Happily Even After Betrayal with Life Coach Jen

211: Dare To Thrive: Lessons Learned from a Trauma Survivor, Dr. Greg Linkowski

• Jennifer Townsend, Greg Linkowski • Season 5 • Episode 211

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A ten-year-old kid should never have to wrestle a loaded gun out of his father’s hand, but that moment became one of the first chapters in Dr. Greg Linkowski’s trauma story and his healing. Greg joins me to share how untreated WWII PTSD, addiction, and a culture of silence shaped his childhood, and how those early experiences echoed through adulthood in the way he coped, worked, and tried to make sense of pain.

We also talk about the life and loss of Greg’s son David, who had a medically complicated childhood. Greg opens up about what it’s like to live on high alert, chase healing, and keep showing up as a spouse and parent when your family is stretched to the edge. If you’re walking through betrayal trauma, divorce recovery, or grief, you’ll hear practical hope here: safety matters, community matters, and healing is still possible even when the outcome isn’t what you prayed for.

Faith is a major part of this conversation, not as a tidy answer, but as a place where questions, anger, and perseverance can coexist. Greg shares how finding the right church community became part of their survival, how he rethinks the word “miracle,” and why forgiveness is a long process that can turn wounds into wisdom. We end with what “happily even after” looks like in real life: choosing purpose, offering small acts of kindness, and learning to give the best of yourself to the people you love.

If Greg’s story helps you, share this with someone who needs it, then subscribe and leave a review so more people can find honest conversations about trauma healing, PTSD, grief, and rebuilding after betrayal.

G: thegreglinkowski_md
FB: Greg LinkowskI M.D.
EMAIL: linkowskigreg@gmail.com
http://www.growingwithgreg.com
amazon.com/author/greglinkowskimd

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Welcome And Podcast Mission

SPEAKER_00

Welcome to Happily Even After Betrayal with Life Coach Jen. This podcast is where we talk about betrayal and divorce and what it actually looks like to live through those experiences while still being a parent, a grandparent, a partner, or just a human trying to keep it all together. If your heart feels shattered, your nervous system feels dysregulated, and your future feels unclear, you're in the right place. Here we focus on understanding what happened so you can rebuild your identity, restore your confidence, and find peace so you can create your happily even after one episode at a time. Hey friends, welcome to today's podcast. I'm so glad you're here. I have an exciting guest here. His name is Greg Linkowski. And how I find my guests is the World Wide Web, right? Like I always find random all these people either reach out to me or reach out to them. And I'm excited. He wrote a book called Dare to Thrive: Lessons Learned from a Trauma Survivor. And you know, I am all about understanding our trauma because our trauma kind of is a lens that we view life with. And if we can understand ourselves more, we can have a better life. So, Greg, thank you so much for being here. And if you want to just say a few more things about yourself so my audience can get to know you.

SPEAKER_01

Well, Jen, first and foremost, thank you so much for having me on your show. And and by the way, I love that heaven is cheering you on today, tomorrow, and forever.

SPEAKER_00

Yes.

SPEAKER_01

Uh yeah, I uh I'm really yes.

SPEAKER_00

My my friend bought that for me when my brother passed away 12 years ago. So you and I have that in common, that even though it was my brother, your son, um, but I really I do believe this because I feel like he's there cheering me on.

Honoring David And Family Grief

SPEAKER_01

Absolutely. And and and you know, I I have to say, I really wrote this book primarily to honor the memory of our son David, who had a very medically complicated life. He lived from 1993 until 2002. And we, our whole family, was blessed immeasurably by having him as our son. And in some ways, like he was like God's little ambassador to our family, and he changed our family. I would say mostly for the better. Uh, are there still wounds? Yes.

SPEAKER_00

Yes.

SPEAKER_01

And, you know, but I'll tell you what, if you were to meet our two living kids, you would say, wow, those kids have heart and they're making a positive difference in the world. For that, I am very grateful. And so, yeah, let's let's begin.

SPEAKER_00

Yes. So I'm curious. So you you're saying you're a trauma survivor. So is it the trauma from your son passing away, or is it from your past, or what what brought you into figuring out, okay, I've experienced all this trauma now. What do I want to do? How do how do you believe you survived the trauma?

Childhood Trauma And Wartime PTSD

SPEAKER_01

Uh well, I want to crank the clock back to like 1954, uh, when I was born.

SPEAKER_00

Okay.

