February 27, 2025 • 38 mins
Megan Lowry, Marine Corps Veteran, Veteran Wellness Specialist, and citizen of the Muscogee Nation is our guest today on the Podcast.
Megan's story is one of hope. She held 'a kernel of hope' when she came to the Hoffman Process in 2015. As a Native American, Megan wasn't sure how she would navigate the week of the Process. She shares, "Being Native, there's things that we do to grieve and things that we never show and never talk about just, culturally, and so just bringing all of that to the Hoffman process, it was intimidating."
Megan served our country in the Marine Corps and then in the Secret Service for President George W. Bush and First Lady Barbara Bush. The military was where Megan gained so much, yet it was a place that also caused her great harm. She grew and learned to “adapt and overcome,” but she suffered both sexual and emotional abuse during those years. After leaving the service, she found herself having a difficult time. Then she was fortunate to meet Lee Lesser, founder of Veteran’s PATH. Lee became a mentor to Megan, helping Megan find a path of healing that included the Hoffman Process.
Now a PhD student, Megan continues to heal her significant PTSD while bringing her many skills and wisdom to serve as the commander of the Muscogee Creek Nation women’s honor guard and support Veterans in finding healing and well-being. For her dissertation, Megan intends to highlight the need for a blend of healing modalities, such as talk and recreational therapies, and ties to the community to give you purpose. Megan says, “It's not just one thing or another, it’s a blend of so many things, of so many pieces to create the human experience.”
Content warning: This episode references sexual assault, emotional trauma, and suicide. If you or someone you know is considering suicide, you can call the US National Suicide Prevention Program at 800-273-8255 (or simply 988), or message the crisis text hotline at 741741. If you are a veteran, you can also reach out to the Veterans Crisis Line.
More about Megan Lowry:
Megan is a Marine Corps Veteran who served as a military police officer and presidential security. She resides in Oklahoma on the Muscogee Creek Nation Reservation with her family, caring for her aging mother and two special needs stepdaughters. Her partner builds hot rods! Megan is also serving as the commander for the Muscogee Creek Nation women’s honor guard, where they are asked to travel the country providing tribal veteran representation for ceremonies.
Megan received her sociology degree and her Master’s in Social Work. She is working on her PhD in Psychology while also working full time as a Veteran Wellness Specialist. She covers the state of Oklahoma for Aetna and is also on the national leadership team for veterans and native resource groups. Megan has 10 dogs, 7 chickens, 2 ducks, a pig named Pumba, and a bunny named Iggy Hop.
In her free time, Megan likes to garden, be outside, cycle, and meditate.
As mentioned in this episode:
Mvto - “Thank you.” in Muscogee Creek
• More on the Muscogee Creek language
Read and watch more about Megan and her life at the University of Tulsa website.
Lee Lesser
• Sensory Awareness Retreat
• Veteran's Path
Secret Service, serving President George W. Bush and First Lady Barbara Bush
• Interview with Megan about the process of applying to the Secret Service
• Megan received the Marcy Lawless Service Award
Marine Corps Military Police
• Military Sexual Trauma
PTSD - Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
Conex Box
Muscogee Creek Nation Reservation
Muscogee Creek Nation women’s honor guard
Suicide in the Military
Veteran’s Mental Health
Congresswoman Jackie Speier
Invisible Wounds Documentary
Vanessa Guillen
Service dog, Therapy dog, vs. Emotional Support dog
PTSD Dysregulation
“It’s literally … your ordinary brain trying to cope with an extraordinary situation, and that is human.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Being native, there's things that we do to
grieve and things that we never show and
never talk about just culturally.
And so just bringing all of that to
the Hoffman process, it was very intimidating. But
then I got there and I met my
roommate, she's wonderful. We still stay in contact.
The whole process itself taught me so much.
It taught me that not only am I
allowed to hope, but I'm allowed to be
(00:22):
happy.
Welcome, everybody. My name is Drew Horning, and
this podcast is called Love's Everyday Radius.
It's brought to you by the Hoffman Institute
and its stories and anecdotes
and people we interview
about their life post process
and how it lives in the world radiating
(00:43):
love.
Please be aware that this episode references sexual
assault, emotional trauma, and suicide.
Please use your discretion.
If you or someone you know is suicidal,
please reach out to the National Suicide Prevention
Lifeline
at +1 80273
1 8
(01:03):
2 7 3 8 2 5 5,
or message the Crisis Text Line at 741741.
welcome to the podcast.
(01:24):
It
is great to have you here.
Madot, thank you. This is a beautiful story,
and I wanna introduce you.
You are a marine.
You have been a marine.
Now you're in grad school. You got your
BA, your masters. Now you're working on a
PhD in psychology. You work for Aetna Insurance
(01:47):
in a program.
Tell me about the program.
So it's the first of its kind across
the nation. It's a veteran wellness program. I've
been there for about seven months now, but
they're already looking at expanding it across the
country, which is really exciting and very much
needed. You have quite the story to tell,
so let's buckle up. And I'm really grateful
(02:07):
that you're willing to tell this story.
Maybe we begin it with
Lee Lesser and meeting her. What year was
that? I believe I met Lee in
02/2011.
Okay.
Talk about why you met her and what
eventually
in meeting her led you to Hoffman.
So when I met Lee, looking back, it's
(02:30):
now kind of a a somber but but
funny story. When I met Lee, I was
coming out of an inpatient stay at the
hospital. I had called the the veterans helpline
because I was
I was thinking about taking my life.
And so coming out of the the inpatient
stay, the vet center that I was going
to, my counselor recommended this women's retreat,
(02:53):
and I was really on the fence. I
didn't wanna go. And I called just because
I said I would, and it was full.
And I was like, okay. Not going. It's
a done deal. We're okay. So then they
called me probably four days in advance and
they said, hey, we just had somebody drop
out. We'd really like it if you would
still be able to come. What do you
think? And I said,
well, what's gonna happen at this retreat? And
(03:14):
they said, well, you know, we're gonna meditate.
We're gonna try to teach you guys some
skills to use. And I said, that's that's
some weird hippie stuff. I don't know if
I'm in for that. Anyway, I went because
I had nothing else to lose.
So
I went, and it was
it was an experience having come from the
marine corps and having kind of a a
very structured,
(03:35):
not emotionally available family, and going and learning
sensory awareness to the point where it was
reconnecting with myself. It was a very moving
experience of I no longer have to hold
myself at one arm's distance. I can self
regulate. I can come back to my breath.
I can find this peace that's always been
part of me and always lived in me,
(03:57):
and it became a very healthy tool for
me to use.
Through doing that, I had already started making
leaps and bounds. I mean, I was hungry.
I was hungry for
this type of work and connection because talk
therapy wasn't working. Prescriptions for antidepressants, you know,
those weren't working.
And I knew that I wanted to live.
I wanted to
(04:18):
to do this work and really dive in,
and I wanted to get better. I didn't
wanna have those feelings anymore.
So through the process of that retreat and
then years later working with Lee and and
going to different veteran events through Veterans Path
was just
developing myself.
And then, eventually, my father who is also
a marine corps veteran, he ended up completing
(04:40):
suicide, and I was you know, I went
back down the rabbit hole of being lost
and being overwhelmed with all of these feelings
and not really knowing
what to do with anything, so I just
locked up. And I, again, was not in
touch with myself. I was pushing everything away.
So Lee recommended that I go on another
retreat to the Hoffman process, and that's how
(05:00):
I got introduced to the whole Hoffman process.
And that was
a life changing experience.
And so you bring this history that,
as you acknowledge, had so much trauma
to it.
There's such
decorations
as a White House security with top clearance,
(05:21):
a relationship with Barbara Bush. What was her
nickname for you?
Tall Meg. How tall are you, Meg? I
am six foot four. It's such acknowledged
as with a badge of honor for your
service to the White House, to the president,
but there's also a lot of trauma.
Can you share a little bit about
(05:43):
what you had been navigating all those years
trying to find a way to heal?
Sure. So I joined the marine corps. I
had my parents sign the paperwork when I
was 17 years old. I chose to join
that young because
I really hadn't aspired
to do much in my life. In fact,
by the time I was I was 16
years old, I ran away from home. It
(06:04):
was just not a good situation. So
joining the marine corps was really an escape.
