July 7, 2025 • 19 mins
Former Marine, author of From Trauma to Joy, and podcast host Michael F. McNamara shares his insights on how to deal with trauma, detailing his own experiences, as well as those of others who have also dealt with extremely tragic experiences.
How to prpcess, what drives motivations, and how does a person process trauma in life? McNamara's transformative experience is a gift. Take a listen.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:07):
Welcome back. It is America today, Jim
Watkins, and I'm honored to haveon a gentleman who's going to
tell us a little bit about griefand how to deal with it.
His name is Michael McNamara andhe is the author of a gripping
book called From Trauma to Joy. Life Changing Lessons that
fellow U.S. Marines taught me after
traumatic events occurred in my life, lessons that apply to
(00:29):
everyone. Also, the author of an upcoming
children's grief and trauma helpbook, Colleen, I can't forget.
So we're introducing you to our audience.
Tell us about the trauma in yourlife.
And then we also want to, of course, talk about the trauma
that we've all been witness to over this weekend in Texas and
how we can process all of this. Welcome to the program, Mr.
(00:51):
McNamara. Tell us your story.
Well, first of all, thank you for having me.
And my story is my parents separate divorce when I'm about
20. They never speak again.
So they annihilate the family that I grew up in, the beautiful
little family I grew up in. I joined the Marine Corps, and
(01:13):
in 1983 and 1993, I'm in charge of a exercise that I put
together and out in the desert of 49 Palms, the helicopter
crashes near me. The pilot was decapitated. 3 of
the Marines were fighting for their lives on the ground.
We tried to save them all and every one of them died.
(01:38):
And I learned a really importantlesson out of that, that one of
my Marines taught me. And that was he came up to me as
I was washing blood off my handsand he asked me.
He said, hey, Sir, he said, how are you doing?
I said, I don't know, I've been kind of busy and as we all have.
And I said, I haven't really thought about that.
And he looked at me and he said,you know, you're never going to
get over this, right. And I looked at him and I can't
(02:01):
tell you exactly what I said because it'd be an inappropriate
for the airwaves, but I said, I'm pretty sure the therapist
doesn't say that to the patient.Now, why don't you get away from
me? And you looked at me and said,
no, Sir, you need to know that. I said, who told you that?
And he told me Vietnam Marines have told him that.
He said, you know, I went through something not nearly as
bad as what happened today. And that's always helped me.
(02:24):
And and the complete thought wasreally important in my life.
One, you don't get over the things that traumatize you ever.
The best you can do is learn howto coexist with them.
You know, how could you, right? How could you?
The next part of that is when you struggle, that means you're
(02:45):
a normal human being and you could still live a great life.
OK. But we have to learn what are
the things I do when these things come back?
And they will. And so.
So I learned that from that incident.
Three years later, my sister's husband murders her kids after
she says she wants a divorce andshe's leaving.
(03:07):
He beats her and then kills himself.
I go to Iraq and Afghanistan forthree years.
I'm a Marine Corps. I was a former Marine infantry
officer before I retired, so allduring the heights of the
fighting. So I've seen ugly things.
But the ugliest thing I've ever seen didn't happen in Iraq or
Afghanistan. It happened in my hometown of
Sacramento, CA to my sister and my nephew.
(03:30):
I came home from Afghanistan, I got divorced something I never
thought would happen to me and then one of my 2 younger sisters
reasons to death that was as a result of alcohol poisoning in
cold weather. So I could not get away from
this stuff. It just kept happening in my
life. And I started doing a podcast
and I would called all Marine radio.
(03:53):
So I talked to Marines and I wanted to talk about because we
had this horrible suicide problem and it still impacts the
deal, the Department of Defense and the military today.
And our combat operations were going down.
Our suicide was going up and none of us understood it.
And so I would ask the people I interviewed every on all Marine
(04:16):
radio, we talked to Marine, right?
So I would ask them, you know what, what happened when you
came home 2/3 of the way throughevery interview.
And the stories they told me were a variation of the same
thing. This stuff started when I was a
kid. I joined the Marine Corps to get
to a better place and get away from a bad place.
(04:39):
So it started when I was a kid. It continued in my life.
