The Other Side Of The Gun: Susan Snow On Losing Her Father In the Line Of Duty

November 25, 2024

Episode Transcript

Today, I sit down with Susan Snow — author of The Other Side of the Gun — to talk about trauma, grief, and the brutal reality of what happens when your parent dies in the line of duty. Ms. Snow was just 17 years old when her father, an LAPD robbery homicide detective, was gunned down on Halloween night in 1985. She walks us through the raw details of that day — the phone call, the scene at the school, and the surreal moment she saw her father’s body under a white sheet.

We unpack how trauma lingers when it's not treated, how poorly equipped the 1980s were for addressing mental health, and how Ms. Snow’s first experience with therapy left her feeling broken instead of better. But years later, a panic attack triggered by the Columbine school shooting forced her to confront the pain she thought she buried. With the help of a trauma-informed therapist, she finally got the correct diagnosis — PTSD — and began the hard work of healing. She shares how journaling, EMDR, and other therapies helped her regain peace after decades of fight-or-flight survival.

Ms. Snow also discusses the ripple effect of her father’s death on her relationships, her marriage, her kids, and her own identity. Her book isn’t just a memoir — it’s a message of hope for law enforcement families, trauma survivors, and anyone carrying hidden pain. She speaks powerfully about the need for mental health support in police and military circles, the dangers of emotional suppression, and the myth that asking for help is weakness.

https://susansnowspeaks.com/

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*Couple O' Nukes LLC and Mr. Whiskey are not licensed medical entities, nor do they take responsibility for any advice or information put forth by guests. Take all advice at your own risk.

See full episode transcriptTranscript is autogenerated by AI

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of Couple of Nukes. As always, I'm your host, Mr. Whiskey, and if you're watching on YouTube, you can see that I am sitting out in Colorado. Not actually, but that would be pretty awesome. I've never been. It has this misconception of being nothing but a town of people high.

On weed and then whatever else they do, you know, stoned but there is a lot of beauty to it. And it was to make our guests feel comfortable at home. And so we have a guest here who will be sharing a gruesome story of the reality of. When your parent is a first responder, whether that's EMT, firefighter, police officer, or in the military there's a higher chance than normal that they could be lost on the job.

And it's a very tragic thing, and obviously we hope that never happens to anyone. But it is something that can happen. And she is here to share not only the fact that that did happen to her family, but the road to recovery afterward. Death, grief, and trauma like that in general is something that we will all experience at some point in our life, whether it's a parent, A child or a relative or a friend, and it can be very hard to navigate that, but we have a guest who not only navigated it, but brought about resources and created resources from that to help other people, Ms.

Susan Snow, would you please go ahead and introduce yourself for us? Hi there. Thank you so much for having me today. And welcome from Colorado. We aren't all high over here. Yeah, we're known for our Rocky mountains. And right now we're, as you can see your background, our Aspens are starting to change.

So beautiful colors. Oh yeah. And For your story, I read it was on Halloween night in 1985. And so, definitely a holiday ruin there for you, so, can you tell us exactly what your father did as a job? You know, all the details around that, and then what exactly happened?

Sure, sure. So, my dad was a Los Angeles police detective. He was robbery homicide based out of North Hollywood, California. Which with him being a detective, I will tell you I watched him work up his ranks from being a little girl when he went into the academy to being a detective too.

And when he was killed. So, I had this false sense of security. My thought patterns around that was the fact that, you know, he came in after the fact. It wasn't, he was no longer in danger because he, he came in after the fact. Not during the crime. And that all changed on Halloween of 1985.

It was kind of a typical day. I was 17 at the time. I had a six year old brother. And in the morning I was getting ready for school and my dad was getting ready to go to court. That particular day I wanted to go to a party that night and it was a school night. So, dad said absolutely no, not going.

And, you know, when I talked to him that morning, it was kind of an argument, you know, we were kind of arguing back and forth you know, teenage angst and all. And I just, you know, I really wanted so badly to go to this party with my boyfriend and my friends and and we went about our day, you know, he took off to go to court.

He was testifying in a case where he was the lead detective. And So he went out and he testified that day. I was at school planning the manipulation that was going to occur when I got home. So I, I got home, cleaned the house like a crazy person and waited. My mom was the first to come home.

My dad the plan was that he was going to go pick up my brother from school. And so as I was getting ready and my mom was. taking her costume off. The phone rang and being the teenager in the house, I thought, who's calling my parents? So I ran across the room, picked up the phone. It wasn't for me. It was a lady from my brother's school, and all she said was that there was a drive by shooting and my dad was involved.

