Ep 22 | David Woods Bartley Part 2

Grief Stories, Grieving Voices Guest, Grieving Voices Podcast, Mental Health, Suicide | 0 comments

David Woods Bartley Part II: The Practical Pieces of Suicide Prevention and More

SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:

**This episode is Part II  – Listen to Part I HERE*

David is a mental health speaker, educator and holds certifications in Mental Health First Aid for adults and youth, SafeTALK (Suicide Awareness for Everyone), and the suicide prevention technique known as QPR (Question, Persuade, Refer), which he mentions in this episode.

In Part I, David shared his story around a day like no other – the day he was going to end his life jumping off of the Foresthill Bridge in California, the 4th highest bridge at 730 feet. A passerby followed their intuition and called 9-1-1 and, his life was saved that day. But, that was only the beginning of his lifelong battle with clinical depression.

As he describes it, David found his way from “mental hellness to mental wellness.”  Through his experience of owning and operating a non-adoption animal sanctuary where he and his then-wife took in animals that were sick, lame, or old – he relates his life through stories of working with the animals and what they taught him over the years.

• In Part II, David shares some practical advice for loved ones who witness someone suffering from suicidal ideation and depression and two thoughts: what I call myths of suicide prevention.
• We talk about the role forgiveness played in his life and road to mental wellness and how he’s found his way from self-loathing to self-love (which, for him, has been an ongoing challenge).
• Through the storytelling, he helps the topic of depression, suicidal ideation, and mental health overall be more relatable and helps others to see those struggling with more compassion.

Some of my favorite “Wisdom-Drops” from David in both episodes:

• “People don’t die of mental illness,’ David says, ‘they die from hopelessness.” 
• “Connection creates hope.  And, hope saves lives.”
• “Sometimes, what hurts the most cannot be seen. And sometimes, what helps the most is easy to do.”
• “Four words that changed my life [as said by my psychiatrist]: It’s not your fault.”
• “If people don’t feel connected, the door stays shut.”
• “Without mental health, there is no health.”
• “Hope awakens harmony.”

Resources from both episodes:

• David Woods Bartley TEDx Talk: How Connection Saved My Life
• Krista Tippett – TEDx Talk on Compassion
• Johann Hari – TEDx Talk: Everything You Know About Addiction is Wrong
• Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen, author – Kitchen Table Wisdom
• Dr. Paul Quinnett & the Q.P.R. (Question, Persuade, Refer) Technique
• Grief Recovery Method

Connect with David:

• Website
• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• YouTube

Victoria Volk  00:08
Hey there. Before we get into this week’s episode, I just want to give a reminder that this is part two. Part One went live last week, the full interviews with David Woods Bartley, He is an educator in suicide prevention, and shares his story through his own experience in this week’s episode, where he talks about how you can’t drag someone from mental health illness to wellness but gives practical tips about what you can do. He also talks about how suicide isn’t the most preventable, preventable death, kind of the myths around that. And some other things you mentioned as well, but we also dig into forgiveness and the role that it played in his life. And he also shares this beautiful quote that I want to share with you right now. It’s by Dr. Drew Ramsey, a psychiatrist and he said, someone you see today, your smile, your question, your love could save them. Trust me, they told me it did. This is a very info packed episode as well as part one, I hope you listen to them both. If you want to reach out to David, you can find him on his website at davidwoodsbartley.com. I’ll also put David’s contact information in the show notes as well as all the resources mentioned in this episode, and the last one, enjoy. And thanks for listening. You know, one of the saddest things for me is to witness people who don’t see their own magnificence. don’t even see their own potential. And I think the status thing, I’m getting emotional, the status thing about it is that so many lives are snuffed out that who knows what they could have been? Yeah. And I think of especially kids. You know, when I reached out to you it was, we learned of a suicide in my area of a ninth grader. And, and I was actually the day that I emailed you.

David Woods Bartley  03:01
Really?

Victoria Volk  03:01
Yes. The day that I emailed you, after I emailed you, I heard of that I learned of that suicide, and it just makes me incredibly sad. How do you help someone see their own magnificence in their own potential?

David Woods Bartley  03:17
It’s, it’s really hard. I mean, one of the things that I tell people is, and here’s the question I get, it’s a variation of what you just asked me, Victoria is, I have somebody that I love, and they, they they’re not willing to help. And I say, here’s the thing, you cannot drag somebody from illness to wellness, you can you can take them, you can force him to go to a doctor’s appointment and stand over him to happen take meds, but it’s not gonna work. I mean, there’s no longevity. And so I think to go back, and in the midst of somebody’s pain, it’s the initial step before we go solution oriented. And that’s our, our loving intent or altruistic motivation. I think first, it’s to create the space to understand the depth of despair that they feel. And again, that may sound counterintuitive. But until we clear that out a little bit way, a little way, there’s no way they can see them like that we have to park the clouds a little bit. And the only way I think we can do that is to allow them to express and then the follow up if we can do that. The follow up is in what are the circumstances what’s going on in which you feel good by what’s happening? And then they’re gonna say, well, for me, it was working with the animals and I’m like, wow, what, what’s it like? Like, can you tell me a story? Can you do anything? And you say, Okay, well, you know, with Joshua, what was it like in that moment? When you held Joshua at this man gave him to you? It’s almost indescribable. I said, you know, do you think what did you have to do with that? I mean, how did you participate? I mean, I guess you didn’t have to take that dog. Right? Yeah. So, one of the things that might below psychiatrists, Dr. C has suggested because I still have these negative cognitions. And they come on a regular basis, not my beloved in my former wife, amazing. My beloved summers amazing. Summer is particularly interested; she hates to see me suffer. And so, what she’ll do is she’ll say, okay, honey, I want you to write down the top five, negative cognitions, that you’re having worthless, not gonna be a good dad, whatever they are. So, say, okay, she listens in this profound way. And then she’ll say, Okay, I hear you. Alright, I think she’ll say, well, I saw you do this, right? And then didn’t you do this, and then you took a short outline what she’s confronting the negative cognitions with just factual statements. And it’s incredibly effective. It is unbelievable. And I keep all them because the negative cognitions will come back. So, I bring that into an answer here that I think one it’s important, just like with summer, what summer does is, let’s first we need to express what is what’s the negativity that’s holding us down right now. And then, to change the conversation to potentially allow somebody to just catch a glimpse of a different perspective, just a little bit of a glimpse. And then maybe explore it a little bit better, or just a little bit more to say, what, okay, here’s what I saw. You know, what do you think about that, you know, there was one that like, I’m never going to be, I’m not going to be a good enough provider and everything else. And so someone says, Well, I think right now you pay for our cell phones, right? Yeah, I do. And then you pay for this right now. And then the other month, you paid for our electric bill and these other things, he says, you know, for me, that’s indication of somebody providing for a family, it is so incredibly effective at changing and really taking dismantling those negative cognitions doesn’t mean that negative cognitions are going to come back. But in that moment, the relief is almost indescribable.

Victoria Volk  07:04
Giving you proof of the opposite being true.

David Woods Bartley  07:07
Exactly. And we can’t do that alone. It’s impossible. I can’t I don’t think we can. You know, we need solitude, but solitude to choice, isolation is not. And so, we need to have time to meditate to contemplate whatever. But we also need the help of other people and for as 57 years old, as middle-aged man, like it’s okay to ask for help. But it’s impossible to become well, it’s impossible to resolve grief, in my opinion, alone. I don’t think he can do it.

David Woods Bartley  07:40
I can’t be mentally healthy alone. It’s impossible.

Victoria Volk  07:43
The healing community for sure.

David Woods Bartley  07:48
Exactly. And hopefully I think, you know, the juxtaposition in terms of the anks in the despair that’s going on now, that is hallmarked by isolation. More and more than I realize, okay, really the only answer to this the simple answers is be connected. You know, you got to be.

Victoria Volk  08:05
On the national news that no, no the other night. I don’t know if you saw it, but they showed it was like a before and after picture of elderly in, in long term care facilities. And it was, it was just, I mean, just Google it. It was on NBC News. But the before and after of a matter of just like, with COVID the I couldn’t even believe the pictures. It was like two different people like one in particular I’m thinking of her face was full. She had you know, color and her cheeks and was smiling. And the next one, it’s like, she was on her side her cheeks sunken in, she was on her deathbed. And isolation is taking so many people too soon.

David Woods Bartley  08:55
Wow. This is you know, I think the monster is licking his chops. And this is exactly what he wants. This is a it’s exactly so we had a one of the horses that came to the sanctuary of his horse named big cloud, he was this beautiful village, smaller Quarter Horse jetblack. He had grade in the face. It’s beautiful. And well, what has happened was some I’ve used this word liberally person had entice big cloud into a trailer, probably with some sweet gray writing, taking them away from where it was, and so big clouds but I think I’ll go for a ride or whatever. Well, this person moves him out Victoria to this desolate place brings takes the cloud out of the trailer and then drives away leaves there to die. And I think that that’s you know, it’s interesting. It’s a paradox that I know a lot of people, a lot of people I’ve heard it’s not uncommon to hear from people who suffer from schizophrenia and hearing voices that at the beginning, the voices are, they’re friendly, they’re supportive, they’re causing depression at the beginning. There is a certain familiarity and comfort around it. It’s kind of It’s weird. be heard. And so I mentioned that because I think that that’s the sweet grain that these maladies entice us into this vehicle. But ultimately, they transport us to isolation and leave us to not. Now in big clouds case, by the grace of life, a ranger in his non regular route discovered this horse, likewise, this horse here and he came to live with us and lived an amazing life fell in love with Dolly. Dolly was this older white Arabian, oh my god, he was so smitten. And you know what’s interesting about that, so they were always together, Dolly Dodd. And Deanna in her brilliance, she allowed big cloud to just stay on this week, the render, we couldn’t do anything with her body for like four days. So, she was covering everything else. Victoria, big cloud stayed with her the entire time never left. And when the rendering truck came to take her body where we had DNS, and we need to let cloud be here, and so he saw her body be taken away. And then he stayed in the pasture for a while. And then at one point after time, he went back to the other pasture and stood at the gate saying, you know, I’m ready to rejoin her. So, it was solid at the sanctuary so many different times in which animals so openly revealed and expressed and then ultimately resolved their grief that they didn’t, they didn’t try to avoid it. Just like okay, we’re gonna delve into it head on. And I think in that regard, they were very mentally well, and you know, it’s funny because looking back now, DNI had established a whole person care system for the animals because we cook for him, we have practitioners come to their body was taken care of their psychological being was was supported in a safe environment. And then they were connected. They had a foundation, albeit a spiritual certainty about what was going on. And so, I think that model, if we transpose it, or transfer it to as an example for human wellness, that’s it.

Victoria Volk  12:07
Learn from nature, right?

