Military's Grief Recovery Challenges: Sandy Wheeler's Journey Through Grief and PTSD

Even though I'm gone physically, I can still have a presence through my video, various releases that I want of my video contacts that I have made for them. Yeah, when you first contacted me, you shared with me this idea and just for the audience who's kind of catching up, Sandy has an app called Life's Final Thoughts and you could find it on the Apple App Store and Android App Store. And essentially, again, correct me if I'm wrong, Sandy, but essentially people are recording a video or a series of videos to loved ones in the to be stored and then in the event that you die, those videos will be shared with your loved ones, right? And you can pick your spouse, your children, your grandchildren, it's up to you, the videos that you want to leave for your family.

And when I first heard this thought, I first I was like, why didn't I think of this, right? And then once I just said, okay, great, let's help Sandy do this. We got behind it because it was such a great idea, right? Everyone who listens, that's familiar with our work understands that we believe that the lion's share of unresolved grief and someone's heart is undelivered emotional communications.

And so for someone to be able to capture all of the things they feel for someone, all of the significant emotional statements they want to communicate to someone, and that loved one can watch that at a later time. We just thought it was such an important thing to get out there in the world. Looking back, I wish I had some videos that my dad made for me. I wish my grandchildren could have personalized videos that were dedicated to each of his grandchildren, that they could watch and see what a incredible, incredible one of a kind man he was, right?

And so when Sandy told me the concept, and he was like, Sandy, the humility you had to just kind of listen to what we, we had to say about it was, was incredible. You're a very accomplished guy. Yet you are still willing to have the humility to kind of get our two cents on on, hey, here's how we would help people find what those emotional communications are, right? Because in a society where this stuff is not discussed openly, right?

Searching around for the emotions, finding the things that are unfinished, finding the things we want to complete emotionally, those are not, you know, household skills that we have. And so that's where I felt like the real partnership for us and you would be, hey, let's help these people, find all the contents of what needs to go in the video message, right? And then you have the expertise in the delivery system of capturing all of that, storing it and then making sure it gets to the right person at the right time every time, like you talked about kind of in the pre interview. So anyway, I'm going to turn it to talking rock back to you.

But again, just I am so glad that our paths crossed. And I'm so excited to see what we can do to just again help humanity with this really much, much needed tool that you guys came up with. So I think, you know, what you remind me of is how this all started. So for me, I was in Vietnam while I was 19, 20, and 21.

And everything I did was top secret. In fact, I had to sign a 20 year non disclosure agreement. And in that entire teams, called Sogs, would just disappear. And I never thought of it at that time because I was young when I look back, but when I got old, then it emotionally really hit me.

What those moms and dads and brothers and sisters had to go through mainly because that particular operation was so highly classified that even if I watched my fellow teammate get killed, they would report him as missing an action. And you can so then you have 20 years that a parent or a spouse or a brother or a sister has to deal with. I call it a false hope because I knew it was false. They didn't know that.

And then eventually they declassify that. And I thought I wonder what that did to many of those families because obviously we didn't have this technology. And they couldn't really leave a message. And then all of a sudden you find out they really were killed in action.

And oh, by the way, it was 20 years ago. So there was that whole event in my life. And another thing I found was why I needed someone like you guys. And God always has a time frame.

So I'm not dismissing that. But I waited till 72 to go through PTSD. And one of my stuck points that really bothered me is one time we were headed south to July. I'm in I core going from dening.

We get an ambush. I'm stuck on one side of the bridge, the rest of them across the bridge and over the other side. And out of that guy comes up along the side. I didn't like his looks, but rules of engagement.

You have to know that that's an enemy combatant before you can engage. And I couldn't tell that I finally got his attention to where he decided to move on. And about 10 minutes later, there's an explosion behind me. And I found out later right about that time we had to move our con boy.

So I get to two. I find out that was a duce and a half that a grenade was tossed into and a bunch of young guys just like me. 101st airborne were all killed. And I carry that. I regret that emotional baggage with me for years.

Never knowing that. First of all, I I don't even know if that was the guy. I couldn't have shot him if I wanted to because I had to violate rules of engagement, which I wouldn't do. And your dad, I'm sure, was identical to me.

And then fast forward. I get to the very day I'm leaving April 5th, 1970, ready to go home ready to celebrate. My best friends, in fact, my best friend from high school was only about a 30 minute chopper ride away from me. He was serving in the army.

And little did I know I know October, I'm in April 5th, 1970, that Dennis would be killed. What was really mortifying to me is I went up to his dad's and Dennis had lost his mom from cancer at a young age. So his dad, Dennis was the only boy and they had three girls. So his dad's also expecting him to come home and he was married and had an unborn little boy.

And out of that, it just devastated me. I had no idea how to deal with it. You know, I needed the grief recovery method right then to help me because I felt like I would have exchanged my life if I could have raised my hand. But as you know, every one of us has our own set of grief issues to deal with and you don't get to trade them like playing cards.

That was what was so impressive when I first jumped on to you guys and started picking up the information and I go, wow, this is stuff I could have used because I ended up retreating into the mountains for three months. Just surviving. And then fortunately life picked up and I had things and so it was like anything that piece just got buried. Never forgot about it.

