side by side and have two totally different outcomes from a blast. So we need personalized and precise diagnostic solutions.

At the current rate of change, I'm optimistic that we could have one in the next few years.

What's more exciting, at least to me – once we find a way to diagnose and measure - that immediately turns to… So what? What the hell are we going to do about it?

That's where we will start to see breakthroughs in treatment, prevention, and eventually eliminating the problem. Prevention and eradication is the ultimate goal.

I've been out of the military for five years now, but when I think about this topic, the training aspect, it all just seems sort of unnecessary. Half of it is sort of bullshit.

Say more about that.

Well, a lot of things, skydiving, for example, you have to practice if you’re going to do it in combat. There's a lot like that. Combat really can't be learned in PowerPoint. But a lot of the explosive stuff – the rockets, mortars, breaching, maybe you can? Or at least in some hybrid way.

If we really think about the risks vs. rewards, is explosive breaching, live rockets, and this sort of thing, is it really productive? In specific units, maybe it is.

I probably would disagree with that argument when I was active. If your number one priority is lethality, you're going to do what you're going to do.

You’re right. Lethality, force readiness - these are the priorities. And I don’t think this is paradoxical: we can focus on those priorities AND the longevity, health, and well-being of warfighters at the same time. These are not mutually exclusive.

TBI almost always ties into psychiatric issues: sleep, depression, anxiety, PTSD, self-medicating, the list goes on, and unfortunately, that includes suicide.

You hear some guys say, "Well, nothing came up in my scan." And there will not be a treatment option for a brain injury if one is not detected. So instead, we proceed with a mental health protocol because those are the symptoms that are presenting. However, the facts are that the majority of research on this topic, examining astroglial scarring, primarily takes place post-mortem – after we've already lost the warrior.

I couldn't agree more. It's very complex. Lifestyle changes and mental health strategies do help. But are we teaching ourselves to dismiss the underlying physiological problem?

You start to get a hold of your life, you stop drinking as much, you make a few changes, and you do feel better. It's all connected.

You're right. More than one thing can be true and probably is. We need to discuss the comorbidity of mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, sleep issues - and brain injury.

So let's acknowledge that we're currently only treating half of this. Yes, we treat depression, anxiety, and sleep issues. However, at the same time, let's strive for a proper diagnosis for TBI.

Much of this is about holding conversations that drive a deeper level of understanding. We need to talk about “what’s going on here” and not live with our heads in the sand. We need to acknowledge what happened during the Global War on Terror.

Too often, when we discuss the level of blast exposure, the common response is, "We didn't know how bad it really was."

But now we do. So, let's discuss it. Let's research it.

I couldn't agree more. It's a lot of people doing the best with the cards they've been dealt, unfortunately.

The long-term mission of Invisible Wounds is clear to me. What are some of the short-term wins you see on the horizon? What are you trying to accomplish this year?

We try really hard to keep our mission simple. You hear that term "mission creep," which can become a problem in corporations and non-profit organizations, but it is a huge watch-out for non-profits. Keeping the mission focused is a priority for us, even if that means we are not of interest to certain donors.

We're currently working in partnership with the RAND Corporation to produce a study focused on understanding the existing work in the field of TBI among Special Operations. This will provide us with a blueprint of what has been done, what is being done, and create a gap analysis what needs to be done.

We are interested in what the ecosystem looks like, and importantly, where the money is being spent – on what research objectives, and by which funding sources.

Again , when people say, "More needs to be done", this study is to answer the question of what is the “MORE” that needs to be done.

That study will lay the groundwork for what we're calling the Special Operations Brain Health Initiative. This initiative will bring together top neurological researchers, clinicians,SOF stakeholders and thought leaders around a common agenda: to accelerate the science that gets at the root causes of military TBIs. It will be led by a medical science advisor with the mission of guiding the future of research – based on that GAP analysis. We are taking a data-based approach to address this complex problem.

We're also working on partnering with several organizations to create a shared agenda. We, and by "we," I mean our community, need to be bigger than we are. This will require a collective effort to achieve systemic change.

How much of this depends on financial support from the federal government?

First and foremost, I believe we need a seat at the table. We're raising a fund right now to get moving, regardless of the public sector.

And I think once the public sector sees that, once they see how much people care about this issue, they'll get involved. But you know, we're not waiting for a grant from NIH; we're not waiting years for a grant from the DoD. We don't have time.

We pursue all these things, of course. But we're not going to be dependent on that.

Many people who read this will be spouses, parents, and family members of veterans. What do you hope they understand about this topic?

Good question. I hope they understand that brain health is a life-long undertaking. Rarely, is a person going to go in with these issues, and they're presented with a fix.

You want to understand as much about a service member's brain as early as you can. Doing so retrospectively can be difficult and seemingly impossible.

Understanding your brain or your loved one's brain is a journey that can provide early insight, take away some of the mystery, make everything far less unsettling, and contribute to a better quality of life.

Shannon, thank you very much. I have tremendous respect for the work you do. The clarity and the focus of the Invisible Wounds Foundation. It's impressive and truly important. Thank you.

It’s been my pleasure.

The TRANSITION and the content within - is not medical advice. If you require diagnosis or treatment for a mental or physical issue or illness, please seek it from a licensed professional. If life threatening, call (800)273-8255

We also discuss the philosophy behind Seven Hills and its unique approach to educating middle school boys—one grounded in movement, experiential learning, and authentic relationships. We talk about the necessity of building trust with each student and the importance of individualizing how boys are taught and recognizing that no single method works for everyone. Ian shares what the boys have taught him, and how teaching has helped him better understand his own story.

I appreciate you doing this. Tell me where you grew up?

