E021: The Gold Star Family Experience of Overcoming Death and Trauma with Jen Amos

Overcoming death and trauma isn’t easy. Experience trauma as a family is something that can bond or break that family unit in so many instances. And when that trauma is the death of a parent, it makes it that much worse.

Today’s episode focuses on mental health and the military and the impacts of mental illness on the family unit.

Amy: [00:01:01] Welcome back to this episode of What We're Not Talking About. Today's guest is Jen Amos and she is an award winning podcaster, online entrepreneur, and mental health advocate. Welcome to the show.

Jen: [00:01:14] Amy. Thanks for having me. I'm so happy to be here.

Amy: [00:01:18] Thanks for accepting the invitation. I'm excited to talk to you today because we're going to be talking about military families and mental health, and I'm sure a few other topics as well. And, Jen, I'd love it if you would begin by sharing a bit more about what makes you so passionate about talking about these topics.

Jen: [00:01:38] Oh, my goodness. I mean, what's not to be passionate about? I'll start with my background. So, I come from a military family. My parents were actually both from the Philippines and both of them come from farmers. My dad especially loved farming.

But his dad was like, “No, you're not going to stay here. You need to join the military and have better opportunities for you and your family.” 

And it's not that we had a bad life in a third world country. I just think because his dad would travel to California - at that time, which was a long time ago - I think it was the early 1900’s. He was like, “You gotta go like, because there are better opportunities. I know there is. So, his way to come to America was through the U S military. And one of the first places he was based was in Yokosuka, Japan, a naval base. That's where my brother and I were born.

Fast forward to 10 years later, in 1998, unfortunately, I actually lost my dad while he was on active duty. I was 10 years old at the time and my dad was serving 18 years. He was really two years away from doing the full 20, when we had unfortunately lost him.

The moment that happened we turned into a military family into what they call a gold star family. And if your listeners are hearing that for the first time, it basically means that you lost a family member while they were in active duty in the military. As I mentioned, that was my dad. From there our life catapulted back to California, because we didn't have a sponsor in Japan.

A lot of my mom's family members were in California, so we pretty much lived there for about 20 years, at least for me. Now I'm here in the East coast, with my husband who is a veteran. I met him after his service. So, for 20 years I was definitely removed from the military, for obvious reasons.

I didn't want anything associated with it.

I really associated it really with death, before I was overcoming death and trauma.

It's like, “Hey, if you want to, join the military,” which even my mom encouraged me to do. I was like, “Why would I join the military?” Knowing even what you went through. I really had a disconnect on that end.

But fast forward to having my husband today, who is a veteran, and we work in the military base together. I had to learn how to embrace my gold star family story, embrace the fact that I did lose my dad and really own that story and see it as a force of good for military families today. So, that's part of my passion when it comes to military families, Amy.

And really, really quickly on that, you also asked me about mental health. When my dad passed, we really didn't know exactly what happened to him. In the recent year or so my sister had decided - she was five at the time when we lost my dad - that she wanted to finally learn dad's story. So we had been interviewing people, our loved ones in our journey to overcoming death and trauma.

We interviewed his best friend, the last person who saw him before he passed. Just this year on January 1st of 2020, at the time of this recording at the beginning of the year. We are finding that my dad actually had struggled with depression and suicidal ideation for the majority of his life.

In fact, I found out when I was one year old, he actually unsuccessfully attempted, fortunately. But, for me, later in life to wonder why I myself have mild depression.

And to know that now makes me think, “Wow, had I known that my dad had that, maybe my life would have turned out a little more differently.”

Maybe I would have gotten help sooner. So, lots of talk about there, but that's a little background on why I'm passionate about military families and mental health. Because I’ve had my own journey of overcoming death and trauma.

Amy: [00:05:35] Thank you for sharing that with me and the listeners. So, how did you and your siblings take what happened with your father and losing him in active duty? How did they process it and how was your process different or similar in comparison to them?

Jen: [00:05:53] Well, I think that they processed it a lot differently than I did. I think that I processed it the hardest because I kind of considered myself like the princess, you know, my dad's princess. And before my sister was born, I was the youngest daughter and I was the special one for at least five years before my sister was born.

