From PTSD to Post Traumatic Growth - E10

From PTSD to Post Traumatic Growth.  Lenora interviews Ken Falke, 21 year Navy veteran, entrepreneur, co-author of Struggle Well and founder of Bouldercrest.org.  Many are familiar with PTSD and the intense challenges that can follow the aftermath of trauma but too few know of the hope that can be found in Post Traumatic Growth. 

After extensive research and disappointing data on the mental health treatments for PTSD, Ken came upon the research of Dr. Rich Tadeschi and Post Traumatic Growth. From there he began a partnership to document and scale what has been discovered through those who've gone on to thrive after trauma.

Boulder Crest foundation locations in Virginia and Arizona have been the proving ground to test and improve the program and now Boulder Crest Institute can equip others in the methodology to scale this effective program to countless other locations.

The interview and conversation is honest and brings awareness to the low percentage of success until this proven program approach.  You'll want to get the book "Struggle Well" and share this information with veterans and first responders struggling with PTS or PTSD.

Visit Bouldercrest.org for more information and to discover new hope for a future where individuals and their families can learn to thrive after trauma.

This podcast and video was recorded under the former podcast name "3Ps In A Pod" Episode 10, a podcast hosted by Lenora, daughter of a Korean War veteran and program Director for youth and veterans at a Fortune 500 company.
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Transcript

Post Traumatic Growth - Struggle Well – Interview with Ken Falke – Episode 10 of “3Ps In A Pod” with Lenora Turner 081820

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to today's podcast. "3Ps In A Pod", discovering purpose, connecting pathways and pondering perspectives. This is episode 10. I'm Lenora, your host. Thank you for listening. Make sure you click subscribe on your favorite podcast app., so you receive notice for future episodes.

[00:00:16] Guess what? You matter. There is great hope for you and a great future possible for you. I wanted to remind you of that because, um, have you noticed there's a whole lot of stress in our world right now? If you're struggling, you're not alone. Many are struggling with anxiety and depression, but we can learn how to struggle well.  Beyond that, for those who have faced additional trauma, you're probably familiar with the term PTS or PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder and the profound challenges people can face after trauma. Well, we're talking about that today. We're also talking about mental health and this question, 'Can people achieve posttraumatic growth?' Hint, the answer is yes. 

[00:00:56] My guest today is Ken Falke author of a book called Struggle. [00:01:00] Well.  Ken is an expert in post-traumatic growth, the founder of Bouldercrest.org and Warrior Path that's taught at Boulder Crest Institute and can be licensed across the U S.  You're going to want to share this episode, please share it with combat veterans, first responders, or really anyone struggling right now.

[00:01:18] You know what? Individuals and their families can live great lives in the aftermath of trauma. So, I don't want to take any more time. Let's jump right into this episode and our guest, which you're going to hear more about again, Ken Falk and his book "Struggle. Well."

[00:01:33] Lenora Diane: Welcome to the podcast. My name's Lenora and I am very, very excited about a guest we have today, Ken Falke.

[00:01:40] If you don't know Ken, I hope you end up reading his book and checking out his foundation and all the work he's done after hearing this podcast. But Ken served in the U.S. Navy as a bomb disposal specialist for 21 years. Thank you for your service. I know I'll be officially letting you respond back in a second, but that's an amazing amount [00:02:00] of time and that's incredible work.

[00:02:01] And then you started A-T Solutions, a counter terrorism company, which again is another profound and unbelievable thing to do, in my world, as far as anything I'm aware of. And then you ended up selling that and then founded EOD Warrior Foundation. And then since established Boulder Crest Retreat in both Virginia and in Arizona, and now Boulder Crest Institute. There's so many things we can talk about Ken, but welcome to this podcast and thank you for your time.

[00:02:31] Ken Falke: Thanks Lenora. Thanks for having me. 

[00:02:34] Lenora Diane: Yeah. Would you, tell just a little bit of your story. I realize that could take our entire podcast, but if you could give a summary of what you've done and then we'll jump into your work on post-traumatic growth. 

