Security Halt!
Welcome to Security Halt! Podcast, the show dedicated to Veterans, Active Duty Service Members, and First Responders. Hosted by retired Green Beret Deny Caballero, this podcast dives deep into the stories of resilience, triumph, and the unique challenges faced by those who serve.
Through powerful interviews and candid discussions, Security Halt! Podcast highlights vital resources, celebrates success stories, and offers actionable tools to navigate mental health, career transitions, and personal growth.
Join us as we stand shoulder-to-shoulder, proving that even after the mission changes, the call to serve and thrive never ends.
Security Halt!
#240 From Desert Storm to Healing: James Sisco on Mental Health and Resilience
In this thought-provoking episode of Security Halt!, host Deny Caballero interviews James “Jim” Sisco, a Marine Corps veteran and Desert Storm combatant, who shares his inspiring story of resilience, personal growth, and healing. From a challenging childhood to navigating the chaotic realities of military life, Jim opens up about his combat experiences and the toll it took on his mental health and relationships.
The conversation dives deep into the importance of storytelling as a healing tool for veterans, unpacking trauma, and embracing vulnerability. Jim and Deny discuss the difficulties of transitioning to civilian life, navigating the family court system, and the role of camaraderie and connection in overcoming adversity. Jim’s story is a testament to the strength it takes to face life’s challenges and the transformative power of sharing personal experiences to help others.
Tune in now on Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Podcasts, and don’t forget to like, share, follow, and subscribe to support the voices of veterans and their journeys!
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Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Jim Sisco's Journey
02:59 From Troubled Childhood to the Marine Corps
06:04 Life as a Young Marine in the 1980s
10:04 The Build-Up to Desert Storm
17:02 Experiencing the Reality of War
23:59 The Calm Before the Storm: Life in Saudi Arabia
32:07 The Day Before the Ground War
39:01 The Ground Invasion Begins
41:02 Unpacking Trauma and Reflection
43:53 Navigating Mental Health Resources
46:24 Personal Struggles and Resilience
49:50 The Impact of Family Court
51:51 Lessons from Combat Experience
54:46 The Complexity of Relationships
59:45 The Power of Vulnerability and Connection
Instagram: @securityhalt
Tik Tok: @security.halt.pod
LinkedIn: Deny Caballero
Follow James on LinkedIn, on social media and check out his book The War Journal: A Young Marine’s Discovery of Critical Life Lessons from Desert Storm
https://www.amazon.com/War-Journal-Marines-Discovery-Critical/dp/B0BW31G5TH
LinkedIn: James Sisco
https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-sisco-558b2713/
Email: jim@enodoglobal.com
Produced by Security Halt Media
security hot podcast. Let's go with an expert in guerrilla warfare, with a man who's the best with guns, with knives, with his bare hands, a man who's been trained to ignore, ignore weather to live off the land job was disposed of enemy personnel to kill period with my attrition right. James jim cisco. Welcome to security. Hot man, how you doing I'm good.
Speaker 2:How are you?
Speaker 1:doing well. Brother, it's a pleasure to have you on. I always, always, love connecting with our veterans that are authors and have, uh, unique and remarkable stories, and and you fit all those categories, man.
Speaker 2:I don't know about that. I would say unique is definitely a good way to describe my career, what I'm doing, but I'm just a humble guy.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, man. It's you know, and shout out to every veteran out there that's humble and thinks of their service as something that was a calling. But we should always remember that it's important to write our stories, it's important to get our lived experience out there. That's how we, for a vast majority of us, how we entered the service through reading those stories, reading those books of men that were greater than us, and I'm proud to have you on the show to share your story, not just a book, but your life in general, man, because one thing that we tend to think is that once you make it on the outside, it's gravy, it's easy, and oftentimes that's not the case.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, funny story before we start. You know last night was Veteran. Well, yesterday was Veterans Day. Last night I went to Applebee's and I sat down by myself to get my free veterans meal and this guy sat down next to me and we just started talking and found out that he was a West Point grad and IT cyber guy and has got out and has his own company. But we sat there and talked for almost an hour and a half and you know it was great for me. You know when veterans get together they're able to share stories and talk about, have these common you know experiences and things like that. It really sets us apart.
Speaker 2:And you know, when we got done he and I talked about the things I did in Desert Storm and the book and my podcast and what I did in Afghanistan. And when he got done, when I got done, before we left, he said you had an amazing career. And it kind of sunk in. I'm like I thought about it today and I had an amazing career and I was very fortunate for my time in the Marine Corps and my time in the Navy and what I learned and then writing the book and doing the podcast and you know it kind of was, you know, invigorating for me.
Speaker 2:You know I want, so I did a podcast this morning for the War Journal and look forward to doing our podcast because I always have so much respect for the people who were World War I, world War II and the frozen, chosen things like that. You know I can never compare my life and career, what they experienced and did, but my story, I believe, is powerful and I think that people will. It'll resonate with people and that's my hope and I hope that your listeners will learn something from it and get something from it.
Speaker 1:Absolutely man. So let's dive in man. How did Jim find himself in the Marine Corps?
Speaker 2:Oh well, just troubled childhood where I didn't have any direction and really didn't do well in school. You know pretty much, you know a family unit that wasn't intact. My father was married three times, my mom four times, and I didn't do well in school. I was told that you know, hey, you're going to join the union and work on the back of a garbage truck, and so the Marine Corps was an avenue for me to really kind of challenge myself. I wanted to go into special forces and I really never applied myself in school and that was my first opportunity.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a common thread that we share with so many of our veterans. I found myself in that same spot. The small towns and cities we come with or come up from they don't offer us much and oftentimes our families are chaotic and we don't have that mentor, we don't have that family member that's there to give us a way out of our environment. So the military is this shiny, bright beacon, and if you take it back to the Marine Corps commercials that you probably grew up with and that we now see that are old, you know, the dragon slayer killing the lava monster, those commercials and the armies as well, the Be All you Can Be, those campaigns that made it seem like even a small kid from this podunk town can make it into something bigger than themselves. And then we enlist and we find that, uh, we've got a lot of growing up to do you find out, it's not like the commercials at all yeah, no dragons well, they are, but they're.
Speaker 2:They're in the form of senior NCOs, and junior officers. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So what was it like as a young Marine?
Speaker 2:Awesome. I mean for me it was 1986. It was obviously society was a lot different back then.
