November 28, 2023 • 51 mins
Corporate Executive and devoted wife Jennifer Seidner Johnson was living her best life until one cold February night when she found herself lying in a pool of blood during a city-wide blackout. Tune in for her incredible story as she sits down with Jacob & Ashley to tell about the night there were six shots in the dark.
Follow Jennifer Seidner on:
Instagram: @Jseidne
Facebook: @Jennifer.Seidner.1
LinkedIn:Jennifer Seidner
__
Follow the show on
Instagram: @thegoodstuffpodcst
Twitter: @TheGoodStuffpodcst
Facebook: @TheGoodStuffPodcst
Website: TheGoodStuffPodcast.com
Youtube: @TheGoodStuffPodcast
Email the show at thegoodstuffpodcast22@gmail.com
Follow Jacob & Ashley on
Instagram: @jacob_schick & @ashleyschicktx
Twitter: @jacob_schick & @ashleyschicktx
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome to the Good Stuff. I'm Jacob Shick and I'm
joined by my co host and wife, Ashley Shake.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Jake is a third generation combat Marine and I'm a
gold Star granddaughter. We work together to serve military veterans,
first responders, frontline healthcare workers, and their families with mental
and emotional wellness through traditional and non traditional therapy. At
One Tribe Foundation, we.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Believe everyone has a story to tell, not only about
the peaks, but also the valleys they've been through to
get them to where they are today.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Each week, we invite a guest to tell us their story,
to share with us the lessons they've learned that shaped
who they are and what they're doing to pay it
forward and give back.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Our mission with this show is to dig deep into
our guest journey so that we can celebrate the hope
and inspiration their story has to offer.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
We're thrilled your joining us again.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Welcome to the Good Stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Our guest today is Jennifer Seidner Johnson, who's an incredible lady.
She's a great friend, and she's an executive at Torchies
Tacos's Best. Today She's here to tell us her story
and the story of her late husband, West Point grad
and United States Army Captain Noah Johnson.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
This is the heroing tale of the night Jennifer survived
being shot six times by her husband when he had
an undefined episode. It is important to Jennifer to tell
her story because she knows firsthand the power of vulnerability.
In opening up and talking about mental.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Health, she epitomizes what it means to be a warrior,
and this conversation is proof positive that everyone has a
warrior within.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
From the moment Jennifer walked in the room, we felt
the abundant power of her presence and her energy.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Jennifer Sidner Johnson, we are so excited that you're here
with us on the good stuff. Thank you for being here.
It is great to see you.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
Thank you for having me. We've grown a great opportunity
to be here tell the story with you today.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
We truly appreciate you being here. It's great to see you,
and we are so thankful that you have the courage
to come and tell us your story. It is one
heck of a story. We were kind of living it
alongside from a distance. Obviously, you were down in Austin
and we live up here in Dallas, but our mutual
and dear friend Natalie Woods Stanier was keeping us posted
(02:17):
all along the way along your journey. So let's just
start from February twenty twenty one snovid.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
Yeah, so, if you remember, we're still trying to come
out of that pandemic world and kind of working from home,
and then we got hit with this monster eye storm
in Austin. We have been without power for three days,
so we were already in survival mode. My husband was
like chopping firewood all day, and you know, we have
(02:45):
bathtubs full of water, living my candle light felt like that,
you know, go to old days, that's what they called
them back then. I don't know why, but we were
really just trying to survive that storm. And it kind
of had been a not a regular day, but as
typical as you could say possible, just kind of make
it through those circumstances. And the power came on maybe
(03:09):
around ten pm that night for the first time I
get in like three days, and so I was like, oh,
I can get some work done. So I stayed up
and my husband went on to bed. I remember he
texted me, I love you good night, and I got
my work done and went to bed. I didn't know
like that would be kind of that last one I
(03:31):
would think conscious communication I ever received from my husband,
because right before three am, my husband woke me up
and he asked me if I would put him back
to sleep, which was a very odd request, and he
was acting. The best way I can describe it is
(03:54):
he was acting like he was sleepwalking, like staring off,
not looking directly at me, and asking very odd questions.
So I actually asked him, like, are you awake right now?
And he said I'm in the in between, and I said,
you're scaring me. I was like, what do you even
(04:15):
mean by that? He said, I can understand why you
be scared right now. So my husband name is Noah
and he was a type one diabetic, so my head
initially yet went to he's having sugar low because when
he had tuggar loos before, he wasn't able to think clearly.
You can talk and break out and sweat can move.
(04:38):
So I was like, are you able to go into
the kitchen with me to get your diabetics supplies, let's
test your blood sugar and like pretty non responsive, And
I got out of bed and we started walking, but
he just walked to the other side of the bed
and sat down, and when he sat down, I'm trying
to interact with him. I trying to get him get
(04:59):
back up, go with me, and at that point he
just became a zombie on me, almost like gone gone.
That's where it scared me. And there was an incident
that happened prior, like four years before that that I
had very consciously on my mind that where he had
kind of gone into a similar state and then had
kind of become, if you will, violent, and I was thinking,
(05:22):
I'm not gonna be able to handle this on my own.
He's sitting on the side of the bed and I
told him, I'm like, I'm gonna go call for help.
And I left him on that side of the bed
and I walked back over to my side of the
bed where my cell phone was on the nightstand. I
pick up that phone. I dialed nine one one. I
(05:44):
remember I put it on a speaker because I thought
I might have to work with him. And as I
turned to walk back around and got into the front
of the bed to walk back towards him, one the
power went back out. So we were on rolling blackouts
at this time. So we go on and go off,
and I remember saying out loud, oh, the power just
went back off. And as soon as I said that,
(06:07):
I heard what to me is down in like fireworks
going off in the room. In fact, it took me
a while to even realize what was going on. Now
one of the blessings I feel like I have in
my life. It was pitch black, so I don't have
any visual of this, but my husband was shooting at me,
(06:28):
really shooting up the room. But I don't have a
visual that I could see the flashes from the gun,
but it was so just far out there, and like
I know, people always say, it feels like you're on
a movie or it felt unreal, like I couldn't even
fathom what was happening until I started getting hit. So
I ended up getting shot six times, my arm, my chest,
(06:53):
and the last one that hit me and maybe go
unconscious for a little while is I got shot right
under the jaw line here, and I call it my
miracle wound because it actually ended up exiting out my nose,
therefore missing my ears, my eyes, and my brain completely.
But it's kind of shattered and my jaw was gone.
(07:16):
And this was completely open. Yeah. I can't tell you
how many times I've been to the doctor and everything
now and they're all just labergasted by that. How I
could have survived that wound specifically and also had collapslungs
and you know, it just missed every major organ that
(07:39):
would have been a lethal hit. When that shot hit,
I did go unconscious for a bit. My husband ended
up taking his own life. I was not conscious for that.
So I also I feel like these are little blessings
that I had, if I can call it that, during
the situation. But I really do feel like those things
were block for me for a reason. But while I
(08:02):
was unconscious, I had some interesting thoughts and visions, some
I can't really explain and I'm all share with you
because they just happened and it's my truth and it's
just kind of weird. But I definitely remembered I was
forty two at the moment and just kind of had
that unbelievable realization like I'm going to die today. In
(08:22):
my process going through that, I was still conscious enough
to be like, I'm going to die at forty two,
and like, how crazy is that? And that's the end
of my story? And then definitely had that feeling and
really try to push out as much energy as I
could into the universe to send my loved ones messages
of goodbye, how much they meant to me. I can't
(08:47):
believe this is happening. I did have that thought that
no one was going to believe what just happened, Like
I couldn't believe what just happened, and it was so
kind of outside I think what a lot a lot
of people's experiences would have been with my husband that
I was like, nobody's gonna believe what just happened, and
I'm the only one in the room that experienced it.
(09:11):
I remember consciously having that like people are not gonna
believe this the weird thing. I'll just share, and I'll
just share it because it was a weird vision I had.
But I feel like there was almost a decision pitched
to me at a point. This is why I say
it's weird, and I can't explain why this was a
vision given to me, but it is what it is.
(09:33):
So I don't know if you ever saw that news
story where a lady had a pet chimp and she
had her face torn off. Okay, for some reason, the
vision that was given to me. She had had like
plastic surgeries to have a new face put on. Wow,
I feel like a decision was kind of put out
in front of me, like if you were to go
(09:55):
on and live the rest of your life like that,
like you would have to have a new face, would
you want to go forward or you would you want
to go ahead and leave? And I was like, I
want to live.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
I want to go Forward's no hesitation. I'm curious to
know was there any contemplating or was it immediately?
Speaker 3 (10:11):
I think it was pretty immediate immediate. I don't remember contemplating.
I remember actually sitting back thinking because I remember them
saying it's gonna be real hard, like you're gonna look deformed.
You'll still get to live life. And maybe I can't put,
you know, a full memory on how long it took
me to make it, but I felt like I was like, no,
you're convicted. Yeah, I want to lift.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
I've actually shared with Ashley, people very close to me,
that I feel like, given the right circumstance, God is
willing to meet you halfway. Now. Obviously that's not every instance, right,
but I do sometimes feel like we are given a decision,
we're given a choice, I can't explain to you or
the listeners how much I relate to what you're saying.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
Okay, good, I share it because that really happened. And
like why I had the vision of that specific lady,
I can't. I don't know, but that's my truth. Like
that that happened while I was going through this whole thing,
And it's interesting to hear you say you could relate
to that.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
So it's still pitching that dark and you had called
nine one one, The call went through, So what happened next?
