Healing ❤️‍🩹 the hidden wounds | The Restored Heart Collective - S.O.S. #264

The biggest military homecoming videos end with hugs and banners, but a lot of families know the harder chapter starts after the uniforms are folded and the photos stop. We sit down with Cathy Turner and Jackie Voytak, founders of the Restored Heart Collective, to talk about what reintegration really looks like when the spouse is quietly carrying anxiety, loneliness, and the constant pressure to keep everything functioning. 

We trace both of their paths through military life: learning the culture as an outsider, navigating officer spouse expectations, dealing with unspoken rank boundaries, and the slow drift of putting your own needs last while trying to “support” a partner through PTSD and post-deployment stress. Then we dig into what actually helped, from intimate retreat spaces to nervous system practices like breathwork, meditation, journaling, yoga, sauna, and cold plunge. The point isn’t trends or buzzwords, it’s reclaiming stability and identity so the whole household can breathe again. 

You’ll also hear how they turned one powerful retreat experience into a spouse-only 501(c)(3), why they chose the name Restored Heart Collective (inspired by kintsugi), and how their model builds community before and after a weekend retreat with structured Zoom calls and year-long follow-up. If you care about military spouse mental health, family readiness, and real-world healing support, this conversation offers a clear blueprint for what’s been missing. 

Subscribe for more Stories of Service, share this with someone who needs it, and leave a review telling us what kind of support military spouses should have had all along.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:01

Within the military community, something I have been noticing as time goes by more and more is often, and it's not intentional, but the family space is often a part of military policy that is overlooked. Oftentimes we put our attention on changing things for the service members, or I would say even more so on foreign policy at the extent of sometimes our personnel issues and then specifically our family policy issues. But what we understand and know from experience and common sense is that if you don't work with the families and you don't support the environment that is around the service member, well, then the service member is not going to want to stay in the military. They are not going to want to give their all. They are not going to want to do the mission to the most, to the best of their ability. And so here to talk about a wonderful resource in the military spouse community. I have Cathy Turner and Jackie. Can you pronounce your last name for me? Voytak. Voy Attack. So you're going on a voyage. Oh, voy voyat. Okay. VoyTAC. Got it. Well, thank you so much for coming on. And how are you both doing today?

SPEAKER_01 1:18

We're so good. Thank you so much for having us. Yes.

Trauma After Homecoming For Spouses

SPEAKER_02 1:22

Well, thank you so much for taking the time to do this. And as I always open the shows, my name is Teresa Carpenter. Welcome everyone to the Stories of Service podcast, ordinary people who do extraordinary work. I'm the host of Stories of Service, and to get us started, as we always do, an introduction from my father, Charlie Pickard.

SPEAKER_00 1:41

From the moment we're born and lock eyes with our parents, we are inspiring others. By growing up as a vessel of service, we not only help others, we help ourselves. Welcome to SOS, Stories of Service. Hosted by Teresa Carpenter, here from ordinary people from all walks of life who help transform their communities by performing extraordinary work.

SPEAKER_02 2:07

And many times in the military, you see the big giant homecoming videos, you see this great celebration, but then what really happens after that homecoming? And for many military families, the war doesn't end when the deployment does. It follows them home quietly and visibly, often carried not just by the service member, but by the spouse standing beside them. Today we're going to step inside a conversation that challenges how we think about trauma, healing, and what it takes to really rebuild a family after war. And today we are joined by the founders of the Restored Heart Collective, a nonprofit born from lived experience and a deep recognition that military spouses are often the unseen force holding everything together while silently carrying their emotional burden. And their mission is clear to create spaces where spouses of combat veterans can finally exhale and equip them with the tools to begin their own journey towards healing and growth. Welcome again.

SPEAKER_01 3:09

Thank you so much.

Kathy’s Story Of Supporting A Veteran

SPEAKER_02 3:10

Thank you. Absolutely. So first off, I want to ask for both of you, and I'll start with you, Kathy. How did you get involved in the military spouse community? Like what brought you to this place where we are having this conversation today?

SPEAKER_01 3:27

Yeah. Well, I met my husband now about 15 years ago. He was just released from the military, actually. So I met him when maybe three nine nine months when he was home. So we had an instant connection. It was a an absolute yes, this is my person. Sure. And there was this added layer of gosh, this is my person, and he's carrying so much. So I really had to do a lot of a lot of searching, a lot of asking of questions, of understanding the military. I was very far removed from military before I met him. And I had to do my research to understand where he was coming from, what was happening, everything. And through the years that continued. It was a constant understanding or learning of what he needed. What did we need in order to be successful? What did we what did he need to feel safe? What did I need to feel safe? And oftentimes what he needed came before what I needed. And that was probably a choice that I made. And it was also probably informed just from kind of the atmosphere and how how we moved around each other. So throughout the years of us learning and me learning and understanding, I started to realize, man, this would be so much easier if I had somebody to do this with, or if I had another woman to talk to and to really bring to light how to not only support my husband, but to how to support myself.