By that time, my mom had rounded the corner and I just handed her the phone and I kind of tried to listen in to the conversation, but I could just see her body language change and I knew it was bad and she got off the phone and she looked at me and said. We're going to the school. So, the school is about 7 to 10 minutes away from my childhood home.

And when we arrived the school has like a parking lot in the middle and the kids were let out on the backside of the school and after after daycare let out. So that was where we headed. And there was a couple of officers that were walking towards us and they had tears in their eyes. And we just kept walking and then I will tell you that the sky on that street was totally lit up because all the police units and there was one ambulance that was sitting in the street.

My mom and I, as we, we kept walking, we kind of glanced over and saw my dad's truck. So we started running towards the truck. And in the midst of getting to the truck, we saw glass all over the ground and rounded the corner and there was my dad. And he was covered with a white sheet, but he was still there.

And I watched my mom drop to her knees and scream. It was surreal. I, as a kid I could not comprehend what I was looking at. And so what I ended up doing is hyper focusing on that ambulance. I just looked at that ambulance and I kept. saying, why aren't they helping him? Police officers came, you know, over to us pretty quickly and escorted us away from the scene and took us to office inside the school.

My mom was taken aside by one of the detectives and I w I sat in the office in a chair and I was trying to process everything. But it was, it was totally unbelievable to me. I, I just couldn't wrap my head around it. And I just kept thinking over and over again, why isn't anybody helping him? It wasn't until I heard two ladies in the office talking that worked there.

And one lady said that my dad was deceased and that was like my world cracked. I. I wanted to run out of that room and far, far, far away to get away from this nightmare, but I couldn't move like my legs, my limbs, everything felt like cement and I was just spiraling at that point. I just, I didn't know what to do, where to go.

Nothing. There were no adults around like giving me any kind of support. My mom came or came back into the room and she said, I'm sending you with a neighbor.

And even though I wanted to run as far as I could. Part of me wanted to be with my family needed to know where my brother was. I didn't know if he had been hurt. I didn't know what he saw. I had no information whatsoever. And here I was being sent. To a neighbor's house and it was you know, it was, it was it was a difficult situation because at that moment, I literally felt like I wasn't important in this scenario and that happened.

I mean, because obviously my, my brother was not hurt. The last thing my dad did was save his life. He told him to duck down in our truck and my dad knew what was coming.

So he wasn't physically hurt, but yeah, mentally for sure. And when I got to the neighbor's house, I didn't know how to handle any of this and my poor neighbor she'd known my parents for years, so she was trying to process everything that was going on and I was beside myself and all I wanted at that point was my boyfriend.

And we'd only been dating three months. And he was 19. Most guys would have high tailed it out of there. But he didn't. He, he, he came over and he was my support system. But when she called him, she didn't tell him a whole lot. And so when he got there, he just wanted me to come with him and he was going to take me to whatever hospital my dad was at.

And so he stood there asking me a bunch of questions like, what hospital is he at? Where's your mom? Where's your brother? Did your brother get hurt? Like, you know, typical questions. Yeah. And I just could not spit it out. Finally, after a little while, because I, I, he was just being really persistent. I.

Just blurted it out. He's gone. And he said, what do you mean? He's gone. And I said, he's gone. He's not at a hospital. He's gone. And I watched that 19 year old boy crumble. And it was, it was a pivotal moment because here we were two kids dealing with this horrific situation. My neighborhood look like I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

I used to live in a quiet neighborhood. It was no longer quiet. It was full of law enforcement. They didn't catch the guys that were involved, and the guys that were involved were a part of what he was testifying against. But they didn't catch him for six days. So I had police presence, about 20 officers in my front yard, 20 in my backyard.

We had helicopters over and because it was a huge deal in the media, we had the media that was camped out as well. So on top of all of that trauma, I was not, I didn't have any privacy. I couldn't grieve privately at all. Yeah. And, you know, I just, my mom you know, obviously there was a lot of chaos that night, a lot of chaos but my mom, you know, dealing with all the things that she had to do logistically I got kind of pushed aside.

I mean, there's no way of saying anything different. And. Back then in the 80s, which you would never remember there was no talk about mental health and there definitely were no resources for kids or young, you know, young adults. PTSD wasn't even something that was talked about either because it was called at the time shell shock, and it was only attributed to the military.