Speaker 2:I came from New Jersey, go down to North Carolina and took the recon and dock and passed and you know, all of a sudden I show up on Onslow Beach. You know they come to infantry training school, pick us up in a Humvee, throw our sea bags in the back. And I remember checking into second recon and it was isolated. We're out in the middle of nowhere. I mean, you know, 10 miles away from main side we have our own barracks, chow hall, everything and we're really isolated and it was the wild West back then. I mean there was hazing and I mean I remember vividly the Humvee dropping us off, throwing the sea bags out in front of headquarters company. And we go and check in and we're like you're going to Charlie Company, there's four of us and there was a sergeant major, our first sergeant capper. He was the first sergeant for Charlie Company and he was on a Marine Corps recruiting poster Bald headed guy, huge, looks like Mr Clean from the TV commercials and literally he's standing outside the headquarters company.
Speaker 2:Uh, and he goes grab your shit and follow me and he like takes off to charlie company which was at the end, and we're like grabbing sea bags and trying to run and keep up with him and we get uh down there and he's like, throw your shit in the barracks. And he goes into his office and we have to go to the NCO desk and they're like, get in there. And I mean we're just standing there at the position of attention, kind of like in shock, we don't know what's happening and I don't hear a word out of his mouth. And he's sitting behind a desk like this and he's just like, and he just jumps out of his chair and jumps on the desk and he goes, get down. And we're just sitting there in shock and like what you know, he's like we just start doing pushups I must have been like 120 push-ups in and sweat and you're in your, your charlies, and it was just like what is going on and that was kind of wow, my book just fell anyway. That was kind of uh.
Speaker 2:We got another one. That was kind of uh, the initial experience. And that was what we dealt with for the first month, month and a half at Recon being dogged out every night, NCOs coming in drunk and just hazing. You Remember screaming in a mirror for like 20 minutes straight? I'm not crazy, you are, I'm not crazy and they're yelling at you. Keep this in, keep this in. So it was different, it was a lot different. And they're yelling at you. You'll keep saying them commitments, and so it was different, it was a lot different. You know fun things, memorable experiences, but just really hard too. You know when you're doing that for a prolonged period of time and then ship out to ARS and then everything changed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's funny we often have the same like. We hear these stories of like, like what it was like in the 80s to both the Marine Corps and the Army, and we have to remember like there wasn't a war, at least there wasn't a consistent war. Things were different, Personalities were different and in your experience, looking back at those years before there was conflict, like how crazy was that compared to? And I think it's even crazier, I think it's more crazy when there isn't a conflict and you have a lot of guys that have been doing nothing but training and training and training. That's when things get completely chaotic.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean. So imagine this the the war and Bay.
Speaker 2:Well, they were bombing had happened and we had four Marines who were involved in that and Sergeant Arroyo was one of them and I remember the first time I met him I was only in recon for I don't know a month. He just got off of deployment and he had all his upper teeth were fake. He got blown out of the barracks and he was lucky to survive. But, you know, and he came in and he was just like a little, really small guy but huge in presence and literally took his teeth out. I'm like, so you're right, it was totally different. You know we're training and going on exercise and deployments, but there's so much downtime and so much uh, you know, uh, aside from the training, I remember IG inspections and just bullshit and that was the environment. So you know we would be training, doing exercises, going out and partying, but there really was nothing, you know, with regard to war and combat, like the op-temp of that I faced later on in my career, that many, you know, soldiers and Marines face, you know, in the past two decades.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's a that's a great thing to be able to dissect your story and the stories of countless veterans from that period in time. There was that chaos of nothing but training and training and training and the, the shift that almost happens instantaneously when something gets spun up. Oh shit, now it's real, now we're. Now you're a recon marine and you're getting orders to go to war yeah, well, that was a really funny story.
Speaker 2:I had gone almost my entire four years and I have my checkout sheet in my hand and I had already turned in all my gear and literally I go into the sergeant major and the battalion commander and that's my last thing on the checkout sheet and sergeant major's like, hey, corporal Sisko, and by that time I had established a very good reputation within second recon battalion as being one of the, you know, best operators. You know technically proficient, hard, um, but kind of a fuck up. You know out on liberty and always get in trouble, but that was my nature. And uh, so I go in and start measuring. Hey, corporal cisco, go on in, boss wants to talk to you. And uh, and I remember like we would have these big deployment or big battalion operations and you know how you have a hot wash afterwards and, like the comms, what did you get? Oh, it was everything's great, sir. Hey, uh, s2, what about you? Oh, yeah, we had a great time. Ops, what do you? Oh, the operation went great.
Speaker 2:And he'd look over and be like hey, corporal cisco, what did you think? And I go, he said I don't know what exercise these guys were on. It was totally fucked up. These guys didn't do this. We didn't have our cons and it turned into a huge, like you know, pointing contest. But so he always knew that he could get ground truth for me, but not in a in a way, you know, I brought it in an intellectual way, not in a. They all suck and this is fucked up.
Speaker 2:So he come, I walk into his office, he goes sit down, jim, and I'm like he goes listen, I'm just gonna get straight to the point. I got some good news and bad news. What do you want? First and was like give me the bad news, sir. And he said the Marine Corps has ended all EAOSs. At this point, you have been involuntarily extended for the needs of the Marine Corps.
Speaker 2:I go what does that mean? And he goes desert storm's kicking off, you're not getting out. And I'm like, ok, what's the good news? And he said the good news is, because you're in the position you're in, I'm going to allow you to make a decision. You can either go to headquarters, you can go to a different company, or you can go back to Charlie Company. And I'm like, sir, I'm going back to Charlie Company and I want my team back, because I was a team leader and he's like all right, go get your check, take that checkout sheet, go get a check-in sheet and get back to the company, which was great. I had trained for four years to go to combat and that was my opportunity. I wasn't going to squander that and go to headquarters to be in the headquarters. So I got my dream and didn't get my platoon back, and that's a different story, but I was heading to Desert Storm.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's for the audience out there, that may not have served. They hear the idea like I was going to war. I was going to like you know, that was my dream. Like that's a hard thing to explain to people, even some service members. It's a hard thing to explain. They're like you train and you train and you train and you practice. And it's almost like perpetual state of Thursday night practice, waiting, waiting for Friday night lights, waiting for football. And it's ingrained in us because a vast majority of us were athletes before we went in the military.
Speaker 1:So that yearn, that desire to actually prove your mettle in combat, it's a needed thing, but at the same time, you have to be able to speak to this. Nowadays, I would imagine it's a double-edged sword. You got guys that are so eager to go to combat. I dealt with it too, seeing young guys come to a team and be like I just want to go to combat and I I dealt with it too, seeing young guys come to a team and be like I just want to go to combat. It's like wait, hold up a second.
