Midlife Mental Health: A Life-Changing Call with Gretchen Schoser

Gretchen Schoser shares her powerful journey through mental health struggles, a near-suicide attempt, and her inspiring recovery. This episode highlights the importance of mental health awareness, community support, and practical tools for healing at midlife.

Key Topics:

• Mental health struggles in midlife
• The impact of early retirement on mental health
• The role of community and support groups
• The importance of seeking help and therapy
• Practical tips for mental wellness and resilience

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Mental Health Journey
00:16 Life-Changing Experiences and Mental Health Struggles
02:21 The Turning Point: Calling 988
09:22 Finding Hope and Purpose After Crisis
11:40 Building a Support System and Community
18:48 Starting a New Chapter: Entrepreneurship and AI Training
21:43 The Importance of Self-Care and Joy
28:49 Final Thoughts on Kindness and Support

 Resources

988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline - https://988lifeline.org/

Gretchen's Podcast: 'Sh!t That Goes On On Our Heads' - https://goesoninourheads.net

Looking for a health care provider who really listens and isn't constrained by insurance requirements? You need to check out the Centered Care Directory-a curated, national resource to help you find the right provider for you. Whether it's functional medicine, physical therapy or hormone help, you'll find it here.

Check out how.healthcare to get started. 

Transcript

Kim Benoy: You are listening to Midlife with Courage. This is where women in midlife come for inspiration, motivation, and sometimes a little education to help them live more boldly. Don't forget to hit that follow or subscribe button so you don't miss an episode. Now let's get started.

Kim Benoy: Hello everyone and welcome back to Midlife with Courage. I am Kim Benoy, your host, and I'm very happy to have you listening. I'm also very happy to have my guest with me here today. Her name is Gretchen Schoser. Welcome to the podcast, Gretchen.

Gretchen Schoser: Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

Kim Benoy: We are continuing a month-long series about mental health. You have an experience that I think is important to share. You had a life-changing experience when you were 59, which was not too long ago. Tell us about that.

Gretchen Schoser: So, we have to start all the way back to the last quarter of 2022. Probably the hardest quarter of my entire life. A lot happened. I signed a document that made me eligible for early retirement after a 15-year beautiful career. I was like, you know what, Deuce, I'm done. In hindsight, that should have been a good thing, but it spurred a lot of other things that happened. Then my wife got shingles. If you know anybody that has shingles, you know there's absolutely nothing you can do for them. I am a true extrovert and an empath. So during all this, I am like taking care of everybody else. I am not taking care of me. As the month progressed, I hit and killed a deer. I got catfished. Yes, I got catfished, but my mind clicked back before I spent any money. Then, a really good friend of ours passed away unexpectedly. My father-in-law passed away two days before Thanksgiving. Throw in some seasonal depression and some holiday depression. At my age, we've been taught not to talk about mental health. You just suck it up and move on. I pretty much did that and wore a mask. On the outside, I was engaging. I would help people. I was the go-to person for where I worked. But on the inside, all I wanted to do was die. On Christmas day, 2022, I wanted to go for a drive because the way I get out of my own head is to go for a drive, turn the music on really loud, and go about my day. But on this day, I couldn't do that. I live in upstate New York. Christmas Day 2022 here was horrible. It was minus 22 degrees. I get out to my car and go to start my car. My car won't start. None of the cars started because it's so cold. It was at that point that I was completely done. Mentally, I had just checked out. I came back into the house, and I don't even think my wife knew that I had come home. I went back upstairs to my room, took a bottle of pills I had sitting in my dresser, emptied them in my hand. I remembered two months before that I had read about the 988 suicide and crisis hotline. I was like, you know what, what's it going to hurt? Because I was in so much pain, I didn't understand what was going on inside me, so I couldn't really talk about it. I couldn't find my footing because I never felt this way before. I was in tears, and my hand was shaking so bad. So I picked up the phone and called 988. There was that glimmer of hope that something was going to get better, and it did. I've made that call, and I wished I had made that call sooner. But nobody in life teaches us how to deal with our mental health. It's not taught to us in school. Part of me was really mad at myself. I could fix everybody else's stuff, but I couldn't fix mine. I felt really weak and ashamed of myself because I couldn't fix me. At the time, I didn't understand what was going on. I will tell you that the lady on the 988 crisis line was the most compassionate person I've ever spoken to in my entire life. She saved my life that day. She spent at least three hours with me on the phone, getting me to a point where I could actually go downstairs and talk to my wife. I cried more that day than I have probably even when my mom passed away because I felt like I could actually talk about what was going on inside of me. The next day, I opened up to social media because, as I said, I'm an extrovert. I hid my pain well. Here's my little PSA for people out there: if you're an extrovert and you are doing that, take your mask off because all it did was end up hurting me more than anything else because I was pretending that I was OK and I wasn't. The next day, I opened up on social media to let people know what was going on. People were terrified because they didn't see the signs. They didn't see anything from me because, like I said, extroverts, we are the master of disguise, not a badge of honor. It is not a badge of honor. But I had about 200 people reach back out to me and say thank you because now they felt seen, heard, and validated. That was a healer for me. Being super vulnerable, here I was getting ready to take an early retirement. This is a PSA for anybody that's getting ready to early retire or just retire. If you're a CEO or a manager, check in on those employees because here's what happened. They took all my job duties away. From October until the time I retired in April, I sat around for eight hours a day and did nothing. My sense of purpose went away. Kim, I'm going to tell you it was a horrifying experience. Horrifying.