So I was a kid that was dealing with post traumatic stress and all the things that come along with it. So I was, I was. In the days that followed, I never slept, which led to major depression, suicidal ideation, because the other caveat to everything that was going on is that my mom and I, we didn't have.

A really healthy relationship. And my dad was always that go between the voice of reason. And now I didn't even have that anymore. My sense of safety was shot. It was gone. And so I had anxiety and panic attacks and no tools. To help me and guide me through them. So there were days where I just felt like I was going to die.

But then again, I thought, well, okay, whatever. I mean, however I could be with my dad. So be it. And I just, I, I, I spent a lot of time just walking around in a haze and everybody that I have talked to has said the same thing when you. Go through something as traumatic as that or, you know, loss. You live in a fog for a while, which I did.

And on top of being in a fog, I, I had strangers in my house for 6 days. Yeah. Who barely said boo to me. And I think a lot of it was, you know, they tiptoed around you. They didn't know what to say. They didn't know how to deal with things. They didn't know, you know, I think everybody had the same mindset that I was a teenager.

I had my friends, I had my boyfriend, I was going to be fine, but I wasn't fine.

And it was about a month after my dad had died. My mom came to me and she said. That LAPD had come to them and said that they wanted to pay for therapist for each one of us separately. And I, I knew nothing about therapy. In fact, I just thought if you went to a therapist, you were crazy. I mean, I had no experience with it.

I had no idea. I knew I didn't know how to verbalize all the things that I was dealing with. Nobody asked me. So, I thought, okay, a professional all, you know, all you had to do is point me in the direction you needed me to go. And that's the direction I went. Like I was barely functioning. And I did see this gentleman in hindsight, I feel like the amount of trauma that I was dealing with, he was not educated enough.

To deal with it. So, you know, and that's probably not his fault, but it certainly was not helpful for me because being a teenager, not knowing how to verbalize what I was dealing with I just thought, you know, he's going to be the one. That's going to make me feel better. And every session, all he wanted to talk about was my relationship with my mother, my brother, my boyfriend in school.

Not once in that entire time that I saw him. Did he ask about that night? Hmm. And people are shocked about that. But, you know, if you have a professional that's not comfortable because they haven't been educated enough, they probably won't dive. They probably won't ask the questions. So I had that experience for an entire year.

After the year, he said, I'm a well rounded young lady. I was going to be fine for the rest of my life. And I didn't need to see him anymore and I walked out of his office and I thought, okay, I'm just going to live with all of this stuff that goes on with me for the rest of my life. I have snapped. I'm crazy.

Not even a professional can help me. And I just said to myself, I, I'm just going to do what I need, you know, I need to do to survive. And what that looked like was fight or flight. What it looked like is taking in what people would say about me or to me about being brave. About being strong, about being resilient.

And so I just, I wore that emotional mask and no matter what emotional thing that came up for me, I would just put that outward mask. Nobody would know that I was just struggling inside. And I did that for years and it took away I married the boyfriend. We're still together 39 years later. But I feel like it took away really living.

I felt like my early years, my young adult years was my kind of going in someone else's path. Like it wasn't mine. It was what we were expected to do. And I think my husband would agree. That we both felt like that as well as being young adults and dating and then, you know, getting engaged and then getting married.

And then, you know, we didn't have children right away, but, you know, it was just a progression and the issue was, is that neither 1 of us were healthy mentally and so we both struggled with, you know, different things. Right. I watched my mother. You know, everybody copes differently and I do not judge, right?

Because everybody deals with trauma differently. Everybody deals with loss differently and people have different coping skills. And my mom used alcohol to cope, but the alcohol promoted abuse. And I, I looked at the abuse, I looked at the use of the alcohol and as my brother got older, you know, he was making bad choices as well.

They were both living their lives in the victimhood and I just, I didn't want that for myself. But I also knew that I was struggling and I didn't know how to fix it. It wasn't until we moved, we moved to Colorado in 97 and I now have two kids. I was working as a hairdresser and I on April April 20th of 1999, I was working at a salon that was close to Littleton, Colorado.

And that day I was doing clients. I had taken a break. I went into the back room and I turned on the TV. And when I turned on the TV, it was all the coverage of the Columbine high school shootings. And I had a visceral reaction to it. I had flashbacks because my dad was killed at a school. I saw the ambulance, the police cars.

Everything. And as I stood there, I started having a panic attack. It turned bright white, sweating. My colleague looked at me and said, I don't understand what is going on with you because you're too young to have kids at that school. And I know you don't live over there. I remember I was told I was going to be fine for the rest of my life.