And you know, then I got divorced, so I started drinking.
I never talked about it, right? And you know, three times had a
gun in front of me once it was in my mouth.
And I heard that story over and over again.
So I began, I thought, you know what?
I didn't know any of this stuff.I need to take the stuff I've
(05:01):
learned that I've heard over andover again, and I need to teach
people because I didn't know anyof this stuff, right?
Nobody taught me this stuff. And I know how much it's helped
me. So I started doing that in 2019.
And the experiences I had, I will tell you, if I sat here and
started telling you those experiences, we could be here
(05:23):
all day and they would blow you away.
So I've learned this, this path from trauma to joy.
And to any of your listeners, I don't care what your experience
is, if it's child abuse, if it'schild sexual abuse, if it's
watching people you love die, right?
Or you know, and I mean the horrible events of this weekend
(05:43):
in Texas, right? I want to tell you there is a
path for you. You can walk it.
It doesn't involve being on medications for life and going
to therapy, to life for life. And it's and it's all anchored
in the truth. I don't sell opium.
I'm not going to tell you time heals all wounds because it
doesn't. I'm not going to tell you
(06:04):
there's a purpose in this because there isn't.
You may give it a purpose, but in and of itself it doesn't have
a purpose. And I'm not going to tell you
that God doesn't give you more than you can handle.
Because when I hear that, I lookat the person who says it and
say, how would you know? Were you in the planning meeting
with God, divvied up trauma and said, let's give more to
McNamara because he can handle it.
(06:24):
And they just look at me. I said, don't say that, OK?
And I know you say it because you don't know what to say to
people like me. Don't say that.
Just give them a hug and say I'mhere for you.
So that has been my path to, into, into what I call the
valley of the shadow of death. And that's what generated my
book from trauma to joy. The the children's book that I
(06:48):
wrote was generated because I had to tell my sons, who are 9
and six, that their cousins weremurdered and by their uncle.
And I had to tell them that because normally you would
shield your kids right from things like that.
Well, my father was involved in Major League Baseball, so that
story went out on ESPN and all their friends were going to
(07:10):
know. And so as their father, they had
to hear the truth and they had to hear they should hear it from
me. And so the book is an effort to
help parents who, like me, couldnot shield their kids from some
traumatic event. And it takes them down a path
(07:31):
from on the same path from trauma to joy.
But the book's called Colleen Couldn't Forget.
It's about a little girl who sees something while she's
riding in her car with her father on the Interstate.
The book doesn't even say what she sees because it's not really
important. But her father notices, She
gets, she gets very quiet. So he says, Colleen, what's
wrong? Is there something wrong?
(07:53):
And she says, well, daddy, you know the thing we saw?
And he said, yeah, she said, I can't forget that.
And he looks at her and says, you know, Colleen, there's
things in my life that I can't forget either.
And she says, really? And he says, Yep, same thing
with your mom, your brother and your sister and your grandma and
grandpa. And I want you to go speak to
everyone of them and ask them what advice they would give you.
(08:16):
So Colleen goes on this little journey where they teach her all
the lessons I teach and from trauma to joy, but in an age
appropriate way for children. The transformational event in
the first book From Trauma to Joy and then Colleen Can't
Forget, is when you see yourselfgetting better, you know that
(08:37):
you're this is a normal human reaction.
And So what happens is you feel yourself becoming stronger
because you understand this valley of the shadow of death
that you've been shoved into. You learn how to live there.
You learn most importantly, how to get out of it and how to stay
out of it. And then what happens is you see
somebody else struggling and youstick your hand into their
(09:00):
darkness. And so Colleen goes on this
journey when she comes back and tells her dad how much she's
learned and how how she knows there's nothing wrong with her.
And she knows what to do now, right?
Instead of isolating, she'll come talk.
Instead of being alone in a room, she'll go outside and play
because she knows her body and her brain need that.
And so he says, well, I'm not done with you, though.
(09:22):
And she says, well, what else doyou want me to do?
And he says, when your friends get quiet and you notice that, I
want you to talk to them and I want you to help them.
And so the book ends with calling and helping a little boy
down the street whose parents have recently separated.
Right. He's very sad and I'm going.