But even so, I remember how harsh my dad was to my brother, because he was the eldest. He's the man, he has to “show up for the family” kind of thing and set the example. But with me, if I asked my dad for money, he would pull out a $20 bill for me.

For me, my dad was the embodiment of emotional support, emotional availability, attentiveness, and everything. And when I lost him, in a sad, tragic way, I felt like I spent the rest of my life trying to chase for that again.

Even though my dad was gone months at a time in deployment, I never felt his absence.

I only felt his presence. Like when he was around, he was very affectionate. He would always hold me. He would make me feel special and really spoil me and stuff like that. But, you know, he didn't treat my brother the same way and my sister was still pretty young at the time. So, I don't know, I'm not entirely sure how he treated her and how their relationship was.

When I lost him, it really impacted me very deeply. I didn’t know at the time how I would even start overcoming death and trauma. I found out my dad was also an introvert like me. And so I felt like I lost the example of who I could have been. As in a sense, where my brother is a lot like my mom.

And I say this out of the highest respect, but there, there's something, like him and my mom, don't really, I don't know how to explain it. It's like they, I'm not saying they lack empathy, but they're task-oriented types of people. And so they don't feel their feelings as deeply as I do. So for them, they weren't, you know... Even my sister, I'm not saying that she's not empathetic, but for all my family, they didn't really outwardly express the grief that they had in losing my dad.

My mom initially did. She absolutely broke down and everything, but my brother didn't seem too bothered by it. And the thing is with our family, our family culture at the time, when bad things happened, we kind of shut off.

We don't talk about it.

In fact, when we lost my dad, we immediately, I remember, catapulted our lives to California and we really never talked about my dad ever again. I wasn't able to grieve in community. And so I had to figure that out on my own. but looking back and talking to my siblings, you know, even for my sister... She didn't really care to reconnect or try to understand dad until a year or two ago, because she started to struggle with self-esteem and being confident in herself and everything. It was her turn to start the journey over overcoming death and trauma.

She's beginning to learn that that lack of self-esteem as well, probably stems back from the fact that she grew up without a dad. They all interpret it differently, but I like to think, at least for me, that I was the most affected emotionally by it because I had that emotional bond with my dad.

Amy: [00:09:17] Yeah, absolutely. There's a really strong bond. I always think of the title, like “daddy's little girl.” It's kind of overused, but it's something that's really indicative. Because I was the same way. However, I lost my father, from an emotional standpoint before I lost him from a death standpoint.

So, it was interesting because it's that disconnection from a parent. I lost my father, like he died a year ago, but I was much older and able to process it in a way that was a little bit more healthy because I had gone to therapy for years. And I was actively managing my depression and my anxiety and the myriad of other mental illnesses I have.

And, I laughed because, you know, what else can you do?

Jen: [00:10:07] I hear, I hear you,

Amy: [00:10:08] Yeah. yeah. And as a child, I know, like for me, one of my best friends, she lost her father when she was 10 years old, too. When it happened, she was the older daughter and she had a younger brother. She was 10, he was seven.

The contrast of how they processed and were overcoming death and trauma, it was so polar opposite. The younger brother wailed, he cried, he was emotive. He was present during the wake and the funeral. And then my friend just went numb for a really long time. And it's so interesting how, although there are different relationships within the family unit, the way that they grieve is so vastly different, even though the environment is quite similar.

Jen: [00:10:56] Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's interesting because later in life, my sister did start to seek help. And one thing I realized that I did wrong on my end as an older sister, is that I thought I was protecting her from our family because after we lost my dad, I went through many different forms of abuse within my family and my relatives.

I mean, you can name it, physical, emotional, mental. I went through it all and I had no one to protect me. My older brother, he was very aloof. He kind of resorted to playing video games and doing art. In fact, today he is a graphic designer. And you know, it is what it is.

I definitely got to a place within my life where I accepted my brother for who he was.

I did resent him for a long time and I assumed that, “Hey, you're my older brother. You need to protect me.” But I really didn't have a lot of male figures in my life after my dad to protect me and in a lot of unfortunate situations.

However, what kept me strong and resilient was that I had a baby sister. She was five years younger than me, and I felt compelled to protect her from that. Like telling her to avoid certain family members and relatives and stuff like that.

