Lessons Learned for Vets
Lessons Learned for Vets
How Training Service Dogs Helped a Marine Heal and Thrive with Ryan Woodruff
What happens when the skills that kept you alive in combat become the very things holding you back in civilian life? Former Marine Ryan Woodruff's powerful journey reveals how purpose can emerge from our darkest struggles.
After two deployments to Iraq and losing 14 fellow Marines, Ryan's transition to civilian life spiraled into PTS, alcoholism, and isolation. The brotherhood, mission, and structure that defined his military service vanished overnight. "I wasn't ready to acknowledge I was dealing with mental health issues," Ryan reveals. "My way of coping with all of this was alcohol."
Everything changed when Ryan found Clear Path for Veterans and was matched with a service dog. In an extraordinary insight, Ryan discovered his dog had begun mirroring his own anxiety and hypervigilance. This wake-up call became his catalyst for seeking help. He discovered that service dogs reflect the best and worst parts about our character, and he set out on a mission to improve himself and focus on his mental health.
Ryan takes us inside the remarkable world of service dogs for veterans, explaining how these animals are trained to respond to specific symptoms of PTS and TBI. From recognizing when a veteran is anxiously twisting their wedding band to providing grounding techniques during moments of distress, these canine companions offer both practical support and profound connection.
Most powerfully, Ryan challenges the "sliding scale" mentality that keeps many veterans from seeking help. "It's not a competition," he insists, urging listeners to reach out regardless of how they perceive their struggles compared to others. His journey from program recipient to CEO of Clear Path demonstrates how our darkest challenges can transform into our greatest purpose when we embrace connection and vulnerability.
Whether you're a transitioning service member, a veteran struggling with mental health issues or simply someone interested in the healing power of human-animal bonds, this episode offers both practical resources and the inspiration to take that first step toward healing.
If you're struggling with PTSD, alcoholism, or other mental health challenges, reach out to Clear Path for Veterans at 315-687-3300 or explore resources like the Crisis Line (988), Vet Centers (VetCenter.VA.gov), or Assistance Dogs International.
You can connect with Ryan Woodruff on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-woodruff-290514195/
Subscribe to our YouTube channel at https://tinyurl.com/llforvets22
SUBSCRIBE & LEAVE A FIVE-STAR REVIEW and share this with other veterans who might need help as they transition from the military!
The Lessons Learned for Vets Podcast is sponsored by Seek Now and their Drive Academy. Seek Now is the property inspection industry's leading business and they created Drive Academy DoD SkillBridge and CSP internships to teach transitioning military service members and veterans skills that prepare them for lucrative and rewarding careers in the property inspection and insurance industries. You can learn more and apply today at www.internwithdrive.com.
Welcome to the Lessons Learned for Vets podcast, your military transition debrief. I'm your host, lori Norris, and I've helped thousands of military service members successfully transition out of the military since 2005. Thanks for tuning in to hear the after action reports and real stories of your fellow veterans, who are here to help guide, educate and inform you as you navigate your own military transition. By the way, if you find value from today's episode, please share it with others, leave us a review and post about us on social media. Hey guys, it's Lori.
Speaker 1:Hey, before we kick off this episode, which is a great, powerful episode, I just want to let you know that we are going to talk about subjects like post-traumatic stress, that we are going to talk about subjects like post-traumatic stress, alcoholism and mental health issues today, and we are talking with an amazing, the CEO of an amazing organization. But I want to give you some resources right up front, in case this is something that you are dealing with yourself. So, first and foremost, you can always go to the Crisis Line by dialing 988 or visiting VeteranCrisisLinenet. You also can look up your local Alcoholics Anonymous chapter and you can also go to Vet Centers at VetCenterVAgov. We are going to talk about service animals. Today we're talking with the CEO of a great organization, but they can only provide so many service animals. So if you find that this is something that you would like to explore for yourself, you can go to assistancedogsinternationalorg to find an accredited provider. To find an accredited provider, and that's important because that accreditation will help you get VA funding for that service animal to support you with your needs. Just wanted to check in with you and make sure that you had the resources you need.
