#65 - "I Am the Product of Veterans Who Never Got Help"- Breaking Generational Trauma w/Breane Lindvall

What happens when a 9-year-old girl witnesses her mother’s death—and no one talks about it?

This week’s guest, Breane, grew up in rural Montana where silence was survival. After watching her epileptic mother die and being told to “move on,” Brianna buried her pain for years. But trauma has a way of demanding to be felt.

From oil fields in North Dakota to raising three boys in the mountains, anxiety and emotional numbness shadowed every chapter—until she broke the cycle. Today, Brianna is the founder of Montana Grit, a one-of-a-kind program helping female veterans and first responders heal through raw, backcountry experiences. No Instagram therapy fluff—just real women, in the wild, doing the deep inner work no one talks about.

Her mission was born from pain: “I am the product of veterans and first responders who never got help.” Now she’s created the thing she wished existed—off-grid resilience and recovery for those who serve, and too often suffer in silence.

To help support Breane's non-profit visit: 
@Montana_grit_outdoors

Chapters

• 0:00 Montana Roots and Childhood Memories
• 9:32 Family Tragedy and Generational Silence
• 26:27 Adventures in the Oil Field
• 38:01 Life as a Boy Mom
• 1:05:17 Processing Childhood Trauma
• 1:42:46 Montana Grit: Helping Women Veterans and First Responders
• 2:28:44 Creating Community Through Outdoor Connection

Transcript

Speaker 2: 0:00

all right, brie welcome thank you what do you go as brie? What do you go as?

Speaker 3: 0:15

well, my name is brianna brianna sorry I have you my phone, me brie.

Speaker 2: 0:18

Okay, brie is good all right, brianna, it's easy welcome to the show well, thank you you you. You're a Montana girl.

Speaker 3: 0:26

Through and through.

Speaker 2: 0:26

Through and through. Through and through. Outdoors, you're doing some really good things for the law enforcement and veteran community. Now I ran into you at one of the expos and I had a buddy recommend and he said we needed to chat, and so it's been a while. We met back in February. Yep, you met back in February. You made the drive down and let's jump into it. Where the hell are you from?

Speaker 3: 0:52

And let's just go there. Well, I grew up in Phillipsburg, Montana, and 900 people's a population it's been pretty consistent. Okay, yeah, it's like in the middle of nowhere and it's glorious. You know like coming here to Boise and driving through the traffic it's like, wow, I'm in society. Yeah. You're like this is what it's like. But the thing about the traffic here, though, is it's not fast, people aren't super aggressive. No. You know, compared to like New York or something.

Speaker 2: 1:13

But anyway, the East Coast is way different.

Speaker 3: 1:14

So I grew up in Phillipsburg, grew up in a hunting family, okay, and that's kind of where the roots kind of started for me, for the outdoors and everything you know, because that's just what we did. Yeah, you know we'd we'd hike into the pintler mountains. I mean, I was tiny, I was like gosh, maybe six or seven you're tiny.

Speaker 2: 1:35

Now, you were a absolutely little woman. I'm not. Yeah, you walked in. I'm like holy shit, someone's the same size as my wife.

Speaker 3: 1:40

Like you're tiny I mean, so I just I spent so much time outdoors and in the woods and stuff, and um yeah, so that's where I'm from how was childhood growing up?

Speaker 2: 1:52

what was it like growing up in such a little? Are you from this town or where were you from originally? Like that's where, that's where I was, so you've been in this town your whole life, so everybody knows everybody there.

Speaker 3: 2:03

Oh yeah, so all the, all my, all my buddies grow that I grew up with. All our kids go to school together. Oh really, that's cool. It's pretty rad. Okay, yeah, okay.

Speaker 2: 2:13

That's a really cool community I grew up in like a village in upstate New York and, like some of my teachers were my dad's teachers. So they're like, oh, another Marshall, like when we came around, yeah, and then a bunch of my teachers were like in school with my dad and then all of my dad's like basketball and football buddies, all our kids we all had. They all had kids at the same time. So it was, it was the same thing.

Speaker 3: 2:31

Yeah, and we, you know, and it's funny, you say that because the the teachers that taught my parents. Yeah. I had the same teachers in school.

Speaker 2: 2:45

Okay, school okay. So they all kind of knew what to expect a little bit. Yeah, they were like they're like who's your? But I'd get like you know, because my brother and I were pretty mischief kids and they'd be like who's your dad like? Is your dad dl? And I'd be like, yeah, they're like, oh god, I had you, I had your dad in high school and I'd go home, be like dad. Do you remember so? And so he'd be like, oh man, he hated me. I'm like, yeah, thanks, I. I'm already marked Day one. I already got the scarlet letter of freaking being your son.

Speaker 3: 3:07

You know, it's so nice though it really is. Living there, I mean, I would rather know everybody, because no matter what you do or where you live, everybody's going to know everybody in your circle, in the community of people that you integrate yourself into or that you grow up in, whether it's a big city or a small town. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 3:29

It's community of people that you integrate yourself into or that you grow up in, whether it's a big city or a small town. Yeah, it's pretty fun though it's, it's a different feel and and it's something that is incredible I wish I could give it to our kids, like I wish we had the means or the ability to live and get away like that. I mean that's our goal, but it's just such a different way of life. I mean everything is just know everybody. Somebody's always there to, and if you don't, it's a phone call away, you can figure something out, and so are you smack dab in town, or are you even on the outskirts of that.

Speaker 3: 3:50

We're on the outskirts. So, we're 11 miles outside of Phillipsburg. Okay. And we're about a quarter mile off of the highway. But the highway is not very busy and we're tucked right up in the mountains. So people actually like when they, when they try to find our house, they drive on by the driveway. So I have to give very specific directions and if you try to plug it into GPS, you're going to end up on the mountain next to us on a really steep road.

Speaker 3: 4:23

So I have to tell people don't go on the maps to find us, Cause you're going to end up somewhere you don't want to be.

Speaker 2: 4:28

So so hunting wise, I mean growing up with your dad. How was your dad and parents like, as, as a I'm a girl dad, so you know to get your daughters out there. It's I don't want to say challenging, but it's. It's very you have to slow down and relearn and think everything. When you have a little girl strapped in your pack or walking along beside you, it's a great time. What was that like? Growing up hunting with your dad?

Speaker 3: 4:53

Well, so it's funny, I didn't start hunting with my dad until I was in my 30s.

Speaker 2: 5:01

Really yeah. Who'd you hunt with?

Speaker 3: 5:03

So when I was young, didn't I didn't hunt, oh okay, um, I just nobody took me, and so what happened was so we'll back up and I'll explain this so that otherwise, uh, it won't make any sense, because it'll be, so broken up if, if we don't begin where you know, where everything began when I was little.

Speaker 3: 5:22

So, um, we, when my mom and my dad were still together, you know we'd go like we go do the mountain hiking and and tons of camping, like we camped every weekend. We were always outside, like I was that kid that had just hair everywhere and like some weird polka dot skirt on and some bright pink shirt or something like that sticks and grass in your hair oh yeah, I mean, I was a mess, I was dirty all the time, you know that's a kid, though that's how every kid barefoot right around.

Speaker 3: 5:55

I remember that just. You know my uh, my babysitter's dreaded their time with me, but you know it was fine yeah but anyway, um so uh, when my mom and my dad divorced, we moved to another town. Uh, in in butte montana, and how old were you when they divorced?

Speaker 3: 6:15

I was, oh gosh, was I seven, okay, eight, almost eight, okay, yeah. So we moved to butte, and when we were there, unfortunately my mother passed away. Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. Yeah, and so we. We moved to Butte, and when we were there, unfortunately my mother passed away.

Speaker 2: 6:25

Oh, I'm sorry to hear that.

Speaker 3: 6:26

Yeah, and so we moved back to Phillipsburg with my grandmother. We moved in with her. Okay. So we didn't grow up with my dad. My dad and I built our relationship strong because he's my best friend, my hunting buddy, like he's my heart. Okay, and we didn't build a relationship until I was probably 28 or so, when I had my first son, because he he wasn't, he struggled with alcohol so your mom passes of?

Speaker 2: 6:59

what, if you don't want me asking?

Speaker 3: 7:00

she had epilepsy. Oh yeah, so that.

Speaker 2: 7:03

So then she moves back with his mom, or is that your mom's mom, your grandmother?

Speaker 3: 7:08

my mom's mom, and so he's battling alcohol and I moved us kids moved in with my mom's mom.

Speaker 2: 7:15

So you, your grandmother, raised you? Was your dad in and out of the picture at all growing up, or was he here's grandma?

Speaker 3: 7:20

he's out yeah it, you know, and I think with him. I think it was just so hurtful for him. You know, when my mom died and stuff, and just what he was battling himself, it was just like it was just too much.

Speaker 2: 7:36

Was he battling alcohol addiction prior to your mom passing, or did that lead on to him picking that up? Do you know that?

Speaker 3: 7:43

It was, it was prior. Okay, yeah, so we kind of went through some some pretty good ups and downs, but, um, you know, and my grandmother, my mother's wishes were cause she always knew that she would not live long. Okay.

Speaker 3: 7:58

My mom did, and my grandmother promised her that she would take us kids if anything ever happened to her, and so my grandma made sure that she could take us, and she was so worried about my dad trying to fight for us that she put a restraining order on him and he couldn't even go to my mom's funeral, which was really sad. I think, yeah, that's kind of fucked up, you know. So like just that hurt for him and stuff and where that began, I think it just really discouraged things.

Speaker 2: 8:28

And was he? And I'm just asking right, you don't have to answer this, but like, was he? What made her do that? Was he abusive to you all, or was she just? Was that just like a knee jerk reaction that she was scared, that she's just trying to help her daughter's wishes, you know, live on. So was that that, or was there an actual reason to put a restraining order on your father?

Speaker 3: 8:48

so he was definitely not abusive, okay, um, she was just I think it was fear okay on my grandmother's part.

Speaker 2: 8:59

So um your grandmother put a restraining order on your father, so he's pretty hurt then.

Speaker 3: 9:05

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 9:11

Did he ever try to have?

Speaker 3: 9:12

a connection or relationship with you throughout the years of being raised by your grandmother.

Speaker 2: 9:15

No, so it's just your grandma.

Speaker 3: 9:17

Yes. Okay. Yeah, it was just her. I think he was just like, like I said, he just he had a. Really he has a hard time like facing that kind of stuff. Does he?

Speaker 3: 9:28

Yeah, so it's easier for him to just disappear. Okay, you know it's not that he wanted to, he just he didn't know how to deal with any of it, you know. And then also, he's not my biological father, which makes it even harder, because when her, him, and my dad, my mom, were together and cause they've been they were together since high school. Got it. In Phillipsburg Okay. And um. She got pregnant with my sister at 17.

Speaker 2: 9:56

With your dad.

Speaker 3: 9:57

Yeah, daddy-o, we're going to call him daddy-o. Okay, my daddy-o, because he's dad.

Speaker 2: 10:04

No, if Okay, my daddy-o, because he's dad. No, if he's raised you, well, okay, daddy-o, daddy-o, we'll call him dad.

Speaker 3: 10:10

We'll call him dad, Anyway. So him and my mom were together since high school and she got pregnant with my sister her senior year.

Speaker 2: 10:18

But with daddy-o.

Speaker 3: 10:20

Yeah, okay, yeah, daddy-o, okay, daddy-o and Dad are the same people and so it's so hard because it gets so confusing, but anyways, so he worked construction and traveled. Okay. And for his job sometimes, and she would just go with him. I mean, they were just in love like crazy, and it was an unhealthy relationship though between them, because she was sick, he struggled, you know drinking too much, but she also would drink and I don't know they both were the same in that choices area.

Speaker 3: 10:54

And so when she was about 19, she moved with my dad to Mesa, arizona, for a short time because he had a job over there, okay, and they moved into an apartment complex and there was a lady that lived next door that I think they kind of made friends with and anyway he was off working a lot. My sister at this point is a baby, right.

Speaker 3: 11:24

She's like a year and a half, two years old or so your mom got pregnant early, yeah, at 17 yeah, um, and she dropped out her senior year because of it, which is silly, but people do things, do silly things, yeah, but anyway, so the neighbor gal had a brother and my dad was gone a lot working and you know whatever, and I think she just was really lonely and maybe scared, and so she built a relationship with the neighbor's brother okay robert is his name, and so then they moved back to montana. Shortly after that, well, she came back to Montana. Shortly after that, well, she came back to Montana, pregnant with me.

Speaker 2: 12:09

Got it.

Speaker 3: 12:09

After her time with Robert. Okay. And so I don't know what happened in between there. I think you know her and my dad broke up a lot. Okay. And, but his name is on my birth certificate Roberts, daddy-o, daddy-o. Okay, and, but his name is on my birth certificate.

Speaker 2: 12:27

Roberts.

Speaker 3: 12:28

Daddy-O.

Speaker 2: 12:29

Daddy-O Okay.

Speaker 3: 12:30

My dad Daddy-O.

Speaker 2: 12:32

Got it.

Speaker 3: 12:33

Yeah, daddy-o might make it easier.

Speaker 2: 12:35

Got it.

Speaker 3: 12:36

Yeah, because that's actually what I call him too. Okay. I never call him dad, I'm like Daddy-O, you know, okay. But anyway, you know his name is on my birth certificate and so growing up, when I was really young, I mean I didn't know he wasn't my dad, and he also had has like red skin, like Native American, you know, and so our skin tones are similar. But it's very, very clear that we are not related.

Speaker 2: 13:08

Okay, you know. Okay, you got a little bit darker complexion. Yeah, okay, and what's your mom?

Speaker 3: 13:15

She is very, very fair skinned. Okay, yeah. Okay, very light skin. All right. European. So anyway, yeah, so she comes back to montana. I'm born and at this time my uncle, john, daddy o's brother, yep, was living with them and he was like 15 or 16 years old or something and he was. He was there when I was born. He was the only one that was there with her.

Speaker 3: 13:42

Uh, because daddy o was working in nebraska got it at the time and I think they were split up and there was a thing okay, because you know she was unfaithful, um, but she, you know, in her defense, choices on both their ends, right, it's just, it's people, it's human where we're at now here, things, whatever. Um yeah, so. So that's kind of how I came about and I nobody, nobody told me.

Speaker 2: 14:10

Nobody told me anything about the fact that I was different no questions, nothing ever got brought up through your childhood or through grandma anything no, okay, nobody said a word. Okay.

Speaker 3: 14:23

Everything was like silence. Everything you know. And that's generational though, Gosh, you know I was a teenager when questions really start popping up because of my best friend, Hannah.

Speaker 2: 14:43

Okay, she's like, your dad doesn't look like you. Yeah, she's like what is Okay? She's like yeah, your dad doesn't look like you. Yeah, she's like what is it?

Speaker 3: 14:48

She's like oh my gosh, we have to figure this out, you know. She's like we need to go on the Maury show and shit, and.

Speaker 3: 14:53

I'm like, no, I'm not doing that. But she's like oh, come on, you know. But anyway, yeah, like my friends started to question and wonder and I never did. I just was just like rolling through life, like whatever, I'm brown, who cares? Yeah, you know, don't know what I am, you know I'd go to, I could go to the Indian Reservation, right, and people would legit think I was native. I went to Hawaii one time and I was in line like at a buffet trying to get some food and I had I was wearing black, like a black shirt, and I had somebody come up and ask me to help their table because they thought I was working there. You know, people thought I was like native to Hawaii.