Kim Benoy: Yeah. Did your wife have any idea that you were feeling so awful?

Gretchen Schoser: None. Like how nobody could figure this out. We'll get into this later on, but on our podcast, if you go to season one, episode three, and listen to our New York trip, how nobody figured that out, because that was two weeks prior to me trying to take my life. I did things that were totally uncharacteristic for me. I look back at it and I'm like, how do you guys not pick this up? Like, did you not put two and two together? My wife was mad at herself because she couldn't see it. Here I am, slowly shutting down. I didn't want to decorate for Christmas. I passed it off as seasonal depression, but it was way past that. I didn't want to have anybody over for Thanksgiving. I just wanted to sit around and eat ham sandwiches all day. I didn't want to go out and do things. I would sit in a recliner and just be zoned out. If my wife was talking to me, as we get later in life, we do have selective hearing. I think I heard like eight words out of her mouth for a month. Even at work, people didn't see me because I wasn't physically at a job. I was on Zoom calls all the time. I had this awesome exterior, like I can put a smile on everybody's face, I can help them work through their problems. But I was just kind of checking out. Maybe on a few calls, I had RBF, where I was actually asked to come off a camera because I just didn't want to be there. I didn't want to be anywhere. I didn't want to be in this body. I didn't want to be on this earth. I just wanted the pain to stop.

Kim Benoy: If someone back then would have noticed that and said, "Hey, what is going on, Gretchen?" Would you have told them?

Gretchen Schoser: If it was somebody that was close to me, if it was somebody that I really trusted and they wouldn't take it and stab me in the back, yes, I think I would have told them because I was really hurting. People would ask me how I'm doing. Our standard line is, "I'm fine, I'm living the dream." But if somebody had asked me a more pointed question, like really dug deeper, I think they would have figured out I was really depressed.

Kim Benoy: Did part of you want to just look at me? Look, something's going, can't you see, can't you help me?

Gretchen Schoser: Yes, yeah. I wanted to shake people. I'm like, can you not see, like, I am mentally checking out. I just wanted to shake people. I'm like, do you not realize what's going on? They all knew all the other stuff that had been going on since September. Just piling it on or taking it away or coming in to me and complaining about something at work at that point. I didn't care because I was leaving in a couple of months. But that other part of me, that giver part of me, that people pleaser part of me, wanted to keep showing up for people even though I couldn't show up for myself.

Kim Benoy: Yeah, it's so ingrained in some of us that we, nothing else matters. Like we have to keep give, give, give, give, give.