Speaker 1:You need to master your task, you need to know your job and but in your case, you had mastered your job. You had been at this, you. You are now somebody that's like, okay, finally it's game night, going back and let us know what happened because, uh, you know, you, you to at some point have a little bit of the idea of like, okay, everything's going to pan out, I'm going to go back, it's going to be perfect, I'm going to get my team back. Then you show back up with this brand new revelation and news to your organization. How did they take that? How did that unfold?
Speaker 2:Well, it was weird because the platoon was going through some changes. We had just done a deployment, so we're post-deployment, so guys are getting out. You know there's a huge turnover. New staff NCOs are coming in, new team leaders are being assigned. So I go back and you know everything is in disarray. And now it's you know, gotta get ready, we gotta have an embark, we gotta do this that we're sending me off to celestial navigation school to learn how to navigate off the stars, with a sextant training for desert, uh environment, which we never have done in the past, doing mobile reconnaissance with humvees and and so there's this huge buildup and training and a very compressed period of time, and so nothing really got straightened out.
Speaker 2:And we head over to Desert Storm and I'm still not a team leader and the teams are still kind of screwed up. There's a brand new lieutenant, a brand new staff NCO. I mean. So it's not a well-oiled machine and not functioning well. But I want to go back to something that you said previously that really resonated with me. I had tried my entire life up to that point to prove myself to everyone my family, my father, my mother, you know everyone who told me I couldn't do anything and first going into Marine Special Forces and reconnaissance, I proved that to myself. But I think going to combat was proving that I was technically proficient, I could lead and it would prove to everybody. Like you know, every doubter that didn't believe in me. But then we ship off to Desert Storm and we arrive in Saudi Arabia and it's just. Everything changes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. Desert Storm was this operation that was initially. People were thinking we were going to have casualties by the thousands, we were going to have this chaos of war that they were going to. They literally had this idea that we weren't going to have enough resources and mortuary affairs individuals to take care of our own debt. They were planning for just large-scale combat, man-to-man on the ground. But what our soldiers, marines, encountered when they got there was not so much. It was not the warfare that we had thought we were going to be getting into.
Speaker 2:Well, I write about that in my book, probably one of the first journal entries, and I can remember that in the news one of the first journal entries and I can remember that in the news, you know, iraq had been fighting with iran and this is like we don't teach kids history in school and like desert storm, for I tell people I'm in desert storm, like what was that? And I'm like never mind, but anyway, the iraq had been fighting iran for decades and iraq had like the third largest army in the world, ground forces. They had like thousands of tanks and APCs, plus. They also use like mustard gas and nerve agents against Iran. So that was the threat and, if you like, in the book I have pictures of me in my mop gear and like mop level four, with a gas mask and the rubber gloves and rubber booties I mean. So we were preparing for that and that was.
Speaker 2:The narrative is that we're going to be in this long projected campaign that could last for months and years and that we had to build up all of our you know resources and we're shipping over tanks and there's 82nd airborne and marines and first marine division. So we're going. You're thinking that this is going to be huge. You know, to the surprise of everyone, the war lasted 96 hours, but we'll talk about that later. I think there's things that we talked about getting up to that yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So you get on the ground and what was that like? Because you're, a vast majority of our American public don't remember and they don't know anything about Desert Storm. It was a blip. Afghanistan and Iraq, and people are you know. Now for 20 years they just think, oh, iraq was just, you know, enduring operation. They don't even know the difference between enduring freedom and the OIF, oef, and it's frustrating for us. I mean, I can completely understand the frustration for you when you're like, hey, like we had conflict there before this 20 year war. What was it like when you sat and you actually got on the ground there?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, let me say this before I answer your question For me I have really good perspective because not only was I in Desert Storm, but I did three tours in Afghanistan and I did deployments to Iraq. So I've experienced in my 30-year career the full spectrum of war and how it changed. The whole continuum of war has changed. But, to answer your question, I get on the ground and we're in this huge staging area in Saudi Arabia and there was like three Camp 5, camp 15. And so it's just a thriving metropolis. It's a huge city and tents everywhere and you know, these conics box is just all over the place and I have chow halls and uh, but not chow halls like in afghanistan or iraq. Five star cheesecake, how many desserts do you want? You're like, is it lobster night or crab legs tonight? You, you're like what?
Speaker 1:That's true.
Speaker 2:It was totally different than that. But here we are, stuck in this huge metropolis in the desert and it was very uncomfortable for me because I didn't want to be there. I thought that was a threat. If there was going to be like they were going to attack, you're sitting duck, I was. You know, I love being out in the woods and in the water and you know where. You have your autonomy and freedom and you can operate and shoot and maneuver and I hated being there and it was boring because you can't train, you couldn't do anything and we were. You know.
Speaker 2:I remember sitting there for hours having scorpion fights. We'd put two scorpions in an ammo can and see who would win and bet on it, playing spades and how many flies you can kill in a day. I think the record was 200 and something. So it was terrible and I hated it. But the good news was we could have some creature comforts. You'd go to Chow Hall and you have a phone center, one phone center where people would line up for hours to get on the phone for like five minutes at the USO and talk to home. Remember, we're still writing letters. These are actual letters that I wrote to my dad and he kept. So you're writing letters home and so it's hard for people today to imagine that you know they don't have their cell phone and texting people hey man.
Speaker 2:So, but we were. You know we're in this big, you know city, 10 city and I wasn't comfortable there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's funny. You brought up the letters. I still remember in like my first deployment to Iraq. That was a real thing. People still wrote, people still went and made the effort to write and then, lo and behold, just a few years, just a decade plus, and it's all email, it's all cell phone, like soft guys still have a cell phone, they're able to call back and send messages back home through Wi-Fi. And it's crazy to think that's just something that few people experience and will experience moving forward as we continue to advance in warfare. Now, it's not waiting weeks and months for a reply from somebody, it's instantaneous. But it's also important to remember war isn't like Blackhawk Town. No, war isn't like the Hollywood version of it. It's long periods of absolute mundane mind-numbing. Nothing unless you're part of the leadership and you're constantly doing work and putting out products.