Jackie’s Path Through Military Life

SPEAKER_02 5:29

I bet a lot of people can relate to that. I mean, there's such a feeling, I think, of loneliness within the military community. And I can speak on it from just being a female in the military serving, because there's just so few women who do serve. And so you're in this very constricted space at times, especially if unfortunately some women are somewhat competitive. And you never want to have that in those kinds of spaces. And I can see also even in the military spouse space that it's sometimes hard, depending on the rank and all these other things, if if if you really have a connection. What about you, Jackie? How did you come into the space of military spouse?

SPEAKER_03 6:12

My story is a little bit different. My husband and I were married. We had a daughter. And in 2008, when the economy started to crash, I lost my job as a teacher. And he was informed that the following year he would also lose his position. So he had a lifelong dream of going into the military, being an infantry officer. And so he did. We thought we were being really smart, and by planning, we decided that we would get pregnant, he would go for his trainings, he'd be home. No, our daughter was two days old when my husband left for five months. So he went to basic and then he did officer candidate school. We also had a 16-month-hold at home, 16-month-old at home. So he was active duty. We lived in Georgia. We moved to Fairbanks, Alaska. Actually, lived in North Pole, Alaska. And it was challenging for me being so far away from my family. And he recognized that. So he got out during that time. He did not deploy. So I thought, like, we were lucky. We were moving back to New York. But he stayed in in the reserve and the guard and actually deployed with the Vermont National Guard during COVID. So I've experienced a lot of the things on the military spouse side in terms of being an officer's wife and being part of the FRG and the key club, um, having coffees is what they call it when officers' wives get together and do things, but also seeing that like underbelly of the military where you really didn't fraternize. You weren't, it wasn't like proper to fraternize outside of your husband's rank. And at the time my husband went in and we were older, you know, he he was the first lieutenant at 30 with these 21-year-olds who weren't married, and we had we had kids. So it was challenging because the women that were my age were majors' wives, and I wasn't allowed to really talk to them. Now there were a couple that were amazing and we were friends, but that line was very clearly drawn by my husband, and then similarly with Kathy, after my husband deployed, he got out of the military, and I started to really shift who I was, and it was a choice that I made because I thought that by taking things off my husband's plate, by doing a lot of things for him, that I was making it easier for him to like reintegrate after his deployment. But I I slowly lost who I was, didn't even realize it. And it took my husband really pushing me to try to sign up for a spouse experience that I recognized how far gone I had let myself go. And from the outside, I have a job, I have a great family, I have all of this stuff. I have it all together. But the moment that I started to look inward and had this clarity of, oh my god, where have I gone? It really spurred me onto this journey of finding my voice and like healing this inner part of me that I damaged by trying to what I thought heal somebody else. When in reality, I needed to just always worry about healing my my own self. So that all of this in the last however many years have brought both Kathy and I to this place of being on our own journey of healing and change and growth, seeing what it can look like on the other side, and knowing that there are so many women out there that also need a space to start their own journey.

SPEAKER_02 10:46

Wow, that's that's incredible. I remember when I first started blogging, there were so many spouses in like the mill blogger space or online. But I always sensed, and I still sense it today, that it's not enough to do the internet stuff. In fact, that's one of the reasons why I started a veteran book club at the local library. It's one of the reasons, Kathy. I was telling you, I've slowed down considerably on my podcasting because there has to be something where you're holding space with people face to face. And you can never lose sight of that. You can meet someone online, but it should and can lead to a more meaningful connection. And that doesn't mean at a big giant conference with 500 people. I think it needs to be something that's more intimate. The other day, a friend said to me, I'm only going to do military-focused events if it's a retreat or it's a physical activity. And that really stuck out to me because I'm feeling the same way. Like it's got to be more meaningful, it's got to have a deeper purpose. So, how did the two of you even meet, Kathy?

SPEAKER_01 12:01

So we met at our at a place called Heroes and Horses out in Montana. They run programs for veterans for 41 days. And that program's ran by Micah Fink. He does an incredible job. Our husbands came back from that experience and changed. And for me, while he was away, I had this moment of uh realization that he's gonna come back completely different and uh maybe even healed. And uh what about me?