I was born in Pittsburgh, spent a couple years in Europe as a kid. Couple years in Germany, summer in France, summer in Switzerland, moved back to Pittsburgh, and then lived in Charlottesville, VA for high school.

I went to Davidson College in North Carolina, played basketball.

Tried out for the NBA. Wasn't quite athletic enough.

So, you end up playing in a European league? Which country?

I started in Spain with a team in Gijon, Spain. On the northern coastline.

I had some tough things going on in my life at the time, so it wasn't the best experience. After the first half of that season, I moved to a team in the Czech Republic.

That was much better, but they ended up not having the cash to pay us, so I went to a team in Sweden, and that's where I ended up playing most of my career.

And was your goal to come back and play in the NBA?

Well, my dream has been to play in the NBA ever since I was a kid. It's funny, though, that I read an article where someone interviewed me during my senior year of high school. I told the journalist, "I'd love to play in Europe at some point."

(Laughter.) Maybe I didn't let myself dream big enough.

Anyway. European leagues are super competitive. It's better than even high-level division one here. It's grown men. The atmosphere, the intensity, the chaos in the stands and the passion of the fans... That's not to knock the NBA.

The season is shorter over there. Every game matters a bit more.

You ended up writing a book, largely about your departure from your life as a basketball player. While playing, did you have any ideas about what you might like to do outside of basketball?

If you asked me that question when I was twenty-six years old, I'd have given you an answer. I got my master's degree toward the end of my career – Environmental Policy.

I thought I wanted to be part of the environmental movement somehow.

I also enjoyed writing.

That kind of stuff was all on the surface; at the deeper level, at my core, I had very little ability to determine what I wanted without someone telling me.

Since I was a child, there were people in my life who would tell me when to practice, when to lift weights, what teams to play for, and how much money I should be getting paid. Everything.

Basketball is over. All of that stops. That proved rather difficult.

Tell me about that. Did you pursue a career in environmental policy?

When I retired, I was not yet done with my degree.

I think I retired on a Wednesday, and by that Saturday, I was on a train to Romania, looking to see the world.

I didn't move back to the United States permanently for three years. I spent time in Canada.

Almost went back to basketball. I lived in the U.S. for nine months, but then I met a friend, and we decided to go to South America for a while. Went to India. Southeast Asia.

I was doing all kinds of things, such that I didn't have to figure myself out.

Eventually, one day, I was in Thailand on my computer. I'd booked a flight to New Zealand, and to visit New Zealand, you have to have a flight out.

I thought, I'll either go to Iran after this, or go home.

I went home. I flew back to Richmond.

What an experience. When you look back at that time, what was motivating you? Something you were looking for? Something at home – you were staying away from?

Good question. Curiosity? I'd started reading a ton. That taught me there was a lot about the world I didn't know. A lot of beliefs I had about the way the world worked – maybe they weren't exactly true?

Maybe the way I thought about myself wasn't true.

Travel, in a way, is a means to figure that out. A way to test that sort of thing.

And did you maintain many close relationships in the U.S. through all of this?

At that time, some members of my family were taking their own journey. Some through alcoholism, through addiction, maybe reliving childhood memories in a way.

I was involved with my family. But we weren't as close as we are now.

What happened to basketball? What's your relationship with the sport today? You ever play? Follow the NBA or any of that?

After I retired, I spent a long time not watching, not touching a ball, but eventually, I came back to it.

Now I watch the games.

What's it like departing life as a SEAL?

It's hard work. When I started doing these interviews, they had mostly to do with military separation. You try to find recurring themes, but it's complex; everyone's experience is unique, I think.

It has a lot to do with ego—not in an "egomaniac" way but trying to understand who you are if you're not a SEAL or whatever you did in the military. It's easy to see your job and your identity as synonymous, especially if you're participating in combat.

Do you maintain the identity without the job? Or not? I think the later you are in life, the harder that becomes.

Yes. Especially if you've been that person for as long as you can remember. Since childhood.

I think a lot of people just don't do it. If you believe the peak version of yourself is behind you. The idea of a pivot is not… welcoming.

Maybe that's a good thing about writing or playing the piano. Reasonable to think you can get better. Forever.

Exactly right. I noticed Tom Brady this past fall, playing twenty years at the top of a sport. He retires, and he's back at the stadium on Sundays in the broadcast booth the very next season?

That's anecdotal, but you see that often. For some reason, I find myself rooting for that person, hoping they find something else.

That's right. Is that something you really want to do, or is it something you can do – know how to do?

Where do you find inspiration for your writing or in life more broadly?

I didn't start reading like I do now until my late twenties.

At some point, I became curious about the classics. Someone pointed me toward the Russians, "Crime and Punishment," "War and Peace," Dostoyevsky, and Tolstoy. Those are sort of a foundation.

I appreciate a good love story. I really admire "The Marriage Plot "by Jeffrey Eugenides.

I think "The Red and the Black" by Stendhal is one of the best books ever written. I had a David Foster Wallace phase (laughter).

I love non-fiction as well, biographies, I had a Civil War phase when I moved to Richmond. Probably read ten books on the Civil War.

In the same way that basketball might have been an escape. I think reading can sit in that place now.

How did you happen across Seven Hills School?

I moved to Richmond. I'd been working in youth education, mainly coaching – camps, clinics, this type of thing. I was looking to get away from the nights and weekends schedule.

Seven Hills came up in a Google search, and immediately I thought, this is my school.

What is it about Seven Hills' approach that you find most effective or beneficial when compared to the traditional way we educate middle-school boys?

Well to preface, I want to say Seven Hills is fortunate to be self-contained. We control our student counts, we have the resources and the staff necessary to create an environment that I believe is beneficial for middle-school boys.