Speaker 2:But for the majority of of our guys and gals, there's a lot of waiting and a lot of mundane stuff that happens, um, so yeah, I, uh, I agree, not only in desert storm, and like in my book, I talk about it before we get to that, 96 hours of combat. You have all of this building up and you can see how it weighs on people, psychologically, emotionally, physically. So let me kind of add to that we finally leave Camp 15, and we are going to be the lead element for 2nd Marine Division. So we stage north and we are off the border of Kuwait and for a couple of months prior to the war we're bouncing around, we're doing ops, we're training, but we're constantly moving so that keeps your op tempo really high.
Speaker 2:But you have this unknown when are we going in? Don't have intel, we don't have, you know, a good understanding of enemy disposition, anything, and we're still trying to learn how to fight in the desert. Like our first patrols were on foot trying to carry 50 cows and running around. You're like, what are we doing? And then finally, we're mounting the 50 cals and the mark 19s on the humvees. You know just jewelry, rigging stuff. You know first time we have pluggers. You know it was the initial. Uh. You know gps systems and they were huge. You know not, like on your phone, you could put ways in. Let's go to your girlfriend's house. You know it's like you're, but anyway.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So we're trying to figure all that stuff out and I'm still not in the team. I'm still like in a team, but I don't have my own team. I'm bouncing around, I'm trying to teach classes on patrolling, I'm trying to, you know, kind of give my knowledge and insights and be a contributing member, and I'm still not allowed. So I'm very frustrated yeah, that's.
Speaker 1:That's not good for anybody, especially in a combat environment where you don't have a set role, where you don't have like a set like. This is my taking ownership. Having that ability to sit down like this is my team, this is who I'm responsible for, and then you have to tiptoe or feel like you're getting involved in somebody's lane. Did the guys ever share any frustration or were they understanding of your unique situation?
Speaker 2:I had advocates who were trying to get me into different roles. I even had guys from different platoons, you know leadership going hey, we'll take them. You guys don't want them, we'll take him. He's awesome, let's hear it. So, yeah, I had that. It was just the whole politics. Even in combat I saw that there's still politics being played and that was disheartening for me because I thought I could understand and be frustrated prior to combat. But I thought once we go to combat, everything's going to be like like moving, like you know, smooth as silk. And it didn't. And it was actually more effed up. But it was just funny stories.
Speaker 2:I'll tell one. You know I have a couple, but I'll tell one. We're putting in requests for ammunition. You know laws, at4s, claymores, hand grenades, you know, and you know the lieutenant's like, oh well, you know I can't do it good. So I'm like fuck it.
Speaker 2:So one day I grabbed this atl and my assistant team leader, you know from this, you know from the platoon, and I'm like come on. He's like what are we doing? I go get in the home view. We're going to go back to camp 15. So I go back to camp 15. It's like a four we doing I go get in the Humvee. We're going to go back to Camp 15. So I go back to Camp 15. It was like a four-hour drive back by ourselves, didn't even tell anybody. This is how I was. I was like a maverick, I mean, I really was. And we get back there and we go into a huge base again. We're driving around, we're like where the hell is the ammo depot? So I finally see it, you know, and I go, hey, pull the Humvee right here. And he says what are you going to do? I go, I don't know yet, I'm just going in.
Speaker 2:So we didn't wear camis, traditional camis, we wore the chocolate chip camis. But we in recon had these hoodies and they were chocolate chip and they didn't have rank on them. And uh, and I had a holster, like this black holster, and I had my nine mil and you know, most of the officers have, you know, pistols and uh, I had my m16 a2 service rifle. I left that in home b and I walk in and there's this huge desk and, uh, there's this gunnery sergeant. He's talking to like another staff sergeant or something, and I'm standing there by myself for like a couple seconds. You know, maybe a minute goes by and they're just jaw-jacking. And finally I just go hey, gunny, can I fucking get some help here? And he like looks at me and he doesn't seize the pistol and he comes right. Oh so, I'm sorry sir. I'm sorry sir, what do you need? I'm like I got my driver outside. I'm, you know, 10 miles off the border. We need some ammunition. Can you help me out? He's oh, I'm sorry, sir, have your driver come around and pull back here. So we just load up the Humvee. We got, I mean, just cases of Claymores and 18 fours and five, five, six mark, 19 rounds, 50 cal rounds. We're like it was Christmas.
Speaker 2:So what happens is we, you know. I'm like, hey, driver, come on, we pack everything up and I'm getting ready to leave because, oh, he said, before you leave, I need you to sign for all this stuff. And I'm like, oh. So I'm like, okay, yeah, so he comes over, he has this big sheet, so he goes. Does that look good? I'm like, yeah, yeah. So I signed my lieutenant's name, lieutenant russ, we leave.
Speaker 2:So we're on the drive back and we also stopped at the bx. He got some food and stuff, but so we're all fat, dumb and happy. I'm like chewing tobacco, smoking cigarettes, we're drinking coke and having fun like, oh shit, what are we gonna do when we get back? Oh, my god, all right. So we get back and I'm like, hey, just park the home here and I go and I grab the team leaders. I'm like, hey, man, get over here, get your shit, get your business. So all of a sudden we go out away from the headquarters and it's like christmas man, we're just like guys. You're like here's the claymores, here, hey oh, I I need that.
Speaker 2:Anyway, the company gunny comes over this guy in the story in the book, you'll see him and I were like this the whole time. He's like what's going on here? And everybody's like you know the pfc salute, I don't know. And uh, I didn't want anybody else to get in trouble. I'm like, yeah, I, I did. That, that's me. He's like what's going on? And uh, I'm like, well, sir, you know, I went back to Camp 15. He's like, oh, come with me, we're going to see the lieutenant. And I'm like, all right, whatever. So he brings me to the lieutenant, tells the lieutenant lieutenant's like you're coming with me, we're going to see the CO. And I'm like all right. And the CO's like, oh, I got you. You know, I'm gonna get you.
Speaker 2:He was a citadel grad, yeah, dork. And uh, he tells the ceo. He's like so let me get this straight corporal cisco, you took a humvee by yourself, drove four and a half hours to Camp 15, got all this ammunition on your own and then drove back. I'm like, yes, sir, he goes. That's pretty damn good. How'd you wind up doing that?
Speaker 2:I was like well, sir, you know, we were asking Lieutenant. And he said and he goes, all right. Well, I just have one question who signed for all this stuff? And I just looked at him and I go and I pointed to Lieutenant and I go, he goes, get the fuck out of here. So that in the book I talk about how the lieutenant and I at that point and the gunner sergeant and I were like like just the whole time and they actually tried to write me up for njp for having alcohol. They caught me with jack daniels. They caught me with intel that I got from another Marine who was back at Camp 15, who I dated and actually got into a relationship with in Desert Storm. So Desert Storm for me was wild.