Fast forward to today or the time when she started to kind of realize that... her interpretation wasn't that I protected her, you know? It was that I kept her away from family. And I'm not saying that she resented me for that, but when I started to realize what I did to her, that I robbed her of that. Oh my gosh. So, I apologized to her. I said, “I'm so sorry I did that to you. You didn't deserve that.”

I saw her get emotional in that way because I think she didn't want to be mad at me, because she's like, “Oh, you're my older sister. I look up to you. You're perfect.” I know I'm not perfect, but she used to think that. The point is that we all grew up with different experiences growing up, despite being around the same kinds of people. We had different ways of overcoming death and trauma.

I thought that I was doing her a favor by protecting her and looking out for her in that way, when really I was robbing her of opportunities to build deeper relationships with our family.

Amy: [00:13:04] Yeah. And that's really amazing that you've been able to, first of all, apologize, and then also come to terms with it within yourself because. A lot of the time when you're in survival mode, you're there, you're trying to protect. You're trying to make sure that the pain you're experiencing isn't felt by your younger sister. But the way that she's building that narrative is that you're this mean older sister that's like preventing her from having meaningful relationships.

So, I want to congratulate you on that because I don't have any siblings. I have the added benefit of not having any of that responsibility. And I say benefit because it's been hard enough to try to manage myself, let alone a sibling. I can’t imagine that when overcoming death and trauma.

Jen: [00:13:50] Yeah.

Amy: [00:13:51] Yeah, it's just so fascinating and wonderful that you're able to have this awareness too.

And I do see this trend that we're all starting to really - well, not maybe not all of us - but a lot of us are really focusing on building that understanding around these past events in our lives that have shaped us and pushed us into certain directions. And a lot of those directions are where a lot of us don't want to go.

Jen: [00:14:20] Yeah. You know, people can process abuse in different ways. Some people, sort of hand down that abuse or do that to other people. There’s that saying “hurt people, hurt people.”

I remember a therapist unofficially diagnosed me with this, but she said, “Oh, it sounds like you have post-traumatic growth.”

How she interpreted that for me is that I'm the kind of person who grows from my traumas. I think that there are some people who can go in a positive direction and actually turn their form of abuse and trauma growing up into something good. And I think that, I have found that the best listeners, the most compassionate, kind, giving people have gone through the most shit. I hope I'm okay to say, I hope that's okay to say.

Amy: [00:15:13] Yeah. Yeah. Swear away.

Jen: [00:15:16] Yeah, they've gone through serious shit. I challenge anyone who has a very compassionate, available person in their life to just ask them, “What did you go through to care about me so much?”

For me, every kind, compassionate, giving person knows what it's like to feel neglected, to not be seen, heard, or validated. And, as they start to gain the skills for themselves, they want to do it for other people. They’ve had their own journey in overcoming death and trauma.

That's what I come to find, especially in other podcasters like you. You wouldn't be doing the show if you didn't care what I had to say, you know?

That says a lot. And I appreciate you having these kinds of conversations. I just think that abuse can make people react or turn out or in certain ways.

But I just feel so fortunate that, because I didn't have an adult ally growing up, because I didn't have anyone to really depend on, especially emotionally, I somehow found it within myself. 

And my sister is a big inspiration for that. To be my best friend, to self-soothe, to find the resources I need and the outlets I needed to be able to work through all of that and unpack all of that so that I can show up better for her. Therefore I can show up better for other people, even after overcoming death and trauma.

Amy: [00:16:37] Absolutely. And that's such a beautiful thing for anyone to be able to do, especially as someone that has gone through the history that you have. That's just so, so awesome. You know? I'm sorry. I would just sit here and talk about how amazing you are for an hour.

Jen: [00:16:55] Well, thank you. I am receiving your compliments.

I think that for people who have struggled growing up, they are very quick to deflect compliments, right? They're like, “Oh no, I'm not pretty, don't tell me that.” You know? Right. And I get that. I was that person, but it's a gift to other people when you can receive their compliments.

So, thank you for listening. And for your kind words.

I don't take it for granted because it tells me that you are listening to me and you find that you find some kind of inspiration in me.

Amy: [00:17:30] Yeah! And I'm sure so many people do as well. It's probably, well not probably, it's definitely very insightful for other families and individuals that are part of the military aspect or the gold star family, as you said, as well. How much impact do you think your father's 18 years of service had on your... see, it's hard for me to ask this question because he was killed in the line of duty, so obviously massive impact.