So I had no idea what was going on. No clue. And I just decided in that moment, I was going to put that mask back on that emotional mask. And I was going to wear it that day. And nobody was going to see all the turmoil that was inside. Everybody around me was freaking out. Everybody around me was upset.

And I just kept telling myself, I'm fine. I'm brave. I'm strong. I'm, I'm perfectly fine. This did not affect me at all. And when I got done at the end of the day, and I walked through those doors to go head home, all of the emotional stuff that I had been dealing with from when I was a teen came flooding back the depression.

I started to feel like I was spiraling. I wanted to leave this planet. But now I'm a mom. And so I had this fight internally with wanting to stop the pain, but not wanting to leave my kids.

And this went, you know, I stopped, I stopped sleeping again. And I was struggling and my husband saw it and he's a smart man and he stopped me at the door one day and he said, you have two choices. You either get help, or I'm putting you in a hospital. So I said, okay, I'll go get help. I'm scared, and I'm out of control, and I need help.

So, I went to a physician, initially. And they put me on antidepressants, because that's what they do. And then he handed me a card and he said, I want you to make appointment with this therapist. And I looked him right in the face and I started to laugh. And he's like, why are you laughing? And I said, cause I tried this 14 years ago and it didn't help.

They didn't fix me. What makes you think this is going to help me? And he said, you have no choice. So I made an appointment and I went and saw this woman and I am so grateful. Because taking that chance, I found my person. She specialized in severe trauma. She specialized in PTSD. And within the first three to five minutes when I told her what I had been dealing with as a kid, and now, she looked me in the eyes and she said, Susan, Everything you've gone through since you were 17 is normal because you have PTSD.

And I thought, well, wait, you know, I'm not, I'm not in the military. I didn't go to war. I'm not a first responder. Like I, I, what? And she said, you know what? Anyone who experiences trauma in their life. Can, can have PTSD. The thing that you need to know about PTSD is it's not something that goes away. It's something you learn to manage.

And those words changed my life because now I had hope. Now I knew that I was on my road for healing. I knew that I found my person that was going to help me and guide me. And I, I always say, you know, it's like the sky opened up and rainbow shot out because I finally had answers to what was going on with me.

And finally I knew I wasn't crazy. And there's so many people out there that feel that way. Like. They have post traumatic stress. I don't like the D. I don't like the disorder part. They have it and they, they're dealing with all these different things and it does, it makes you feel like you're crazy.

So I, I felt like for the first time I wasn't crazy

and I had hope and that was the most important thing. And that's what I tell people. That's, that's one of. The messages that I put out is that if you really seek to heal, you have to find the right therapist, coach, whatever, that you feel that you can be vulnerable with in order to do the work and move through your pain and your trauma to truly heal.

Because if you don't, The healing, the sobriety, the whatever it is that you're, you're trying to get to will be harder to get to.

And that was a big aha lesson for me that I learned personally. And so now I, that's my message. I will. I will die on the hill. I will do it. I will, I, I, I say it with a, you know, full chest because it's, it's, that was literally my turning point. And I think the, the funny part, I would say kind of was that I was still kind of skeptical.

And but I wasn't sleeping. And if you haven't slept in days, it's miserable. You're barely functioning. And she said, well, we need to attack that. That, that, that is the first thing we're going to, this is going to be done in baby steps. So I said, okay, you know, what are you going to do? I'm thinking she's going to prescribe me a drug or Whatever.

And she said, no, here's what I want you to do. She said I want you to journal and you can do it in different ways. Like you can write, you can do art, you can do it in music, whatever, whatever is from your heart. And I said journaling, really? She's like, yep. And so I've always written, I've always wrote.

So I said, okay, well, I'll get a notebook. And she said, I want you to do it at night before you go to bed, even if you have to, like, put your alarm clock on or whatever to, like, remind you to do it. She said, she gave me a couple of prompts and she said, I want you to take everything that's in your brain and put it on the paper, whether it makes sense or not.

It doesn't matter. Just put it on there. And I was like, oh. Okay, this sounds crazy, but okay, I'll, I'll try it, you know, and after the second night of doing this, I slept like a baby and I had to admit that it worked. I went and saw her the following week and she asked me, you know, how did it go? How did it feel?