It was a way for me to get
out, so to speak. I didn't make good
grades in high school. I didn't have any
plans to go to college. I didn't
didn't really have anything else to do except
the military.
And I was planning on being in the
Marine Corps for twenty years, and that was
(06:25):
just gonna be my life. Even if I
didn't make it for the full twenty years,
then I was gonna die in combat. My
mom could use the money from the death
benefits. So, you know, I had all these
plans going, and it was not a healthy
plan to say the least.
So when I joined the Marine Corps, I
originally had signed up to be a military
police officer.
(06:45):
It was a wild ride. Being six foot
four, men either looked at me like I
was a challenge or they were just intimidated.
You know, this is one of the two.
But I made a a lot of really
good friends, lifelong friends.
But, unfortunately,
part of being a woman in the military,
it happens to men too, but part of
that experience did include
military sexual trauma. And it wasn't just a
(07:06):
a onetime thing. It was pretty brutal.
The man that did this was one of
the higher ranking members in my chain of
command,
and
he ended up basically kidnapping me. And and
then when he was finished, he dumped my
body on the side of the road. I
thought I was gonna die there on the
side of the road, but I didn't. And
that was kind of the
(07:26):
unnecessary
maybe, but also necessary
piece of grit that
because it kinda bloomed in me, was that
I I needed to get back to the
part of the base where my room was
or my barracks room was, but also, you
know, going to medical and everything after that
happened. I told him, you know, a bookcase
had fallen on me. It wasn't something that
we would we could even talk about. And
(07:48):
then when I got to my unit doing
presidential security, I was one of four women
in our security squadron once we got there.
When I left, I was one of six.
So we, I mean, we had to be
top notch to everything.
And we could never give any of the
guys an excuse.
We had to go above and beyond anything
that they could and would do. Because if
(08:08):
you if you didn't,
what would happen? It was weakness,
and it was like sharks scenting blood in
the water. I mean, they would just circle
you, and it was awful.
It was survival.
I mean, you in order to perform in
that manner, it was it was survival.
And so, again, here comes this overly structured,
(08:29):
overly intense
part of armor that I had to constantly
wear. And I know I had PTSD. I
had also
gotten crushed under some conex boxes. I have
I have screws in my face in both
sides of my jaw.
I have a lot of physical stuff going
on, traumatic brain injuries, all this stuff. But
it's something that even now, even through my
schooling, I don't want
(08:50):
to let it control me. It is a
piece of me. It is not who I
am.
So you take all of that partially healed
trauma
and your desire
to understand yourself better, not let it define
you, and you head into the process. What
happens?
Take us there. Yeah. I had this kernel
(09:11):
of hope. I've always clung to this little
kernel of hope. Even through the darkest times
in the marine corps, even through all of
the stuff with my dad,
there was always this hope, like, life cannot
be this bad.
There has to be more.
People talk about being in love, and I
I didn't experience that. I didn't have that.
(09:31):
I mean, my mom and I are we're
very close, especially now. I'm I take care
of her, but then I was like, I
was very alone. I was very ostracized.
Lee took over kind of that mom position
for me in a lot of ways. She
was a mentor, and I sought her counsel.
I I trusted her wisdom.
And so she recommended this Hoffman process, and
I said, you know what? I've done a
lot of work through my PTSD and my
(09:53):
depression and and learning sensory awareness and showing
up and being present in the moment.
I wonder if this next step can help
build that kernel of hope into something bigger.
And then I got to Hoffman, and I
was terrified.
I mean, it was it was beautiful. There's
it was just so intimidating. Like, you read
everything, you know, going going into the process,
(10:13):
but you still don't know what to expect.
You know?
And so I come in, and I know
that I have all this trauma and my
my dad's suicide still freshly on my heart.
And
and being native, there's things that we do
to grieve and things that we never show
and never talk about just culturally. And so
just bringing all of that to the Hoffman
process, it was it was very intimidating. But
(10:34):
then I got there, and I met my
roommate. She's wonderful.
We still stay in contact,
and the whole process itself taught me so
much. It taught me that
not only am I allowed to hope, but
I'm allowed to be happy. And I'm allowed
to have play and be in touch with
myself in different ways and have all these
different complex feelings. It doesn't just have to
(10:55):
be
anger and fear, and I don't have to
be reactive all the time. I can be
proactive and do things like self care for
myself and really show up for myself, and
that's okay. And it's okay to set boundaries,
and it's okay to want to do different
things and move through all of these different
feelings and move through
different parts of myself that may die and
(11:16):
and rebirth. And it's a cycle. It's a
constant cycle. It's also okay to have bad
days, but it's also okay to have good
days, and it's okay to celebrate. There's there's
so many things that I learned from the
Hoffman process.
You know, you talk about celebration and joy,
and the process is a deep dive
into the psyche, into some of the shadow
(11:36):
of what it means to be human,
but it's also a powerful celebration
of life. Is it not? Is that part
of what you experienced
is the coming home
to the joy, the goodness, the celebration of
what it means to be human? Yes. Very
much so. I very sincerely feel like I
went from
(11:56):
being in survival mode to being allowed to
just
exist
and strive for this this neutral existence.
And that was well and good,
but I still again, I had that kernel
of hope. And then I come to Hoffman,
and I learned that I can celebrate. I
can play. It's a little hard for me
still. Still working on that and still learning
(12:17):
it, but I can smile, and I can
laugh, and I can have joy,
and I can play games like a kid,
or I can read books that, you know,
make me laugh and and be happy. We
share jokes every day at work. These are
things that I never
I never knew life could hold, and here
we are. Those are ideas, but I imagine
(12:38):
in the process, they were felt senses that
this was an embodied experience you had and
not just an epiphany.
Right. It is an overall wellness. I mean,
joy and happiness, it it not only affects
your psyche, but it but your physical well-being.
If you carry stress and anger and resentment,
it turns in into poison in your body,
(12:59):
but it also makes you sick in so
many different ways. And so this healing that
came about, it was not just mental. It
was very much physical. It was a whole
whole life experience.
When you phrase it that way, I think
about the work you're doing right now in
the insurance industry. Is that part of what
you're doing with the programs you're developing? Yes.
(13:21):
I got the fortunate opportunity not only to
work with veterans but also their family members
because
being a veteran and recognizing that whatever's happening
with and to the veteran,
the family's also experiencing that too. That's one
of the things that gets highlighted in in
the Hoffman process. Right? So it very much
just overall wellness, not just mind and body,
(13:41):
but everything,
spiritual, tribal, cultural, every part of it, wellness.
So that's what I get to strive to
do. And to help your people see the
connection
between not just what they're going through, but
the impact
it's having on the ecosystem around them, their
direct family members. And not only that, but
our ties to the land, you know, being
(14:02):
native, that's another thing that comes in is
our relationship.
It's not just a relationship with self. It's
not just a relationship with our work and
our economy. It's a relationship with our land.
And so I know that talk therapy very
much has its place, but so does recreational
therapy. So being able to find opportunities to
even bring that in for wellness opportunity for
(14:24):
people can be very, very profound. You mentioned
being native.
How do you experience that part of you
on a day to day basis,
and how do you relate to that part
of you? You live in Oklahoma now near
Tulsa.
Yes. I live on our reservation land.
(14:45):
There's been a lot.
Over the last few years, there's been a
lot going on with the tribes. Just in
general, all of the tribes in the country
getting their land recognized as reservation land for
the treaties that were through our government.
Part of that was
I get to live on the reservation.
I practice my culture and my language. And
more than that, about two years ago, our
(15:06):
national council, which is the ones in charge
of the tribe and our our chief, created
legislation.
So it's it's literally a law in the
Muscogee Creek Nation to have a women's honor
guard. Women veterans
had a veteran's office, a a veteran service
office through the tribe, and there's a a
few women veterans that would come in and
out, but they really didn't have this healing
(15:28):
path, this this opportunity to recognize women veterans
in their service. It was, again, it was
just an another male dominated space.
So for them to create this legislature
to have a women's honor guard were called,
which means red person,
warrior,
woman.
Just to have this space and this recognition
(15:50):
was huge, but then
we started wearing our traditional regalia
to go do ceremonies and everything. And so
we started getting asked to go to events
across the country.
We've been everywhere from California all the way
to Washington, DC, and everything in between. It's
been it's been really amazing.