Speaker 3 (11:22):
Again, if you remember, I had put it on speaker,
that my phone on speaker because I thought, you know,
I had called for my husband and I thought I
was gonna have to be helping with his care. So
what ends up saving my life is the nine one
one dispatcher heard the whole thing, so i'd actually when
(11:43):
I started getting shot, dropped that phone. It hit the
our wood floor and shat. That phone shattered and still worked,
and so they one could hear the whole situation. But
when I came like back to I remember hearing the
nine one one saying nine when one do you have
an emergency? Now again to paint the picture I have
(12:06):
no jaw at this time in my and my tongue
is flitt in the four. Well, the other crazy part
of the story is we did communicate me and the
nine one one dispatcher one. I would say she was
very well trained. She could do yes no answers that
I could more articulate. She needed to figure out where
(12:27):
I was. They couldn't locate me. We needed to get
an address, so we went through and finally took a while,
I got my address. And then also keep in mind
again it's ice storm, right, so that fire station is
five minutes from my house, and it took twenty minutes
(12:48):
for them to get to me, and I'm bleeding out
pretty profusely, right, So I do remember watching the pool
kind of grow around me, and I had one of
my dogs in ruin. I remember trying to keep him
out of it for whatever reason, because you wanted to
come to me, and I was kept pushing him away.
(13:09):
And that was pretty scary because you can definitely feel
yourself leaving or just getting Yeah, you can you feel it,
you feel yeah. I haven't listened and I went one tapes,
but I know I shared that with that with the
dispatcher several times that I'm telling her they need a hurry,
because I could feel myself dying and it's.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
A feeling that is very hard to.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
Articulate correct and even like she was doing her job
of asking me questions to keep me conscious, and I
remember they were getting harder to answer, and I was like,
oh no, like like it took me a while to
think about it because my brain started I just pushing
blood to other places. Net was needed.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
From the time you called, you made the call and
you hit speaker, was it twenty minutes from the time
that happened or was it you know, twenty you know,
say twenty three and a half or whatever.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
It was a little bit more, Yeah, because then.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
The events had to unfold and then you know, clearly
the dispatcher had to process what was going on.
Speaker 3 (14:06):
Yeah. I think the events are around ten minutes and
then wait.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
For another I'm curious to know. Did it feel like
an eternity? No, it felt or did it feel like
this happened, there's this shock, here's me coming back into myself. Yeah,
and then now I hear the help arriving. Because with me,
(14:30):
I in my experience, it was like this is quite
possibly the longest day on the planet.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
That's so true. The word you shock is probably the
best because even in the moment that almost like so motioning,
like what is actually happening? And even then when you
shock a process, what I was still in too much
shocked even kind of process was happening. And I don't
know if you were like this, But then my brain
went really to like very kind of a logical like
(14:59):
I need to survive now. Like I had no room
at that point to process like I just lost my husband.
What is this going to look like? My brain didn't
have any room for that. At that point I went
right into I need to get help. Am I able
to stand no? Because I didn't experience my husband killing himself.
I didn't know where my husband.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
Was left the room.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
He had not he had shot himself in the room. Okay,
but when I'm talking to the nine one one dispatcher,
I didn't know that. So she was at yes, shattered.
They're asking me where he was. I was telling them
I didn't know he's Unfortunately, when they came to the house,
they had to treat it like an active shooter situation.
(15:42):
I'll tell you that to say, even when I start
seeing flashlights and everything, and I'm like, I'm in here.
I'm in here, and I'm like begging them to come in.
They could not come in yet because they're treating. And
I'm telling the nine one one dispatcher I see them,
tell them to come on in. I'm telling her, please
tell them just come in, break down the door, come in,
and they couldn't because they had to secure the area because.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
That's not how it works. Unfortunately.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
Yeah, So what happened when they did come in, so unfortunately,
the way I found my husband had passed is they
did break in a door. I have a door that
goes to my bathroom that's connected to our bedroom. They
came through that door and I heard them come in
and they immediately start shouting. Watch. I watch at he's
you know, he's still arm, has a gun in his hand.
(16:27):
And then another officer said it doesn't matter, he's doa
That's how I learned my husband had passed. What went
through your head at that point, I'm in so much
shock that like the fact hit me, but nothing else
hit me. At that point, I was still in like
am I gonna die? Like at that point, I still
(16:49):
didn't know if I was going to.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Make it either to say, like, I think it's really
important for people to understand in that moment when you
feel and it is a fit physical sensation, feeling life
slowly leaving your body. It is a physical sensation that
it's very hard to describe and put into words. You
can be given any type of information that will register, yeah,
(17:14):
but you're almost in a place of you don't have
time to process what you're given because you're so focused
on it is almost like an internal clock that you feel.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
Yes, that is so spot on. I couldn't say it
any better. I heard it. Noah was gone, but I
couldn't do anything with that information at that moment.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
And there was nothing you could do anyway.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
At that point, I'm still laying on the floor bleeding out.
I don't remember feeling pain at that moment just yet.
I don't know how to describe it with the sensation
of leaving, I didn't feel pain, and until they put
a tourniquet on my arm, and it was like the
tourniquits it was like ratcheting down a wrench and everything
and crushing bone and all that. Where I that all
(17:59):
that suff I think I came a lot of little
shock into like full out pain at that point, he's
even getting getting hit by the bullets and everything. I
don't remember a lot of pain. More again, shock and
like what is happening right now more than anything.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
And that's the I mean, it's the body's way to
protect us from that. I mean, that's it's built in,
you know. And it's that those different chemical releases from
the brain to where you don't have to physically acknowledge it,
which makes it harder to understand. Obviously, my situation was different.
You know what happened. He was a high probability, right,
(18:37):
that's something shitty was going to go down. Another difference
being is I'm almost positive you were a much better
patient than I was. Yeah, I mean, but for me,
like my go to my whole life was to get
mad and fight, you know. That was how I came
out of the corner. If I was back then, that
(18:57):
was my go to? Was that right? So I immediately went
to my default. We all have different backgrounds and upbringings
and all those things. And again, like this was a
completely unexpected, very out of the norm. Yeah, and you're
given all these different things thrown at you. People do
not understand the amount of intake that had to happen
(19:21):
intellectually in that moment on top of the pain setting in,
because that clearly that takes everything to another level because
it's very distracting too. You start to feel the pain,
and then it throws off your thought process because then
it takes so much of your attention that you're not
(19:41):
able to process the way you were before it's set in.
Speaker 3 (19:44):
Yeah, bingo, because that from then on a like pain.
I do remember the ambulance tried to the hospital and
we're on ice. I'm conscious the whole time, but I
can remember us like all over the road and they're
like apologizing no time and again trying to keep the
bleeding on control, seeing if I can give me blood,
and like again the whole time, I'm just thinking between
(20:06):
like how unbarreled while the pain is at that point,
and like I don't even know if I'm going to
make it to the hospital.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
Because of the extreme circumstances that this all happened.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
Then Yeah, in fact, I remember almost being like still
feeling like I'm leaving because I still feel like we'll
see if I make it there. Like my head was
kind of in the like we'll see if I make
it to the next step, and like I was like, oh,
I made it till the help got there. Oh well,
let's see if I make it to the hospital. Like
it really is kind of that long right, like you're
(20:37):
just trying to see, like, oh, well I made it
to this. I wasn't sure if I was going to
and you just kind of go like, okay, here I
am now, and here I am now. I do remember
even getting the hospital and they opened those ambulance doores
and that cold air hitting like waking me up, like wooh,
like just a little bit of reality because I was
kind of baiting a b and like that woke me
(20:57):
back up a little bit, and going right into the hospital.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
That's crazy because I remember obviously it was not cold
where I was. It was like one hundred and twenty
something degrees. But it's the reality too that it was
almost like a physical shock. Yeah, that cold, But for me,
what it was is when you know they're loading that
gurney onto the you know, it was a filled gurney,
so you know they're loading it onto the black Hawk,
(21:24):
and I remember thinking to myself, like there's no way
the pain could get worse right now, there's no way
and the rotorwash blew up that she you know, there's bandages.
Doc was like bandage on, bandage off, bandage on, bandage off,
because I was bleeding and I remember the sand blowing
into the wounds. That was like the ambulance door is
opening for you, Like it hits you, and it's a
(21:44):
physical sensation that I believe is beneficial because it connects
you to these chemical releases. It gets you to keep
It's like, okay, it almost wakes you up a little bit.
Speaker 3 (21:56):
Yeah, it was like I woke back up like oh,
and then I was like, okay, now we're at the hospital.
So now let's see what happens in the emergency room.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
And so what were the next few months and it's
been just over two years now, Yeah, what happened next?
Speaker 3 (22:10):
Yeah, so a lot of rebuilding. Yeah, even when I
first got there, they were still like it was pretty
touch and go. It didn't.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
I was gonna say, how much do you remember before
you start to not remember her? Because that for me,
it was I think a surgeon was like I know
for a fact, as I watched him do it, they
gave this nod to the aneissus like please knock this
on little bit.
Speaker 3 (22:32):
Yeah, so I don't remember, I will say once I
got to the emergency room. The other thing I do
remember is fuss her heart. They call my mom, and
I remember trying to talk to my mom. It probably
didn't say the right things, but I remember I kept saying,
everyone shot, I've been shot. Is probably what no mother
ever wants to get that phone call. But I don't know.
I felt like I needed to give her facts in
the moment, yeah, which is I don't know. My brain
(22:54):
was still was in kind of very factual, like here's
what I am in the hospital, Like I didn't die,
I'm in the hospital, blah blah blah. I remember calling
my mom and then I think they put me out.
Then I don't remember anything until I woke up, like
the next day. I think, does she live close by you? Okay? No?
So I was in Austin, Texas. My parents live in Missouri,
(23:15):
and it actually took them like three or four days
to be able to get to me because of the
ice flights. They couldn't drive. Again, you get that phone
call and they couldn't even get to me.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
I can't fathom that as.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
A parent, I know, so Luckily, my mom had my
best friend's phone number, Elizabeth, and she called her, and
so Elizabeth was the first person at the hospital with
me when I woke up the next day.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
So that was the beginning of the hell of a journey.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
By the time I'd woke up, I had already had
a lot of surgery. Wanted to kind of get me
quit bleeding and everything. So one was just just to
get everything to survive and get me stable. Then I
had a lot of surgeries for I hope I get
this word right, bridement, just to get all the gunpowder
and everything. So because I guess at first in the er,
(24:08):
they just especially with my face, they try to like
close a lot of things up, but if you have
gunpowder anything in there, it'll continue to disintegrate the tissue.
