Drive On: Helping Veterans Navigate PTSD & Life After Military Service

Many military and veteran families are facing tough times. Groceries are more expensive, paychecks do not go as far, and reaching out for help can feel discouraging. This conversation addresses those challenges and offers hope for a better path. Vicki Sarracino, Vice President of Programs at Soldiers' Angels, explains how the group supports service members, veterans, and their families. They provi...

Some men leave the military and still notice the empty seat at the table. The mission has ended, the unit is no longer there, and civilian life often lacks the honesty they once shared with fellow service members. Historian and Marine veteran Bryan Rigg offers a unique perspective on this struggle. He draws from his research on World War II, Holocaust history, his time in the Marine Corps, and his...

A solid transition plan does not guarantee a clean landing. Guest Taamir Ransome left the Army with advanced education, real-world experience, and a strong résumé, but he still felt the loss of identity, purpose, and daily mission after taking off the uniform. This conversation follows Taamir from joining the Army after 9/11, serving in the 82nd Airborne, moving into EOD, supporting special operat...

Silence can linger long after a veteran has returned home and taken off the uniform. For Eric Gillis, one of the toughest challenges after leaving the Army was learning to function in a world without the structure, purpose, and brotherhood that once held everything together. He kept his inner struggles to himself, feeling he had no right to speak up because others had paid a higher price. That sil...

Pain has a way of taking over every part of life. It follows you into the workplace, rides along during traffic, sits at the dinner table, and keeps you awake long after the house quiets down. This conversation sheds light on a VA benefit many veterans might not be aware of: medical massage therapy. Samer Hamadeh, founder of Zeel, shares how his company nearly folded when COVID shut down in-person...

A hospital bed, a trach tube, and a doctor saying the water was gone from his future could have been the end of the story. Joe Gonzalez, a disabled Navy veteran, refused to let that be the final chapter. After years of surgeries, opioid addiction, anger, depression, and the heavy mental weight that comes with disability, he found a new mission through the ocean. This conversation goes into the min...

The hardest battles after service can happen in the quiet places, at home, at work, and inside your own head. Brendan T. Kelly spent 22 years in the Army before stepping into teaching, corporate life, and eventually writing. Along the way, he faced nightmares, PTSD, family strain, and the hard truth that leading troops in battle did not mean he could heal alone. This conversation follows the path...

Some wounds keep you scanning every exit in the room. Others bury themselves deeper, showing up as guilt, shame, distance at home, and the fear that the people you love would see you differently if they knew the whole story. Larry Brant brings clarity to that hidden battle through his path from Helmand Province to a COVID ICU to the Aspire Center, where he saw how PTSD and moral injury can wreck a...

Life after service can look calm on the outside, while your nervous system stays stuck in alert mode. Ryan McDermott breaks down the chain reaction that can follow major stress: isolation, fractured sleep, anxiety spikes, and that familiar urge to grind harder instead of getting support. His story moves from leading troops early in the Iraq war to navigating a civilian career that suddenly turned...

Some war stories do not stay in the past. They follow you into work, marriage, fatherhood, sleep, and the quiet moments when your mind starts replaying what happened and what it meant. This conversation goes straight at that weight by unpacking moral injury, the kind of wound that hits when combat collides with your deepest values. It gets into why so many veterans carry pain that standard convers...

Life after the uniform can feel disconnected, even when everything looks fine on paper. The routines change, the circle gets smaller, and the stress stacks up in ways that are hard to explain at home or at work. Michael D'Angelo lived that shift and found a way to push back through standup comedy. He shares how Marine Corps humor shaped him, why he walked onto an open mic anyway, and how the fear...

Military transition can strip away structure, identity, and the sense that your life is aimed at something that matters. This conversation follows what happened when that loss of purpose collided with anxiety, PTSD, and the frustration of trying to build a meaningful civilian life. The story moves from feeling disconnected after service to finding direction through advocacy, community involvement,...