[00:02:46] Ken Falke: Yeah. Well, the quick rundown is I come from a family that was home based in Chicago and Pittsburgh.

[00:02:53] My dad from Chicago, my mom's in Pittsburgh. I was born in Pittsburgh. My dad got out of the Army, became a cop from [00:03:00] Washington, DC. And we moved to DC where I kind of grew up. My mom died when I was a really young boy, seven years old, and I spent most of my summers with my grandparents back in Chicago and Pittsburgh.

[00:03:12] And, then one thing led to another, I kind of grew up in the summers and hockey camps, playing hockey became a pretty good hockey player and thought that I would try out for the NHL because my high school career didn't go very well and my college. acceptance opportunities were very limited. So, I had a failed attempt at playing professional hockey and a year later, after high school, I enlisted in the Navy and had a great career.

[00:03:39] As you said, 21 years as a bomb disposal guy. But I got out of the Navy because I was, you know, I was at a point in my career where I was the senior enlisted rank.  Really you know, a good senior enlisted guy should be supportive of the officers you work with. And I had just had a couple officers that I just couldn't support.

[00:03:58] I didn't agree with their leadership style, their strategies. And finally, I thought you know, the best thing for me might be to get out. And I got out and I started my own company primarily because I had this misperception that, you know, if you have your own company, you can be your own boss, which is never true. Cause we all have customers and we all have employees.

[00:04:17] But I also come from a long line of entrepreneurs. After my mom died, my dad started a construction business. My grandfather ran a refrigerated trucking business years ago. Way back in our family, we come from textile businesses and one of my grandfathers owned a big gun manufacturer. So, we are a family of entrepreneurs.

[00:04:36] And I knew that working for yourself is really a great way. And we hit it off. We had a great company; we were supporting the war over and over again. And one thing led to another and the company started creating value and people started asking us to sell it. When the number was right, we sold it. And you know, I miss it a lot.

[00:04:54] Some days I wish I wouldn't have sold it; other days I'm very grateful. Philanthropically, it's allowed us the [00:05:00] money and our family has allowed us to do some really great things for people that, you know, that don't have the resources we have. So, we feel really blessed about that. I did, after I sold A-T Solutions, I took a year off.

[00:05:13] I went to Georgetown and got a master's degree and started a second company called Shoulder to Shoulder. And we did some more work, but my real joy in my life is these two nonprofits. I started the EOD Warrior Foundation back in 2004, early in the war. And working with these EOD, which is explosive ordinance disposal or bomb disposal.

[00:05:35] And working with these men and women who have lost limbs, primarily amputees. And we started bringing them out to our house. We are an hour west of Washington, DC in Bluemount, Virginia. One thing led to another. And my wife and I were walking on our land one day, we had an estate with 200 acres and 37 acres of it were open pastures, and my wife said, you know, rather than having these families in our house all the time, why don't we build them some cabins down [00:06:00] here on the pastures? That's how Boulder Crest got started in Virginia. 

[00:06:04] Lenora Diane: Well the property is stunning.

[00:06:07] Ken Falke: It is beautiful. It really is. And our biggest donor here in Virginia was the Clarke family out of Bethesda, Maryland. Washington, DC based family.

[00:06:15] And they gave us a $10 million gift a few years ago to open up a second facility, which is in south of Tucson, Arizona.  And that's what I do now primarily. I've retired from the EOD Warrior Foundation. There's a new chairman of the board over there, and I'm really focused now on two things. 

[00:06:34] One is getting money and our coffers to sustain Boulder Crest and also to scale the work we're doing in post-traumatic growth nationwide. 