So they actually had to go back open up and
just I had several if you will, just cleaning ye.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
Wash outs, wash out surgery, surgery, that's what they call
them wash outs.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
So a lot of that. Then you kind of start
to go into the rebuilding surgeries, and then that's where
you learn like that's not a hey, it will be
a couple of weeks and we'll get y'all hied up
and send you on your merry way. I won't ever
forget when my surgeon kind of sat and he's like,
it'll probably be like a year and a half, and
(24:50):
I couldn't believe what he was even telling me I
have a surgery tomorrow. So it's been like two and
a half years, so he probably was even being conservative
on his head. It hit me really hard when I
heard that at first, because you do think like you
want to kind of, I don't know, move on. And
(25:11):
patience was the hardest thing for me.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
And I don't It is such a bullshit word. They
have to come up with it, yeah, like patient, Like
I remember, it just pissing me off the fact that
that was the word because I was a bat, like
it was. I was not a good one. Like the
nurses would do paper rock scissors every night, okay to
see who got my chart. I was not a good thing.
Speaker 3 (25:36):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
I remember when I was really able to start to
analyze my wounds, and I remember because my love leg
was intraction, my left arm was intraction. I remember one
day they took my left leg out of traction to
clean the rods and stuff so the skin didn't grow up.
The rods, right, so they had to clean them and
(25:57):
make them push them back down and all this, and
I remember it was the first time I had seen
the back of my leg because I'd seen the front
and I saw the back and I was like, damn it,
what else have I not seen? That is like jacked up?
And then I remember seeing my thighs and seeing where
they had taken the skin and doing all and it
was just like this thick kept on giving in a
(26:19):
very negative light, and I was like, how much more
are you going to rob from Peter to give the ball? Yeah,
like I need to be briefed on this ship. Yep,
you know, And it's you're right. It is a very
long process.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
Yeah, because I think in my head and just me,
I was like, let's just do it all at once
and get it over with. That's not how it works
at all all. So I mean it's been you know,
a couple of years, cause like you gotta do a
step and then let that heale and see how it
works and how it doesn't work and if you have
to redo, and then you go to the next step
and next step. There's a few times where I might
(26:52):
have not taken the news so well, because you know,
but and so that's why I'm and like the patience
was the hardest thing for me, because yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
I'm curious to know from the very beginning, how long
were you in the bed? Like we're in the hospital,
I should say, yeah, but before you were allowed to
leave the hospital.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
I kept getting transferred to different hospitals because I was
in a trauma hospital, and this is kind of what
I would go through. It was like, so I was
there for probably like two months, and then in that
time I had to be patient, like between surgeries or
like we're a trauma hospital, we don't like maintain, so
then they would send me to another hospital while I
(27:38):
was healing from a knickt surgery, and then I have
to come back to the trauma hospital. So I did
that probably for three three and a half months, and
then I went to impatient rehab hospital after that.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
So I'd be we're talking like months on end a
year maybe close not quite.
Speaker 3 (27:56):
A year, but months. Yeah, because even in the reh
ab and we can go through but how to relearn
how to use my arm, my leg, and how to
relearn how to swallow talk everything I don't know about
you Jennifer.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
But I've never met a physical therapist that I like.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
They're there to hurt you. Never let never let a
physical therapist say, oh, we're just going to do a
massage today. That might sound really nice. That is going
to be your.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
Worst They're liars, all of them. Yeah, thank you to
physical therapists out there. You guys just equals suck factor.
That's it.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
But thank you for the work that you arms details.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
So what did you think about when you were there
in the hospital for that long?
Speaker 3 (28:49):
Actually, I think it was a pretty great patient. Again, sorry,
I'm going to be that person, I guess, but I
don't know. Something click to me pretty early that one.
I kind of had a vision that I'm gonna make it,
and when I go on, I wanted to get out
of there and I just was gonna think really positively
(29:12):
about it and the other thing that happened to me.
So again, it was twenty twenty one. When I got
to that hospital, it was totally overwhelmed, so it was
still COVID, so they're already full with COVID patients. And
then the ice storm created a lot of trauma patients
from accidents and things that happened and they had run
(29:33):
out of rooms, and I was I remember seeing these
nurses come in and they were like they couldn't even
go home because of the ice storm, so they were
living there.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
Another element. You don't even think about it, like that
doesn't cross your mind.
Speaker 3 (29:50):
Yeah, one day, this nurses came in my room and
she just broke down crying. She was just exhausted and sure,
and I I remember having that opportunity and I'm like,
I want to talk to her and like uplift her.
And I remember at the end of it, I was
just trying to build her up and make her feel
like appreciated and everything, and she was like, I can't
(30:11):
believe you're sitting where you exactly and you're the one
like lifting me up in my day, I felt it
in me like this is going to be my approach
to life, how I'm going to try to impact others.
So I actually had the approach like any nurse, anybody,
any the people that cleaned my room, anybody I could
touch while I was in there, just trying to me to.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
Any an impact on the fact that you listened to
that voice, the fact that you embraced it and you
didn't let you know the negativity seep in or the
why me or any of that. You said, you know what,
I'm going to turn this into a positive.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
That's beautiful.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
Yeah, I believe that's God given. I really do. We
all have a choice to make all the time. You
wake up and you fight for good or you fight
for evil, and it's a daily decision, yeah right, and
it can switch midday. It's something that is a conscious
effort throughout the entire day. I feel like that you've
really gotten close because I also believe that every human
(31:08):
being on the planet is born with an inner warrior, right,
and that has nothing to do with your job. You know.
That doesn't mean like you have to put on a
camouflage and go to war like that's not That's not
what I mean. I mean that like inner voice that
we all have. Yeah right. And I feel like that
you started feeding that gladiator immediately. It's obvious. It's prevalent
(31:29):
to me because you're here now only two years like
not even you know, that's relatively short timeframe for you
to be sharing what you're sharing now, and it's like, damn,
it makes me feel like I can you know, I
can do better, Like I can do better I can
do better perspective. It's a perspective in mindset.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
I will say, there are a lot of nurses and
even some of the doctors you know mds telling you
that they would come in and be like they could
almost tell if someone who's gonna make it or not
make it all based on that mindset, like do you
believe it? Do you believe it? And are you fighting
for it? And are you already living like you're you know,
(32:10):
I'm going to live. And I was very interesting to
hear again that medical staff see you know, whatever you know,
medicine or surgeries or whatever they could do, they knew
that there's something else to it. Right.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
That's another element to me when I say, God will
meet you half with are you a victim or you
a victor? And that's a daily decision, yeap.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
And even some of the nurses that would come in
and talk to me and the ones that'd be really overwhelmed.
What was overwhelming him are the patients that quit trying.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
Right.
Speaker 3 (32:42):
So when I went to the rehab hospital, I did
have the joke that I had a little competitive spirit.
So I was like I go in there and I'm like,
I'm going to be the fastest on that now I
was competing with all like eighty plus year old drying
hare like. But that's awesome, But what would make me
so sad? I remember calling my parents and everything are
(33:03):
You would see people that had just completely given up
and just like sit on the machines and just and
you just knew you just it's over.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
The will to live is a very real thing.
Speaker 3 (33:19):
Not just my experience almost dying, but also getting the
fight and seeing the difference between fighting and not fighting
to live. That has given me a lot of perspective too,
from this journey I've been on, so I've definitely seen that.
I feel like there was something clicked in me, something
came out of me pretty early that I made a
(33:39):
decision that I was going to live and I was
going to fight for it, and I wanted something good
and that carried me through a lot. And like that
inner warrior that you talked about, I would say that
I certainly did not know I had that within me.
I don't think a lot of people thought I had
that within me, but I sometimes can't believe it. I've
(34:01):
been able to do overcome, achieve even through this, and
I think a lot of people were really surprised how
hard I was able to fight through a lot of this.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
And we are so truly proud for you and proud
of you, so incredibly proud of you for that. Let's
talk about your support group.
Speaker 3 (34:23):
Oh my gosh. So one of the things I think about,
and it's almost like so weird to say, is like,
I don't know how one of the hardest years of
my life ended up being one of the best years
of my life as well. It was all because I
have never experienced the love and support of community and
(34:48):
the power of prayer that is the secret of making
things happen in this world. And I had so much
support of friends, my my employer torches tacos. If I
can shout them out, we love.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
If you don't like tacos, we can't hang out.
Speaker 3 (35:15):
Church communities, not only in where I live, around the world,
Like prayer change everything, like coming through UNBELI I mean,
I feel it, you really do feel I just I
can't explain it. But I was just so surrounded. I
had people like Natalie come stay with me and.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
We facetimed and I can't and I remember not because
sometimes in that face.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
It's like Natalie always face times, Jake, and we never
know what's going to be on because.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
God only knows what is about to happen in that exchange.
And then it's like if we're around the boys, I'm like,
is this going to be our kids? Appropriate? Like what?
But I know there's always a point, like there's always
a reason for it, and then so I always answer.
But I remember when we facetimed, and I don't remember, man,
(36:07):
it wasn't too long though, after you had gone through
what you went through. But I do remember talking to
you and like I felt your spirit then, like you
were already at the place that you were talking about
that you've been in since this has happened. I felt that.
I remember having you know, I showed you almost skin
(36:28):
grass and all my crap, you know, and it was like,
this is what I remember from this, and this is
you know, it's a marathon, not a sprint for sure,
you know, but it was so helpful.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
I remember that, And I remember I had you look
at where they had taken my fibula and plant and
the skin graft and everything. You're like, oh, that looks
so good.
Speaker 1 (36:45):
Okay. I think I told you on the call too,
Like I remember when they tried to transplant some they
amputated again to try and do a bone transplant from
my fibio to my left arm, and you know that felt,
but no knocked a certain tried and it was oddly enough,
when I realized it felt. I was doing a live
radio interview in my left arm just like kind of
(37:10):
semi explode, and my dad was in there with me,
and my dad's very he didn't like that stuff, and
we're standing. It was a radio studio where it just
had like the round tables that you stand all the
hosts stand up right, they're not seated, And I remember
what happened, and I remember my dad's face like going
as wide as your shirt. And I was like in
(37:30):
the middle of talking, like had his shirt like moving
him towards a seat so he doesn't faint, because you know,
I'm worried about my dad fainting in his head busting
open doing this, and so I'm like talking, do not
missing a beat, like pushing him towards this seat. My
arm's oozing in. The radio host is like, what in
(37:50):
the hell is going on right now? Like it was
never adult moment, you know, but yeah, it was. I
remember that that convo with you, and it was like
because I remember remember being in the hospital and I
don't think I ever in my life have had that
much time to think and just be. I learned in
(38:12):
the hospital. I was twenty two. That's where I learned
what being present means, especially with oneself. And it was
forced on me obviously. I mean, I'm not like I
was going to go play kickball anytime soon. Like I
was forced to learn what it meant to be with oneself.