But when I met his little boy, when his boy was about 14, people had told him to contact me to find out about his dad. So now he doesn't have a grandpa because he's dead and he doesn't have a dad and never got to hear his dad say I love you or touches and or anything. And when I got to meet him, he was a little boy full of anger, not understanding remotely why my dad and why didn't I get to him. So catalog that that was one of the building blocks to my app.

The next one was on August 6th of 2011 on a helicopter called Extortion 17 filled with SOF guys just going out to help a Ranger team get what we call squirters. And then there were some bad guys who somehow they slipped through your grasp and that's what the name of squirter and fast forward on that thing what happens they go out to help him. Most of them were still team six guys and the chopper was fingered by an Afghan special operations guy who was aboard the chopper. That's taken out by an RPG at 50 yards, killed them all.

But at the end they did fiend rules for everybody which we would expect but at the end of this one his name was Lou and all the lights went dark and up popped this video. For six minutes he talked to his wife on you thanking her for letting him do the one thing he dreamt about doing in life and that is being a warrior and be able to keep bad guys from coming to good guys land which is USA. And then he gets done with six minutes of talking to her and he spends the next four minutes talking to little boys seven and nine who were expecting their dad to come home forever and be in their lives. And that did not happen and it's hard to fathom I know you guys can it's hard to fathom for a guy like me that all of a sudden that person would be taken out of your life.

And you had a dad and now you don't have a dad the great thing is his wife was able to use that video should replay that many times every time the boys were missing dad she just like that four minutes in. And here he was as you know when you die the voice is the first thing to go I can look at pictures and I can have memories but I can no longer capture your voice and just a voice mail in today that's not yet this so that's the idea of my video. Is to capture your voice your specific message for each of your loved ones because each one of them are unique and special and they need that reassurance I am sure to pick up the pieces when they just lose someone they loved dearly. So that kind of did it then finally the one that kicked me off the deal that said okay now actually make the app was when the abigate with 12 Marines and one Navy Cormin were killed and again those young people their parents and all their family movements were expecting them to come home no big deal we're withdrawing is this the last bit we're going to see them in a few days.

End up they didn't get to see him and that's where I said never again this just can't happen you know I can't force people to make video content but they should because I believe it is a precursor to helping the process that you guys are experts in which is the grief process because anytime we lose someone we love we are going to have a grief experience. And to me as a just an outsider that experience will vary on the degree of that based on my love attachment and my interaction with that person would that be fair to say yeah absolutely. You know what's so interesting and I don't know if we've actually discussed this sandy but you know our certification training has been around for you know 40 years now and we've had thousands and thousands of people go through that certification training and a huge part of that certification training is going through personal work identifying a loss you want to go through the entire method with and then going through that method and we have a lot of actions involved that you know anyone could find in the grief for every handbook but.

The thing that we used in the certification training for years and years was a thing called a final statement form and we would have a series of questions so that you could basically leave your most important thoughts and and beliefs with your family and then at the very last question it was like if you would like to write some some things to different loved ones please write them here right and it was such a powerful experience and it and this was not even shared with you. You know you're encouraged after the training you can go share stuff with with your loved ones but the amount of value that it actually gave the individual to kind of recalibrate their priorities what's important in life you know to to be reminded another time in a very powerful way you didn't write anything to your car company you didn't write anything to your alma mater right the entirety of that final statement was to your loved ones to your family right and it just helped us all that participate in the same thing.

But it was cette diversity your family members MUSIC of feel to declare this is a huge�끾 that was a lot of international success because this is what you listened to my experiences came in to my experiences. individual doing that too as well. You know, and I think it is just such a powerful exercise. And again, that was all just written content. So I love your idea because to be able to have it in basically high definition for people is just is so so needed.

And you know, there's so many similarities in terms of your story and my dad's story and just really weird things. I don't know if you know, but I had an uncle who passed away named Dennis and I was born on April 5th. You know, but we just dropped these things that are just so wild to me. Sorry, I got sidetracked, but essentially, you know, I love the passion that you have and we have at the Institute to help veterans.

And obviously that's a very dramatic profession. And every time you go down range, you don't know what's gonna happen and that is so needed. But I love that you also have honed in that this is needed for every grant parent walking the planet. This is needed for every parent, right?

This is just a needed tool for humanity, right? And I know on your website, you have different kind of things to help, again, just different individuals navigate this. But again, emotionally communicating things that maybe you haven't ever or emotionally communicating something that you've told your kid a thousand times, but you want to be crystal clear that they get to hear it anytime they want on demand. I really do think it can change the world.

If we were got in a habit of doing this and encourage each other to do this for the people we care about. You bring up a great point and that was when you would have them go through your grief recovery method and pick a topic and then write a letter, you know, for all that. It's exactly what I felt when you actually create a video and the great thing of starting with a picture because I had a lady that was dying of cancer, two, 21 year old twin girls and a 23 year old girl. And she said every time she went to try and just start her video, she would come apart emotionally and just couldn't make it.

So she called me to tell me that. And I just said, okay, I had no answer for that. And I don't know, it's probably a few days. I'd like to think I was so smart that by the end of the day I called her, but I don't think I did that.

And I called her back up because an idea had come into my mind and I said, hey, would you be willing to try one more thing? I'll keep in mind, this lady's dying of cancer and that emotional bent as she's looking down wind and knowing that's coming to her, right? There's nothing else. It's just a matter of navigating the pain and then life is gonna be done.