SPEAKER_04 12:42

Right.

SPEAKER_01 12:43

I still have all of this stuff that I need to unpack and deal with and figure out, and the balance is gonna be off. So there was a really high sense of need for me to uh experience something greater than talk therapy. So in addition to this Heroes and Horses, their veteran program, they uh Mackenzie Fink, Micah's wife, began to offer a spouse retreat. And this was a nine-day retreat where the women of the men that they have served will go out and experience some of the experience things that our husbands did. And that's where Jackie was. And so when when we met, we uh we headed off, we had an extra very special time there. It was magic, it was healing, it was all of the things. And throughout that time, and throughout that time, Jackie and I would kind of elbow each other and go, gosh, we have to continue this. We need an East Coast chapter, or how do we keep going? How do we keep this going? And uh we went home, we integrated back in our into our families in a really beautiful way. And I think both that her and I were we were ready because of that experience. We were ready to step into our own power and say, we can do this. Yeah. And here we are.

SPEAKER_02 14:14

I love it. I absolutely love it. You guys remind me so much of of my friend Jessica. She runs an outdoor recreation company called Libo Risk, and she does probably five or six outdoor adventures a year, and she has this a very similar philosophy about getting veterans together and doing these things that are so natural with the environment. Like she she hates cruise ships, which I understand. She hates the whole you know, I agree. They're they're they're terrible for the environment. They I do them, but I also understand the criticism about them. And but I also have amazing experiences on them, like veterans' events and other things that they do. So I I can see both sides, but regardless, I I love what she's doing and how she's taking a real natural approach towards tourism and and being a traveler. And it sounds like you guys did the same thing with healing. And I remember I was talking to you, Jackie, and I want you to touch upon this maybe a little more. You mentioned the thing about how I thought this was all like woo-woo stuff, and I wasn't sure. And so tell me about how this event like changed your perspective about that.

SPEAKER_03 15:26

Well, you know, when my husband went to Heroes and Horses, he was very intentional about what he shared with me because he didn't want to give away the goodness that is Heroes and Horses. To me, he wanted me to go in kind of blind, like he did. And the whole time he's like, Jackie, just lean in, just lean in, just lean in. Like I am like your typical type A over-the-top girly CrossFit gal, like I like to run my body into the ground. I think that comes from being collegiate athlete. Like, you just you're like pounding on your body at all times. And so when I really started to dive into these different modalities, breath work, meditation, different types of yoga, sauna, cold plunge, the cold plunge. My first cold plunge at the ranch was like they the next day, everyone like kind of sat next to me because they're like, we're not really sure if Jackie's gonna change this or not. Now fast forward to my husband and I cold plunge and sauna at least once a week together. It's like become our little ritual. And these different practices have changed my life in a way that I've never experienced before. I used to physically like carry, it felt like I was physically carrying this like weight on my chest and like constantly like could feel this pressure, like anxiety of all these things that I was trying to like manage and the shift in my perspective, you know, like I got stuck an extra hour driving home. The entire road was closed, and then the fire truck man closed the road again. And in the past, I would have been like a psychopath, like screaming, cursing, but I was like, sure, like the universe is timing. And like if you knew me, if you know me, like my friends who know me, they're like, You really have changed as a human being because it shifts your perspective into like what actually is important and has made me realize like I can try and fit this, you know, this round peg in this square hole as hard as I want, it's just not gonna work. So I've really leaned into that understanding of things are happening as they're meant to happen. And it's allowed me to soften and unfold in a way that is positively impacting my daughters. Like I have teenage daughters in our house, and to see how their the way they show up in the world has softened over the last, you know, year is really like the proof that I need to continue on my own path. So journaling, breath work, meditation, it all like seems like what is that?

SPEAKER_02 18:26

Oh, it seems all new age and weird, but it's it works.

SPEAKER_03 18:29

It really does like completely change your perspective on the world. And like, who doesn't want to be in a state more stable, happier place every single day versus like this psycho angry person that's like screaming at the car next to them? I don't want to be that person anymore. Like, I don't have to be that person anymore either. Like that's a choice I get to make that I now am able to see. Whereas before I don't think I could even recognize that.