SPEAKER_01

I was the second of four children. My dad, bless his soul, and and and actually bless his heart. Yes, he was in the Navy in World War II. He was at D-Day, at Normandy, saw in the Navy, saw so many horrific things, you know, including the water, the water around the boat at times was blood red. And so so dad had all of this trauma from being in World War II, which I suspect most of those precious men and women who fought on all sides, yes, Germans, Japanese, I mean, people were duped, conned, forced into uh into fighting. But anyways, so my dad comes home and goes right to work for the railroad, and I am certain that he had a pretty bad post-traumatic stress disorder, aka P T S C. Yes, which in those days was basically just swept under the rug. Oh, yeah, shell shock. Get over it. Yeah, you know, get to work.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, you we gotta, we don't have time to feel sorry for ourselves. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01

Exactly. And as it turns out, pretty predictably, my dad, like so many other people, wound up resorting to alcohol to numb yes, his feelings and to, you know, basically an attempt to cope.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So people still do that today, unfortunately.

The Gun Incident And Silent Aftermath

SPEAKER_01

Oh, without a doubt. And believe me, I have struggled with alcohol. Uh I've I'm doing, I would say, dramatically better now, but I have I I have overindulged in that in in my past. But but but anyway, so one episode in particular that happened that I actually lead off in my book. Dad's drinking had gotten way worse over a few years, probably when I was around ten or eleven. And one Saturday morning, basically, dad was very intoxicated. It was probably around ten or eleven in the morning. And I know my mom and dad had been verbally fighting, and I do not know what's going on, but I do have I do have some suspicions about what really was going on. But um, but those suspicions will they'll be meaningless as I cross over, you know, and and see them again in heaven. But anyway, so it's a Saturday morning. Dad was very drunk and out of nowhere, brandished his, pulled out a 45 caliber semi-automatic pistol, and basically shot the gun in the house, in the floor of the kitchen, and announced to our family, I'm going upstairs to kill myself. You can imagine, and I even visiting that now, and I've worked, I've been in multiple therapies. I've done a lot of my own work.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Well, we're gonna give 10-year-old Greg a big hug right now.

SPEAKER_01

Thank you, thank you, thank you. He was walking up the stairs to go up to their bedroom, stumbling, and somehow we all just subdued him, we charged him on the stairs, and I was successful in wrestling the loaded 45 caliber out of his right hand. And my next in-line brother, thank you, dearest brother, he hid all my dad's firearms, and my mom called the police, and I know he he went to grandma's house for a couple days to dry out, and anyway, he came back a couple days later, and it was like it never happened. Yeah, yeah, but it did happen, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

We don't talk about stuff like that, right? We just want to sweep it under the rug and pretend I didn't remember, I was drinking, I wouldn't do that, right?

SPEAKER_01

Right, yeah, right, and and so you know, we had all of us, I'm sure, have at least some element of PTSD along with other stuff. And anyway, shortly after I was about probably around 13 or 14, I actually thought I wanted to become a psychiatrist. I I knew in my heart I wanted to become a doctor. I was unsure if I had, you know, the mental uh, you know, I wasn't sure if I had all the all the qualifications, but I I felt like I wanted to become a psychiatrist. And I found out why a number of years later. But anyway, so I got accepted to medical school where I met my current and only wife, who we've put up with each other for 42 years.

SPEAKER_00

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_01

We've lived through just about everything there is to live through, and and there's more to come. I really respect her and and my commitment. While we've we both have our imperfections, neither of us have quit. You know, the past is in the past.

SPEAKER_00

Yes.

Medical Training And A Career Pivot

SPEAKER_01

But but anyway, so so I get into medical school and I had my heart set on becoming a psychiatrist until I rotated through psychiatry in a in a locked uh veterans' hospital, a locked ward uh in sort of upstate New York. And one patient on that ward actually committed suicide successfully while on the locked ward one weekend. And I have to tell you, Jen, when I got there on Monday and I found out, it was like God helped me just turn the switch off. And I said, There's there's no way I can I I would want to become a psychiatrist. And then I found out several years later why, because I was I wanted to heal my family and heal my own wounds, which is really not a good reason to go into psychiatry, along with being very sensitive.

SPEAKER_00

So it was maybe it was a blessing in disguise that you realized like this probably wouldn't have been a good path for you. And so what kind of doctor did you become?

SPEAKER_01

I became a diagnostic radiologist. I mean, very dramatically different in that I I don't have a tremendous amount of patient contact, and unless I'm doing a procedure or uh helping out, you know, in some fashion. Uh, but I usually just see the patient's images, which Jen, for whatever reason, God gave me an amazing ability to be able to look at images and extract the useful information from them. And so I would I got very good at it. And I and I had a really darn good career, but the highlight of my life really is having had our children. That is far and away the the um the pinnacle uh of uh of my life.

Addiction Recovery And Complicated Love

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I love that so much. So before we get off your dad, I what happened to him? Did he ever get clean and sober or did he love that?