But from a belief standpoint. Was there a lot of military type of mentality ingrained within your family unit or was it much more fluid?

Jen: [00:18:15] Yeah. So, are you essentially asking me how the military life conditioned me? Is that sort of what you're asking?

Amy: [00:18:21] You as well as your family? Yeah.

Jen: [00:18:24] Yeah. I do want to backtrack real quick and share a little bit about my dad's story. So, as I had mentioned, he had struggled with depression and suicidal ideation. One thing that. when we lost him, he actually disappeared. His last ship was a USS Kitty Hawk and they were taking off from Yokosuka, the classical Japan Navy base, to South Korea.

One day he was missing,  and they sent a search crew for him for three days and they couldn't find him.

On his death certificate it actually says that his death is unknown or that he may have drowned in the sea. What we had found in the last year or so, not that we have any physical evidence, but from the stories that our family has told us so far, we have a very strong feeling that my dad may had actually committed suicide.

I mean, in my mind, I'm thinking like, “Oh, maybe he was bullied. Maybe he was discriminated against because he's this brown guy on a ship with an accent, you know, like maybe that's the case.”

But, the people that we have been talking to and hearing the stories and the hardships that he went through, I wouldn't be surprised if that's what had happened. That he felt like it was such a burden for him to be alive that he thought the world would probably be a better place if he took his own life.

And, like I said, there's no evidence on that, no clear evidence, but based on the stories, it actually, it's interesting. Because it gives me a sense of peace knowing that because I literally didn't have any of those stories told until recently. So that's a little bit about what may have happened to him that we have gathered.

It’s helped me with overcoming death and trauma.

In regards to how military life has impacted my family, I'll speak first from my own perspective. Whew. I mean, I still think I'm living the military life because as a kid, we moved around every two to three years.

And after we lost my dad we completely started over our lives in California. I moved to two different elementary schools in fifth and sixth grade. Then, before I could get settled, I was in middle school. Again, before I could get settled, I was in high school. Then I went to a second high school, and the longest thing I stuck with was college. I finished college in five years. We called ourselves the super seniors, cause it took us five years to graduate.

You know, a lot of my life has been very transient. Even since 2014, I've probably only lived at one place for less than a year. Where I currently live in Virginia Beach right now, is the longest I've lived anywhere in a while.

My husband and I have been here for about a year and a half. Then with my husband being a veteran, he also has led a very transient life. He's traveled to 50 different countries and can speak four dialects. And he's just always that kind of guy that's on the go.

So, I think that's why I was attracted to him because he reminded me so much of my upbringing. Obviously there's a bad side to that as well. It's like, “How can I have deep relationships if I'm always on the go or I have that paranoia that I need to leave soon,” you know?

For me, that had been the impact of growing up in the military. 

My mom, God bless her. I'm so glad that she kind of lacks this level of empathy because I can just only imagine the discrimination she faced as an immigrant from the Philippines with a thick accent. She still has an accent today. The current place she works at, she works for the government in San Diego, California right now.  Prior to the job she currently has, for years she was dealing with discrimination by her supervisor.

Anyway, the crazy thing is I feel like the military didn't really impact my mom emotionally, cause she just doesn't seem to have that. But, it's interesting. Like I said, I can't speak on their behalf, but it doesn't seem like my siblings were as impacted by all the change as myself. Even for my sister, we lost our dad when she was five. She pretty much grew up in San Diego, California. For her, she went from kindergarten all the way to high school. She had childhood friends and by the time she was 18, she was like, “I want to get out of the house.” So overcoming death and trauma was different for her.

She lived that typical average American life. And she ended up going to UC Santa Barbara. She was actually the first to leave the house. It. At 18, my older brother and I were still at home. To me, I think she had that stable upbringing, but at the same time I think she really struggled with a lack of? That, that that… What do you call it?

That fatherly support, that she always kind of felt like she wasn't good enough or good. I mean, it’s good for her that she's received so much help since then.

It's interesting how the military has shaped us and even how it's made me do the work that I do today.

Amy: [00:23:40] That's amazing. So, what kind of work do you do today? I'd love to know.