Expectations On Couples And Spouses

SPEAKER_02 18:56

I I relate so much to that. I I I recently retired from the the Navy last September, and I had a plan in my late 20s that I wasn't going to take on another regular nine to five, or I was just gonna do what I wanted to do with my time. And I can tell you that I'm I'm 49 and and I've had a few people ask me questions about it. Like, well, what are you gonna do now? What where are you working? What are you doing? And I have to just tell them I have a show, I go to graduate school. I hopefully will get one more period of education after this one. I'm working on that right now with the GI Bill, and I'm just gonna do whatever I want. I if I want to volunteer, I'm gonna volunteer. I'm going to help my husband with all our many house repairs. And it's just so freeing and beautiful. And I have no shame about this because I I saved for it for 30 years and I was gonna do it regardless of whether or not I got married. I got married at 40. I mean, this was just this was in the cards all along. But society puts this pressure on us to perform, and we're conditioned that if we're not performing, then we're not worthy. And I see it even with military spouses in a in a different way, where it's like if I'm not the showing up the best for my husband at the expense of my own mental health. Oh my god. Right. And that's what's important. So that's your pressure. My pressure was well, if I wasn't a good public affairs officer, or if I wasn't getting good evaluations, or if I didn't have all these qualifications, or if I didn't get this next milestone, or if my boss didn't love me, I wasn't worthy. And I feel like in the spouse community, there's a similar type of pressure to show up and be this particular spouse and take on these kinds of family readiness roles and other things. And none of those things define us, none of those things are really important. If that they're not important to you and you don't want to do them, don't do them. If you want to do them, do them.

SPEAKER_03 21:10

Absolutely. But that's so true. All of what you just said.

SPEAKER_01 21:15

I I also think that there is such an expectation just to be a married couple, and you know, to go out into the world and what does that look like? You know, you you always show up together, you're always doing these, you're always going to parties together. That was the kind of pressure that I felt and was I was so shocked by that that maybe my husband wasn't feeling that good. You know, maybe he was in like a oh, he was really experiencing some PTSD that day and I can't show up. And then how I I had to practice walking into a room by myself. And that took a whole lot of learning. So I think that that expectation for what things can look like goes in so many different ways. It does. And that was that was a huge impact for me to learn that, like, okay, I'm okay on my own. Um, and I'm okay that my marriage can look very different because this is our life and and we're dealing with some very heavy stuff. Right.

SPEAKER_03 22:25

Absolutely. Kathy and I share so many things, but I did not know that about you, Kathy. Oh my gosh, because so that is something that has taken me years to understand with my own husband, is he many, many times does not want to do, does not want to go. And so I have to go alone and having to explain people. I've had friends ask, like, does he just not like us? I'm like, it has nothing to do with you, but it's like that mental load of you're right, having to be on, right? When like you, you're you're in this cycle or this pattern or something that you're dealing with, I cannot even comprehend. And I for the longest time, I just thought he was punishing me. I didn't even make the connection until you're sharing your story. And this is why what we're doing is so important, right? This is why building the communities that we are looking to build for women is vital because until this moment, I knew that he was not alone in this situation, right? Right.

SPEAKER_02 23:42

No, no, and I feel it too. I mean, I I try to drag my husband to some things that he's not into, and I learned quickly that it's just not the right environment for him. He is a more of a blue-collar fix-it kind of do-it-yourself guy. And I would try to take him to some of these officer events and he would go because we both felt like we had to be there. Like if the all the Tods we hauled him, head of department on on my carrier, if we all went out and did a social, I was expected to be there. And I don't really like socials with big groups too much. And so I would always be like, babe, you gotta come with me, you gotta come with me. And he would not want to be there because he's quiet and he only connects with people he has things in common with. And these are career naval officers who have done something completely different than him, and it's just tough to have common ground, it's nothing personal, there's just not that common ground there. And to your point, Kathy, I think we we force people into this mold and we say, no, the couple is a unit, they need to come together, they need to both be ongoing and want to socialize and network. And I mean, you got chemistry with some people you don't have with others. And I think it would be wonderful if we just recognize that and saw it for what it was and not try to read too much more into it than that.

SPEAKER_01 25:16

Yes, absolutely.

Building Restored Heart Collective Fast

SPEAKER_02 25:19

So tell me about after the retreat, we got to the part where you two were like, man, we've we've got to bottle this up and take this on the road and do the East Coast version. And people do this all the time, you know, like, hey, you got an idea, I got an idea, but then the idea just kind of stays in the idea cloud and doesn't actually make it to paper or to a anything tangible. So, how did you guys take this forward?

SPEAKER_01 25:44

Well, you call Jackie. You want things done, you call Jackie, and I'm gonna figure it out. Don't take her from me.

SPEAKER_02 25:53

Well, to be fair, over to you, Jackie.

