Al’s Story: Outliving PTSD

Al’s Story

Trauma doesn’t come as a single event—it builds. One layer over another, until it feels like you’re carrying an onion made of pain. To heal, you have to peel back each layer, and that’s not easy for me, PTSD came when the layers became too many to bear. It hurt my marriage, my career, my ability to be the father I wanted to be. By 2012, I was at my breaking point. My wife walked in at the moment I was about to pull the trigger and end my life. She saved me. That day, I finally got help—not because I wanted it, but because I owed it to my kids to at least try.

The early days were rough. Medication helped me begin to reset how my brain processed everything—from childhood abuse, to combat trauma, to the things I had witnessed as a funeral director, embalmer, fire fighter and rescue & recovery diver. Over time, these experiences built into a crushing weight of despair and damage—what we call post-traumatic stress disorder.

It took twelve years after that hospital stay, twelve years of seeking help, before I found the therapy that truly worked for me. That therapy changed my life, and it changed my marriage. I wouldn’t be here without AJ, my service dog, and without a wife who refused to give up on me, even when I had nearly given up on myself.

Now, I know this: I can get better. I can outlive PTSD. And that’s why I share my story—because this organization matters, and because hope matters.

I want others to understand that they can outlive PTSD too. Healing is possible. Relationships can be mended. Marriages can be restored. Mental health can be reclaimed.

I am living proof.