Gretchen Schoser: Yeah, keep giving until like I couldn't give anymore. I really got to that point, like I just couldn't give anymore. I couldn't give to myself. I couldn't give to the people around me. I thank God for that little glimmer of hope. I don't know what it was. It could have been my mom. It could have been something, but it told me that things were going to get better. It was at that moment that I made that call and I'm so grateful to be alive.

Kim Benoy: Thank God.

Gretchen Schoser: Because what happened after that surprised me more than anything else. I will tell you, I'm happier now than I've been in 20 years.

Kim Benoy: Amazing. I don't want to keep going back to dwell on it because I want to talk about what happened after and the hope that there is for whoever's listening. But being where we're at this crazy time of life, this midlife, if we want, that's what we call it. All these things are happening and you had so many extra things with people dying and early retirement and not having that purpose at work. That's something I'll go through at some point in our midlife, some of those things. But how do you think? I guess my question is, if some of those things that happened as a younger person, do you think you would have handled it differently? Or do you think life had any role in that?

Gretchen Schoser: I think that the early retirement part of it would have been better because at the time, like I said, I was 59 and a half. We all know that there's ageism in the workplace. I was really fearful of not being able to find a job, even though I am truly a subject matter expert in my field. But when you're depressed, you don't think about that. You think about all the other things like, how am I going to pay my cell phone bill? I like my bougie toys. How am I going to pay for this? What am I going to do? If it had happened earlier in my career, that part of it probably would have been easier for me to handle. But all the things that were like one after another, after another, after another, it really compounded fast. I've had bad, horrible things happen to me all my life, like when my mom passed away, when my dad passed away, getting sick, having eight million gazillion surgeries. I've been laid off before, but having all this kind of just land on my plate. I didn't know how to section it out because at the end of the day, it was just a big old pile of crap. I don't know what to do with this.

Kim Benoy: Yeah. Wow. So tell us, let's talk about the hopeful part in that glimmer that told you to call 988.

Gretchen Schoser: So like I said, that lady was phenomenal. She was so awesome. She made sure I'd had a therapy appointment scheduled. She gave me a ton of resources. She hooked me up with the Tompkins County Mental Health Association, made sure I was okay before I even got off that phone and before I even went downstairs and talked to my wife. I had to sit with myself and like I said, I cried and I hadn't cried in like months, but I just cried because now I felt a sense of relief. I felt seen, heard, validated. I didn't feel so alone. Like somebody else knew what was going on with me and she gave me the tools that I needed to talk to my wife. Yeah, my wife was pissed. Okay, because listen, I've been hiding this, not hiding it, but I couldn't talk about it because I didn't know what it was for three months. It was during that conversation, and as I was going through therapy, we came up with a code word, like if I need to get out of the house. My code word is unicorn. I don't use that word very often. If I need to get out of the house, I say unicorn. No matter if it's like three feet of snow on the ground or blistering hot outside, we will get in the car and go for a drive because that helps me get out of my head and kind of refocus on other things than all the negative stuff. I'm going to tell you, it made our relationship stronger. We are now at 31 years.

Kim Benoy: Congratulations. Awesome.

Gretchen Schoser: 100,000 dog years, if anybody asks.

Kim Benoy: 100,000 dog years.