And I said, would you go get a picture or two pictures of one of your most memorable times with your girls? I don't care if it's shopping and I don't care it's vacation. And I said, then make an eight by 10 copy. And when you turn your camera on, the first thing you do is hold that picture up, and say, hey girls, you remember this?

And I said, I'll bet it'll put a smile on your face because this is a memorable event. And I said, then I only want you to talk about that event, not one other thing. She called me back up and said, she just raved about what a difference that made because she wanted to do the task of creating this video to preserve her voice and her face and her message of love and comfort to her girls in the midst of dying. She just couldn't get over that hurdle.

And that's where we came up with memory spark is because then like I told her, no matter what you say on the story that you're holding up, you won't be judged as incorrect because it's your story, your version of exactly what happened that day. And nobody's gonna get offended if in fact you said, oh yeah, we had hamburgers and you had salmon. They don't care. But they are honed in on, is they're looking at your eyes and you're gonna have a smile on your face because you're talking about a memorable time with three girls that you love.

The great news was she called me back up and said, how do I thank you? That's how memory spark came. It wasn't, I was so brainy. It's that I felt that God gave me that intuition and it just happened to be a combination of events and I really wanted to help this lady.

But when she called me back up, I truly just kinda said, okay, because I definitely wasn't gonna argue with someone who was about to die and challenge her, say, oh, just need to buck up and do that. No. She was already dealing with the fact of missing her girls. The difference when she calls me back up and the smile on her face just said it all because there's an accomplishment every video I complete, like I've done 12 videos for my 12 grandchildren for their wedding.

I'm 77. Youngest seven. I have no idea if they're even going to, but we put a system in place that allows me to put the event wedding and the way we keep in contact so we never lose contact with them. And when they're old enough, they get to go in and change that event wedding to the actual date.

That starts the time clock and for me, I have those videos going out five days before their wedding day. Can you imagine I've been dead five, 10, 15 years and all of a sudden here on their email pops up a deal and here's Papa and he's got a wedding video for me. I just think it's that kind of stuff that you, I get to celebrate even though I'm not there physically and they're gonna celebrate with me because they get to hear my voice again. I didn't age, hey, that's a great thing.

That's a video I stay there. But it was all those kinds of things that just resonated on me. So for me, I have all my children. So the first volley of videos all release when I die.

So within one or two days of my death, those videos will appear each one very specific and unique to each one. But your part of completing that, when you do a video, it's just very satisfying when you go, you watch it back and you go, that's a wrap. And I remember I did my memorial video. So I did one for my own funeral because I have a captive audience.

And I get to say whatever I want and I don't have to worry about tomatoes being flung at me or anybody saying anything. They're gonna listen to every word. And so I share something that virtually nobody knew about me on a top secret program I worked on. That is everyone knows what it is today, but they didn't know then.

That's the stuff that even when I was making it, it's about 11 minutes long. Man, I was smiling and chuckling. And when I watched it, I replayed it three times and I said, that's a wrap. And I've not had to touch it again.

That's that satisfaction thing of knowing that I checked the box. I got, yeah, it's an obligation I feel, but man, alive, it was a celebration because I enjoyed every moment because I can visualize them opening that video. Yeah, what it would be like. That's the power I think that you're talking about.

And you think about for grief, recovery, and just going through that, just having additional messages pop up at their 16th birthday or their 21st or high school graduation or college graduation when they're not even expecting it because you're dead. Right, right. Well, and Sandy, the thing that excites me about kind of what, I don't know what to call it, a collaboration or the, we have some stuff together in the works that we hope we can accomplish down the road. And you know, it's kind of probably too soon to get into that too much today.

But you know, one of the things that I told you is I think one of the value ads that we could bring the grief recovery method to your app is familiarizing people, educating people on how to explore what their emotions are, what the events are, right? In the grief recovery handbook, we have the relationship graph. Well, look, if I'm going to do a video to someone, that video is going to have a lot more content if I have done a relationship graph on that individual, right? I'm going to know, I, it's not going to be a mystery what I'm going to put on that video, right?

And if I'm, if I'm doing one video or three videos to one person forever, I want to make sure I can get everything in there that I want to get into either. So I love the, I love the, the idea of, of our two projects in conjunction with each other. Because you know, Sandy, one of the, the, one of the heart breaks I would have for people is if you have, let's take a veteran who is a warrior of their whole life and they've been trained, hey, you just compartmentalized stuff and you keep it bottled up. The last thing I would want is for some touching moment in that video to be the first time that child has ever heard that dad felt that way, right?

Or for a spouse to hear stuff that they did never, they never got, you know, yearly or month to month when that person was here. So I think there's a real opportunity for us to also help the trajectory of that person's life as their living life, right? Not just an emotional video at the end of life, right? Of course, these are extreme examples, but I could see that happening.

And so what I would love, again, if in my, in my perfect world, we'd have people go through grief or cover method, get a lot more educated on how to identify, again, undelivered communications that we want to make and then make them while we still have time and then also make them in the video, right? So I would love the video, like my video when I die and my kids watch, I would love that video to be a bunch of stuff I've told them a million times and then they get to just hear that again. And because their whole life, I want them to have no confusion about how I feel about them and specific stuff I love about them and apologies I've need to make, make to them. And just, you know, all of those things, I want that to be a part of their just regular childhood and relationship with me.