Speaker 3: 15:36

I'm like okay, all right well this is good, because then I'll get treated better by the locals. You know, um, but man, it just did bad have. So I used to work in the. There's this big, famous candy store in Phillipsburg. It's like amazing. And I started working there when I was like 15 years old and people would come in there and they would start speaking Spanish to me and I'm like I don't know Spanish, you know, because they would. They thought I was Spanish. Yeah, I don't know Spanish, you know because they would.

Speaker 2: 16:05

They thought I was Spanish. Yeah, yeah, you know so you get to play all sides. Yeah, I mean, you got like the perfect skin complexion. So yeah, you could, you couldn't.

Speaker 3: 16:10

Yeah and I, you know, I was a bartender for a long time and I'd have people come into my bar and they would say I have been all over the world and I cannot figure out what you are. I'm like well, when you figure it out let me know, and people would be like you're so full of shit. I'm like no, I really have no idea.

Speaker 3: 16:30

They're like yeah but where are you from? I'm like I'm from Billingsford. I'm from Montana, yeah, but where are you from? I'm like I'm from Montana, motherfucker, like, stop asking me that. So, yeah, me that, so, yeah. So that's the story of, like you know, um the beginning, the beginning of of my childhood, and how things kind of rolled into where I am now you know, and just like the confusion and and the you know, not knowing where I came from, but, like I, I was just numb to all of that.

Speaker 3: 17:04

You know, I was just until until I was like I probably gosh. It's probably my late twenties when I really started to think about it.

Speaker 2: 17:17

Really yeah. What triggered you to start like, okay, something's off?

Speaker 3: 17:21

Because I was looking at my baby and going, hmm, what am I gonna tell you? You know what I mean? Because he's, because my, my oldest boy and my middle boy are are dark like I am okay, what's your husband? So he's like this, tall, like dark and handsome. Know he's got the tan all the time, but he's not dark like I am. Okay.

Speaker 3: 17:47

You know, and he's got dark beard, dark hair, you know he's 6'4". So I mean, when our third child came out, he's just light skin, you know, lighter than my husband, and everything, everything, and the blonde hair and the blue eyes. It was just kind of like okay we gotta figure some shit out, yeah but doug's mom, my husband's mom, you know she's got that uh eye color and everything on her side of the family.

Speaker 2: 18:19

So yeah, so when you decided to start digging, where did you start?

Speaker 3: 18:24

well, okay, so that part of it, that piece gosh, that was shit you not like two years ago really like digging like as far as like who I?

Speaker 2: 18:34

am okay, yeah before we get there, by this point, your daddy-o is back in the picture, right? You're in your 20s, does he? If you got, are you guys starting to build a relationship? Do you guys have an open line of communication, or is he still gone out of the picture at this point?

Speaker 3: 18:57

So at that point he was coming around a lot. We were talking on the phone a lot and stuff and building the relationship coming around a lot. We were talking on the phone a lot and stuff and building the relationship. Um, actually before that, probably a couple years before that, we actually started to really connect again when I was working in the oil field in north dakota how did you? We'll shift hold on I know there's so much you are such a tiny little thing.

Speaker 2: 19:28

How did you end up in the? What were you doing in the oil field one and how did you end up in the oil? I just look at I'm not trying to judge your profile, but you do not look like anybody that I would ever picture working in the oil field. I know um don't tell me you're some roughneck or some shit like throwing change.

Speaker 3: 19:42

No, I'm not, I'm not Okay. All right, you got to be really strong.

Speaker 2: 19:48

I never know. I don't put her past anybody.

Speaker 3: 19:50

Do something like that.

Speaker 2: 19:51

Okay. So how'd you end up in the oil field and what were you doing?

Speaker 3: 19:54

Well, okay. So I was in this like really horrible relationship and it didn't last long and I'm like, okay, okay, my grandma died blah, blah.

Speaker 3: 20:08

I decided I'm getting the hell out of Montana. I'm like I don't have any. My grandma's gone, I don't have any ties here. I'm not sticking around to figure out what happens in this relationship. I'm out, you know, and I called up a friend of mine who was already over there and she's like, yeah, come. I'm like, hey, if I come over there. I was like, do you have a couch for me for like a couple days, you know, to figure this out. She's like, yeah, just come over, there's lots of opportunity.

Speaker 3: 20:32

I'm like all right, because before this, okay, this is, this is what sparked the oil field, though, okay, this is where the root began all right when I was um gosh, I was about 24 years old I moved to missoula, montana and I moved into this giant mansion house with like six other dudes, seven other dudes, and two of them were my brothers. Uh, the other guys, they grew up in the little town down the road from me, you know, so our parents knew each other and it was, you know a thing, and these guys were all roughnecks, even my brothers at the time.

Speaker 3: 21:06

And they were on a two week on, two week off schedule, so some of them would leave and then they would come home after two weeks and then the other group would go. Got it.

Speaker 3: 21:15

You know. And so it was just a revolving door of just you can't imagine. This house was huge, every room had a bathroom in it. Like it house was huge, every room had a bathroom in it. Like it was insane. There was the garage. Like you could drive it, and the garage like went underground so you could drive into the garage and then drive down if you had a tiny car, and then it it would like curve and then you could drive out the other side. Really it was wild, yeah. And there was like this big fountain of uh, I don't remember which, um, I don't know if she was like a playboy star or porn star or something, but she's holding the flower out to. Anyway, it was a whole thing. Um, because the guy that built the house was like obsessed with this, like porn star chick and I don't. I don't remember which one it was that's a little weird, I know yeah yeah and um, anyway, so and anyway.

Speaker 3: 22:03

so these guys were just making like pockets full of cash and I'm like man, that must be really hard to do over there, you know, because my mind at that time I'm like gosh, I would never go do that. And then I started thinking about it, you know, after a couple years passed and it just kind of the seed got planted right and uh. So before I moved out of this house I went to a local bar and had a drink with a friend of mine and it's so funny, this is how I met my husband in walks doug your husband yes, before we had ever known each other.

Speaker 3: 22:44

And I'm like, okay, we can say I have one more, you know anyway. So I approached him and, um, because I'm very bold, like that, you know, and he thought I just wanted to be bros because I bummed a copenhagen from him and bought him a shot of jameson dip. Oh, my god not anymore, mostly and not you are from montana yeah, it's not good. I don't, I'm sorry when I was like 16, yeah, anyway, yeah we met a couple women in my life that have dipped.

Speaker 2: 23:17

I've been fascinated by every one of them. This is the wildest thing. I remember the first time I ever saw a chick dip. I was in high school at a freaking um, uh, what is the the not bumper cars with the demolition derby and I watched a chick put the biggest upper decker in and I was like that's the worst place to put it.

Speaker 2: 23:37

Oh my gosh it matter where she put it. It was this teenage girl my age putting one in. I was blown away. And it was Copenhagen too. Please tell me you didn't dip Copenhagen.

Speaker 3: 23:48

It's Copenhagen. Long cut, oh my goodness, all day long you are hard.

Speaker 2: 23:51

Okay, you're a special breed. Does your husband dip? Yeah, would you guys used to share dips together?

Speaker 3: 23:57

Yeah, I usually just take his.

Speaker 2: 24:00

That's hard, okay. So you meet your husband in a car.

Speaker 3: 24:03

Okay, so he wanted to be. Yeah, and he thought he just thought I wanted to be his bro or something you know, and I'm like totally not, I'm totally hitting on him you know, yeah, yeah, yeah. And anyway. So he told me he was working in the oil field and so I started asking about questions about it and everything. And he's in his mind thinking like this girl's not going to go to the oil field.

Speaker 3: 24:25

Yeah, you know, and sure as shit, I end up over there you know, because I yeah, because I wanted to, kind of I wanted to get out of that you know lifestyle that I was in just partying too much and having too much fun. Like I knew I had a purpose and I didn't know what it was. But I needed to go do something, you know, because I mean I would work job to job. I was never insecure about getting a job. Got it Every time I ever applied for a job.

Speaker 3: 24:51

I went into that believing I would get it, and every time I did, yeah, and so just living the lifestyle that I did in Montana, driving to North Dakota and getting a job there was not. It seemed normal to me, you know, to try to do something like that because I used to work in the at, uh, in bonner montana, at the chip yard. So, um, it's, they bring in, like the lot, you know, tons of different logs, okay oh, they're just making mulch and stuff like that type of chip, so uh, paper towels oh, yeah, so they, they, they would put the logs through the chipper.

Speaker 2: 25:26

Got it.

Speaker 3: 25:27

And it would feed into like rail cars, and then they'd ship it to Washington to make paper towels out of them.

Speaker 3: 25:34

Yeah, so I worked there and I learned how to run a loader and it was terrifying and I would load hog fuel trucks because that's kind of where the like, the mulch or whatever would come in is the hog fuel you know, like the, and what that is is when you, when you feed the logs through the chipper, all the bark and the, the crap that is on the outside of it gets spit out okay you know, and then that's where I would come in, and I didn't do this very much, but this is where they taught me to scoop up the wood chips and load them into the Hogfield trucks. Got it.

Speaker 3: 26:12

And they were so good to me. Like even the truck drivers are like you got it, but you just be patient. You know it's so funny when you get a girl on site like that, like they're just like making sure that you're going to be okay. It was so nice.

Speaker 2: 26:23

I've had other guests on. Rachel was one of them. She's a truck driver and she's a stud when it comes to, like you know, low boys and big.

Speaker 3: 26:33

Being a badass.

Speaker 2: 26:34

And she talks about being on the lot she works over on the coast on a bunch of logging companies, and how cool all the old timers, they all help her and like wait for her, and so, yeah, yeah, it cool all the old timers.

Speaker 3: 26:48

They all help her and like wait for her, and so, yeah, yeah, it's nice, it's good to hear that. You know they're not just a bunch of pricks like hurry up, we got a chick on here, so, yep, okay, bar husband, yeah, but so that's why that job right there is kind of what conditioned me okay for the oil field got it like as far as like doing hard work was normal.

Speaker 3: 27:01

I did a lot more than you know. I didn't. I didn't load, load those hogfield trucks very often. I ran the scale shack and the rail car mover and all that. That's the whole thing. Um, so anyway, going to north dakota, I you know I knew how to bartend and stuff, and so I'm like I know that I can do that. First, like get a serving job, you or whatever. So my friend helped me get a place to live, you know, within a few days, like a couple weeks, and I had a job within like three days and so I just picked up a waitressing job. And then I actually helped take care of some horses and stuff, because I grew up riding horses with my uncle. I had horses for about 10 years, horses of my own, and so at that time when I left the bad relationship, we had horses. I had horses in that bad relationship. Okay.

Speaker 3: 27:53

So when I was working at that restaurant I also got a connection to take care of these horses for these people, and so that was really cool. But eventually I got a connection to get a job on the frack and I wasn't fracking because I'm still not that cool and strong and badass okay I wasn't actually fracking, but it was. It was for a safety company and I was working outside okay you know. So when it was below zero, I I mean, we were outside.

Speaker 2: 28:23

You're in North Dakota, so when it's below zero, it's well below zero.

Speaker 3: 28:27

Yeah, my first week on that job, like nobody warned me because you had to have steel toe boots and all that stuff, right, and I didn't know what composite boots were. I'm like I don't know. I never worked this freaking job before. Like I'm just going to get my gear and like got my boots that found one pair that fit me out of the entire state of north dakota that's an exaggeration, but you know what I mean yeah I mean it's a.

Speaker 2: 28:50

I'm a six and a half in women's boots like you know, you're trying to find safety boots and I'm trying to find a work boot with steel toes, you know.

Speaker 3: 28:58

So, anyway, I'm on location and that first week and I ended up getting frostbite and on my left foot and man, it was cold, it was probably I don't know like 20 below you know with windshield or without windshield, because that changes everything I don't know, probably a mix of both yeah, off and on, I don't really remember.

Speaker 3: 29:21

but, um, I was still outside, you you know, and sometimes the heater would. We had this little like shed thing that we'd go in and the heater would quit working in there, so we would sit in the vehicles and stuff. But so what I did on location, working for the safety company, is when the log trucks and the sand trucks would come in, I had to draw out the yard map and make sure that the log trucks, or the log trucks, the water, did I say?

Speaker 2: 29:48

You said log.

Speaker 3: 29:49

Did I in the first place? Okay, hold on.

Speaker 2: 29:52

That's why I was like North Carolina Sand trucks.

Speaker 3: 29:54

I know.

Speaker 2: 29:56

Sand and water.

Speaker 3: 29:57

Sand trucks, water trucks Got it Okay. So when the sand trucks and the water trucks would come into location, I had to make sure that the water trucks were going this way, the sand trucks were going this way to the sand castles to dump the sand and then to dump the water. And also, working for the safety company, I had to make sure they had their FRs on and all the PPE stuff. I was like the enemy oh yeah, yeah, for sure for sure, but I was definitely not perceived that way okay, why is that?

Speaker 3: 30:31

because I was the only female on location. Really, there's like 200 dudes in and out of there every day and like I was the only chick, got it and so these guys would bring me, like chinese food and coffee. My coffees were just stacking up, but I didn't have the heart to be like I already have a coffee. I just wanted to make their day.

Speaker 2: 30:52

Was it all good? Did you run into any assholes out there, or was it generally pretty good?

Speaker 3: 30:57

I had one problem.

Speaker 2: 30:59

What's that One?

Speaker 3: 30:59

time. Some guy was just being arrogant. He was just being arrogant.

Speaker 3: 31:06

He was just being just rude big shot. And this was the thing about it. Out there is the company hands. They let me know. Hey, if you got a problem, you let us know. And this guy was being a turd and I just I said something quick because I didn't want to deal with that every day, was being a turd and I just I said something quick because I didn't want to deal with that every day, you know. So I went in and I just let him know, like hey, this guy's kind of kind of being rude, you know, and talking some shit to me and uh, that was the last time he ever did it okay you know.

Speaker 3: 31:39

So they always had my back. Like the company hands were really great, um, but yeah, that was a really hard job. When, like just being outside, I remember it was like it got to zero degrees and there was no wind and I'm just like taking off layers, I'm like, yeah, this is nice. And I come back home to Montana and it's like 25 degrees out, you know in the wintertime, I'm like, oh, this is good, this is nice. And everybody's just like freezing, shivering, you know in the wintertime.

Speaker 2: 32:08

I'm like, oh, this is good, this is nice and everybody's just like freezing, shivering, you know. And I'm like, yeah, people don't understand that when you get climatized to miserably frigid temperatures, like when it and the reason I say this because I had a buddy of mine. He was from Florida and I took him back home to upstate New York, where I'm from, and it was like the first four days it was like negative 15. I mean, wind chill was miserable and he was just like how do you people live like this? He's like there's, he's never experiencing like that in his life.

Speaker 2: 32:32

I was like just wait till the end of the week, it's gonna get like 30 degrees, and he's like 30 degrees. He's like, and then when it hit 30 degrees, he's like this is so nice outside. I'm like see, like you actually get used to how miserable it is to when you hit zero or anything above it. Like you know, we used to do it all the time, Ice fishing in the wintertime. You'd be out there and it would just be gale force winds, miserable, and then it would be 20 degrees and you're out there in like a hoodie playing hockey on the ice and you don't think of that if you've never experienced it.

Speaker 3: 33:12

Like, even though it's 20 degrees degrees it actually feels incredible after dealing with just frigid temps for several days on it.

Speaker 3: 33:15

It's miserable. Yeah, that um, that will thicken your skin out there, sure, like I. You know it was dangerous out there. I mean being a, a female out there was. You know it was, it was pretty. I never had any um any real issues, though, because I just, even when I would bartend, you know, or wait tables, cause I would still like, after my hitch was over on the frack, cause I was a two week on, two week off schedule, I would, if I wasn't coming home to Montana, I would pick up shifts just to make some extra cash and I was just addicted to working over there basically and making money and I mean I built a really great follow like cause.