To ask you to, to hold that onlybecause we have a hard break.
(09:44):
Just take a take a breath because this is so much and it's
so important what we're doing here.
My guest, Mike McNamara will be back from trauma to joy.
You're listening to America TODAY.
It's OK. From trauma to joy, that is the
(10:09):
name of the book by this man. His name is Mike McNamara, and
he has a story to tell and he's here for the reason of the
tragedy and the horror that we've witnessed this weekend.
There has to be some solace and this man has the life experience
that he's sharing with us. He's written not only one book,
but 21 called From Trauma to Joy, which we talked about, and
(10:30):
also Colleen Can't Forget, whichis a story that we can all
relate to because let's face it,among us, how many have not had
some kind of tragedy? But this man breaks all the
records. And, and I do want to interrupt
you, but you were talking about the conversation between the
little girl and her father. So please continue on that if
you wouldn't mind, Mike. So the book ends with Colleen
(10:56):
seeing a friend of hers, a little boy who rides the bus
with her to school. He's very quiet and he's sitting
by himself on the bus. And so she goes and sits next to
him and she says, are you OK? And he says, no.
I'm really sad. My my dad left our house and I
(11:16):
don't know what to do. Colleen tells him about what
happened to her. And she said, I have a notebook
with a lot of notes in it from these conversations.
Would you like to see it? And he says, yes.
So they go over to Colleen's house.
He copies all the notes, and they're sitting there and they
(11:36):
talk. And he looks at her and he says,
I feel so much better calling. Thank you so much.
And so then he leaves. Colleen is then the bookends
with Colleen having dinner with your family.
And there's a knock on the door and the little boy has come back
and he brought his little brother with it.
And everybody stops and Colleen answers the door.
(11:57):
And he said, Colleen, could we go to the park?
And could you talk to my brother?
And Colleen leaves the house. I'm getting emotional.
Just tell the story. She, she leaves the house with
this huge smile on her face and she makes eye contact with her
dad. And then the three of those
(12:21):
kids, they head to the park. And so children go through this,
right? I mean, my kids did.
And as parents, we have to be able to discuss this stuff to
tell them, you know, sadly, as you just said, this is the
normal part of life, right? And it's probably not the last
(12:42):
hard thing you're going to go through in life.
So the question is, what do we do?
What do we do with this terriblething that's happened to us?
Is all we do is, is endure it? Is that all we do?
And there's got to be a better path than that.
And that's what the book tries to outline in terms of, of, of
what we can do with something like this and how we can use it
(13:04):
to help others. And and I tell people in in the
in the book from trauma to joy, I said, you know, if you do
that, if you stick your hand in,if you learn how to do this, and
then you stick your hand starts into somebody else's darkness
when life has shoved them into the valley of the shadow of
death. At some point, you're going to
get a call that sounds somethinglike this.
Hey, man, I just wanted to talk to you.
(13:27):
Do you remember the conversationwe had a couple of months ago,
The long one? Yeah, that one.
I remember it. You don't know this, but I was
getting ready to kill myself that night and I just wanted to
call you and say thank you. The reason I'm alive today is
because of you and what you've taught me.
And I'm not hypothesizing about that.
(13:47):
I'm telling you with certainty that that's what will happen
because I've seen it so many times in my life and the people
that I've helped in their lives to, as they learn this skill and
then learn it to use it to help others.
And so that's what both books are.
That is the theme of both books.Mike McNamara is on with us
(14:07):
today. We're talking about Trauma and
Joy and his other book also, which we just went in length
about Colleen Colleen's father. That's the name of the book
Colleen's father. No, the name of the book is
Colleen couldn't forget. That's right, Colleen couldn't,
can't forget. So you're a trauma counselor.
And I have to ask you, the man that that when you had that
(14:30):
first horrific experience in theMarines, was it 29 Palms?
The man, Did you guys stay in touch?
Did you ever see him again? What?
Was oh, yeah, no, he's, he's a great friend of mine, great
friend of mine. And all that I've done, I look
at him and say you're the one that pointed me in this
direction. And he and he looks at me and he
(14:51):
goes, I didn't do this, you do it.