Gretchen Schoser: But I'm so grateful to her, right? Because she didn't shun me. Yeah, she was mad. She had a reason to be mad. I was mad at myself. But she didn't shun me and she just wanted to make sure I was okay. Once work found out, my boss at the time, we're like best friends and I use that term super loosely because there's a 20-year difference between the two of us. She was only my manager for a super short period of time because everybody knows I was getting ready to retire. Part of my healing was calling her every morning and we would laugh about stuff you should never, ever, ever, ever, ever laugh about. But here's the great thing about those kinds of conversations. Laughter is a natural healer because it breaks up your cortisol, it gets your serotonin going, it gets your endorphins going. We would be in a call later in the day, and we would start laughing, and people would be like, what are you laughing about? I'm like, well, we can't talk about it, because we're probably laughing about you. It was during one of those conversations, she's like, we should do a podcast. So we did. We created a podcast to normalize how we talk about mental health, because as I was going through my own battle, I had tried to find podcasts that would help me kind of figure out what was going on. I couldn't find anything. Like, you remember the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off and the teacher Bueller, Bueller? Like some of those podcasts, that's all I heard was Bueller, Bueller. I'm like, this is not helpful because like 30 seconds later I'm asleep and I'm still like in this bad funk. We released our first episode on February 14th in honor of my mom. I had buried my mom on Valentine's Day in 1997. As part of my healing journey, I wanted to change the trajectory of that day. We kind of did the podcast as a joke. Well, the joke was on us, okay, because we're like, yeah, nobody's going to listen to us. We're going to do three episodes. We'll be done, right? 190 episodes now, listened to in over 160 countries and we have about 5 million downloads. Don't ask me how any of that happened because it freaks me out every single day. About six months after we released our first episode, we had a listener reach out to us and thank us because we helped save their life. They actually contacted the 988 number, got into therapy, and so we knew that our episodes were starting to hit. People were starting to listen and really normalize these conversations. Because here's what happens when we talk about it. Every time we talk about what's going on in our lives, we unlock somebody else's prison so that they do not feel so alone and terrified in their own journey. If you're here in the States right now, you know that everything is crazy. Like the entire world is crazy right now. Since January 20th of 2025, our numbers have gone up over 50 percent. It scares me because we're all struggling and people are having a hard time finding people to talk to. That was my first healer. My second healer and the second really cool thing that happened is I did get a job. I ended up working for a really small consulting firm, working about 30 hours a week. I didn't want to work that hard. Listen, I put my time in for 45 years. I was done. It was all well and good until that small consulting firm in November of 2024 got acquired by one of the top five big consulting firms. I was like, yeah, no, this is not going to happen because I was already 60 at the time. I'm like, you know what? I've worked really, really, really hard and I do not want to go back to doing this again. Listen, I do not need a micromanager. I don't need any of this. What was cool this time and a lot of people commented on it is I was very open and very honest about how I was feeling. I didn't hide it, I took my mask off, I was unhappy, I didn't want to do this. One of the things that I've kind of learned about myself over the last few years is I don't want to compromise anymore. I've compromised my entire life. I don't want to compromise for somebody else's happiness. I want to do something for me. My awesome wife, we were in New York City for our annual trip, we try and go back every winter because New York City in the winter is just magical. We had gone out to dinner and she's like, listen, I know you really hate your job and you can quit. Man, I'm telling you people, you know how that weight kind of lifts off your shoulders and then all of a sudden you're like, go back to like, ooh, I took an early retirement. Now how am I going to pay for my cell phone? So we're on the plane and I'm a very technical person and I had my resume and chat GPT on my phone and I forget how long it takes to de-isoplane. It takes like an hour and a half. I'm like, perfect, I have plenty of time to do this. So I fed my resume into chat GPT and I was like, based on everything we've done with the podcast and what I've done in my work life, form an independent consulting firm. About two minutes later, it spat out all this stuff and about two-thirds of that stuff I did not want to do again. Listen, after 45 years, we do not want to do a whole lot of stuff, right? We want to shrink that down to the bare minimum. I get home and start finalizing what my business plan is going to look like, how I'm going to be able to accomplish this. It's just me and my wife and six cats. I had the money that I could sink into my business. For anybody that's over the age of 59 and a half, whenever you take your withdrawal from your 401k, you don't have to pay a tax penalty. You do have to pay tax, but you don't have to pay the penalty. I used my 401k to jumpstart my business. On January 2nd, I went back to work and turned in my resignation and people were shocked. Once again, people do not learn how to read the room. Listen, for months you told me to come off the phone because I had RBF. I get it. But I did this for me. The first year of business was really hard. I'm going to call last year like kind of the unpaid vacation. I did have a couple of customers, which were great. But towards the end of the year, things started to dry up. My little brain doesn't stop. It's just like thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking. I use AI every single day. I've used it every single day since we started the podcast and I use it now in my business. I went to our local library. I live in rural upstate New York. We have 6,500 people that live in our little village. I was like, Hey, can I do some free AI training? The library jumped on it. Since December of last year, I have been going once a month and doing AI training for free with senior citizens, people in the community. The way that I can keep it free is I go to local businesses and have them sponsor me because here's what we're doing. We're empowering our community to do better because in rural America, it takes a long time for technology to make its way to us. It happens. But by the time it does happen, there's nobody around to help teach people. People that have been coming to my class love it. They come with a long list of questions. They give me a sense of purpose. Also, at the beginning of the year, I ended up getting a really awesome client and I'm going to end up, you know, it's a 1099 consultant being able to be paid every two weeks is the most phenomenal thing in the entire world.