Speaker 3: 33:53

Just the good old boys you know in Montana, the people I grew up around I could I could pick them out of any crowd, you know, I was able to connect with people like that and they would always have my back.

Speaker 3: 34:05

Like I get you know, Bree, where are you working at? Where are you working at today, Like, what bar are you working at? You know, and I'd let them know, and then I just get a whole group of they'd bring their whole crew in, you know, and they'd all sit in my section and I was always.

Speaker 3: 34:17

I always had a full, you know, and so if I ever had an issue like, I could just call one of these guys you know, or let them know, go to their table, be like, hey, this dude over here at table right there like just don't leave until I leave, you know and they would stay you know and make sure I was okay.

Speaker 2: 34:33

So after the oil field, how did you transition out of that and into what?

Speaker 3: 34:38

Well, so my husband and I Doug my husband Doug was still working over there and he saw that I was over there, like on Facebook or something, and this is probably three years after we met. Okay.

Speaker 3: 34:57

Where I bought him a shot and all of that and he thought we were just going to be bros. Yeah, and I met Doug over there. We went on our first date and all of that. Because he saw that I was over there, he hit me up, asked me out. The rest is history. I ended up getting pregnant. How soon? Like two months. Okay.

Speaker 3: 35:21

And I'm like I'm not raising a baby over here, yeah, hell no. Like there was no way, and I had a house in montana okay you know. So I'm like I I just can't, and so, um anyway. So I went back home and he picked up a job on the rigs to where he had the two week on, two week off schedule, because originally he was pipelining and that was like a six, seven day a week situation oh yeah and um, that, just that wasn't gonna work, you know, for having a baby and everything and wanting to to have a good life, and so, uh, yeah.

Speaker 3: 35:58

so he ended up coming back to Montana on his two weeks off and just you, you know, just so, living there with me and everything and transitioning back into normal life again was really scary, because I remember going back on my days off all the time and just like going, gosh, I'll never live here again.

Speaker 2: 36:20

You know that's In Montana or in North Dakota.

Speaker 3: 36:22

In Montana At the time, like when I was working all the time in north dakota. I'm like gosh I couldn't ever live here again, and how do people make? It here yeah because there was so much opportunity in north dakota during the oil boom. Yep and sure shit there. There I was, you know, back home again, and it was the best decision I ever made for sure yeah so yeah.

Speaker 3: 36:40

So I jumped back into that. I started cleaning houses. I had my own business doing that and then I started managing a restaurant after my second son. And then I got pregnant with my third boy and I was actually looking into go to school for working horses and stuff. And so then I got pregnant with my third son and of course that dream just went down the drain. But God had another plan for me, so I'm grateful for the path I'm on now.

Speaker 2: 37:14

Absolutely. You know, yeah, kids will do that for sure. You have all the plans and everything and then find out you're having a third. What's the age gap on all your boys?

Speaker 3: 37:26

Five, seven, seven and nine or ten my seven year old is gonna be eight in august what's it like being a boy mom oh man, hmm, well, it's it is. It's so much fun and at the same time it's like so much because my boys are like, they're free spirits, like, and they're strong and they're hardworking and their minds like they would have already, like, opened that box and tried to figure out what's in it.

Speaker 2: 38:01

For sure.

Speaker 3: 38:01

You know, and like probably broke whatever was in there or took it apart, or you know like it's very humbling and it's, you know, I don't want to say it's easy, but it's nice because they watch their dad and they watch me, you know, with the firewood and the hunting, because we're 100% wood heat Okay, and they automatically do what we do. Right, that's what kids do. They do what they see. They don't really do what you say, you know. And so they choose that you know. They choose to work and they're just expected to, even if they don't want to and they complain, they know they're expected to do it, you know. So it makes it easier in that way to like kick about the door to go stack firewood, or they jump on the four-wheeler. Or you know, my oldest boy just mowed a bunch of lawns to save up to buy a dirt bike and he's, you know, he's 10, yeah he just wants, you know, he wants the dirt bike.

Speaker 3: 38:59

So bad, you know. So it's a little bit stressful, though, because it's like, okay, what's uh, what's going to happen with this dirt bike? Like what? That's a whole other chapter, you know when they're off on the four-wheeler, I'm like, are they jumping the four-wheeler right now? Like what's actually happening when I'm not looking?

Speaker 2: 39:20

Boys. What's the favorite? What's your favorite part about being a boy? Mom?

Speaker 3: 39:28

They cuddle.

Speaker 2: 39:29

Really.

Speaker 3: 39:30

And they love their mama, they love on me like it's nobody's business. They got my back, yeah, and they got my heart. So that's my favorite part, because that part right there will never change about them. No yeah.

Speaker 2: 39:47

That's awesome. See, I got the daddy's girls. Well, not so much her, but that's why I ask, because I don't. You know, I have all my buddies I think we talked about this. They're like all of my close friends, all daughters, every one of them, every one of them, every one of them. I have a buddy in texas right now that's just having another girl and he's the last, like all his brothers all have daughters. She's like I gotta keep trying to have a son to carry on the family name, but it's. I see some people with sons and you know, I do have a couple buddies and they, uh, they're, they're definitely mama's boys and it. And it's funny to me because I thought when we were having our youngest, all of my buddies were like dude, you're having a son, it's going to be a little bam, dude's going to be the baddest fucking kid on the planet, and so it's like yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 40:39

And my wife the whole time is like you're having daughters.

Speaker 3: 40:42

You're a dirtbag.

Speaker 2: 40:44

You're a Marinebag. You're a marine like you and all your friends are all all you and she called it from day one I was gonna go down. I was like nah, like no, there's no way, like I'm yeah no, I'm 100 having a son. And then we find out we're having another girl and I was devastated because I didn't know, I didn't even want a second kid, I was cool with her. I was yeah, one and done cool.

Speaker 3: 41:03

Cool, this is easy, we can do this. Yeah, I'll write this out.

Speaker 2: 41:06

And then you know, we find out we're having a second kid and I was like fuck, like already like you know, I'm have an awesome career going.

Speaker 2: 41:14

I'm like I'm just going to screw everything up, yeah, and this sucks Like I do not want. I did not ask for any of this, and when she came out, man and she cause my wife had C-sections and she can't give birth naturally and so I got to spend that first quality time while she was in recovery and I don't know if that helped the bond, but it. It's been inseparable ever since, and to have like daughters that are so can, like, so close to a father, I love it. So that's why it's I love asking moms like to have sons, like what it's like, because some of them are like, oh my god, I stink, I can't get them away from me.

Speaker 3: 41:58

It's like change your underwear and they're like I did I'm let me see what they look like, because I know what they looked like.

Speaker 2: 42:07

You had your little GI Joe underwear on for a week now.

Speaker 3: 42:10

Yeah, dude, like I have to make them do it. I'm like let me see what they look like and they're like I'm like, get in there and change their fucking underwear, like what is wrong with you.

Speaker 2: 42:23

Did you ever think in a million years you'd be yelling at kids to go change their underwear? No, Hilarious.

Speaker 3: 42:29

What the hell man Gross you know, but they don't get it.

Speaker 2: 42:33

What's the struggle, what's the toughest part? I mean, your husband works. He's in and out of town, right, what I've picked up on, I mean is he home every night?

Speaker 3: 42:41

He's home every night.

Speaker 2: 42:42

Okay, so that's good. So they have that in the house. So for you juggling, especially summertime, right now, I mean they're in your shit 24-7. 24-7.

Speaker 3: 42:56

What's the toughest part about having three boys all within that age range? That there's three and not four or two, because it's like you have to have three of the same of everything and everybody needs to have the thing, but when the other one doesn't get it, it's like a thing it's a fight.

Speaker 3: 43:09

Or if the oldest one gets to go do something the other two can't, and it's just like it's a thing. It's like so heartbreaking sometimes, but at the same time I'm like you know what this is life Like, this is what's gonna happen anyway. So the toughest part is honestly just trying to to keep everything equal amongst them and to keep the strife out in the fighting like the fighting, so I brought the hammer down on them the other day, though, oh, man oh so, oh, I took away their camping trip.

Speaker 3: 43:42

That was the first step okay, it went past that well, it had to keep going. But it was just little things, right like took the tv away. Um gosh, what else? Just just little, little stupid things that just like is so heartbreaking for them. It's like, oh, we're gonna be bored. I'm like you're on 20 acres go outside, figure it out. Which they do anyway. I give them free reign on the TV. It is monitored, though, of what they are seeing, because I know they're going to get bored, Because that's how my boys are.

Speaker 3: 44:14

That's their free reign. As long as the chores are done, everything's done and they earn the TV.

Speaker 2: 44:21

Got it.

Speaker 3: 44:21

That's not just like a thing. As long as they get their shit done right, they end up going outside, running around building the fort, getting on the four-wheeler, playing in the fire pit, playing in the mud puddle, yeah you know whatever. So, um, but yeah, they were like at ease, soldier, like get it together. Like the whole drive to drop them off to my mother-in-law before coming here. Silence in the car.

Speaker 2: 44:47

I was like damn, this is great.

Speaker 3: 44:48

I was like, wow, all right, let's just keep doing this. Like went into the grocery store the other day, jumped out and they just followed me in. I didn't even stress about it. I was like, whoa, more camping trips need to be in the future that I can take away. If I have to like that leverage, like the dirt bike, the four-wheeler, bring it on.

Speaker 2: 45:10

Like that's got to be really nice having kids that aren't glued to an electronic, because when I feel that if you have any boys or girls that are, uh, they love something that is so passionate about being out like you know, my brother and I we were. My mom never even saw us. We would we'd get out of school on a friday, all of our buddies. We'd have everything lined up for the whole weekend planned out pack our food. My mom would help us pack and she would drop us off down at the dock. We'd get in a boat and we were gone until sunday late afternoon, like that was it, that's that's, but if we ever did anything to screw up and they pulled that from us.

Speaker 2: 45:44

It was, it was the end of the world. I mean, you might as well have lost everything, yes, and so. Yeah, it's probably nice to be able to leverage like four wheeler. Go give me the key, you're done. You know, camping out, nope. Like so nice to be able to utilize that as, yeah, because they don't have phones, they don't have tablets, they don't have video games good, I don't allow it in my house, good. So. So, as boys, how important is it for them to watch their father? Like? What role do you see them watching him and being able to want to copy or be like him? Are you noticing that? Yet? How like, how important is that as a father's role in their life at this age? It?

Speaker 3: 46:28

is. It is the most important thing, because they're boys, right, and usually you know, like I mentioned earlier, like they're gonna follow your footsteps like as the parents, they're gonna follow our footsteps right. Well, doug being the man they can relate because they're boys, so for them to watch him. Like he's come home and like started to fall asleep with the fork in his hand at dinner okay my husband like he he 150% into everything he does.

Speaker 2: 47:07

So, as a wife and watching that do you is that kind of a proud moment for you, Cause you see how hard your husband is working and being able to show your sons like what a role model is and how hard it is that they should look forward to working, I mean, do you, do you notice that? And okay.

Speaker 3: 47:24

Yeah, so they'll, they'll take initiative. And okay, yeah, so they'll, they'll take initiative and they, you know they'll work. But on the other side of that, though, the love and the affection that my husband gives them creates that balance. Okay, you know, to showing them like the soft side of him and not just like that hard ass like cause Doug's like this you know, I'm gonna imitate him the best I can, but he's like six four. He's big from working, not working out right, and he talks like this you know my name's Doug and I talk like this go clean your this. You know my name's Doug and I talk like this go clean your room you know like type of shit you know.

Speaker 3: 48:10

So like he is 100% like Montana, born and bred, like your perfect example of, like a Montana man that works hard and loves his family, you know, and so he, you know he provides that for them. So it's it's so important for them to have both, both of those things out of him, because they will imitate that, you know, and so generationally, as time goes on, they're going to pass that down to their kids and they're going to always be okay because they're always going to work. You know they're going to make money, like my 10 year old he tells me when he has to go do the job he's 10.

Speaker 3: 48:53

You know, he's like oh, mom, I got to go to so-and-so's, or mom, I got it. What day is it? He's like two days. I got to go do this. Mom, tomorrow I have to go, you know so-and-so Like he reminds me and he keeps track of the time, he makes sure you know so.

Speaker 2: 49:14

I like that you brought up that he shows the affectionate side, because I feel most, not most. I feel like there's some dads that I watch and they're so got to be this, got to chase this, we're men, we're men, we're men, we're men, which is a very important part of a young boy's life. But I feel a lot of fathers leave out the emotional part of raising sons because as they get older they don't know how to control those emotions. They don't know how to control those emotions. They don't know how to be emotional toward a woman. And I look at things completely different now. When I see somebody I'm like, oh God, like good luck in the future, because you're raising this little soldier which I feel that there was so for such a long time as a gen, like as a nation got to raise these little little men, little soldiers. But there's so much that comes with that.

Speaker 2: 50:06

During that process of being able to talk and be okay, what's going on? Not in a coddling type of way, not in a soft what are this? The new parenting skills? Like where they're just free range parents or whatever, like tell me your problem, buddy, but at the same time, if kids aren't, especially boys, they don't know how to process their emotions. They don't know how to handle them.

Speaker 2: 50:30

So to hear you say that your husband is this giant man, but it works hard, loves his family, he's, he's setting the example for your sons but at the same time, he's teaching them how to do that, I feel that is such an important role, because when they become teenagers and they become young men and then they start dating because that's where I look at things differently how are they able to process their emotions while going into a relationship? Because now I'm putting my daughters out there into the world and so you're raising this son. That's this little soldier. Yeah, he does jujitsu and does all this other cool stuff and he's just badass little kid. But how's he going to handle that when he has these emotions and he doesn't know how to even process them? So it's, it's nice to know that like and that's important, and you brought that and you brought it up.

Speaker 3: 51:15

Well, and there's one more thing too to that they see how he treats me. Okay. They will treat their wife the way that their father treats their mother.

Speaker 2: 51:28

What's important. Why does that stand out to you? Like, how does he treat you? That you why? Why would you bring that up?

Speaker 3: 51:35

Because he's he's respectful. Okay. Um, he listens to what I say. If I ask him to do something, he just does it. Um, you know, we're we're affectionate, Okay.

Speaker 2: 51:51

That's huge.

Speaker 3: 51:51

You know, like the boys they see us like, always hugging and holding each other.

Speaker 3: 51:56

You know, um, as cheesy as that might sound, but in a marriage like that's huge, you know, and especially like you can, they can feel that too, you know, and like the way that we talk to each other too, like the way that that Doug talks to me, you know, like he's he's very kind to me and, um, he's, he's always got my back, like he's always. He's always got my back, like he's always. Sometimes he backs me up when the boys are being turds, you know like, well, I mean, he always does like if they're not listening to me, but, like you know, he'll show them. Like that he's got my back too, like if they're doing something that they shouldn't be. You know.

Speaker 2: 52:41

I see that a lot in parents, especially younger parents, where they're not evenly yoked when it comes to discipline where the dad will step in to correct a child in them.

Speaker 2: 52:51

No, it's just don't, don't, don't talk like that or don't leave. It's not as big of a deal. But then that's showing the kid immediately that there's a good cop, bad cop in this relationship and they, they're, they're, they're going to pick up on that immediately. And it's also showing that you're overriding the, the disciplinary person, as the father in a household. It's, you know, I don't, we don't have like, I don't put myself above my wife as far as a disciplinary, but as a father it falls on us. I believe more because there'll be times where my wife's like you need to go handle, handle that. I'm like fuck, got it. You know, I have no problem, but she's never come in and been like hey, it's always behind closed doors. If I make a mistake, which you do as parents. Nobody's perfect and it is what it is. That's the type of stuff that needs to be done behind hey, I think it was this hey, next time, instead of Instead of this approach, try this, okay. And then I listen, and so.