What happened? And I told her, okay, okay, okay. All right, I was skeptical, but it actually worked. It actually worked. And so she was like, great, keep doing it. Anytime you have those dark thoughts, any time you start to spiral before you're going to sleep, you have that anxiety, you have that, you know, pit in your stomach.

Like, Oh God, I have to close my eyes, you know? She said, do it, write it out, get it out of your head. And so I did. And then the next thing that we, we kind of attacked was my anxiety. And there's so many different modalities out there for that. You, you've got to kind of find what works for you. This isn't a one size fits all for healing.

Everybody is individual, you know? For me we started out with the tapping techniques speaking affirmations doing all of that kind of stuff to kind of reprogram my brain. And it led me to later down the road going into EMDR, which is a little more intense and using the electro paddles and really diving into the trauma.

But, you know, I, I really I was bound and determined. I wanted, living in fight or flight for 14 years was miserable. And I just wanted to feel like a normal person. So I was, you know, I had to be willing. To dip my toes into any kind of cognitive therapy that she could throw at me in order to see if it worked, if it, if it alleviated my symptoms and if it gave me a tool that down the road, if I did have a panic attack, how do, how do I get out of that?

How do I talk myself down? How do I calm my nervous system and ground myself and all of those things that are really important. When you're dealing with those things. So, and people ask me, you know, in writing a book, I, I had a lot of fear there, a lot of fear, you know, because I knew for so many years that other people were telling my story in their own heads.

And I got to a point in my life after doing all the work that I did mentally that I was ready to tell my story and to tell my journey because I knew that in some form of, you know, in, in, in some form, it would help others. And the first people that I actually thought of besides my kids and my family and, and that were law enforcement, because there is a lot of law enforcement that hear my dad's story, or they know my dad's story, or they worked with my dad, or Whatever.

And even all these years later that are still carrying around the anger and the pain and the sadness around his death. And so for me, I thought, well, if they can see me and my journey and see that I'm okay and that I have found the resiliency I have, I ha I'm on the other side of it that. Maybe in some little way that will help them heal that will give them a safe space to heal.

And so at 50 I drew a line in the sand. I said, this is it. I'm 50 years old. I got to write this book and I didn't know the 1st thing about writing a book. So I was terrified about that.

But the other thing was that I, I had feelings around, you know, what was this book? Because in telling my story, I had to be authentic. I had to be vulnerable. And in telling my story, I knew I was going to have to tell my mom's story. And I thought, well, you know, is that going to destroy whatever was left of our relationship?

My husband and I have been through a lot together, and I was afraid that it might. Break us up. And then, of course, there was safety. The men are still in prison, some of them. And I was afraid to put myself out there. Again, we've been out there off and on since it happened, but to really put myself out there and In doing that, I just had to step back and and think about my purpose and why it was that I wanted to write the book.

It was nothing. Yes, it was me telling my story, but it had nothing to do with me any longer. It was bigger than me. And I knew that there were people out there that needed to hear my message, who needed to see hope and healing, who would be able to connect with it in different ways. Which has happened, and I'm grateful.

So I, anytime those fears came out, I just kept pushing forward. I kept seeing those faceless people out there that needed to hear my message. And I've been really grateful that I have been able to connect with people in that way. And it's, it's led me to meeting incredible people and having amazing conversations like we're having now.

Right. And you mentioned early on that it was surreal. And listening to your story, it does sound like something you would see in a movie. That classic example of the dad and the daughter get in an argument and it's the last time they see each other, not knowing that. And then that, that guilt that's associated with that, you know, we see that in the movies and we always think, oh, you know, but as we discussed in my last episode and we touched upon today, the brevity of life, the sudden mortality of it at times can be so shocking.

And so I think it's a good reminder to really analyze. You know, what are we getting so mad about upset about what are we arguing with people about? And like you said teenage angst, so we we understand especially when it comes to you want to go to a party dad saying no We get that. But overall in life whether it's online or in person People are starting fights and I mean cutting off relationships Over some of the smallest things, you know, we're really focused on such things And, we never know when our last breath is or when the people we're fighting with, when they might take theirs.

And often times it can be very unexpected. So I think your story is a great reminder of that. And, I think it was interesting you talked about the police being stationed at your house. And, you know, a couple things like, they weren't really comforting you or giving advice or anything. And, like you said, tiptoeing, that idea of, we're just going to try to act like we're not here.

