In this episode of Leave the Light On, Tammy Flake shares the intentional practices that have shaped her family through trauma, military life, and the challenges of raising children in today's world. From journaling and family councils to teaching financial responsibility, navigating social media, and having honest conversations about mental health, Tammy explains how small, consistent actions build resilient families.

Healing doesn't begin in a therapist's office—it often begins around the kitchen table, one conversation at a time.

If you've ever wondered how to break generational cycles, strengthen your family, or create a home where your children always know they belong, this episode is for you.

Remember: You don't have to be a perfect parent. You just have to keep showing up.

Tammy walks through what happened: a hostile on-post OB practice, a delivery where retained placental tissue went undetected, being sent home while hemorrhaging, and a WIC nurse who found her iron levels so low she couldn't understand how Tammy was still upright. She traces the line from that trauma to twelve years of avoiding the VA and the medical system entirely — and to the civilian doctor who, with a second pregnancy, finally listened, prepared for the same complication, and rebuilt what the institution had broken.

This episode is also a direct message to women veterans: that dismissal inside military medical systems is a pattern, not a personal failing, and that distrust born from real harm is a rational response, not a character flaw. Tammy connects her own story to the advocacy work she now does in Washington, D.C., and makes the case for why lived testimony — not just policy expertise — is what actually moves the needle in rooms where veteran healthcare decisions get made.

She starts with hyperbaric oxygen therapy, correcting the common image of a cramped medical chamber (it's closer to a comfortable inflatable tent) and explaining the research behind its effect on traumatic brain injury and PTSD symptom severity when paired with talk therapy. From there she shares her own surprising experience with Dive Into Healing, a free scuba program that uses breath-focused pool sessions and float meditation to shift veterans' nervous systems out of hypervigilance — including a session with six skeptical veteran men who left calling it "a cool experience."

Tammy also maps out a broader network of programs: Project Sanctuary for military families, Continue Mission's outdoor adventure model, local Utah resources like Warrior Revival and the Veterans Lounge, rewilding, and equine therapy. She's candid about medication too — she's not anti-medication, but makes the case that alternative, body-based healing can help veterans move past symptom management toward something closer to freedom.

This episode is a resource guide as much as a conversation: a bigger map for anyone looking for the next door to try.

Tammy shares her own story of staying away from the VA and the veteran community for twelve years, not because she didn't need help, but because institutional systems had broken her trust. She describes the specific moment that finally brought her back through the door — a program run "by veterans, for veterans" — and why that distinction mattered more than anything else on offer.

She also speaks candidly about vetting the programs she recommends, calling out organizations that use bait-and-switch tactics with veterans, and explains why shame, not distrust, is often the first and most underestimated barrier keeping people from seeking help at all. The episode closes with practical guidance for anyone further along in their healing who wants to become a peer themselves — starting with showing up, consistently, without an agenda.

It's an unflinching account of what crisis intervention actually looks like — not dramatic or decisive, but long, exhausting, and mostly just staying. Tammy also shares a second story, of another woman (also named Tammy) who stepped back from a bridge because someone called to check on her, and who has since dedicated her life to being that call for others.

The episode closes with what Tammy believes the research and her own experience both point to: that connection, not credentials, is what keeps people alive. You don't need a degree or a program to be the person who stays.

Content note: This episode describes a suicide attempt in detail, including specifics that some listeners, especially those at risk, may find activating. If you are in crisis, call or text 988.

Tammy also shares what she learned researching a federal veteran suicide prevention grant application for Heroes Haven — including a hard truth about where veterans are actually dying: not in cities with resources, but in rural areas where isolation is measured in miles, not feelings. She didn't get the grant, but she kept the data, and she's turned it into a personal, measurable commitment to see Utah's veteran suicide numbers go down.

The episode closes with a story about a neighbor whose son recently died by suicide, and what Tammy believes is the actual work underneath all the other work: not expertise, not the right words, just presence — the willingness to sit with someone in their worst moment and not leave.

Tammy walks through what unfolded over those three days, including a conversation about AI companionship tools and their risks for people in crisis, and a one-on-one walk with a woman whose life experience looked nothing like her own on paper — and everything like it underneath. Again and again, across every political and religious divide in the room, one thing kept surfacing: suicide had touched nearly everyone there.

What Tammy brings home is a simple but hard-won idea — that suicide doesn't recognize party lines, income, faith, or politics, and that talking about it honestly might be one of the few things left that can actually bring people back to each other. This episode is about what it looks like when a room full of people who disagree on almost everything choose dignity over defense, and what that choice can open up.

She shares stories of what VFW posts do far outside the stereotype: covering a stranded veteran's car repair, providing honor guard for a grieving family, mentoring the next generation through student essay programs. She talks candidly about last year's contested national election, the "gentleman's agreement" around conference rotation that broke down, and why she decided it was time to run herself rather than wait.

At the center of her platform is a single idea she calls "the reframe" — not changing what the VFW stands for, but changing how it shows up, especially for post-9/11 veterans who don't yet see themselves in it. Her first promise as commander: visit every department in her first year, not to be celebrated, but to ask one question — what do you need?

Underneath the campaign talk is the reason she's doing any of this at all: veteran suicide, and her belief that belonging, not just a hotline, is what actually saves lives.

Tammy walks through the ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences) questionnaire, shares her own score, and explains why she believes a number like that is a map, not a verdict. She talks about a recent experience with a wild mustang through a rewilding program, and how it became a mirror for understanding her own need to feel safe and seen. She also introduces the AVAR framework — authentic, vulnerable, accountable, reciprocal — as a way of thinking about the kind of community that helps people heal instead of hide.

Along the way, she recommends Bessel van der Kolk's The Body Keeps the Score, reflects on how unprocessed trauma showed up in her own body years later, and makes the case for journaling as a tool for reflection in a world that rarely slows down.

This episode is part personal check-in, part toolbox, and part invitation: to pause instead of react, to be witnessed instead of fixed, and to believe that hope is something you can build, one small practice at a time.

In this conversation, host Tammy Flake sits down with General Burton for a rare, unguarded look at command, grief, and what it actually takes to lead people through combat while carrying a loss he didn't let himself feel until years later. He talks candidly about his son's bipolar disorder, the "hot wash" sessions he pioneered to give enlisted soldiers a voice, his own resistance to — and eventual breakthrough with — EMDR therapy, and the suicide support group he and his wife ran for seventeen years. He also reflects on his time in the Utah House of Representatives, where he helped write the state's suicide prevention legislation, and on what he believes the country still gets wrong about mental health.

This is a conversation about the cost of compartmentalizing pain — and what's possible on the other side of it.