[00:06:46] Lenora Diane: Well, you're kind of a motivated person. You've got a lot done and it's pretty impressive. So, I think I know the term post-traumatic growth was very new to me, sadly. I've learned [00:07:00] more and more in the last couple of years because of my work and just some of my friendships in the veteran community. To learn even more about, post-traumatic stress. I think that is a pretty well-known term post-traumatic stress or PTSD, Ken. But because you can articulate it much better than I could, would you make just kind of a statement of what is PTS or PTSD? And what is PTG? I mean, realize we're going to go more into it later, so I'm just wanting to start. But beyond that, I have more questions for you. 

[00:07:32] Ken Falke: At the highest level of PTSD is a combination of anxiety, depression, nightmares, you know, substance abuse. It's a variety of things that kinda come together. And I mean, literally if you think of the words, post-traumatic stress. It's stress that occurs in our body after a traumatic event. Now, normally in the way it's defined, is that traumatic event should be, or is life [00:08:00] threatening.

[00:08:00] So a life-threatening event that creates a level of stress in our bodies that we can't, without some sort of support, get rid of on our own. That's how the mental health community diagnosis post-traumatic stress. Now post-traumatic growth is not a disease; post-traumatic growth is the outcome of living with these traumas and growing from, the bad things that happened to us. Learning from them and growing.

[00:08:29] And that's really what, you know, at the highest level what PTSD and PTG are. 

[00:08:36] Lenora Diane: Thank you for that. And I think, again, people are familiar with PTS or PTSD. I read when I was reading your book called Struggle Well, I was hearing, that there's, unfortunately, a whole lot of work that people are trying to do with post-traumatic stress and so much of it, sadly from what I read, is not effective.

[00:08:57] So, why do you think [00:09:00] a lot of the things being done are not effective? 

[00:09:04] Ken Falke: Well, let me start first because I'm not a big fan of traditional medicine period, not a big fan at all of the traditional mental health approach. You know, the mental health community, has tried to ride the coattails with the medical community. We pathologize everything. Everything's got a disease; you're either bipolar, depressed or anxious. You know, these are things that happen to everybody, right? I mean, everybody's a little bipolar, everybody's got some depression, sometime in their life.

[00:09:34] Everybody's suffered with some level of anxiety. You know, my sitting here with you today and my grandson's in the hospital, you know, we have some anxiety around that. But to pathologize that, to medicate it, to treat it, you know, it just turns into this, this pharmaceutical cocktail that it takes you down a road that nothing good comes out of, both internally in your body, externally in your [00:10:00] actions.

[00:10:00] But let me also say this. So, know that I'm not a big fan of traditional medicine and traditional mental health at all. Traditional medicine, you know, obviously we have our grandson in the hospital and I was being treated by doctors, and I'm very grateful for that. And, I'm sure that things that they're doing are the right things to do.

[00:10:18] But I also want to say that if people are getting success in their treatment, through these people, through traditional mental health and cognitive processing therapy or prolonged exposure, you know, a therapy dog, whatever it might be, that's helping you. And I'm very grateful for that as well. But here's the facts only about 30% of the people who seek out traditional mental health care will, in fact, see results; get better, if you will. 

[00:10:48] Lenora Diane: 30%? 

[00:10:50] Ken Falke: 30%. A third. Now that's a third of the people that go. The stigma around mental health, in general terms, prevents most [00:11:00] people from ever getting in the door. So, think about, let's just say in the veteran community, specifically, they say only about 50% of veterans who are in need of mental health will go seek out treatment.

[00:11:14] So we start with a pool of a hundred percent, 50% of them never go to the doctor. Of the 50% that do, 30% of them get some sort of relief from their PTSD. So, in my mind, you know, you work in a fortune 500 company. You think of any metric in the world where 30% is good enough. Right. It's not good enough on the football field and the hockey rink; it's not good enough in corporate America.

[00:11:41] It's not good enough for cancer. Why is it good enough for mental health? On the subject of substance abuse, very similar results, but about a 97% recidivism rate in substance abuse. Yet our insurance companies pay hand over fist in dollars for [00:12:00] the care and people don't get better. So, it's mind blowing to me and that's why I am so down on the community is because there seems to be a major lack of innovation.