And I said no, without you, without you, you know, telling
me that. And again, at first it's
shocking when you hear somebody say you'll never get over it.
But when I tell people that, they look at me and then they
start laughing and I'll say, what's so funny?
And they say, you know, I've never heard anybody say that.
(15:12):
But as soon as you said it, I knew it was true.
How could I ever get over watching, you know, my wife die
over the course of a two year span?
But that's what I've been tryingto do.
I think go by going to therapy and taking these medications
that somehow or other this is going to leave me.
And I'm like, and I look at themand say, that's not going to
(15:33):
happen. Well, that is the you're going
to learn, right? You're going to learn to coexist
though. Yeah.
And and that's one of the reasons I want to brought you on
because of the mental health aspect of this.
What you said to me makes so much sense because so much of
what we do, we're fight or flight.
That's our, that's our human nature, right?
So when we can't beat something,our natural instinct is to run.
(15:56):
And this is what the process is,I think in, in dealing with
mental health and PTSD. And you know, I've been a long
proponent of the fact is don't give somebody pills.
Try to find out, dig deep. It's sometimes harder because
you're right. Once it goes in, you can't
unthink or unlearn something that you've seen.
(16:19):
And I think a lot of people right now and, and they get
angry, right? I mean, your experience is the
first, there's like a series of things that you'll do probably
like the seven steps of grief, right?
And the first one is you get angry and then then you start
negotiating. And at the end of the day,
you're right. It's you can't unthink it.
So the only possible thing to dois to what share it is, is this
(16:44):
what your overall message is? Is it in the sharing of grief we
can somehow deal with it better?Well, the first thing is you
have to learn about it. You have to learn about the
valley of the shadow of death that you've been shoved in into
that you know that you know thatyou're there's going to be days
when you're not going to be ableto shut the video off, right?
You can't mute the audio and those are tough days.
(17:07):
And that's normal and it's OK. So you have to learn those kind
of things and then you know, youhave to learn.
What do I do? Do I isolate?
Do I think like I'm OK and numb myself with, with fitness or
gaming or online shopping or something?
And that's how that's how most people do it.
That's what I learned. Most people will tell you
(17:27):
they're OK. They'll isolate themselves and
and they numb themselves with fill in the blank.
Could be work, could be parenting, it could be gaming
or, or any other thing that you do to take yourself away from
that, which I don't want to think of.
So we have to learn to change our behavior.
And that's really the hard thing.
But if you'll, if you'll do it right again, if you'll take care
(17:50):
of your money, so you, you, because again, life's not done
with you right now. On to that trauma.
Let's slur on alcohol, let's slur on relationship issues and
let's slur on financial issues. Pretty soon it's crushing you,
right? Crushing you.
And I don't know how to deal with this.
And so that's what the book is about.
(18:11):
It's a blueprint. It's not a esoteric discussion
of the philosophy of resilience or trauma.
It's not that it is. Do this.
It's Marine stuff, right? Do this like Marines, the first.
When something goes wrong, what's the first thing we do?
Let's go get drunk. That'll help, right?
Wrong. OK, So a, a therapist would look
(18:32):
at you and say, Jim, I think youshould give a lot of thought to
the way you use alcohol. I don't say that.
And and I'm, I would call myselfa trauma coach, right?
I have ABA in economics. So I'm not a mental health
person, but I, I've been a leader most of my life.
I've, I've LED in the valley of the shadow of death.
And now that's what I do. So I look at people and say,
hey, stupid, stop drinking, OK? You want to make everything
(18:56):
worse, You want to ruin your life, you want to drive
everything away from you, stop drinking.
Do you understand it? OK, Do you want me to make you
have have you ride it 100 times?And so it's a very it's more of
a coachable human approach to this very normal thing.
I. Want to get time to plug you?
We only got about 20 seconds. Michael Mcnara and his book is
(19:16):
called From Trauma to Joy. He also has a website which is
all marine radio. And I think that's important
because I want people to connectwith you.
And podcasts are very popular now, all marine radio.
Find the podcast, you can searchfor it.
I want to have you back on again.
I think your information is valuable.
And I really appreciate you taking a few minutes to share
(19:37):
some very intimate details aboutyour own life.