David Woods Bartley  12:10
Oh, man, I mean, even talk about some working on a book. It’s funny. just laugh at the title. It came from life didn’t come from me. So, book is they pooped, we scooped unexpected wisdom picked up, sank in an animal sanctuary.

Victoria Volk  12:28
Sounds like a movie.

David Woods Bartley  12:31
These are there’s all these different stories.

Victoria Volk  12:35
There is though, is there a movie based on a true story of a man that opened an an animal sanctuary?

David Woods Bartley  12:42
No, no, yeah, there’s I think there’s a couple one is think didn’t mess, Matt Damon played in the one.

Victoria Volk  12:50
Here we opened an animal sanctuary, I think that was leaving the title.

David Woods Bartley  12:56
There’s some amazing people who are doing great work and sanctuaries, all over the, you know, the granddaddy of them all his best friends in Utah, they have somewhere close to 3000 animals. There’s another one in New Hampshire called rolling dog, which is incredible. They take special needs animals. There’s a great place in Southern California called gentle barn. There’s an organization that used to be in California in New York, called Farm Sanctuary. So and then, especially in the dog, world, dog and horse in particular, there there is hundreds upon hundreds of small independent rescue organizations that come to be because of an individual’s love for a particular role. I guarantee there’s a havanese rescue, certainly our Boston Terrier rescues and everything. And these people work, basically with no money. And they, they’re tireless because they want to help this these beings that means so much to him. So a lot of our animals came from different frontline rescue organizations, when they had an animal that was almost impossible to adopt, because we didn’t know adoption. So, they would give us the old ones and the sick ones. And so, there are great people out there doing amazing work.

Victoria Volk  14:11
How did you move beyond that grief of losing that thing that was so important to the sanctuary? I mean, and your spouse? I mean, at the time, too, I mean, you lost everything.

David Woods Bartley  14:24
Oh, it was. Yeah, I’m still processing it. I still. And you know, it’s interesting, Victoria, it’s, you know, again, our timing, I just realized this at the moment I in particular, and I’m sure there’s some part of the COVID thing I also think in an ongoing commitment. The one thing I’ll give myself credit for is to be incredibly consistent on self care. that some of the other things have been processed and moved away and so like you had talked about there’s there’s some, I mean, we all I shared with you we had 90 animals dying 20 years I mean, it was so busy, sometimes an animal would die. In the morning, and then another new one would come in the afternoon because there was so few places for the type of animals in that state would come. And so, right, it’s just finishing last couple months, like the grief around the sanctuary in the loss to say, tan. And so I try to remember, grief has arrived, not to annihilate me, but to support me, to allow me to cry a lot. I write different stories, when I tell these stories about the animals, I still have shame around the fact that I lost everything. And that is dangerous, because then that can, the monster can grab ahold of that. So I would love to say that I have processed all my grief, but there are some parts, you know, I may continue to grieve for maybe the rest of my life. And you know, I don’t say that in a debilitating way. It’s just, it’s really, you know, to have something in which I thought was going to be the rest of my life to have it be taken away. It’s That’s hard. Yeah, really, really difficult. But thankfully, I don’t, I don’t endeavor I, I am working my way through with a lot of people now like in with you, that I get to have this beautiful relationship with you, somebody I can talk specifically about grief work.

Victoria Volk  16:26
Well, and I don’t think we necessarily ever arrive unless we become the monks. You know, I think we’re always going to be processing and peeling back the layers and kind of really learning how to unlearn a lot of the unhelpful and hurtful things that we put in our backpacks. You know, growing up as children, because actually, this circles back to a point that I actually wanted to bring up is that when trauma doesn’t have to be molestation, right, sexual abuse, anything like that, and I want to circle back to that, because one of the very first losses children often have is a pet loss. Right? So, coming back to like, you know, Animal Sanctuary and things like that, that can be traumatic for a child. And pet loss and miscarriage are two of the most minimize losses. And so, what is a parent’s first instinct when the child loses a pet? was okay, Johnny, we’ll get another one. Right, David, let’s just go to the pet store, we can get another one. Not really acknowledging and let the child process and share how they their feelings of losing the first pet that they felt connection to. Right, right. Let’s just replace it. So that’s the very first lesson most of us receive as children about how to process grief. We don’t process it, we just replace it with something else. Right? Something else to make us feel better, right?

David Woods Bartley  17:55
I agree. 100%. And I think not to shame myself, and I can without it being an excuse. I think how busy DNI were, I mean, on the one hand, you could say, well, didn’t you do that? Didn’t you just replace them? And say no, I mean, I think was different. And I think one of the things you know, both Deanna and I would agree, the sanctuary became too big. And you know, we should have topped Captain at a certain amount. Maybe there would have been spaces in our, in our life at that point to be able to process loss. And every animal that that transition did so in an incredibly dignified, beautiful manner, it was there was a ceremony and this beautiful accord, and they were, I used to tell the animals, okay, here’s your job, you know, your job is to be adored. That’s it. That’s all you got to do. And so they were cared for and loved in ways that were extraordinary and passed in their own time. And just the remnants of it, you know, remain on me. It’s, it is it is hard, but I know grief is not here to beat me up. No grief in you and I talked about this, it’s, it sounds almost weird, but grief is my friend.

Victoria Volk  19:08
It’s my teacher. It’s been my teacher.

David Woods Bartley  19:11
Yeah, it’s, you know, and then you know, grief of losing my father grief of losing my innocence, all these different things that, you know, there’s so many aspects of grief and like trauma is trauma and grief is grief. It’s all individualized, it’s personal. It doesn’t something that doesn’t traumatize me Can traumatize you. Doesn’t, you know why? And so we need to just be accepting and there’s no timetable for healing of trauma, or healing of grief. Take as long as you need.

Victoria Volk  19:35
Time just passes. It’s the action you take in time that matters.

David Woods Bartley  19:41
You know, what, between the two dashes in terms of dates, time we live in a time.

Victoria Volk  19:47
Is there anything else? I mean, I feel like this was such a very, very deep good conversation.

David Woods Bartley  19:55
Oh, I just I’m so blessed that we’ve connected.

Victoria Volk  19:59
I feel like there needs to be too Like a part two or something?

David Woods Bartley  20:02
I have a lot more stores there is this saying I would highly recommend Johanns TED Talk is. And he tells the story, this goes back the whole thing of connection that this was a scientific study that we’ve all heard of it that, you know, they put a rat in a cage and there was a bottle of cocaine laced water and regular water rat always went to the cocaine loweswater killed himself, like, Oh, my God, that’s what humans are doing. Somebody came along later and said, Hold on, rats are very social, you’ve isolated this being. So they recreated the experiment. And so they made like rat topia, there were other rats that were hills, there were tunnels, there was food, and there was water, and the same two bottles, didn’t drink cocaine, didn’t really make sense because they were connected. They’re part of a tribe. So you know, we, especially around grief, as somebody takes what we would consider in our, in my ignorance, what’s taking me too long, not so much now, but it’s taking you too long to get over. This. Doesn’t matter how long it takes, it’s okay. But if we, if they feel misunderstood, they’re going to retreat. And then they’re going to fall back into the caustic arms of the monster. And there’s where be like, it’s kind of like big cars going into that. That horse trailer. There’s a certain bizarre enticement, and nobody understands me. But this feeling of despair, if nothing else is familiar. And there’s a certain comfort because I know what it feels like I can hang out here because nobody understands. But people think I’m being stupid people. People don’t understand that I can’t get out of bed, because depression is literally weighing me down. Why am I crying? I can’t do my job, or whatever it is why? Why did I want to kill myself? Why have I attempted suicide? Not my case. But why am I cutting? Why? Why have I attempted suicide more than one? Whatever it is, because we don’t understand when people when we feel misunderstood, we’re going to retreat, we’re going to retract. And if we get too far down into that hole, it’s like that beautiful ninth grader. There’s no coming back? No one. I don’t know. They say, I don’t know if I agree with this, per se. You know, they say that suicide is the most preventable form of death? No, you know, I think I think the problem I have with that is there’s one way that that comes out is that it’s all our responsibility to save one another. And that’s how I think that’s true. I mean, there are certain people that are gonna die from suicide. It’s just That’s a fact. It’s just the way that it is. And I’m not being cavalier about that. But that that’s just the way that it is you cannot drag somebody to wellness, there needs to be a responsibility on the person. I’m not saying it’s easy. But I think, to suggest it’s the most preventable form of death. What that also would say is that the that it’s a person is capable of completely resolving trauma and grief and everything else. And I think sometimes it’s just, I think it’s too much. It’s just too much. And I say it to just to add in, I think what’s important is an aspect of realism. Because I think if we don’t, and we lose somebody to suicide, I think we feel like we fail. And then we feel misunderstood. So I think it’s, you know, I’m contrarian to some of the things that are said in regards to it. The other. The other thing that comes up, which I don’t agree with, is this whole notion that we those of us who are contemplating and then attempt suicide, really what we should do, we need to know what the impact is going to be in other people. And I’m like, okay, that’s illogical, because in that moment that I was going to kill myself, I honestly believe that Deanna and the sanctuary, and everybody would be far better off. So, you’re asking me to consider something that’s completely arbitrary to how I feel in the moment. I’m not saying that that’s not important. But I think if we try to have that be like, as a missionary statement, like, Okay, well, we’re gonna add suicide as if people realized in that moment that it was the ripple effect would be devastating. Okay. That doesn’t work.

Victoria Volk  24:07
You wouldn’t be having that conversation, if you know.

David Woods Bartley  24:15
It helps me now. When summer my sweetheart will sit with me. And if I have a suicidal thought, and we’ll talk about what would be the impact, there’s a likelihood is negligible at this point, but I still have a thought, and someone will say, what would the impact be like on grace, like, Okay, I get it, like now, I understand. But I wouldn’t have understood that nine years ago. You have to arrive at this point of understanding and so I just think, you know, as we as we endeavor to overcome these maladies, we have to approach it differently. And I think there’s a lot of good messages which if you look at what we can do for a suicidal friend is first talk to him. You know, and that’s why question persuade, refer, just question the person, persuade them to stay alive and then refer them to get Help it CPR for mental health, your new are completely capable of doing that now. And it’s leveraging, ultimately understanding to create connection. That’s it. And then you escort them, you journey with them, you companion with them to, to somebody who can offer professional support. Our job is not to save people. That’s not what we’re supposed to do. Our actions ultimately may, but if we go into that, with that our intent, we’re going to screw it up.

Victoria Volk  25:29
Two things I want to bring up before we close our conversation. In grief recovery, we try to get people to understand that they don’t need to take 100% responsibility for themselves or their lives, they only need to take 1% responsibility, or at least just 1% responsibility. So my next question for you then is what role did forgiveness play for you? Not only of yourself, but for others in your turning your life around.