Speaker 3 (38:30):
I love that. I have a lot of people ask me,
like again a little over two years out of it,
like how are you in this place now? And I'm like,
I had so much time with myself in that hospital
to think about so much stuff, like I don't it
just I am. It put me in a different place,
in a place that I feel like I have had
(38:51):
a lot of opportunity to work through a lot of things.
And you know, I will say at first, I was
a little worried because at first, like I almost couldn't think,
like I would just stare off I remember, and I
would be worried about myself, like am I going to
be able to function at work anymore? Right? Is my
brain and a function normally. I did have a lot
(39:12):
of shock and a lot of payments. You know, at
first where I started worry like, ooh, I hope you
know I'm going to be able to really think and
function normally. But then as I kept going, then yeah,
you just get a lot of time to reflect. And
the other thing I would think, kind of what Yousus
said is that's one of the gifts I think that
(39:33):
I've been given out of this is being more present.
I find myself a lot of times just pausing wherever
I am, and when I get this feeling like I
shouldn't be here. I would all be going on and
I wouldn't be here. So it feels like the sneaky
like I'm being able to see what would be going
(39:53):
on if I was gone, but I'm here, like because
it feels like that, like, oh, I got a second
chance at this. But the other part of it is
that it actually makes me actually kind of step back
and start taking everything in. Like I'll be in a
Starbucks and I'll just start looking around and notice everything
(40:17):
like the colors, the textures that think, the smells, and
I just try to like consciously take it all in,
Like if you're just standing in line, but really like
absorb the world a little bit more. And the other
thing that happens to me more now is if I'm
standing in line with y'all, I'll be looking at you
(40:38):
and I'll be thinking in my head because I don't
want to stay out loud and say people think I'm
a weirdo. It's like, oh my gosh, guys, like we're
all like standing here doing life together right now, Like
how are we like standing on this earth and the
same time, like we're gonna have to get a Starbucks
and like really soak that in. I know that sounds
completely it's awesome.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
Start living.
Speaker 3 (41:00):
And that is something that was given to me from
this experience that I know a lot of people can't
have and it probably sounds totally insane, but I have
those moments now where I'm just like, guys, we're totally
doing this right now.
Speaker 1 (41:16):
The power of that is indescribable. And I think the
takeaway is that you don't have to experience being blown
up or being shot or whatever to choose to do
that right like, you don't have to do it's a choice. Yeah,
And sometimes it's forced upon you, and sometimes you never
(41:39):
get the chance.
Speaker 3 (41:40):
Yeah, it is pretty powerful when you do it, and
I would so. Yeah, as much as you can just
take a moment and just step back and just be
present and taken all of it is so so important.
Speaker 2 (41:54):
Time is our most precious commodity, and time and time
again we're reminded of that you did get a second
chance at life. Thinking about you being in the hospital
going through all of this rehab that you went through
at the same time mourning the loss of your husband. Yeah,
let's talk about Noah, because he was a force to
be reckoned.
Speaker 3 (42:14):
He was and I have to say in the hospital
when I was having that energy wanting to touch others, Also,
what was going into a mind is that energy that
was just lost in Noah Because if for those that
knew Noah, I had never met a more extroverted person
in my life. And he had this power of wo
(42:35):
that he could just enter a room and if he
didn't already know half the room, he would make sure
he had impacted at least someone that matter, and oh
my gosh. Yeah, and I had never seen a force
like that. And I was pretty conscious again in the
hospital like that force had just left and it was
such an amazing energy that had impact on my life
(42:57):
because I am an introvert. I was like, I just
lost that and like somewhere in my head and my brain,
I was like, I need to take that part of
him with me, No, and carry it on.
Speaker 2 (43:09):
And you are. And it's so. I mean, I can
feel it across the table from you. That's exactly what
you're doing. And by you having the strength to come
even tell this story, you are doing that because I
knew No. I met him a couple times through the
standiards and he was he was magnetic, he had that energy,
had a great smile, and that you knew when his
(43:29):
presence entered the room, just like you just said. And
you have the same effect on people. And it's not
just because of this journey that what happened to you
didn't define. Maybe it woke something up inside of you.
But here you are doing that and giving that gift
to us.
Speaker 1 (43:45):
I think that's the reason that you're able to have
the courage you have that's on display to day right
because what you're doing right now, to me, that epitomizes
the very meaning of warrior. Okay, just because you got
shot out or whatever doesn't make you work right because
me getting severely wounded was a moment in time doesn't
(44:09):
define who I am, who I am and who I
evolve Intwo's up to me, not what's happened to me,
and it's on display with you. So of course you're
channeling all the good and then you're burning the pain
and the bad is fuel for the good. That's a thing, right,
(44:32):
And sometimes you're forced into that, and sometimes it takes
you down another path because again it's a choice. Every
day you absolutely are doing exactly that and like freaking
kudos in the strong enough word, but like just welcome
to the badass arena.
Speaker 3 (44:52):
So I think the other thing I'll want to say
is there is the physical part of going through the
hospital and kne but that wasn't actually the hardest part
for me. The hardest part of any of this that
I really struggled with is the why behind it, and
the point of not exactly sure what happened that early
(45:16):
morning and knowing that we'll never have answers of what
actually happened, like why did he act like that and
you know, try to take mine and did take his
own life? We'll never know that question, and uncertainty has
(45:38):
definitely been the hardest thing for me to grapple with
through everything.
Speaker 2 (45:42):
So how do you feel about him.
Speaker 3 (45:45):
I know a lot of people don't like this, but
I actually think he had the greatest loss. I always
put myself back at that early morning, and if you
remember how I started telling his story, like he was
not in his full capacity. Now again, I don't know
if that was tied to his diabetes. I don't know
if he was wrestling with you know, voices in his
(46:10):
head of depression. We don't know if as pt as
a d We don't know. I don't feel like he
was acting with his full capacity. So I feel like
there was a big loss there. I do feel like
mental health that is a big thing that has impacted
my family's life. But overall, he was a complex man.
(46:35):
When he was good, he was the best. Anyway he
was bad, and he was often the worst. I feel
like that about all of us, and we've got to
give grace, Like people are very complex people and they're
dealing with a lot of things, and even for we've
had other people that have chosen to take their lives
and it's hard to understand. But I was not in
their shoes, and I do not know what that would
(46:58):
be like. I would love to be able to help
any way I can, but I'm definitely gonna not be
the one that passes judgment on that, even when I'm
the victim. Yeah, I loved him and love him. Good.
Speaker 1 (47:13):
Listen, that, like, what you're choosing on the daily is
one of the reasons you are where you are right now.
I know it for a fact, and I think that
there is so much power in that because it's hard.
It's the harder thing to do. The easier thing is
(47:37):
the anger, resentment, all the shit. Because we have so
much more to draw from when it comes to those emotions.
It makes it so much easier because it's a very
little effort. The fact that you're choosing love, grace, forgiveness, joy, gratitude,
You're able to feel the things God intended forced to
(47:59):
fill the way He intended for it to be felt,
and you're just scratching the surface on the power in that. Like,
I am so stoked to see where you go from here.
It is literally just the beginning, and it's all because
(48:20):
of you and God, you know that, but mainly because
of you and your mindset and your conviction and that
I am going to live well in spite of it all.
Just stay the path.
Speaker 2 (48:33):
I'm officially going to change your name to Grace's. That's it. Sorry, Sorry,
Jennifer is now Grace.
Speaker 3 (48:39):
Can I end with that? Just one bunny?
Speaker 2 (48:42):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (48:43):
So.
Speaker 3 (48:43):
One of the things I did not share, but I
hope your listeners will get quite a kick off and
it'll be my last advice I'll give is also when
I was coming to and laying there thinking I was
dying and leaving the earth. So I had been doing
keto and running, and I had lost a lot of
(49:06):
weight before this, like seventy pounds. I had really worked
hardy seventy pounds I did, and.
Speaker 1 (49:11):
So I really would you lost a small human?
Speaker 3 (49:14):
I did. I had been working really hard. But as
I was laying there on the ground, I had to
tell you that one of my dying thoughts was about food.
So and this is how I know that food is
so important to me in my life, because I literally
had the thought like my last meal was a freaking salad.
(49:36):
This is this all literally happened. I literally was there
like I would have ate something good if I knew
my last day. So now I try to tell everybody
I can, like eat the cookie. Start with dessert, because
one of your dying thoughts might be.
Speaker 1 (49:51):
About you got a damn salad.
Speaker 3 (49:54):
It was the last thing you had, and don't let
it be a damn salad. So that'll be my parting
wisdom I give to your listeners.
Speaker 1 (50:01):
Love it. That is the good stuff. I'm making a
shirt dot. Don't let it be a salad. Eat the cookie,
Eat the damn cookie, the cookie.
Speaker 3 (50:13):
Love it.
Speaker 2 (50:14):
Thank you so much, Jennifer, Thank you. I am so
grateful for her strength to come and share this with us,
all of the life advice that she gave us. And
we will never forget Noah. He was such a great
human and a great light on this earth. And Jennifer
(50:34):
is too.
Speaker 1 (50:35):
That's right, and she's carrying it forward for not only herself,
but Noah and everybody else. She is leading from the
front and it is an honored privileged to call her friend.
Speaker 3 (50:45):
Agreed.
Speaker 2 (50:46):
Thank you so much for listening. We hope this episode
touched you today, and if it did, please share it
and be part of making someone else's day better.