I've never met an educator or administrator from a traditional school system, and they've said, "I don't want our boys to have the resources that Seven Hills has."

So, when I speak about what's working at Seven Hills, I think it's important not to do so as a critique of other schools.

There's a disparity of resources when it comes to education in this country. It isn't negligence that makes the difference, at least in most cases.

Anyway, I'll tell you one thing we do well, that other schools might not do as well, is establishing a relationship with every boy. We have ninety-six boys at the moment and eighteen staff members.

I know every boy in the school and the teachers prioritize those relationships. That's number one.

And help me understand what that looks like? I suppose if I went to the middle school down the street, the teachers would claim they also have a relationship with every boy. But I don't think that's the same as what you're talking about?

You're right. When I was a middle schooler, I was fortunate enough – generally – to feel safe. What I've learned by working at Seven Hills, is that unless a boy feels emotionally safe and physically safe, learning is not going to happen. So, they depend on us to create that environment.

Conversely, the students have taught me a lot about my own life and my own childhood. When I was middle-school age, I was experiencing OCD symptoms and struggled to understand why, or, how the whole thing worked. And so the boys - being a middle school teacher has helped me better understand that.

That type of thing. That's an example of the authenticity involved when I say we establish a "relationship" with the boys.

That makes a lot of sense. I was an Adderall prescribed, ADD diagnosed kid. How much of the impact Seven Hills is able to have - would you say is a product of an uptick in physical activity? Finding ways to educate outside of the classroom?

Well, a good bit, but deeper than that is the school's recognition that there are many different types of boys.

We welcome boys that are quieter - might want to read for seven hours a day and we also welcome boys who would prefer to live on the soccer field, just want to play basketball, and some that want to draw all day.

We try to encourage that part of them and that's what motivates the higher level of physical activity.

We have what we call "Experiential Learning" on Fridays. The whole school will meet on the James River and do something hands on, different things, different outdoor experience.

Art by Avery H., student at Seven Hills School.

In terms of student population, are these predominately boys who've given the traditional classroom model a try, and are in search of an alternative? Or is it more a scenario where a family is aware of Seven Hills reputation and thinks, "I want that for my son."?

I'd say the way in which students come to Seven Hills are as diverse as the students themselves.

Some parents think, 'My child is leaving elementary school; there's no longer recess every day. I know my child needs that, so we're looking at Seven Hills.'

Other parents think, 'I know my sons a little different. He could use the emotional support the school provides.

Makes sense.

The school has grown a lot. It started in 2001. In a perfect world, we would take every kid that applied – every kid that genuinely wanted to be there. But you know, interest has grown.

Seven Hills was named an AMLE School of Distinction. Only forty-three schools in the country reach that recognition. It's a big deal.

I guess all that's to say, there's a ton of ways in which the students arrive at the school.

You maintain the school's Lit Magazine "Ashes and the Sparks", what do you try to impress upon the boys in terms of, what can be enjoyable about writing?

"Ashes and the Sparks" is a way to help highlight the boys writing. They can submit to the magazine, but more often, one of the teachers will send me something a student has created. A short story, or a poem.

They'll send it to me. There's a 1:1 editing process which I think is sometimes scary for the boys? But also rewarding, maybe?

We'll go back and forth a bit and then publish it in the literary magazine.

The hope is that they're proud of that. Being able to say, "they're being published."

How do you define "good" writing when talking to a middle-schooler?

Interesting question.

We work on adhering to readable standards and grammar. I don't dismiss experimental writing; I think there's a place in poetry for that, but at that age, I think it's important not to dismiss grammar.

Maybe not the best time to tell them it's okay to write without periods. (Laughter)

Clarity. I try to convey that writing can be dense, difficult even, but it should be readable. Are they making their points clear?

And then I encourage them to find voice. Sometimes, I'll read an essay and you can hear mimicking in a way. A mimicking of the example essay, the student newspaper or something.

If you can do those three things in middle school. Outstanding.

What do you think defines good writing?

I'd have to think about what I would tell a middle-schooler. Generally, I think if you can cause an emotional reaction in the reader - someone you've never met – then I suppose it's good. You've kind of done it.

All of these end with the same question. If you could back, prior to your TRANSITION from basketball, what would you tell yourself?

I don't know. Those questions are interesting, but I wonder if you really want to change things.

I try to tell myself; life is exactly what it is. To be grateful for the journey. I'm not sure I believe everything happens for a reason, but I think you can accept that everything has happened.

Even if I was dealing with OCD or even considered taking my own life at a point. There's comfort in accepting that however things came to be, is how they came to be. Not think too much about going back and wishing this or that.

Ian, thank you. I appreciate you doing this, I appreciate your story, and I certainly appreciate what you do at Seven Hills.

"It’s sad when someone says, 'Let's plan quality time.' There's no quality time. You want garbage time. You and your child and a bowl of Cheerios at 11 at night, when they're not even supposed to be up. The garbage is what we want." – Jerry Seinfeld.

If I've learned anything in the six months since leaving corporate America, it's that breakthroughs - the realizations that shape life, career, and our relationships, rarely show up on our calendars.

More often, they show up in the gaps. In the quiet, the solitude, in the “garbage time.”

We seem to know this is true. Most can recall a time in the last year when clarity appeared - something you realized between the flames of a campfire or mid-flight, without Wi-Fi, looking down at the clouds.

But seldom do we allow space for moments like these to occur.

We opt for structure. We try to outwork uncertainty. We optimize. We organize our time around what's most predictably productive, measurable - most likely to yield a return.

Weeks ago, I called a friend spontaneously. Successful guy with kids the same age as my own.