David Woods Bartley  26:04
That’s such a great life quote. Yeah, that’s, I mean, the most difficult has been Of course, to forgive myself, which I still have a hard time. And there’s where the negative cognition sitting with my beloved. Yeah, I mean, there were some folks especially at the end, that I think the ending could have been really different in terms of how the sanctuary ended. And it’s interesting if you Google, my name, like the second thing that comes up is this person who was a board member accused us of fraud at the end, which ultimately, there was none. And then if you read through the whole article, it was like how many 10s of 1000s of dollars that we gave and everything else but I mean, just so I forgiven that person, you know, to to you know, I remember hearing somebody say that, when you if I were to hold anger with somebody, in fact, what I’ve done is really I’ve I’ve connected myself with them energetically. And so the forgiveness is probably more beneficial for me than for them and then I think maybe probably one of the worst things I could do is if I ever saw this person again is to say well I forgive you Well, they may not think they’ve done anything that needs to be forgiven. And so the forgiveness is about me and it’s, it’s better and I’m getting better and better and better and the more that I’m able to do it, it’s it helps so I think I have forgiven and I’ve taken responsibility I’ve endeavored to make amends to my former beloved and our neighbors and in the things in the slight errors that I thought that I’ve made and to express my grief and sorrow that things didn’t end differently so I feel like I’ve done the best that I could do to make amends to take responsibility and there’s still some remnants so and so anytime I have a thought of unforgiveness for others I try to process that and in order to be fully transparent I still have a really difficult time forgiving myself tar I think actually I should have done this different I should have done this differently and there’s you know, thank God because of the extraordinary soul I have as a partner and then the other one that I had to the other person who just helped me to look at Okay, you know what? Yes, mistakes happen you know, there’s somebody a dear friend of mine was given a talk and talked about this whole thing forgiveness and she said well maybe look at it this way if it happened again, would you do the same thing? like wow, no, I wouldn’t I would have done a whole bunch of stuff to at the core would still be taken care of zero but there would be a whole bunch of stuff that she says okay, then you learn from it. You know, ultimately, you got to give yourself a break, at least for me.

Victoria Volk  28:44
So that ties in to my neck, next question or point or thing you want to ask you so in grief and when you feel like that when you have that shame and things like that we have this self self loathing. So, what does self love the opposite of self loathing? What does self love look like to you now?

David Woods Bartley  29:05
That’s difficult too. So, I’m really good at working out and and yet, there’s almost no morning that I wake up Hey, ready to go workout? And yet I do my thing you know, and it’s so what I will oftentimes do is I’ll look in the mirror and say, you know what, you didn’t want to do it. And you did it. That’s really good. So I’ll I will look for ways small ways in which I can use the word stomach that’s maybe not much I can accept acknowledgement of myself like okay, you know, you’ve done a good job and so I think that’s at the feeling emotional level, in which I can look at myself sometimes literally, because I have a body dysmorphia thing i’m sure from being raped and some other stuff, but I just I don’t like to look at myself and I will endeavor to try to force Myself and then give myself some sort of affirmation, which is not, I think the best thing that I will say to myself, and it feels good to say, You know what? You’re good. Do you really, you’re really good. Do you really endeavouring. Yeah. And when I do, it feels really good. So it’s a work in progress. I wish, I really wish it wasn’t so hard. You know, I’ve battled myself for 50 some years, and I still do. It would be, you know, I have some momentary feeling experiences when I’m not when I’m not in opposition myself. And it’s God that feels good. You know, like, if my own worst enemy is myself, like, that person just didn’t show it that, that it’s, it’s tough. You know, I, I don’t know, if I’d have the same level of difficulty if I didn’t have this condition. And, and I was thinking to kind of serve all the way back. Would I have this condition without the trauma that I experienced? I don’t know. I mean, I would venture to say no, because my three brothers who I adore, they don’t have this. They don’t have the same father. They were older when my dad died, but they hadn’t suffered this other trauma. So, thank God that kind of meandering question modern answer was?

Victoria Volk  31:11
No, it’s, I think, I think we could probably talk for another two hours. I just want to share, there’s one book that I read not long ago. I don’t know if you’ve read it but breaking the habit of being yourself. Dr. Joe dispenza, just ties in with what we were just talking about. Because you said something, and that reminded me of the book title. And the other book I’m reading right now is love yourself, like your life depends on it? And I think it does. Yes. And I think that’s, I’m not quite halfway through it. But I think you’ll like that book, too. Just talking about self loathing to self love. And I think just sharing what I’ve shared, and you share what you shared, I just think that the the one truth that I feel now, for me, is true for me, I don’t know that we can give to others what we can’t give to ourselves.

David Woods Bartley  32:05
No, I agree. You know what, I totally agree. And so, you know, I feel no pressure. But I’m motivated to resolve this within myself, so I can give it to the kids and my beloved, and the world. But no, I agree. What’s theirs. I mean, use the G word just, just because it’ll put it in better context is a great minister, who has since made his transition, but a big influence. I love his talking. It said, God can only do for us what God can do through us. So, in other words, so yeah, it’s, you know, we can’t give away what we don’t have to possible. And there’s where, you know, I think this whole aspect of self care, if you say, well, you need to prioritize yourself can put yourself on a pedestal persona, you got to put other people first, okay, you know what, that’s doomed to failure. If your compass empty, if your tank is empty, you have nothing to give. So, if I have if I if my if I’m able to love myself, orlin put it this way. I’m gonna be able to love the kids and summer to the extension of myself. When I switch it like that, I’m like, Okay, all right, I got to make a change, because I want to love more precisely because makes me feel good. You know, I feel good. And if that’s selfish, so be it. But the better I feel, the more I’m able to be of service to other people. I get to read something. This is the other book. My grandfather’s blessing to check this out. By show off girl, frickin brilliant. I would love this would be on my this is on my bucket list now is to meet Dr. Rehman, she lives in Northern California, she must be hiding because I can’t find her. Anyway, this is so cool. She says the best definition of service I have come across is the single word belonging, service is the final healing of isolation and loneliness is the lived experience of belonging. So it’s all these things that we do in support of one another, ultimately, were the greatest benefactor. Because, you know, when we feel like I certainly feel the same way when we feel like we belong to something to somebody somewhere at some time in some place to all good, you know, or at least it makes it it’s culpable. if that’s a word, that’s a word, but yeah, it’s it’s the last day last year I’ll let you go because I could talk to you for hours. Hope awakens harmony, and here’s what so we had two puppies at the sanctuary. Most everybody else so we went one non rescue dog. Her name is crazy about Boston Terrier, so help with this brindle colored, gorgeous, cute, ridiculously wonderful pop, and so on. While we are waiting for hope to be weaned from her mom, Deanna went on the dreaded Petfinder, which is the best pet adoption site in the world. And she came to me and she says, you know, what do you think about this? And it was this picture of an eight, another eight week old Boston Terrier puppy, but jetblack with this very devilish smile. I’m like, why is this dog on Petfinder? We’ll come to find out she was 100% deaf. And I’m like, What in the hell of a deaf dog Well, I lost thankfully, I lost the argument and we got harmony. So we picked up help harmony on a Sunday help on a Monday. And so here’s what would happen I would come into the house and hope would come to greet me. And then she would turn around and she’d go wake up or sister harmony who couldn’t hear then she bring harmony so hope awakens harmony, and then be there and all hope and harmony wanted to do is just be with me, there was no demands that just wanted me to get on my hands and my knees and to cover me with kisses and affirmations and love and to say, Papa, come sit down on the, on the couch with us and let’s take a nap. And, and I think it’s the same thing in our life is that hope never comes alone. Hope always brings something with it. It can be patience and understand. I think it oftentimes is harmony, because inherent in harmony. When things are harmonious. Like there’s a certain aspect of certainty and reliability, like you know what, it’s all gonna be okay. And so whatever we can do, to step into the door, and to be welcomed by hope we can be guaranteed that hope is going to awaken something else most often. It’s going to be harmony.

Victoria Volk  36:42
There’s another book title.

David Woods Bartley  36:43
I know. I know. Hope awakens harmony, I know. And harmony, she had the loudest bark. I mean, it was screeching. I don’t know cuz she couldn’t hear us. I mean, she was 100 people to just want to get her hearing check them like, Okay, let me show you. Let me scream at her. But the other thing is, hope has an aroma. Hope has a certain sense. So, in the times when say hope was with mom or something, and I would walk into the house and harmony was fast asleep hence the truth. The truth is deaf dogs get the best sleep in the house, that’s just so in those instances in which hope wasn’t there to Awakener I would walk up. And this is what happened every time. Sometimes it was instant. Sometimes it would take a minute, harmony, all of a sudden, Victoria, her head would swing I mean just pop up. Like all of a sudden she could hear and I yelled her name. Well, her said was so enhanced because of her deafness, you have to think and then out of the million different sense somehow she could distinguish mine. And what she would do is her head would pop up and then she would focus her eyes and she would see was me and she’d come running up me and dive literally put her head right in the middle of my chest and move back and forth and then take like little bites of my skin. Or like she was with this part me this, this being that meant more to her than anything in the world. And so she was awakened by the realm of hope. And again, I think that your we can be in this catatonic state of grief or mental illness or whatever it is. And that little essence of hope it has a very distinct aroma. It can awaken us from our slumber and ideally, you know, move us into a different place than if nothing else in the moment feels better.

Victoria Volk  38:41
So, do you think it’s part synchronicity, happenstance? And maybe a little bit of intuition as to what we find then that helps us awaken?

David Woods Bartley  38:54
Oh, absolutely. No, no, I absolutely. And I think it’s you know, there’s this great again, I don’t propose any sort of spirituality, I my own I’m radically inclusive of life, that there’s this great, and I think it’s an African proverb of prey and move your feet. So, in other words, I think we all are gifted with a sense of intuition, but then we it needs to be activated. So, serendipity, you and I, so we could have met, but never had this. So, there was the the universe gave us the gift the universe orchestrated things so that you and I could meet that system, what are we going to do with it? So, we spend this first two hours of our relationship being incredibly connected. So, I think it is but you can also do too much activity and not have enough kind of sacred consideration of what’s going on to it. So, my mother Suzanne used to always like to say she say, Honey, moderation is the key. So, mom was talking. It’s all about balance, you know, too much of anything too much. Sunshine burns. Yeah, yeah. No. So I agree with you. You said a beautiful and I think Ultimately, we know what’s in our best interest. We do. Sometimes, though, more often than not, we just need people heading down that road is too scary to do it alone. And like, I don’t need you to say anything, I just would you just please go with me? I think that this like, okay, and we can do that for one another, you know, we can drive with somebody to go to their doctor’s appointment, you know, hey, the first time you take a medication, how about I go to the pharmacy with? I may not want it but imagine somebody offering, like on the first day that you’re going to take medication? Like, would you like me to go with you to the pharmacy? We can pick that up together. And I think it is those simple acts just, they come with what I call the power of an unexpected gesture, because we don’t we don’t expect people to do those sorts of things.