And I think a lot of people are touched by that, including me.
So, Mr. McNamara, thank you for your service to your country and
what you're doing today. I really appreciate that.
My privilege. Thank you for having me, Jim.
Welcome back. It is America today, Jim
Watkins, and I'm honored to haveon a gentleman who's going to
tell us a little bit about griefand how to deal with it.
His name is Michael McNamara andhe is the author of a gripping
book called From Trauma to Joy. Life Changing Lessons that
fellow U.S. Marines taught me after
traumatic events occurred in my life, lessons that apply to
(00:29):
everyone. Also, the author of an upcoming
children's grief and trauma helpbook, Colleen, I can't forget.
So we're introducing you to our audience.
Tell us about the trauma in yourlife.
And then we also want to, of course, talk about the trauma
that we've all been witness to over this weekend in Texas and
how we can process all of this. Welcome to the program, Mr.
(00:51):
McNamara. Tell us your story.
Well, first of all, thank you for having me.
And my story is my parents separate divorce when I'm about
20. They never speak again.
So they annihilate the family that I grew up in, the beautiful
little family I grew up in. I joined the Marine Corps, and
(01:13):
in 1983 and 1993, I'm in charge of a exercise that I put
together and out in the desert of 49 Palms, the helicopter
crashes near me. The pilot was decapitated. 3 of
the Marines were fighting for their lives on the ground.
We tried to save them all and every one of them died.
(01:38):
And I learned a really importantlesson out of that, that one of
my Marines taught me. And that was he came up to me as
I was washing blood off my handsand he asked me.
He said, hey, Sir, he said, how are you doing?
I said, I don't know, I've been kind of busy and as we all have.
And I said, I haven't really thought about that.
And he looked at me and he said,you know, you're never going to
get over this, right. And I looked at him and I can't
(02:01):
tell you exactly what I said because it'd be an inappropriate
for the airwaves, but I said, I'm pretty sure the therapist
doesn't say that to the patient.Now, why don't you get away from
me? And you looked at me and said,
no, Sir, you need to know that. I said, who told you that?
And he told me Vietnam Marines have told him that.
He said, you know, I went through something not nearly as
bad as what happened today. And that's always helped me.
(02:24):
And and the complete thought wasreally important in my life.
One, you don't get over the things that traumatize you ever.
The best you can do is learn howto coexist with them.
You know, how could you, right? How could you?
The next part of that is when you struggle, that means you're
(02:45):
a normal human being and you could still live a great life.
OK. But we have to learn what are
the things I do when these things come back?
And they will. And so.
So I learned that from that incident.
Three years later, my sister's husband murders her kids after
she says she wants a divorce andshe's leaving.
(03:07):
He beats her and then kills himself.
I go to Iraq and Afghanistan forthree years.
I'm a Marine Corps. I was a former Marine infantry
officer before I retired, so allduring the heights of the
fighting. So I've seen ugly things.
But the ugliest thing I've ever seen didn't happen in Iraq or
Afghanistan. It happened in my hometown of
Sacramento, CA to my sister and my nephew.
(03:30):
I came home from Afghanistan, I got divorced something I never
thought would happen to me and then one of my 2 younger sisters
reasons to death that was as a result of alcohol poisoning in
cold weather. So I could not get away from
this stuff. It just kept happening in my
life. And I started doing a podcast
and I would called all Marine radio.
(03:53):
So I talked to Marines and I wanted to talk about because we
had this horrible suicide problem and it still impacts the
deal, the Department of Defense and the military today.
And our combat operations were going down.
Our suicide was going up and none of us understood it.
And so I would ask the people I interviewed every on all Marine
(04:16):
radio, we talked to Marine, right?
So I would ask them, you know what, what happened when you
came home 2/3 of the way throughevery interview.
And the stories they told me were a variation of the same
thing. This stuff started when I was a
kid. I joined the Marine Corps to get
to a better place and get away from a bad place.
(04:39):
So it started when I was a kid. It continued in my life.
And you know, then I got divorced, so I started drinking.
I never talked about it, right? And you know, three times had a
gun in front of me once it was in my mouth.
And I heard that story over and over again.
So I began, I thought, you know what?