Speaker 1:To say the least. So, after those awesome stories of just trying to get prepared, trying to get things going when it finally kicks off, where did you find yourself?
Speaker 2:so I will tell you this that I have and this will be etched in my memory forever. It was one day before the ground war started and we had just done an exercise and I had stayed back and I was on the comms team because I wasn't assigned to a team yet and the teams had gone out. And this is Charlie Company, the guys who I knew and I trained with, and they came back off a mission. We're sitting in a circle and we're just chilling out, eating, reading mail and hanging out. And I'm sitting there with five guys and the guy next to me is Corporal Michael Cook, and Mike and I we train together, we're friends, we hang out, go partying together.
Speaker 2:And I remember Lance Corporal Stroud was about 20 feet away, 30 feet away by the, by the humvee, and he was playing with the radios and he goes hey, corporal cisco, can you help me with the ky gear? And I go fuck you, were you a retard? You know how marines are? Yeah, and everybody started laughing, you know, like a retard. And Mike looks over at me and he goes bad dog. And I go yeah, it was kind of a dick move and saw my dog go help. So I go walk over and I start helping him with the radio and I'm over there for maybe less than a minute, maybe a minute or not too long at all, and I hear this loud explosion, boom, like what the fuck. And it came from where I was just at, where I was sitting, and so I just go running over first instant. You know, that's me, you know. Just go run what the fuck happened. And I run over to where the sound came from, where I was sitting and mike had his 782 gear on and he was taking his 782 gear off and when we went on patrol we would take the thumb slips off the hand grenades and we would loosen up the pins so it was easier to pull and supposedly well, nobody really knows but when he took the 718 gear off, I think the pin got caught and it came off and it fell down between his legs and he went to go grab it when the hander day went off.
Speaker 2:So I am standing there looking at Mike. Both arms are gone and it's not like the movies. There's no blood and guts. The heat is so intense that it just burns everything. So everything is black and charred and like his cambies are ripped and his leg was just hanging there and both our arms are gone and and I'm just looking around like what the fuck? And I have my training, I can do trachs and ivs and cpr and I just knew he was dead.
Speaker 2:He said like kind of slumped down and it was over. Corman knocked me out of the way and they start working on him and within a couple minutes there's a ch-46 and they met it, back him out with the guys who were, uh, got shrapnel, they got fragged, and you know, that's the day before the ground war started. So the story gets worse. And you're gonna say, how can the story get worse? Well, I'm glad you asked. When somebody dies in combat, you have to go through their personal effects and their military gear and you separate them, because the personal effects will go home yeah and for some reason I volunteered.
Speaker 2:I'm like you know what I'll do it. Maybe it was because I was, I could have been next to him, I might have been dead, or maybe because we were friends for that long not close friends, but we were good friends and I started going through all this gear and I'm separating stuff and I literally remember, you know, I'm wiping pieces of flesh and bone and black charred powder chamois like off of some of the gear. And, uh, my hands are like you know, black and with all this charred powder chamois like off of some of the gear. And, uh, my hands are like with, you know, black and with all this charred stuff. And you know anyway, and I get to his wallet, which is in the bottom of his pack, and my one pennsylvania driver's license, one social security card you know 26 and you have to write everything down on paper and there's like a staff sergeant was over on the side. He was just watching me like he didn't want to get involved, and so I reached into one of the billfold pockets in the wallet and I pull out a picture and I look at it because I'm like you know, not paying attention. I look at it and I'm like what the hell? And it was a picture of my girlfriend, oh fuck. And I turned it over and it has like a heart and says love Ashley.
Speaker 2:And at that moment in my life I had felt emotions that I wish no one ever would ever feel, ever feel. Death and betrayal were mixed together in a way that I, literally, I could feel my heart rate just going nuts. You know, I started breathing. I was, I just took a knee. I was like what the fuck? I didn't know what to do. The staff started, looked at me, said you okay and typical marie, yeah, I'm good, I'm good, got it. Typical man, I'm good, no, I'm okay, and I'm like just give me a sec. And I walked out into the desert. I just was like get your fucking shit together.
Speaker 2:I went back and uh finished doing what I had to do and was kind of unnerved and uh went back to my little hooch underground little you know yeah in the sand and started drinking, smoking some cigarettes, and drank almost a half a canteen at jack daniels and to the point where I got up with my nine mil and went to coots's hole and pulled my fucking gun out. He's like you fucking tell me right now. And he's like what? It was terrible. I'm like fucking tell me. And he knew, and a couple other people knew, and so that was like shit. And I remember I went to bed and then the next day we were going to do we were the lead element for the ground invasion. So the good news is I didn't have time to dwell on much. I was immediately assigned to a team. I had the responsibility of a team and I had to plan, mission, plan and I had to execute.
Speaker 1:So I learned how to compartmentalize and I was gonna say you took all that and just stuffed it right down the bottom of that sea bag yeah, yep, and you know, and I wrote in the book in my.
Speaker 2:This is the actual journal I wrote when I was in Desert Storm.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow, and that was what the original book is. It's my actual journal entries and I wrote it in there. And so the next day we're at renovation and here's the redemption in a way. Here's the redemption in a way. I'm on the back of the Humvee standing behind the 50 Cal. We are driving up to the border, where the breach site is, and there's Marines, just like in columns and columns and rows of me standing there and APCs and tanks and Humvees, and these Marines are in mop level two and three and I'm on the back of a Humvee behind the 50 cal with a green cravat bandana on my head, in my boots, with my mop level four pants and a T-shirt, in my boots, with my mop level four pants and a t-shirt, and we are playing Guns N' Roses Welcome to the Jungle. And we have a big American flag on the back of the whip antenna and we're just driving by all these Marines and they see us and they just start screaming hoorah. And it was just hilarious. You know, for me At that point I did not give a shit.
Speaker 2:I had no shits to give and I had a sense from the time I got there that I would be okay. I knew that. I just knew that I would come out of it, okay. So we pull up to the breach site and everybody's just like what the fuck are you doing? And I'm like we're going to do this. But if you want to ask anything and then, if you want, I'll tell you about the breach, because that was really cool too, and then we can talk about yeah, and I want to time travel a little bit and reflect on this moment you just, uh, shared with us.