Victoria Volk  40:45
So good.

David Woods Bartley  40:48
You’re so good.

Victoria Volk  40:50
Is there anything else that you would like to share?

David Woods Bartley  40:54
Yeah, I mean, the bigger the thing is, I think you can handle one more story. I’ll try to review it. I just told this. I just told us for the first-time last night, I’ve written about it. So, here’s the truth. I think what happens is we see a circumstance that goes back to this whole thing that I think oftentimes we’re we don’t think we’re qualified or capable. But what if I told you that you can save a life just by sitting down? So, one of the Boston terriers that came to the sanctuary was Doug Murphy. And again, you had to fit into one of these four categories. And when Murphy arrived, I got this stunningly gorgeous. Guy along with everybody loved him, and I’m like, okay, someone like kind of slipped him in my radar. Like he had no special need at all. But not long after he got there. The first time he ate, he ate and ate and ate and then threw up everything. So, I thought, okay, maybe he’s a little nervous. Well, it happens the next day, same thing happens the next day, same thing like okay, well, something must be wrong. Take him to the vet, to the car. I mean, his vitals are good, and we don’t know nothing’s wrong. And so it keeps going on. Well, Deanna, just this amazing soul, every animal that came to the sanctuary became her baby. And so she’s like, okay, we’re gonna figure this out. And so, lo and behold, Deanna figures out that Murphy has this thing called mega esophagus. So, in other words, his esophagus is enlarged to the point where it doesn’t contract. It can’t do its job to take the food from the mouth and the throat down to the stomach. And absent that, a dog standing on all fours. So what happens is, he’ll die because he eats. It goes partway down the throat, but the esophagus doesn’t move it along. And so he doesn’t throw up. He regurgitates it looks the same, but it’s different. So dogs die from this. So Dee is like, Okay, well, that ain’t gonna happen on my watch. So she comes up with his brilliant solution, she watches Murphy, he and she knows the point the exact time when he’s eating enough. And but he, you know, is about to regurgitate. And so she scooped him up and propped him up, head and back against her chest. And she say, okay, but sit down. And then she’d give Murphy to me, just like you would imagine, like the crown jewels being passed over. And then I would sit there with Murph, his back against my chest, his head on my shoulder, his whiskers tickling my cheek, and a lot of times, we would just fall asleep in that position, just propping him up, life as gravity did the job of malfunctioning anatomy and brought the food down into the place where then if we sat there long enough, you can consume it. And Murphy always knew when the time was up, and she’s about 3030 minutes or so, and then he would jump down and play. And so that’s how his life was saved. Save a Life by sitting down. And I think the same thing that’s happening, be it great for anything else is we can have a seat and have a conversation with somebody, we can have a seat and have a meal, we can have a seat and watch a movie, we can have a seat and go visit them. In the psychiatric hospital. We can have a seat in our car and trance and go with them somewhere. We can all save lives just by sitting down. And so I think my final message is just that. Never underestimate kind of paraphrasing, but the great Maya Maya Angelou said, never underestimate what an individual’s small act of kindness continue to change your life. And in fact, I’ll end with this last thing, and I promised I will let you go. There was an amazing psychiatrist Dr. Drew Ramsey in New York means this one quote, in which he talks about the issue of suicide as a problem and a solution. One short paragraph, these are Dr. Ramsey’s words, not mine. Dr. Ramsey tells us, someone you see today is thinking about killing themselves. Your smile, your question your love could save them. Trust me. They told me at that. That’s impactful. He’s pretty cool. He’s brilliant guy.

Victoria Volk  44:53
Well, folks, if you don’t look at your dog, the same after today.

David Woods Bartley  45:00
She’s outside the door right now kind of whining.

Victoria Volk  45:04
Oh, no, really, I mean, it makes it memorable. Like the storytelling of all the stories that you’ve shared makes it memorable. It makes it relatable. It makes it impactful. That’s genius, by the way, and I just love how you’ve tied it into your message. Thank you so much.

David Woods Bartley  45:25
Well, yeah, and all credit to my former Beloved, and the great people and amazing animals. And you are so welcome. And again, I can never thank you enough for what you’re doing, to take this topic and have it be your passion and to be of selfless service to so many people, you’re a lot like, you may not be given the gift to know how many people that you save and unburden. But it’s a new age because you don’t just help that person, that person then helps somebody else and somebody else and somebody else.

Victoria Volk  45:55
It is my mission that we talk about grief, like we talk about the weather.

David Woods Bartley  46:01
Got it, and I say let’s make mental illness, a casserole disease. And someone comes home suffering from mental illness, let’s bring them a big good, just like we would any other instance.

Victoria Volk  46:13
I love that. I love that. So many quotes.

David Woods Bartley  46:20
Kind of goofy.

Victoria Volk  46:21
No, I love it. Okay, thank you. Thank you so much. Um, I’m gonna, I might do this in two parts, actually, this podcast episode.

David Woods Bartley  46:31
And please do, whatever I can do to serve you, or anybody else. You know, if somebody wants to talk, or whatever, want to hear a story, I’m here to serve my job.

Victoria Volk  46:40
I love it. Um, I’m actually going to put all the things that you mentioned in the show notes reference in the show notes. And thank you. Thank you for the work that you’re doing, for sharing your story for going first. It’s like I said, we never fully arrive. We shouldn’t be journey alone.

David Woods Bartley  47:03
No, no. Amen. Well, you are a delight and joy and I have a new lifelong parental. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your trusting conference. Thank you for choosing me.

Victoria Volk  47:15
My intuition.

David Woods Bartley  47:17
There you go. Nice. Gizmo for me.

Victoria Volk  47:21
Air hugs. Thank you so much. And everybody, I hope you enjoyed this episode. or two. I think I might do two I don’t know we’ll see. But if this was helpful to you, please share it with somebody you know, or love and share the love on Apple podcasts if you don’t leave a review for David’s fantastic words of wisdom. And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.

Ep 21 | David Woods Bartley Part 1

Grief Stories, Grieving Voices Guest, Grieving Voices Podcast, Mental Health, Suicide | 0 comments

David Woods Bartley Part I: A Day Like No Other & How Connection Saved His Life

SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:

**This episode is Part I of II: Listen to Part II HERE**

David is a mental health speaker, educator, and holds certifications in Mental Health First Aid for adults and youth, SafeTALK (Suicide Awareness for Everyone), and the suicide prevention technique known as QPR (Question, Persuade, Refer), which he mentions in this episode.

David shares his story around a day like no other – the day he was going to end his life jumping off of the Foresthill Bridge in California; the 4th highest bridge at 730 feet. A passerby followed their intuition and called 9-1-1 and, his life was saved that day. But, that was only the beginning of his lifelong battle with clinical depression.

As he describes it, David found his way from “mental hellness to mental wellness.”  Through his experience of owning and operating a non-adoption animal sanctuary where he and his then-wife took in animals that were sick, lame, or old – he relates his life through stories of working with the animals and what they taught him over the years.

Also in this episode, you will hear tips on what to say to someone who is dealing with depression and possibly suicidal ideation, receive an education, overall, around the topic, and learn how all of us have a role in ending the stigma associated with mental health.  We also discuss mental health in kids, and the role curiosity plays in helping those suffering.

“People don’t die of mental illness,’ David says, ‘they die from hopelessness.”

Some of my favorite “Wisdom-Drops” from David in this episode:

• “Connection creates hope.  And, hope saves lives.”
• “Sometimes what hurts the most cannot be seen. And sometimes, what helps the most, is easy to do.”
• “Four words that changed my life [as said by my psychiatrist]: It’s not your fault.”
• “If people don’t feel connected, the door stays shut.”
• “Without mental health, there is no health.”

Resources:

• David Woods Bartley TEDx Talk: How Connection Saved My Life
• Krista Tippett – TEDx Talk on Compassion
• Johann Hari – TEDx Talk: Everything You Know About Addiction is Wrong
• Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen, author – Kitchen Table Wisdom
• Dr. Paul Quinnett & the Q.P.R. (Question, Persuade, Refer) Technique
• Grief Recovery Method

Connect with David:

• Website
• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• YouTube 

Victoria Volk  00:08
Hey there, Pardon the Interruption before the episode actually starts. After I edited the two-hour podcast episode, I decided to break it up into two parts only because there’s so much information, good good information, that I felt like there needed to be some sort of time to like process what you’re listening to. Because there is so much goodness in there. And I just felt like to it would help. You’re more likely to listen to the whole thing if it’s not almost two hours long. Right? So, this is now part one with the interview with David Bartley. And in this episode, he, I mean, we talk a lot about connection. He gives practical questions to ask someone who is potentially having some suicidal ideation. He speaks of a day like no other, which was the day that he was going to jump off of the fourth tallest bridge in the country, which is near San Francisco. And it is not the Golden Gate. Actually, it’s Forest Hill bridge, which is taller than the Golden Gate Bridge. He shares that personal story and talk we talk a lot about depression itself. Mental Illness overall, he shares a lot of resources that I will probably put in the show notes for both episodes just because I feel like I don’t want anyone to miss any of the good things he had to share. Also, in this episode, he shares suicide prevention technique called QPR, which stands for question, persuade, refer. And he shared a quote by Dr. poliquin. net, which I absolutely loved. He said it’s the unasked questions that lead to tragedy. And so we talked a lot about connection. And it’s just so many amazing ways that we can support others who are dealing with depression, who may have suicidal ideation. And really, it’s so informative because I learned so much and to really hold each other’s hearts in our hands and understand that there is a battle and some people that we can’t see sometimes. So, enjoy this episode. Come back for part two. What I also failed to mention at the end of the episode is that you won’t hear at the end of this episode because it’s the first half. But at the end of Part Two, I also had forgotten to ask David where people can reach him. It was just an amazing conversation that slipped my mind but if you would like to reach out to David, you can find him on his website, David Woods bartley.com and I’ll put the link to that in the show notes. He’s also on Facebook, David W. Bartley dot five, the number five. Again, I’ll put the links in the show notes. He also has a TED talk, titled How connection saved my life. This is just an amazing conversation. I’m very proud of this episode. both parts actually is one episode split into two but enjoy, share with someone you know and love. Because you never know it could save a life.  Welcome to another episode of grieving voices. Today my guest is David Woods Bartley as a mental health speaker, educator and trainer. David has seen his fair share of successes and setbacks from directing a nationally recognized nonprofit to battling a life-threatening mental illness. It was the ladder a brutal knock down, drag out fight with clinical depression. That led David to a suicide attempt. Welcome to the podcast. David thank you so so much for being here.  I’m excited because like I’ve shared with you before and email. And before we started to record, this is a topic, mental health, suicide prevention is something that is very much needed, I think everywhere, but I definitely feel it within, in my state and my community and surrounding area. So again, thank you for being here. And welcome.