Speaker 1 (50:53):
Put on your badass capes and harness your and her Jennifer,
and go be great today and remember you can't do
Epic Stuff without a people thank you for listening to
the good Stuff. The Good Stuff is executive produced by
Ashley Schick, Jacob Schick, Leah Pictures and q Code Media,
(51:15):
Hosted by Ashley Shick and Jacob Shick, Produced by Nick
Cassilini and Ryan Counts. House post production Supervisor Will Tindi.
Music editing by Will heywood Smith, edited by Mike Robinson,
Welcome to the Good Stuff. I'm Jacob Shick and I'm
joined by my co host and wife, Ashley Shake.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Jake is a third generation combat Marine and I'm a
gold Star granddaughter. We work together to serve military veterans,
first responders, frontline healthcare workers, and their families with mental
and emotional wellness through traditional and non traditional therapy. At
One Tribe Foundation, we.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Believe everyone has a story to tell, not only about
the peaks, but also the valleys they've been through to
get them to where they are today.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Each week, we invite a guest to tell us their story,
to share with us the lessons they've learned that shaped
who they are and what they're doing to pay it
forward and give back.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Our mission with this show is to dig deep into
our guest journey so that we can celebrate the hope
and inspiration their story has to offer.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
We're thrilled your joining us again.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Welcome to the Good Stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Our guest today is Jennifer Seidner Johnson, who's an incredible lady.
She's a great friend, and she's an executive at Torchies
Tacos's Best. Today She's here to tell us her story
and the story of her late husband, West Point grad
and United States Army Captain Noah Johnson.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
This is the heroing tale of the night Jennifer survived
being shot six times by her husband when he had
an undefined episode. It is important to Jennifer to tell
her story because she knows firsthand the power of vulnerability.
In opening up and talking about mental.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Health, she epitomizes what it means to be a warrior,
and this conversation is proof positive that everyone has a
warrior within.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
From the moment Jennifer walked in the room, we felt
the abundant power of her presence and her energy.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Jennifer Sidner Johnson, we are so excited that you're here
with us on the good stuff. Thank you for being here.
It is great to see you.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
Thank you for having me. We've grown a great opportunity
to be here tell the story with you today.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
We truly appreciate you being here. It's great to see you,
and we are so thankful that you have the courage
to come and tell us your story. It is one
heck of a story. We were kind of living it
alongside from a distance. Obviously, you were down in Austin
and we live up here in Dallas, but our mutual
and dear friend Natalie Woods Stanier was keeping us posted
(02:17):
all along the way along your journey. So let's just
start from February twenty twenty one snovid.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
Yeah, so, if you remember, we're still trying to come
out of that pandemic world and kind of working from home,
and then we got hit with this monster eye storm
in Austin. We have been without power for three days,
so we were already in survival mode. My husband was
like chopping firewood all day, and you know, we have
(02:45):
bathtubs full of water, living my candle light felt like that,
you know, go to old days, that's what they called
them back then. I don't know why, but we were
really just trying to survive that storm. And it kind
of had been a not a regular day, but as
typical as you could say possible, just kind of make
it through those circumstances. And the power came on maybe
(03:09):
around ten pm that night for the first time I
get in like three days, and so I was like, oh,
I can get some work done. So I stayed up
and my husband went on to bed. I remember he
texted me, I love you good night, and I got
my work done and went to bed. I didn't know
like that would be kind of that last one I
(03:31):
would think conscious communication I ever received from my husband,
because right before three am, my husband woke me up
and he asked me if I would put him back
to sleep, which was a very odd request, and he
was acting. The best way I can describe it is
(03:54):
he was acting like he was sleepwalking, like staring off,
not looking directly at me, and asking very odd questions.
So I actually asked him, like, are you awake right now?
And he said I'm in the in between, and I said,
you're scaring me. I was like, what do you even
(04:15):
mean by that? He said, I can understand why you
be scared right now. So my husband name is Noah
and he was a type one diabetic, so my head
initially yet went to he's having sugar low because when
he had tuggar loos before, he wasn't able to think clearly.
You can talk and break out and sweat can move.
(04:38):
So I was like, are you able to go into
the kitchen with me to get your diabetics supplies, let's
test your blood sugar and like pretty non responsive, And
I got out of bed and we started walking, but
he just walked to the other side of the bed
and sat down, and when he sat down, I'm trying
to interact with him. I trying to get him get
(04:59):
back up, go with me, and at that point he
just became a zombie on me, almost like gone gone.
That's where it scared me. And there was an incident
that happened prior, like four years before that that I
had very consciously on my mind that where he had
kind of gone into a similar state and then had
kind of become, if you will, violent, and I was thinking,
(05:22):
I'm not gonna be able to handle this on my own.
He's sitting on the side of the bed and I
told him, I'm like, I'm gonna go call for help.
And I left him on that side of the bed
and I walked back over to my side of the
bed where my cell phone was on the nightstand. I
pick up that phone. I dialed nine one one. I
(05:44):
remember I put it on a speaker because I thought
I might have to work with him. And as I
turned to walk back around and got into the front
of the bed to walk back towards him, one the
power went back out. So we were on rolling blackouts
at this time. So we go on and go off,
and I remember saying out loud, oh, the power just
went back off. And as soon as I said that,
(06:07):
I heard what to me is down in like fireworks
going off in the room. In fact, it took me
a while to even realize what was going on. Now
one of the blessings I feel like I have in
my life. It was pitch black, so I don't have
any visual of this, but my husband was shooting at me,
(06:28):
really shooting up the room. But I don't have a
visual that I could see the flashes from the gun,
but it was so just far out there, and like
I know, people always say, it feels like you're on
a movie or it felt unreal, like I couldn't even
fathom what was happening until I started getting hit. So
I ended up getting shot six times, my arm, my chest,
(06:53):
and the last one that hit me and maybe go
unconscious for a little while is I got shot right
under the jaw line here, and I call it my
miracle wound because it actually ended up exiting out my nose,
therefore missing my ears, my eyes, and my brain completely.
But it's kind of shattered and my jaw was gone.
(07:16):
And this was completely open. Yeah. I can't tell you
how many times I've been to the doctor and everything
now and they're all just labergasted by that. How I
could have survived that wound specifically and also had collapslungs
and you know, it just missed every major organ that
(07:39):
would have been a lethal hit. When that shot hit,
I did go unconscious for a bit. My husband ended
up taking his own life. I was not conscious for that.
So I also I feel like these are little blessings
that I had, if I can call it that, during
the situation. But I really do feel like those things
were block for me for a reason. But while I
(08:02):
was unconscious, I had some interesting thoughts and visions, some
I can't really explain and I'm all share with you
because they just happened and it's my truth and it's
just kind of weird. But I definitely remembered I was
forty two at the moment and just kind of had
that unbelievable realization like I'm going to die today. In
(08:22):
my process going through that, I was still conscious enough
to be like, I'm going to die at forty two,
and like, how crazy is that? And that's the end
of my story? And then definitely had that feeling and
really try to push out as much energy as I
could into the universe to send my loved ones messages
of goodbye, how much they meant to me. I can't
(08:47):
believe this is happening. I did have that thought that
no one was going to believe what just happened, Like
I couldn't believe what just happened, and it was so
kind of outside I think what a lot a lot
of people's experiences would have been with my husband that
I was like, nobody's gonna believe what just happened, and
I'm the only one in the room that experienced it.
(09:11):
I remember consciously having that like people are not gonna
believe this the weird thing. I'll just share, and I'll
just share it because it was a weird vision I had.
But I feel like there was almost a decision pitched
to me at a point. This is why I say
it's weird, and I can't explain why this was a
vision given to me, but it is what it is.
(09:33):
So I don't know if you ever saw that news
story where a lady had a pet chimp and she
had her face torn off. Okay, for some reason, the
vision that was given to me. She had had like
plastic surgeries to have a new face put on. Wow,
I feel like a decision was kind of put out
in front of me, like if you were to go
(09:55):
on and live the rest of your life like that,
like you would have to have a new face, would
you want to go forward or you would you want
to go ahead and leave? And I was like, I
want to live.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
I want to go Forward's no hesitation. I'm curious to
know was there any contemplating or was it immediately?
Speaker 3 (10:11):
I think it was pretty immediate immediate. I don't remember contemplating.
I remember actually sitting back thinking because I remember them
saying it's gonna be real hard, like you're gonna look deformed.
You'll still get to live life. And maybe I can't put,
you know, a full memory on how long it took
me to make it, but I felt like I was like, no,
you're convicted. Yeah, I want to lift.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
I've actually shared with Ashley, people very close to me,
that I feel like, given the right circumstance, God is
willing to meet you halfway. Now. Obviously that's not every instance, right,
but I do sometimes feel like we are given a decision,
we're given a choice, I can't explain to you or
the listeners how much I relate to what you're saying.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
Okay, good, I share it because that really happened. And
like why I had the vision of that specific lady,
I can't. I don't know, but that's my truth. Like
that that happened while I was going through this whole thing,
And it's interesting to hear you say you could relate
to that.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
So it's still pitching that dark and you had called
nine one one, The call went through, So what happened next?
Speaker 3 (11:22):
Again, if you remember, I had put it on speaker,
that my phone on speaker because I thought, you know,
I had called for my husband and I thought I
was gonna have to be helping with his care. So
what ends up saving my life is the nine one
one dispatcher heard the whole thing, so i'd actually when
(11:43):
I started getting shot, dropped that phone. It hit the
our wood floor and shat. That phone shattered and still worked,
and so they one could hear the whole situation. But
when I came like back to I remember hearing the
nine one one saying nine when one do you have
an emergency? Now again to paint the picture I have
(12:06):
no jaw at this time in my and my tongue
is flitt in the four. Well, the other crazy part
of the story is we did communicate me and the
nine one one dispatcher one. I would say she was
very well trained. She could do yes no answers that
I could more articulate. She needed to figure out where
(12:27):
I was. They couldn't locate me. We needed to get
an address, so we went through and finally took a while,
I got my address. And then also keep in mind
again it's ice storm, right, so that fire station is
five minutes from my house, and it took twenty minutes
(12:48):
for them to get to me, and I'm bleeding out
pretty profusely, right, So I do remember watching the pool
kind of grow around me, and I had one of
my dogs in ruin. I remember trying to keep him
out of it for whatever reason, because you wanted to
come to me, and I was kept pushing him away.