Speaker 1:You go through something that is so painful you lose a brother and then, not even 48 hours, not even 24 hours, just a few hours later you're going through his stuff and you find the ultimate betrayal Like how did you unpack that later on in life? How did you begin to unpack that?
Speaker 2:No, this is and this is remember. When we talked, you know, prior to the podcast, and we didn't script anything, we just talked about our experiences and what we were going to talk about, we said, let's just keep it open. I did. I didn't ever unpack anything from my childhood. I didn't ever unpack anything from Desert Storm. I didn't ever unpack anything from my military experience in the Navy and my combat towards there, until I was going through a divorce and I lost custody of my kids.
Speaker 2:And at that point and I lost custody of my kids and at that point everything fell apart. It was the darkest period of my life. You talk about that pain that I felt at that moment. Magnify that by 10 and prolong it for years. And that's what happened. And that's why I wrote the book, because I pulled this journal off of my bookshelf and started reading it because I hadn't read it in 20 something years. And when I got done I was like holy shit, why didn't I fucking read this throughout my life? If I had read that book, if I had read that journal at different points in my life, it would have saved me so much pain and so many bad mistakes.
Speaker 1:And that's why I wrote the book, because if you read it, it can help you and help anyone not make the mistakes that I made One of the main issues that we, as service members and veterans, we walk away from combat, walk away from Afghanistan, walk away from Iraq, and we tend to think I made it, I survived, I don't have to do any internal work, I made it Awesome. It's not the truth. Oftentimes, we lived through a lot of chaotic ship before we went into the military and then we continue to add more traumatic events. When you find yourself going through transition or you're about to transition out of the military, if you haven't done the work to sit down and speak with somebody or get help in putting things into perspective, things that you've gone through, how's the time? Do it now, before you walk out into your next chapter?
Speaker 1:The things we do in combat aren't normal. We have to do a lot of fucked up things, fucked up things and, like I said before and I always talk about, we are a generation of service members. The vast majority of us went through some traumatic and horrible things before we got in and then we added more stuff on top and that rucksack gets really heavy, man. It gets really really heavy. Take a knee, offload some of that, get plugged in with some resources. We share a whole bunch of them on this show. Here's a couple right now 22 to 0. Be able to reach out to anybody. I'll put the link there on the episode description. Be willing to connect with somebody. Hell, even if you don't do it through the military. Go to BetterHelp Online resources, in-person resources. Whatever it takes to get you back to the best version of yourself, it's worth the fight.
Speaker 2:I agree wholeheartedly with what you're saying. The problem for me was when I got out of Desert Storm I was back in the United States and seven days later I was out of the Marine Corps.
Speaker 1:I was back in the.
Speaker 2:United States and seven days later I was out of the Marine Corps. In 1991, there were no resources. After my first combat tour in Afghanistan, when I came back out of my three, there were still not a lot of resources, but they still weren't touching on the mental health issues. It was more on the physical, emotional, psychological. So when I departed the military 13 years ago the infrastructure wasn't there, the resources weren't there like they are today. So once again I was just like compartmentalize everything, pack it away, I'll deal with it. And I think I would have dealt with it if I didn't have to go through the custody stuff and losing my children. So I do share your opinion and believe that everyone should utilize every resource available and, uh, the mentality, and especially in the special forces community, that you can do it alone or you know yeah, it's not a good one you know, being a man like I, can deal with this.
Speaker 2:Okay, I know you can, but it's easier when you have a buddy by your side or you have some absolutely that that what you just said has killed so many of us.
Speaker 1:I'm a man, I can get through this. Yeah, tons of friends have said that and they've tried to. John Wayne, that shit, and sadly, a lot of them aren't here anymore. That is so true, man, in your journey, right now, having gone through what you shared with us, is the most painful thing ever losing your family, losing your kids. How are you navigating that? How are you putting, day by day?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I don't want to spend too much time on talking about what's happening with my personal life and the custody trial, but I'm just going to say that. Imagine this 23-year veteran business owner, husband for 11 years and wife decides that she wants a divorce because she's not happy. She gives me custody of two of the three children. So I'm raising two of my kids by myself during COVID and you know being a great dad, coaching their rugby team, you know going to the gym before they wake up in the morning, taking them to school, helping them with homework, taking them to doctor's appointment, taking them to rugby practice, being a dad and loved it. Best year of my life, I connected with my children in a way that I wish that every parent or father would connect with their children. We would go for daily walks around the lake. I'd talk to them about life and share knowledge and insights with them. Go to court and if anybody's been through the family court system, it is just a nightmare and dealing with lawyers and therapists and this and that and not prepared. And I will say this I was prepared for combat. I had trained, I was hard as woodpecker lips. I went to the family court system and just got destroyed and I represent myself pro se. I go in front of a judge and I think it's a slam dunk. He's going to give me all three kids. My ex-wife is batshit crazy in a way. You know, she gives me the custody of the kids. My youngest daughter, who was in my wife's care, threatens to commit suicide. How am I not going to win the judge whose own daughter was murdered by her male college roommate? He rules that I alienated the kids from their mother, gives my ex-wife full legal custody and limits my interaction with my kids to 30-minute Skype calls on Sunday evenings. How does that happen? And that's what I've been dealing with for three years. So when you ask me how am I dealing with this day by day and it has been the biggest struggle for me uh, you know, the irony of veterans day for me is last year, on Veterans Day, I played in a rugby game, the annual rugby game we have between the Kiwis and the Roosters.
Speaker 2:After the game I went to dinner with my girlfriend, chelsea and I didn't feel well. I thought it was the game. We sat down in our booth. She goes are you okay? And I'm like, yeah, I'm just thirsty from rugby. I'm dehydrated. I went to drink out of straw and the water went everywhere. I suffered a stroke that night.
Speaker 1:I was just going to say shit.
Speaker 2:And I think that was directly a result of what I've been dealing with for the past three years. So the good news is, a year from one year later, here I am a hundred percent recovered Well, not a hundred percent, 90%. You have a little paralysis in my face and in my left hand, but overall I'm healthy and, uh, that is one of the results of what I've been dealing with jim you're.
Speaker 1:You're a hell of a fighter man. Um, I know we talked a little bit and you shared some of your. You know your life and your situations, situations and what you're dealing with is, I think, every man uh absolute nightmare. You survive combat, you make it through deployments, you make it through what we often think is like the worst of the worst and you come back home, successful entrepreneur, living a great life, raising children, and then you're having to deal with this struggle and I just want you to know that from the bottom of my heart, brother, you're in my family's prayers.