He didn't answer but sent a text.

"On a call," he tells me. "What's going on?"

"Nothing. Just calling to see what's going on." I sent back.

"I’ll can call you tomorrow at 10 mtn. Or Wednesday, I can do between 11:00 and 12:00. Either of those work for you?"

The procedural nature of his proposal. The scheduling of a social exchange; my response was one of indifference.

The same week, a former colleague sent me an article from New York Magazine, curious if I'd see it. "We need to catch up,” he wrote toward the bottom. “How does lunch sound? I could do May 9th at noon."

It was April 12th.

What's happened here? Are we that busy? Has time efficiency become so important, we’re willing to schedule social connection in the gaps of our Outlook calendars?

I used to operate just like this. Monday through Friday, a sequence of thirty-minute “kick-offs”, “syncs”, “updates”, and “1:1’s.”

When I left my nine to five, I had seventy-five percent of a novel written. Forty-five thousand words, written mostly in the morning, before the day's schedule - with space to think.

I assumed more time would mean more progress, more productivity. I’d have entire days at my disposal, I would schedule dedicated time to write like anything else: "A thousand words per day, twenty days… I’ll have this thing done."

But that's not what happened.

Quality and creativity didn’t show up just because they were penciled in. In fact, productivity decreased, as did quality, the whole thing seemed to resist structure.

"I cannot cause light. The most I can do is try to put myself in the path of its beam." Annie Dillard wrote in her 1974 Pulitzer Prize-winning work, "Pilgrim on Tinker Creek", a sort of meditation on attention, solitude, and the slow unfolding of its value.

Dillard is on to something when it comes to the way we spend our days - the way we navigate life’s TRANSITIONs.

Perhaps the occurrence of breakthroughs has everything to do with the conditions we create - the extent to which we’re available, available for surprise, for what must be stumbled upon.

More to do with “being” than “doing.”

I suppose if I were reading this essay, I would think. Sounds nice. Easier said than done.

And it is. Of course, easier said than done. De-optimizing feels unproductive at first. There’s no guarantees. No assurance that a walk without your phone, or an unexpected trip with your child will yield any insight whatsoever.

But eventually it will.

In 2022, I happened across someone I now consider a dear friend. He lives in Maine, and myself in Colorado. We have no professional overlap, no incentives, no real reason to stay in touch other than being like-minded. He’s well-read, and I found our conversations enjoyable.

For a few years, we'd catch up spontaneously, sometimes for five minutes and other times for an hour. Always unplanned.

One morning, a few years in, I mentioned my daughter was dealing with an autoimmune disorder that affects less than half of one percent of children.

"You serious?" he asked. "My child is dealing with the same."

He proceeded to answer every question I had. In fifteen minutes, handing over the knowledge he’d assembled over five years.

The relationship didn't make a lot of sense. Until it did.

If we can agree that life unfolds in unexpected ways, we must make the time for what’s unexpected to occur.

Otherwise, life delivers only what's expected, the outcomes we already know how to ask for. Rarely the breakthroughs. The realizations. The things that really matter.

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She has extensive research history examining mental health, with over 20 publications in scientific journals, and dozens of research presentations at national and international academic conferences.

Dr. Bartlett’s practice provides a variety of services to individuals and organizations including therapy, speaking engagements, trainings, mental wellness programming, critical incident response.

Thanks for doing this, Brooke; how did you find your way to Psychology, and more specifically, the First Responder/Military community?

When I finished undergrad, I applied to a handful of graduate Psychology programs and was rejected by all except my "shoot for the stars" program. I found out later, the only reason I was considered was because of my personal statement. Certainly not because of any scholarly merit. (laughter)

I played tennis in college, six days a week training. I really didn't do anything to set myself apart in terms of getting into grad school; I never worked in a lab. I was playing tennis all day.

What do they expect an undergrad to have accomplished at that point?

Volunteering, doing unpaid work in a lab, and perhaps helping with research, perhaps. All that kind of stuff helps.

That makes sense. Instead, you focused on tennis and then wrote a solid personal statement. That seems easier.

That's right. My grades were decent but not typical of who they usually admit to Boston University Graduate Psychology programs.

I laid out the hard work and discipline required to be a Division One athlete. I was lucky in that it resonated with the supervisor who read it, someone I still keep in touch with today.

So anyway, I went to grad school in Boston, spent a few years at the National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder doing trauma research with military vets. And from there I got into a doctoral program at the University of Houston.

At that point, my plan was to be a military psychologist, but as soon as I got to Houston, the lab I was with had just started a partnership with Houston Fire. I immediately loved it.

A lot of overlap between First Responder's culture and Veteran culture. At that department, about 25% of the first responders were vets.

Anyway, it took about 12 years, but finally got licensed a few years ago.

Good for you. Long road. And you practice as a clinician today?

I do. My practice includes therapy, consulting – going into agencies – doing training, speaking engagements, running peer-support programs, and critical incident response. A ton of stuff.

In recent years, the number of outlets people turn for mental health advice seems to have multiplied ten-fold. Thinking back to when I was a child, the typical response to any mental health issue, was basically to consult a psychologist or another form of licensed talk therapist.

That's changed, now we see people derive their mental-health advice from all kinds of places. How do you think about the risks and perhaps the benefits of that shift?

Well, you're right. If someone wants to invest in their mental health, they should find a competent, well-trained clinician. When I say "competent," I don't mean someone who's taken a 1-hour online course on "military culture."

Someone who has done hours and hours - years of training with a particular population is going to add a ton of value as a result of that. Working with a combat vet, working with a police officer, it's very different from working with civilians.