David Woods Bartley  05:27
Thank you, Victoria, thank you so much. And thank you for the work that you’re doing not just to shine the light on mental health, but in particular grief, because I think it is, every person, not everybody will have an experience of depression or suicidal ideation. But we all experience grief. And I think that there’s, I think that there’s an equal stigma to grief. And there’s always a timeline associated if we lose somebody, then we have X number of days or weeks or months to process it. But then after that, then we are stigmatized, because we’re taking too long. So thank you for what you’re doing. Because I think in the absence of being able to process grief, I think that would lead into a condition that I experienced, which would be depression and untreated can ultimately potentially take somebody’s life.

Victoria Volk  06:13
So, tell us about that journey for you, when it started for you?

David Woods Bartley  06:19
In terms of the way I begin most talks is to talk about a day in my life that was like no other. And that was August 31 2011. And for most people this rather average Hump Day was indeed just ordinary and run of the mill. But for me, it was like no day I’d ever experienced because that was the day I was going to kill myself. And that was the day that the monster known as clinical depression, after passionately trying for close to 40 years on that day, convinced me beyond any doubt that I was worthless, useless, pitiful, grotesque, stupid, ugly, that I become an embarrassment and a burden to my family. And most damning was the fact that on that particular day, the monster convinced me not just as a passing thought, not just as maybe, but truly, albeit a logical I believed it to be true that everybody in my then life, my former wife, Deanna, my family and my friends on that day, I believe that their lives would improve exponentially in the wake of my death in the absence of my pitiful and grotesque existence. So the time I was living about 30 minutes east of Sacramento and Northern California, about two hours west of San Francisco, and I lived on this two and a half acre parcel with Deanna and I remember that day here in Northern California at the end of August, there’s no chance of rain and there’s almost never a cloud in the sky. And I remember Victoria going out that morning. And it was like Michelangelo had come down and done his version of a blue sky. And after a while being outside lived in this beautiful area, I went back into the house, I sat down at the computer and typed out my suicide note. And then without telling anybody where I was headed, I made the short 20-minute drive from our home in this little town called Penryn, to what is known as the Forest Hill bridge. Now, everybody knows the San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge. But almost nobody knows the Forest Hill bridge, which is the fourth tallest bridge in the country at 730 feet. It is 500 feet further off the ground, and it’s more famous cousin. And it’s important to note that this was not my first trip to the bridge. And it is universally accurate to say that suicide is almost never spontaneous, it is incredibly rare when someone just spontaneously ends their life. Most of us who suffer are plagued with suicidal ideations as I was in my case for close to four decades. And so, in imagining, wondering, planning, what and how I would in my life, I had chosen that I would jump off the foresail Bridge. And so, I’d make trips to the bridge, not in a, some sort of more morbid way, but in the thrust of grieving, and I love what Johann Hari, who has probably the best TED Talk I’ve ever seen, which is everything we know about addiction is wrong. And in johans word that the opposite the opposite of addiction is in sobriety, it’s connection. So we think about what’s happening now in isolation, and he has a further quote that says, isn’t depression in all its forms, really a form of grief, grief for the life that you thought you would have grief for the life that you did have grief for the life that you want it? So, I imagine this in suicidal ideations is just what you do. And so when I arrived at the bridge on that day, I knew exactly where I was going to park. And I remember bringing my vehicle to arrest and I turned off the ignition and then I put my hands reflexively on the temperature The position on the steering wheel took these deep breaths, opened my eyes reached over grabbed the suicide note, place that right in the center of the bag. And then I took the keys out of the ignition place those on the note exit the vehicle turned back around just to make sure the door was unlocked and then face back again crossed over the road and and came to the closest part of the bridge, the bridge deck and it’s a half mile long. And if you if you google the for-sale bridge, Vittoria view from either side is spectacular. It’s stunning. But I didn’t want to look at the view. I didn’t want to make eye contact with any of the passing drivers. Instead, I focused on a light post that stood right at the midpoint and then made my way there. And then once their turn to the left, press my body up against the suicide barrier. So hit me right about mid chest. And again, not looking at the view. Instead, I focused on the water that was flowing in the North Fork of American River. And once again, close my eyes. And I began to imagine what’s the most efficient way like how am I going to make my way over this barrier. And I done the calculation, it was going to take me seven and a half seconds to fall. I thought, what’s that going to feel like? What am I going to think? And then I thought I just somehow either want to pass out or pass away before I make impact. I mean, there’s no way I was going to survive a 700 foot drop. But I didn’t want to feel the pain. And I was so fixated, so focused in that present moment that I can’t tell you how long I was there. I don’t know. But thankfully it was long enough for a passing driver to act on a sense of something we’ve all experienced that she looked upon the scene and thought something’s not right with this picture. She picked up the phone called 911. And a sheriff’s deputy approached me from the left hand side and initially established contact, which is logistical. And then created connection which is life saving because connection creates hope. And hope saves lots was taken off the bridge and to an emergency department into a psychiatric ward where I would spend the next 15 days and when people Victoria found out I was there and why. Like, does not calculate does not compute. They couldn’t get their head around because instead of seeing me as clinically depressed, instead of seeing me as somebody who thought he was worthless, people saw me as the happy and contented co director of a nationally recognized Animal Sanctuary called a chance or bliss. And you and I talked about this a little bit Gizmo would love this place. And the sanctuary was amazing home to as many as 100 animals at any one time. 25 horses, 23 dogs, nine pot bellied pigs, goats and sheep and ducks and geese and bunnies and birds and fish and turtles and everything like no I’m sure would have been so jealous. If he came back and looked at that he’s like, wow. And as I shared with you, for an animal to come, they had to fit into one of four categories. Very old, very sick, some sort of special needs, or the vast majority were at the end of life. And so, DNI my former bride and I did no adoptions. Instead, animals came and then they stay and until they made their transition, they went to the greatest pastor of all and and we became known as this forever home in different parts of the country, even different parts of the world. And on June 2, 2010. We were the cover story in the life section of USA Today. And so, I didn’t fit the image of somebody who was mentally ill. I didn’t fit the image of somebody who was clinically depressed, somebody who was suicidal, somebody who was at a high risk to end their life to kill themselves. But I think of everything that I talk about in the in the wonderful opportunities that I’m given is this is that sometimes what hurts the most cannot be seen. Sometimes great despair, overwhelming grief, soul, crippling soul killing agony lies just behind a forced smile, a distracting joke, or in this case, a seemingly perfect and ideal life. And not even my beloved, this amazing woman she had no idea the degree of hopelessness on that dark spot on a tall, tall bridge. Just 14 short months after the mountaintop experience of England, USA Today. There I was one short movement from killing myself, but incredibly amazingly divinely, my life was saved. And on that day. On the day I thought it would be my very last day alive. It wasn’t said the first day of a brand new life and the first steps in what has now been a nine year journey away from mental health illness, and into the experience of our birthright mental health. And so that’s, that’s how I am here today to be in your loving wonderful, incredible hands to do anything I can to support that work that you Do you hope that anything that I could say would eliminate even a little bit of suffering from a soul who may be suffering at this point?

Victoria Volk  15:09
What do you think set this off the clinical depression is it’s like, I think that’s actually one of the questions I had here. What are some of the causes of mental illness and in your personal experience? what led to that day?

David Woods Bartley  15:26
So, it’s interesting, as I, as I tell, the speech that I give, the most often is called sometimes what hurts the most can’t be seen. And sometimes what helps the most is easy to do. And in the beginning of the speech, I tell that’s the intro and then I talked about in the second day in the psych hospital, I had this amazing experience with a psychiatrist. Now, a lot of times when we think about shrink, there’s no like happy image that comes to mind. But this guy walked in and it wasn’t, didn’t have a lab coat didn’t have a stethoscope. And there was just something about the energy like the thought that this guy got off, and it gave off. And what was fascinating, and I talked about this, is that he didn’t just launch into clinical questions. He what he was using, he was leveraging curiosity to create understanding, and understanding creates connection. And little did I know it then there was this kind of essence, this mist of hope, which was, felt it because it just felt different. So anyway, at one point, he had to shift after he asked these questions about the animals and everything else, and he said, two questions. No one ever asked me because they’re counterintuitive. First question was David, is there any history of mental illness in your family? And I thought, Hmm. Well, you know what, I hadn’t thought about it a lot. But my understanding is my father’s father, my paternal grandfather ended his life by suicide when my dad was really young. And then my dad died when I was young. And why don’t have any specific memories. My three older brothers shared with me that our father was horrifically and devastatingly overwhelmed with clinical depression. He didn’t die by depression, he died by cancer. But at this point in my life, now I know that the depression can weaken every part of you to make you more susceptible. And so the doctor then said to me, says, Now David, realize what you’re dealing with is depression is a medical condition. Okay, well, no one had ever said that before. And he said, because it’s a medical condition like diabetes and heart disease and all these other things, you can inherit the gene, you can inherit the predisposition, but just because you inherit that any kind of predisposition, it doesn’t mean you’re going to suffer from it instead. Oftentimes, there has to be something else. And if you can imagine the, the dry kindling of the predisposition for mental illness, something needs to light it, some sort of match and said, oftentimes, the sad news is, it’s trauma and then Victoria, I will never forget. This man shifted in his chair, in this way that I can only describe it was like compassion in form. And I love the definition by Krista Triplett, in her great TED Talk, that compassion is curiosity without assumption, like, I didn’t feel like I was just another patient. And he said, he looked at me and he said, David, have you experienced any trauma? Has there been any trauma in your life? And no one had ever asked me the question, and I thought, I was like, my brain went blank. So this man picked up the non verbal clue. And he said, Well, you, you, David, you mentioned that you were young when your father died. I said, How old were you? I said, I was seven. And he said, David, that that’s traumatic to lose a little boy and losing his father at such a young age. That’s, that’s traumatic. And then he said, has there been anything else. And Victoria, there was something else, something I had never shared. I was 48 years old at the time, but hopefully, you and others have had the experience where someone has just set the table where it’s so safe, that you are compelled to unburden your soul. And so I shifted uncomfortably, and I took a breath and I said, Doctor, when I was 11, I was sodomized and violated and tortured and raped by a Boy Scout leader. And when the words went out of my mouth, it was one of those instances in which I so desperately wanted to grab them and pull them back. I just I felt shame and guilt and all of this. And then there was this silence in which it was uncomfortable, and I didn’t know Did you not hear me or I didn’t know. But again, I know now that the sweet soul was processing and he he looked at me and he said, David, you didn’t choose your genetics. You didn’t choose your trauma. You didn’t choose to You didn’t choose suicide wasn’t your choice. And then he reached forward Victoria. He took me by the hand, and he said four words, which changed my life. He looked at me and he said, It’s not your fault. Now, he may as well been speaking Mandarin because the monster had convinced me it was my fault. I was, this was my just desserts. I had done something that was so horrific that I indeed needed to pay this price. And again, this sweet soul picked up on those nonverbal clues just held my hands just a little bit tighter and said, David, it is not your fault. And this time, I could hear him a little bit and I was allowed to stand up and longer answer your question, my call as is unfortunately, incredibly common, that there can be some form of genetic predisposition. But that in and of itself is not enough. The trauma really is the thing that not only ignites it, but left unresolved. Grief is traumatic, left on process left unshared left, examine. It’s like a smoldering Ember that ultimately will become combustible. And there’s Johann Hari is that Johan, like, He’s my friend. He wrote this great book after the TED Talk called Lost connections in which he’s a brilliant writer and a storyteller in which he says that there’s more and more data about big data person. But there’s more and more evidence that’s pointing to the impact of trauma on the the genesis of mental illness, and less and less on the genetic aspect, the genetic aspect, I think, is a contributing factor. But in the absence of trauma, I don’t know. And I’ve never heard, which doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, have an instance of mental illness that people just become mentally ill because there was this gene, I mean, it could, maybe, but in all the stories that I read about, and when people blessed me with sharing their stories, there’s always trauma. And it could be the loss of a parent, it could be the loss of a pet. I mean, you I’m preaching to the choir, in the sense grief is grief. Grief is individualized grief is, is personal grief is everybody’s grief is different. Until we dishonor people by saying that, you need to grieve this way. And people don’t realize what the impact of conditions are be aggrieved for COVID-19 or whatever it is just the vast uncertainty that we’re experiencing globally, right now. That all can Usher people into a more exacerbated experience of mental illness. Maybe they had a lesser degree before this pandemic. And now that’s being exacerbated or their song who have situational, mental illness and most likely depression or anxiety, and it’s coming up for the first time. So I think those are the baseline causes. And if you had to, if you had to distill it down to one word, that the cause of mental illness is trauma.