Kim Benoy: That's awesome.

Gretchen Schoser: But that's kind of how everything happened. I want people to see me as a story of hope because even on that darkest day, I did the things. I still go to therapy every week. I still practice a ton of self-care and self-love. They may seem like buzzwords, people, they're not. Listen, if you are not taking care of yourself, there's absolutely no way that you're taking care of everybody else. You may think you're doing a fantastic job, but at the end of the day, that's what it was. I didn't take care of me. I took care of everybody else's stuff. As an empath, I've now learned to set some really serious boundaries. Know when to flip that shield up so it reflects back on somebody else, listen, homie don't have time now. I think I told you before, this is the happiest I've been in 20 years, because I'm doing it for me, and I have a sense of purpose, and I still get to do my technical stuff, I'm still doing it. My mental wellness stuff. Work with a lot of small businesses to make sure that they have tools in-house, you know, that are free. A lot of the stuff that's out there is free. All you need to do is implement it and maybe have a heart. It does. Having a heart is like a prerequisite to everything I do. I'm fortunate. I'm fortunate that I have a ton of people that still see me as that subject matter expert. They are thankful that I'm very vulnerable with my voice and getting my story out. My book is going to be released in January, I think. It's truly a memoir. I had like 20, 30 people read it before I sent it to a publisher because, you know, just need to self-check here, make sure I'm not crazy. They all told me the same thing. They couldn't put the book down. It made them laugh and it made them cry. They walked away feeling empowered because a lot of that book comes from my point of view and it gives people some tips and tricks on how to identify if your extroverted friend is depressed. Things you can do, things you can ask, how you can approach people because like I said, we are the masters of disguise and it opened my eyes to what I was going through and how I've seen other people struggle in the past. It's made me a way more empathetic person.

Kim Benoy: Can you maybe share, are you willing to share a couple of those tips for somebody who might be out there thinking, yeah, I have this really extroverted friend or maybe it's them, I don't know. But can you share a couple of those tips with people?

Gretchen Schoser: Yeah, so like the first thing that you can do is, you know, approach them with kindness because that kind of goes with anything you do in your life. Approach people with kindness. Be super empathetic when you're asking the question and ask them a question that we actually have to answer. Don't ask them like, how's your day going? Ask them, hey, how's your mental health going? Are you doing okay? Is there something I can take off your plate? Do you want to like step outside and like go for a walk and you know, things are like really heavy right now and you're not acting the same as you were a couple of months ago. Is everything okay at home? Are you struggling with something? If you get a chance, go out to YouTube, look up the Simon Sinek 8 minutes video. Every time I watch that video, I cry because you know what? We all have eight minutes for a friend. Every single one of us does. If you tell somebody, if you tell any of your friends, I'm always here for you, make sure you really are always there for them. If it's us reaching out to a friend, a lot of times we just need you to listen. Don't try and fix us. We just need a way to air out what's going on in our head. We don't necessarily need fixing because nine times out of 10, we have a therapist that'll do that for us. A lot of times we just need a friend. You can help with that situation by approaching it with a laugh too. Because as I said, laughter is that natural, it's a natural healer. It kind of breaks up all the madness that's going on in your head. Some people may not want to talk, but you can also give them the suggestion of, hey, maybe you might want to call the 988 Suicide and Crisis Hotline, because it's not just for suicide ideation, it's truly for crisis too. Those counselors are amazing, amazing humans that all they want to do is help. I want people to remember that you are loved, wanted, and needed in this world. This world is a better place because you're in it. You are not a burden. You are enough and people actually want to help you. But you have to take that first step and you have to take that mask off because if you're not going to take that mask off, nobody can get in to help you.