I didn't know any of this stuff.I need to take the stuff I've
(05:01):
learned that I've heard over andover again, and I need to teach
people because I didn't know anyof this stuff, right?
Nobody taught me this stuff. And I know how much it's helped
me. So I started doing that in 2019.
And the experiences I had, I will tell you, if I sat here and
started telling you those experiences, we could be here
(05:23):
all day and they would blow you away.
So I've learned this, this path from trauma to joy.
And to any of your listeners, I don't care what your experience
is, if it's child abuse, if it'schild sexual abuse, if it's
watching people you love die, right?
Or you know, and I mean the horrible events of this weekend
(05:43):
in Texas, right? I want to tell you there is a
path for you. You can walk it.
It doesn't involve being on medications for life and going
to therapy, to life for life. And it's and it's all anchored
in the truth. I don't sell opium.
I'm not going to tell you time heals all wounds because it
doesn't. I'm not going to tell you
(06:04):
there's a purpose in this because there isn't.
You may give it a purpose, but in and of itself it doesn't have
a purpose. And I'm not going to tell you
that God doesn't give you more than you can handle.
Because when I hear that, I lookat the person who says it and
say, how would you know? Were you in the planning meeting
with God, divvied up trauma and said, let's give more to
McNamara because he can handle it.
(06:24):
And they just look at me. I said, don't say that, OK?
And I know you say it because you don't know what to say to
people like me. Don't say that.
Just give them a hug and say I'mhere for you.
So that has been my path to, into, into what I call the
valley of the shadow of death. And that's what generated my
book from trauma to joy. The the children's book that I
(06:48):
wrote was generated because I had to tell my sons, who are 9
and six, that their cousins weremurdered and by their uncle.
And I had to tell them that because normally you would
shield your kids right from things like that.
Well, my father was involved in Major League Baseball, so that
story went out on ESPN and all their friends were going to
(07:10):
know. And so as their father, they had
to hear the truth and they had to hear they should hear it from
me. And so the book is an effort to
help parents who, like me, couldnot shield their kids from some
traumatic event. And it takes them down a path
(07:31):
from on the same path from trauma to joy.
But the book's called Colleen Couldn't Forget.
It's about a little girl who sees something while she's
riding in her car with her father on the Interstate.
The book doesn't even say what she sees because it's not really
important. But her father notices, She
gets, she gets very quiet. So he says, Colleen, what's
wrong? Is there something wrong?
(07:53):
And she says, well, daddy, you know the thing we saw?
And he said, yeah, she said, I can't forget that.
And he looks at her and says, you know, Colleen, there's
things in my life that I can't forget either.
And she says, really? And he says, Yep, same thing
with your mom, your brother and your sister and your grandma and
grandpa. And I want you to go speak to
everyone of them and ask them what advice they would give you.
(08:16):
So Colleen goes on this little journey where they teach her all
the lessons I teach and from trauma to joy, but in an age
appropriate way for children. The transformational event in
the first book From Trauma to Joy and then Colleen Can't
Forget, is when you see yourselfgetting better, you know that
(08:37):
you're this is a normal human reaction.
And So what happens is you feel yourself becoming stronger
because you understand this valley of the shadow of death
that you've been shoved into. You learn how to live there.
You learn most importantly, how to get out of it and how to stay
out of it. And then what happens is you see
somebody else struggling and youstick your hand into their
(09:00):
darkness. And so Colleen goes on this
journey when she comes back and tells her dad how much she's
learned and how how she knows there's nothing wrong with her.
And she knows what to do now, right?
Instead of isolating, she'll come talk.
Instead of being alone in a room, she'll go outside and play
because she knows her body and her brain need that.
And so he says, well, I'm not done with you, though.
(09:22):
And she says, well, what else doyou want me to do?
And he says, when your friends get quiet and you notice that, I
want you to talk to them and I want you to help them.
And so the book ends with calling and helping a little boy
down the street whose parents have recently separated.
Right. He's very sad and I'm going.
To ask you to, to hold that onlybecause we have a hard break.
(09:44):
Just take a take a breath because this is so much and it's
so important what we're doing here.
My guest, Mike McNamara will be back from trauma to joy.