And I think that's the value that we can bring is like, hey, let's coach these people along on how to do that, day in and day out. And then also my videos are gonna be that more powerful because I'm very clear, crystal clear on the stuff I want to communicate, right? And it's not the first time I'm using some emotional words or it's not the first time I've really discovered, oh, that, wow, I never said that to you. You know, those kind of things is where I'm so excited to work together on this because I think they really do go hand in hand.

I think they're gonna be powerful actually because, you know, I have absorbed your book and yet I just feel like I'm this much in my education process which hour long you want to build that. I think it's so powerful because it is a great preparatory. First of all, we should be using it every day. I told you, it just pups into my mind.

This guy, it was SF with Tendet Colonel. I was actually headed down to a base to actually visit with him about our app. This is just when I had wire frames. I'm going on a Monday, on a Saturday I get a call and he had snapped and he pulled again on the police and on his family.

You and I talked about this because see, warriors I believe need that debrief. Much like your dad probably talked to you, you know, after you do a mission, you have a debrief and that's to really be honest about what took place and see if there's a better way in which you could execute the next time. Well, in that debrief, these guys who especially are at the top of the chain as far as warriors. So let's take our special operations group.

They never have a chance to unload. That's my theory. They don't even know how to handle it. And one of the things I love talking with both you and Ed about was the ability for us to unload.

Let's say after every mission, because every mission brings along something in your life that you can go back and say, wow, I wish I would have had this. For us, I know on our website, we are going to heavily promote a preparatory of getting engaged with a grief recovery method. At a minimum reading your book and even a better option would be attending one of your deals so that we can help, especially in the military, help those guys unload this stuff because otherwise, I think back about my daughter, my youngest daughter said, Dad, would you make sure before you die that you will write a story about Vietnam? Those are difficult things for us.

I don't know how good your dad was at that. We mostly just say that was a position in our life. We went to help people who wanted a life like us. That's what we believed.

South Vietnamese wanted that, but you got to have heart. And for whatever reason, that war didn't turn out like we would have liked it to. But I think the ability to debrief and learn how to deal with grief or things because I know I haven't even disclosed. I don't know if that's true or some of it, but I'd even wanted disclosed.

Yep. My dad was the same way. My dad did not really want to talk. For as much grief or recovery work he did, and as much as he was emotionally complete with the people in his life, honestly, Vietnam was not a place he wanted to go a lot or discuss a lot.

And my mom and our family and my sister, and we just loved him and let that be. There's a Johnny Cash song that I cry every time I hear it. You know, the lyrics of it, of course, I'm not going to remember it, but it's basically about a guy in Vietnam. And my family loves me, but they don't understand.

He's the chorus, you know, and it was like, of course I couldn't understand what you did at 19, what he did at 19. You know, I'm getting chills right now just because. So anyway, it always kind of broke my heart that that was one place he didn't want to really open the door too much. And that's why when you said you were willing to look at it at 72, you know, I don't know.

I don't know if he really fully ever looked at it, you know, or at least not with with us. And again, that's okay. But I think anything we can do to help our, and by the way, let me say this, we've talked about this as well. We don't claim to be the end all be all for everything that veteran is struggling with, but I've told you this, but we have worked with Tier one guys.

We've worked with seals. We've worked with Rangers. I mean, you name it. And we have had great results doing this work because the day a kid gets to boot camp, guess what?

He already has an emotional T kettle that is filled up with grief, right? We haven't even got deployed yet. And I promise you, there is a bunch of unresolved grief because dad left when he was five, right? Grandpa who helped raise him died when he was 13.

That, you know, the dog that he loved that was most constant in his life, he saw it got hit by a car and everyone minimized it. You know, and then Liz goes on and on and on. So a lot of the time, again, I don't care if you're a Delta operator or Seal Team 6 or you're just an infantry guy or you worked at, you know, just at the operating base, we all have grief over just the regular events in life that are absolutely, we're bleeding to death emotionally on that stuff, right? And we're not even getting into the really, you know, like even the thing you shared with us in our audience, so just on that truck I'm not sure what the decision to be made with that guy was, right?

That's on top of all the other stuff we're just navigating just as human beings, right? Navigating or the planet before we get to war. And so anyway, yeah, we got a lot of work to do to educate people in how, what tools we can give them, right? And then they can apply.

And then I felt about this officer, that this guy had dedicated his life and in a millisecond he snaps because he has no place to unload. When you're in the military, I guarantee you, if you walked into the room, he said, hey, how many of you would like sign up for my grief recovery method? There would not be one hand go up. Correct.

And that's a good point. Let me just, and no, no, you're totally right. And let me just say this, when we do get those guys who have a lot of combat experience, it's because they've just retired and they're trying to figure out how to show up for their family and they're trying to figure out how to get complete with this past life, this different experience, and they know on some level, I need to figure out how to make some adjustments to be able to live in this world, right? Because most of the time I haven't been in this world, I've either been training or deployed, and my mind has pretty much always been there.

Because it's like, those guys, it's like they're in the NFL, right? It requires constant focus all the time. And again, now this major change in their life, which we would classify as a grief event, which is retirement. They either wanted it, they either got pushed out, they either got hurt.