SPEAKER_01

Finally, a handful of years later, and I don't remember precisely, probably could have been, I'm just gonna throw this out maybe 10 years later. Um my brother and mom and uh and actually some family members kind of did an intervention, yeah. And had him, he voluntarily went to rehab, and he went to AA often. Uh and and the last, I would say probably the last 20, 25 years of his life, he was a different guy.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, but not the guy that the 10-year-old Greg needed, right?

SPEAKER_01

Oh no, no, I mean yeah, we uh that didn't happen. Yeah, yeah, although we did bond fishing, oh we had that, and I'm forever grateful for dad for the times that we spent together, like either fishing from ashore or on a boat. And so I got to know who was that masked man.

SPEAKER_00

Yes, yes. Well, I love that so much. So you have your son who's handicapped, or he has a seizure disorder, you said, right?

SPEAKER_01

Terrible, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And then how far apart were your other children?

Faith After Loss And Finding Safe Church

SPEAKER_01

Um, well, our our daughter it was was actually uh is actually um oh god, I don't know, three years older, precisely three years older. So we have a healthy daughter who has blessed Lynn and me, and and our whole family with four little children, ages one through nine, who we're we're in love with. Yes, and then we had a son after David, and his name is Sammy. And Sammy was born roughly about four years after David was born, roughly give or take some months. And so Sammy is alive and well, and he's actually a very good performer, uh, lives in the LA area, does musical theater, teaches voice, and uh he's you know, he's he's thriving, he's living his best life.

SPEAKER_00

So were you raised in a faith? Like, because you mentioned that faith really helped get you through your son passing away.

SPEAKER_01

I was raised Roman Catholic, and back in the day when I was an altar boy, which was the 60s, the mass was still in Latin. And so we learned like the responses, the confidor, and all the different things.

SPEAKER_00

I learned the Latin, but didn't learn the English.

SPEAKER_01

Exactly. And so it's you know, it's kind of funny, but not funny, and um, but I can still repeat a good part of the confidier in Latin. But anyway, so I I was uh basically raised a devout Roman Catholic, went through baptism confirmation, and you know, etc. And then probably in college, basically left my faith walk for a while. And then over the years, my wife and I wound up going to different non-denominational Christian churches for which uh we we currently are doing.

SPEAKER_00

Do you think it was helpful? Like, did that help you get through your son passing away, or did that push you away from God? Because a lot of people get angry with God when we have trials, right? So did you find yourself getting angry, or did you find yourself having the desire to be closer to God?

SPEAKER_01

Um, we were after we found out about how severe David's situation was, because we didn't find out till he's about three and a half, four months that there was a problem. And then it's like all of a sudden we were we were um like jumping on a moving freight train, you know, with the with the medical care that he needed. We were desperate for God to heal our son. And you know, God loves desperate people. And so we basically were at a particular church, which was a large non-denaminational church. But as it turns out, David would he would make noises like he uh, you know, during the service. We did not want to keep him in uh you know in the uh nursery, you know, in the in the nursery or be, you know, a babysitting area. So it just so happened that we found out about this little inner city church called the downtown church. And it was more homey, more free-flowing. In fact, the pastor, uh, his name is Doug Lanier, has become my best friend in Fresno. He wrote the foreword to my autobiography. Uh, as I feel he knows us inside out, and he loves us and has walked with us on the entire journey of David's life.

SPEAKER_00

I love that because without for whatever reason, you felt uncomfortable, it sounds like at your big church, and you thought, I need to go somewhere else. I need to find somewhere else that we belong. And you found a lifelong friend and a safer place, right? I think when we're experiencing things that are traumatic, we have to find our safety, we have to feel safe. And you for whatever reason didn't feel safe in that other church, but you found safety in the downtown church, right?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And and so we really we dug in, and I have to say if you if you or anybody in your audience ever want to hear about in blow by blow detail, we went to just about every uh healing evangelist and um you know, healing crusades, uh you name it, we did it. Yeah, and and and we went to all sorts of churches. And you know, I still believe that God is a God who does work miracles. I've seen some miracles in in my life, I haven't seen too many creative miracles, like where you know somebody it goes from like the situation that David had when he was functioning like an infant. I haven't seen that to being totally healthy, yeah. But but God uh God allowed a major miracle to happen with David, in that when David passed on, he is now whole and healthy. And me being 72, I believe I'm in the last quarter, and unless either Jesus comes back or AI discovers immortality. But it doesn't matter. I don't even I don't want to live for that.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, you want to see your son again. And oh, I missed the beautiful thing. I think sometimes we think miracles, we have the idea of how the miracle is supposed to go play out, but really sometimes the miracle is in refining us, in helping connect our relationship with our spouse or with our kids, or we learn or teach someone something, like right, our faith helps other people. So sometimes we think, oh, the miracle has to be healing my son, but really sometimes we need the miracle. Like our son was the conduit for how we found God or grew our faith or whatever. So even though it is hard when our loved ones pass, there can be real beauty in all of it. I mean, it takes a lot of healing to get there, right? Because we're so sad and devastated. But sounds like you have done a lot of healing.