You're listening to America TODAY.
It's OK. From trauma to joy, that is the
(10:09):
name of the book by this man. His name is Mike McNamara, and
he has a story to tell and he's here for the reason of the
tragedy and the horror that we've witnessed this weekend.
There has to be some solace and this man has the life experience
that he's sharing with us. He's written not only one book,
but 21 called From Trauma to Joy, which we talked about, and
(10:30):
also Colleen Can't Forget, whichis a story that we can all
relate to because let's face it,among us, how many have not had
some kind of tragedy? But this man breaks all the
records. And, and I do want to interrupt
you, but you were talking about the conversation between the
little girl and her father. So please continue on that if
you wouldn't mind, Mike. So the book ends with Colleen
(10:56):
seeing a friend of hers, a little boy who rides the bus
with her to school. He's very quiet and he's sitting
by himself on the bus. And so she goes and sits next to
him and she says, are you OK? And he says, no.
I'm really sad. My my dad left our house and I
(11:16):
don't know what to do. Colleen tells him about what
happened to her. And she said, I have a notebook
with a lot of notes in it from these conversations.
Would you like to see it? And he says, yes.
So they go over to Colleen's house.
He copies all the notes, and they're sitting there and they
(11:36):
talk. And he looks at her and he says,
I feel so much better calling. Thank you so much.
And so then he leaves. Colleen is then the bookends
with Colleen having dinner with your family.
And there's a knock on the door and the little boy has come back
and he brought his little brother with it.
And everybody stops and Colleen answers the door.
(11:57):
And he said, Colleen, could we go to the park?
And could you talk to my brother?
And Colleen leaves the house. I'm getting emotional.
Just tell the story. She, she leaves the house with
this huge smile on her face and she makes eye contact with her
dad. And then the three of those
(12:21):
kids, they head to the park. And so children go through this,
right? I mean, my kids did.
And as parents, we have to be able to discuss this stuff to
tell them, you know, sadly, as you just said, this is the
normal part of life, right? And it's probably not the last
(12:42):
hard thing you're going to go through in life.
So the question is, what do we do?
What do we do with this terriblething that's happened to us?
Is all we do is, is endure it? Is that all we do?
And there's got to be a better path than that.
And that's what the book tries to outline in terms of, of, of
what we can do with something like this and how we can use it
(13:04):
to help others. And and I tell people in in the
in the book from trauma to joy, I said, you know, if you do
that, if you stick your hand in,if you learn how to do this, and
then you stick your hand starts into somebody else's darkness
when life has shoved them into the valley of the shadow of
death. At some point, you're going to
get a call that sounds somethinglike this.
Hey, man, I just wanted to talk to you.
(13:27):
Do you remember the conversationwe had a couple of months ago,
The long one? Yeah, that one.
I remember it. You don't know this, but I was
getting ready to kill myself that night and I just wanted to
call you and say thank you. The reason I'm alive today is
because of you and what you've taught me.
And I'm not hypothesizing about that.
(13:47):
I'm telling you with certainty that that's what will happen
because I've seen it so many times in my life and the people
that I've helped in their lives to, as they learn this skill and
then learn it to use it to help others.
And so that's what both books are.
That is the theme of both books.Mike McNamara is on with us
(14:07):
today. We're talking about Trauma and
Joy and his other book also, which we just went in length
about Colleen Colleen's father. That's the name of the book
Colleen's father. No, the name of the book is
Colleen couldn't forget. That's right, Colleen couldn't,
can't forget. So you're a trauma counselor.
And I have to ask you, the man that that when you had that
(14:30):
first horrific experience in theMarines, was it 29 Palms?
The man, Did you guys stay in touch?
Did you ever see him again? What?
Was oh, yeah, no, he's, he's a great friend of mine, great
friend of mine. And all that I've done, I look
at him and say you're the one that pointed me in this
direction. And he and he looks at me and he
(14:51):
goes, I didn't do this, you do it.
And I said no, without you, without you, you know, telling
me that. And again, at first it's
shocking when you hear somebody say you'll never get over it.
But when I tell people that, they look at me and then they
start laughing and I'll say, what's so funny?
And they say, you know, I've never heard anybody say that.