You know, one thing in reading about you
and researching you,
(16:11):
there's such incredible advocacy
you do. Your
dad dies of suicide,
completes a suicide, and you create
a race
to raise funds and awareness
for suicide
and suicide prevention in the military.
Original statistics came out that it was 22
(16:32):
a day,
but that's been disproven that it's actually maybe
twice as much.
And you became such an advocate for
mental
health for military vets and saying that we're
trained how to be in combat. We're not
trained
how to come home from combat.
It's absolutely right.
Absolutely right. And I still even now with
(16:54):
the work that I do, I I get
the opportunity to talk to reservists or people
that may be transitioning out, veterans, and they
still feel the same way. That part hasn't
changed. The military has tried, of course, to
do
do different things, have different programs to kinda
ease that transition, but it is still so
hard to make that transition to come home
because it is it's your entire life. You
(17:15):
eat, sleep. Everything you do all day long
and all night long is is military, and
then it's just done. You signed a paper
and it's just done one day. And what
do you do? It's different for every person.
But part of the advocacy work, part of
the drive to do the advocacy work is
not only just to bring people home, but
to let them know that they don't have
to struggle in silence like I did.
(17:36):
They don't have to
isolate themselves and be afraid of their anger
like I was
just to be able to be
open and experience life. It doesn't have to
be just this structured military
experience for life. It's a whole plethora of
everything else.
Yeah. There's some real theme here of
(17:56):
after surviving
your dad's
suicide completion and then your own suicide
attempt and hospitalization.
Once you heal or in the process of
healing,
you turn back.
Rather than just keep going forward, you turn
back to
your community, your neighbors, your colleagues,
(18:19):
your
fellow military
veterans,
and lend a helping hand. When it comes
to being
subject
to military sexual assault,
you turn around
and create
and connect with a California
senator or congressman at the time to create
a block advocacy
(18:40):
change in the law. Can you talk a
little bit about that?
I got brought in at the very tail
end. I wish I was able to do
more with that, but congresswoman Jackie Speer was
instrumental.
There was even a documentary that was created
called Invisible Wounds.
It's a deep dive into military sexual trauma,
and it highlights not only what it is
(19:01):
for women, but what it is for men.
It's so much
so. I would never in good conscience say
yes. It's it's a good opportunity to join
the military. The military is still very much
struggling with this to the point where
now we even see cases like a few
years ago with Vanessa Gillian going missing for
days and and weeks and no one knowing
what happened. And then it finally came out
(19:22):
that she was gonna be reporting sexual harassment
and sexual assault. And, unfortunately,
she lost her life instead of being able
to report it.
So it is very much still ongoing, but
now there are steps being taken
to bring it to life, to say yes.
You know, you first have to acknowledge there's
a problem. And now that that's being done,
now there's how can we fix it? How
(19:44):
can we change the reporting? How can we
change the way the investigations go? Because all
of that was also just an added trauma
for me, for my own experience.
I went to go report it, and I
was told not to. I finally did report
it after several other happenings and then being
stalked by this person. My chain of command
really tries to try to sweep it under
(20:04):
the rug. And so that's a whole another
piece of trauma of broken trust. How do
you move forward from that? Just to tie
all of this together, part of the advocacy
work and everything that I do, it is
to tie back into your community because
what is a more important purpose
than being in community?
I mean, if it's a veteran community, if
(20:24):
it's your local community, if it's your tribal
community, your religious community, whatever kind of community
it is,
it gives you purpose.
It ignites that passion and keeps it going.
That's part of why I do what I
do.
That community is tied to belonging,
and outcomes for people who belong
are much better, who have a community, who
(20:46):
are interconnected
to the world around them. Isolation
kills, does it not? Yes. That is one
of the leading causes
for suicide is the isolation. That's one of
the key trademarks. If you know someone who
is experiencing,
you know, all of these very, very hard
emotions and and all of these really painful
(21:07):
things inside. One of the things that they're
gonna do before they complete suicide is they're
gonna isolate.
Megan, in your continued advocacy, you worked with
Pups for Patriots, helping train
military dogs.
Do you still have a military dog?
So, unfortunately,
just a couple months ago, my service dog,
(21:28):
he passed away. His stomach turned. And for
German shepherds, it's unfortunately
common, but also
a very low survival rate for the surgery.
So I got him to the vet immediately
and got him comfortable, but we did have
to say goodbye.
And then a few months later, we had
a puppy, a stray puppy that showed up,
at my partner's shop, and he brought him
home. And now we have another dog.
(21:51):
I'm training them to do PTSD service dog
work. It's something that is still very near
and dear to my heart. It's something that
I still get asked to help with, whether
it's consulting for the tribal hospital I used
to work at to make some different policies
and regulations. Now I got to share some
of the highlights and the policies and regulations
with Aetna nationally so that they could push
(22:12):
it out for people who may be interested
in that information.
So that people can actually get financial support
to have a military service dog? Well, not
only that. There are certain questions you can't
just say, well, why do you have a
service dog? The proper question the legal question
would be, what services does this service dog
provide to you? And PTSD is one of
the only mental health conditions that's covered under
(22:35):
the ADA law for a service dog. Everything
else, mental health wise, would be an emotional
support dog.
Megan, would you be willing to share
PTSD
stands for post traumatic stress disorder.
When you have experienced that in your life,
what's happening? What does that look like? Could
you take us inside for a minute? Yeah.
(22:56):
It's been almost
sixteen years since I got out of the
military now, maybe a little bit longer. Closer
to 18 makes me feel a little old,
but here we are living life.
But even that long after the military and
even still going through learning sensory awareness and
the Hoffman process and different therapies that I've
been able to participate in,
(23:16):
you know, it's still
a dysregulation
within my brain and my body. So sometimes
I'll have nightmares, and I'll wake up just
completely drenched in sweat. Like, even my sheets
and my blanket are just drenched in sweat,
or
I'll wake up and I'll be fighting my
blankets and my sheets because there's there's no
one there. You know? But then other times
it can be a smell,
(23:37):
just a very specific smell that takes me
back and floods me with these memories, these
intrusive thoughts. And it can be a sound
or a voice, or even just a familiar
face.
It's not a weakness to have this. A
lot of people say, you know, you you
may be predisposed to developing PTSD if you've
had depression or other mental health conditions, but
it's literally
(23:58):
your brain trying to cope, your ordinary brain
trying to cope with an extraordinary
situation.
And that is
that is human.
That is in essence human nature.
And the service dog
helps in what ways?
So it's accountability,
first and foremost. It's accountability because that's that's
(24:21):
an extension
of myself. It's almost like a a child
that you have to care for. You know?
But they wanna play. They wanna go on
walks. They wanna get up and get moving
and get out of the house. They wanna
snuggle you if you're having a hard time
sleeping.
And if you're drenched in sweat, they're gonna
give you kisses to wake you up. And
even I've even trained them to turn on
the lights so that I don't try to,
like, throw them off the bed or something.
(24:43):
But also in public, you know, it's one
of those where sometimes it's really hard for
me to be in crowded spaces and have
people behind me that I don't know. And
so the dog can sit either facing behind
me or they'll do a three sixty around
me. The leash that I have allows them
to move in a a three sixty around
me. But it's also something where
if I'm having those intrusive thoughts, it's a
(25:05):
grounding
skill also where I can reach down and
I can feel their warmth or even though
he's huge, put them up in my lap
and just let that deep pressure ground me
to know that I'm here in the present
moment.
And you've shared previously
that even helping you up the steps, helping
you get up off the couch, some of
your physical disabilities,
your dog has at times really
(25:27):
played a a vital role. Yeah. My German
shepherd, the one that recently passed away, he
was one of the first service dogs to
graduate during my undergrad and walk across the
stage with me. And so that was pretty
exciting. He loved it. He got a lot
of treats and a lot of hot dogs
for that. But
even just the few small stairs, it was
four steps to get up on the stage.
His little harness that he wore helped kinda
(25:49):
be able to give me that motion to
get up because I have
so much fusion in in my back. My
left leg doesn't always do what I want
it to do. So, like, recreational therapies like
snow biking and snowboarding and everything. I I
wanna try those things because I've never done
them before, but I couldn't get my left
leg to cut in and so I could
slow myself down. So they put me on
a snow bike. And then the marine in
(26:09):
me, I got cocky and took off and
was zooming around and having a blast. But,
anyway, those are the things that you just
have to experience.