Speaker 1:And we're talking to Ryan from Clear Path for Veterans and he tells you the best way to get a hold of their organization is to call them. So I want to make sure you have their phone number, and that is 315-687-3300. Now let's check out the episode. On today's episode of the Lessons Learned from Vets podcast, I am welcoming Ryan Woodruff. Ryan is the Chief Executive Officer of ClearPath for Veterans and a US Marine Corps combat veteran who served two deployments in Iraq. His journey began as a recipient in a grassroots service dog program, which sparked his focus on canine training and veteran advocacy. Under his leadership, clear Paths Canine Program earned national accreditation and became a model for excellence, and today he leads the organization with a focus on expanding programs and services that help veterans heal, connect and thrive. I can't wait to talk about dogs, so we're just gonna talk about dogs the whole time. Does that sound like a plan?
Speaker 2:Ryan, that absolutely works for me.
Speaker 1:I love that going to talk about dogs the whole time. Does that sound like a plan, ryan, that absolutely works for me? I love that. I love talking about dogs. I um have actually had the opportunity to visit the military working dog program at luke air force base and just see how they train their dogs, and so it's always fascinating to me to talk about what you do. So thank you for what you do and and what your organization does for veterans.
Speaker 2:It's my pleasure and it's been a gift to be honest with you. I never thought I would have arrived where I am today, but I am nonetheless extremely grateful for the path that's been laid before me.
Speaker 1:That's very cool and we're going to talk about that. How you felt about you know if you thought about where you would be today. So let's start with your transition, because you and I talked a little bit about it, like, let's talk about your transition out of the Marine Corps. You made the decision to separate and just you know how was your transition out of the Marine Corps.
Speaker 2:So I would say it's anything but smooth. As much as I thought I had a plan, it really kind of fell apart. You know, the military teaches you to always have a contingency plan and I really didn't think that through as I navigated from my time serving in the Marine Corps to entering civilian life and having served two combat deployments to Iraq, one that was in a very volatile area between Fallujah and Ramadi, losing 14 men that I served along with never made it home I really wasn't prepared for the full weight of what that was going to be like. And so you know, the skills, the discipline, the leadership developed that I thought would automatically translate. Just it didn't right.
Speaker 2:And I discovered that civilian life operates on a completely different wavelength lack of brotherhood, lack of a clear mission, no real sense of purpose. It just kind of all fizzled out rapidly, like almost immediately. So you know, I would say my transition was really marked by struggle. I wasn't ready to acknowledge the fact that I was dealing with mental health issues, post-traumatic stress. I was not clinically diagnosed with traumatic brain injury while I served, and my way of coping with all of this was alcohol, and that's very common amongst veterans and those who have served. That's very common amongst veterans and those who have served, and it was my only way to really mask the pain and disconnection that I felt when I got out, and what I thought would be a simple shift from military to civilian life became a journey through some of the darkest periods of my life and really now realizing that my story isn't unique and that a lot of us have faced similar challenges, but at that time, you know, I really felt isolated and lost.
Speaker 1:Okay, how did you make it through that, like, what was the path that you traveled to make it to the other side where you are today?
Speaker 2:it to the other side, where you are today. So it's been. You know, I've been out of the Marine Corps for 15 years now and the last nine years I've experienced the most profound transformation, mostly due in part to the work that I'm doing at ClearPath. But when I first connected with ClearPath nine years ago, it you know, I was stepping into a new role as a peer mentor, all the while receiving services at ClearPath at the same time battling alcoholism, PTSD, TBI and feeling completely disconnected, without any sense of purpose or community. And but nobody could see that on the surface, right Like I, was functional, I was showing up early to everything, I was doing my work. But underneath the surface and going home back to some of those places of isolation is really where I experienced the most pain.
Speaker 2:And I didn't realize how important connection was until I started to navigate the programs and services at ClearPath.
Speaker 2:And again these two crossroads intersected at the same time.