But anyway you look at it, it is the most massive change of the league to do the work. You're right, I couldn't go into somewhere where everyone's active duty and have them all sign up, right? I would love to figure out how to do that. But we're not there yet.

I'm excited to announce our premium in-person certification training, individuals who have a desire to help other people with grief and loss, join us for a four day event that you will remember forever. This is based on the proven four day certification we've done before. The curriculum is the same, but now you're going to get a ton of stories and education and training from Sandy. These are tangible tools that help people in any area of their life.

You're going to get a ton of stories and education and training from me. We will have double the amount of trainers to answer questions you have. I want to help people by missing information, this missingly. I'm an advocate for the grieving process, because I know that's like, why would you not tell somebody to heal?

There's going to be some tears in there, and there's going to be some tissues. But I think what will surprise people that are considering this training is if you sat outside of the room when this training is happening, you wouldn't believe how much laughter is happening in this training. You wouldn't believe how much joy and hope you can see on people's faces as we're breaking and people are coming out of the room. It's everything.

The thing she was saying made me feel seen and normal and validated and not insane. I saw grief as this really bad dark thing, instead of seeing it as the actual healing process. As someone who's been in this field for 15 years now, I would have loved to have been trained under these circumstances. It's just such a premier training.

You're going to probably walk away with some like lifelong friends. We did not want to say goodbye to each other at that end of that four days. Be able to help walk them through that and give them that same light bulb that came on in my head. It was transformative.

It was such a rich time of learning and engaging, listening to people's stories, being present, being focused with who you're talking to is such a big part of the grief recovery work. I had done a lot of things. I had done coaching. I'd been in therapy.

I had done a lot of other modalities and they were helpful. But when I did the grief recovery method and when I walked through the method and continued to use the tools, life began to have color. I went from being very emotionally disconnected to being very connected. Do not wait.

Seeds are filling up. Sign up. You will not regret it. I cannot wait to see you.

Have a great day. I think I was talking about this lieutenant colonel and the whole process of throughout his life, he just kept piling on event after event after event. Because when we were there in the military, that's where we were. And I said, if you walked in the room and said, how many of you would like to be part of my grief recovery method, that probably wouldn't be a hand go up.

And the reason is because they would mark you as weak. So this is everything but weak, but that's how we're educated, right? That's how we're brought up. Suck it up.

Be a top boy. Hey, big boys don't cry. I mean, it's truly that way. And you talked also about the determination that comes along and most people call it, I have a chip on my shoulder, right?

They're the ones that end up being the best operators, usually because they're out to prove the world about whatever that chip involves, which also is a grief method. I mean, a grief process. I felt like this guy, that was the very thing it became so evident to me. And in fact, I told the general that was, had just retired, who introduced me to him.

I said, this is a major problem. I don't understand why the military is not going to address this. Because we should really be doing a grief debrief. Every time you should have this ability to figure out what that mission you just were on, what did that just do to you so that you're not filling the bag up until it overflows and all the sudden something that happened to him on that day, he snapped.

It cost him five years in prison. Yeah. Unbelievable. Yep.

And that kind of stuff on the military side. And then it's just as important on the civilian side. Because I see the devastation. I've been to several funerals.

And sometimes the children or grandchildren are just devastated, either from the lack of contact with the person or the fact that they had so much contact, they really depended on them. And now they're not there. And that grief just boils over on them. And my whole idea here is to be that grief precursor, hoping you through that process.

And this is just one chip to the process, right? I can pull a video up just like the little boys for lose little boys every time. They missed dad's voice. It was the same message.

Same for a minute. Did they ever get dissatisfied with it? Nope. Not one time.

Because they could hear his voice. And he was reminding him of the principles he had already taught him in life and shared with him. That was powerful stuff. Yeah.

I think the tool you've created is going to benefit everyone involved. I think that the person doing the videos, I think that they are going to, it is going to impact them more than anybody on your team maybe realizes. It's like, yes, the benefit is for the viewers of these videos. But I'll tell you, if this is done properly, the person that will benefit almost the most will be the person recording the video as well.

Right? It will. I'm telling you, it's going to recalibrate their whole perspective, make them adjust, make them communicate maybe in a different way than they were before. And like you said, essentially, there will be pressure release valve valves that were giving guys and gals that frankly have a lot of pressure built up, right?

It's like you said, that gentleman served five years in prison. We just interviewed a guy in prison two, three months ago, right? Everybody in prison, it's unresolved grief and it exploded. Everybody in the military, it is unresolved grief and it exploded.

Everyone out there just in regular life, it's unresolved grief and it explodes. It's just the, the degree of how dramatic the explosion is. The explosion can be suicide. The explosion can be suicide homicide.

The explosion can be domestic violence. The explosion can be making a really bad decision and leaving your family, right? I mean, the list goes on for a teenage girl's own. Fortunately, the explosion is cutting themselves.

That's what we see there, right? So anyway, it's, I think I'm going to kind of just keep going over this, but I think everybody needs your product and everybody needs our product. And then when you put these two together, I think you have something so unique that the world really hasn't tried yet. And that's why, again, after a couple of conversations with you, I knew within five minutes, I liked your product.