Victoria Volk  23:08
I would agree. It’s so uncanny how similar our stories are. Because my dad died when I was eight, have cancer.

David Woods Bartley  23:19
I’m so sorry.

Victoria Volk  23:20
And thank you, and thank you for sharing your story, too. And I was also molested as a child. So, it is a trauma, right? I absolutely 100% agree with you.

David Woods Bartley  23:36
And you know, the other part about that is what I try to tell people now, and I would imagine you do the same, just having this initial wonderful experience with you with grief. Trauma doesn’t have to be what you and I endured, that trauma, trauma can be something that for one person, it’s not traumatic, but for another person it is. And so I think we cannot if we do an incredible disservice and exacerbate somebody’s trauma, by trying to put it into a box that we’ve experienced, or a box that is defined that way. And the same thing with grief, doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. If somebody who’s been married to somebody else for 50 years, and this soul dies and people will I think with all good intensity Well, you had them for 50 years and they’re in a better place you want to say, I don’t want to hear that. And then but and then when people give that thought, like in the same thing with the person who can’t get out of bed from depression as well, you should get out of bed but you have it better than the people who are starving in Africa and then we shame those people. We’ve eliminated the possibility they’re going to talk about it. So then their thoughts become contaminated because they have no air. We have exacerbated them circumstance and we may be why are we then surprised that far too many souls are walking down the path towards ending that life because the suffering gets To the point, they lose, I defined depression as the absence of possibility, reason and hope. There’s no possibility things are going to get better. We have lost the reason to live. And hope is nowhere on the horizon. People don’t die in my opinion, Victoria have mental illness. They don’t desire desire, they don’t die from the medical condition, they die from hopelessness. without help, forget it, you can live without love. You may not have the capacity to develop great faith. But if you don’t have hope, you’re done. You are done. And that’s why I think both in any of the paradigm where people are suffering that the path out not easy, but the way out is through the mechanisms, then there are many of creating connection because connection creates hope, with hope. All things are possible. Everything. Everything is doable with hope.

Victoria Volk  25:56
You can’t see me right now, but I’ve been nodding my head like this whole time. Yeah, you know, I just I mean, I’ve been taking notes here, it’s just so much good things. You know, and that’s the whole premise of two of my podcast is to show people and give people hope. And through story, and through other people’s stories that because I love an underdog and I love an underdog who has made it through some really difficult times, turn their life around, and how did you do it? Show me how you what you did? and show me the light. We have to go first and that’s how it like you said that’s the I mean, that’s how you build connection to is in community and grieving as a community grieving, holding space for people. Giving compassion showing compassion, love everything you said about compassion, by the way,

David Woods Bartley  26:54
And that’s Christie Triplett, I mean, he has a great TED talk and this is that quote of like, Oh my god, compassion is curiosity without assumption it’s like what I call my phrase on it is blank slate listening. And then here’s another thing about listening real quick before I forget the greatest quote of all time about listening is from the great Dr. Rachel Naomi remen who wrote kitchen table wisdom. Please read it on my unbelievable book collection of essays so the great doctor says our listening creates a sanctuary for the homeless parts and other people.

Victoria Volk  27:29
Oh, that’s so good.

David Woods Bartley  27:31
So, a soul is grieving I think that’s why peer support in any malady because peer support gives hope hope defined as hearing other people’s experiences like oh, okay I you know, we you know, dear sister that we can become so consumed the monster is so great at convincing of us with the whole slate of lies that we feel we are the only one who is this abnormal this tarnish this horrific and then you sit amongst a group of other souls who are going through grief and loss and mental illness and anything else. Just hearing other people’s experiences gives us hope and then you get late You know, Charles Schultz, the creator of peanuts said that happiness is a warm puppy. Okay, if that’s true hope as a whole group of eight-week-old Labrador Retrievers hope this wants to be with you hope has no demands at all. Just wants to hang out with once a sit on your lap and go to sleep. Just like you know, like when Gizmo you told me that have an easiest mate to sit in your lap. Okay, so havanese probably the root word for having ease is hope.

Victoria Volk  28:44
You know, it’s funny you bring that up, because actually, the reason why we got a dog when, you know, I mentioned that we had before that we had tried the, you know, when my kids were younger, we tried the whole rescue dog thing, but that didn’t work out too. Well. What prompted me to get a dog again, when my kids were a little bit older, was the fact that my youngest was going to kindergarten. And I That same year, I was closing a business and I had a lot of change and that’s when a lot of grief started coming up for me. I had been a work at home kind of stay-at-home mom and I had been so wrapped up in that identity of being a mom and having a business having built a business and and choosing to say goodbye to that. Although it was very difficult. I knew that it was the right thing to do. But I had a lot of grief coming up at that time. And I thought what’s the what’s the cure? I need hope I need a dog. And yeah, I I pretty much came to my husband crying like I need a dog. I needed something and in grief recovery. I know now that my dog was my sturb we call them stuff short term energy relieving behaviors. Yeah, if if we don’t have hope, and we don’t have feel like there’s something good to look forward to, we look for things to make us feel better for a short period of time. And so, like you said, I, what you are leading to is like, even if you don’t think that’s how addiction happens, right? When we solely when we don’t have someone to talk to when we don’t, when we can’t feel like we can express what is lying dormant within us those that emotional grief energy, we either implode or we explode. And it either comes out as manifests as disease and, and health problems which I was experiencing at that same time. Or, and I was drinking, I actually ended up in the last year I just I next month will be a year that I quit drinking completely. Congrats. Thank you. But I say that though, just because it comes ties back to what you’ve been saying. And that we look for things to make us feel better for a short period of time when we aren’t willing to when we don’t, either we’re not ready. Or we’re unwilling to face the difficult stuff. And so what do you have to say to that, when it comes to clinical depression?