(13:09):
And that was pretty scary because you can definitely feel
yourself leaving or just getting Yeah, you can you feel it,
you feel yeah. I haven't listened and I went one tapes,
but I know I shared that with that with the
dispatcher several times that I'm telling her they need a hurry,
because I could feel myself dying and it's.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
A feeling that is very hard to.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
Articulate correct and even like she was doing her job
of asking me questions to keep me conscious, and I
remember they were getting harder to answer, and I was like,
oh no, like like it took me a while to
think about it because my brain started I just pushing
blood to other places. Net was needed.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
From the time you called, you made the call and
you hit speaker, was it twenty minutes from the time
that happened or was it you know, twenty you know,
say twenty three and a half or whatever.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
It was a little bit more, Yeah, because then.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
The events had to unfold and then you know, clearly
the dispatcher had to process what was going on.
Speaker 3 (14:06):
Yeah. I think the events are around ten minutes and
then wait.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
For another I'm curious to know. Did it feel like
an eternity? No, it felt or did it feel like
this happened, there's this shock, here's me coming back into myself. Yeah,
and then now I hear the help arriving. Because with me,
(14:30):
I in my experience, it was like this is quite
possibly the longest day on the planet.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
That's so true. The word you shock is probably the
best because even in the moment that almost like so motioning,
like what is actually happening? And even then when you
shock a process, what I was still in too much
shocked even kind of process was happening. And I don't
know if you were like this, But then my brain
went really to like very kind of a logical like
(14:59):
I need to survive now. Like I had no room
at that point to process like I just lost my husband.
What is this going to look like? My brain didn't
have any room for that. At that point I went
right into I need to get help. Am I able
to stand no? Because I didn't experience my husband killing himself.
I didn't know where my husband.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
Was left the room.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
He had not he had shot himself in the room. Okay,
but when I'm talking to the nine one one dispatcher,
I didn't know that. So she was at yes, shattered.
They're asking me where he was. I was telling them
I didn't know he's Unfortunately, when they came to the house,
they had to treat it like an active shooter situation.
(15:42):
I'll tell you that to say, even when I start
seeing flashlights and everything, and I'm like, I'm in here.
I'm in here, and I'm like begging them to come in.
They could not come in yet because they're treating. And
I'm telling the nine one one dispatcher I see them,
tell them to come on in. I'm telling her, please
tell them just come in, break down the door, come in,
and they couldn't because they had to secure the area because.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
That's not how it works. Unfortunately.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
Yeah, So what happened when they did come in, so unfortunately,
the way I found my husband had passed is they
did break in a door. I have a door that
goes to my bathroom that's connected to our bedroom. They
came through that door and I heard them come in
and they immediately start shouting. Watch. I watch at he's
you know, he's still arm, has a gun in his hand.
(16:27):
And then another officer said it doesn't matter, he's doa
That's how I learned my husband had passed. What went
through your head at that point, I'm in so much
shock that like the fact hit me, but nothing else
hit me. At that point, I was still in like
am I gonna die? Like at that point, I still
(16:49):
didn't know if I was going to.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Make it either to say, like, I think it's really
important for people to understand in that moment when you
feel and it is a fit physical sensation, feeling life
slowly leaving your body. It is a physical sensation that
it's very hard to describe and put into words. You
can be given any type of information that will register, yeah,
(17:14):
but you're almost in a place of you don't have
time to process what you're given because you're so focused
on it is almost like an internal clock that you feel.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
Yes, that is so spot on. I couldn't say it
any better. I heard it. Noah was gone, but I
couldn't do anything with that information at that moment.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
And there was nothing you could do anyway.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
At that point, I'm still laying on the floor bleeding out.
I don't remember feeling pain at that moment just yet.
I don't know how to describe it with the sensation
of leaving, I didn't feel pain, and until they put
a tourniquet on my arm, and it was like the
tourniquits it was like ratcheting down a wrench and everything
and crushing bone and all that. Where I that all
(17:59):
that suff I think I came a lot of little
shock into like full out pain at that point, he's
even getting getting hit by the bullets and everything. I
don't remember a lot of pain. More again, shock and
like what is happening right now more than anything.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
And that's the I mean, it's the body's way to
protect us from that. I mean, that's it's built in,
you know. And it's that those different chemical releases from
the brain to where you don't have to physically acknowledge it,
which makes it harder to understand. Obviously, my situation was different.
You know what happened. He was a high probability, right,
(18:37):
that's something shitty was going to go down. Another difference
being is I'm almost positive you were a much better
patient than I was. Yeah, I mean, but for me,
like my go to my whole life was to get
mad and fight, you know. That was how I came
out of the corner. If I was back then, that
(18:57):
was my go to? Was that right? So I immediately went
to my default. We all have different backgrounds and upbringings
and all those things. And again, like this was a
completely unexpected, very out of the norm. Yeah, and you're
given all these different things thrown at you. People do
not understand the amount of intake that had to happen
(19:21):
intellectually in that moment on top of the pain setting in,
because that clearly that takes everything to another level because
it's very distracting too. You start to feel the pain,
and then it throws off your thought process because then
it takes so much of your attention that you're not
(19:41):
able to process the way you were before it's set in.
Speaker 3 (19:44):
Yeah, bingo, because that from then on a like pain.
I do remember the ambulance tried to the hospital and
we're on ice. I'm conscious the whole time, but I
can remember us like all over the road and they're
like apologizing no time and again trying to keep the
bleeding on control, seeing if I can give me blood,
and like again the whole time, I'm just thinking between
(20:06):
like how unbarreled while the pain is at that point,
and like I don't even know if I'm going to
make it to the hospital.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
Because of the extreme circumstances that this all happened.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
Then Yeah, in fact, I remember almost being like still
feeling like I'm leaving because I still feel like we'll
see if I make it there. Like my head was
kind of in the like we'll see if I make
it to the next step, and like I was like, oh,
I made it till the help got there. Oh well,
let's see if I make it to the hospital. Like
it really is kind of that long right, like you're
(20:37):
just trying to see, like, oh, well I made it
to this. I wasn't sure if I was going to
and you just kind of go like, okay, here I
am now, and here I am now. I do remember
even getting the hospital and they opened those ambulance doores
and that cold air hitting like waking me up, like wooh,
like just a little bit of reality because I was
kind of baiting a b and like that woke me
(20:57):
back up a little bit, and going right into the hospital.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
That's crazy because I remember obviously it was not cold
where I was. It was like one hundred and twenty
something degrees. But it's the reality too that it was
almost like a physical shock. Yeah, that cold, But for me,
what it was is when you know they're loading that
gurney onto the you know, it was a filled gurney,
so you know they're loading it onto the black Hawk,
(21:24):
and I remember thinking to myself, like there's no way
the pain could get worse right now, there's no way
and the rotorwash blew up that she you know, there's bandages.
Doc was like bandage on, bandage off, bandage on, bandage off,
because I was bleeding and I remember the sand blowing
into the wounds. That was like the ambulance door is
opening for you, Like it hits you, and it's a
(21:44):
physical sensation that I believe is beneficial because it connects
you to these chemical releases. It gets you to keep
It's like, okay, it almost wakes you up a little bit.
Speaker 3 (21:56):
Yeah, it was like I woke back up like oh,
and then I was like, okay, now we're at the hospital.
So now let's see what happens in the emergency room.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
And so what were the next few months and it's
been just over two years now, Yeah, what happened next?
Speaker 3 (22:10):
Yeah, so a lot of rebuilding. Yeah, even when I
first got there, they were still like it was pretty
touch and go. It didn't.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
I was gonna say, how much do you remember before
you start to not remember her? Because that for me,
it was I think a surgeon was like I know
for a fact, as I watched him do it, they
gave this nod to the aneissus like please knock this
on little bit.
Speaker 3 (22:32):
Yeah, so I don't remember, I will say once I
got to the emergency room. The other thing I do
remember is fuss her heart. They call my mom, and
I remember trying to talk to my mom. It probably
didn't say the right things, but I remember I kept saying,
everyone shot, I've been shot. Is probably what no mother
ever wants to get that phone call. But I don't know.
I felt like I needed to give her facts in
the moment, yeah, which is I don't know. My brain
(22:54):
was still was in kind of very factual, like here's
what I am in the hospital, Like I didn't die,
I'm in the hospital, blah blah blah. I remember calling
my mom and then I think they put me out.
Then I don't remember anything until I woke up, like
the next day. I think, does she live close by you? Okay? No?
So I was in Austin, Texas. My parents live in Missouri,
(23:15):
and it actually took them like three or four days
to be able to get to me because of the
ice flights. They couldn't drive. Again, you get that phone
call and they couldn't even get to me.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
I can't fathom that as.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
A parent, I know, so Luckily, my mom had my
best friend's phone number, Elizabeth, and she called her, and
so Elizabeth was the first person at the hospital with
me when I woke up the next day.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
So that was the beginning of the hell of a journey.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
By the time I'd woke up, I had already had
a lot of surgery. Wanted to kind of get me
quit bleeding and everything. So one was just just to
get everything to survive and get me stable. Then I
had a lot of surgeries for I hope I get
this word right, bridement, just to get all the gunpowder
and everything. So because I guess at first in the er,
(24:08):
they just especially with my face, they try to like
close a lot of things up, but if you have
gunpowder anything in there, it'll continue to disintegrate the tissue.
So they actually had to go back open up and
just I had several if you will, just cleaning ye.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
Wash outs, wash out surgery, surgery, that's what they call
them wash outs.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
So a lot of that. Then you kind of start
to go into the rebuilding surgeries, and then that's where
you learn like that's not a hey, it will be
a couple of weeks and we'll get y'all hied up
and send you on your merry way. I won't ever
forget when my surgeon kind of sat and he's like,
it'll probably be like a year and a half, and
(24:50):
I couldn't believe what he was even telling me I
have a surgery tomorrow. So it's been like two and
a half years, so he probably was even being conservative
on his head. It hit me really hard when I
heard that at first, because you do think like you
want to kind of, I don't know, move on. And
(25:11):
patience was the hardest thing for me.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
And I don't It is such a bullshit word. They
have to come up with it, yeah, like patient, Like
I remember, it just pissing me off the fact that
that was the word because I was a bat, like
it was. I was not a good one. Like the
nurses would do paper rock scissors every night, okay to
see who got my chart. I was not a good thing.