I just wanted to make sure that me, you know, I wanted to know who Sandy was, right? And I'm, I'm crystal clear on kind of the human being you are at this point. And so again, I'm just really excited that that I think, like you said, I think God kind of said, hey, you two need to talk, right? And then it just happened.

And I think we're going to do really cool stuff for, for, for people. You know, we haven't even gotten into the actual, all of the, the, the other critical components of, of our warfighters, which is their amazing families, right? Their wives, their spouses, their children. Again, if we're all doing these videos, if we're all identifying the things that we want to communicate in these videos, think about how much closer families would be.

You know, if we all learn how to communicate these things. And okay, well, we're going to prepare to learn how to do these videos. But in doing that, we're actually learning how to communicate again on a daily basis in the car ride to school. You know, when dad gets home, you know, when dad leaves, we're going to, our, our emotional communication, our emotional IQ is going to be through the roof.

If we get comfortable talking about these really scary uncomfortable things, you know, that is so true. Yeah. You know, I, you just prompted something. I, at one time I was speaking with another Navy SEAL guy at FIS Special Forces.

And I, again, I'm old. So I, that's probably about, I might have been in my late 60s. And we had invited them and made sure, hey, if you have a wife, bring them along, if you have a girlfriend, bring them along, light open. I was the last to speak.

And what I, one of the things I told them about was the definition of a warrior. Because I felt I said, you know, when those who are special in the SOF, let's just use them because they, they do have a more high intensity of deployment. And I said, you know, I am going to explain to you what a warrior is because most of them, it, it's the operator that enlists. He's the one who enlists.

The family not so much. That's there along for the ride and you say, yes, they got married and they decided to have children. They did. But, but they went the ones that raised their hand and say, here are my, send me.

And then what happens is when you're on mission, I believe you have such adrenaline rushes. Why I'm pretty convinced in life, there's no adrenaline rush that matches a bullet shot at you. And you realize that person is trying to kill me. It's a whole nother level of adrenaline.

So I was explaining to them a warrior. And in the back of the room, I could see this one guy, I could tell she was an officer with SOF and I could see tears rolling down her face. What I did is in explaining the warrior, I said, you know, you often wonder when your husband returns and he's around the house and everything's kind of trying to get back to whatever normal definition is. And then after a couple of weeks or so, they get fidgety.

Well, the fidgety isn't that they necessarily want to be with their teammates all the time. It's that they have developed that relationship and think that they pay a key role in their survival. That's what a team is all about. And it's said, so what happens, you begin as the family, you begin to think that they love the team more than they love you.

That's where that communication part coal comes in because the warrior himself doesn't know how to handle that adrenaline because there is no adrenaline that matches that. And you know, and I know that when you have adrenaline rushes, let's just take sports. You crave that adrenaline rush. Our bodies do.

That's how we're made. So what happens that warrior is he is really craving that adrenaline rush again. And that's what makes him fidgety. And when I got done, I remember there was a guy that was a ranger in his wife and his eyes were like biggest saucers.

They're making a beeline for me. And he had got pulled out of the part where Black Hawk Down was two days before that event happened. And as I was talking to him and his wife and he would just become explosive at times, well what he was is he was furious that he got pulled out. So I asked him, I said, so let's say you're with that helicopter pilot on the ground.

Tell me what you're going to do. What's the difference? You'd have been dead too. And you would have been, even if you'd have been there and they wouldn't have pulled you back.

You all would have been stymied just like you were in what happened. Because guess what? We were unprepared for that event. And that's the thing I think is just even being prepared for death, which is inevitable.

We just don't tend to like to talk about it. But it's inevitable. And that's what I think about with my app. Why I'm really looking at grandparents other than military as a plus to me.

But grandparents, because we know we're on the downhill slide. And we shouldn't be afraid to talk about something and we should be able to focus on wanting to do the greater thing for our children and our grandchildren and our spouses. And I'll tell you this little piece. And you don't need my app to do this.

But I've shared this with a few guys is that we know in the military that marriage is a big issue and divorce is a big issue. And most of them do not know how to communicate. You know, they get married, they have all these plans and then the real world sets in. So what I did this last year, and here I am 77.

So I shouldn't brag too much. But this last year for my wife's birthday, I decided to do a video. And I started the video letting her know the first time I ever saw her. Not the first time I ever talked to her, first time I got a chance to meet her.

I got turned down five times when I did ask her for a day. So we don't know how that worked out. But when I got done telling her that story right up until the point when I actually finished by saying, would you marry me? And fortunately she said, yes.

She calls me up on the phone because I send her the video and I'm up at my office. She's down at the home because I wanted her to watch the video in private. And she watches it and she calls me up and she's just balling like unreal. And she said, this is the greatest gift you could have ever given me.

So see, I reaffirmed why I fell in love with her. And what it did to me as I made it, I reminded myself why this was the girl that I wanted to marry and spend my life with. That's the power that I see and your guys' stuff is I go, this is going to help me on every facet. Sometimes I'm not a really good communicator with my kids.

And sometimes I probably overstep my bounds. And how do I go back and how do I handle that? That's this thing I love. Once I tapped into your guys' book, and of course, having the conversation with both you and Ed has just been a real blessing to me.

But I put this at our top priority of being involved with our app because I think that first of all, the messages will be that much better. So having that relationship, what did you call a relationship map? Is that what you call a relationship graph? Relationship graph.

