 My name is Senior Mass Sergeant Rebecca Spettillary. I'm a first sergeant with the 35th Aeroport Squadron at the 514th Air Mobility Wing at Joint Base McGuire-Dix Lakehurst, New Jersey. My story or resiliency, you know, as a first sergeant, we're always focusing on our people. We always want to highlight, you know, our folks and sometimes the first sergeants forget about themselves because we got to be tough. We got to be strong, you know, in front of our folks and I actually experienced that and how I experienced that was when I found my why in life and how I found that was on my last deployment. So I was deployed in 2019. I went over with the medics. I was the first sergeant for them. Never deployed with the medics because I'm a defender by trade, security forces and it was probably the best deployment on my life. There were they were saving lives over there, long story short. What these airmen were seeing was affecting them and as a shirt you want to take care of them, especially when it's affecting you too. And so I had that support system in the background where I was struggling. So I knew my airmen were struggling and then the biggest, most scariest moment of my life was when we almost lost an airman one day, who he just couldn't handle the things he was seeing when we're bringing people in from from those battlefields that are getting injured, severely injured. Building that camaraderie, even on social media, through communication, seeing that he was reaching out for help is what saved his life and between his his primary leadership and his leadership at the command level, we were able to stop him and when I was able to get a one-on-one with him, I heard his story and it totally resonated with me and at that moment I realized why I was still alive. He told me he wanted to take his life because of all the things he dealt with, but then on top of it his whole life at home had been destroyed. His girlfriend left him and he just felt completely lost. He didn't know how he's going to make it through and it was crazy. This guy's telling me this because I literally went through the same exact thing he did, just not on a deployment. Right before I deployed a few months prior when I'm at stateside getting ready to deploy, I had the same thing happen and it involved some domestic abuse. You know, it involved me afraid to tell anyone what just happened to me because I thought I was going to lose my job. I thought my life was over. So I reached out to my friends and basically was telling them goodbye because I was going to end my life. So I went out to the road and I just collapsed on the ground and I was like, I don't even care if a car runs over me. I was done. And my friends came running. I had my civilian job come. They helped me. My military family helped me and I was with LRS before I deployed and before I left, the unit was taking care of me. The airmen are now taking care of the first sergeant. And it came around in full turn because then it strengthened me to be able to go and do what I needed to do to take care of my people overseas. So sharing that with him, it connected and resonated with him and it reached a lot of people beyond that. So in retrospect at that moment, that's just how I found my why. And if I would have ended my life that day, I never would have been there and been a part of that and pushed to fight suicide as strongly as I did with them over there. And it definitely didn't just save my life and his life, but it impacted a lot of people over there. And I'm actually proud to share stories like this because I want people out there to know that they're not alone.