[00:12:11] There seems to be a major challenge to the status quo, right? People can go through college and I understand it. Don't get me wrong to be a mental health therapist you have to get a master's degree. So, you've got to go through a lot of college.  It's a cookie cutter model.

[00:12:29] So people are getting what they call manualized techniques. They get a book that says, here's how you treat somebody. And if that's the only thing you know, and that's the only way you can provide treatment, it's not going to work. Because every one of us are different as humans and all of our traumas are different.

[00:12:46] And these manuals in the system prevent people from doing anything innovative.

[00:12:52] Lenora Diane: Those numbers are incredibly difficult to hear. Because you think of the challenges you think of our current environment, with the [00:13:00] other things going on, you've got more people under other additional types of stress. That's part of why I wanted to talk about, Post-Traumatic Growth and your book, Struggle Well, because, sadly, I've been learning more and more about issues and more about, friends of mine who are struggling. I've been through very difficult times, not the same way. I certainly don't want to compare my trauma to some of the things people have faced, but whether it was cancers where you're, it's just the saddest things, and you're having to feel so powerless and watch someone pass away. Or you go through your own personal breakdown, whether it's in the family, and you just have suffered some very deep pain and you think, you don't want to get stuck there. What I don't want people to think is that you're forever stuck with the impacts of trauma.

[00:13:48] I'm one that has to believe, there has to be solutions; there has to be hope or, you know, it's not a good thing. So that's why I got very excited when I was told about your book "Struggle Well". I love the title Struggle Well, because people will struggle and some have had more struggles than others based on what you were born in, what may have happened, our own choices, sometimes, but, trauma, it can be very real.

[00:14:11] So tell me a little bit about that topic or why you came up with that title and dove in and actually wrote the book called "Struggle Well."

[00:14:21] Ken Falke: Yeah, so I went on a journey around the United States to meet with some of the top mental health professionals in the world before I ever got into the business.

[00:14:29] When we built Boulder Crest as a retreat, the concept of it was for families just to come out from the hospital and stay here. Kind of a respite. And we also were hosting some programs that would help them heal faster through their processes. You know, we looked at all sorts of traditional medicine, untraditional, nontraditional medicine, and included chiropractic care, acupuncture, acupressure, massage therapies, dogs, forced therapy, a whole variety of different things.

[00:14:57] And what we found was that. [00:15:00] We thought that we would be better to have our own program, being more in control. So, I wanted to learn about building a program and kind of learn from the best. And on that journey, you know, a very disappointing journey with these mental health professionals. I ended up running into a guy that I have the utmost respect for today, Dr. Rich Tedeschi at the University of North Carolina who had coined this term post-traumatic growth in 1995. And post-traumatic growth is nothing new. It's the concept; the term is very new, since 1995, but the concept of it isn't very new, and I had somebody say to me, well, you know, growth is impossible after trauma, not for everybody.

[00:15:38] And I said, well, if it wasn't possible, we'd be extinct with the dinosaurs. Right? It's like all of us; no matter who we are as human beings, no matter where you're from, all of us live a life that looks like the sine wave, right. Ups and downs. And you mentioned, you know, death, or you have to put your dog down, or it was [00:16:00] me today, I'm sitting here with my grandson in the hospital, and then tomorrow he'll get out of the hospital and I'll have this high. And you know, you have these ups and downs. The key is to figure out how to live a sine wave that's really easy, you know, easy in the sense that it doesn't look like this up and down and up and down. 

[00:16:20] Not such highs, and not such lows. Right? The highs of, oh, I'm going to solve all my problems today. I want to go out and buy myself a new car. And then two days later, I wake up to realize that I can't afford a $500 a month car payment. Now I'm back in depression with financial problems. And the truth is, you know, when you get really low, depressions very, very difficult to get out of for lots of reasons.