Jen: [00:23:44] Yeah, for sure. A little background on my husband. When he was serving, he got out of the military while he was in Germany and he wanted to find a way to stay there. He managed to find a financial firm in the area that he lived in that focused primarily on the US military families and the DOD, or the government contractors, there.

With financial services and focusing specifically on them, he was actually able to discover that, a lot of times, when you think about your typical financial advisor, you think about the civilian way of providing financial advice, which is, “Hey, if you're going to be working at a job for a couple of decades, you might as well save for retirement.”

Because that's typically what civilians do is, you know, they work at one job for a couple of decades and then in their sixties, that's when they retire and they can start pulling money out of your insurance or whatever thing you planned or set up for yourself at that time. The thing with the military is that when they retire, they're still in their late thirties, young forties, they still have a couple of decades to go before they actually retire. And yet, we are putting on these civilian financial advising type of advice onto our service members and our military families.

Which is actually a huge disservice for them because getting out of the military and going into civilian life. 

It's not like jumping from one corporate job to another. It's completely different. In the military, you're trained to kill. Most corporate jobs don't teach you or train you to kill. So your mind is wired differently. And you may be overcoming death and trauma. More importantly, in military life, especially if you're a career military, which means that you would serve for about 20 years, at least, you're ingrained in that kind of lifestyle to follow orders and be told where to go, what to do, and everything.

When everything is on the surface, it looks like you have this stable life, because someone else is taking care of you and looking out for you and you have all these benefits and stuff. But it's when you transition where it's like, “Okay, you're not here anymore. So good luck.” Though, it's not as bad as that. They do have like this kind of check off the box, transition program for the service members.

But, it doesn't serve the military spouses who've had to give up their career to move every two to three years with the service member. And they themselves are trying to think like, “Okay, what do I want to do in my post-military life?”

I say all of that because military life is so different from civilian life.

Therefore we have to talk about money differently for them. For us, we are bold enough to say that, we're not helping you save for retirement. We're helping you to save for your post-military life. And we want to help you not just align your finances for post-military life, but align it with who you want to be in post-military life. Like, who do you want to be as a civilian? What kind of dreams do you have? What do you want to be when you grow up? Essentially, who do you want to be now?

And so that's a really big thing for us. My husband actually has a book that just came out at the time of this recording. It's actually free right now. Anyway, he has a book that explains it so much better than how I'm explaining it. It's called “Veteran Wealth Secrets,” and his website, if anyone wants a free download, is Veteranwealthsecrets.com. But this book really talks about the realities of what our military families and service members go through and how, the government can only do so much to help you with that transition, financially, mentally, and emotionally.

We're here to say that we're not your typical financial adviser. We're proud of that because we have a better solution specifically tailored to our career military families, and it's not just about money. It's about, “Who do you want to be when you grow up?Who do you want to be in this next chapter of your life? How can we align your money in a way that supports that?”

I know that was a long explanation, but I hope that made sense.

Amy: [00:28:00] Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's, I really thank you for that long explanation because there’s a lot of insight in there on how potentially stressful that post-military life could be from a financial perspective on top of everything else, even overcoming death and trauma. Because for me, not being anywhere near the military, I have problems with my finances point blank.

So, that on top of everything else, and as you said, a lot of the financial advisors that are set up to help in normal banks don't have that background or insight into how to maximize your finances.

Jen: [00:28:39] Yeah. And also, if you look at the financial services industry as a whole, a lot of people who get into the industry are typically taught to be salespeople. So, what usually happens is a big firm says, “Hey, come in. You have all the support here in the office. Okay. Now that you know that what we want you to do is create a list of 200 people that you know in your network and then let's just start prospecting them.”

They're really taught to just sell and to get in front of their friends and family. And for us, we take a different approach where like, “No. We're gonna set you up, especially if people do work with us, you know, we're going to set you up so that you only serve who you're meant to serve.” We're not just going to go through your Rolodex, or modern date Rolodex, which is, I guess, your contact list on your phone and make you reach out to everyone and just say, “Hey, let's help you save for retirement.”

Instead, we specifically focus on career military families, people who have served for about 20 years and are about to transition out. 

They're about to enter that civilian life. We ask them like, “Who do you want to be when you grow up? Who do you want to be in this new stage of your life?”