Speaker 2: 53:43

And then the affection part. We're very affectionate in this house, like I'm always grabbing, and I've talked about it on here. I think it is so important because if your kids see that and which yours do, ours even notice it, they'll go over friends' places they go and they'll be like God I've never seen their parents touch, I've never even seen them kiss. And the fact that your children will notice how much you love their mother or their mother loves their father and vice versa, like that's important and so like I want my daughters to be able to go into a relationship wanting that and that's something that they're looking for because they know their love, they know that they're respected and that that's a healthy. To me, that's a healthy relationship and people might be different. They might have incredible relationships where they don't do that to each their own and that's.

Speaker 2: 54:27

Whatever goes on behind your closed door is cool, but how we parent and I want, we want our kids to see that it's okay to be affectionate and to be lovey and kissy and grope, because it shows them like man, we love each other. This is I don't just walk into the kitchen Like there's always an ass grab or a hug. I mean there's something and like that to me, I feel, and somebody like that's not healthy. You know your kids shouldn't see that. Well, good luck, you know, I mean that's that's your parenting skills, but this is ours, so it's it's nice to see somebody else talk about it and that it is important to that your sons be able to see that yeah, and like when?

Speaker 3: 55:02

like when Doug walks in the door, I pay attention to his body language. Okay, how so?

Speaker 3: 55:11

Well, it tells me what happened that day. Okay, does he need a beer? Does he need a hug, like, or both? You know, like, where are we at right now? You know so and like, instead of bombarding him with like oh, this is, this is, this is today, you know, like frick, you know like it's more like it's about him when he comes in the door, I try my best I'm not I'm not perfect at it, you know but I try my best to really pay attention to that.

Speaker 2: 55:40

My mom had a 20 minute rule growing up that we couldn't talk to my dad for 20 minutes when he walked in the door, it was a 20 minute decompression.

Speaker 2: 55:48

We wouldn't even mess with him and he would sit in the kitchen. My mom would have a cup of coffee for him and he would decompress. And then, after that 20 minutes, all hell would break loose after that. But that was a rule growing up when my dad was on the road and he'd come home, or long days Cause my dad worked for the town and he would plow, he'd be, I mean, 20 hours straight, depending on how, if it would just dump snow, I mean you know how it is living in Montana and then when he would have that time off 20 minutes and that was a rule. And there was times where I've had different jobs and that was it Same thing here.

Speaker 2: 56:19

It's like Give me 20 minutes, catch my shit, cool, let me hear it. All you know, and so it's. It's. It's a thing you know.

Speaker 2: 56:26

But you also have to think is like a man dudes out in the field all day. He's dealing with the bullshit, all the stresses and battles are going on his head. Anyways, they're already dealing with, with finances, providing wife, kids. All of that never goes away. And then when you come home and then all of a sudden you're hit in the face with it. It sets a tempo for the rest of the day, but all you have to do is take 20 minutes. Cool, let dad go to his room, let him go in the man cave, sit in the garage, drink, have a beer. Hey, 20 minutes is up, it's all yours boys, and like. That's. That's how it was, and I think it helped my dad a lot, because then he can process instead of oh fuck, the truck broke down. I had to do this. I, this isn't ready. I'm already working on this for tomorrow. What's my list like? I get prepped and you know it. It lets them decompress and I think that's an important thing to, especially how your husband's greeted.

Speaker 3: 57:15

Yeah, I mean, try it. You know, it's like have you ever watched alvin and the chipmunks, where you know how they are in the studio trying to record and they give them coffee and they start like smacking into the windows and shit and bouncing all over the place, like when doug, when they hear his truck coming up the driveway, because he drives he drives a diesel pickup and it's loud, so like they can, they know what that sounds like. I mean, that is the effect. Like it's like giving them chipmunks coffee, you know, and they're just bouncing off the wall, they're running to the window and they're running out on the porch and they're opening the door and the dogs are running out in the road. Well, I mean, there's not really a road to driveway, but we have a puppy. I always worry about getting run over, you know, but anyway. So they're always like right there and I'm always like guys, you can't. Like you gotta give dad some time. Like you gotta give them a minute, you know, and they're just so excited, you know. So that 20 minute rule.

Speaker 2: 58:05

And it helps the kids as well, because you have to think like, almost like a puppy effect. You come in your house, your dog's wound up and you're, you immediately meet it with that energy. There's no calming down. But then if you ignore that puppy and you walk in and then its level of energy comes down, you get to relax and then you meet. It's almost the same thing, because my brother and I we were 18 months apart, I mean we were, so he, my dad, had two twins almost meeting with that energy and so, yeah, it was very we would be, we would find our groove, we would go back to what we were doing or go back outside 20 minutes.

Speaker 2: 58:38

Come we, come back in the hospital, I'll be like all yours, and so then you weren't meeting with a max 10, like we were like okay dad's been home With my boys.

Speaker 3: 58:45

it's like over the top.

Speaker 2: 58:46

For sure.

Speaker 3: 58:47

Then they're like where's my hatchet? Dad, can I have my hatchet, can I have my sock? Can we go shoot a gun? Can we, can we, can we, can we? You know, like, let's do this, let's go throw the football. You know, I'm going to try that. I'm going to be like putting that as a rule, because that's genius.

Speaker 2: 59:10

That's good. I'm glad to hear this, and it's cool to talk to a boy. Mom, that's, you're in it.

Speaker 3: 59:15

God, I'm so proud of those boys Good, they're beautiful too, and they're just that's, they're just amazing beautiful too, and they're just that's.

Speaker 2: 59:28

They're just amazing. Kids are incredible. Yeah, they're, they're pretty awesome. I feel bad for people who are like fuck, I mean, I don't mean me wrong, I hate kids. I absolutely hate, I do too. I hate, I do not like it.

Speaker 3: 59:37

And people hear that they're like I love her laugh in the background she knows it.

Speaker 2: 59:41

When we go places I'm looking at kids like get the fuck.

Speaker 3: 59:44

I know, I'm the same, I'm just like, oh, I just don't but my I would.

Speaker 2: 59:50

I would give up everything for my children yeah.

Speaker 3: 59:53

When it comes to your own other people's kids, yeah.

Speaker 2: 59:55

I I got a couple buddies that got little ones and I could. I could handle them, but I'm in public and just rude. I'm that person and I don't ever realize like I'm making a face and my wife would be like change your face.

Speaker 2: 1:00:07

Change your face, I'll just be like little kid interrupts. I'm like what the fuck? You know? Cause I, I set such high standards for my kids, not on a, on a, an attainable standards, but when adults are talking like you're, I'm ready, let's go like that's never happened for me. Yeah and uh.

Speaker 3: 1:00:27

So yeah, when I, instantly, when I mother people's kids and my wife will be like hey, they have kids, like let's not, let's just relax, I'm like, fuck, I know it sounds so horrible, but and I don't want to because, like the thing is is like there's a there's a difference, right, and you've got a couple categories with kids, right, like you can tell which ones are just put in front of a screen all the time yeah you know, when you see their parents are in shape and their kid is overweight, and then they can't talk very good, and then they're interrupting and doing that weird behavioral stuff, you know um.

Speaker 3: 1:01:01

And then there's, you know, the kids that are homeschooled, for an example. Or, like in my family, my kids aren't homeschooled but they are put in situations where they have to use their skills, situations that you know, some people, I guess in the bigger populated areas, might see as dangerous, or you know whatever. Yeah, but when, when you're constantly putting your children in those situations where, like, like when we're hunting, like I put my, my five-year-old in my hunting pack for sure that was really hard for sure he was

Speaker 3: 1:01:51

heavy. He wasn't five at the time I didn't do it last year, but it was the year before last year and yeah, so he was three and and he's kind of big, you know, and uh, there I I mean he went shooting with me, yeah, and so I taught him on the right like he's better on the range than the older two, he knows what to do, he knows how to sit and be still during that time, because I made him watch my trigger finger, I made him watch the barrel so that he was aware of when something was going to come out of the end of it. So he had that in his subconscious like oh, I need to be safe, I need to sit here. I made sure he was behind me because if he moved or did anything I couldn't shoot, even if he was behind me. If he moved, I'd turn around, we'd go through it, I'd sit him down, I'd shoot, he would be still.

Speaker 3: 1:02:45

That's how I knew he was paying attention. We were safe. He's not going to run in front of my gun, get up, you know, or anything like. You really got to be aware of that. So when he was in my hunting pack, you know, I had this ear protection on him and all that you know there might have been. I never got to shoot anything when he was with me, but if I did, I was prepared, like if I got a shoot off hand, like yep, that's what it is like.

Speaker 2: 1:03:05

He's going to be right there, but I think it's so important to the to start your kids at such a young age and if you have the ability to do it and you know I have I know I have guys that they're avid outdoorsmen and their kids aren't even like getting into it till they're teenagers. And then they're hitting me up like yo, how'd you get your kids into it? I'm like, bro, if you're, if you're asking at 13 years old, it's if they don't have it, they're good luck and they're already been pulled into electronics, social, whatever these platforms. I mean you're, I mean dude, your kids got snapchat and you're trying to get them into the outdoors now and they're 13, 14 years old. Like good luck, you've lost it yeah I'm our youngest.

Speaker 2: 1:03:39

She would be beside me. She had her little pack on and I'd make her carry that. Started by just carrying her snacks.

Speaker 2: 1:03:43

I'm like, okay, cool, you're carrying your snacks yeah it was like, okay, cool, you're carrying your snacks and water. And so we'd always raise their suck level, because we always got you know in the military of your suck level, where you know you do something which is horrible, like, okay, that's the new norm of where it's miserable. So with my kids, when we were getting them to the outdoors at such a young age, it was like, cool, you're gonna come with me, we're gonna, we're gonna go on a couple of hikes this week and you're not gonna carry anything. It's like, okay, here's your pack, you're gonna have your sandwich, your little chips are in here, whatever else it's heavy, I don't give a shit. Like, you want to have snacks.

Speaker 2: 1:04:15

We stopped at the gas station. You just bought $20 of snacks. You're carrying this shit. So then they got used to it. It was like, hey, here's your water. Then it was like, hey, here's a little bit more, you're going to carry your jacket. And so throughout a season or two it's not a now she's packing her whole entire bear out. You know, hide the skull, everything, yeah, tripod rifle, and it's nothing to her. Then meanwhile I got the little one stuffed in a kafaru pack and yep you know.

Speaker 2: 1:04:41

And then we get somewhere flat and I put her out like cool, you're walking, you can walk this. And if we're going down steep, you know, up or down, put her back in the pack, cinch her in there, she hang out on my shoulders. But then, like that's how you do it, then it becomes a norm. They don't know any different. Yeah, and so I don't know if that's how you started your boys out, but like for us that's, it was so important. Because then it's not this kid that's sitting on the couch or in their room secluded and like come on, son, we're gonna go elk hunting. And then this kid's like they're like where's my ipad?

Speaker 2: 1:05:11

like I'm miserable, I'm hungry, I don't have my snacks, and now they're hating life. And then you just ruined it because yeah this kid's never done it before and they're like how did you get yours? Yours are so into it. It's like they're not that they're into it it's just life.

Speaker 2: 1:05:25

That's just they don't know any different and it's like, okay, cool, hey, get your shit, get your gear up, we're going. And they just know what to do because it's not like they've, and if they don't want to go, cool, I don't push it. I'm like, yeah, fuck, easier for me, like it's less I gotta worry about. But they've always yeah, we're in, and so it's. It's one of those things I feel that a lot of people really screw up because they get in this groove and they want to kill something.

Speaker 3: 1:05:47

They, I got it, I got, I, I, I, and they're not thinking outside of themselves and like, whatever it is, their goal is in that you know, like for us it's a way of life, you know, and just the meat itself is very important to us. Sure, you know, even though, like we're spending a shitload of money on gas sometimes, you know to get where we're going. But you know, we don't, we don't view it any other way than just our lifestyle, like you were talking about. You know how you started your, your girls out and everything, and, um, the first deer I ever shot by myself and this was my second deer I was, I don't say 29, 30. Let's see montana, my middle son. He was in, he was three months old and I had axel, he was three, it was his third birthday and he wanted to go hunting for his birthday.

Speaker 3: 1:06:47

I'm like, okay, well, let's try it. And so I've got the baby in the front pack and I mean I got all this shit and he's bundled and it's cold and snowy, and got my rifle, I'm like I don't know, I'm just going to try. You know, on foot didn't really find anything. So we went back to the house, went back out in the afternoon and I was just kind of driving around and I spotted some deer and it was during the rut you know, I'm like, okay, well, I should give it a shot.

Speaker 3: 1:07:13

Baby's sleeping in the truck and we were on private land, like up by where I live, and so I jumped out of the truck and I got Axel with me and I shot a buck. Yeah, you know, I was like you know, a couple hundred yards from the pickup, but you know it was, but just doing that like was like damn now what you know, I called my dad. He came over and showed, told me what he didn't touch the deer, told me how to do it and I did, gutted it out, did all the thing, but anyway, um, so when the boys were in school the older two were both in school my dad would take me in the morning with the boys and he has this like big, rusty bucket blazer. That is just amazing.

Speaker 3: 1:08:02

This thing is just beat to ever living shit, like the clunking and the. You know he's got chains in the back and like this giant jack. So every time we like go over a boulder, it just goes, you know, and I'm just like how the hell are we gonna shoot anything? At first I was would think like that. You know, pretty sure these elk are like conditioned to his rig and the way it sounds, because they are not afraid of it. But so, like before the boys would go to school, I'd go into town, meet with my dad, load them up in the blaze, we'd go out. He'd drop me off in a spot and this is before I had Onyx maps too and like he dropped me off in a spot and he'd be like okay, you go 200 yards down, you're going to hit this old logging road, go to the left, don't go too far left, because you'll end up in the cliffs. And if you end up in the cliffs you're going to have to come back out and you're going to have to go up and back around, you know. So every time he told me don't go there, I ended up there. So I learned how to not go there, you know.

Speaker 3: 1:09:01

But anyway I'd pop out another spot. My dad would drop the kids off at school and he'd come back to where I was and he'd pick me up. Wherever I'd pop off, you know whether it was on the highway or on another back road. He'd pick me up. We'd drive around a little bit, look for a deer, go to the next elk spot. He'd kick me out the door. You know, I'd hike around for a few hours. He'd turn around. He'd drive down the road waiting for me to push something out.

Speaker 3: 1:09:24

You know oh yeah because that's usually how lucky my father is.

Speaker 2: 1:09:28

Like he, that guy shoots elk and like the easiest people have that like that luck, like he just like yeah, it just it makes me crazy. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 1:09:37

I'm like hiking all day and he just like, oh boop, there's one, let's just back up to it Right off the road Standing right there.

Speaker 3: 1:09:44

Yeah, I'm just like damn it, and so, anyway, he'd go pick the boys up from school and then bring them back out and we'd do the same thing, that's cool. And they would. Just they'd jump around in the blazer, they'd get out and run around and you know, of course they would get bored. So, like they've always known that, like that's their life too, like hunting season is around, they're all over it, even if they get bored having to be in the vehicles. Bored's good though.

Speaker 3: 1:10:10

Like they don't care. No, you know, like they just bounce around and eat tons of junk. That my dad buys them, because I don't ever buy them any of that crap, but he does, so I let it ride.

Speaker 2: 1:10:20

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's what makes it fun, you know, it's those little things like oh, grandpa's always got the best snacks. You know they'll remember that type of stuff growing up.