Speaker 2:So one I was serving as a peer mentor, helping other veterans navigate these unique challenges, but also just through by a complimentary to me doing that, I was receiving services myself, I was connecting with other veterans, I was working with those that were significantly worse off than I was, and what I really truly began to understand upon first walking in the doors was that this place was truly about connection, relationship, not isolation, finding veterans who understood what I went through and were navigating that too, and not offering sympathy, but genuine understanding born out of shared experience, which I think was really critically important. So I would say that was the beginning of what helped me start to really understand that there was a light at the end of the tunnel of this transition and that there was hope. Most significantly, my involvement within the canine program. So you know we talked briefly about this, but I wasn't. I didn't start as a staff member within the canine program, I actually applied as a recipient, and that's where really a lot started to come together for me.
Speaker 1:Okay the. So getting that service dog was really important to your recovery in that process.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a hundred percent. And it wasn't necessarily the placement of the service dog, but just working with, you know, a living animal on the other end of a leash really helped me understand. It was a reflection, like dogs reflect the best and worst parts about our character. And, you know, I started to realize that the only way that I would be successful in this program is if I could get over some of the struggles that I was working through. There was a concept that was introduced to me back when I started training called vicarious traumatization, and that's essentially those you surround yourselves with. It's kind of contagious right, like what you're experiencing is going to be shared by those within your inner circle. And I experienced that, and no greater example than when being matched with a service dog, right, because the program as it was back then was much different.
Speaker 2:We were in a very intensive training timeline that took almost two years together and I could, you know, when I was first placed with the dog she was very happy, social, wanted to interact with others.
Speaker 2:With the dog she was very happy, social, wanted to interact with others, and within six months she became a little reclusive, a little reactive, not really interested in people coming into my space and a trainer at the time who's actually the founder of ClearPath.
Speaker 2:We sat and talked about this and she said, you know, like your dog is a mirror image of kind of your character right now and some of the heightened sense of post-traumatic stress symptoms that you're experiencing right now and that's all traveling down the leash. And so you know I said, okay, well, I want to fix that. So that was really a catalyst for me to jump into therapy, to start networking a little bit more and working with other veterans in a similar capacity to just be vulnerable. That was a big part for me is just having a willingness to step into discomfort and be vulnerable and open up about the experiences that I was having, because carrying that all the while and not having some kind of pressure without the release it's, it's just adds to the continuous damage. So I went to school for dog training and really discovered this new affinity, which is amazing and so it back then.
Speaker 1:You, I know your father now. You didn't have kids back then. No, um, so we're talking about that vicarious trauma, today's traumatization with an animal. Imagine if it was also with your family members, right, your children, your, you know those that you love the most, and so you know I think this is just like a call to remember that what you're dealing with impacts more than just you right A hundred percent. Yeah.
Speaker 2:That was a big change for me. I had, I had my children in 2017 and, you know, I I got sober the same year and that was because I was beginning to look at what I could potentially lose as a obvious direct result of some of the habits I had formed, the coping mechanisms which were clearly unhealthy. All of this all happened really at the same time. So, finding clear path, building a family, getting married, going through a service dog program, and it was like being fire hosed with information and it was a lot to handle. But, you know, I felt that this, this came at a point in my life where I was being prepared to handle this. I certainly didn't, you know there felt that this, this came at a point in my life where I was being prepared to handle this. Um, I certainly didn't.
Speaker 2:You know, there's a lot within my own character that I didn't feel like I qualified for a lot of what I was receiving and the services that I was being connected to, and I know that's something we could we could get to in a minute, but it's very common. A lot of veterans. They try to do this on their own and they use pain and suffering as a scale, like if they don't feel that they're worthy because somebody else out there has experienced something worse than them, then they'll take a lower seat. It's very in the work that I do, I see veterans often taking a lower seat, not willing to step up to any type of services that they could be provided, and it's. It's unfortunate and that's certainly my encouragement to those. Listening is like take the lifeline, ask for help, and it's okay, and there's, there's other people that have gone through what you're going through and it's really important to find community.
