Some people find their purpose. Others have it forged out of them through fire, loss, and the kind of pain that doesn't show up on any medical chart. I'm the second kind. Everything I've built, everything I've written, and everything I stand for today came out of the hardest seasons of my life. If you're in one of those seasons right now, you're in the right place.
I served as an Airborne Sergeant in a U.S. Army Scout/Sniper Platoon during a 14-month deployment to Iraq. I survived two IED strikes, one EFP blast, and a multiple Katyusha rocket attack. I came home with a Purple Heart, a traumatic brain injury, moral injury, and PTSD. I also came home with wounds that didn't show up on any scan or in any report. Those are the ones that almost killed me.
Six years after I came home, on a December morning in 2015, I sat at my kitchen table and nearly didn't make it. I had spent years trying to outrun everything I brought back from Iraq and I had run out of road. What stopped me was faith. What rebuilt me was purpose. What kept me going was the people who refused to give up on me even when I had given up on myself. That morning became the foundation for everything that came after it.
I didn't climb out of that season quietly. As an IAVA Leadership Fellow and WWP Warrior Advocate Leader I led veteran delegations to Capitol Hill and helped advocate for six pieces of landmark federal legislation including the PACT Act and the 988 National Suicide Hotline. That work took me from living rooms in Indiana to the halls of Congress, from the TODAY Show and NBC Nightly News to CNN and the 700 Club, and eventually to the stage of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. None of it came from having it together. All of it came from choosing to keep going.
Canyon of Hope is what came out of that December morning. It's the story of what it looks like to lose everything, find faith in the wreckage, and rebuild a life worth living. It's not a war story. It's a story about what comes next. Every copy available here is personally signed by me. It's the one place you can get an autographed copy.
I built all of this from a kitchen table on a December morning when I chose to stay. If you're still here reading this, I think you're choosing to stay too. I'm glad you are. Whatever you're carrying, there's a way through. Let me help you find it.