Speaker 3: 1:10:29

Yeah, he out of there. There should be.

Speaker 2: 1:10:30

Yeah, so okay, I don't want to backtrack, but you said your dad got back into the picture when you got back into hunting, right?

Speaker 3: 1:10:45

When I had my first son. Okay, and then that's how I got. I got back into hunting, going out and shooting that first deer by myself calling him, realizing how passionate I really was about it. And then that's when I started hunting with him.

Speaker 2: 1:10:58

Got it and that helped a lot. Yeah, so change subject real quick because I don't want to jump on it. I feel we're time period maybe getting close when you discovered who your biological was, or you said it wasn't until later on in life, or am I?

Speaker 3: 1:11:19

Yeah, okay. So I did try to go there earlier, didn't I, and tell the story. I discovered him on that ancestry thing.

Speaker 2: 1:11:37

Really yeah, you discovered who.

Speaker 3: 1:11:40

Robert.

Speaker 2: 1:11:41

Okay.

Speaker 3: 1:11:41

My biological father.

Speaker 2: 1:11:43

Okay, which you didn't know the story up until this point.

Speaker 3: 1:11:47

You started doing your own research and then discovered this Well, so three years ago, Okay, okay, this, well, so three years ago, okay, okay, um, my earliest memory, honestly, of any information about him was when my mom was still alive. We were at a gas station and I had asked her if, uh if, eddie, my dad was, my biological father, was actually my real dad, because my brother asked her that, which was very weird.

Speaker 3: 1:12:14

I think he overheard a conversation or something, and he was like five at the time you know we're like at the gas station, and so I asked her you know, I'm like, well, I'm gonna ask that's a weird question to ask, you know, I mean I'm like six or seven years old at this time and she said no, your, your biological father's name is robert, and the last I heard he was in new york, but don't tell anybody. And so I didn't. I just lips were sealed, never said a word, buried it, right. So so I'm going to tell you how this all came about, and the timing was actually really good. Um, as unfair as it was that he didn't know I existed, I could have had a father.

Speaker 3: 1:12:55

Blah, all those sayings so he didn't know he had no idea that my mother was pregnant when she left arizona okay yeah, and so um so. Anyway, when, when my mother was six years old she was about six years old her stepdad was very abusive.

Speaker 3: 1:13:19

He was like an ex-convict or whatever I don't know. He was like escaped from prison, something along those lines. He was just a really scary man and my grandmother was afraid of him. He was very abusive and he had thrown my mother up against a solid, solid oak bedpost and it created, it opened that door to her epilepsy. So she was having seizures since she was very young. Oh, okay, yeah, so that also created like a belief in her of well, now I'm sick, nobody wants me you know, stuff like that and just the silence, right.

Speaker 3: 1:13:57

Nobody talked about it. My grandmother did not talk to her about any of that stuff. That's how that generation was.

Speaker 2: 1:14:05

They buried a lot.

Speaker 3: 1:14:08

And so, and my grandmother man, I mean, she had a hell of a life. You know she was an army brat. Her father, my great grandfather John, which I meant to send you that story, you know, world War II, korea, vietnam. He got injured in Korea. He was not supposed to be going to Vietnam but he bribed one of the clerks to send him anyway. That's cool. The clerks to send him anyway served on special forces in Vietnam until the army caught up with him and gave him the option to either go to court or retire he retired.

Speaker 3: 1:14:43

He served for many years, but he was also very abusive to my grandmother because he was just a very angry man, you know. And I would imagine yeah, I would imagine it's just from his experiences, right, but you know so prior to this man that she had married. That was abusive, her father was abusive, so she joined the army in spite of him, just to piss him off and to also get away from him. And so and gosh, I wish I would have I have a picture of her being sworn in.

Speaker 3: 1:15:16

Send it to us and he's, yeah, and he's standing next to her as she's being sworn in and he's just fuming. Really. You wouldn't know by the picture. Okay, right, so, anyway, my mother got epilepsy from the blow to her head and everything. And so growing up, right, everything's in silence. My grandma kept everything in silence, so my mother did. That's generational. You do that, your kids are going to do that, they're going to suppress everything if you don't address the problems. And it's okay.

Speaker 3: 1:15:49

It's not your fault, you didn't do this, you know. Whatever it may be. And so as I got older older, right so my mom would have seizures when me and my brother, my sister, were little, when we were there with her alone. Sometimes she had one when she was driving one time really but she would be standing there talking to you and all of a sudden she would just tip over backwards that's scary and hit the ground and she'd go into convulsion like it was really the ground and she'd go into convulsions Like it was really you remember this.

Speaker 3: 1:16:17

Yeah, She'd go into convulsions and she'd start spitting up stuff and just you know you could hear like moans coming from her and stuff, and then she'd come out of it and she would get up and she wouldn't know who we were for like a half an hour.

Speaker 3: 1:16:34

Really yeah, and she wouldn't know who we were for like a half an hour really. Yeah, she wouldn't know where she was, she wouldn't know her own name, she wouldn't know who we were and she just would have this like fear on her face for sure you know of like, like a child, like it was. It was almost like she went back to that some certain age. You know, like you remember all this I remember her facial expressions, I remember everything, um, but nobody spoke about it really nobody told us what to do if this happens, so we would just roll through it like it was normal.

Speaker 3: 1:17:12

Just thought it was normal for this to be a thing. You know, in my mind I'm like I guess this is just what I have another seizure. This is okay yeah, you know, like it happened one time and we're just like sitting there watching tv and we were just like, oh, she's having a seizure and we're just watching tv. Just numb to it, just nobody said, hey, oh, you should probably call somebody or make sure she's not swallowing her tongue, you know, and uh that's terrifying yeah, it was.

Speaker 3: 1:17:43

I was never afraid really. I mean I was, but like it was always a surprise every time it would happen. It was always a surprise Every time it would happen, it was a surprise, but then like it just became just normal.

Speaker 3: 1:17:58

I just normalized it you know, and that wasn't right, because everything else after that, if anybody was ever in pain or if anybody was hurt or grieving or if somebody died, I was just like okay, whatever, oh well, don't matter. I was just like okay, whatever, oh well, don't matter. So you fast forward to when we moved from Phillipsburg, when her and my dad got a divorce. We were living in Butte and she had married my stepdad Wayne and he was a singer, like he had a band and so he would sing at like weddings and different bars and things like that, and there was one night they were out stuff and she, she would go with him sometimes and us kids would either. We very rarely had a babysitter like my sister was 11 at this time, so we just stayed at home.

Speaker 3: 1:19:04

Yeah, it was normal then, like we did and like sometimes we would like get in some fights with some hockey sticks and cabbage patch dolls, but we were fine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nobody really knew about that. We just hashed it out and figured it out and anyway. So they're out and they leave and it's just me and my sister and my brother at home and all of a sudden my mom comes home by herself and her and I had a really special relationship, like because she knew I was different. Ok.

Speaker 3: 1:19:41

I think in her heart, like she knew the struggle that I was about to go through growing up, you know, like just being different, and you know just the way I came into the world, right, like she, just she was very good to me, you know. And anyway, so she comes in and there's a staircase going upstairs and underneath the staircase there is a bathroom under there. So she goes flying in, she goes straight into the bathroom, you know, and I'm like standing by the stairs just waiting for her to come out, cause I was concerned, Cause I had that relationship with her, you know. And so she comes out and she's like holding her belly, you know, and she's like, and my back then my, my nickname growing up was Nana, like your grandma. Okay.

Speaker 3: 1:20:28

Yeah, my grandmother actually gave me that name.

Speaker 2: 1:20:32

Oddly enough, you just cared for everybody.

Speaker 3: 1:20:35

Mm-hmm, all right, I think so Well, that's a good way to put it, you know, maybe that was why, I don't know, but anyway. So she comes out, she's holding her belly, and I remember this just like it was yesterday and she says you know, she's like, oh, I'm just not feeling good, so I need to go upstairs and go to bed and I need you and your sister and your brother to. I want you to go. You know, us kids go to bed and stuff. And uh, then wayne came in. It was like I don't know 2, 30 in the morning or something like that.

Speaker 3: 1:21:23

My stepdad, he comes in and from singing and my bedroom was directly across the hallway from there, so I could like see the bed in there. I could see like three quarters of the bedroom, okay, and, um, excuse me. And so he comes in and he turns the light on in there and you know, I'm just watching and and he's she's laying on the bed and and he's shaking her, he's like renee, renee, wake up, wake up. You know. And he's she's laying on the bed and he's shaking her. He's like Renee, renee, wake up, wake up. You know. And he's just like so concerned and just, you know, just frantic.

Speaker 3: 1:22:00

You know, like, wake up, you know, and and so he calls 911, and all the paramedics come in and you know, and I'm watching this whole thing Like nobody knew I was there, and uh, so they all come in and they go in the room and and you know, they're all trying to figure out what to do, like everybody was just like so concerned about her. You know, and that's, you know, that's what's so cool about. You know what I do with Montana grit, helping veterans and first responders. I have been on the other side of that, you know, helping veterans and first responders.

Speaker 3: 1:22:33

I have been on the other side of that. Okay, you know like and we'll get to that. We'll get to that.

Speaker 3: 1:22:36

But you know, just, I remember this specific paramedic he had, like the, because this is in 1996. I'm nine years old, okay, and he had this like blonde flowy hair down to his shoulders, like I remember him so perfectly, you know, and he was he showed the biggest level of empathy, you know, in the room, like concern, like he really was worried about her and he never even knew her, you know, and anyway, so I'm watching them running around trying to help her, and so they, they pick her up off the bed and they put her on the stretcher. And during this time, once that happened, like I started yelling from my bed, you know, like just yelling, like mom, you know, or wait, or somebody like hear me, like what is going on, you know, and nobody I don't think anybody actually heard, you know, heard me, nobody heard me, you know, and at that time, like as a child, I'm thinking, okay, well, they're just ignoring me. You know, I'm not important enough to know what's going on in this situation.

Speaker 3: 1:23:48

And so they come by my room and somebody just shuts the door and they just shut me in there.

Speaker 2: 1:23:56

That was the last time you saw your mom.

Speaker 3: 1:23:58

Yeah, that was the last time I ever saw her and there's just silence, now Nothing, because once they get her out in the ambulance, and all that silence, and I'm just there alone with my own thoughts at nine of like what the fuck did I just see, you know. And anyway, the next morning, you know, of course all the family shows up and all of that, and so I stayed in bed longer. You know, I knew everybody was down there, you know, but I knew I had to face them and figure out, like because I was just so confused at what I just saw. So I'm like, okay, well, what do I do now, you know? So eventually I go down the stairs and I go up to my grandmother.

Speaker 3: 1:24:52

You know, she was the first one I approached because I knew she was the one that was going to tell me what I already knew. And I walk up to her and she looks up to me and she goes your mom went to sleep last night and she never woke up. And I remember, just like I had no emotion Zero, nothing. I had no emotion Zero, nothing. But I did feel guilt because I cried out a fake cry, and I remember when I did that, I cried out I want my mom and I did this fake cry. When I did it, I had to pretend like I was surprised, and that created guilt that I carried forever. Why?

Speaker 2: 1:25:39

do you think?

Speaker 3: 1:25:40

that Because I was hiding something and I lied. Okay. You know, cause I I and the lie was in I want my mom. No, I didn't want my mom because she wasn't there, she was gone. I already knew that. So I was hiding something. So automatically I had guilt, her funeral and everything like I treated it like it was another one of her seizures, you know like, oh okay, she's gone. I don't really know why. You know, I don't understand this. I don't remember crying.

Speaker 2: 1:26:25

Did anybody explain to you or pull you kids all together at any point, like, sit you down and no one, and so that's where that silence comes in.

Speaker 3: 1:26:35

That's a generational thing in families sometimes, and in our family it was Like nobody asked me anything.

Speaker 2: 1:26:44

How you are. No, nothing, huh.

Speaker 3: 1:26:47

So I held that in and, like I kept that, what I witnessed my family never knew To this day they don't know, know my brother does. I didn't explain it. You witnessed everything yeah, and he didn't know until like a year ago really. I didn't tell this story to my husband until like two years ago, you know, and so I just kept it all in and carried it with me and all the emotion that was created from that, like the guilt and and everything.

Speaker 2: 1:27:17

Yeah, that's pretty rough. You watch your mom, I mean essentially pass. Then nobody explains or sits yeah, it's down and I wonder how often that happens, because it's such a chaotic time and then you just kind of get not I don't want to say forgotten about, but like push to the side, you know, and nobody really thinks about the kids and what they're processing, and then that just sets up a life of like drama.

Speaker 3: 1:28:00

You know it really does, does. But here's the like when you so fast forward to me now, right, I didn't face any of this stuff until I was like, or until like, two years ago really yeah, why, how, what, what made you want to face it then?

Speaker 2: 1:28:13

Why did it take so long? And then, how did you face it? What made you face it?

Speaker 3: 1:28:19

That was God. Okay, I'm going to tell you why. Okay, so running Montana, grit right, I'm trying to help these women get through their stuff. Help these women get through their stuff, and God told me you cannot help these women transition if you don't transition yourself. Okay.

Speaker 2: 1:28:57

So I started to face it and go through it and walk it out myself before helping somebody else do those things, how, I mean? So okay, so you're thinking about starting Montana Grit. You're helping women, which we'll get into how. When you, when this was put on your heart, how did you even where did you start by facing this?

Speaker 3: 1:29:18

I admitted to myself that I needed help. Okay. I mean I was suffering from debilitating anxiety.

Speaker 2: 1:29:28

Over what would cause it.

Speaker 3: 1:29:29

Just all of that that I held in, all of that.

Speaker 2: 1:29:33

All those years.

Speaker 3: 1:29:33

All that fear, okay, all of years, all that fear Okay. All of those emotions, everything. And when I had my first son is when it really actually my second son is when it really hit me. My first son kicked it off because now I was in reality, now I'm accountable, and for somebody other than myself. Okay.

Speaker 3: 1:29:50

And so it just like brought me into reality. Like having a baby, I started to live like in reality for the first time and thinking outside of myself because I had to, that like I didn't have to always be in survival mode and take care of myself and make sure I was okay and had a job, and then I was making money and I had a place to live and I had food to eat. Like I was always in that mode, so I was never. And also being numb to other people's pain, whether it was physical, mental so you had no like empathy for anything?

Speaker 3: 1:30:30

no, checked, checked out. Okay, I still had my heart, though, but on my terms. For sure. You know, and now we were on God's terms.

Speaker 2: 1:30:40

Absolutely.

Speaker 3: 1:30:40

So I got help through a coach. She is phenomenal. She was in the Air Force for like 25 years or something like that, 25 years or something like that and she, she took me to those places you know and you know, brought out my limiting beliefs and and just what I was believing about myself and I figured out why through journaling, through my sessions with her, and like I really dove into it because I did not want to feel what I was feeling anymore, like sitting here with you right now I'm like I feel peace, okay, but back then I'd have been like this, you know, like how did that?

Speaker 2: 1:31:26

did you see, I mean to try to have a marriage and a relationship with somebody and you're, you're so closed off, like that. I mean that had to have been tough and a relationship with somebody and you're, you're so closed off like that.

Speaker 3: 1:31:37

I mean that had to have been tough. Oh yeah, my husband is a saint because I mean I was like so dumb, okay to love okay like I just didn't understand it. I didn't know how important it was because I, first of all, I'd never seen a marriage not fail I'd never seen a marriage not have some sort of trauma or something involved with it trauma, or drama and drama yeah, just weird stuff, chaos, you know.