For example, I'm a specialized trauma psychologist. I don't know the first thing about helping or treating trauma with a child. That's a totally different thing.

I most worry about any clinician or business that looks like a "catch-all." What I mean by that is, for example, someone who says they specialize in 25 things, or in working with a handful of very different populations. I would be cautious there.

Another thing I would say is that when I say "shop around," I mean really shop around. Most clinicians offer an initial consult for free; I wouldn't give them a shot if they don't. But ask questions, "Do you have experience working with military?" "What training do you have?"

When people contact me, I tell them at the beginning, "You're not expected to make a decision at the end of this call; take some time and think about it."

The last thing I'll add is that many providers working with military/first responders are trained in "evidence-based treatments." do you know what I mean by "evidence-based treatments"?

Yes, but it might be helpful for you to explain.

These are protocols that have been very stringently tested through randomized control trials (RCT). Protocols shown to treat various things, trauma for example.

In trauma, often military trauma, we commonly think about Cognitive Processing Therapy and Prolonged Exposure.

You've probably heard a lot about EMDR? (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing.)

I have. I did it last year.

Did you find it effective?

Yes. If I have to give a yes or no, the answer would be "yes."

Good. So EMDR is also an evidence-based trauma treatment, but with slightly less efficacy than PE and CPT, but many have benefited, nonetheless. But the reason I say that is because EMDR is a company, and they have a lot of good marketing, so most people only hear and know about EMDR.

You don't hear as much about PE and CPT because they're formed by people who work at the VA, funded through grants, and don't have the same backing structure as EMDR.

Plenty of RCTs show EMDR to be effective, so I’m not trying to say it isn’t. But I get a lot of military/first responders that come to me and they feel they're screwed because they tried EMDR and didn't get the results they were looking for - no one's told them there are two other gold standards when it comes to treatment.

That's interesting. I wasn't aware of that.

How often do you see someone come to therapy for job-related trauma, and then as you work with that person, what they're experiencing has more to do with childhood or something separate?

It's a good question, and I don't have any research to tell you about, but I can tell you anecdotally, it's common.

Trauma in general is common, especially among military and first responders. More common than you might think among these populations is also childhood trauma of all sorts. It's not uncommon for someone to seek care about a certain call or an event that took place on a deployment… In session one, we identify why we're meeting, and then, by session four or five, you know, they throw out something like "I forgot to mention this happened when I was a kid."

Abuse, sexual trauma. Whatever the case may be. And that's not unique to the populations I serve. Trauma is comprehensive and tends to snowball; it shapes how we see ourselves, how we see the world, how we see everything, so whenever we try to isolate one particular event, it's quite common to uncover roots which connect to other things.

Is it possible that "healing culture" can be taken too far? Confusing mental health "problems" with what is really just the normal human experience?

Yes absolutely. This is another important reason to find a highly trained, competent professional. There's undoubtedly pathologizing, which just means making something generally expected, and treating it as abnormal.

Generally, we should all pursue a strategy of self-efficacy, which basically means having confidence in our own ability to identify, tolerate, and address stress and issues as they arise. Not telling people their stress is a bigger deal than it needs to be – to drive business or as a marketing strategy.

There's a book called "Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing" by Abigail Shrier that has much to do with this idea. In other words, poorly trained therapists providing “therapy” to people who do not have any issues that necessitate therapy can actually create or worsen problems.

The number of non-profits that serve the military and first responder communities has multiplied in the last few years. Many of which I have a lot of respect for – but if someone is curious about engaging with a particular group, a retreat let's say, what should they look out for?

Yeah, there's a lot of nuance. You do have to look at each one to see specifically what it is they offer and how they provide support.

What's bothersome to me is when it's marketed incorrectly. You see the word "coach" everywhere now. "Coaching," "You'll get to work with our coaches," I even see "Trauma Coaches."

Becoming specialized in the trauma protocols we were talking about takes ten-thousand hours, eighty-hour week rotations. Not, "I'm a veteran; I had PTSD, so I can help you with yours."

Right? Having a heart attack isn't a qualifier to "coach" cardiology patients to recovery from their heart disease. Now, can a veteran who has experienced PTSD provide peer support or play an extremely beneficial role to others experiencing PTSD? Absolutely. And I am a huge proponent of someone building a network with peers who they can relate to and find support from.

But peer support and evidence-based therapy aren't the same thing. And this is something I talk a lot about. It’s extremely important that veterans and first responders understand this difference, because someone who is struggling with significant post-traumatic stress needs a specialized licensed professional to help address it. Seeing an unlicensed/unqualified person for something like post-traumatic stress can be very detrimental and, in some cases, pretty dangerous. I can't tell you how many people have come to me and told me they worked with a "coach" or a group that provided "coaching," and things got worse.

What makes you the most excited about the work you do? Where are you seeing progress in your work?

I get most excited about proactively educating military and first responders.

Programs that normalize mental health. Creating programs where it's talked about, everyone gets the same education so that when an incident happens, they already have the tools and some foundational self-efficacy in place to recognize how certain factors are affecting themselves or the department. From there, they’re able to identify what their needs are, whether it be self-care or needing some outside help, to proactively intervene before things snowball.

When I say “proactively”, I mean equipping fire departments or police departments with information, tools, and resources before bad things happen.

We still have a way to go, but more departments are taking that approach—versus the alternative, which is a “reactive” approach that deploys resources and info after something bad happens like a line of duty death or suicide.

That kind of stuff.

I usually end by asking people about the younger generation, sometimes younger versions of themselves. If you talk to someone early in career, a young firefighter or police officer, what advice would you have for this person?

Start now.

Start to normalize and incorporate - just like you would with your physical health – routines and information. Talk to other people at your department. Learn from their experience.