[00:16:46] This is another reason that I get so frustrated with the mental health community is that, they have even coined a term now, a diagnosis called TRD, which is treatment resistant depression. So, the mental health professional says I can help you; it's all [00:17:00] your fault because you're treatment resistant, and it's crazy to me.

[00:17:05] So, we believe is that, you know, to live this life of a sine wave that looks normal up and down, you need two critical things in your life. The first one is this ability to self-regulate, to be able to sit here in a very stressful situation, take a deep breath, know that things are going to get better and that the things that are out of your control, that you can't control, that we can't take on us. Now those self-regulation practices come in the forms of things like breathing, exercise, meditation, reading, walks.

[00:17:39] You think of it, there's a lot of things we can do to self-regulate. I remember my dad, when I was a kid, if I got all frustrated, he would say, listen, Kenny, breathe, or go for a run or get out on the ice rink, you know, go do something to just get calm. And those things really all resonate with me. On the other end of that sine wave, so we've got regulation practices, is what we [00:18:00] refer to as the three to five. 

[00:18:01] Because as humans, we become the average of the three to five people we spend the most time with. 

[00:18:06] Lenora Diane: Right. 

[00:18:07] Ken Falke: Because you're spending time with three to five drunks, you're going to be a drunk. Spending time with three to five drug addicts, you'll probably go down that road. You're spending time with three to five entrepreneurs or, you know, successful mentors and people that you admire and you look up to, you'll probably go in that direction. Now, that's very difficult for a lot of people because a lot of people are bound by these relationships that are toxic and very difficult to get out of. 

[00:18:31] So, all of that is where we come to work. Now Tedeschi had studied post-traumatic growth, primarily in parents who had lost children to cancer, and he also had studied some Vietnam veterans and prisoners of war to find out that prisoners of war had come back from the Vietnam War a lot healthier than some of their peers had.

[00:18:54] Lenora Diane: I read that and I was blown away. I kept hearing the statistics on that when you talked [00:19:00] about, I think it was 30% of people had post-traumatic stress from, their time in war. And then you'd talked about the percentage of those who had had been prisoners of war. And I've been doing the same thing.

[00:19:12] I've been asking everybody, what do you think the number is? And they always do the same thing I did and say, well, I don't know, 80%, a hundred, or, you know, and, and then I'd say, it's like 4. And everyone does the same thing I did; no way! How is that possible? 

[00:19:26] Ken Falke: Yeah, that's crazy. And so, Tedeschi was studying the outcomes.

[00:19:29] Watching these families grow, you know, coining the term, measuring them. He has a measurement portfolio or a series of questions called post-traumatic growth indicators. So, through a series of questions, they can see what your growth is tracked and modeled on. And I said to Tedeschi, I said, have you ever taught anybody how to achieve post-traumatic growth in their life?

[00:19:52] And he looked at me like really intrigued. And he said, you know, I never have. And I said, what if we could expedite the process? What if we could teach people the [00:20:00] right things that they need in their lives?  And take that framework and let them grow a lot faster than they would in a normal situation.

[00:20:11] You know, in the scenario, let's say like a family, who's lost a child to cancer, there's going to be a grieving process. And we know that process, you know, based on lots and lots of metrics, lasts anywhere from three months to a year where it's very difficult to see growth, but after a year you can start to see some growth.

[00:20:31] So we know the grieving process does get in the way of a lot of healing, but it's also, it's also a process that's required to get there. 

[00:20:40] Lenora Diane: Yeah. I'm one that learned from needing to, how important grief is and how people don't ever even stop and grieve and allow themselves to grieve. They can get stuck and it can be an underlying reason for not progressing forward. Cause you're not allowing yourself to just, you know, weep with those who [00:21:00] weep or being able to grieve as you need to, and then find that hope. There's so many parts and pieces to this. What I loved about your approach was, I think two words, "proven" and "scalable" that you had.