Speaker 1:And you don't. You don't have to put your pain and suffering on some kind of sliding scale to make it make you worthy or deserving, right? It's like you know, if two people trip and fall in the same place, they're they both get hurt, maybe in different ways based on their own body composition, but it doesn't mean that one is more important than the other, right? I think, um, that's a really good point to make, that you don't have to like compare yourself to others to be worse than or better than to be able to get that help and it what it sounds like to me is that the key really to you getting better, if you will, or improving, or, you know, healing was helping other people, right, getting outside of just being isolated and giving back to others. Is that right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a missing component that veterans often face when leaving the military. They swear an oath to service and then, when it's over, they're lacking. What was built in the within their identity and their fabric and their character is the capacity to serve. But you know you have to arrive at some point within your journey in order to be able to contribute to others. That's something that took me a long time to really understand. Certainly, through the work that I did at ClearPath in the beginning was it began to help me realize that if I'm going to be best for the dog that I'm training or for the veteran that I'm trying to walk shoulder to shoulder with, then I have to be a breathing example of that. So what am I doing within my life, or where are the areas of growth within my life that I have to look at and not try to transform overnight, but take the slow journey of just incremental progress every day?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think when we're on a like, a path of I don't know, improvement, self-improvement, we expect it to be like a switch flip right, I've made the decision, now it's all going to get better, and I think that we are. Our expectations aren't always realistic of ourselves and I think we've got to figure out a way to look at our progress as like. I don't know if you've read the book Atomic Habits, right, but James Clear, the author, talks about just like 1% better every day. If you just focus on each step being 1% better, then that compound effect over time really makes an impact. But we we have to have realistic expectations of what we can accomplish. I mean, if you think about how long it took you to get to a place where you were struggling, that wasn't necessarily just a switch flip, right, it was a combination or a compilation of experiences that put you in that place, and so I think it's that's a good point of like, just giving yourself that for lack of a better word grace to heal.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no better message 1% every day. I think that's incredible. That's something that really stuck out to me in dog training. So it takes two years to train a service dog right and you start with a new puppy that's never really been introduced or exposed to a very human world and the expectation is that that dog can navigate everywhere the general public is allowed to navigate, legally right. And in order for them to do that, it is baby steps, and the same goes for any discipline of dog training. Like you have to have grace and understand it's a building process and it takes time.
Speaker 2:And so, like that example for me was just really profound and incredible to look at the progression of training a dog and trying to translate that into my own healing. So, and we we actually did a study on revealing that the training itself of a service dog has this complimentary impact of reducing stress, reducing social isolation, increasing quality of life, reducing symptoms associated with PTSD, and it all makes sense, right. Like we get dogs for a reason, um, both in the working capacity and not, it becomes a part of our family. It's something to take care of. There's actually research out there that suggests we take care of dogs and we better than we take care of ourselves. Uh, so I learned you know so much just through the natural companionship and the human animal bond and working with dogs. It was just the 1% better really sticks out to me.
Speaker 1:Can you help me understand, or all of us understand, like, how does in a service animal help a veteran with PTSD? Aside from some of the things we just talked about, like the companionship, which I know is huge, but what are some other things that a service dog can help?
Speaker 2:One is you become the center of attention, right? So a lot of veterans struggle with finding community and I often tell we tell everybody going through our program is you got to be prepared to be the center of attention because you're not going to go walk into the grocery store with a floppy or yellow lab or golden retriever and not have somebody come want to pet your dog or ask you questions. And we rehearse that over and over and over again to the point where there's this comfort level with people coming up and talking to them. Social facilitation is really what this dog is doing. There's technical things that the dog does, like perform specialized tasks to mitigate symptoms that are directly correlated with that specific veteran. So when we're screening veterans to go through our program, we're asking a lot of different questions related to their unique challenges and how that presents itself in, how that presents itself in a picture so that we can then train the dog to respond to so a lot of people in general, not just those struggling with post-traumatic stress or veterans, but those struggling with anxiety or anybody that has a self-soothing coping mechanism that they do when they're under some degree of stress. We can visualize that and train the dog to respond to it in a certain manner. That's grounding and either brings the individual back to the present moment or helps them settle in whatever experience they're having. It's pretty incredible. It's me talking about. It doesn't do it do it justice.