Yes. So I think we're going to make that a process or a part of our website. Because again, even though we have an idea hub, and I am grateful to God that I came up with that memory spark, the showing of a picture, because I can't tell you the number of people that we're having extreme difficulty starting the video. Even though we had a list of all kinds of ideas, it wasn't until I came about a personal memory story about your love for the people you're going to share that video with, that opened the gate.

Now that opens the gate so that it also gets you going. It's kind of like taking a test. You know, I remember one time a professor told me, he said, Wheeler, you're never going to complete my accounting test. Period.

He said, so get over it. What you do to take a test? He said, you go find a question that is a slam dunk answer for you. Piece of cake.

That's called momentum. And then once that, he said, then look for the highest points. And if they resonate with you, that's what you do. And what momentum will do, it will carry you through.

And the next thing you know, you have the answer for that one. And that one. And you won't get stuck. That's exactly that point when I went through PTSD.

I had that massive stuck point about filling guilty for a group of guys. I called them young guys and I go, hold it. I was the same age as those guys. But you know, your memory kind of, as you think about it, when you're older, you think of them as young guys.

And yes, that's what I was. I was just a young man in a war zone. But I think this coal is going to be so powerful. And I think for grandparents, how about estranged parents or grandparents?

And you brought up a great thing that I think we should talk about. And that is, what if I didn't have a good relationship with my kids? And how do I prepare a video that hopefully will still help them? Can I say, even though I didn't in real life, the best scenario would be to say, I'm sorry, I did that in real life.

But what if that is so estranged that I feel comfortable doing that on a video where I say son or my daughter, sweetie, and dad was never there. I'm sorry, I never went to one of your problems or I never commented on your prom dress. What does that do in the process of the person who's on the receptive band? And what if I'm in a strange grant?

Fortunately, we're not with our grandchildren. But I know a lot of grandparents where their children for whatever reason have prohibited them from seeing the grandchildren. Where does that come in in the grief and the process of getting through this? Well, that's a great question.

And as questions often are answered, it depends. It depends on what that individual has done. Have they worked on getting complete with that even before they heard the apology? Could the apology just out of the blue really just help them have a sense of completion?

Absolutely. Could the apology make them angry? Because they know they recorded the video five years before their actual death and they didn't find it important enough to fix that in those five years and actually have a in-person conversation with me. Right, it really depends.

But that's where more today than ever, Sandy, just on this podcast, us talking. I am so, I want obviously I want your app to be out there in just a household name. But I think it will look once you have recorded a video to your loved one, okay, you're never going to be the same. Your perception of the your whole situation will never be the same, right?

Now, is everyone going to write their wrongs right then immediately? Probably not, but they should. And a lot of them it will eat at them until they do write that wrong. And don't wait till they die and the video is as seen by their loved ones.

And that's where this is going to be so much healing in real time even before that person's watching the video on the death. Let's see, that's the reason for us collaborating together because we on our website, I want to bring up a piece like that. And I think I really would like to have a little short recorded video of you just explaining that because to me, there's very few that purposely want to damage their children or grandchildren. Correct.

There are. I would totally agree. But what if we could guide them and just have them ponder that to say, you know, before you close the book on the chapter of your life, what if you could go back and think, did I do and we could have a list of things that would prompt, right? That just like well, the PTSD is something that prompts you and then help them right now because you're right.

I mean, I hope that the videos are in there for 10 years, 15 years before they pass away. The idea is I know the day or the hour, so I need to do it today. But if we could do some of those things, which would be educational, which is just being an informative piece in our idea hub that says, you know, if you have done these kinds of things or something, you may not even realize it, but think about this. You would be the expert.

I'm not the expert on that. But I could see how that would prompt me and I'll use my data as an example. My dad was a Marine. We were never close.

I was never close with my mom. Now that could just be the weirdness of me. I don't know. But I can't remember them saying they loved me ever.

And I went on with life and I made a determination saying, I'm not going to be that way for my kids and my grandkids. You don't want to tell them I love them. But I'm also a guy who's not perfect at all. And I'm sure from time to time, I step on toes or do something.

Some of it, I don't know. But going through the process of what I think you guys can bring the table could just be things that helped me finish off life better, including having the video, which will come to them at a later time and probably make our video content even better, especially if our relationship is rocky. Yeah, I mean, look, I know this sounds really weird and we wouldn't actually do this because confidentiality on your side in ours is to the utmost importance, right? But if you were just a fly on the wall, I would be so interested to see videos that were done by people who had gone through the entire grief recovery method and were familiar with all the stuff we teach in the grief recovery handbook.

And then watch videos from people who have never seen anything or been really educated on that topic at all. And I think you would find very, very different videos. Again, I think they would all be heartfelt from the person's best ability to produce whatever they're consciously aware of. I just think the depth would be vastly different, just seeing what I've seen.

So again, I know I'm preaching in the choir here and I'm really looking forward to helping assist at how we can integrate these tools. So people can get across what they really want to get across. That's, you know, it's not about, oh, my, this method is so greater, anything like that. It's just like, how do we help these people the most, right?

How do we get their stuff deep and impactful? Yeah, you bring something really great. And I'm with you. Yeah, confidentiality is like massive, right?

