Unarmored Talk

He Lost Sight and Hearing… Yet Found a Mission

• Mario P. Fields - Sergeant Major (Ret.) • Episode 165

Share episode

Send us a text

What happens when your job, identity, and future disappear overnight?

In this episode, we sit down with Aaron Hale—a Navy chef turned Army EOD tech—to unpack his journey from an IED blast that took his sight and hearing to rebuilding a life defined by purpose and action.

Aaron shares how trauma fractures identity, how community at Walter Reed kept him grounded, and how shifting from “I can’t” to “How can I?” changed the trajectory of his recovery. He walks through his arc from cooking for a three-star admiral to volunteering for Afghanistan, then learning to kayak, run marathons, and climb a 19,000-foot peak without sight.

We also highlight his entrepreneurial path and his Point of Impact podcast, where he continues serving by sharing lessons forged in adversity. If you’re ready to trade excuses for momentum, this conversation will move you.

Key Takeaways

  • 🚀 Replace Limitation With Motion
    Asking “How can I?” instead of “Why me?” creates movement, options, and hope—even in the darkest moments.
  • 🎯 Build an Identity That Travels
    Jobs, uniforms, and roles can disappear. A values-based identity stays with you everywhere.
  • 🤝 Community Is a Lifeline, Not a Luxury
    The right circle doesn’t just support you—they challenge you, laugh with you, and walk beside you while you rebuild.

Guest Link: 👉(5) Point Of Impact With Aaron Hale - YouTube

Support the show


Mario P. Fields:

Welcome back to the Unarmored Talk Podcast. Everyone, I'm your host, Mario P. Fields. And if this is your first time watching or listening to the show, welcome. Everyone, don't forget to continue to subscribe, share, and like on the YouTube channel and also um on the audio platforms. Uh, again, that generates charitable dollars that goes to my nonprofit. Uh, if you want to learn more about my nonprofit, go to www.stillservingink.com. And if you want to donate like two bucks a month, you can become a member of my YouTube channel. I got uh about 12 wonderful members who every every uh month they donate two bucks, and uh it makes a difference here in Pitt County, North Carolina. Well, today I have another guest willing to remove their armor to have a unarmored discussion to help people develop an accurate way of thinking. His name is Aaron Hale, a Aaron. He is a veteran, Navy, he went Navy chef, turned Army EOD team leader. He survived an ID blast and meningitis throughout his life. He's lost his eyesight and hearing, but yet he didn't quit everyone. Chose to build some businesses, you know, lead that family to family, and create some platforms that inspire others. He's a co-founder of Extraordinary Delights, and he's also another podcaster like myself. He's the host of the Point of Impact podcast. If you guys aren't following that, shame on you. I mean, I'm a Sorry major retired, but I still hopefully you do one push-up. Aaron, welcome to the show, man. Hey, thanks for having me, Mario.

Aaron Hale:

I'm glad to be here.

Mario P. Fields:

No, I'm glad I'm glad you are here. And uh, can you do me a favor? Tell the listeners and viewers a little bit about Aaron Hale.

Aaron Hale:

Well, I mean, I was not the traditional service member, you know, the Patriot that just grew up with a you know a toy rifle in his hand. I was a uh um an all-American slacker. Uh had no ambition whatsoever. Uh I had enough, you know, I was natural talent abilities to get by without having to try very hard. Uh, and the rest was just BS. Um, and then when I I went to college, I didn't know what I wanted to do. Like, picked like international business or something to um because it was so general and I like to travel. Uh, of course, everybody who knew how to hard work hard thing, you know, that ethics, uh, work ethic, they um passed me by really fast and I found myself out of my butt. Um, so uh it was it was one of those things where I needed to get my my life around, turned around, got get that work ethic that learned how to achieve, you know, go for after some goals, uh find a little self-respect and um get that tuition money back. Uh so and the the military just fit that bill for me. So it was all kind of a personal selfish kind of uh necessity thing, just to you know uh find a way to better myself. And it just so happened along the way that I caught uh some of those external, extrinsic values like duty and service and you know the yeah, taking care of the Joes. Uh and and I fell in love with it. So I I I again when just like picking the uh uh my major picking the my job and you know the branch was almost as almost as detailed or uh decision uh uh uh process as that I did. I just didn't want to, like I said, pick up a rifle and go into the the desert or the jungle. So the Marines and the Army were out, and I had no idea about the Air Force except planes. Like, okay, and I joined the the Navy. It was like back then when I was growing up, it was let the adventure begin, right? And I loved to travel, like I said, and I also had decided after getting kicked out of college that I wanted to become a chef, and they have cooks in the Navy, so I decided to become a mess management specialist, which later turned into a culinary specialist. Um, and while I was getting those those values, the internal and external, uh I was being promoted ahead of my peers. I just I really took to service the Navy. I love being a sailor and I love my job. And within a couple of years, I was cooking for a three-star admiral, the commander of the Sixth Fleet in Gaeta, Italy, and uh cruising around the Mediterranean and visiting all these uh ports in Europe, and it was a hardship duty, it was not, but I joined in '99, and uh soon thereafter, we were in two wars. Right. So I decided, you know, with all these newfound, you know, the self-esteem and the values and the hard work and the new skills, everything that my all my talent and uh skills were not being put to proper use to best serve the military and the war effort. So I volunteered to to deploy to Afghanistan. So I went from running, you know, uh the the uh admiral's mess to cooking for uh in a de facto with nine local national Afghans for like three, four, five hundred ISAF troops. I mean, that's when I met some EOD techs, uh yeah, the military's bomb squad, and that they were they were doing like a cool guy uh yard sale with all their gear out of their truck doing the P you know preventive maintenance checks. That's when I met those guys and I learned all about it. Um and I knew that's what I would needed to do. So I I switched uh uniforms. I went to the army since the Navy liked my cooking too much, I guess, and denied my request to go Navy EOD. Uh I let my contract expire. I went over to the Army recruiter, said I want to go with EOD. They said, We've got two wars going on, we could use you. And so um switched uniforms, trained up as an EOD tech, and deployed uh to Iraq after that, and then back to Afghanistan in 2011, uh, and eight months into that uh 12-month deployment. One had my name on it, it uh hit me square in the head. I was virtually untouched from my the neck down, and uh it's a perfect place to hit a pretty thick skull, but uh uh that's how it got my injuries. Uh it took both my eyes, blew up my eardrums, cracked my skull, and put me uh uh in civilian clothes for the rest of my life. But um I've learned how to be a blind person, and this was 2011. And uh it was tough, it was tough, it was tough. Uh not so much the the physical aspect of it, technical aspect of it, it was the mental part of having my entire identity ripped right out. I was I was a father, husband, soldier, EOD tech, all these things. And I was laying there and Walter Reed thinking I can't be any of those things anymore. What is my life? My life is over, I'm blind. I can't I can't I can't do the job. They don't even like it when you're colorblind and EOD, the whole red wire, blue wire thing. But uh I can't drive. I can't but I mean how am I supposed to do any of this stuff? Um, I can't be a father, I can't be a husband, I can't protect. Uh I don't even know how I'll provide. So um uh of course, sitting there with Walter Reed. I was among you know the whole unit full of warriors going through their own personal battles. Right. I almost think about myself too much. One of my uh good friends, uh another EOD team leader, you know, had been injured just a couple weeks before me. And he was just down the the hall. And he comes wheeling in, and he he uh he reminded me, he was his sense of humor, his personality, it just reminded me that I wasn't alone and I wasn't dead, I was very much alive, and I still I still had a job to do, I still had a mission, and there was one thing about uh uh was it uh uh Madness's uh book, Call Sign Chaos, where he said uh you know I mean the Marines things being hard were never a good excuse for mission failure. So I just remembered I mean it was hard, but it wasn't impossible, and I could do this, and I had no uh no monopoly on pain. Everybody was everybody here was going through their own fights. So who was that to say that my was the good enough excuse for mission failure? I can't quit. So I decided that I was gonna if I was gonna be blind for the rest of my life, I was gonna be the best darn blind me I could be. Man, um so I learned how to be blind.

Mario P. Fields:

You you know, Eric, powerful. It and Sixth Fleet is a busy fleet, that's a busy fleet. And for listeners and viewers, not everyone is selected to be a executive level chef for a three-star. Um, you know, that's equivalent to someone being like a personal chef for like the president of the United States, if you will.

Aaron Hale:

But but it's the launch pad for guys in uh our are the sixth fleet mess, they would go to going to Camp David, White House, one. Yeah.

Mario P. Fields:

And and for everyone, you know, and for you to, you know, during that time to know, hey, it's it's very kinetic in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to continue to volunteer to be selfless is just remarkable. But the one thing that I love that you mentioned is the power of the mindset as you're in Walter Reed, and you you got to a point where you changed the way you thought about life, and that's powerful. I've seen a lot of service members and veterans, regardless of their struggles, it's the mindset that's the critical change. And so as you make this mindset change, which has been just been powerful, what what do you think was the turning moment? Was it the book, your friend, a combination? But what do you think was that critical moment where you changed the way you thought? And then what did you experience after you changed the way you started to think about your current situation?