Kim Benoy: Yeah. So many wonderful messages there. I'm so thankful that you called 988 that day. That is amazing. You are an advocate you call yourself for that.

Gretchen Schoser: I do. I listen to every podcast that I record, every podcast that I guest on. I don't care what the topic is. 9-8-8 is such an incredible resource. If you're listening in Canada, Canada also has a 9-8-8 crisis hotline. There's websites and everything, but pick up the phone, call somebody, let people know what's going on. You shouldn't carry this burden away.

Kim Benoy: Right. You touched earlier too, on community and reaching out to other people. That's a theme that I've noticed as I'm talking to people about mental health, especially. But in general, we need other people in our lives and we need to be talking to them and interacting with them. Ironically, we're talking through a computer screen right now, but not through a computer screen.

Gretchen Schoser: Yeah, I mean, for me, I joined a support group. I live in very rural America and the best way for me to get that community of people that have been in a similar situation was joining a support group. You would be amazed at how helpful those support groups are. There are some people that talk, there are some people that don't talk, but it all starts to resonate and gives you better resources to help you make it to that next day. I have a ton of friends from those support groups that still reach out to this day and we check in on each other. Make it a regular habit to check in on your friends. On Sundays, I do a mental health check-in. I text everybody. I ask them a question, like how's their mental health? They can answer with a text or they can just give me a thumbs up and let me know they're okay. If there are people in your life you haven't heard from in a really long time, maybe check in on them now because they may have their own stuff going on, but there's a lot of external stuff coming at us right now that is scary and hard, and a lot of us don't know how to handle that. That simple text, man, that just can brighten anybody's day, just people letting them know that somebody's thinking about them.

Kim Benoy: Yeah, that one simple idea can change your whole outlook.

Gretchen Schoser: It can change your whole outlook. I started a gratitude practice about two years ago. Part of my gratitude practice is the first 20 minutes of every morning, I watch the most messed up, funny, raccoon videos, and I laugh. Then I feel bad for about five minutes after that because now they've just destroyed somebody's property. But it made me laugh, right? So it gets me started. Then I stand up and I say out loud what I'm thankful for that day. It could be anything. I'm grateful that I have a bed to sleep in. I'm grateful to be alive. I've really stopped with that negative self-talk because a lot of times we talk to ourselves worse than we would ever respond to somebody in a text message, worse than when you want to yell at somebody. Be kind to yourself. If every time you're thinking about that negative thought, turn it around and make it a positive thought because that actually helps you. The world's beaten us up enough as it is. Stop beating yourself up.

Kim Benoy: We need to go inside of ourselves sometimes and just see what's really there and feel that yeah, we are worthy. We are valued and we are beautiful and this is another way of talking about that, which I think is so important.