But what I am going to do is I would love to send my funeral video to you. And it could go to Ed too. But it would just give you an idea because when I created that, I didn't even know about you guys. Yep.

Didn't know about wreath recovery method. I didn't know anything. And yes, it does it because I would love to have an A B test like that. And sometimes it might be where we actually could do that where we show by volunteer, right?

Because they'd have to be making samples. I'm not sure. Sure. Well, here, here, here, here's, no, that here's how I think we're going to figure this out.

So I think correct me if I'm wrong, but I think we're scheduled to do, do some work together in December. Right? So, you know, the plan is for you to go through the grief recovery method in December. And then, um, and then I just want you to, you know, report back to me.

You know, again, I know that incredible stuff are in your videos right now full stop, right? When you say something like and it feels like that's a wrap, that's what we try and help people with a grief recovery. This feels complete. I don't know how to describe it, but it waits off my shoulders.

I feel less pressure. You know, I used to have back pain. I had a guy who woke up every morning, uh, uh, in the middle of the night, 2 p.m. running through with a nightmare running through the jungle looking for magazines and he had none, right? And he went through grief recovery.

And within the four day period on day three, he reports back to the whole group and he felt safe enough to do it with a bunch of civilians in the room. I did not, I did not have that nightmare last night and we all gave him a big hug and we all cheered and and and drive on, right? But it was like so, uh, beautiful. Um, man, I don't know where I got sidetracked with that, but, you know, just the back of a view going through the grief recovery.

So I've not gone through it yet, right? But I'll send you guys my video because I don't mind you seeing my funeral video that I called a wrap. What will be interesting is once I go through the grief recovery method, are there other things that trigger in that where I go, well, I could do a lot better job at this. And I'm not even better, right?

And again, I don't even want to put better on it. I, my guess would be is you're going to go through it and be like, you know what? I got some amazing stuff. Those, those videos are staying.

And then I also want to do some other videos because I have some more, more awareness because we looked at it in a way that, you know, we're not socialized. Look at stuff. Like that's, that would be my bet is what's going to happen. It's, oh, man, there's some other great stuff we can do, right?

And in our work and in the, in the handbook, if you remember, there's PS letters, right? In our work because once we go to emotional completion through reading a letter, we're not totally complete, right? We're complete with what we consciously are aware of. And then the next day, you know, we have some other memory or some other stimulus hits us.

And then so, you know, again, I think there's also going to, you know, my hope would be there's a maintenance piece to the videos because again, as that person lives more life, we're going to want to throw more stuff in there. And I think that's what will happen for people who, you know, go through this method. The, the, the awareness will just be there in, in some places. But, you know, again, we, I'm excited to have this conversation in December once, once we get to work together.

And I cannot believe it, but we're at the hour mark. So Sandy, I want, I want final thoughts from you. And again, I would love, I appreciate your time. I'd love to have you on again, because I think we got more to cover.

But what, what do you want to leave the audience with, Sandy right now? For me, it's just that don't forget the importance that you play in someone else's life. And, and to be able to convey your guidance, your instruction, your love, your comfort to them, keeping in mind that there will become a day where I am going to be gone. And I want them to know how much I enjoyed having them in my life and how fortunate I was and how much I love them.

And that, I'll see them at the gate. Because I'm a Christian and that's most important to me for all my children and grandchildren, which I have five children, 12 grandchildren, three great grandchildren. And I want them to know that based on things of me and my life that I share with them, that I do want to meet them at the gate. And I'll look forward to that day.

And that is, make sure you run a good race, right? That's what's important. But I want them to know immensely what they meant to me in my life. And that's why, to your point, I have to do things with them right now, right?

Which I have done. I've done that throughout my life with my grandchildren. So if I show them a picture of Cliff jumping and they're in the picture, they're going to remember that day to a tee. And what it was like when Papa said, hey, listen, I'm right down here.

You're going to be just fine. Just jump. And the first time they do, that's the hardest. And after that, they don't want to stop because that thrill is unbelievable.

And they're going to remember Papa talked me off the ledge. He's the one. Yep. Yep.

That's that's what I want. I just want my love to be there to encourage them, even when I physically am not there that all of a sudden, I get big joy just thinking about a video all of a sudden pops up on their screen and maybe a graduation of college. And they're going to hold it. He's been gone 10 years.

I already know what I want to say to him about life and my love. And that's what I feel about all this. And coming back to the grief recovery, that ability to help us who have carried baggage to unload that baggage to be a better person in and of myself would be really great. So yeah, that's kind of my final two bits.

Wonderful. He said, Sandy, I cannot follow that. That was just perfect. And you know, again, I want to thank you for your time.

I look forward to episode two whenever we can schedule that, sir. And if you we're going to put this in the show notes, but for our listeners, it is life's final thoughts, right? And you can find that in the either app store, Apple or Android. And again, I think this this will benefit everybody listening any human being, right?

We focused on a couple very needed communities we want to help. But if you are a human being and you have loved ones in your life, I encourage you to look into this app because I think it's going to really change so many lives. And so we fully support what you're doing, Sandy, and hope we can help in any way. And thank you for tuning in.

And again, this is this is feel free again. And thank you for tuning in. Share it, like it, spread the message if this was meaningful for you. And I hope you have a great rest of your day or evening.

Thank you.