Speaker 3: 1:32:09

So to me it was normal to just like, oh, whatever, I got married when I was 19 and when I went into that marriage I was like, well, I could just get divorced.

Speaker 3: 1:32:16

I don't really want to marry this guy and this is your husband now, no, oh, okay, okay first marriage I was 19 years old and I just I had that longing for like normalcy, you know, like oh, I'm ready for it yeah, no, not at all okay. And so I saw myself like, oh, I will learn to love this person, and I created a story of the life that I believed I was going to live with this guy, and it just wasn't good. So we got divorced in less than a year after being married, because my mindset was well, I can just get a divorce whatever I can get out of this if I want.

Speaker 2: 1:32:54

And you're not processing it at this point. I mean you're 19 years old, you're a kid, so you're not like, okay, I have generational trauma put on me, along with everything that you witnessed. I mean you're just.

Speaker 3: 1:33:10

Yeah, no, I was just rolling through life.

Speaker 2: 1:33:12

Yeah, you're just cruising.

Speaker 3: 1:33:13

Just right on, we're getting married. This will be fun Whatever, and yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:33:24

So you get to the point where now you're like, okay, I need to start facing this because, like, what was the switch or what put you over the edge that you realize you can't live with everything that you're carrying anymore. Was it affecting your marriage? I mean, obviously you said your kids are really opened up, like, okay, now I have. Were you and I don't mean this in a, in, I don't know how to word it but did you feel you just weren't putting the love into your children? Or were you? Were you realizing you're missing, like that passion for them? What, what was it that made it click where you're like, okay, I, I need this isn't right so at the beginning of my husband and i's marriage, um I was, I was not great okay you know I treated him good, but I just I was shut out.

Speaker 3: 1:34:09

I was just numb to like right on, we're married, I love this man, we're just gonna do great and have great things and whatever, but really that's not.

Speaker 3: 1:34:19

You know, that was not reality yeah it was hurting him, you know, um, but but that moment that you're talking about, um, I was sitting on the couch in my living room and I was feeling everything. I was feeling, right, like the pain in my trap muscles. My mouth would go numb just sitting there thinking, oh, I was all by myself, like trying to do Montana grit stuff, trying to figure out my LLC, and like I could feel the pain from head to toe, like the jolts that would go from my stomach. It was like it was like putting your finger in a light socket every like five seconds and these jolts would go into my stomach and go down my legs. It was just like pain and just, you know. And I started like having, and prior prior to that, I would see a gun to my head, but I was never holding it and I wasn't suicidal, I wasn't the type to even think like that. Um, but that, that is where my mind went but you're picturing it.

Speaker 2: 1:35:30

I was, and that's a start.

Speaker 3: 1:35:31

Yeah, okay, and so I was sitting there on the couch and I'm like man, this isn't normal, you know. So that was a big laying down pride moment, like I had to get out of my own way, like I had to let go of my pride completely and admit to myself that I needed help, that I needed to do something, because I realized it wasn't normal, like all those years when it really kicked off was after my second son was born okay and every day for that, for gosh, it was like six years, you know, five years straight.

Speaker 3: 1:36:19

I was always living in fear, afraid of everything, afraid to speak sometimes, like I loved horses and I was never afraid of them. And all of a sudden I was afraid with my horses. You know, I was afraid with my horses, you know I was afraid driving down the road, like I was always picturing something bad happening. I was always afraid something bad was going to happen. And that's where the memories that manifested from my mother's death really started to surface, because you cannot numb that no, forever it builds a little bit of dose of reality is going to open that door.

Speaker 3: 1:37:01

And so, you know, just sitting there, I just knew and and so, yeah, that's when I reached out to my coach and she took me. You know, she walked me through it and I just through journaling and and going through the motions with her, what were some of the steps, like what she having you do?

Speaker 2: 1:37:19

I mean, obviously you're journaling. What are you writing? Your feelings, your thoughts, your what's going on that day? Or is it just a journal of your life?

Speaker 3: 1:37:27

So we would. She would ask me questions. Okay questions okay, um, and we would find out.

Speaker 3: 1:37:42

You know where the emotion came from in my answers okay, um, let me think of an example of a. There was a specific like. There was one exercise that was actually really, really hard, but it was very effective. She had me journal, like we did our session, and she asked me she's like okay, I want you to journal.

Speaker 3: 1:38:06

You know a time in your life where you know you felt some sort of emotion of some sort. So when you're focusing on that emotion itself, your brain is automatically going to take you to where it started, okay, and where it began, or your earliest memory of it, of feeling that emotion you know. So I went to this one memory. We were in butte. This was before my mother, it was when we first moved there, within like the first few months of being there, and it was before my mom started dating my stepdad and, of course, she had another seizure. Well, this time it was different, right, so we were in an apartment, there was an upper level and a lower level, and my mom and my sister were upstairs and me and my brother were downstairs and my mother had a seizure, but this time my sister called 911, which I thought was very weird, because normally she would just have a seizure and we would just be like right on, it's another seizure, you know me would just be like right on, it's another seizure, you know. And uh, but this time she called 911 and I remember being like annoyed. I'm like why would she do that, you know, and they're bringing my mom down the stairs and my mom's looking over at us and she's looking at my sister, bailey, and she's like where are they taking me? Where am I going? Where are they taking me, you know, and she's just scared, like that scared child. She's like stephanie, where are they taking me, you know? And she's just scared, like that scared child. She's like Stephanie, where are they taking me, you know? And she's just so afraid and like the paramedics are like taking, walking her out, you know, to go to the hospital and stuff. So that's just an example.

Speaker 3: 1:39:48

So I journaled that memory and I broke down, like she had me break down. You know what I was thinking towards my sister and why, why did I feel annoyed by her saying that, you know, and like really getting into, like why did I feel that emotion? Why did I feel confused? Why did I feel annoyed? Why did I feel that way? And then finding the answer in that like you really take a hold of what is in you because it's already there from childhood. It's already there, you know your kids, they have those same emotions, that same guilt and shame and fear and confusion. It stays with them for their entire life.

Speaker 3: 1:40:29

If, unless it's talked about, unless you can do the work, you know and like in the moment, like you're, you're never going to be able to do it every time. You know, cause they're human and they're. You can't prevent all of that. No, but you can help them, like with my kids, you know like I I try to read them, you know, and like, talk to them and ask them like hey, you're, you know, picking, unusually picking on your brother right now, why and he did nothing like why do you? Why are you doing that? You know, like what's going on and I'll get the answer. I'm like, oh, okay, well, let's squash this, you know. And then boom, moving on and they're not holding that. Whatever that grudge was, that or whatever, maybe not a grudge, but you know, whatever that reason was, it's like, okay, well, let's address this has nothing to do with your brother, you know. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:41:27

So yeah, witnessing your mom's passing, burying that your whole life, then to finding out how to cope with it. Deal with, not cope. I hate the word cope.

Speaker 3: 1:41:43

Get through it. How to?

Speaker 2: 1:41:44

process it.

Speaker 3: 1:41:45

Yeah, process, that's a good yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:41:46

So you're learning how to process all that while you're starting your organization, montana Grit, to be able to help women that have gone through these types of things correct.

Speaker 3: 1:41:58

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:41:58

Okay, how have you been able to use your life and your scenarios to transition to Montana Grit, to be able to relate to these veterans and law enforcement women that have gone through very similar things, worse things, in their own personal life and then, obviously, in their line of work?

Speaker 3: 1:42:24

So, like I said before, I have been on the other side of the veteran and the first responder. Okay, Both of my brothers, two of the three brothers. My third brother is from my biological father, so, um, that's different. But so my two brothers that I grew up with, Hank and Brian, they're they're both combat veterans in Iraq. Um, I had an uncle in Desert Storm, an uncle who was a sniper in the 70s. He was taking out smugglers that were crossing the border of Thailand. Jeez.

Speaker 3: 1:43:01

And then he went to Iraq in 2005. Of course, my grandmother joined when she was 18, my great-grandfather that I had talked about, my mother's dad, my grandpa, my grandpa Gordon. Him and my grandmother had met at one of the bases. He was a survival instructor for the Air Force, my other grandpa was an MP and then he was also the sheriff in my hometown and my grandmother was the 911 dispatcher when I was growing up, got it, you know. So then another uncle in the guard, my little kid cousin, she's in the National Guard right now.

Speaker 2: 1:43:42

She had spent a year in Kuwait or not Kuwait. So you come from like a lineage, you come from a lot, it's a long line.

Speaker 3: 1:43:48

So I am the very product of veterans and first responders that do not get help. Got it, the silence, the suppressing, the suck it up, you know like figure it out mentality, you know, and, and so when I went into, uh, montana grid, I did not know what I was in for yet okay and so to go to your question that you asked me, I can relate in that way of being on the other side of that, like being the child in the situation you know, like watching those first responders handle my mother, you know like they did, like.

Speaker 3: 1:44:31

I will never forget that. Yeah, and it is a proven study that first responders have a higher level of empathy than most of the general population of people, which is why they do what they do. They literally, in their heart, care about every stranger and they, they genuinely want to help.

Speaker 2: 1:44:58

Like it's in that profession yeah.

Speaker 3: 1:45:00

But they, but they want to. You know that's why they do it, which is pretty fricking amazing, Absolutely, you know. So, um, just being on the other side of that right Like I can relate, just being in the family and just just any like having the trauma that I do have and then being able to recover from it for sure because let's go back to when I was feeling guilt.

Speaker 3: 1:45:29

Okay, right when, when I felt like I had lied and I was hiding something, when my grandmother had looked up to me and told me that my mother had died, and looking back at that, okay, when I was yelling from my room, nobody heard me. I was alone. I'm not important. I, I, I, I, me, me, me. Guess what it wasn't about me. Once that clicked in my mind, I was, I, me, me, me, guess what it wasn't about me. Once that clicked in my mind, I was like shit, I feel so much relief. It wasn't about me, it was about her, it was about my mother. They were trying to save her life. You know, if they knew I was there and I was like reaching out, one of those people would have walked in that room and helped me. They just didn't know, you know, and so just that in itself, like that brought freedom for me, realizing like it wasn't about me.

Speaker 2: 1:46:27

So something I don't want to say simple, but just that's realizing and opening your mind to okay it's. I felt shushed, I felt hidden that night but in reality, like everybody was focused on actually saving your mother. Once you started the process that differently, that's when did you? Was it an instant? I mean, you said that God put it on your heart when you started starting all this and everything. Was there a lot of praying? Was there a lot of, or is it just the journaling? I mean there's, there's a lot of steps to be able to process it, but once you started to do it, did you start to feel the stress relief? Because you know you carry that, you feel it. You said you were mentioning, you felt it in your traps and you're feeling it in your mouth and going numb and all that stuff. Once you actually looked at it differently, did that help a lot? I mean, was it an instant?

Speaker 3: 1:47:22

okay, no, no, took a while. Yeah, it was very painful really how so um facing, facing every individual emotion okay intentionally okay, which is tough yeah, and also mont Grit had already been a thing for like two years.

Speaker 3: 1:47:41

And so here I am, like silence now, like there was no activity going on within that time of me facing my past, you know. So I'm like in my mind, I'm like I got to show up for these women, like I got to help them, like this is my job, you know, this is what I'm meant to do, this is my calling, and I'm doing nothing. So, like focusing on myself and trying to help myself, I had guilt. It was really hard. And then it also, like sometimes would bring me down a rabbit hole for a while. You know of just thoughts, of like you know why am I still feeling this way? I just faced this thing, we just talked about it, like why can't I just kick this feeling? And sometimes you just have to stay in it until you realize that simple little thing Like it wasn't about me, that in itself, that simple little thing just brought me so much freedom. And so, like you're not always going to see that off the bat, you know it's a, it's a process that you have to take, like working with my coach. It was basically like working with a therapist, just different, you know, and that's why it's good for for people to find a good therapist, you know that can help them through this, or a coach or whatever direction they need to go, but when you do it with intent and you do it believing that you're going to be okay, then you will, and the whole time I was doing it, I did it with the belief, though, that I was not going to feel this way anymore, and that stems from another memory of when I was 16 years old, or no, I was, I was 15, 14 or 15, 15.

Speaker 3: 1:49:27

And I was up in my bedroom and I was like sitting Indian style, and I was like I was so upset, like I had all this anger and emotion and and I was sitting there and I was sitting Indian style, and I had my arms crossed and I'm just swaying back and forth and I'm a load, you know, up there, and my body just got really, really hot and I just got really, really angry and just I don't remember what kicked this off at that time, but I had felt so bad that when I came out of that, I told myself that I was never going to feel that way again.

Speaker 3: 1:50:07

So I did everything in my power not to, and so that mentality stuck with me, because I sensed the danger in that in those emotions I was feeling when I was swaying and my body was getting hot, it was all like mental right, I didn't know why or what, but I just knew that that was not okay. And so like ever since then, like even going into, you know, my experiences with my coach and stuff facing my past past I had that mentality still and that belief like I am not going to feel this way anymore so instead of facing him, you were just burying him, or what?

Speaker 2: 1:50:48

yeah, okay. So during that moment when you're rocking and getting hot and everything and you're like I'm never going to feel this, instead of processing it, you're just burying it. And then, from that point on, every all negative emotions, you buried until buried got it yeah and that just led to all more selfish behaviors.

Speaker 3: 1:51:07

You know, like people would get hurt and I would just push it aside and be like, oh, I don't know how to help you. Yeah, you know, and you know, like, with my mom, nobody hearing me again, that belief that I created that I didn't matter, that me caring about what's going on with you does not matter, I can't help you because you don't want me to. And that stems from, you know, trying to scream out and nobody addressed. You know, and it was just that stupid belief Like it.

Speaker 2: 1:51:41

Well, also, at the same time, like you didn't have, your mother wasn't there, you're raised with a grandma. You're a teenage girl that never got the process, probably your mother's death properly, because it was just normal.

Speaker 2: 1:51:59

Yes, so you know, you didn didn't have you didn't have that role model growing up and then now, and you're an adult having kids, reality's hitting you of the your whole entire life, of bearing emotions, feelings, trauma, everything else. Yeah, so you finally get the coach. She gets you back on track, which is helping you process and learn how to handle who you. Now these women are reaching out to you, correct, or?

Speaker 2: 1:52:30

okay, yeah, um, we do get people that do reach out or we, or we find them okay, so and then with that process, how it walked me through Montana grit and how that's what you're doing with that now.

Speaker 3: 1:52:48

So right now we are in the process of pioneering a resilience program. Okay, explain. And I I call it that because it's the best way to put it in perspective. Okay. And it's all geared around your belief system, what they're believing about themselves. It's a lot of the coaching style with a twist with it.

Speaker 2: 1:53:14

What's the twist?

Speaker 3: 1:53:17

Jesus. Absolutely. Okay.

Speaker 2: 1:53:24

So there's a lot of biblical principle, so you're faith-based faith, faith-based, faith-based.

Speaker 3: 1:53:28

We don't put we don't put it in people's faces, right?

Speaker 2: 1:53:31

good, so like like we can.

Speaker 3: 1:53:33

I can take scripture and put it in my content and you can find it in science. You can look that up scientifically and find the same answer okay that I'm providing you. So everything I provide is based off of you know, my experience and like biblical principle. Okay, and so it just it helps people to, um, really tap into what, what is already there. We're just providing the path for them to get there. Okay. And so.

Speaker 2: 1:54:07

How? So? What's the path Like? What are? You're finding these women? Well, I'm just going to use a cop or a female cop or a veteran. You find them or they reach out. What's the process?