(15:12):
But as soon as you said it, I knew it was true.
How could I ever get over watching, you know, my wife die
over the course of a two year span?
But that's what I've been tryingto do.
I think go by going to therapy and taking these medications
that somehow or other this is going to leave me.
And I'm like, and I look at themand say, that's not going to
(15:33):
happen. Well, that is the you're going
to learn, right? You're going to learn to coexist
though. Yeah.
And and that's one of the reasons I want to brought you on
because of the mental health aspect of this.
What you said to me makes so much sense because so much of
what we do, we're fight or flight.
That's our, that's our human nature, right?
So when we can't beat something,our natural instinct is to run.
(15:56):
And this is what the process is,I think in, in dealing with
mental health and PTSD. And you know, I've been a long
proponent of the fact is don't give somebody pills.
Try to find out, dig deep. It's sometimes harder because
you're right. Once it goes in, you can't
unthink or unlearn something that you've seen.
(16:19):
And I think a lot of people right now and, and they get
angry, right? I mean, your experience is the
first, there's like a series of things that you'll do probably
like the seven steps of grief, right?
And the first one is you get angry and then then you start
negotiating. And at the end of the day,
you're right. It's you can't unthink it.
So the only possible thing to dois to what share it is, is this
(16:44):
what your overall message is? Is it in the sharing of grief we
can somehow deal with it better?Well, the first thing is you
have to learn about it. You have to learn about the
valley of the shadow of death that you've been shoved in into
that you know that you know thatyou're there's going to be days
when you're not going to be ableto shut the video off, right?
You can't mute the audio and those are tough days.
(17:07):
And that's normal and it's OK. So you have to learn those kind
of things and then you know, youhave to learn.
What do I do? Do I isolate?
Do I think like I'm OK and numb myself with, with fitness or
gaming or online shopping or something?
And that's how that's how most people do it.
That's what I learned. Most people will tell you
(17:27):
they're OK. They'll isolate themselves and
and they numb themselves with fill in the blank.
Could be work, could be parenting, it could be gaming
or, or any other thing that you do to take yourself away from
that, which I don't want to think of.
So we have to learn to change our behavior.
And that's really the hard thing.
But if you'll, if you'll do it right again, if you'll take care
(17:50):
of your money, so you, you, because again, life's not done
with you right now. On to that trauma.
Let's slur on alcohol, let's slur on relationship issues and
let's slur on financial issues. Pretty soon it's crushing you,
right? Crushing you.
And I don't know how to deal with this.
And so that's what the book is about.
(18:11):
It's a blueprint. It's not a esoteric discussion
of the philosophy of resilience or trauma.
It's not that it is. Do this.
It's Marine stuff, right? Do this like Marines, the first.
When something goes wrong, what's the first thing we do?
Let's go get drunk. That'll help, right?
Wrong. OK, So a, a therapist would look
(18:32):
at you and say, Jim, I think youshould give a lot of thought to
the way you use alcohol. I don't say that.
And and I'm, I would call myselfa trauma coach, right?
I have ABA in economics. So I'm not a mental health
person, but I, I've been a leader most of my life.
I've, I've LED in the valley of the shadow of death.
And now that's what I do. So I look at people and say,
hey, stupid, stop drinking, OK? You want to make everything
(18:56):
worse, You want to ruin your life, you want to drive
everything away from you, stop drinking.
Do you understand it? OK, Do you want me to make you
have have you ride it 100 times?And so it's a very it's more of
a coachable human approach to this very normal thing.
I. Want to get time to plug you?
We only got about 20 seconds. Michael Mcnara and his book is
(19:16):
called From Trauma to Joy. He also has a website which is
all marine radio. And I think that's important
because I want people to connectwith you.
And podcasts are very popular now, all marine radio.
Find the podcast, you can searchfor it.
I want to have you back on again.
I think your information is valuable.
And I really appreciate you taking a few minutes to share
(19:37):
some very intimate details aboutyour own life.
And I think a lot of people are touched by that, including me.
So, Mr. McNamara, thank you for your service to your country and
what you're doing today. I really appreciate that.
My privilege. Thank you for having me, Jim.
Host
JIM WATKINS
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