What I see too often is waiting until there’s a problem.

I would read Substacks like yours, read books, listen to podcasts, utilize their peer support team. It’s all so much better than waiting until things start to get bad.

I use the example of professional athletes. The reason they’re professionals, yes, they’re talented, yes, they work hard, but they have an entire program that they stick to, so much of which is pre-emptive. Things that keep you resilient and prepared for the wear and tear of our work. Mental and physical.

Thank you for doing this, Brooke. So much respect for the work you do.

You can find more about Brooke on her Website, LinkedIn, and on Instagram (@doctorbrookephd)

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Junger is the author of “The Perfect Storm” which was adapted into a major motion picture. His 2016 book “Tribe" explores the deep human need for belonging and community, particularly through the lens of soldiers.

In 2021, Junger wrote a travel memoir titled “Freedom” after walking 400 miles along Pennsylvania’s rail lines, concluding that modern life has not made people feel safer or more content in their lives, and that lacking interpersonal bonds have contributed to the rise of anxiety, depression, and suicide, especially among wealthy societies.

Following an abdominal bleed that nearly took his life, his latest book,“In My Time of Dying” is an exploration of near-death experiences and the idea of an afterlife.

Weeks ago, I wrote something about Combat Outpost Keating in Nurestan Province, Afghanistan, a particularly hostile place. A handful of people commented, people who'd spent time there. Many expressed the same sentiment.

One person wrote, "Oddly, I miss the hell out of that time in my life. I miss how simple it was, how close to death, but also how alive I felt. It was horrible, and I would also go back in a heartbeat."

Do you ever share that sentiment? Nostalgic about seemingly dangerous times, be it the Korengal Valley or otherwise?

Yes and that response doesn’t surprise me.

I studied anthropology in college, so think about these things through that lens.

We’re all social primates, adapted to existing in challenging circumstances and surviving in collaboration with other humans. Historically, if you were left on your own, you die. Humans don’t survive alone in nature - at least over the long term.

American individualism, you know, it's comfortable but also inconsistent with who we are as a species.

The way to feel safe in the world, and I mean this in every sense of the word – physically, emotionally, and socially safe – is to provide something to your survival group that they need. Otherwise, you yourself are at risk.

If you're the only guy who can chip arrowheads, no matter how obnoxious you are, you're not going anywhere.

So, you take a platoon in combat, which happens to be the same size as our typical human survival group - when you're a part of that platoon, you've produced almost exactly our evolutionary past, and that feels really good.

Most things that are adaptive feel good - because they aid in our survival. Eating when you're hungry feels good, that leads to survival. Sex feels good, that leads to reproduction. When you find yourself contributing to a small group, contributing, it feels good. Even when it sucks, it feels good.

You remove a person and place them in the great American suburb, there are two problems. First, it's too easy. All these skills you have are no longer needed. And second, no one is reliant upon you.

Maybe you play rugby once a week with buddies, but no one's survival depends on that. It doesn't matter, really.

So the result is anxiety, depression, "what's the point of all this" which is a form of suicidal ideation, all the things you described.

To me, it makes sense that we feel that way.

Sure. It's not as odd once you zoom out. Is re-immersion, re-integration something you always understood? Something you’ve always been conscious of? How do you think about your own re-integration process?

Well, most of my war reporting was not with the U.S. military. My first trip to Afghanistan was in '96 as the Taliban was taking over and then later with Massoud and his commanders which I wrote about in a piece titled The Lion of Winter for National Geographic Adventure.

Then, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Bosnia in the early nineties.

So, my TRANSITION struggles were different, but they were significant. If you're in war, you see bad things, and bad things might happen to you. It takes time to recover from that.

It also takes a while to recover from a car accident, a divorce, or losing a brother to cancer. Soldiers don't have a monopoly on trauma.

Often, I’d return from a trip, I could tell something was off. This was before PTSD was talked about, before 9/11. I was anxious in bars, in the subway, freaked out on a ski gondola once. I was forty years old. I thought I was going crazy.

It took me a while, but I realized this is classic trauma response. Situations where you're not in control.

Eventually, I realized that episode in the ski gondola when you freaked out for no reason. That was because weeks earlier, you watched a dozen guys get drug out of a minefield – all missing their legs.

Bun in the Korengal Valley, I didn't see gruesome things like that. A few, but in a way, it was fine. Some close calls. But the guys in the 173rd Airborne were outstanding soldiers.

I remember thinking we were in combat, but they got this.

I expected I wouldn't have such a reaction when I got home from that trip because the trauma was relatively low compared to other places.

But that's not what happened.

After Tim and I made Restrepo, I realized what we're all experiencing isn't a trauma response; it's grief.

I really affiliated with the platoon I was with. For the first time, I'd been woven into the fabric of the tribe. I was trusted, I was relied upon, and it was an honor to be part of it. It was everything we're adapted to want as humans.

That’s intoxicating. And when I got home, I bottomed out. Real depression.

When I realized all the other guys in the platoon were having the same reaction. It clicked. This was actually a very healthy reaction to being deprived of something consistent with our evolutionary past.

I was taken out of that and put in something unnatural and so safe which isn’t normal.

Home, the safety of home, it's a blessing in some ways, but that TRANSITION is certainly not natural.

Much of your professional work has been abroad and much of it pretty adventurous – dangerous by comparison. How do you find the time between those adventures, participating in regular life? Do you still long for that kind of work?

I got out of war reporting at age 50 when my friend and colleague that I made Restrepo with was killed in Libya. He was hit with shrapnel from a mortar and died in the back of a pickup truck.

After that, my marriage fell apart, several things happened, and I had to sort of reset the odometer. I got married again and eventually started a family.