The other thing too, Amy, is that a lot of people, a lot of our civilian, regular Americans, which I don't mean that in any disrespectful way whatsoever, but most people look at the military as a charity case. It's very common knowledge to know that veteran suicide is real and that they are kind of this charity case. And it hard for them, with seeing their friends die and the trauma from the battlefield. They aren’t overcoming death and trauma.

The thing is there's a lot of people in the military who actually managed their finances really well, they just don't know what to do with it. They have this money sitting around and they don't know what to do with it, and we want to show them what to do with it. And, so, yeah, we love what we do.

Also, I think the biggest thing is that we are military-affiliated ourselves. We have been through the trenches, with the military. My husband is a veteran, I'm a gold star daughter. We know what that life is like. We know about overcoming death and trauma. And we know that it's not an easy transition to become a civilian, to have choices and actually choose to give yourself orders and be like, “Who do I want to be? What do I want to do?”

A lot of times if people plan too late, they end up just trying to pick up another stable job.

They try to find another job that tells them what to do, where we really like to speak to people who want to redefine who they want to be outside of the military.

So, we don't work with everyone. We definitely like to look for ambitious service members and families who have managed their money well, but they know that they could manage it better. They just don't know what the other options are. And that's really our prime goal, is to just let them know that they have better options out there.

And that’s it. We're not hard sellers on it. Like I said, we have a free book. We have a lot of content that we push out there on social media and on our website. And we just want people to know. We want our service members and military families to know, “Hey. You have options and here's a couple for you.”

And if you think that we could help you with that, then you could definitely reach out to us.

Amy: [00:31:52] Perfect. And I'll make sure that all those links to connect with you, and to download the free book, will be available on the show notes website. That is in the description of this podcast. You'll be able to easily check it out and get all that information.

I just want to take this moment, Jen, to thank you again so much for coming on the podcast.

And I always love to ask the guests to leave the listeners with a little bit of insight or inspiration for how to move forward in this time of uncertainty.

Jen: [00:32:33] Oh, yeah. That's a wonderful question to ask. One thing that works for me, that maybe your listeners may like, if you're looking for a practical way to move forward or what to do right now. I think, if anyone is familiar with the “do, delegate, or delete,” if anyone's ever heard that meaning of knowing how to organize your tasks.

A way that I like to sort out whenever I'm feeling overwhelmed is I create three columns. In one column it says “Now.” The next column says “Next.” Then the third column, it says “Not Yet.” What I do is I do this entire brain dump of anything that's on my mind right now that feels absolutely overwhelming in the “Not Yet” column.

And then I try to move one or two items to move into the “Next” or “Now” column. I ask myself, “What do I need to do right now? What's timely right now? Once I get that done, what is literally the next thing I should do after that?” Once you get those two done, then you can continue to pull from that “Not Yet” column.

I like doing that because it gets people to... And this is probably better to show visually, but hopefully I verbally, it makes sense... I like doing that because, and this is something that I think military life has taught me is, I think that time is an illusion and all we really have is this moment.

All we have is this moment, the resources, the knowledge, and the tools in front of us.

And the people in front of us. So, we gotta use what we have. Then, as time goes on, maybe we have something else that comes along the way, an additional resource or a person, and then you can adjust then and there.

I think when people realize that now is the most important time to act, for people that says, “Oh, I'm just gonna wait for the new normal. I'm just gonna wait for things to get normal again.” While, I'm sorry I didn't tell you that this is the normal, and you need to learn to be okay with that.

The last thing too, Amy, that I wanted to share, is for people that don't know how to deal with this moment and this weird time in history to get help. I mean, hire a professional therapist. Or a place that I really love to volunteer on is called Seven Cups.

That's number seven and the word cups, plural for cups. And this is a free platform. I don't get paid to say this. This is a free platform for people who are just looking to confide in compassionate strangers. If you're just looking to open up to someone or vent to someone, Seven Cups provides that.

So, now you don't have an excuse to not get help. You know, there's also the Crisis Text Line. There's also the National Suicide Hotline. There's a lot of resources out there that are free that you can use today. So, don't say that you can't afford mental health because you can't afford not to have mental health.

You need it, especially in today's times. It’s essential for overcoming death and trauma.