So she has some peace when in reality, I think you needed to face the situation head on well with them, you know So I think that's important not just for police officers, but for anyone dealing with someone who is grieving that Sometimes pretending or like your therapy your first therapist kind of almost like not addressing that root cause Kind of looking at it as if everything else is okay, then it's like it didn't happen you know, just because everything else in life is going smoothly doesn't mean that some traumatic event or whatever it was in your life didn't happen.

It still happened. Right. And it can be, you know, kind of like how cancer, you know, it can go unnoticed for a long time in people, you know. And all your other organs and everything can be perfectly fine, right? And then suddenly you find out one day something stops working and you're like, you've, you know, I've been filled with cancer for all this time.

That's how I would describe it. You know, you have that. Oh, it is. It is a cancer. If you don't, if you don't heal from your trauma, it is a cancer and it does come out one day and it does ruin relationships and it does take away your opportunities, you know, for the job you wanted or, The career you wanted or the child you wanted.

It's a lot. I mean, I, you know, when it comes to law enforcement I talk a lot about with law enforcement, I talk a lot about compartmentalization because that is a training technique. Right. That comes naturally with the job. But, you know, I feel like right now and it's definitely been a taboo type of conversation in the past.

And even talking to my dad. When he was around and talking to him about, you know, what they see every day and what they do every day and the danger that they're in and all that kind of stress. And, you know, they're human, you know, and if they're not dealing with their mental health, which is just as important as their physical health.

It's damaging. And that's why, you know, divorce, there's a high rate of divorce. There's a high rate of alcoholism and drug abuse and, you know, the self sabotaging behaviors. And I know when my dad was alive, you know, back then it was, if you did seek help, you were looked at as weak and you got chastised.

And, you know, you know, I have met officers who have been hurt on the job and almost died and they had to be, you know, it was an automatic that they had to go into therapy. And what they came out with is that I should have done this a long time ago. I should have taken care of my own mental health because it is important.

The machismo thing needs to go away. Right? Because over and above, you're a human being, and you can only see and deal with certain things for, you know, for as long as your mind can handle it, and most people, your mind can't handle it after a while. There is no more compartmentalization. It goes away.

And compartmentalization is a coping skill. So, If you're not coping, that's when mistakes are made. That's when, you know, bad things occur. And so it's, it's an important conversation, especially now that more people are talking about mental health. And I feel like it definitely needs to be a conversation within law enforcement and first responders.

And it doesn't, you know, that whole. Idea that you are weak if you seek help. It's the opposite. It is the total opposite. You are strong. You are, you know, you are looking out for yourself and your health, your mental health, because it affects everyone around you. And I've had conversations with retired law enforcement who feel the same way.

They feel like the job, they were the job after a while. And that job killed everything around them. Their relationships with their kids, their relationship with their spouse, and they have regrets around that not taking care of themselves when they were on the force, dealing with the emotions and the things that come up when they're on the on the force and, you know, don't get me started with military, because.

I've had conversations with vets and they say the first people that come after them when they come out of the military is police departments all over the country. And this gentleman I talked to said, you know what? Here's the thing in the military, We are taught to kill. That is what we are taught. We are supposed to defend the United States.

We are supposed to defend ourselves, right? That is what we're taught. We're not taught to deescalate. And so he said, honestly, I just could not. I was not. I had been in the military ten years. I had been programmed. A certain way, and he said, honestly, he looked, you know, right into this interviewer's face and he said, there is no way I feel comfortable with you giving me a gun and a badge and putting me out there and, you know, I commended him for that.

Because he knew his mental health was important and he knew that he was not, he was not capable of doing the job at a high level if his mind was not right. And so, you know, and he's like, don't get me wrong. I have some buddies that are great, but they sought help when they came home and they worked through a lot of their PTSD.

Traumas. So it allowed them to make better choices and be, you know, better law enforcement officers at a high level. So I think, you know, across the board, bottom line is your mental health should be your priority. It affects everything, even physically. So, you know, my message is, you know, if you are in, in that situation, if you are you did go through something traumatic and you do want to heal from it, you do want to feel better.

You do want to find your person, do it. Don't wait. Life's too short, man. If anything that I learned at 17 years old is that life is short. And we can't take our lives for granted ever. Yeah. Well, Ms. No, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your story and ladies and gentlemen, in the description below, we'll have the book, the other side of the gun written by Ms.

No, and then also her website, where you can find out information on contacting her if you want her on your show at a speaking engagement or for whatever other reason. So ladies and gentlemen, be sure to check that out. But again, Ms. No, thank you so much for coming on the show. I appreciate it. Thank you so much.

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