PTSD does not always look dramatic. Sometimes it looks like overthinking, staying busy, and trying to keep your mind from going places you do not want it to go. This conversation is about what happens when a veteran finds a healthier outlet and actually commits to it. Ken Webb talks about leaving the cycle of contract work behind, building a new life in Peru, and using writing to deal with fear, b...

A missed bus. A dead phone. Smoke over lower Manhattan. A life that should have ended at work that morning went in a completely different direction, and years later, it turned into a mission to help wounded warriors feel alive again. This conversation carries the weight of 9/11, the long shadow of war, and the hard truth that many veterans come home with pain nobody around them fully understands....

The stress does not stay at work. It follows you into your sleep, your marriage, and your patience with your kids. Guest, Johnnie Gilpen, talks about a stretch in pediatric emergency medicine where he lost six kids in a short time and had to face a direct question from a colleague about how he was coping. He explains the three supports he relies on: faith, three people he can call without hesitati...

A civilian job can pay well and still leave a veteran feeling irritated and restless by the end of the day. Alan Brown breaks down the parts of military life that disappear first after retirement: the uniform, the PT, the daily contact with soldiers, and the built in group that understands the standard without a long explanation. He retired in January 2020 after 23 years in the Army, and he descri...

Hospitals can strip you down fast, not just physically, but mentally. You walk in hurting, and the system can make you feel lucky to be there at all. Dr. Pamela Pyle trained inside a VA hospital where camaraderie filled open wards, and she has spent decades watching what helps people fight for better care, and what quietly breaks them. This conversation gets practical fast: why the first answer is...

Home should feel like the safe part. For many veterans, it is the opposite. The noise is gone, the mission is gone, and the people around you might not know how to read the signs when you are running low. That is where isolation starts, and isolation is where things can get dangerous fast. This conversation pulls you into the real stakes of suicide prevention through the eyes of someone who has li...

A lot of veterans grind through blurry vision, eye strain, and overpriced frames because nobody ever told them the VA can cover eye exams and prescription glasses. This episode puts that benefit in plain language, straight from a fellow infantryman who now runs the operation that fills millions of prescriptions for veterans each year. You will hear how Sean Loosen moved from West Point to Iraq, fe...

The hardest part of transition is not always the job search. It is the moment you realize the mission feeling did not automatically follow you home. This conversation is a reset for that. You will hear a clear, practical way to turn veteran strengths into local impact without burning out, starting with the Four Ts of true changemaking: time, talent, treasure, and testimony. The examples are ground...

Headache pain can look like a minor annoyance until it starts stealing whole days. For many veterans, it is not a random ache that fades with water and a nap. It can be a complex, repeating neurological problem that shows up after exposures, stress, disrupted sleep, or injuries that never fully healed. This episode walks through why headaches and migraines hit the veteran community so hard, why th...

One report can flip your whole world upside down, especially when the people who promised support start calculating what your truth costs their careers. Chelsey Woodard shares what it felt like to go from a strong first stretch of service to a back half defined by retaliation, bureaucracy, and leaders choosing self-protection over accountability. She breaks down the tactics she saw up close: being...

Sleep breaks down, pain turns constant, and the mind keeps running like it never got the memo that the mission is over. This conversation follows what it looks like to claw your way back when the body is hurting, the nights are loud, and isolation starts to feel normal. Rowdie McMahon shares her experience as an Air Force nurse deployed to Afghanistan, including the relentless pace and mass casual...

Walking away from the uniform often means walking away from purpose, identity, and your tribe all at once. In this conversation, retired Marine Colonel Brian Gilman shares how his own unexpected orders to a Pentagon reintegration office opened his eyes to what veterans really need after service and eventually led him home to Montana to lead Warriors and Quiet Waters. He breaks down their nine-mont...

Pain meds after surgery were supposed to help her heal, not take over her life. Years of prescriptions following a C-section, miscarriages, and unresolved childhood sexual trauma quietly turned into addiction, shame, and a double life that looked perfect on the outside while crumbling on the inside. When everything finally imploded, Shannon said yes to help, went to The Meadows in Arizona, and sta...