Had I TRANSITIONED out of that life at thirty, I might have missed it enormously. But, as you go through life, different things are meaningful at different ages.

If you're living a quiet, sedentary life at twenty, you might be missing out on some young man stuff - young woman stuff. If you're still dodging bullets at sixty, you might be missing out on some old man stuff. Right?

The world's a beautiful place. If you're always chasing war, or if you end up with a bullet in your forehead, it's not such a beautiful place.

If you can't appreciate the beauty and the profound nature of the world in its quiet forms, then appreciating it in its more dramatic form is kind of bull shit. You're missing it.

I'm lucky because I did that stuff when I was young and got out. Reluctantly. I wasn't sure what my identity was if I was not a war reporter. Like many soldiers, you could probably answer that better than I could.

Eventually, I started to see the shallowness of that perspective. Constantly trying to make yourself happy.

I was 55 when my first child was born. That was the most profound, exciting, and meaningful thing that ever happened to me.

I might not have appreciated that at thirty. But I do now.

And have you found it difficult to find things to work on? Outside of raising your children.

Sure. It was much more difficult when I was younger, but now I can.

I knew a guy who was much older than me. Very wise man. A chimney builder who lived on Cape Cod. He spent his entire life on this narrow peninsula of sand. Name was Conrad.

One day, I said, "Conrad, no offense, but do you ever regret spending your entire life in this tiny place?"

I remember being nervous when I asked him that. I waited for him to be offended by my question.

He says, "No. Because I learned to see the infinite in the minutiae. Everything you're doing, looking at, it's incredible."

I think there's some real wisdom there. Just the fact that you exist, that you're alive - it's very unlikely, and if you can appreciate that, life gets easier.

Anyway, that's something I would have dismissed as a younger man, but I can appreciate it now.

How do you think about transformative experiences when it comes to your children? Going abroad and being in the military, all of that was formative in my life – but it was also dangerous in ways. Do you plan to encourage your daughters?

Well, no parent wants their child dodging bullets. But people die doing all kinds of things. Risky or not.

I'll encourage them to take risks. But take risks where you can control the variables. Not to play Russian roulette.

Risks should be meaningful and not random. I'd want my kids to take risks where there's some reward that comes from it – some learning, something new, some value.

We plan to take trips, live in Africa and Mexico, take them around the world, and expose them to the fact that American society, the American way of life, is not the only one.

Perhaps it's not even the best one.

You can make some pretty powerful arguments that it's actually not particularly good for people – measuring by mental health statistics.

Veterans will read this, but some interested in writing as well – I hope. What advice would you have for someone early in their writing career, looking to find their sound, their style? When it comes to pace, sound, voice - how did you come about your own?

I never studied journalism, but I read a lot of good writing. Peter Mathieson, Joan Didion, John McPhee, the list goes on.

You know, I was a long-distance runner in college. Running is all about efficiency. Your body gets more efficient, and the mechanics improve the more you run. If you do 50 miles a week for years, your body finds efficiencies.

A coach can tell you not to swing your arms, but that doesn't work well.

Same is true of writing. You find your style by writing a lot.

You don't choose a style, and you don't get given a style; you get there by crawling on your hands and knees up the mountain.

You've mentioned a quote you admire: "Journalism doesn't tell you want to think; it tells you what to think about." Is there an outlet or person in journalism that you really admire right now?

Man, I don't know. All of cable news is out.

Fox News is particularly bad, CNN is not as bad but still excludes itself from the news category because of such an insistence on leading the witness, even at its own demise.

But these really aren't journalists; I don't know what they are. Reality television or something.

C-SPAN is pretty straightforward. (Laughter) There are some good shows on NPR, but they also can have some insufferable liberal bias.

I'm a Democrat, but liberal bias… I hate liberal bias; it makes my skin crawl. I don't like conservative bias either, but liberal bias is particularly bad – it has this whiff of moral superiority that just drives me crazy.

I don't know what to tell you, really.

(Laughter) That's why I asked, I don't have an answer.

The New York Times, the front section, and the Wall Street Journal's front pages can be pretty straightforward. The opinion sections, though, can be pretty obnoxious.

The National Review is conservative. Again, I'm a Democrat, but I'm willing to tip my hat to conservative publications that I think are straightforward, not tipping the scale, not leading you to their ideas…

Those three aren't bad. I read good stuff writing in the Atlantic and Newsweek, but there's also a lot of bias there.

People are much smarter than a lot of journalists want to believe.

I'll give you a tip. Every newspaper is, in one way or the other, affiliated with the right or left. A few aren't, but generally speaking.

People call the NYT a liberal newspaper, and they're right; it is. But they're at least willing to criticize the liberal establishment. I mean, they excoriated Biden, the guy who was, quote, "their president", right?

Point is, what should be really alarming is any outlet that never criticizes their own camp. Fox News is particularly bad about this. If someone refuses to criticize their side. That's not news; that's a propaganda arm.

Last one, if someone came to you and said, "Sebastian, I'm at the end of a long military career, and I'm out next month, leaving the tribe, how do I not fuck this civilian thing up?" Any advice you have for this person?

Well, I would say the more affluent the community you live in, the lower the impetus toward connection – towards community. The less affluent people are, the more they rely on the community.

I grew up in an affluent, almost entirely white suburb of Boston in the sixties. There are some nice things about that, of course, nice people, but we didn't know our neighbors at all. We didn't need to know our neighbors because we didn't need each other.

I now live in a mixed-income neighborhood on the Lower East Side of New York. People rely on each other. Everyone is entwined here. It's a real community.