David Woods Bartley  31:18
I mean, I think so, what I talked about is that what I was what I’ve experienced, but then by these great coaches and mentors and therapists, and psychiatrists, and peer support, and all these other that the monster is not satisfied with just owning our mind. The monster wants to control our physiology, our psychology and our spirituality. In other words, the monster wants to devour the whole of who we are body, mind, spirit. And so my by my own belief, and I live on the more severe spectrum because I, I still have horrific days, I still have thoughts of killing myself from time to time, but I have this amazing set of tools and a mechanism. So I have put my self care on pedestal, there’s nothing more important, and it’s whole person care. It’s not just one thing, I don’t think that there’s a again, everybody’s different. But for me, there’s no single thing I can do to be well, I have to do all of it, I have to attend to the whole of who I am. And so for me, it’s about sleep. hygiene fact, I just I realized I had thanks to my beloved summer who’s my sweetheart, she said, I think you have sleep apnea. And so I have one of those c pap machines, and all of a sudden my God, I’m sleeping better. So it’s sleep, it’s dying to try to eat as clean as I can. Occasionally Colonel Sanders says, Come visit me because I miss you. And I must heed the call. And then I’m really good about exercise time outside, I have a bad ass psychiatrist, my he’s become like a father to this man is incredible, an incredible therapist, and they’re distinct. Although I do therapy also with my psychiatrist, which is a little unusual. I take two minutes. But the important thing about medication, I think there’s two hurdles that we need to get we ultimately get people over the first is okay, meds can help you. But the other thing to realize that in the best case, the best case scenario, what your medication is going to do is to quiet your symptoms met, you’re not going to cure you. It’s the difference between an antibiotic and an Advil, you break your leg, assume there’s no infection, you control the pain and the symptoms, you quiet them so you can go do physical therapy and everything else. The same thing is true with anti psychotic or an antidepressant or anti anxiety that they quiet the symptoms to allow the true curative healing effects and diet and sleep and exercise and therapy and counseling and psychiatry. And then, for me my own spiritual practice and then a sense of defined purpose, the sanctuary no longer exists. But I give curious entation center around the world in which I take this aspect of mental illness and I wrap it in animal stories. And they’re not stories just because I want to tell people feel good story, their feel good stories, but they all have a very specific teaching point. And my experience has been Victoria that for people like us who are dealing with something difficult. An animal story gives us a safe distance to relate to the topic at hand without it being right in our face. And for the people who want to understand somebody on scene like me, they can look at the story. I’m like, that makes sense. Just a beautiful way you explain addiction that we think it’s like why would you do that, but to realize in my belief that the people, people who have mental health disorders are actually far more tied into how they feel. They can relate more to how they feel than the normal person and so in the acute experience of those in the absence of compulsive behavior, without condoning it, you have to have some way to bleed out that intensity. Again, I’m not advocating for addiction, but there’s a reason behind curiosity City is the greatest and the most direct path to understanding when we understand one another, doesn’t mean we have to agree. But at least like Okay, wow, now, I get it. It makes sense. And then, if you want I know you probably you made me promise I tell the Joshua story. This is actually a perfect spot for the Joshua store. So we get a call one day at the sanctuary. And here’s the story. So old man, very old man, probably in his 80s comes into the animal shelter not far from our sanctuary with a very old dog. He was a basset hound cross. Carmel Crowther, Carmel colored swayback. Like an old pony had no teeth on the right hand side. So his tongue hung out. Okay, it’s an old dog, kind of a hot mess. So the man comes in to talk to the staff and said, Hey, I was walking and I found this dog as a stray. And I thought the right thing to do the right thing to do would be to bring him in and put him maybe he can find a home? I don’t know. So the staff was like, wow, that’s not like the behavior you would assume of a senior person. Thank you so much. Just to help us out. If you could please just give us some information about you and where you found the dog. We’ll take him in the back. Who knows? Maybe he’s microchip. So the man agrees to do that. Staff goes in the back comes back and says, Oh my god, we’re in luck. He’s microchipped. And then the staff member compare the information that was recorded on the microchip to the information that the man had filled out. And it matched. Now, in that moment, I would have opened up a can of whoop ass on that man, the likes of which he had never experienced I say, What if someone just dumped you out? At the end of your life like you have outgrown your usefulness, but this staff member Victoria, like the most amazing demonstration of compassion I’d ever heard about. She shifted the question from, what’s wrong with you to what happened to you, sir? What’s going on? What’s happening? How can I help you and in that moment, beautiful man just burst into tears, like, could not control he saw, like his whole body. And he finally was able to get himself back together. And he said, this is Joshua. I’ve had Joshua, since he was eight weeks old, there is nothing more important. This is my best friend. I’m dying. And I’m going into a medical facility and I can’t take my dog. And I thought if I said he was a stray, instead of the fact that I had to surrender, and it would give him more time to find. Mr. Rogers famously said that, quite frankly, there’s no one you can’t learn to love. Once you know their story, I would have done the same thing. And here’s the beautiful thing about understanding this is like that, you know, this is the bonus in the fertile ground, the level ground with an understanding that has the soil of compaction solutions and ideas. They just like Poom, it’s instant manifestation and that staff member who had asked that brilliant question, she said, there’s a sanctuary, down the hill, maybe they have room and they call this DNI went, I will never forget this wonderful man handing me the most important thing in his life, and asking me to take care of his beloved Paul. And all because somebody asked a question, Joshua was able to come to the sanctuary, and be treated with dignity and respect and was able in time to make his transition and this beautiful soul went on to in this life. And I think that that’s why curiosity is the most direct path to understanding, I think, curiosity is the most direct path to overcoming our fears about addiction, and mental illness and grief. Because in my opinion, the opposite of fear isn’t called the opposite of fears, understanding, the more we understand, the less we fear. So when we see these daunting behaviors, these societal conditions that are now just being exacerbated to an exponential level because of COVID, and isolation and distancing and everything else, I think it’s important for us to leverage curiosity to come to a place like we can understand wonder, if I think about the questions that the first responder asked me on the bridge, and the first question after he established logistics was David, what does it feel like to be depressed? Like, in that moment, like everything went calm, counterintuitive question. That would be like, what is your grief feel like? We would think that that would put us into a more acute, but it’s actually that’s what keeps you on the safe side of the rail of the barrier. And so, you know, when we I think in this time, in particular, if, if we ask people and we leverage questions of what and how, not why, and when You know, when someone asks you a why it almost automatically makes us defensive and when adds in the stress of time, but wondering how are very benign, they’re actually beautifully neutral. And we ask, you know, what’s it like? And if nothing else, we see somebody who’s suffering and struggling, and maybe they’re not able to vocalize and articulate the difficulty. And maybe the question is, then, what would help you feel like you were Understood? Because I think when we feel like people understand us, man is that that’s hopeful. Like, okay, I don’t, I don’t feel like some alien on some planet.

Victoria Volk  40:39
You can’t see my notes. But I actually wrote, doctor, and then what happened to you? Because that is one thing that doctors will never ask like, if you go to your general practitioner, I’ve done a few of these interviews now, regarding like, with mental illness, or just in conversation, obviously about grief, and you go to the doctor, general practitioner, or whatever, they never asked what happened to you, I had about of postpartum and what I know now, it was postpartum at the time, I had some really dark thoughts, and go to my general go to my practitioner, nurse practitioner, share with her what I was feeling, well put you on an antidepressant. And it wasn’t because of, well, I had a baby. And then I had another baby. And then I had another baby. It was this dormant grief that had been sitting there and was rising up with all the hormones and all the changes and just everything. And I didn’t know what to do with those feelings, or things that you’re saying. It’s just, yep, touching all everything. Like every every note that I have. And I’m asked, I’m wondering to how then do you identify someone who may be clinically depressed? Or who is exhibiting the jolly go lucky person? on the exterior? How do you figure out that out? Like how, what, what, even because even some of the people closest to like, the people closest to you had no clue, right? Is that correct?

David Woods Bartley  42:18
Oh, you my beloved. And you know, I say for my former bride is amazing soul, and we’re still really good friends. I was able to hide behind the velocity of our life. Okay, you can imagine, let me just tell you 25 horses produce a lot of manure, it’s like, and we literally picked up every piece every day, because we wanted this environment to be pristine. And just so I can hide behind that. And I think there are a lot of good actors out there. There are a lot of people like me that they call, they found a one of two categories. They’re either smiling depressives, or high functioning, depressing. So you just have no clue, like, keep showing up and getting stuff done. And so, if you look at the symptoms, there, basically it’s changes in cognition, you can have people who all of a sudden are giving things away. They may become very irritable, it’s just in so what I say to people, when I do a PowerPoint, there’s always an animal picture on it, is to one first, just be okay. Don’t make yourself wrong, don’t be engulfed in shame. If If you don’t see these, because for people like me, these can be incredibly subtle. Like, really the only way I think beyond something that’s just really obvious, is it’s to follow that intuition that we all have, say. Some seems off, and then you think, oh, whatever, you know, right now the Oh, it’s just the stress of COVID, which could be true. But I think we just we need to pay attention. You know, that I love the quote that says, attention is the purest form of generosity. Like, let’s just be a little bit more mindful of one another. And look for these because these signs are really subtle. And then when when we do like, okay, we have the wherewithal to step forward and leverage curiosity. We need to ask a direct, heartfelt question. And it could be something like, I may be totally wrong, but I’m just feeling like, I feel like you’re suffering I feel like it just I just don’t feel like I just feel like something’s wrong. Would you please tell me how are you feeling? And I think if we can pose the question that is there is a difference between Are you feeling okay? That’s a yes or no. versus how are you feeling? It’s not Can I do something for you? It’s what can I do? Do you feel like I understand you are what can I do to help you feel understood? If people want to talk to you, they may be reticent. They may feel embarrassment and shame because there’s still a stigma around this. I think it’s less than little by little thanks to great people like you. But I think ultimately, people want to talk about it. And so we need to ask hard question. There’s a suicide prevention technique that was created by an amazing psychologist Dr. Paul quintet, and it’s called QPR, which is question persuade, and refer. It’s kind of like CPR for mental health. Well, Dr. cornet has this quote, in which he said, it’s the unasked questions that lead to tragedy. So why I thought this, but it is counterintuitive, like why would that officer asked me David, what does it feel like to be depressed? You would think, okay, that’s really going to toss this person over. But again, that’s what kept me safe. You know, what’s it like on your worst day? You know, when when you hear voices, what are the voices say? Would you please help me understand, I want to understand so I can, I can serve you, I can help you. And then quiet. In the end, you have that quote from Dr. Lemon said, in this gift of listening, it literally creates a sanctuary for people like I had a home to live on that day, but on that dark spot, and tall, tall bridge, I was homeless, you know, and the fact that this man, listen to me, just listen. Just listen, that was it. He asked the question, then he listened, like, wow, it’s not really complicated. And I think what happens is, I there are available resources to process grief and mental illness and everything and they’re not perfect, but they exist. But if people don’t feel connected, the door stays shut. That’s why I gave a talk recently, and I wanted to be a little I wanted to grab people’s attention in the talk was mental illness, a complex problem with a simple solution. solution is connection. That’s it. Like if we become more connected in all these different ways, become great at remembering people’s names. Leverage curiosity, to create extension, become the master of the handwritten note. People need to hear how you feel about me. If you’ve just become great with those things. You experience the mutuality of connection it’s mutually beneficial and you will change people in ways that you cannot imagine and then if I can I’m gonna tell you real quick another real quick story all that said you can I totally get how frustrating it can be if we do all these things. We’re really looking forward to we’re looking to step up and help people and there’s no visible we don’t feel like what we do makes a difference. It’s like and you want to give up like I’m doing everything I can I’m doing all these steps and so we had this bird at the sanctuary named kiya she was pretty good sized parrot. She had been abused by man so she comes and we had this big great room and then kiya there was this armoire and kiya had this beautiful platform she had this great new look at all the animals and everything these are brilliant when it created all the methods in which we took care of these animals I was really good at picking up manure I like I can do it so I was the feeder primarily and so the first day I go up and I approach KSK Victoria as soon as I did she like shakes violently turns around and goes to the rear of k i think you know what, but then I’ve been the rescue for a while we run this have good energy I’m it’s going to be okay. Go out the next day, same thing and so I changed the paper and I open the cage and I put in the water and nuts enter treats and she’s just you know what it’s gonna be okay. So this goes on day after day after day after week after month, same thing, no change. Like I’m doing all these things to make a difference and nothing’s changing. And at one point I said, Honey, I can’t do this. This is I think I’m making a worse you know, like you do and she said how they just I know she she needs to know that men are okay, I know it’s gonna change. So keep going on. It’s not gonna change, like nothing happens. And then one day I go up and I’m like robotic factorial. Approach the cage and she’s doing her thing and I changed the paper open it up and I put the water in I put the nuts in as I put the treats in. kiya turns around and comes to the front of the cage climbs up and pops her head out and puts her head down. And when a parent does that, one they’re completely vulnerable because they can’t strike you with their town or bite you and what they want you to do is to scratch their head. And remember that oh my god. And so the question is Was trust created in that moment? Or was it those small acts consistently done, encouraged by this beautiful woman. And it was, of course, the ladder. And then every time I came to the cage, that head was down. And so, you know, the bad news is in in, I think a lot of instances, we don’t get to see the impact of our kind acts. But as somebody who’s on the receiving end, including a bark in the background, they’re on the receiving end of an innumerable number of those, each and every one of those, even if I don’t respond, they all made a life saving difference. And so I would just say, keep doing, keep making those deposits of kindness and compassion and love and understanding into the bank of a soul who’s depleted. And it will, in fact, It can turn a life around.