Speaker 2:I often go out and do demos and that kind of thing to show people exactly what this looks like. And so if you just picture somebody coming home from work or from a stressful day or anything like that they come into their home, they're bringing their dog with them, they sit down, they put their hands on their face and the dog immediately responds to that because it's a visual cue to either lay on their lap or put their nose on their face or lick them, and it that's where there's this mutual partnership. That's just so incredible. Or if somebody's twisting their wedding band over and over again when they're anxious and the dog comes up and rests their chin on their lap. These things are what we don't even realize. Like we're doing self-soothing techniques or bouncing your knee up and down because you're anxious, or you're looking to get out of some situation and the dog comes up and puts their paw on your foot.
Speaker 2:Pets do this too. I mean, you probably could talk about this for days. Pets will pick up on this. It's intuition and it's mutually beneficial. So the dog learns through a lot of training and work that it's intrinsically rewarding to perform these jobs. So by doing these things it releases dopamine, it releases oxytocin and it's just incredible. I mean it's there's science to it, but to me it's really. It's a lot about the bond. The technical training is incredible, being able to take the dog anywhere. You know that the general public's allowed to go, including flights and all that is nice, but the training is is really where it's at, in my opinion, yeah what, what the people that are listening can't see that ryan can see is that he's putting tears in my eyes and he knows that.
Speaker 1:I know this well because I just lost a dog, um, in april, and I think about, like you know, the comfort that he brings to me, or brought to me and to my mom, who has health issues, but also, like I think, about my daughter. Many people that have listened long term to the show know that my daughter recently had a really big surgery and the years leading up to it she was in a lot of pain and like so much pain that you know I don't know that.
Speaker 1:she had a great outlook on life and she got a cat, yeah, and we don't often think about cats as people is something that you connect with, but this is. She got a special cat.
Speaker 1:I feel like this cat was sent to her from from above and, uh, that cat, I think, got her through the last six months before her surgery if I'm being honest with you, like I feel like that cat helped give her a reason to make it, and I've seen that happen firsthand and I'm a big believer in animals' connection, and just to hear what a service dog can do and to hear you describe it is really impactful to me, knowing how important pets are in my life as well.
Speaker 2:So I appreciate you taking us through that, so thank you. Yes.
Speaker 1:And thanks for making me cry on a podcast this morning.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry. It's powerful. No, it's true.
Speaker 1:It is yeah, it really is Like I just that connection and just hearing you describe it, like I could just visualize that happening to someone who really was in distress, you know, and and not having that. So we're going to talk about other things, but I really, at this point I want to talk about your programs. I want to talk about Clear Path and just like the programs that you offer and just how people can get involved and possibly support you as well, cause I know you've got some really big plans ahead.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the there's the canine program, which we place service dogs with veterans diagnosed with post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain injury. It's available to veterans across the country. So wherever you're residing in, you're eligible to connect with us and we can work through our screening process and see if our program's a good fit for you. We also do a new program called Veteran Support Services, which combines family support, employment support, financial support and a host of other different services to include basic needs. So there's veterans within the state of New York that are really struggling with homelessness, food insecurity, and we provide a lot of those crisis intervention services. That particular program is somewhat tied geographically because we provide these services directly, so we're typically driving all over the place connecting with veterans where they're at. However, we do connect nationally too. If anybody out there is just looking for a lifeline, they can connect with our peer support program and we'll get you to the right place.
Speaker 2:We do wellness, so wellness is a. It's a broadly used term these days and the way we define wellness is non-clinical therapeutic modalities to include enrichment programming as well. So we'll do anything from knitting to massage therapy, yoga, meditation. We're diving into some spiritual programming at ClearPath, which is new for us. So all of our programs and everything that we do, it takes into account the unique challenges that veterans are facing and everything that we do it takes into account the unique challenges that veterans are facing and we've designed these over the course of 15 years to specifically align to that, so that to help mitigate some of these unique challenges that veterans are facing every day.
Speaker 2:So canine peer support, wellness, and then there's so many other things. I mean we sit on a 78 acre campus so we're having different events and programming all the time. We do art therapy. We always have different events running throughout the month as part of our enrichment services. So the nice thing is it takes a village. I always tell people this, so we don't try to do everything. We connect with community members within within our catchment area to connect with ClearPath and offer some complimentary services at our campus. So it's pretty incredible. We do base everything on veteran challenges, but also the different pillars of wellness as well.