Speaker 1:I can't thank you enough for being vulnerable enough to share that, because we often think, like I said earlier, that life is just going to be all butterflies and rainbows on the outside once we're done. But life continues to happen and we have to remember that resilience just isn't an easy button you press and then you magically have it. You have to continue working hard and continue to see the positive, continue to say that you are experiencing something difficult but you can overcome it, that you can eventually get through this. When we see a situation as being hopeless, that there's no way we can overcome it, we don't develop resilience, we don't develop anything out of that. We lose hope, we become depressed and then we have this domino effect that actually affects our physical health as well, takes us in that dark spot, and I think you're a shining example of being willing to understand the reality of a situation but still fighting for hope, still fighting for resilience and getting through that next day. So thank you for being willing to share that, brother.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, that's kind of why I wrote the book and do the podcast, because the experiences that I had, I think will help anyone. They transcend race, gender, ethnicity. You don't have to be a veteran. What I'm dealing with, you know. Hundreds of thousands of men, women face, you know, each year with the family core system. What I would like to do is say that the resilience that I have now is a by-product of what I experienced in desert storm, because you know, let's just go back to desert storm.
Speaker 2:Um, I am, you know, I remember sitting on the breach and I watched the Bangalore torpedoes go across the minefields and the breach site and the explosions going on. And and we are the, the first home v is going across and you know we're like what? What are we doing? You know it's like we're the lead element for second marine division and we're just driving in these home v's and we see coming up on kuwait city and, uh, you know we got the tanks behind us. They're like move faster. You know we're like, and we're encountering Iraqis sporadically and most of them were surrendering. We had a couple engagements, but nothing huge. And we're just on the outskirts of Kuwait City and we can see the skyline and we can see all the high tension wires and you know, out of nowhere we start getting fire.
Speaker 2:And I mean it's like this is my first firefight and it's game on. You know, all of a sudden the training just boom. You, just you, you act. You know, you, you train for years and all of a sudden you're in that situation and you hope that you know you are able to react in the way you do it. And for me it was. It was like game on. And I'm on the 50 Cal and I'm going to town, bullets are ricocheting like 10 feet away from me on the metal high tension, ding ding, ding, ding. I didn't care. I'm like, yes, tracer's going out and for some reason I look over, I don't know why, look at a corner of my eye and I see the, the staff sergeant who I had the issues with, jump out of his home v and throws m16 on the ground and hide behind the tire.
Speaker 2:and I didn't know it was him at the time I grabbed the, I'm get off the gun and he's like, he's like. And I jump out, run across the desert, kick him. I kicked him as hard as I could. I get the fuck up and he looks up at me and when I saw him I was like he looked at me. I looked at him, it was like what? And I run back to the Humvee and I'm on the gun for about not even five, 10 seconds and everybody's like cease fire, cease fire, cease fire, like. So you know, I squeezed out a couple more. Oh God, that's doing.
Speaker 1:You're that guy. Oh my God, did that cease fire? Oh okay, sorry, didn't hear.
Speaker 2:You Didn't have my earplugs in, didn't have my earpro in and anyway to get on the radio. And we're figuring out we had to deconflect. We were actually engaging the lead element for 1st Marine Division as we came up. I write in my journal, I don't know if I can find it, but I wrote. Write in my journal, I don't know if I could find it, but I wrote today, the world's most elite fighting force engaged the most elite fighting force for three minutes of sustained combat, no WIAs, no KIAs. So that was my first combat experience, you know, engaged with the First Marine Division. It was hilarious, nice, nice. So that was my first combat experience.
Speaker 1:You know my engagement for a spring division.
Speaker 2:It was hilarious, nice, nice. So then we wound up getting out to the outskirts of Kuwait City, we see the cloverleaf of death and I'm like seeing all this death and destruction. War's over. War is over, but not for me. Yeah, there's a lot of loose ends. There was a lot of things that were happening. You know, there had a charge sheet for the Jack Daniels. I had the issues with the gunny. But there was one other thing that was happening. The entire time I was in desert storm.
Speaker 2:I had dated a corporal, female corporal, when I was in the Marines, and we broke up and she deployed, and I found out that she was in the marines, and we broke up and she deployed and I found out that she was in, uh, desert storm also, and she was assigned to second marine division intel. And she, once I found out, I was like at camp five. I ran into her like she's like cisco. I'm like, holy shit, what are you doing here? What are you doing here? Like this is my dream. And uh, she told me she was an intel and we were talking and we had direct mails, you know, back then in country, which was easier, and uh, she would give me intel on our positions. She would give me intel on the enemy, all classified shit. And uh, I got caught with it.
Speaker 2:And same gunny, he goes into my when he found the Jack Daniels, he found all this Intel, and takes the Lieutenant Same story Lieutenant's like where'd you get this? I'm like I'm not telling you, sir, it's none of your business. He's like, well, take this to the CEO. And I'm like all right, let's go, we to the CO. And I'm like, all right, let's go, we go for the walk. You know, go to the headquarters, the COC, the Command Operations Center, you know, go down into the COC. And he gives it to the CO.
Speaker 2:And he's like Corporal Sisko, I found this on Corporal Sisko. And he's like hey, sisko, what's up with this? And I'm like'm like, hey, sir, you know, I know I have a friend who's at, you know, second marine division and intel. We've been asking the lieutenant to get us threat briefs. We've been asking for enemy disposition, we've been asking for the locations, the enemy minefields. We don't get any intel. And uh, so I took upon myself to see if we can get it. And so he starts looking through all these maps and charts and jogs and and all of the overlays with the acetate paper. You know the old the old school stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know that was the cool shit back then.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:We don't have iPads and you know anything. And uh, yeah, she had to read a map. So anyway, he's looking through this and he's like, this stuff's amazing, this is better than I had. And he's like, can you get more of this? And I'm like, yeah, I just got to draw back to Camp 5 or Camp 15 anytime, I want as much as I want. He's like, oh yeah, I want you to go back every week and I want you to get this stuff. So now I'm like in the freeze of the CEO. I'm going back once a week getting these big intel dumps, briefing the teams, bringing it to the CEO. So I'm the golden child. The lieutenant hates me, gunny hates me. They want to fry me War's over. Belinda was the person who was giving me the intel.