Victoria Volk  50:56
That’s a beautiful illustration,

David Woods Bartley  50:59
Out of black and tan coonhound. It’s being very disrespectful on our podcast right now.

Victoria Volk  51:11
Just saying hello, just saying hello. Okay, so I suppose the principle still applies. And those rules, not rules. But that idea still applies when you have kids that are not necessarily very vocal and open and it’s, they’re kind of like, tough nuts to crack, you know?

David Woods Bartley  51:32
Exactly. So, here’s an interesting it’s an incredible segue. I don’t know if I shared this, so I’ve never had children at DNI neither of us waited. And then with summer who’s my beloved now, she has three babies, Ethan is 15 Bella is 12 and Gracie is nine. And so like, Okay, this is a whole learning experience for me. And it is because I you know, I’m trying I’m trying to learn leverage on the experience under the mentorship with my former bride You know, they’re sentient beings that’s the commonality an animal on a child different but they’re sentient beings. And so for me to to recognize the subtle differences and then leverage curiosity in a way that that works for them maybe not be so direct on a question related to depression or anxiety but something different and it’s great I’m still learning it it’s it’s still a skill and sometimes I mess it up Horace, why did I say that? And the times when at a point of relating maybe something totally different for Grayson is playing like she’s super active. And she’ll say, David, okay, and we make up games and everything else. I remember these games Victoria them when I was nine years old, growing up. So we just make up all these games. And we’re making nothing else. That’s a point of connection for Shana. And maybe there’s she may, then we’ve been in each other’s lives now for almost two and a half years. And there’s been these moments where she is sharing when she’s felt anxious when she’s been depression. And I know, she knows, I’ve never the two girls. Ethan has has seen me speak a couple times to girls have not, but they have an idea. And I Grace has gone so far as to say that in regards to when she’s feeling depressed at times that she says, I know David understands. So okay, you know, and she’s at a quick handwritten note story. So someone I don’t live together, yet, we’re actually gonna move in together in January to be great for all the parents out there, please help me because I don’t know what I’m doing. I have nowhere to run, I can escape now. And so I’m sorry. I’m afraid. So there was this day, and I was in a bad space when I was in depression was within my budget. So summer had said, Honey, could you go by the store and pick up a few things for me, and I said, Sure. And then I didn’t have time to take it to her house, which is not far away. And I said, they’ll just have to leave it in the car, and you can come back. So I’m upstairs, take Sharon and come out to my car. And there is not one but two notes. On my front seat. One is from summer, just expressing her love and support. And the second one is from grace. And I don’t have a right here and we’re on a radio anyway. So it’s on a piece of line notebook paper. And it’s written in purple pen. And it says Hi, David, this is grace. Thank you so much for being the best stepdad in the world. I love you so very much. And thank you for taking such good care of mommy. Now I took pictures of both of those Victoria and I send them to summer and I said thanks. And she said thank you so much, because grace wouldn’t let me know what she wrote. So Gracie had no idea that I was having a bad day and yet, my child intuitively knew that in that moment When I needed this reminder that I was okay, and that I was loved and that what I was doing in service to her mom and loving her mother, she noticed that she picked up that whole thing. And I have that note laminated. You can offer me a million dollars for that, I’d say no, I could use a million. But no, it’s not another note I got from a young woman who’s like a daughter. At the end of the know, she said, depression can’t have you, because your hours. So it’s, I think we might be surprised at how impactful small things are. You know, and I think what I tell people is, you know, we, each of us, because if we don’t have initials past our names, if we don’t have a PhD, we may think we’re incapable and unqualified to make difference. But I think actually, it’s just the opposite, that we are all universally capable and qualified, because we not only can we create connection, we know what it feels like, we know what it’s like when someone remembers our name. And we had no expectation that they would just remember who I am. When someone creates a safe place for us to tell our story. When we go to the mailbox, and there is, let’s say, unsolicited mail, and then all of a sudden, there’s that uniquely sized envelope. And there’s that handwriting like, okay, it’s gonna be one of three things, it’s gonna be an invitation, it’s gonna be cash, or it’s going to be somebody taking the time to let us know, they love us. Because if they think we’re a butthead, they’re going to send us a text. So it’s just these things. I mean, I’m so passionate to say, oh, we’re in such a difficult position, it is incredibly daunting and complex problem. Grief is can be overwhelming. But if we come together in that pure tribal sense, and offer each other’s support, not advice, journey with one another, not one in front, and one behind just side by side, man, let’s just walk this thing together. I think I know that’s the way we can win. I really, really do.

Victoria Volk  57:04
And grief recovery, we call it being a heart with ears.

David Woods Bartley  57:08
Oh, I love that. Right?

Victoria Volk  57:12
Yeah, we need more of those.

David Woods Bartley  57:14
We do. And they’re out there. I just think, you know, it’s just, it’s a matter and who knows, maybe the silver lining and all the suffering and difficulty of COVID is a reset to a certain degree. I mean, it’s not a reset I wanted. And in terms of the work that you and I do, maybe what this has done is is focused what really what the what really the most daunting problems that our society has are all in relation to mental health. That’s it, everything, you know, there is no mental health. Without mental health, there is no foundation. It’s like you’re, you’re gonna drown and imagine when we feel Well, interestingly, when I feel good, I treat other people really well. I mean, they do it’s just, you know, we stand in that beautiful place of understanding and do all these things. It’s, you know, and courageous souls like you to bring attention to a really difficult subject. You know, like, that’s why I’m here to talk about grief. Oh, sorry. I had I didn’t realize I had another appointment.

Victoria Volk  58:25
Someone asked me not long ago, she said, do you love grief?

David Woods Bartley  58:31
Wow.

Victoria Volk  58:32
And I’m like, it caught me off guard actually. And I was like, yeah, grief is kind of my jam. But not in a way like, oh, yeah, you know, it’s it’s like, like you say, like you’ve used you wrote on your, on your forum here. Grief has become my friend. And it’s been my lifelong friend, like yours. So, it’s just so add just the similarities. I feel like you’re a kindred spirit.

David Woods Bartley  59:01
Oh, no, I’m a bit of a, like an obsessive freak about serendipity. No, you know, I don’t believe in randomness or I just think, you know, you and I, the way we think there’s no accident, this does and the fact that we are together now, all of it, to me is divine. In the most universal sense. I’m not trying to point to a certain belief system, but I just think it’s not capricious, it’s just it’s like, this is what it’s supposed to be. So now I have a kindred spirit, you know, a sister that understands and focuses on another aspect that I still deal with, you know, I, I don’t know I don’t know if I shared with you that. So I was released from the psych hospital on September 15 2011. By the end of that year, I lost every conference and so long story which I’m talking about now, but just everything went away. I remember very clearly handing the keys to my vehicle on the Repo Man drove away. We lost our support because people thought if the co founder was going to kill himself, what must be happening to the animals, which the animals were being cared for, and loved in ways that most people wanted to be. But people freaked out, they were afraid. So the animals were taken away. With Auster house to foreclosure it was sold at auction and the marriage crumbled under the weight. And so I mean, it was literally like a fire had come and spontaneously erupted and wiped my life out. And with a borrowed car, and one of my beloved Boston terriers, harmony, came to live where I live now with my two brothers and sister in law and I look back now like you say, I went from one sanctuary to another because it has been in this sanctuary that I’ve been able to heal but and it’s interesting. Another part of that is to underscore how connection saved my life on multiple occasions. When I was in the hospital, I met a guy named Don was another middle-aged man who was going to kill himself. And when Don got out of the hospital, he found this men’s depression Support Group, a group of middle aged men who met every Tuesday for two hours and for six years, every Tuesday at see my therapist from four to five, take a break and then go be in group for two hours. From that amazing place. I met my therapist, I met my psychiatrist, I got on the right medication, I was given the first chance to speak eight years ago, all because of a guy that I met in a psych hospital. And then you fast forward to the end of that year had I not had the group and everything else. I didn’t know the nightmare that was coming, the trauma and the grief that would overwhelm me had I not met Don made that connection, there is no way in the world that I would have been alive by the end of the year. That wasn’t an accident, that of all the people that could have come to the mental health, mental health, that psych ward, that man and I met on that day and everything that happened out of you and I coming together and there’s no accident. I think that life is yearning is screaming for us to connect in these ways to open up our eyes so we can work together to heal what’s going on and healing. Isn’t it possible, I’m not saying it’s easy, a lot of work. You know, I spent as much time in self care that the average person spends in a part time job, you know, between working out therapy, where it just it’s a lot of work it is but I’ve had glimpses and experiences of mental health I’ve never thought possible. That it was interesting. So until like five years ago, August 31 of the year was every year was the worst day of the year on the January baby I hate summer. It just I don’t like the heat not in California, it’s a dry heat facility. So five years ago, I go to the mailbox. And there is one of those uniquely sized envelopes. And open it up on the outside of the card. It says advice from a glacier, go slow, carve your own path but whatever like I want to like cost the same but out of curiosity open up in these big like Crayola crayon orange print. It says happy today. And it’s from my incredible friend Greg. And it was this support and this love and this encouragement and as a result of that card Victoria, August 31 of every year went from the worst day to my New Year’s that and every year including just recently on August 31. I go back to the bridge and apart my vehicle in the same spot and a walk to the midpoint in a celebration in a New Year’s Day. And this last year was the most extraordinary because my beloved whose name is mentioned just happens to be summer which I think is hilarious. She said honey, I want to go with you. And here we are. I’m walking with the woman then I’ll spend the rest of my life with the juxtaposition between the epitome of isolation to the apex of connection as we walk to that same point all thanks to a card that showed up on that day at that time. Just like that’s it. That’s we hold it in our hand we can do this. It’s and then when we do we open up access to all of these resources to the whole world with souls who stand on the front line the people who embrace becoming a mental health service worker to become a psychiatrist and a psychologist who who deal with the rigors in the upset of what they call courtesy stigma that that they share some of the stigma that we do by association and yet they’re like that’s okay man. I don’t care about that. You’re This is my peeps and I’m gonna help these people like all of those relationships open up when we have that moment of connection and we can create it everywhere, anyplace, anytime, with anyone. No matter what.

Victoria Volk  1:04:55
Wasn’t that an amazing part one episode with David seriously combat for part two, it’s just as good. We get into how you can’t drag someone from hell illness to wellness, how difficult that is for people standing on the sidelines watching someone who you know they love and care about who is depressed and may have suicidal ideation and how to help them. He gives more practical tips and advice around that. He talks about his own thoughts around the myths, I call them the myths of suicide prevention. We get into forgiveness, self loathing, loathing to self love, which is very apparent with people who are clinically depressed. Just he shares a lot more personal story and great analogies of life that we see in nature with animals, and he just makes everything just so relatable. So come back next week for that episode. And till then, take care. Much love my friend.