Speaker 1:Okay, how can somebody learn more about your organization?
Speaker 2:I hate telling people to go to the website. I prefer to talk to people, to be honest with you. That's the easiest way for me, so I would encourage people to call for one. You can call our office and talk to somebody and we can get you connected. That way, you can check out the website and it'll talk, you know, give you all the information of everything that we do.
Speaker 2:We have a YouTube channel which has so many documentaries of people experiencing some of the transformative properties of each of our programs. We have all the social media platforms Exciting so a couple. We're hoping we're not hoping we're going to launch a new ecosystem that's available digitally, so that folks that are outside of our catchment area can connect through all of our programs through our website. So to provide all these services and digitize them so that they can navigate them wherever they are, whenever they need to you know, if they're working full time and they can't get to the campus, we're going to make these programs available to everyone. It's going to take some time to get there, but we're working on it right now.
Speaker 1:Okay, so I'm going to put the phone number for ClearPath, the website for ClearPath, the YouTube channel link. All that's going to go in the show notes and you can find that wherever you're listening it's the show notes show up in your podcast app or on the website at ll4vetscom. So okay, so we'll put all of that in there. Now, you mentioned earlier that you did not feel deserving of the support we kind of talked about that. Right, it's not a sliding scale of who's most deserving, but I remember you told me like I didn't feel like I deserved the support that came with receiving a service dog. I think that's a pretty common theme, right, but according to your statistics, between 37 to 50 percent of Afghanistan and Iraq war veterans have been diagnosed with a mental health disorder, right? So how did you get past that feeling of not deserving that service, that support, and really accepting that?
Speaker 2:Biggest thing for me was just realizing that there is no scale. It's being trying to compare trauma is a dangerous place to be. It's not a competition and it's all relative. So my experiences are certainly relative to me and it's not fair of me to try to put that on a scale and compare it to somebody else's of me to try to put that on a scale and compare it to somebody else's Having other veterans that I know have experienced some horrific trauma. Come alongside me and, you know one, be genuinely interested in who I am and authentically connect with me, but also not ask any pressing questions that are going to make me, you know, feel over threshold, um, just to be willing to connect and help in in any capacity. There's so many folks out there that just want to do that, regardless of the circumstances and figuring out that you know there are those both within the civilian community and the veteran community that are really coming together to be a network of support, which was what helped me cross that bridge.
Speaker 2:About six years ago I started connecting with a local fellowship support group and that's really where I started to experience that, but it was all through connections at ClearPath, a volunteer, he saw that I was struggling at one point and he just lent out a lifeline and said hey, you know, I don't know what your situation is, but you look like you could use some community and we meet weekly and we'd love to have you out and I. That began a whole new journey for me, but it's been incredible right Just to spend six months with the same group of folks that really want the best out of you and then feel comfortable at sharing your full story in full measure. Navigating your story, I think, is really important. Everybody's story is unique and there are certain mile markers within that story that I think is very healing to understand, to move beyond. So it was certainly complimentary to the work that I'm doing at ClearPath and it only happened because I was in the ClearPath ecosystems. But yeah, community is just really important.
Speaker 1:And you talk about like sharing that story. I mean, I don't know, there probably is a lot of people out there that haven't ever really completely shared their story with somebody you know, and I hope that you all have somebody to do that with. But, um, if you haven't, I think it's important to find it, Don't you think?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And, uh, if nothing else, it's, it's, it's. I don't recommend doing it alone, you know, but, uh, before I shared my story, I wrote it down and I adjusted. I, you know, I, I adjusted it, I, I got some more details out and it was healing in that I began to understand some things about myself. Um, but I wrote it down, I read it and, uh, I even practiced it and, you know, never nothing could prepare you for standing before 30 people, but those in which you would call family to pour it out, I mean, and that's, that's something that I did, and I was a mess, I mean, I couldn't even keep it together, but I did that, and I can't express how important that was to experiencing transformation, true transformation. Go from brokenness to a path of restoration was certainly marked by that process, and I don't think it would have been possible had I not entered into a great period of discomfort in order to do that, but the fruit of it is just has been incredible.