Gretchen Schoser: For any age, I don't care if you're 25 years old or if you're 80 years old. You still need to check in with yourself every single day. The other thing that I've been really working on is my joyfulness practice. Because joy is intentional and joy can help change the trajectory of your day. It's easy to find joy. Like for me, I got to go outside today without a jacket on. I was like, wow, this is awesome. Or, flipping back through my phone, I have a joy folder on my phone and it's pictures and videos that bring me happiness. It's the sound of a little kid laughing. It is watching the baby foxes and baby raccoons walking through our property. Those are the things that bring us joy. That joy, like I said, it's intentional, can help you, like even reframe some of the negative thoughts that are going on in your head. Now I learned this overnight. This is three years of really intense therapy, learning how to set boundaries, learning how to throw that shield up when I need to throw it up and finding my joy. For anybody that's out there, and I know there's a lot of people that are kind of like in between jobs or maybe have gotten laid off. My recommendation to you is don't chase the money, don't chase the dream, chase joy. Because at the end of the day, money may not bring you that joy. That dream may not be that dream that you thought it was. Chase joy. Chase things that are going to make you happy. At the end of the day, you're going to find that going to that really horrible job that you have to go to or the fact that you're out there looking for another job, you can still be a productive member of society and still be proud of yourself. I think those are really important messages because you know what, nobody tells us that.

Kim Benoy: Yeah. No, they don't. That's usually the opposite that we get from the outside world.

Gretchen Schoser: Yeah, the outside world is like, yeah, I hope you fail, have a great day, bye. Yeah, no, I don't do that.

Kim Benoy: Yep. See ya. Yeah. Wonderful. I love all these messages and yes, wonderful for anyone of any age as we just said. Can you tell us the name of your podcast? Because I don't believe we have said that yet.

Gretchen Schoser: So the name of our podcast is Shit That Goes On In Our Heads and it's spelled with an exclamation and not an I. I don't know why it's still a bad word, but apparently it is. Nobody wants to let us use the real word. They can go out to goesoninourheads.net you can read all about us. You can listen to all our episodes, but we are on every single platform in the world. We are an audio-only podcast mainly just because we want to have a little bit of anonymity that goes with our guests. A lot of times they have not shared this story with people that they've known for years. We always take guest suggestions. We are completely booked with guests until May of 2027.

Kim Benoy: Wow, that's awesome. Does it come out every week or is it more often?

Gretchen Schoser: Yeah, it's crazy. We drop two episodes a week.

Kim Benoy: Okay, wow, amazing. Good for you. That is awesome.

Gretchen Schoser: Like I said, it gives me a sense of purpose. It was funny, like when we first started the podcast, my wife was really funny. She's like, I've never seen you work so hard for something you don't get paid for. But the thing is, it's like, we are doing a service. I will tell you that over the last three years, I have seen companies on LinkedIn really start to pay attention and start paying attention to our messages and the information that we get out there. I will always look out for the little guy. I always look out for the employee and I really hammer into employers that they need to start paying attention to people's mental health because right now, like over the last two years, the true suicide attempt rate and completion rate is up over 50%.

Kim Benoy: My goodness.

Gretchen Schoser: We need to all be watching out for each other. Be kind, find joy, don't be a jerk. If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. Just remember that if somebody's yelling at you, they may have something really horrible going on in their life and they don't have a manageable way to get that information out and you probably just hit a nerve. Don't take it personally.

Kim Benoy: Offer support.

Gretchen Schoser: So many wonderful messages, I said, Gretchen, I feel like we could just keep talking all day and, you know, keep sharing everything that I'd like to talk to you about, but we'll have to close it up here. Is there any one last little message you want to leave with the listeners?

Gretchen Schoser: I do. You know, in the state of the world today, if you see people struggling, I don't care if they're introvert, extrovert, if it's a coworker, it's a manager, be kind to them, approach them with kindness, and offer them a solution. If they just need a shoulder to lean on, give them your shoulder. Don't try and fix this, but offer them suggestions of like maybe contact 988 or have you thought about, you know, maybe talking to a therapist. Don't try and fix us because we already know we're broken. But just be that kind, compassionate friend that you are and have been and just know that having you in their life is a huge difference.

Kim Benoy: Very good. Thank you so much, Gretchen, for spending time with me today. I hope we get to talk again soon.

Gretchen Schoser: I hope so too.

Kim Benoy: Thank you for listening to Midlife with Courage. If you liked what you heard, I would love it if you would leave a review, or even better, send a link of this episode to a friend. And remember, if you are in crisis, please text or call the 988-CRISIS line. Until next time, take care of your beautiful self.