Speaker 3: 1:54:21

through helping them so there is a curriculum okay um, there's action items, right. So, for example uh, I'm a big believer in the mission statement to yourself, to yourself okay okay, um, so we and this is just one of the things that's included is because we start soft, like we're not going to do any sort of deep dives, like right away. You know, it's like all right, let's get you to where you are okay with yourself, where you can start that mindset of like squashing those insecurities and those negative beliefs that you're having.

Speaker 3: 1:55:04

So, like with the mission statement, right, it's 100% based off of you and what you believe and know about yourself. That is positive, that you're going to live by every day. So you hold yourself accountable to this mission statement. There's a certain amount of time that you, that you do that and that mission statement will change after the program is over and the program isn't finished. So this is just a piece of it that I'm going to explain. Yeah, they hold themselves accountable to it and like there's more, there's more steps to the process, right, just really getting them rooted in those little bits and pieces of who they are that they didn't know about.

Speaker 3: 1:55:50

How are you doing that? What they tell themselves out loud? Okay, Right. So, providing you know an explanation of certain keywords, for example, that they could use, you know when they're okay, slow to anger, right. So if somebody is feeling angry and they are struggling with that, well, there's simple things that you can tell yourself, and it doesn't happen overnight. But if you consistently do this, like you will de-escalate.

Speaker 3: 1:56:29

For sure because words are very powerful. What you tell yourself is very true. It's what is going to play out and act out in your life, no matter what. Yeah right, so so slow to anger, right. When you're angry, slow to anger, be still Right. That's one example, just elaborating. You know, like in a session with them, for example, if we are meeting over like a Zoom, or if we're in a retreat, setting Right.

Speaker 2: 1:57:02

Okay. So this is my question. Okay, all right, if we are meeting over like a Zoom, or if we're in a retreat setting right, okay. So this is my question. Okay, all right, because I was I'm going to interrupt, I'm trying to process. Okay, you're taking these. How, how is it and this is, I guess, ties into it Are you pulling these women into retreats? Is it women's group therapy, I want to say therapy in a way where they're all able to sit around, talk. Okay, so this is how you're helping these people now.

Speaker 3: 1:57:23

This is leading up to the hunt.

Speaker 2: 1:57:24

Okay.

Speaker 3: 1:57:25

Right, so we help. We specifically serve women veterans and women first responders. Okay, so they go through the program before they do the hunt. And we also want to provide this program for people not doing the hunt, so we'll also include a difficult activity to go with it. If it's somebody that doesn't hunt or doesn't wanna hunt, like there's the sky's the limit, right? So what I was explaining to you about the mission statement and the things that we initiate that we can work on, like okay, where are your weaknesses at? Like, where are you struggling? So I use anger for an example. Right In the Bible it says slow to anger, like be still. You know, like it works.

Speaker 2: 1:58:11

Do you see that a lot in these women that you're dealing with? What no names? I don't need any of that. What is? Is it sexual trauma? It anger? Is it abuse? Is it or is it a combination of everything? Who these women that are needing help? What? What are they? What are they needing help with? Is it just processing to get them back on track? What is it that you're you're stepping in and helping them realign themselves with?

Speaker 3: 1:58:41

So I don't put them in a box, okay, and what I mean by that is oh, they're veterans and first responders, so they need this certain type of help. I don't think like that. We don't think like that in this organization. It's more okay. They're human beings with a similar experience and I like to focus on them from the beginning, like post-service.

Speaker 3: 1:59:14

How they dealt with things before they served speaks volumes to how they're dealing with their service okay you know, with post serving or currently serving um, because we'll, you know, we'll take veteran first responders, veterans, uh, people that are actively a first responder um and actively a veteran, if they can, um, but a lot of times it's just almost impossible because of the demand in that. But you know, we really want to because, I mean, they're human for sure. They're just people, you know, and was called to do this. Like the, the process, it needs to be organic. You know, like it has to be something that.

Speaker 3: 2:00:19

Let me reword that we are making it something to make this make more sense. We are making this process something that will inevitably be effective. Okay, you know, because, because of the things that are getting implanted right, so, like, on my end, I can, you know, I do, you know, I I include the, the biblical principle in it, the action items, you know, the book that I'm writing there's like a method along with it, right, and there will be a workbook that is attached to that, so things that they're constantly going to be working on throughout their weeks, and then we come back together, we talk about it what worked, what didn't, how did this affect you and then we've got the licensed professionals on the other side and we have not come together with them yet to collaborate my method with theirs.

Speaker 3: 2:01:18

Okay my method with theirs, okay. So on that end of things, it makes it even more because these ladies that we're bringing in, um, they're, they're very, they're specific, they're specifically helping with, uh, veterans and first responders across the board one of them is, so they have a lot of knowledge in in that piece of it so what?

Speaker 2: 2:01:41

if I'm following you correctly, you're helping these women in more of a mentor coach I don't want to use the word life coach but you're helping them. Okay, is it day to day walking through, because obviously you're not doing the counseling part. You just said you have people that are focused and strictly on that. So your role, with Montana, grit and everything, is helping people face their problems, realize what problems are. Are you helping helping them get their life on track? Are you helping them with their fitness, with their mental health, physical health? Is it a combination of a little bit of everything?

Speaker 3: 2:02:32

Yes, because they need. You know you have to be in shape to do these hunts.

Speaker 2: 2:02:37

So you're preparing them in all life aspects, except for the mental capacity, where you're, which you have professionals, yes, that are working with them, because obviously that's not you, that's a whole.

Speaker 3: 2:02:48

That's a whole different I'm like the person that inspires you're a life coach we talked about this, you just don't want to accept it.

Speaker 2: 2:02:59

Everything you were saying, I know there's nothing wrong. It's just a title. I mean you use whatever you want, whatever title you want to give it, but if you're motivating and you're encouraging and you're helping get people's life on track, you're that's mentor, coach, what I am yeah, so that's what you're doing, okay. So see, it makes more sense when you put a title on it.

Speaker 3: 2:03:20

I know, I know.

Speaker 2: 2:03:21

Okay, so this okay, so this makes sense to me. So you're taking these women that have gone through military law enforcement it could even be pre career traumas, anything like that or during. I'm sure they face a lot of shit. I talked to a lot of women that have gone through hell during their careers and those fields.

Speaker 3: 2:03:42

Yep.

Speaker 2: 2:03:42

Then they're kidding out or staying in if you find them during that process or whatever stage they're in their life, and now you're helping them square their life away in a way as far as okay, we're going to go through these processes, see where you're struggled. The end goal is to take these women on a backcountry hunt, adventure, group therapy, whatever it may be okay. So this is pretty cool of what I mean who else is doing. Is there any other programs that you've seen that are kind of focused on this? Because I mean, I've been in the charity world for a while I haven't really come across anything along these lines not for the women yeah, that, that's what I'm yeah none.

Speaker 3: 2:04:18

So I've done the research. I could be wrong on this okay but so far I haven't found one organization in the united states that is specifically serving this population of women. Okay, veteran and first responder women only across the board there are a lot of great organizations out there that are creating women's programs within their organization, but our sole focus is on the women, only a space for them.

Speaker 2: 2:04:45

That's cool and yeah.

Speaker 2: 2:04:47

That's really cool. So, now that you're okay, so now that you've got these women and your mentor does it have to is the hunt the main goal? Or why the hunt at the end? Why not a retreat? And then you're, they're going powwow and I use the word powwow not light, lightly, but you know it's, we use it all the time. With us we're gonna get a bunch of dudes to go fucking powwow. But why the hunt? What is so significant about taking these women, sending them into the back country to do something along these lines? Well, what, why, why do you feel like that's so important?

Speaker 3: 2:05:25

oh, man, I mean because it's important to me, okay. You know, um, when I'm hunting, it's like, it's like a part of my heartbeat, you know, okay, uh, I hunt on my own a lot. I don't my husband and I don't hunt together, because I like my spot and he likes his spot. Okay. You know, and we both have agreed like that, we just like being alone when we're out there, you know, and he also walks too fast and he's too loud. Yeah, six more.

Speaker 2: 2:06:00

He's got a stride on him.

Speaker 3: 2:06:01

I'm just saying, okay, no, um, he's fine, but, um, man, like what it does to you, you know, like an elk, like they're, like, they're like a ghost, you know, and just when you get to see them, it's you know, and just when you get to see them, it's it's just real special, you know, and and and to give somebody else the opportunity to like to feel that part of my heartbeat, you know, and to to try at something like that, because it's so difficult, like, because this hunt, these hunts, are not like easy for sure like this hunt we have coming up.

Speaker 3: 2:06:44

We've got two gals going into the bob marshall wilderness of montana. It's 24 miles in one way on a horse and big boy country it is a steep. I mean it's grizzly bears like it's a thing. So, man, just that, just that experience alone, especially being on the horses, like that.

Speaker 2: 2:07:04

It's life-changing.

Speaker 3: 2:07:04

I mean, and just the survival, like because you're surviving when you're doing this, and I just I wanted to give them something challenging too that's going to test them.

Speaker 3: 2:07:22

Like test your boundaries and your you know your capabilities. And so when they go through the program right, they go through the resiliency program and then they get to take everything that they learned, that new mindset, that they develop, that new control, Because the point of the resilience program is so that they can stay in control over negative emotions and reactions. And so they get to take that into this hunt and, instead of reacting out of their fear in the way that they used to, now they get to process it. Okay, why am I afraid? Why am I feeling this emotion? What's happening right now that is making me this way? Being able to apply like okay again, like calm down, Okay, let's look around, what is the problem. And being able to help themselves without anybody there, as like a crutch you know like cause that.

Speaker 3: 2:08:30

So when they do the hunt like we, they do that independently, so we get them. You know training, you know with their guns yeah we provide the guns if, if they don't have one, the gear, everything like, we get them set up the head to toe, you know um. So we provide all of that, and because we want them to not cheap, no, and we want them to go into this hunt with confidence.

Speaker 2: 2:09:00

Okay, so you're prepping them from ground zero.

Speaker 3: 2:09:06

Mentally, physically, all of it.

Speaker 2: 2:09:08

That's a lot, that's pretty awesome. Yeah, okay. So where's your biggest struggle of running this organization? Because it's not easy and you're doing some pretty. I've been in the game for a long time over a decade so I know what you've gone through. Where, where are you? What do you need help with the most? As this, as your program starts to grow and you start to help these women on so many different levels, there's there's going to be some hurdles. Where are you facing these right now?

Speaker 3: 2:09:47

Well, right now, financially, that's the biggest issue we're facing is just getting donors, and it takes money to just do marketing and to get in front of people and to get out there and to get in front of those donors. And another thing is getting people to take us seriously. Why do you think they're not taking, you know? And another thing is is getting people to take us seriously because why do you think they're not taking you seriously?

Speaker 3: 2:10:04

I think it's because there's such a lack of knowledge and understanding of what women are actually doing as veterans and first responders.

Speaker 3: 2:10:14

Like I have a good friend who is a paramedic in Spokane and so you know she gets people on the ambulance from point A to point B, like to the hospital, right, she gets on these calls, keeps them alive, gets them there, and she was telling me a story about this call that she took and it was his grandparents, that they were both in a wheelchair and they were watching the kids. The parents went out, you know, and they were watching the kids and there was like a couple 12-year-olds and then the young boy. He was like eight or nine, and the 12-year-olds had a couple of their friends over and they're all running, you know, playing or whatever. Well, the young one, the eight, nine-year-old, nine-year-old boy, he wanted to be involved, like he wanted to fit in and he wanted to play and you know. So he ran in the house and he grabbed his parents' pistol and ran out of the house to show it to them and he had shot himself in the head in front of the grandparents and the other kids.

Speaker 3: 2:11:23

So she was the first one to to take that call right, that's rough, so like, and the reason I'm telling this story is so that people understand like women are also there doing the things that the men are doing and helping you know helping other people in those capacities, you know, and and the acknowledgement of of people actually understanding that I think is just not there for the general population, right, and so like she's got to deal with that, you know, and she's sitting there talking to me about this and I'm like, I'm like, so how did you deal with this? She's like I'll have it, I'll process it in about two weeks.

Speaker 3: 2:12:10

She's like it hasn't hit me yet yeah and she, you know, and so she told me, you know I'm like, so what do you like? What do you do? Like, is there somebody you talk to? Is there something she's like? I can't afford it. You know, she kind of, like most people, can't like to get the help and everything, which is another reason why this is inspired is like we want to provide that you know that help that, excuse me.

Speaker 2: 2:12:44

We're cutting that out right sounded horrible.

Speaker 3: 2:12:45

I'm just fucking with you, oh my god, so anyway um that's how we're gonna start the episode.

Speaker 2: 2:12:51

No, but it's I. I get what you're saying. I mean these, I mean I've, I haven't. I. I hope to god I can get some female paramedics, veterans, veterans, law enforcement, on the show. I would love, love, love, love, love to get them on, because there is more.

Speaker 3: 2:13:08

Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off. Oh, do you think? There are more women veterans than there are people that live in England. Really. Yeah, I read that. I can't tell you where. You know what's crazy.

Speaker 2: 2:13:19

Out of 11 years of having an organization and helping thousands of vets, we've probably helped a dozen women.

Speaker 3: 2:13:26

I mean I've got, I've got a stack of applications. I've got ladies reaching out to me like it's wild, you know, and so like, like going back to um, you know, like the acknowledgement right. Like you take women that are serving too like, and most people they're like oh, that's really great what you're doing, you know, and stuff for the ladies, and but but what I'm hearing in people's voices with that is maybe confusion. How.

Speaker 3: 2:14:05

Because they don't know why we're helping just the women, Like I don't think they know the level of service that women do in the military.

Speaker 2: 2:14:18

I personally don't think women should be getting help from like how we do our trips. I don't think it would benefit a woman. I feel your cause. A woman's not going to sit with a group of dudes. I'm not going to sit in a group of women and sit here and be like this is what I've been through. Like no offense to trust.

Speaker 2: 2:14:38

You haven't experienced what I've experienced, no matter what you say you have, and vice versa. As a woman, there's so much more empathy. They're nurturers. A lot of them are mothers, so they look at things completely different than how a man I feel. This is just my opinion, but I don't think women should be powwowing in these events with men. I don't either.

Speaker 3: 2:15:01

I think it's very important For the effects wise.

Speaker 2: 2:15:04

They're not going to open up, they're not going to sit here and say and this is just me, I'm one of those. I don't think women should be in certain positions, in military, in law enforcement, because it's dangerous and it's tough and the things that men are capable and how we process things are completely different than how a woman processes things. But we're here and they're, they're doing it. So but to sit here and to put a woman in a group therapy situation and there's could be some women out there and be like I fucking do just fine, great. But I feel what you're doing is very important because I can't. I'm not going to sit down and at a campfire and relate to you and you're not going to relate to me.

Speaker 2: 2:15:46

But in that setting of women where they feel safe and vulnerable and they're able to open up in a judgment-free zone, I feel is very important because there's guys we we've had guys on trips and the only reason I'm saying this is because I've had law enforcement officers that we have on trips, because we help out cops as well. They're like dude. I don't feel comfortable opening up to my stories because I haven't been through what a vet's been through in my mind. I'm like, bro, you're out here in the streets dealing with this shit, a hundred times more than what a vet does on a six deployment. You're doing this for a career, even though we have careers in the military, but we're not deployed every fucking day Like a cop is.

Speaker 2: 2:16:25

So you know, I've I've had guys voices to me like, oh man, like I don't know if I'm comfortable sitting with a bunch of dudes that haven't been through what I've been through, and so that to me registers like, okay, I'm not going to invite a woman to sit in this group therapy or to go on this trip with a bunch of guys, even though we've had women come on, and we're like, hey, there's only going to be one or two of you women on this trip and as long as they're cool with it cool. But it's not that environment where we're sitting down and having them break through. So I feel what you're doing is very crucial and important for the law enforcement, first responders, veteran side of things, because like where do they go for this?