Speaker 1:I think about like a liter bottle of, or two liter bottle of soda, right, and like how much pressure is relieved just by like twisting that cap. And I think sometimes, as humans, that's how we are. You know, we're that two liter bottle of soda with everything trapped inside of us and and it, just it, causes so much pressure. And then you get to that, like you said, the self-medicating process of like. I think if you just open that cap, you know, and release it and talk about it, it is very helpful in what I have found.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, for sure, and it's nothing to ever get complacent over. The journey is lifelong, yeah, and I'm not naive enough to think that I. You know there are going dark times are always ahead and, um, it's not about living a life expectant of dark times, right, Like that's a. That's a place that I was. I was always. I was taught to expect the worst. I mean, that was built with as hardwired into me in the military is just expect, always expect the worst is going to happen and have a plan to get out of it. Not a healthy way to live, because it certainly doesn't help you. Be grateful for the moment I think that's really important but also just to continue to train your mind and your body and your spirit and bring attention to that, because there are going to be times where it's going to be difficult. You want to have a community to rely on and a family and be willing to express yourself openly and honestly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think you're right in that you have to know that there will be setbacks, right. There will be times that you have troubles, issues, and so just knowing like you're training yourself to be able to navigate those more effectively.
Speaker 2:So many tools out there too.
Speaker 1:So many. So you know you said it earlier, but let's talk about it. You know, if you thought of think about like, back when you transitioned out of the Marine Corps and you've tried some different things, right, like you tried, you went into being an arborist. You told me, um, today you're the ceo of a very successful non-profit organization. So, uh, you know, I remember you told me the story of like when the board approached you, of like, hey, I think that we'd like to talk to you about being our next CEO, and kind of your reaction to that Like, is this what you imagined when you left the Marine Corps?
Speaker 2:Absolutely not, not by a far stretch. Never would have guessed that I would have arrived where I am today, where I am today, and again back to that feeling of not being qualified or undeserving. I entered into being an arborist when I got out of the Marine Corps because my plans to go into law enforcement didn't work out and I just thought working in nature was a good option, right, and working with small teams and really difficult work was something that I was already very accustomed to, but it was only taking me so far. So, entering into ClearPath and navigating through my journey, but also working as a peer mentor, a dog trainer, program director, all of those things were great and they certainly helped me in terms of experience and all that. But I honestly, in reflection now, I think what uniquely qualified me for this position and this is probably the first time I'm saying this was the hard times was the fact that I could be intimately connected with the life experience of those that we serve.
Speaker 2:And having gone through that, you know I I don't live with regrets, um, and I wouldn't change a thing about my life at this point because if I had not experienced all of this, there's no way I'd be filling the shoes that I'm in now. So, uh, for the board to approach me and say, hey, we, we were asking for you to step up to the plate and do this job. Uh, it was very humbling to to go through that process and, just, you know, first doubt myself and look in the mirror and say, are you this character? Can you do this? It's a, it's a big undertaking. But then to have others I mean, we have 47 staff and I've been so grateful for all of them to come alongside and support me through this transition and to really just cheer me on and and it's reciprocal, you know, like it, it's a tribe and we have a great culture up there. So it's been a wonderful experience. I'm grateful for it and just going to continue to do the best I can love it.
Speaker 1:I, I think, uh, you know, I think all of us are only limited by kind of what we can imagine is possible for our future, and I think that sometimes you've got to be open and to new possibilities, but you also have to be like, willing to live through whatever it takes to get you to that next place. So I appreciate you sharing your experience with us and I really commend you for the work that you're doing at Clear Path for Veterans, and we'll definitely put some info in the show notes about how people can get in touch with you. So thank you so much for sharing your story, for making me cry today, ryan, appreciate that. No, it wasn't you. It was just no like feel like you really. I really could feel like the power of that connection, and so I encourage everyone to explore that and, uh, and I will put that phone number in there great.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, laurie thank you.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to today's episode. My goal is to give you actionable strategies to help you learn to market your military skills and smooth your transition to the next phase of your career. If you learned something valuable today, share it. Subscribe to our podcast and our YouTube channel, leave us a review and write a post on social media about the lessons that helped you today from this episode. Thank you, thank you.