So, my first advice is not to move to an affluent suburb. If you want to be a depressed alcoholic, move to a wealthy suburb.

Lastly, give up the idea of reproducing the thrill of combat. It's not realistic. Right?

If you think that's the way to be happy in civilian society, you'll never be happy. And if you consider yourself to be in some way superior to everyone else because you were in combat – you'll never TRANSITION home – because who wants to TRANSITION to an inferior population?

You have to give up that sense of specialness. That specialness helped you survive in a combat environment; it was useful. But the same thing will end up impeding your life in an ordinary existence.

That's really good. SEALs, in particular, Special Forces types, I sometimes see us working so hard to maintain some "operator" type relevance long after our departure from active duty. Reluctant to give it up or to move on to whatever's next.

Certainly, and that's not unique to military folks.

Listen, Sebastian, I think "Tribe" is one of, if not the most recommended and referenced books in the veteran community. I really appreciate you doing this and the work you do. Thank you.

My daughter also received a cochlear implant last year - a surgically implanted device that bypasses damaged or missing parts of the ear, sending sound directly to the auditory nerve.

The week I decided to quit also happened to be the week she had surgery.

I recall arriving at children's hospital very early. The surgery takes time, implanting both sides, and we were the second of two procedures that morning. Anesthesia, in general is unsettling but when administered to your two-year-old; I remember it being a pretty uncomfortable waiting room experience.

Eventually, the doctor made his way to the lounge where my wife and I were seated on a fake leather love seat. As he walked toward us I studied his face, anxious for clues.

He was stoic-looking. His facial expressions providing nothing.

"I’m finished," he said, sitting on a chair opposite us, looking somewhat unimpressed with himself. "I tested both sides. Positive response. She did great."

"Does this means she can hear?" my wife asked - tears filling her eyes.

"Correct. The nurse will call you back in about fifteen minutes and I'll see you back in about five days."

It was a lot to process. A lot of joy. Gratitude.

I noticed the time, it was 11:15 AM. In the time before lunch, he'd given not just one but two toddlers the ability to hear.

The days that followed were intense with thought. Seeing her recover, realizing how much of ourselves we would need to be dedicated to her new reality.

Also that I should quit my job.

In the military, although unaware I’d achieved satisfaction, content in a system of very high-purpose and decent pay. Somehow, however many years later and not all at once, I resided in a place of high pay and little to no purpose.

I'd somehow given up ownership.

In military TRANSITION, one might assume a positive correlation between military success - things such as rank, prior leadership, elite units, combat - and personal and professional success afterward.

While sometimes that’s true, we know it's not a very reliable predictor.

Many even become inhibited by prestigious military careers and alternatively, some seem to be limited by what they perceive as lacking military careers.

Perhaps success in TRANSITION has less to do with what we did and more about the story we're telling ourselves. How we understand our experience. How objective are we, and to what extent we take ownership?

When my wife and I first realized our daughter was deaf, someone recomended "Transformative Experience" by philosopher Laurie Ann Paul.

It's a challenging read, and I didn't think much of it until I noticed her being interviewed on the Tim Ferris Show last week and went back to reread.

In the text, Paul uses the example of Cochlear Implants to understand transformative experiences. Be it that it's common for deaf children to have both a hearing and non-hearing parent, the question of whether to implant the child comes from an interesting vantage point - for one parent or the other.

Neither parent has complete information as to what their child's life will be like once the decision is made.

(A world with sound or a world without.)

To varying degrees, this is true when we find ourselves amidst life’s TRANSITION – the periods that follow transformative experiences, be it military separation or otherwise. When we find ourselves transformed, motivated, and lacking complete knowledge.

This is where ownership becomes critical.

Paul points out the value that can be derived from the following:

Acknowledge the transformative nature of your TRANSITION. Likely, who we are post-military (or any transformational experience) has fundamentally changed; whether we perceive that as positive or negative, doesn’t make it any more or less true.

Come to terms.

We all know individuals separated from a job, the military, or a sports team and never seem to let go of the identity part. Whether the parents choose to pursue a cochlear implant or not, the child is transformed by the decision and by accepting the outcome, the child can take it’s first steps forward, become proficient, be it in sign language or spoken communication.

Embrace the unknown. As you attempt to understand what's next in life and career, embrace the incompleteness of your understanding.

It's common to see higher-ranking vets struggle here. Perhaps holding too tight to their experience in command – determined to enter the private sector in what they perceive to be a lateral transfer.

Similarly, Paul argues that a child is likely to benefit if he or she is encouraged to embrace their new reality as either a recipient of the implant or as a member of the deaf community. Accepting its newness and seeing it as an opportunity to learn.

Hold tight to your agency and authenticity. Paul details the necessity of agency as we move through transformative experiences. We must see external pressures for what they are, taking ownership of our uniqueness as our post TRANSITION identity forms.

Letting go of expectations and what templated tracks exist for people who've come before us. Also common in the vet community, and certainly in the SEAL community.

Regardless of the parent's choice, agency must be afforded to the child. The transformative experience has occurred, and they must develop in their own unique way.

More than a few times, I've questioned to what extent my daughter's deafness, my change in perspective, and the lessons I've derived are coincidences.

I don't know.

I do know that on the day of her surgery, noticing the surgeon, I experienced a transformation in my priorities.

It was clearly unacceptable to allow my job to interfere with my daughters development.

Also, it was clear there was a misalignment in my career more broadly; thinking about the idea of the surgeon and the apparent purpose in his work, made me notice the ambiguous nature of my own.

I realized I'd given up ownership. The same ownership that gave me the confidence to drop out of college and join the Navy.

It was time to take it back.

Paul, L. A. (2014). Transformative Experience. Oxford University Press.