SPEAKER_01

I I I have. And and um, believe me, I thought it was done, it wasn't. And I'm all I can say is I'm a work in progress, but I have discovered some things through my life that have helped me press on and and do, you know, continue to live and live with purpose and meaning.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and I, you know, I think I wish more people in, I guess you're a baby boomer. Are you a baby boomer or no? Uh yeah, born in 54 towards the end. So I just wish that more people in your generation could heal their trauma because their kids are begging them to, right? And their grandkids.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And so I think it's such you're such a great example that no matter your age, healing's always possible. And recognizing trauma and not blaming your dad, you're not, you're just looking at it from the lens to see, okay, no wonder I have carried these hurts and pains. And now you can help other people. I don't I don't know. I I just I like that you have done this.

SPEAKER_01

Absolutely. And and you know, after I retired out 12 years ago as a radiologist, it was perfect timing for me. I had been there, done that. And since then, I actually spent a year as an assistant to the hospital chaplain at the same hospital that I was a radiologist at. And so I've I've done my best to come alongside people, and so so has my wife Lynn. In fact, I can see us in the future at some point possibly helping out in a hospice situation as volunteers, or even at the children's hospital. We have a very nice children's hospital in Fresno County, and you know what we've gone through deserves to be shared.

SPEAKER_00

Yes, and you can help so many people. You can help so many people.

Book Details And How To Reach Greg

SPEAKER_01

Well, I and I will tell you, okay. Yes, if it's okay for you. Yes, yeah, shameless provision. Share your book. Why I wrote my autobiography, Dare to Thrive, Lessons Learned from a Trauma Survivor.

SPEAKER_00

Where do we find your book?

SPEAKER_01

Um, you can find it particularly Amazon, they say is the best place. Barnes and Noble. Okay. There's other uh places as well.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So if someone wants to find you, Greg, tell us some of the links they could find you at.

SPEAKER_01

I I I can give you okay. How about this? My email address is my last name, lowercase Lynn Kaus.

SPEAKER_00

L-I-N-Greg K-O-W-S-K-I Greg G-R-E-G at gmail.com. Perfect. Okay. And Facebook, I'm on just uh yeah, I'll put all your other links in the show notes. So if anyone wants to buy your book or contact Greg, you can and look in the show notes. But um really fast, what do you see as your happily even after the next 25 years? We're gonna say you're gonna live. How old are you gonna be when you die? You're gonna be 100?

SPEAKER_01

Uh, I'm gonna be between 99 and 99 and 100.

SPEAKER_00

So that's like 20, you're 72. So I'm terrible at math. 28 years. So what what's the next 28 years?

SPEAKER_01

Well, I'll tell you what, how about this? Okay, I'm I'm gonna read this.

SPEAKER_00

I want you to read it.

SPEAKER_01

Okay, my dare to thrive reminds us all that while pain is inevitable, it does not define us. And through forgiveness, perseverance, and unwavering faith, we have the power to transform wounds into wisdom. And so, armed with that, I am doing my very best to be a positive influence. Even when I go out like to Costco, you know, and I see somebody like in a in a in a a wheelchair or something along those lines, and they're and they're trying to get something from a shelf. If I'm around, I will be, I will be helping them. My goal is to give the best of me, particularly to my wife. And we both had we both had a few medical challenges, some ongoing. I want to give the best to myself, to my daughter, son-in-law, four grandkids, Sammy, his significant other Kobe, and I want to leave this world with the knowledge that I I really went for unconditional love or as close to it as I could get, and also walking in forgiveness with humor.

SPEAKER_00

With humor. I like I like it and you know, I like the humor.

SPEAKER_01

I like there isn't much else to say.

SPEAKER_00

And what a beautiful tribute to your son, David, right? Like it's beautiful. Well, thank you so much, Greg, for coming on my podcast today. So just remember, if you want to buy his book, it is called Dare to Thrive: Lessons Learned from a Trauma Survivor. You can find that at Amazon or Barnes Noble. Or also, we're gonna put all the links in our show notes so you can contact him. But thank you so much for taking your time out today to be on my podcast and to share your story. I think as we share our stories, we can connect and grow together. So thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01

Thank you so much, Jen.

SPEAKER_00

Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Happily Even After Betrayal. If you want to understand what stage of betrayal you're in, head to my website at lifecoachgen.com. That's Jen with one N and take the free quiz. It's a simple step you can take today toward creating your own happily even after.