From your process,
you mentioned earlier about some tools that you
continue to use. What remains
enduring
as a tool or practice from your week?
One of the enduring tools I would say
(26:30):
was, I mean, obviously, just playing and celebrating
and allowing that space into my life, but
also
recycling was a really good one. It is
a tool that I use
to acknowledge within myself what's going on, but
also a tool that I use to express
it and get it out. And to know
that it doesn't have to control me, it
doesn't have to ruin my day. It is
(26:51):
something that's there, and I can process it.
As I hear you say that, one of
the things that
recycling does that I see you sort of
talking about is that we titrate a little
bit, which is allow
people to go to the wound or the
past or the hurt or the pattern or
whatever didn't work,
(27:12):
and then
rewrite the story from that place to
undo it physically and then to call in
spirit and recreate it almost,
rewiring the brain in the process.
Is that how you see it? Oh, absolutely.
Not only do I practice that even just
in my daily work, but it is something
(27:33):
as a native person, when I go to
to sweat, like a sweat lodge, that is
essentially a similar practice.
And so it's very present for me both
culturally and spiritually and mentally, so it's a
good tool.
Megan, in a way, I wanna say it
happened again because you're building your house
four or five years ago. You hire a
(27:53):
contractor. You buy the land
from
monies that you were able to save up,
and something happens again, doesn't it? Will you
tell us a little bit what transpired and
how you navigated it? Yeah. So the money
that I had left over from my dad's
life insurance policy, actually, between that and then
what my mom had, we went in 5050.
(28:14):
She's aging.
She's now got dementia, but we decided years
ago that we were gonna live together to
take care of each other, and and that
was gonna be, you know, our life because
we forgave each other and we grew a
lot more together than than what we were
previously. So we bought this property. We started
getting, you know, all these quotes in from
different builders. We liked this builder. We opted
to use him. Our bank vetted him. He
(28:35):
was a professor at a local college,
for entrepreneurship and construction, and so we were
like, hey. This guy's on the up and
up. We can definitely trust him. Until we
got about maybe three months into the build.
We had given him and even our bank,
you know, our our bank signed off on
giving him so much money to advance him
for all these contractors that he said was
going out there. And then we started getting
(28:56):
liens in the mail from these contractors that
he had not paid.
And then we started getting more letters and
phone calls from these contractors, wondering where their
money was. Why are you calling me? What
what's going on? We give this money to
this builder. He's the one that's supposed to
pay you. And so immediately, the bank stopped
any funding on the project. It was also
when COVID had just started in 02/2019,
(29:18):
so everything shut down.
And so it's like, what happened was bad,
but then it got worse because of COVID.
So, essentially, this house, it just sat there.
It was just the studs. The wood was
getting warped, and it was old, and some
of the the beams needed to be replaced
and all these things. And so finally, once
COVID's kinda started lifting, my friends were able
(29:38):
to come out and it's acres. There's multiple
acres here and the grass had grown up
even taller than I am. And it very
much looked like this crazy abandoned property. So
my friends came out, we attacked the grass
and everything as much as we could to
make an area just for the tractors to
be able to get in to brush hog
it. And then this lady came out to
try to help me kinda get things on
(29:58):
track, but then the bank found out that
she was also not a good contractor.
I'm telling you, it was wild. So then
my partner came along. Not only does he
build hot rods, but he also knew construction.
He knew how to build houses and stuff.
And so he was started giving me pointers
and I hadn't even told him about it
when we got together. It was just like
this thing hanging out there. I I figured,
you know, we'll have to give the house
(30:19):
up, you know, foreclose it with the bank
and everything.
And then somebody, I don't know who, but
somebody told him about it. And then he
found one of the clips from the news
stories, and then he asked me about it.
And I said, well, I'll just go show
you. Like, I don't know what's gonna happen
with it, but I'll go show you. So
we went out there, and he was just
looking around. And then I had to go,
I think, on a business trip or something.
(30:39):
And when I came back, he was like,
no. Don't freak out, but I need some
money. I was like, what are you what
are you talking about? You need some like,
did did something happen with the shop? What's
going on? And as we're driving home,
he starts going to the property
and I was having like a heart attack.
Stay in the present moment, stay in the
present moment.
And so,
I mean, fear, like I was sweating. My
(31:00):
mouth was dry. It was like I was
freaking out. And so we got here
and he had had a dozer come through
and work the property over to smooth things
out and got all the grass cleared out.
And there were people inside putting up drywall.
There were walls on the outside of the
house. Like, it looked like an actual house.
(31:21):
I remember there's been many nights where we
came out here. Either I was by myself
or my partner was with me, and we
were stapling in different insulation, or I was
out here painting or cutting up, you know,
whatever. Just just learning how to build a
house that I had you know, these are
skills I'd never learned.
But in the military, they tell you adapt
and overcome. Right? And through the Hoffman process,
(31:41):
I learned how to say yes to different
experiences.
And so this was one of those. But
also again, that grit and resiliency to not
give up and not let go.
And so happily now we've lived in this
house for over a year. We moved in
right before Thanksgiving. It was not a big
Thanksgiving celebration, but we had a Thanksgiving celebration
and that was kind of our welcome to
(32:01):
the house moment.
But we're in it, and we love it.
And now we have all these animals, and
it's a family, and it's a house, and
it's it's everything.
Megan, I wanna ask about the military being
both
this place where you gained so much, adapt
and overcome, such
resiliency
in that statement,
and yet it's also a place that's caused
(32:22):
you such pain and harm
and trauma.
How is it to hold the complexity that
maybe the paradox
of that the military has been wonderful for
you and so painful
as well?
When I joined the marine corps, the motto
of the marine corps was pain is weakness
leaving the body.
(32:43):
And at first, I was like, yeah. That
that's so hard. You know, hardcore. It's tough.
You know? That's real strength, but it's not.
Pain is not weakness. Pain is your body
telling you that something is wrong.
Why did they have to say that? I
attempted to live out the embodiment of that
motto, and then it was not okay. It
was it was awful.
So but it is. It's a complex
(33:05):
spectrum
of feelings that I I have for the
military. It is I do have this gratefulness
because on one hand, I've been able to
go through and get my education
through my educational benefits and then also scholarships
from my tribe, and I don't have any
student debt. And there's not a whole lot
of people working on a PhD program that
can say that.
It's also given me these life skills of
(33:27):
not giving up and just one foot in
front of the other, having the ability to
just break life down sometimes hour by hour
when it's needed to get through, but also
it enhanced
my own personal tenacity. It enhanced
different skills and traits that I already had
and different leadership traits that I had,
but it also gave me more depth as
a human being because here I have experienced
(33:48):
this trauma,
but I'm also not willing to give up.
How do those things coexist in life?
Well, I mean, at the end of the
day, that that's life. Right?
So I have this gratefulness, but also this
anger, but never resentment.
Say that again. Anger, but never resentment.
Mhmm. I'm mad that I didn't get to
(34:09):
to stay in for twenty years. I'm mad
that there's people allowed to stay in the
military even after they do these horrific things
to other people.
But I'm also grateful for the experience because
now I get to help other people.
I get to help people come home from
that and not only just come home, but
find a path to wellness.
And you've been able to
(34:31):
guide people on that. Certainly, you were a
part of a conference.
I read online somewhere that you were the
best part of this
two point o. What was it called?
I don't know if I was the best
part of it. It was wisdom two point
o. Wisdom two point o. Mhmm. That was
another invitation from Lee and her husband that
(34:51):
brought me to that. That was another
moment that I got to share about
military experiences
and different ways of trying to cope with
that. You know, throughout your
life, it seems like there's been
a desire to not only turn
and help others, but
to not remain quiet. It just seems like
(35:12):
over and over again, you've had a choice.
Do I stay silent and stay small, or
do I speak up
despite
the pushback I know I'll receive?
And it just seems like you have spoken
out and spoken up every time
injustice has happened and then
turned around and been an advocate
(35:33):
for systemic change as well.
Is that just part of who you are?
Yes.
You know, I think part of that stems
from my childhood. We were raised in a
home where children should not be seen or
heard.
So it was
there was so much wrong that happened.
There are things that my family knew was
(35:54):
going on, but no one ever did anything.
And so I think that my ability to
use my voice and advocate and seek justice,
it all stems from that. It's in direct
response to that, probably.