Speaker 2: 2:17:06

yeah, where. Where is their outlet? Where's community? It's community is what it comes down to. I'm not going to build a community of hardened veteran dudes and try to relate that with females, because a lot of guys are going to look at and be like, okay, you haven't been through what I've been through, which is cool, and they haven't been through what that woman's been through. She's dealing with a whole other side and how they process things. So I think it's very important and it blows my mind that there's not more programs. It's just like with cops. The amount of programs that are there for cops and the cops don't even know about, or the ones that just don't exist they should. That blows my mind as well. Yeah, and we have these first first responders that are dealing with the worst of the worst. I mean not as a cop deals with, with the anger and the hate and everything they get for just wearing a uniform, but like a first responders, every call, it's. It's something traumatic, it's something gory, it's it's never somebody's life.

Speaker 2: 2:18:04

You're dealing with the worst day of somebody's life. Every call, you go on as a first responder and we're like, cool, see you tomorrow. And it's like, how do they process that? But the fact that you're now digging into the niche of okay, we want to help the women that are in these, helping these categories that are having a hard time processing or not processing anything at all and then going into let's get them back on track, let's get them mentally healthy, physically healthy, get them moving again. Here's this program, here's a process that they're going through. I think what you're doing is is fucking awesome and it's an incredible thing and thank you.

Speaker 2: 2:18:38

Yeah, and so thank you, yeah, and so I feel, and we're just this is a real conversation, but I feel you haven't found your the true. You haven't found your true north yet. Listening to you talk, and the only reason I say this is because it took me. It took us like six, seven years to find it for our organization, because I was so set and hearing you talk is just, it was me.

Speaker 2: 2:19:03

You know, yeah, 10 years ago, because it was my heartbeat, this is what I felt, this is what I wanted to do. But once we started to listen to, what the community wanted and this is something maybe you should try is putting polls out there. If you have this list of women that you say like from all over the nation, build a poll and start asking them questions, Because when I started our organization, it was my path, this is what I do, this is my passion. I'm in the outdoors, I'm going to get guys out and that's what. When we launched, that's what we did.

Speaker 2: 2:19:37

But what really changed everything for us and got our organization like on the track to where we were like holy shit, we never even thought of this is when we started asking the community what do you want out of this? What do you want to learn? If you can learn something, what would it be? And the response nobody. Nobody, except for a couple of fathers later on came back I would love to learn how to hunt with my son or my daughter. I would love to. I don't know how to do it. It was. I want to learn how to do this. I would love to learn this hobby. I would love to experience this. And that's when I was like, fuck man, we're hemorrhaging money on all these expensive hunts, that cool.

Speaker 3: 2:20:17

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 2:20:22

When. I can change this guy's life with something that's a fraction of the price, which helps as a charity. But now you're giving them what they never would have the the chance or the ability to be able to go and do and it could be, the most simplest shit.

Speaker 2: 2:20:33

So I would say, as you grow in this, in this continues, start doing polls and start listening to what these women want, because it could just be like I want and so such a good idea, the and what really helped us. So we'll take the law enforcement we launched. We launched our cop program and cops are great because they write. They're not like vets and marines that are just fucking drawing in crayons and shit and don't give you any feedback. And cops actually like give feedback.

Speaker 2: 2:21:00

And we did this poll with the law enforcement community like what do you guys want? If we could provide any service to the law enforcement community and what you guys have been through, how can we help you? 90 of them. I want to be connected with other law enforcement officers throughout the nation. We're like why are? Why am I booking these trips that are costing tens of thousands of dollars? We're doing funds and banquets and things to fund these adventures. They don't even want to go on them. They're doing it because that's what we're offering. But we're like wait, so I can get these guys together. We could fly them in, rent an Airbnb on a lake for three or four days and they just want to be able to relate to other cops. We're like, yeah, it's a no brainer.

Speaker 3: 2:21:45

Gosh, it makes it. It makes so much more, it makes so much sense, like and I did start thinking outside of of the hunting box, right, and like I was telling you about the, the gals in Chicago. So there's, there's three women that work for the chicago pd who we've currently been trying to get to montana. Originally, you know, we want to do a wall tent retreat with them and get them out there, um, you know, but now you know, just giving them the experience of just being in montana, like get a vrbo, because's our next, that's what our goal is right now is, you know if we can get the money raised to get a VRBO for them?

Speaker 3: 2:22:25

and they want to learn, they want to learn the long guns, so their traditional hunting rifles, uh, do a hike one day, um, and then just take them out, like let's stop at the brewery, let's go have dinner or make dinner, like whatever you guys want while you're here.

Speaker 3: 2:22:40

Let Like let's stop at the brewery, let's go have dinner or make dinner, Like whatever you guys want. While you're here, let's do it the last day, you know? And I mean these gals are like from the heart of Chicago, like they see some horrible shit you know, I can imagine yeah.

Speaker 3: 2:22:55

And one of the gals. She was actually spent some time in Iraq first. And one of the gals she was actually spent some time in Iraq first. She served in the military and then when she came back she joined the police department in Chicago. And so I've got to meet with these gals over Zoom calls and stuff, because that's a huge thing with Montana. Grit is the communication piece and I know as we grow and get bigger that's going to get more difficult to do, but I get to do it right now.

Speaker 3: 2:23:23

For sure I have the time and there's not too many right now, you know to where I can reach them and build that relationship with them because, like I really really want them to know how much we care, Like we see them, that at the end of the day is probably the biggest yeah the biggest check in the box is allowing these women to know that you truly care like and that you know in my heart that comes from my grandmother

Speaker 3: 2:23:55

okay because when she was dying, I mean, I just I remember looking at her in the hospital bed, you know, and, man, she just her whole life she never felt seen. She didn't know how much I loved her because I didn't know how to tell her and she didn't know how to tell me, know how to tell me. And her whole life, everybody in her family and her parents and the abuse and everything like her, going through her whole life not knowing how special she was, yeah, how important she was, how much she mattered, the impact she made on me and all my friends on every you know like she would take in kids all the time, like my two brothers.

Speaker 3: 2:24:39

My brother hank he's not really my brother, he just moved in with us when he was like 13, you know, and my grandma just took care of him. She didn't ask for anything from his dad. Yeah, you know, he had a hard life growing up and so my grandma's, like you know, and we'd known him since we were like tiny, and he's my brother, my brother Hank, he's still in the military, you know, he works for the National Guard, but I mean just you know that impact that she had in like just bringing us another brother, you know, and building our family in that way, even you know, because to this day, like he's one of my best friends in the whole world, you know, and building our family in that way, even you know, because to this day, like he's one of my best friends in the whole world, you know, and so it's great that she was able to do that.

Speaker 3: 2:25:27

Yeah, and so just for women, and I think for everybody honestly, like, even if you're too tough to admit it, you want to be seen. Everybody wants to feel that. They want to believe and know that somebody sees them. You know, and that's what we're here to do. Like, my explanation might've been a little confusing with, you know, the resilience program or whatever, but really at the end of the day, we see you but you need to see you.

Speaker 2: 2:25:58

And that's what you're helping with.

Speaker 3: 2:26:00

Love your neighbor as you love yourself, as as you love yourself, because if you don't love yourself first, you cannot love somebody else you won't ever get. You will never see outside of your pain. You, everything that you do, will be like all the good things, all the potential, all the opportunities will be overshadowed by your pain, your guilt, your shame, your insecurity. If that is what your focus is Because that's what my focus was that's why my body was in so much pain all the time from anxiety. It's because all I was doing was focusing on my pain, on my fear. I didn't know what was in me, and once I got all of that out, I learned that I could write.

Speaker 3: 2:26:48

I didn't know I could write. I dropped out of school and homeschooled myself and got a full-time job and started bartending at 18 and did my homework in the bar, got married and divorced at 19,. Blah, blah, blah, and then on and on Right. I didn't know I could write. I didn't know I could be a public speaker. You know, like I love public speaking. I love getting up there and being able to tell these stories and to show people that I see them too. You know, because, like that's a calling on my heart is like literally my job, my calling it's not a job, it's a calling it's, it's a way of my life, is who I am is to genuinely love and care about people, everybody and it's very important to me to carry that out and this is how I get to do it so like, like through my public speaking, through the program of my LLC that runs into the nonprofit, like, all of that is 100% based off of love.

Speaker 2: 2:27:48

Good. The world needs more of you doing that.

Speaker 3: 2:27:51

Yeah, like acting out of love is the most honorable thing you could ever do. But loving yourself first, that is next to loving God, that is second in the command to loving God is loving yourself. So it's one of the most important things because, like I said, if you don't do that and loving yourself it's not just you know, oh, I love myself, it's like no start working, do the work, do what it takes, otherwise you're never going to know what you're meant to do. Yeah, you will never find it. That's why it's like identity purpose, all these things, like it's all the same. Who am I? You know?

Speaker 2: 2:28:37

well, I'm glad you're you're doing what you're doing to give back and to help these women get their lives on track, because there's not a lot.

Speaker 3: 2:28:44

I I don't know, but I I don't think that there's too many, like you said, opportunities or programs for them to be able to do it there's not, like when you know, like being a female, I mean it's been designed by, by females. You know, like this Montana grid, yeah, and we, you know to to create that that space, like man, it's just, it's such an honor to do it and uh. But you know, it's really difficult to get it out there in front of people, you know, because it's like nobody really understands that the guts of it, like like what we're actually doing and what these women have actually done.

Speaker 3: 2:29:27

You know, like I mean it just it blows my mind, these stories that these women tell me imagine you know, I went and I, um, I went and spoke at a women veterans symposium in Montana and I was speaking to ladies who were from ages like probably late twenties to, like you know, world war or Vietnam veterans, you know, and like, like the older ladies though, like from like Vietnam and stuff, like they were interesting, like it was cool to sit there because I sat and talked with them for a while before, you know, I got up there to speak and everything, and it was pretty cool.

Speaker 3: 2:30:07

It was pretty wild back then, like the rules and how women were treated in the military and stuff. Wild. Like they had to get permission to like be pregnant back then To still work and be pregnant, like you know, because it was the mentality of like, okay, you're pregnant, you got to be home and be a mom now and be a housewife and whatever, but yeah, so it's very honorable and, um, I just hope that, uh, you know that more people will do it, the more people will see, you know, see these gals, because I mean there's so much more to it and I can't even imagine you have a wife and sometimes you don't understand what she does, what she does, and sometimes she don't understand she, what she, why she does what she does.

Speaker 3: 2:30:50

Right, like I'm the same, you know. It's like I don't know why I'm saying that. I don't know why do I feel this way?

Speaker 2: 2:30:56

I don't know, you know, oh god, I'm not the only one, okay, so like no, you are not alone in that.

Speaker 3: 2:31:01

Because it's like there. That needs to be a program where we get to figure out why the fuck their wives are mad at them yeah, so now we get to like, bring these gals together and just figure it out.

Speaker 2: 2:31:10

You know, that's I'm really happy for you that you're doing this and I hope it takes off, because there's a lot of women out there that need help and just being connected with fellow women that have gone through these types of things and same struggles and battles and everything else that they're going through.

Speaker 3: 2:31:26

Yeah, yeah, thank you.

Speaker 2: 2:31:28

Yeah Well, that's a hell of a conversation. I appreciate you driving down from the bum fucks of Montana.

Speaker 3: 2:31:37

Into society.

Speaker 2: 2:31:39

Yeah, back into the real world.

Speaker 3: 2:31:40

I didn't have any meltdowns driving. There you go. I was so proud of myself. Good.

Speaker 3: 2:31:44

Yeah, I think it's because I'm used to driving in Salt Lake. If I drive in a city, it's always been like Salt Lake and that's a flipping nightmare. Like what do you do with a three-way? Like what the hell is a three-way? Like I rolled up on this like weird intersection thing and I was just like I don't know when to go, I don't know what to do, so I just punched it like, got honked at, but I made it so like fascinating, because it was so like you don't know how to drive to begin with they don't know how to drive.

Speaker 2: 2:32:11

They don't know how to merge. That's a nightmare, but I appreciate you coming down and I appreciate you opening up about this and your story and your struggles that you've been through and everything. I'm sorry about your mom and everything, but it's all led to what you're doing now has been put on your heart to be able to help these women, and so if there's is women out there that have served in any sort of way, we'll get everything linked for you so they could reach out. And if there's anybody that want to support helping these women, we'll get montana grit on there and I say grit or grit, um grit.

Speaker 2: 2:32:43

I think you said grit okay, I thought I did but I might have mumbled that one. But yeah, we'll get all everything for you linked, so hopefully this will help draw some awareness of what you're doing and trying to give back to the, the female community and the ones that have served, and just help them in any way possible.

Speaker 3: 2:32:59

So yeah, Well, I appreciate it Like this has been. This has been a great uh atmosphere doing this podcast with you. Like uh, it was very relaxing and and I appreciate that you provided the space. So, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 2:33:13

That's the whole point of this. So what we're trying to do is just give people a platform to be able to come and talk and if there's somebody that we can I mean you never know there could be yeah, we have a lot of law enforcement on here and I know there's a lot of law enforcement women on here, because I get messages all the time from the shit that they're dealing with, just like the corruption side of stuff. So hopefully they listen to this and they can utilize your program and if anybody wants to support, you got a battle ahead of you, because our our hardest program to ever fundraise for is law enforcement. Just nobody cares and it's yeah, it's very sad.

Speaker 2: 2:33:44

It is hard, yeah, and I and I don't say that in a disrespectful way, but like we could throw anything out veteran wise. I mean, there could be a cat missing a fucking tail and an eyeball and you raise 10 grand overnight for it. But you want to help out a cop and yeah it's crickets.

Speaker 2: 2:33:55

So you definitely got a battle ahead of you, but don't, don't stop it's. It's one of those things once the ball gets rolling, it'll go. But yeah, I feel you'll find your groove and your mission is probably going to change 20 different times here in the next few years. Don't fight it. It would be my advice. Listen to the community and the people that you're trying to help. They're going to direct you in, but I'm also, at the same time, not saying to change it, if that's your true passion.

Speaker 3: 2:34:18

I appreciate that piece. That piece of advice is huge, like listening to them, because that's what we're trying to do, is meet them where they're at.

Speaker 2: 2:34:25

And the only reason I even bring that up is because I was the same way. But once we started listening, it was like I fought it and nope, this is who we are, this is who we are. But then, once we started getting the feedback, it was like oh fuck, Okay, let's, let's see how it goes. And it started going really well and um, but yeah, I mean it's if it doesn't change and that's how you want it to run, run it. But at the same time, like, listen to them, it could take it a whole different direction that you never even Montana goes so.

Speaker 3: 2:34:57

I'm happy for you. We're doing what we can.

Speaker 2: 2:34:59

Congrats on being a badass girl or girl. I was going to say girl mom. I'm so used to saying girl dad, boy mom. Thank you Everything, and working on everything that you have and dealing with those little hellions I'm sure they're like Tasmanian devils at times, but they're just feral, feral All the time. Perfect way to put, I guess, three boys raised in Montana, and that's how boys should be raised.

Speaker 3: 2:35:18

Three little bear cubs, that just.

Speaker 2: 2:35:20

Perfect, that's what you want to hear. So thanks again. I appreciate your time and the conversation and you opening up and telling us your story.

Speaker 3: 2:35:27

Well, thank you.

Speaker 2: 2:35:28

Thank you.

Speaker 3: 2:35:29

It was a great great conversation it was good, that was awesome. Was it boring?