So I'm curious if your parents, what things that they did that were very supportive to you that maybe w- would be useful for, uh, you know, people who are sort of like, "Hey, I wanna help my adult or young adult children, but I, I don't really wanna interfere."

My parents were not married, uh, past the age of two for me, so I was raised in a divorced home.

My dad modeled grit for me, my mom modeled grace, but they both, we, I had a, a, an open dialogue.

They had me very young too, so they were kind of more like my sister and brother at some points in my life, but I respected them both, and they're very different.

So I think the grace from my mom coupled with the grit from my dad was really key in surviving some of these times.

My mom said to me, whenever I moved across the country from a tiny hometown in southern Illinois, I was raised on a retired dairy farm, and all my family lived on the farmland, more or less.

So I went from that with one blinking stop light in my town to San Diego, you know, Coronado, where Marcus was in BUDS training, with a baby.

What did you lean on when you, like, the well ran dry, and it was like, "Hey, there is no more fuel in the tank, and I'm running on fumes"? What was a practice you did that enabled you to continue?

Goodbye"?

Oh, I was, I was definitely close.

In fact, I had decided I was out.

Um, w- at one point our, both of our kids had expressed that, you know, they didn't wanna live in the home, uh, under the current circumstances anymore.

And I thought, "It doesn't matter how tough I am, I'm forcing them along on this crazy ride.

They've already been through enough." A lot of their friends' fathers didn't come home, or many of their friends' fathers didn't come home from the war, and, you know, this is the hell that we're living through.

You know, it, it was just torture, honestly.

No.

Your journey through that as well.

Yeah, the spouse and the children of the military community to me are the unsung heroes.

And it was an absolute honor to support Marcus as he served our country.

Many of my friends feel the same, but I have many, many friends who are widows.

And days like today are so important to remember the sacrifice that they made and that they continue to make for this nation.

So...

Yeah, it's a bittersweet day for sure.

And you're the CEO of that? Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

And leaving that command was really difficult for him because he thoroughly enjoyed, um, being there.

And I thought, "Well, if we go back to the command, it's like going back to the game of Russian roulette." So many friends died there.

"If we get out of the military, maybe then that gets him out of this limbo phase." And he too is looking for a change.

Right before we made this decision, there was a helicopter crash in Afghanistan where 31 members of the command were lost, and it felt like-- and many of them, you know, friends.

It felt like we can't go back to that.

And so getting out seemed like the only option that we had.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Okay, so a little bit more context on that scene.

I had gone to bed, and I woke up middle of the night, and I heard men's voices.

Marcus wasn't in bed, and I tiptoed down the hall, and this guy was in our house.

And I thought maybe he'd had a fight with his wife-

[laughs]

I have gi- [laughs] I have given it a, a bit of thought.

And there are a couple things actually that I didn't say in the podcast that I would like to touch on in terms of being an ultimate human, but my real answer is gonna follow these two things.

How do you fund VETS? What you're undertaking is big.

Yeah.

It has been the honor of a lifetime.

I certainly think that it is why we were put on this Earth.

I have a very deep Christian faith, so this seemed to be, in the beginning, somewhat opposed to that.

I had to really reconcile that.

And yet, what I have witnessed over the last eight years is this incredible series of bondages being broken over all of these lives and these individuals who have given so much are reclaiming their lives and living fully for perhaps the first time in their adulthood.

With Secretary Doug Collins, what would your message to him be?