What's next for you, Megan? Where do you
go from here as you eventually get your
PhD?
So I want to
I mean, obviously, I wanna get my PhD.
(36:15):
I have to defend my dissertation and
all the adventure that that is gonna entail,
but what I really hope to do
is to highlight
a very specific need, a gap in care,
if you will,
that we have these therapies that are allotted
through insurance programs, talk therapy, inpatient stays,
outpatient intensive outpatient,
(36:35):
you know, all all these sort of things,
substance use treatment, all these different things that
affect our mental health. But it's not often
that insurance companies will pay for recreational therapy
or even therapists themselves will include that as
part of a traditional therapy, if you will.
So what I really wanna do for my
dissertation is show and highlight the need for
(36:55):
talk therapy and recreational therapy and being tied
into your community that gives you purpose as
a means to heal
because it's not just one thing or another.
It's a blend of so many things, of
so many pieces
to create the human experience.
That's what I hope my next step is
also gonna be is not only being able
to highlight this, but also create programs, whether
(37:16):
it's through grants or whatever else that will
host all of that.
Megan, for your advocacy, for the work you
do in the world,
and also for the vulnerability and the stories
you shared about your life,
I'm deeply grateful. Thank you. Well, thank you.
And we say Mado is the way that
we say thank you in in Muskogee Creek.
So Mado, I appreciate this time and this
(37:38):
opportunity. Mado.
Thank you for listening to our podcast. My
name is Liza Ingrassi. I'm the CEO and
president of Hoffman Institute Foundation.
And I'm Rassie Grassi,
Hoffman teacher and founder of the Hoffman Institute
(38:00):
Foundation.
Our mission is to provide people greater access
to the wisdom and power of love. In
themselves,
in each other, and in the world.
To find out more, please go to hompaninstitute.org.
Being native, there's things that we do to
grieve and things that we never show and
never talk about just culturally.
And so just bringing all of that to
the Hoffman process, it was very intimidating. But
then I got there and I met my
roommate, she's wonderful. We still stay in contact.
The whole process itself taught me so much.
It taught me that not only am I
allowed to hope, but I'm allowed to be
(00:22):
happy.
Welcome, everybody. My name is Drew Horning, and
this podcast is called Love's Everyday Radius.
It's brought to you by the Hoffman Institute
and its stories and anecdotes
and people we interview
about their life post process
and how it lives in the world radiating
(00:43):
love.
Please be aware that this episode references sexual
assault, emotional trauma, and suicide.
Please use your discretion.
If you or someone you know is suicidal,
please reach out to the National Suicide Prevention
Lifeline
at +1 80273
1 8
(01:03):
2 7 3 8 2 5 5,
or message the Crisis Text Line at 741741.
welcome to the podcast.
(01:24):
It
is great to have you here.
Madot, thank you. This is a beautiful story,
and I wanna introduce you.
You are a marine.
You have been a marine.
Now you're in grad school. You got your
BA, your masters. Now you're working on a
PhD in psychology. You work for Aetna Insurance
(01:47):
in a program.
Tell me about the program.
So it's the first of its kind across
the nation. It's a veteran wellness program. I've
been there for about seven months now, but
they're already looking at expanding it across the
country, which is really exciting and very much
needed. You have quite the story to tell,
so let's buckle up. And I'm really grateful
(02:07):
that you're willing to tell this story.
Maybe we begin it with
Lee Lesser and meeting her. What year was
that? I believe I met Lee in
02/2011.
Okay.
Talk about why you met her and what
eventually
in meeting her led you to Hoffman.
So when I met Lee, looking back, it's
(02:30):
now kind of a a somber but but
funny story. When I met Lee, I was
coming out of an inpatient stay at the
hospital. I had called the the veterans helpline
because I was
I was thinking about taking my life.
And so coming out of the the inpatient
stay, the vet center that I was going
to, my counselor recommended this women's retreat,
(02:53):
and I was really on the fence. I
didn't wanna go. And I called just because
I said I would, and it was full.
And I was like, okay. Not going. It's
a done deal. We're okay. So then they
called me probably four days in advance and
they said, hey, we just had somebody drop
out. We'd really like it if you would
still be able to come. What do you
think? And I said,
well, what's gonna happen at this retreat? And
(03:14):
they said, well, you know, we're gonna meditate.
We're gonna try to teach you guys some
skills to use. And I said, that's that's
some weird hippie stuff. I don't know if
I'm in for that. Anyway, I went because
I had nothing else to lose.
So
I went, and it was
it was an experience having come from the
marine corps and having kind of a a
very structured,
(03:35):
not emotionally available family, and going and learning
sensory awareness to the point where it was
reconnecting with myself. It was a very moving
experience of I no longer have to hold
myself at one arm's distance. I can self
regulate. I can come back to my breath.
I can find this peace that's always been
part of me and always lived in me,
(03:57):
and it became a very healthy tool for
me to use.
Through doing that, I had already started making
leaps and bounds. I mean, I was hungry.
I was hungry for
this type of work and connection because talk
therapy wasn't working. Prescriptions for antidepressants, you know,
those weren't working.
And I knew that I wanted to live.
I wanted to
(04:18):
to do this work and really dive in,
and I wanted to get better. I didn't
wanna have those feelings anymore.
So through the process of that retreat and
then years later working with Lee and and
going to different veteran events through Veterans Path
was just
developing myself.
And then, eventually, my father who is also
a marine corps veteran, he ended up completing
(04:40):
suicide, and I was you know, I went
back down the rabbit hole of being lost
and being overwhelmed with all of these feelings
and not really knowing
what to do with anything, so I just
locked up. And I, again, was not in
touch with myself. I was pushing everything away.
So Lee recommended that I go on another
retreat to the Hoffman process, and that's how
(05:00):
I got introduced to the whole Hoffman process.
And that was
a life changing experience.
And so you bring this history that,
as you acknowledge, had so much trauma
to it.
There's such
decorations
as a White House security with top clearance,
(05:21):
a relationship with Barbara Bush. What was her
nickname for you?
Tall Meg. How tall are you, Meg? I
am six foot four. It's such acknowledged
as with a badge of honor for your
service to the White House, to the president,
but there's also a lot of trauma.
Can you share a little bit about
(05:43):
what you had been navigating all those years
trying to find a way to heal?
Sure. So I joined the marine corps. I
had my parents sign the paperwork when I
was 17 years old. I chose to join
that young because
I really hadn't aspired
to do much in my life. In fact,
by the time I was I was 16
years old, I ran away from home. It
(06:04):
was just not a good situation. So
joining the marine corps was really an escape.
It was a way for me to get
out, so to speak. I didn't make good
grades in high school. I didn't have any
plans to go to college. I didn't
didn't really have anything else to do except
the military.
And I was planning on being in the
Marine Corps for twenty years, and that was
(06:25):
just gonna be my life. Even if I
didn't make it for the full twenty years,
then I was gonna die in combat. My
mom could use the money from the death
benefits. So, you know, I had all these
plans going, and it was not a healthy
plan to say the least.
So when I joined the Marine Corps, I
originally had signed up to be a military
police officer.
(06:45):
It was a wild ride. Being six foot
four, men either looked at me like I
was a challenge or they were just intimidated.
You know, this is one of the two.
But I made a a lot of really
good friends, lifelong friends.
But, unfortunately,
part of being a woman in the military,
it happens to men too, but part of
that experience did include
military sexual trauma. And it wasn't just a
(07:06):
a onetime thing. It was pretty brutal.
The man that did this was one of
the higher ranking members in my chain of
command,
and
he ended up basically kidnapping me. And and
then when he was finished, he dumped my
body on the side of the road. I
thought I was gonna die there on the
side of the road, but I didn't. And
that was kind of the
(07:26):
unnecessary
maybe, but also necessary
piece of grit that
because it kinda bloomed in me, was that
I I needed to get back to the
part of the base where my room was
or my barracks room was, but also, you
know, going to medical and everything after that
happened. I told him, you know, a bookcase
had fallen on me. It wasn't something that
we would we could even talk about. And
(07:48):
then when I got to my unit doing
presidential security, I was one of four women
in our security squadron once we got there.
When I left, I was one of six.
So we, I mean, we had to be
top notch to everything.
And we could never give any of the
guys an excuse.