[00:21:12] Some of this PTG was shown to really be effective after you were doing all your research. And then the question to say, which clearly fits your entrepreneurial thinking and what you did in the past, you want something that can be scaled, what's scalable? What can we do and build and expand? So, Bravo.

[00:21:31] Ken Falke: That's what we do with the Tedeschi he said he was willing to help us. And we put together a curriculum, which I think is the basis of scaling anything. And, you know, we had Boulder Crest, Virginia and Arizona. So, we had two places to kind of experiment with the curriculum. And now what we're doing is licensing the curriculum out to partners around the nation.

[00:21:51] We have a partner in Florida, Georgia, and Maine, South Carolina, next year Washington State. So, we're making some real good progress [00:22:00] with scaling the curriculum out and around to, you know, to other nonprofit organizations. 

[00:22:05] Lenora Diane: Is it going to be called Boulder Crest as well? Or are they calling it something else? 

[00:22:10] Ken Falke: The program we run is called Warrior Path and that's what the programs will run, but it'll be different nonprofits. So in Florida, the nonprofit's called Gratitude America. But they run our Warrior Path program. The nonprofit in Washington state, it's called the PTSD Foundation, Permission to Start Dreaming.

[00:22:29] And they're going to run our Warrior Path program. So, we train them how to run it. We oversee it for a couple of months and then they run it; they go out and run it on their own. 

[00:22:39] Lenora Diane: So, what do you recommend for people? Because we're talking for a few minutes on this. There is so much information in your book, and information out there. Again, I'm just learning about it, but you have me reading several things now. You don't realize that, but, but I've been going on to other resources going, okay. I want to grab a hold of this better because I see the need so much. 

[00:23:00] And again, having walked through other parts of my own life really began to help me, I think getting away from being afraid of my own pain or somebody else's pain and to say, it's okay if you can face this, you can get through it and get to something much better. Where life can become clear again, life can become, you can see a blue sky again, in the sense of hope and really love being on the planet.

[00:23:22] And I know personally I struggled and for no good reason. I can look back and see reasons why, but I struggled in my twenties, not wanting to be on the planet for certain times. And I'm thinking, that's not a good place to be, but I know if you don't have hope for a future, it's hard to get out of that.

[00:23:41] And that was a piece of beginning to get me beyond where I was stuck, to thinking of a future and finding a very great path towards some things. And I'm a person of faith so that was a huge, huge piece of my path. But for someone who is struggling right [00:24:00] now, or someone has in their family, and their family is struggling very much with depression or post-traumatic stress, what is one or two things you'd say hey, point them to what?

[00:24:12] Ken Falke: Yeah, well, first of all, let me say something. I'm glad to hear your story and that you're here. Suicide is why I'm in this business because in the veterans, ...125 Americans a day, today with COVID, 128 Americans a day, are taking their own lives. 20 of those are veterans. And we don't even know that these numbers are right, but they're, they're close enough for argument's sake. But 20 of my brothers and sisters, people who were great soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, coast guardsmen are killing themselves because of things that they've seen on the battlefield, the poor transition they get out of the military to the civilian life, unemployment, no resources to raise their families. You name it, there's a list of things. So, what I tell everybody, is that the truth about suicide, and you used the word several times, [00:25:00] it's a disease of hopelessness. And when you get to the point of hopelessness, where that becomes the answer, it is it's very low.

[00:25:09] So how do you stay from getting there? And that's what our book is based on. We have a wellness model of four areas of wellness: mind, body, financial, and spiritual wellness. And our mission, and what I tell everybody is, you have got to work every day. Life's not hard, life is hard work. Every day you have to get up and you have to work hard to ensure that in those four areas of your life, you're doing something to get better.

[00:25:37] So in our mind, what are we doing? We're maybe meditating, praying, doing something that brings us back together to where we're not just living this proverbial life of the tail wagging the dog. We're in control; we're up every morning and we know what we've got to do. We've made a list of things to get done and we're working towards that.