Speaker 3 (25:36):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
I remember when I was really able to start to
analyze my wounds, and I remember because my love leg
was intraction, my left arm was intraction. I remember one
day they took my left leg out of traction to
clean the rods and stuff so the skin didn't grow up.
The rods, right, so they had to clean them and
(25:57):
make them push them back down and all this, and
I remember it was the first time I had seen
the back of my leg because I'd seen the front
and I saw the back and I was like, damn it,
what else have I not seen? That is like jacked up?
And then I remember seeing my thighs and seeing where
they had taken the skin and doing all and it
was just like this thick kept on giving in a
(26:19):
very negative light, and I was like, how much more
are you going to rob from Peter to give the ball? Yeah,
like I need to be briefed on this ship. Yep,
you know, And it's you're right. It is a very
long process.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
Yeah, because I think in my head and just me,
I was like, let's just do it all at once
and get it over with. That's not how it works
at all all. So I mean it's been you know,
a couple of years, cause like you gotta do a
step and then let that heale and see how it
works and how it doesn't work and if you have
to redo, and then you go to the next step
and next step. There's a few times where I might
(26:52):
have not taken the news so well, because you know,
but and so that's why I'm and like the patience
was the hardest thing for me, because yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
I'm curious to know from the very beginning, how long
were you in the bed? Like we're in the hospital,
I should say, yeah, but before you were allowed to
leave the hospital.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
I kept getting transferred to different hospitals because I was
in a trauma hospital, and this is kind of what
I would go through. It was like, so I was
there for probably like two months, and then in that
time I had to be patient, like between surgeries or
like we're a trauma hospital, we don't like maintain, so
then they would send me to another hospital while I
(27:38):
was healing from a knickt surgery, and then I have
to come back to the trauma hospital. So I did
that probably for three three and a half months, and
then I went to impatient rehab hospital after that.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
So I'd be we're talking like months on end a
year maybe close not quite.
Speaker 3 (27:56):
A year, but months. Yeah, because even in the reh
ab and we can go through but how to relearn
how to use my arm, my leg, and how to
relearn how to swallow talk everything I don't know about
you Jennifer.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
But I've never met a physical therapist that I like.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
They're there to hurt you. Never let never let a
physical therapist say, oh, we're just going to do a
massage today. That might sound really nice. That is going
to be your.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
Worst They're liars, all of them. Yeah, thank you to
physical therapists out there. You guys just equals suck factor.
That's it.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
But thank you for the work that you arms details.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
So what did you think about when you were there
in the hospital for that long?
Speaker 3 (28:49):
Actually, I think it was a pretty great patient. Again, sorry,
I'm going to be that person, I guess, but I
don't know. Something click to me pretty early that one.
I kind of had a vision that I'm gonna make it,
and when I go on, I wanted to get out
of there and I just was gonna think really positively
(29:12):
about it and the other thing that happened to me.
So again, it was twenty twenty one. When I got
to that hospital, it was totally overwhelmed, so it was
still COVID, so they're already full with COVID patients. And
then the ice storm created a lot of trauma patients
from accidents and things that happened and they had run
(29:33):
out of rooms, and I was I remember seeing these
nurses come in and they were like they couldn't even
go home because of the ice storm, so they were
living there.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
Another element. You don't even think about it, like that
doesn't cross your mind.
Speaker 3 (29:50):
Yeah, one day, this nurses came in my room and
she just broke down crying. She was just exhausted and sure,
and I I remember having that opportunity and I'm like,
I want to talk to her and like uplift her.
And I remember at the end of it, I was
just trying to build her up and make her feel
like appreciated and everything, and she was like, I can't
(30:11):
believe you're sitting where you exactly and you're the one
like lifting me up in my day, I felt it
in me like this is going to be my approach
to life, how I'm going to try to impact others.
So I actually had the approach like any nurse, anybody,
any the people that cleaned my room, anybody I could
touch while I was in there, just trying to me to.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
Any an impact on the fact that you listened to
that voice, the fact that you embraced it and you
didn't let you know the negativity seep in or the
why me or any of that. You said, you know what,
I'm going to turn this into a positive.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
That's beautiful.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
Yeah, I believe that's God given. I really do. We
all have a choice to make all the time. You
wake up and you fight for good or you fight
for evil, and it's a daily decision, yeah right, and
it can switch midday. It's something that is a conscious
effort throughout the entire day. I feel like that you've
really gotten close because I also believe that every human
(31:08):
being on the planet is born with an inner warrior, right,
and that has nothing to do with your job. You know.
That doesn't mean like you have to put on a
camouflage and go to war like that's not That's not
what I mean. I mean that like inner voice that
we all have. Yeah right. And I feel like that
you started feeding that gladiator immediately. It's obvious. It's prevalent
(31:29):
to me because you're here now only two years like
not even you know, that's relatively short timeframe for you
to be sharing what you're sharing now, and it's like, damn,
it makes me feel like I can you know, I
can do better, Like I can do better I can
do better perspective. It's a perspective in mindset.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
I will say, there are a lot of nurses and
even some of the doctors you know mds telling you
that they would come in and be like they could
almost tell if someone who's gonna make it or not
make it all based on that mindset, like do you
believe it? Do you believe it? And are you fighting
for it? And are you already living like you're you know,
(32:10):
I'm going to live. And I was very interesting to
hear again that medical staff see you know, whatever you know,
medicine or surgeries or whatever they could do, they knew
that there's something else to it. Right.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
That's another element to me when I say, God will
meet you half with are you a victim or you
a victor? And that's a daily decision, yeap.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
And even some of the nurses that would come in
and talk to me and the ones that'd be really overwhelmed.
What was overwhelming him are the patients that quit trying.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
Right.
Speaker 3 (32:42):
So when I went to the rehab hospital, I did
have the joke that I had a little competitive spirit.
So I was like I go in there and I'm like,
I'm going to be the fastest on that now I
was competing with all like eighty plus year old drying
hare like. But that's awesome, But what would make me
so sad? I remember calling my parents and everything are
(33:03):
You would see people that had just completely given up
and just like sit on the machines and just and
you just knew you just it's over.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
The will to live is a very real thing.
Speaker 3 (33:19):
Not just my experience almost dying, but also getting the
fight and seeing the difference between fighting and not fighting
to live. That has given me a lot of perspective too,
from this journey I've been on, so I've definitely seen that.
I feel like there was something clicked in me, something
came out of me pretty early that I made a
(33:39):
decision that I was going to live and I was
going to fight for it, and I wanted something good
and that carried me through a lot. And like that
inner warrior that you talked about, I would say that
I certainly did not know I had that within me.
I don't think a lot of people thought I had
that within me, but I sometimes can't believe it. I've
(34:01):
been able to do overcome, achieve even through this, and
I think a lot of people were really surprised how
hard I was able to fight through a lot of this.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
And we are so truly proud for you and proud
of you, so incredibly proud of you for that. Let's
talk about your support group.
Speaker 3 (34:23):
Oh my gosh. So one of the things I think about,
and it's almost like so weird to say, is like,
I don't know how one of the hardest years of
my life ended up being one of the best years
of my life as well. It was all because I
have never experienced the love and support of community and
(34:48):
the power of prayer that is the secret of making
things happen in this world. And I had so much
support of friends, my my employer torches tacos. If I
can shout them out, we love.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
If you don't like tacos, we can't hang out.
Speaker 3 (35:15):
Church communities, not only in where I live, around the world,
Like prayer change everything, like coming through UNBELI I mean,
I feel it, you really do feel I just I
can't explain it. But I was just so surrounded. I
had people like Natalie come stay with me and.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
We facetimed and I can't and I remember not because
sometimes in that face.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
It's like Natalie always face times, Jake, and we never
know what's going to be on because.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
God only knows what is about to happen in that exchange.
And then it's like if we're around the boys, I'm like,
is this going to be our kids? Appropriate? Like what?
But I know there's always a point, like there's always
a reason for it, and then so I always answer.
But I remember when we facetimed, and I don't remember, man,
(36:07):
it wasn't too long though, after you had gone through
what you went through. But I do remember talking to
you and like I felt your spirit then, like you
were already at the place that you were talking about
that you've been in since this has happened. I felt that.
I remember having you know, I showed you almost skin
(36:28):
grass and all my crap, you know, and it was like,
this is what I remember from this, and this is
you know, it's a marathon, not a sprint for sure,
you know, but it was so helpful.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
I remember that, And I remember I had you look
at where they had taken my fibula and plant and
the skin graft and everything. You're like, oh, that looks
so good.
Speaker 1 (36:45):
Okay. I think I told you on the call too,
Like I remember when they tried to transplant some they
amputated again to try and do a bone transplant from
my fibio to my left arm, and you know that felt,
but no knocked a certain tried and it was oddly enough,
when I realized it felt. I was doing a live
radio interview in my left arm just like kind of
(37:10):
semi explode, and my dad was in there with me,
and my dad's very he didn't like that stuff, and
we're standing. It was a radio studio where it just
had like the round tables that you stand all the
hosts stand up right, they're not seated, And I remember
what happened, and I remember my dad's face like going
as wide as your shirt. And I was like in
(37:30):
the middle of talking, like had his shirt like moving
him towards a seat so he doesn't faint, because you know,
I'm worried about my dad fainting in his head busting
open doing this, and so I'm like talking, do not
missing a beat, like pushing him towards this seat. My
arm's oozing in. The radio host is like, what in
(37:50):
the hell is going on right now? Like it was
never adult moment, you know, but yeah, it was. I
remember that that convo with you, and it was like
because I remember remember being in the hospital and I
don't think I ever in my life have had that
much time to think and just be. I learned in
(38:12):
the hospital. I was twenty two. That's where I learned
what being present means, especially with oneself. And it was
forced on me obviously. I mean, I'm not like I
was going to go play kickball anytime soon. Like I
was forced to learn what it meant to be with oneself.
