 Hi, my name is Colonel Dave Trotter. I'm the Vice Commander of the 502nd Air Base Wing. We'd like to introduce a campaign on resiliency today, and that campaign is the things that we carry. And what does that mean actually? The things that we carry are those things, the experiences in life that have taught us different lessons along the way. You can experience experience for other people, but what you can do is share experiences that will accelerate learning. And for me, that's what resilience is about and how we together as a team move forward. There's an old saying in the Army that says, hard times don't last, but hard people do. And in this series, we're going to try to talk about that. And in one particular situation was my older brother who committed suicide. What I was troubled with the most was the fact that he had three young sons that all of a sudden lost their father with no explanation. I became instantly angry at him. I was upset that he would do something to me that seemed selfish. I found myself really struggling with the idea of carrying the experience that my older brother had committed suicide. I was becoming more and more angry as well. And as I became angry, I was beginning to have people tell me that they thought I was tense, that I thought I was a little aggressive, and that in some cases they thought I'm out of line with how I'm treating people. And that stress was just building and building and building. And it got to the point where one of my peers, a fellow company commander said, hey, Trotter, I think you need to deal with your anger. And I had no idea what he was really talking about. A couple weeks went past and he came back to me and said, Trotter, you really need to do something. Your anger is involved with everything that you're doing now as a commander. And you owe it to your soldiers to do a better job. That's when I thought I do need to do something. I didn't know where to go. I didn't know what to do. And I remember talking to my chaplain at the time and asking the question, do you see a difference in me? Do you think I should do something? And the chaplain saying, yes, you probably do need to see somebody. We can talk about the loss. But I think right away you need to talk about your anger. And for me, that's when it changed. I realized that I needed some help. And in doing so, the chaplain directed me to our Army Community Services. And there I found that I could learn how to handle that type of anger. And it's helped me ever since. What I found was that some of the things that I had learned, the tools that I had learned in that course, I could apply to my nephews. They were upset that their father would do that. They were upset that they didn't understand what happened. They were upset because their life had changed completely. And trying to help them sort all of those things out, I found myself teaching them about anger management skills, teaching them about, hey, this too shall pass. And teaching them that we've got to be resilient and press through. We've got to fight through to the other side, whatever that may be. It was one of the best decisions that I've ever made. In the Army, I mean, you know, when you talk about death and the loss, you know that somebody probably won't return. You're going to do everything you can in training. You're going to do everything you can to prepare everyone because your number one goal is to bring everyone home. But it is really hard to be prepared once you have a loss. I remember in combat working with Master Art Anthony Davis, who was a good friend of mine in Bajarok. On the 25th of November 2008, he was killed during a humanitarian mission where he was giving food to local civilians. I wasn't ready for that. I had just talked to him the night before and we had just had dinner at his combat outpost. And we were talking about his retirement. We were talking about his family. And the next day I found out he was dead. I couldn't understand, you know, why someone would be killed trying to do something good for other people. And I remember that time and talking with our combat stress team to kind of sort out what was going through my mind at the time, which was a lot of anger, a lot of sorrow for his family and a variety of other feelings. Six years later to the exact date, I had the major wordel Turner was killed. He was out trying to help people in Afghanistan and he was killed by a roadside bomb. Working through the fact that two really, really important people in my life, friends, were killed literally on the same day with just a few years separating the two. It's really, really kind of hard to sort out that kind of thing by yourself. Falls around Thanksgiving. Everyone is bringing their families together and I'm thinking about two men that won't be at the Thanksgiving dinner table each year. And it's not something that you talk about with your family because, you know, you don't want to spoil it. You don't want to spoil their happiness. But what I found is that sharing that with other friends that were there or people in the unit has been extremely helpful. I think all those experiences have been very helpful in defining who I am today. As I mentioned before, your experience may mean one thing to you. It may mean something entirely different to me. We carry all those experiences with us. The question is what do we do with it? How do we sort it out? How do we deal with it so that we can continue? It's not if it's when things happen. We set the stage or the foundation to have resiliency as that backdrop so that as we move forward, when we experience things that we didn't expect, we can always reach back to that foundation. We have to allow our soldiers to seek counseling. I myself have been in situations where I've required someone to sit down and help me navigate life's curveballs. I think that is absolutely something that is encouraged in the military today that they should go forward and seek that assistance wherever they need it.