We had to go above and beyond anything
that they could and would do. Because if
(08:08):
you if you didn't,
what would happen? It was weakness,
and it was like sharks scenting blood in
the water. I mean, they would just circle
you, and it was awful.
It was survival.
I mean, you in order to perform in
that manner, it was it was survival.
And so, again, here comes this overly structured,
(08:29):
overly intense
part of armor that I had to constantly
wear. And I know I had PTSD. I
had also
gotten crushed under some conex boxes. I have
I have screws in my face in both
sides of my jaw.
I have a lot of physical stuff going
on, traumatic brain injuries, all this stuff. But
it's something that even now, even through my
schooling, I don't want
(08:50):
to let it control me. It is a
piece of me. It is not who I
am.
So you take all of that partially healed
trauma
and your desire
to understand yourself better, not let it define
you, and you head into the process. What
happens?
Take us there. Yeah. I had this kernel
(09:11):
of hope. I've always clung to this little
kernel of hope. Even through the darkest times
in the marine corps, even through all of
the stuff with my dad,
there was always this hope, like, life cannot
be this bad.
There has to be more.
People talk about being in love, and I
I didn't experience that. I didn't have that.
(09:31):
I mean, my mom and I are we're
very close, especially now. I'm I take care
of her, but then I was like, I
was very alone. I was very ostracized.
Lee took over kind of that mom position
for me in a lot of ways. She
was a mentor, and I sought her counsel.
I I trusted her wisdom.
And so she recommended this Hoffman process, and
I said, you know what? I've done a
lot of work through my PTSD and my
(09:53):
depression and and learning sensory awareness and showing
up and being present in the moment.
I wonder if this next step can help
build that kernel of hope into something bigger.
And then I got to Hoffman, and I
was terrified.
I mean, it was it was beautiful. There's
it was just so intimidating. Like, you read
everything, you know, going going into the process,
(10:13):
but you still don't know what to expect.
You know?
And so I come in, and I know
that I have all this trauma and my
my dad's suicide still freshly on my heart.
And
and being native, there's things that we do
to grieve and things that we never show
and never talk about just culturally. And so
just bringing all of that to the Hoffman
process, it was it was very intimidating. But
(10:34):
then I got there, and I met my
roommate. She's wonderful.
We still stay in contact,
and the whole process itself taught me so
much. It taught me that
not only am I allowed to hope, but
I'm allowed to be happy. And I'm allowed
to have play and be in touch with
myself in different ways and have all these
different complex feelings. It doesn't just have to
(10:55):
be
anger and fear, and I don't have to
be reactive all the time. I can be
proactive and do things like self care for
myself and really show up for myself, and
that's okay. And it's okay to set boundaries,
and it's okay to want to do different
things and move through all of these different
feelings and move through
different parts of myself that may die and
(11:16):
and rebirth. And it's a cycle. It's a
constant cycle. It's also okay to have bad
days, but it's also okay to have good
days, and it's okay to celebrate. There's there's
so many things that I learned from the
Hoffman process.
You know, you talk about celebration and joy,
and the process is a deep dive
into the psyche, into some of the shadow
(11:36):
of what it means to be human,
but it's also a powerful celebration
of life. Is it not? Is that part
of what you experienced
is the coming home
to the joy, the goodness, the celebration of
what it means to be human? Yes. Very
much so. I very sincerely feel like I
went from
(11:56):
being in survival mode to being allowed to
just
exist
and strive for this this neutral existence.
And that was well and good,
but I still again, I had that kernel
of hope. And then I come to Hoffman,
and I learned that I can celebrate. I
can play. It's a little hard for me
still. Still working on that and still learning
(12:17):
it, but I can smile, and I can
laugh, and I can have joy,
and I can play games like a kid,
or I can read books that, you know,
make me laugh and and be happy. We
share jokes every day at work. These are
things that I never
I never knew life could hold, and here
we are. Those are ideas, but I imagine
(12:38):
in the process, they were felt senses that
this was an embodied experience you had and
not just an epiphany.
Right. It is an overall wellness. I mean,
joy and happiness, it it not only affects
your psyche, but it but your physical well-being.
If you carry stress and anger and resentment,
it turns in into poison in your body,
(12:59):
but it also makes you sick in so
many different ways. And so this healing that
came about, it was not just mental. It
was very much physical. It was a whole
whole life experience.
When you phrase it that way, I think
about the work you're doing right now in
the insurance industry. Is that part of what
you're doing with the programs you're developing? Yes.
(13:21):
I got the fortunate opportunity not only to
work with veterans but also their family members
because
being a veteran and recognizing that whatever's happening
with and to the veteran,
the family's also experiencing that too. That's one
of the things that gets highlighted in in
the Hoffman process. Right? So it very much
just overall wellness, not just mind and body,
(13:41):
but everything,
spiritual, tribal, cultural, every part of it, wellness.
So that's what I get to strive to
do. And to help your people see the
connection
between not just what they're going through, but
the impact
it's having on the ecosystem around them, their
direct family members. And not only that, but
our ties to the land, you know, being
(14:02):
native, that's another thing that comes in is
our relationship.
It's not just a relationship with self. It's
not just a relationship with our work and
our economy. It's a relationship with our land.
And so I know that talk therapy very
much has its place, but so does recreational
therapy. So being able to find opportunities to
even bring that in for wellness opportunity for
(14:24):
people can be very, very profound. You mentioned
being native.
How do you experience that part of you
on a day to day basis,
and how do you relate to that part
of you? You live in Oklahoma now near
Tulsa.
Yes. I live on our reservation land.
(14:45):
There's been a lot.
Over the last few years, there's been a
lot going on with the tribes. Just in
general, all of the tribes in the country
getting their land recognized as reservation land for
the treaties that were through our government.
Part of that was
I get to live on the reservation.
I practice my culture and my language. And
more than that, about two years ago, our
(15:06):
national council, which is the ones in charge
of the tribe and our our chief, created
legislation.
So it's it's literally a law in the
Muscogee Creek Nation to have a women's honor
guard. Women veterans
had a veteran's office, a a veteran service
office through the tribe, and there's a a
few women veterans that would come in and
out, but they really didn't have this healing
(15:28):
path, this this opportunity to recognize women veterans
in their service. It was, again, it was
just an another male dominated space.
So for them to create this legislature
to have a women's honor guard were called,
which means red person,
warrior,
woman.
Just to have this space and this recognition
(15:50):
was huge, but then
we started wearing our traditional regalia
to go do ceremonies and everything. And so
we started getting asked to go to events
across the country.
We've been everywhere from California all the way
to Washington, DC, and everything in between. It's
been it's been really amazing.
You know, one thing in reading about you
and researching you,
(16:11):
there's such incredible advocacy
you do. Your
dad dies of suicide,
completes a suicide, and you create
a race
to raise funds and awareness
for suicide
and suicide prevention in the military.
Original statistics came out that it was 22
(16:32):
a day,
but that's been disproven that it's actually maybe
twice as much.
And you became such an advocate for
mental
health for military vets and saying that we're
trained how to be in combat. We're not
trained
how to come home from combat.
It's absolutely right.
Absolutely right. And I still even now with
(16:54):
the work that I do, I I get
the opportunity to talk to reservists or people
that may be transitioning out, veterans, and they
still feel the same way. That part hasn't
changed. The military has tried, of course, to
do
do different things, have different programs to kinda
ease that transition, but it is still so
hard to make that transition to come home
because it is it's your entire life. You
(17:15):
eat, sleep. Everything you do all day long
and all night long is is military, and
then it's just done. You signed a paper
and it's just done one day. And what
do you do? It's different for every person.
But part of the advocacy work, part of
the drive to do the advocacy work is
not only just to bring people home, but
to let them know that they don't have
to struggle in silence like I did.
(17:36):
They don't have to
isolate themselves and be afraid of their anger
like I was
just to be able to be
open and experience life. It doesn't have to
be just this structured military
experience for life. It's a whole plethora of
everything else.
Yeah. There's some real theme here of
(17:56):
after surviving
your dad's
suicide completion and then your own suicide
attempt and hospitalization.
Once you heal or in the process of
healing,
you turn back.
Rather than just keep going forward, you turn
back to
your community, your neighbors, your colleagues,
(18:19):
your
fellow military
veterans,
and lend a helping hand. When it comes
to being
subject
to military sexual assault,
you turn around
and create
and connect with a California
senator or congressman at the time to create
a block advocacy
(18:40):
change in the law. Can you talk a
little bit about that?