Speaker 2:Ashley and I break up, obviously, and I'm hurt and Belinda is there for me and we start developing a relationship and when I go back to Camp 15 after the war, we finally have the opportunity. We have sex, we hook up and it's awesome. I move away from Ashley, I move away from us. I have the intimacy of a woman. I have the love of a woman in my life, which I've always wanted and I'm okay, which I've always wanted and I'm okay, and we are supposed to meet one night outside the women's parlor where our bond is at. And she comes out and she's like I can't see you anymore. I'm like what? And I'm like what's going on? She's like I love you, I'll always love you, just walk away. And at this point I'm like what's going on? She's like I love you, I'll always love you, just walk away. And at this point I'm like what the fuck is going on, you know? And I'm like fuck it. I just turned around and walked away and I wrote in the journal. It was like a bogey and Bacall moment, you know. She says I love you forever, just walk away. And I'm like all right, I'm out.
Speaker 2:And so, 26 years later, we connect on Facebook and through our discussion, she tells me that she was sexually assaulted and raped by some of her staff NCOs in her command her command.
Speaker 2:They found out that she was providing me with the intel and they assaulted her, raped her and threatened to tell the command that she was giving away classified information to me.
Speaker 2:And so she had to make a decision whether or not to tell me or not tell me, and I think she did that to protect me in a way, because if she told me that had happened to her with my personality and you know everything, she knew that I probably would have tried to take matters into my own hands.
Speaker 2:So, uh, she, you know, kind of gave that ultimatum and you know, at that point, with everything that happened with Ashley and you know in my life, I just, you know, decided I was going to walk away and I did, and you know that's the tragedy of my Desert Storm deployment. You know not only the death of my friend, the betrayal by my girlfriend, but then you know this experience, some a new relationship and have like this hope and have all that kind of taken away or destroyed. So Desert Storm for me was a very valuable time in my life in that I learned some really hard lessons and experienced some I don't want to say trauma, because everybody uses that word, but experienced some challenges or traumatic experiences that really had an imprint on my identity and my life and, like I said previously, I wish I had applied those lessons throughout my life, and I did.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's perfect. And what's the name of the book? You got it right there in front of you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's called the War Journal, a Young Marine's Discovery of Critical Life Lessons from Desert Storm, and it is honestly it's. The journal is transcribed in the book and I add a bunch of pictures for Marines. You know, I didn't put any crayons in but and it talks about not only the journal entries but each journal entry kind of gives you an insight into how that experience. But at the end I really talk about those critical life lessons, I talk about faith and religion, I talk about education, I talk about relationships and marriage and friendships and finance and those are the things that I believe can really help young people, even adults, because those are things that you will use throughout your life. And that's kind of the basis behind the book and it's not one day of war and trigger pulling and one or two firefights, but it really is about all the life lessons that I've learned.
Speaker 1:No, absolutely, and I think that war is the perfect catalyst for all of us to learn so much from it, because life's like, perfectly depicted in that entire experience you share with us All this, build up to what you think you're going to experience, and then life hands you something completely different, and that is a powerful lesson a lot of us need to understand that we can be resilient in receiving what we think is not what we want and being angry about it and rallying against it.
Speaker 1:You just got to be able to deal with the cards you're given and I think that's the beauty of that book. It really shows us that a human side, that Jim that's going through it in that moment, and the lessons he learned. And, like you said, if you would have been able to reflect back on those words, on what you experienced later on in life, you realize oh, wait, a second, I've been through this. In fact, I've been through these exact situations. If you pause, go to the episode description, you'll see a link where you can pick up the book for yourself and you'll see it right here in the video on YouTube, jim, if people want to connect with you and reach out where can they find you?
Speaker 2:You know, I am not a social media influencer, I'm not a content creator, I am just Jim Sisko influencer. I'm not a content creator, I am just jim cisco. And uh, I have no problem giving out my email address and phone number. You know, I'm not directing anybody to a website, uh, you know, and you can't ever contact me. Call me, talk to me if you have a problem, if you're, if you're. You know I I'm going to tell share one story.
Speaker 2:So I had just put out the book and I was still in this really dark period and fortunately it became a bestseller and I did a podcast or two and I did the same thing and put my phone number out there. And I was sitting at night and you know how it is the phone rings and you look at it and you don't know the number and you're like, eh, it's kind of like Russian roulette. Do I pick it up, who knows? And I'm like, eh, I got nothing going on. So I picked up the phone, answered it Good evening, jim Siskel. And the voice on the other end goes hi, my name is Steve and I hope I don't mind if I'm calling. And and I'm like no, I'm like, hey, what's going on? He's like, hey, I just wanted to let you know. I saw the podcast and you talked about your book. And I'm like, oh, hey, cool, thanks. And he goes hey, I read your book and I just wanted to talk to you for a minute and tell you that I really appreciate you writing a book. And I'm like, oh, that's cool.
Speaker 2:And so he starts telling me that he was in the and then he starts sharing with me that he was going through a really terrible situation at home and with his family. And he just blatantly said I was thinking about ending my life and committing suicide. And I'm like I didn't really know what to do. I mean, I have been in the same situation as him. I've had those thoughts and know, sorry, I didn't really, you know, I was kind of like didn't know what to say and I'm like, well, I mean, great, you read my book. And he goes no, uh, I read your book and I changed my mind. It gave me purpose, it gave me meaning. And he said, if you, if I, if you can go through what you went through and going through what you're going through, I can deal with what I'm dealing with. And I was like that's awesome, thank you, I appreciate it. I didn't know what to say.
Speaker 2:We spoke a couple of different times after that, but it really hit me If I can help one person, I've done my job, and if I can help 100 people, I've done a great service. And if I can help a hundred people, I've done a great service to humanity and to the world. And that's what drives me and that's what motivates me, you know, and it's not royalties. I think Amazon gets like $14 for every book and I can make like three, you know. So I'm not trying to make a fortune on this, I just cover the cost of production. But it really is the purpose of the book. And so I put out my phone number, put out my email, and anybody wants to just shoot me an email or give me a call. If you need to talk, I'll help you in any way I can.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, jim, thank you so much and I really appreciate you being vulnerable enough to share your story with our audience and I cannot wait to have you back on the show because I know there's more that you can share with us and I know there's got to be more stories and more hidden gems in there. So, jim, thank you so much for being here today, thank you for what you're doing and to all y'all listening, go get the book and, more importantly, share the show. Help us, help us grow. Send out this episode, share with a friend and like, follow, subscribe all that jazz, because you can't grow without your support. So thank you for what you're doing and we'll see you all next time. Until then, take care If you like what we're doing and you enjoying the show, don't forget to share us, like us, subscribe.