Aaron Hale:

No, the thing was throughout all of it, my friend, my incredibly uh supportive family, uh everybody in the unit throughout my entire life. If I look back, uh no pun intended, uh that um no matter how uh often I felt isolated and alone, I wasn't. No matter how much I wanted to be sometimes, I wasn't. And it was those times when I remembered my connection to the rest of humanity and that I you know fed into the system, so to speak. And I I don't I don't believe that. I don't believe it. Uh for me, it's cutting the bottom off because uh abundance it flows through us. So if the more we give, the more we're filled up. So even when I'm at a worst, if I can turn around and I can help others, and there's this saying that is etched in my brain, it's uh someday the story of your struggle will be the blueprint for someone else's survival. Now so when I started saying, it was the moment I stopped saying I can't, and started asking, how can I? And then how can I so I can teach others? So I turned every experience kind of like uh uh Viktor Frankel, uh man's search for meaning in the um uh in Jewish camps, uh that uh he can't he was studying the experience so that he could help others and you know complete his book. So it was almost like a scientific experiment. So I would look at my situation and okay, how can I figure this out? Like every good you know, war fighter, every good soldier, sailor, marine, air airman, you know, they look at solutions, fix the problem, and continue the mission. So how do I how do I figure anything out without looking? How do I figure that out? And uh with the support of you know, and and then how do I how do I share this so that somebody else is going through maybe not just blindness, some other struggles? How do I figure that out so I can help them? How do I convey it and like tell my story the best I can so they learn and they can get through it? So uh I I was doing that for a couple of years, and and from 2011 when the the the bomb blast took my eyes, for the next four years or so. I was I was I was I learned how to not just navigate with it when I came, but I was whitewater kayaking, I was running marathons, I was climbing mountains, and uh I went uh joined an all uh wounded veteran team to the proving Andes in 2013. Um climbed a climbed a 19,000 foot peak. Uh and I mean I was I was I was well on my way to mastering this blindness thing, uh, and maybe feeling a little bit you know too big for my riches, uh, when you know the meningitis struck. It was like God saying, Oh yeah, I think you're yeah, it's yeah, I I I picture him having uh you know that soldier's sardonic humor, right? Oh yeah, you think you're so hot, and try this and do it again.

Mario P. Fields:

Oh man, but you know, Aaron, and you've inspired me. I mean, and and I love I love when you said I I want, I'm going to, not I want to, I am going to be the best blind person on earth. What a powerful mindset. And for listeners and viewers, I mean, I you know, I'm five foot two. You know, I'm gonna be the best five foot two human male the world has ever seen, or I'm gonna be the best, you know, uh, person in ICU. I mean, I hope you're not in ICU, but that mindset, and I love that. And then, like you said, Aaron, hey, you know what? I'm still alive. What can I do that's the for the betterment of other people? And that's powerful. And and you're doing you're gonna you're doing it on the show, you've been doing it you know before this show, and you'll continue to do it in the future. And um it's just very powerful in in and and and I'm glad that that bomb did not take you off this earth. You and I were deployed in Afghanistan, by the way, at this at the same time, my friend, um, in 2011. So it's very, very kinetic um over there. So thank you and welcome and welcome home. Last question, because I would love to have you on this show forever, and I know you have lots of things to do, and I don't want to be selfish. If you could give yourself a piece of advice um about 30 years ago, you know, 20 years or 30 years ago, you're standing next to yourself, what would you give yourself?

Aaron Hale:

Get off your butt. Uh you can't action is life. I movement is life. When you're stagnant, when you're sitting still, that's just the opposite. That's death. So I think it was Benjamin Disraeli said, yeah, uh, action doesn't guarantee happiness, but there is no happiness without action. And the the truth is the more I move, the better I feel. Uh and when I'm sitting still, when I'm not moving for too long, that's when I feel the wheels really starting to fell off.

Mario P. Fields:

Wow, you guys heard it. Action does not guarantee happiness, but there is no happiness um without action. Aaron, again, thank you for your service. Happy, beloved, belated uh Veterans Day, and I appreciate you taking time to come on the show, man.

Aaron Hale:

Thanks for having me.

Mario P. Fields:

Thank you, sir. Well, everyone, you guys know the deal. Until next episode, I will continue to pray for you all, the listeners and viewers, your families, your friends, and all living beings around you. Aaron, have a great day, my friend.

Head Shot

Mario P. Fields

Host