I got brought in at the very tail
end. I wish I was able to do
more with that, but congresswoman Jackie Speer was
instrumental.
There was even a documentary that was created
called Invisible Wounds.
It's a deep dive into military sexual trauma,
and it highlights not only what it is
(19:01):
for women, but what it is for men.
It's so much
so. I would never in good conscience say
yes. It's it's a good opportunity to join
the military. The military is still very much
struggling with this to the point where
now we even see cases like a few
years ago with Vanessa Gillian going missing for
days and and weeks and no one knowing
what happened. And then it finally came out
(19:22):
that she was gonna be reporting sexual harassment
and sexual assault. And, unfortunately,
she lost her life instead of being able
to report it.
So it is very much still ongoing, but
now there are steps being taken
to bring it to life, to say yes.
You know, you first have to acknowledge there's
a problem. And now that that's being done,
now there's how can we fix it? How
(19:44):
can we change the reporting? How can we
change the way the investigations go? Because all
of that was also just an added trauma
for me, for my own experience.
I went to go report it, and I
was told not to. I finally did report
it after several other happenings and then being
stalked by this person. My chain of command
really tries to try to sweep it under
(20:04):
the rug. And so that's a whole another
piece of trauma of broken trust. How do
you move forward from that? Just to tie
all of this together, part of the advocacy
work and everything that I do, it is
to tie back into your community because
what is a more important purpose
than being in community?
I mean, if it's a veteran community, if
(20:24):
it's your local community, if it's your tribal
community, your religious community, whatever kind of community
it is,
it gives you purpose.
It ignites that passion and keeps it going.
That's part of why I do what I
do.
That community is tied to belonging,
and outcomes for people who belong
are much better, who have a community, who
(20:46):
are interconnected
to the world around them. Isolation
kills, does it not? Yes. That is one
of the leading causes
for suicide is the isolation. That's one of
the key trademarks. If you know someone who
is experiencing,
you know, all of these very, very hard
emotions and and all of these really painful
(21:07):
things inside. One of the things that they're
gonna do before they complete suicide is they're
gonna isolate.
Megan, in your continued advocacy, you worked with
Pups for Patriots, helping train
military dogs.
Do you still have a military dog?
So, unfortunately,
just a couple months ago, my service dog,
(21:28):
he passed away. His stomach turned. And for
German shepherds, it's unfortunately
common, but also
a very low survival rate for the surgery.
So I got him to the vet immediately
and got him comfortable, but we did have
to say goodbye.
And then a few months later, we had
a puppy, a stray puppy that showed up,
at my partner's shop, and he brought him
home. And now we have another dog.
(21:51):
I'm training them to do PTSD service dog
work. It's something that is still very near
and dear to my heart. It's something that
I still get asked to help with, whether
it's consulting for the tribal hospital I used
to work at to make some different policies
and regulations. Now I got to share some
of the highlights and the policies and regulations
with Aetna nationally so that they could push
(22:12):
it out for people who may be interested
in that information.
So that people can actually get financial support
to have a military service dog? Well, not
only that. There are certain questions you can't
just say, well, why do you have a
service dog? The proper question the legal question
would be, what services does this service dog
provide to you? And PTSD is one of
the only mental health conditions that's covered under
(22:35):
the ADA law for a service dog. Everything
else, mental health wise, would be an emotional
support dog.
Megan, would you be willing to share
PTSD
stands for post traumatic stress disorder.
When you have experienced that in your life,
what's happening? What does that look like? Could
you take us inside for a minute? Yeah.
(22:56):
It's been almost
sixteen years since I got out of the
military now, maybe a little bit longer. Closer
to 18 makes me feel a little old,
but here we are living life.
But even that long after the military and
even still going through learning sensory awareness and
the Hoffman process and different therapies that I've
been able to participate in,
(23:16):
you know, it's still
a dysregulation
within my brain and my body. So sometimes
I'll have nightmares, and I'll wake up just
completely drenched in sweat. Like, even my sheets
and my blanket are just drenched in sweat,
or
I'll wake up and I'll be fighting my
blankets and my sheets because there's there's no
one there. You know? But then other times
it can be a smell,
(23:37):
just a very specific smell that takes me
back and floods me with these memories, these
intrusive thoughts. And it can be a sound
or a voice, or even just a familiar
face.
It's not a weakness to have this. A
lot of people say, you know, you you
may be predisposed to developing PTSD if you've
had depression or other mental health conditions, but
it's literally
(23:58):
your brain trying to cope, your ordinary brain
trying to cope with an extraordinary
situation.
And that is
that is human.
That is in essence human nature.
And the service dog
helps in what ways?
So it's accountability,
first and foremost. It's accountability because that's that's
(24:21):
an extension
of myself. It's almost like a a child
that you have to care for. You know?
But they wanna play. They wanna go on
walks. They wanna get up and get moving
and get out of the house. They wanna
snuggle you if you're having a hard time
sleeping.
And if you're drenched in sweat, they're gonna
give you kisses to wake you up. And
even I've even trained them to turn on
the lights so that I don't try to,
like, throw them off the bed or something.
(24:43):
But also in public, you know, it's one
of those where sometimes it's really hard for
me to be in crowded spaces and have
people behind me that I don't know. And
so the dog can sit either facing behind
me or they'll do a three sixty around
me. The leash that I have allows them
to move in a a three sixty around
me. But it's also something where
if I'm having those intrusive thoughts, it's a
(25:05):
grounding
skill also where I can reach down and
I can feel their warmth or even though
he's huge, put them up in my lap
and just let that deep pressure ground me
to know that I'm here in the present
moment.
And you've shared previously
that even helping you up the steps, helping
you get up off the couch, some of
your physical disabilities,
your dog has at times really
(25:27):
played a a vital role. Yeah. My German
shepherd, the one that recently passed away, he
was one of the first service dogs to
graduate during my undergrad and walk across the
stage with me. And so that was pretty
exciting. He loved it. He got a lot
of treats and a lot of hot dogs
for that. But
even just the few small stairs, it was
four steps to get up on the stage.
His little harness that he wore helped kinda
(25:49):
be able to give me that motion to
get up because I have
so much fusion in in my back. My
left leg doesn't always do what I want
it to do. So, like, recreational therapies like
snow biking and snowboarding and everything. I I
wanna try those things because I've never done
them before, but I couldn't get my left
leg to cut in and so I could
slow myself down. So they put me on
a snow bike. And then the marine in
(26:09):
me, I got cocky and took off and
was zooming around and having a blast. But,
anyway, those are the things that you just
have to experience.
From your process,
you mentioned earlier about some tools that you
continue to use. What remains
enduring
as a tool or practice from your week?
One of the enduring tools I would say
(26:30):
was, I mean, obviously, just playing and celebrating
and allowing that space into my life, but
also
recycling was a really good one. It is
a tool that I use
to acknowledge within myself what's going on, but
also a tool that I use to express
it and get it out. And to know
that it doesn't have to control me, it
doesn't have to ruin my day. It is
(26:51):
something that's there, and I can process it.
As I hear you say that, one of
the things that
recycling does that I see you sort of
talking about is that we titrate a little
bit, which is allow
people to go to the wound or the
past or the hurt or the pattern or
whatever didn't work,
(27:12):
and then
rewrite the story from that place to
undo it physically and then to call in
spirit and recreate it almost,
rewiring the brain in the process.
Is that how you see it? Oh, absolutely.
Not only do I practice that even just
in my daily work, but it is something
(27:33):
as a native person, when I go to
to sweat, like a sweat lodge, that is
essentially a similar practice.
And so it's very present for me both
culturally and spiritually and mentally, so it's a
good tool.
Megan, in a way, I wanna say it
happened again because you're building your house
four or five years ago. You hire a
(27:53):
contractor. You buy the land
from
monies that you were able to save up,
and something happens again, doesn't it? Will you
tell us a little bit what transpired and
how you navigated it? Yeah. So the money
that I had left over from my dad's
life insurance policy, actually, between that and then
what my mom had, we went in 5050.
(28:14):
She's aging.