[00:25:56] So our mind we're in control of. On our body, you know, I always tell people, are we fat or are we fit? And when you start to get really fat and I'm not trying to, you know, I've had challenges myself since retirement with weight. When you get into a point where diabetes and heart conditions and all this stuff starts, it creates a very difficult life for you.

[00:26:18] And not only for you, but for the people around you that love you, people that have to take care of you. So, you know, there's, and I'm not saying everybody's got to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger, but I mean, we've got to work on fitness. You've got to get up every morning and do something, a walk, you know, some pushups, something that allows you to, you know, live a life.

[00:26:39] And I mean, I see this. I mean, I've been working with amputees since 2004. I got a young man who's lost all four limbs and every morning he gets up and does some exercise.  Puts his prosthetic legs on it, he goes for a walk, he does sit ups. You know, it doesn't matter where you're at in life, you can get better. 

[00:26:57] Finances. I tell everybody the same thing my dad told me, don't spend more than you make. Americans, you know, we moan and groan about how bad congress is in spending, but the truth is the average American family has so much debt, it's very difficult to get out of it. You know, why do we need new cars every three years?

[00:27:16] Why do we need these long-term mortgages? You know, be very careful in trying to overcome your depression with material solutions. It doesn't work. Right? A new car makes you feel better for a couple of days. It's not going to make you feel better for a long time. Matter of fact, it's probably gonna make you feel worse because of the payments, the new insurance costs, and all of that.

[00:27:38] So, don't try to solve these spiritual problems, which is the last element of our wellness triangle. Don't try to solve your spiritual problems with material solutions. It doesn't work. And then spiritually, what are you doing? And we measure, you know, in a very nonreligious sense and if you are religious then you will find this to be even [00:28:00] greater, I think. But in a nonreligious sense, I measure religiosity of how to have spirituality in three ways:

[00:28:06] The first one is your relationships to others. Do you really have that three to five people that you are around that are healthy in your life? Are you in a position where you can prune the bad people, the toxic people out of your life? The other way I measure spirituality is in your service to others.

[00:28:25] Are you doing something for somebody other than yourself? That in itself, I mean, regardless of what religion you are or what you believe, if we just did two things that Jesus said, cause we can't argue that there was the guy named Jesus that walked on this earth, was a pretty good guy by all accounts and, you know, had had a great mission for us. But you know, treat people the way you want to be treated and help people that can't help themselves. 

[00:28:51] If you weren't doing those types of things, you know, and you can start, you don't have to do what I've done and have a nonprofit, but start with small acts of kindness. Go down to a local soup bank or soup kitchen, and feed people on the weekends or go to the local, you know, food banks and help them stack the shelves or do a food bank run. I mean these small acts of kindness, and you can do that really, although they're great for other people, they're really good for us internally. So, you know, that's kind of really what I tell everybody to work on. And there's no secret answer.

[00:29:24] The answer is to create a life worth living. And that prevents us from getting into hopelessness. So, there's four areas to work on, and those are the four areas, and you can learn a lot more in the book. 

[00:29:36] Lenora Diane: Yeah. I thought the book was incredibly practical. You go through some very, very honest conversations.

[00:29:40] You've got some very practical tools, so you can take it a step at a time. This kind of work and depending on what you started with, is whether you have knowledge of what the better life even looks like, or, you know, so it's getting through that process. But you're giving things so people can help see what that means, what you [00:30:00] just shared, but with more detail and some more resources. And then you take a step at a time and like you talked about, hope for your future matters, getting to where it's not just lost.  I understand that depression, you can just get to where you just become so internal focused and it's just a way to think down very far. But you can get back out of it, life becomes very, very good, but I also thought a massive key was that three to five people.

[00:30:29] I think that is such a big deal of being connected to others. So that you can help be accountable with each other, have those connections. I listened to; I think it was a Ted Talk saying there's an epidemic of loneliness. People need people, we need each other. And when you've transitioned out of the military, which has quite a network, you're connected for all the different reasons and then if you don't rebuild that in various ways, you're going to feel pretty lost. That's definitely going to be a very human result. [00:31:00] 

[00:31:00] How can people get more involved? Where you get this message out so that more people hear this concept and see the numbers where you are getting more success than what is out there with most other attempts and approaches?