Speaker 3 (38:30):
I love that. I have a lot of people ask me,
like again a little over two years out of it,
like how are you in this place now? And I'm like,
I had so much time with myself in that hospital
to think about so much stuff, like I don't it
just I am. It put me in a different place,
in a place that I feel like I have had
(38:51):
a lot of opportunity to work through a lot of things.
And you know, I will say at first, I was
a little worried because at first, like I almost couldn't think,
like I would just stare off I remember, and I
would be worried about myself, like am I going to
be able to function at work anymore? Right? Is my
brain and a function normally. I did have a lot
(39:12):
of shock and a lot of payments. You know, at
first where I started worry like, ooh, I hope you
know I'm going to be able to really think and
function normally. But then as I kept going, then yeah,
you just get a lot of time to reflect. And
the other thing I would think, kind of what Yousus
said is that's one of the gifts I think that
(39:33):
I've been given out of this is being more present.
I find myself a lot of times just pausing wherever
I am, and when I get this feeling like I
shouldn't be here. I would all be going on and
I wouldn't be here. So it feels like the sneaky
like I'm being able to see what would be going
(39:53):
on if I was gone, but I'm here, like because
it feels like that, like, oh, I got a second
chance at this. But the other part of it is
that it actually makes me actually kind of step back
and start taking everything in. Like I'll be in a
Starbucks and I'll just start looking around and notice everything
(40:17):
like the colors, the textures that think, the smells, and
I just try to like consciously take it all in,
Like if you're just standing in line, but really like
absorb the world a little bit more. And the other
thing that happens to me more now is if I'm
standing in line with y'all, I'll be looking at you
(40:38):
and I'll be thinking in my head because I don't
want to stay out loud and say people think I'm
a weirdo. It's like, oh my gosh, guys, like we're
all like standing here doing life together right now, Like
how are we like standing on this earth and the
same time, like we're gonna have to get a Starbucks
and like really soak that in. I know that sounds
completely it's awesome.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
Start living.
Speaker 3 (41:00):
And that is something that was given to me from
this experience that I know a lot of people can't
have and it probably sounds totally insane, but I have
those moments now where I'm just like, guys, we're totally
doing this right now.
Speaker 1 (41:16):
The power of that is indescribable. And I think the
takeaway is that you don't have to experience being blown
up or being shot or whatever to choose to do
that right like, you don't have to do it's a choice. Yeah,
And sometimes it's forced upon you, and sometimes you never
(41:39):
get the chance.
Speaker 3 (41:40):
Yeah, it is pretty powerful when you do it, and
I would so. Yeah, as much as you can just
take a moment and just step back and just be
present and taken all of it is so so important.
Speaker 2 (41:54):
Time is our most precious commodity, and time and time
again we're reminded of that you did get a second
chance at life. Thinking about you being in the hospital
going through all of this rehab that you went through
at the same time mourning the loss of your husband. Yeah,
let's talk about Noah, because he was a force to
be reckoned.
Speaker 3 (42:14):
He was and I have to say in the hospital
when I was having that energy wanting to touch others, Also,
what was going into a mind is that energy that
was just lost in Noah Because if for those that
knew Noah, I had never met a more extroverted person
in my life. And he had this power of wo
(42:35):
that he could just enter a room and if he
didn't already know half the room, he would make sure
he had impacted at least someone that matter, and oh
my gosh. Yeah, and I had never seen a force
like that. And I was pretty conscious again in the
hospital like that force had just left and it was
such an amazing energy that had impact on my life
(42:57):
because I am an introvert. I was like, I just
lost that and like somewhere in my head and my brain,
I was like, I need to take that part of
him with me, No, and carry it on.
Speaker 2 (43:09):
And you are. And it's so. I mean, I can
feel it across the table from you. That's exactly what
you're doing. And by you having the strength to come
even tell this story, you are doing that because I
knew No. I met him a couple times through the
standiards and he was he was magnetic, he had that energy,
had a great smile, and that you knew when his
(43:29):
presence entered the room, just like you just said. And
you have the same effect on people. And it's not
just because of this journey that what happened to you
didn't define. Maybe it woke something up inside of you.
But here you are doing that and giving that gift
to us.
Speaker 1 (43:45):
I think that's the reason that you're able to have
the courage you have that's on display to day right
because what you're doing right now, to me, that epitomizes
the very meaning of warrior. Okay, just because you got
shot out or whatever doesn't make you work right because
me getting severely wounded was a moment in time doesn't
(44:09):
define who I am, who I am and who I
evolve Intwo's up to me, not what's happened to me,
and it's on display with you. So of course you're
channeling all the good and then you're burning the pain
and the bad is fuel for the good. That's a thing, right,
(44:32):
And sometimes you're forced into that, and sometimes it takes
you down another path because again it's a choice. Every
day you absolutely are doing exactly that and like freaking
kudos in the strong enough word, but like just welcome
to the badass arena.
Speaker 3 (44:52):
So I think the other thing I'll want to say
is there is the physical part of going through the
hospital and kne but that wasn't actually the hardest part
for me. The hardest part of any of this that
I really struggled with is the why behind it, and
the point of not exactly sure what happened that early
(45:16):
morning and knowing that we'll never have answers of what
actually happened, like why did he act like that and
you know, try to take mine and did take his
own life? We'll never know that question, and uncertainty has
(45:38):
definitely been the hardest thing for me to grapple with
through everything.
Speaker 2 (45:42):
So how do you feel about him.
Speaker 3 (45:45):
I know a lot of people don't like this, but
I actually think he had the greatest loss. I always
put myself back at that early morning, and if you
remember how I started telling his story, like he was
not in his full capacity. Now again, I don't know
if that was tied to his diabetes. I don't know
if he was wrestling with you know, voices in his
(46:10):
head of depression. We don't know if as pt as
a d We don't know. I don't feel like he
was acting with his full capacity. So I feel like
there was a big loss there. I do feel like
mental health that is a big thing that has impacted
my family's life. But overall, he was a complex man.
(46:35):
When he was good, he was the best. Anyway he
was bad, and he was often the worst. I feel
like that about all of us, and we've got to
give grace, Like people are very complex people and they're
dealing with a lot of things, and even for we've
had other people that have chosen to take their lives
and it's hard to understand. But I was not in
their shoes, and I do not know what that would
(46:58):
be like. I would love to be able to help
any way I can, but I'm definitely gonna not be
the one that passes judgment on that, even when I'm
the victim. Yeah, I loved him and love him. Good.
Speaker 1 (47:13):
Listen, that, like, what you're choosing on the daily is
one of the reasons you are where you are right now.
I know it for a fact, and I think that
there is so much power in that because it's hard.
It's the harder thing to do. The easier thing is
(47:37):
the anger, resentment, all the shit. Because we have so
much more to draw from when it comes to those emotions.
It makes it so much easier because it's a very
little effort. The fact that you're choosing love, grace, forgiveness, joy, gratitude,
You're able to feel the things God intended forced to
(47:59):
fill the way He intended for it to be felt,
and you're just scratching the surface on the power in that. Like,
I am so stoked to see where you go from here.
It is literally just the beginning, and it's all because
(48:20):
of you and God, you know that, but mainly because
of you and your mindset and your conviction and that
I am going to live well in spite of it all.
Just stay the path.
Speaker 2 (48:33):
I'm officially going to change your name to Grace's. That's it. Sorry, Sorry,
Jennifer is now Grace.
Speaker 3 (48:39):
Can I end with that? Just one bunny?
Speaker 2 (48:42):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (48:43):
So.
Speaker 3 (48:43):
One of the things I did not share, but I
hope your listeners will get quite a kick off and
it'll be my last advice I'll give is also when
I was coming to and laying there thinking I was
dying and leaving the earth. So I had been doing
keto and running, and I had lost a lot of
(49:06):
weight before this, like seventy pounds. I had really worked
hardy seventy pounds I did, and.
Speaker 1 (49:11):
So I really would you lost a small human?
Speaker 3 (49:14):
I did. I had been working really hard. But as
I was laying there on the ground, I had to
tell you that one of my dying thoughts was about food.
So and this is how I know that food is
so important to me in my life, because I literally
had the thought like my last meal was a freaking salad.
(49:36):
This is this all literally happened. I literally was there
like I would have ate something good if I knew
my last day. So now I try to tell everybody
I can, like eat the cookie. Start with dessert, because
one of your dying thoughts might be.
Speaker 1 (49:51):
About you got a damn salad.
Speaker 3 (49:54):
It was the last thing you had, and don't let
it be a damn salad. So that'll be my parting
wisdom I give to your listeners.
Speaker 1 (50:01):
Love it. That is the good stuff. I'm making a
shirt dot. Don't let it be a salad. Eat the cookie,
Eat the damn cookie, the cookie.
Speaker 3 (50:13):
Love it.
Speaker 2 (50:14):
Thank you so much, Jennifer, Thank you. I am so
grateful for her strength to come and share this with us,
all of the life advice that she gave us. And
we will never forget Noah. He was such a great
human and a great light on this earth. And Jennifer
(50:34):
is too.
Speaker 1 (50:35):
That's right, and she's carrying it forward for not only herself,
but Noah and everybody else. She is leading from the
front and it is an honored privileged to call her friend.
Speaker 3 (50:45):
Agreed.
Speaker 2 (50:46):
Thank you so much for listening. We hope this episode
touched you today, and if it did, please share it
and be part of making someone else's day better.
Speaker 1 (50:53):
Put on your badass capes and harness your and her Jennifer,
and go be great today and remember you can't do
Epic Stuff without a people thank you for listening to
the good Stuff. The Good Stuff is executive produced by
Ashley Schick, Jacob Schick, Leah Pictures and q Code Media,
(51:15):
Hosted by Ashley Shick and Jacob Shick, Produced by Nick
Cassilini and Ryan Counts. House post production Supervisor Will Tindi.
Music editing by Will heywood Smith, edited by Mike Robinson,
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.