She's now got dementia, but we decided years
ago that we were gonna live together to
take care of each other, and and that
was gonna be, you know, our life because
we forgave each other and we grew a
lot more together than than what we were
previously. So we bought this property. We started
getting, you know, all these quotes in from
different builders. We liked this builder. We opted
to use him. Our bank vetted him. He
(28:35):
was a professor at a local college,
for entrepreneurship and construction, and so we were
like, hey. This guy's on the up and
up. We can definitely trust him. Until we
got about maybe three months into the build.
We had given him and even our bank,
you know, our our bank signed off on
giving him so much money to advance him
for all these contractors that he said was
going out there. And then we started getting
(28:56):
liens in the mail from these contractors that
he had not paid.
And then we started getting more letters and
phone calls from these contractors, wondering where their
money was. Why are you calling me? What
what's going on? We give this money to
this builder. He's the one that's supposed to
pay you. And so immediately, the bank stopped
any funding on the project. It was also
when COVID had just started in 02/2019,
(29:18):
so everything shut down.
And so it's like, what happened was bad,
but then it got worse because of COVID.
So, essentially, this house, it just sat there.
It was just the studs. The wood was
getting warped, and it was old, and some
of the the beams needed to be replaced
and all these things. And so finally, once
COVID's kinda started lifting, my friends were able
(29:38):
to come out and it's acres. There's multiple
acres here and the grass had grown up
even taller than I am. And it very
much looked like this crazy abandoned property. So
my friends came out, we attacked the grass
and everything as much as we could to
make an area just for the tractors to
be able to get in to brush hog
it. And then this lady came out to
try to help me kinda get things on
(29:58):
track, but then the bank found out that
she was also not a good contractor.
I'm telling you, it was wild. So then
my partner came along. Not only does he
build hot rods, but he also knew construction.
He knew how to build houses and stuff.
And so he was started giving me pointers
and I hadn't even told him about it
when we got together. It was just like
this thing hanging out there. I I figured,
you know, we'll have to give the house
(30:19):
up, you know, foreclose it with the bank
and everything.
And then somebody, I don't know who, but
somebody told him about it. And then he
found one of the clips from the news
stories, and then he asked me about it.
And I said, well, I'll just go show
you. Like, I don't know what's gonna happen
with it, but I'll go show you. So
we went out there, and he was just
looking around. And then I had to go,
I think, on a business trip or something.
(30:39):
And when I came back, he was like,
no. Don't freak out, but I need some
money. I was like, what are you what
are you talking about? You need some like,
did did something happen with the shop? What's
going on? And as we're driving home,
he starts going to the property
and I was having like a heart attack.
Stay in the present moment, stay in the
present moment.
And so,
I mean, fear, like I was sweating. My
(31:00):
mouth was dry. It was like I was
freaking out. And so we got here
and he had had a dozer come through
and work the property over to smooth things
out and got all the grass cleared out.
And there were people inside putting up drywall.
There were walls on the outside of the
house. Like, it looked like an actual house.
(31:21):
I remember there's been many nights where we
came out here. Either I was by myself
or my partner was with me, and we
were stapling in different insulation, or I was
out here painting or cutting up, you know,
whatever. Just just learning how to build a
house that I had you know, these are
skills I'd never learned.
But in the military, they tell you adapt
and overcome. Right? And through the Hoffman process,
(31:41):
I learned how to say yes to different
experiences.
And so this was one of those. But
also again, that grit and resiliency to not
give up and not let go.
And so happily now we've lived in this
house for over a year. We moved in
right before Thanksgiving. It was not a big
Thanksgiving celebration, but we had a Thanksgiving celebration
and that was kind of our welcome to
(32:01):
the house moment.
But we're in it, and we love it.
And now we have all these animals, and
it's a family, and it's a house, and
it's it's everything.
Megan, I wanna ask about the military being
both
this place where you gained so much, adapt
and overcome, such
resiliency
in that statement,
and yet it's also a place that's caused
(32:22):
you such pain and harm
and trauma.
How is it to hold the complexity that
maybe the paradox
of that the military has been wonderful for
you and so painful
as well?
When I joined the marine corps, the motto
of the marine corps was pain is weakness
leaving the body.
(32:43):
And at first, I was like, yeah. That
that's so hard. You know, hardcore. It's tough.
You know? That's real strength, but it's not.
Pain is not weakness. Pain is your body
telling you that something is wrong.
Why did they have to say that? I
attempted to live out the embodiment of that
motto, and then it was not okay. It
was it was awful.
So but it is. It's a complex
(33:05):
spectrum
of feelings that I I have for the
military. It is I do have this gratefulness
because on one hand, I've been able to
go through and get my education
through my educational benefits and then also scholarships
from my tribe, and I don't have any
student debt. And there's not a whole lot
of people working on a PhD program that
can say that.
It's also given me these life skills of
(33:27):
not giving up and just one foot in
front of the other, having the ability to
just break life down sometimes hour by hour
when it's needed to get through, but also
it enhanced
my own personal tenacity. It enhanced
different skills and traits that I already had
and different leadership traits that I had,
but it also gave me more depth as
a human being because here I have experienced
(33:48):
this trauma,
but I'm also not willing to give up.
How do those things coexist in life?
Well, I mean, at the end of the
day, that that's life. Right?
So I have this gratefulness, but also this
anger, but never resentment.
Say that again. Anger, but never resentment.
Mhmm. I'm mad that I didn't get to
(34:09):
to stay in for twenty years. I'm mad
that there's people allowed to stay in the
military even after they do these horrific things
to other people.
But I'm also grateful for the experience because
now I get to help other people.
I get to help people come home from
that and not only just come home, but
find a path to wellness.
And you've been able to
(34:31):
guide people on that. Certainly, you were a
part of a conference.
I read online somewhere that you were the
best part of this
two point o. What was it called?
I don't know if I was the best
part of it. It was wisdom two point
o. Wisdom two point o. Mhmm. That was
another invitation from Lee and her husband that
(34:51):
brought me to that. That was another
moment that I got to share about
military experiences
and different ways of trying to cope with
that. You know, throughout your
life, it seems like there's been
a desire to not only turn
and help others, but
to not remain quiet. It just seems like
(35:12):
over and over again, you've had a choice.
Do I stay silent and stay small, or
do I speak up
despite
the pushback I know I'll receive?
And it just seems like you have spoken
out and spoken up every time
injustice has happened and then
turned around and been an advocate
(35:33):
for systemic change as well.
Is that just part of who you are?
Yes.
You know, I think part of that stems
from my childhood. We were raised in a
home where children should not be seen or
heard.
So it was
there was so much wrong that happened.
There are things that my family knew was
(35:54):
going on, but no one ever did anything.
And so I think that my ability to
use my voice and advocate and seek justice,
it all stems from that. It's in direct
response to that, probably.
What's next for you, Megan? Where do you
go from here as you eventually get your
PhD?
So I want to
I mean, obviously, I wanna get my PhD.
(36:15):
I have to defend my dissertation and
all the adventure that that is gonna entail,
but what I really hope to do
is to highlight
a very specific need, a gap in care,
if you will,
that we have these therapies that are allotted
through insurance programs, talk therapy, inpatient stays,
outpatient intensive outpatient,
(36:35):
you know, all all these sort of things,
substance use treatment, all these different things that
affect our mental health. But it's not often
that insurance companies will pay for recreational therapy
or even therapists themselves will include that as
part of a traditional therapy, if you will.
So what I really wanna do for my
dissertation is show and highlight the need for
(36:55):
talk therapy and recreational therapy and being tied
into your community that gives you purpose as
a means to heal
because it's not just one thing or another.
It's a blend of so many things, of
so many pieces
to create the human experience.
That's what I hope my next step is
also gonna be is not only being able
to highlight this, but also create programs, whether
(37:16):
it's through grants or whatever else that will
host all of that.
Megan, for your advocacy, for the work you
do in the world,
and also for the vulnerability and the stories
you shared about your life,
I'm deeply grateful. Thank you. Well, thank you.
And we say Mado is the way that
we say thank you in in Muskogee Creek.
So Mado, I appreciate this time and this
(37:38):
opportunity. Mado.
Thank you for listening to our podcast. My
name is Liza Ingrassi. I'm the CEO and
president of Hoffman Institute Foundation.
And I'm Rassie Grassi,
Hoffman teacher and founder of the Hoffman Institute
(38:00):
Foundation.
Our mission is to provide people greater access
to the wisdom and power of love. In
themselves,
in each other, and in the world.
To find out more, please go to hompaninstitute.org.
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