[00:31:15] Ken Falke: Well, I mean, our website is bouldercrest.org. Start there; there's a lot of great information. The book has its own website strugglewell.com. You can get a copy of the book. You can hear an audio book. I think we've got on Kindle as well, so there's a lot of ways to see the book and read it.

[00:31:32] We've had some great feedback on the book and I appreciate your comment about it being, you know, kind of prescriptive because we had seen a lot of post-traumatic growth books, but they were all about other people's stories. You know, Susie had been in a car accident, you know, couldn't walk and a year later she climbed Mount Everest, but it doesn't necessarily relate. You know, I have no interest in climbing Mount Everest, so her story was inspirational, but it doesn't kind of tell me how I could do my version of that. And that's what we really wanted Struggle Well to be and kind of, what can I do every day to get up. Cause we measure success really simply. We define success as doing better today than we did yesterday.

[00:32:12] And it's simply that good. It's creating this hope in our lives, having a job and sleeping well at night, working on that wellness triangle, all that stuff makes sense. So, volunteering at Boulder Crest is an option. If you're in Virginia and Arizona, we really always need volunteer support. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn.

[00:32:35] Share our posts. There's a lot of things you can do. We are not privately funded nonprofit. We need to raise over $6 million, almost $7 million a year. So financial contributions are always welcome. But I also know that's challenging for a lot of people too. I tell everybody, you know, when it comes to helping nonprofits, it's really three ways to help.

[00:32:56] One is to be a cheerleader, to be a volunteer, and to be a [00:33:00] donor, a financial donor, and those three things all help. The cheerleader is easiest, sharing our Facebook posts or sharing a LinkedIn post. That stuff's big because although you may not have financial means to help us, maybe somebody in your network does get inspired by our work and has those means. I hope that helps. And for anything else, you can reach out to me at Ken@strugglewell.com. If you need to get ahold of me, I'm very open and happy to help anybody that's in need. 

[00:33:33] Lenora Diane: Well, I sure appreciate this. I absolutely will be that promoter of your work. I'm hopeful, too, that you'll get a chance to, heck, testify in front of Congress. How do you get your chance to do that? I mean, this is a big need everyone's aware of, and you've got the street cred to do it. I just think it needs to get out to all kinds of different avenues for people to understand this post-traumatic growth concept. So again, love your book. It's one of those [00:34:00] I'm marking up and I've been telling people about it.

[00:34:03] A few people have picked it up already and they're reading it themselves, too. I think it's just so practical and anyone will benefit from it. I don't care whether you had a specific trauma but there are so many ways in life where people struggle.

So, again, I’m a fan, so definitely Ted Lucas made you a new fan for sure. And I just want to help create more of those because our veterans matter, everybody matters. And I think that hope for the future is critical and people are so valuable. I think often they don't realize no, your life is incredibly valuable, and it can be great and we need each other to get there.

[00:34:38] Ken Falke: Yeah, absolutely. Amen. I am a big fan of that story. I think we're all valuable. We all need to help each other to be successful. 

[00:34:46] Lenora Diane: Yeah. Thank you so much. I really appreciate your time. And try to get more people to understand what you're doing. And again, thank you so much for your service and everything you've been doing since then. And I hope your grandson is all fine and well. 

[00:34:58] Ken Falke: Thank you. Thank you, Lenora. Thanks for the podcast. 

[00:35:01] Lenora Diane: You're very welcome.

[00:35:03] Thank you for listening to this episode, you can get your copy of struggle well online or on your Kindle app. And you want to visit Bouldercrest.org to learn more. This episode was sponsored by Lenoradiane.com. Please remember to go to your favorite podcast app and click subscribe.