SPEAKER_03 25:55

Happy texted, and you know, like I did screenshot it at one point, and I think at one point we're gonna have to print it and like put it on something, but she had texted me almost a month to the day that we got home from being in Montana together, and I called her right away because I was like, we gotta talk about this on the phone, you know. Like, if you're if you really want to do this, like we we will do this. So we almost immediately started a document and started writing, writing down all of the things we needed to do. I started writing people in my life that I thought would fit into different roles within our organization. And almost immediately we were able to put together a board of seven people who we knew would want to be part of this mission. And so cool. Yeah, we were formally incorporated December 10th. And thank you. We received our 501c3 status in February, and we just really hit the ground running. I think that was the easy part, right? Getting all the paperwork done, getting the people together, getting the ideas down. The hardest part in that phase was figuring out our name. Our name is like huge, it's super important to us. And the Restored Heart Collective came about from right, like we want we knew we wanted to have something to do with the heart and how we're putting it back together through this process of our own healing. And Kinsugi really stuck out to us. And Kinsuki is the Japanese art of repairing broken things with precious metals, and they become these gorgeous pieces afterwards. So we had our logo made. That was a labor of love, but our graphic designer stuck with us through it all. Shout out, Sam. Thank you, Sam. That was we were we were probably really difficult because we just had such a vision in our mind. But she worked with us and got us all the way through that, and then we started having to tell our story. The easy part was setting us all up and getting a 501 T and like that was getting people on board with what we were doing. Yeah, like it's very easy to do that, but when you have to go on podcasts and start telling the deep, dark secrets of your soul that you might not have ever said out loud, that's when start things started to get a little bit more challenging. But the more conversations we've had, the more organizations that we've been linked with. So we've been able to link up with Winded Warrior Project, Operation Hot Trick, Guardian Revival is a large nonprofit in our area. We recently Blue Star Family has been amazing.

SPEAKER_02 28:46

Oh, Blue Star Family is great, and I mean all these groups.

SPEAKER_03 28:49

Huge shout out to Emily. Like Emily, you are a rock star. She's helping us with our survey data so that we can really have the correct information to provide to funders. No, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 29:02

And Tom Porter, I think, is with Blue Star and he's great.

SPEAKER_03 29:06

Well, Tom, if you're listening, we want to Yeah, he's a former public affairs officer.

SPEAKER_02 29:10

And I spoke to him when I did an article about TRICARE. So apparently, when you have a college-age child, you age out of the TRICARE system, and then you have to go on this other type of TRICARE that's super expensive, and you don't get the same benefits as the Affordable Care Act. It's just a discrepancy. It's like a TRI care tax. And so I did a I did a whole article on it and researched it for a class, and he was very responsive and let me know that they had also been looking into this issue. And so I and I know that Blue Star Families also works quite a bit with a lot of the other uh military nonprofits in some of the spaces. So they're a great organization. And that's wonderful. I mean, that's yeah, the first step is to then go, okay, where is where is the media at the family space? And and what are the podcasts that that go into military family circles and and who who can I work with to do this? Because this for you is leading into a retreat, right? Like you want to host and himself. I know you guys are almost there, right?

SPEAKER_03 30:20

Yep. We've got our next one planned as well. Our intent is three this year. That's awesome. Every conversation we've had with other organizations, it has been this immediate yes. I think that uh we fill a void that exists, and larger organizations recognize that they they have this void. So we've been able to kind of step in, which is amazing. It's amazing, especially for our first year and probably for the first couple years. But really, the intent of this is that we are gonna stand at our own two feet. We are gonna do a standalone spouse organization. You know, we want to shine a light that spouses are seen and they're deserving, and that they deserve a space to have their own community.

Retreat Design And Nervous System Reset

SPEAKER_02 31:14

I mean, I love this. I I mean, there's it reminds me, like I said, of so much of LIBORisk because uh Jessica does a lot of this stuff with her. She's got like a Facebook group, and then she's got the private Facebook group for the people that have been on retreats and have actually done different things, and then she's got her public Facebook group, but she and she does maybe six events a year or something. And then she's even now, at least last time I talked to her, she's trained others to take on certain roles and be facilitators at events, even when she's not at those events. I mean, she's been at it for I think five or six years now doing this. But I I think that's like what you guys where tell me a little bit about this upcoming retreat. Where is it? How long is it? And what are some of the events that'll be at the at the event? I mean, at you know, at the retreat.

SPEAKER_01 32:01

So our our next coming retreat is up here in Vermont. It's at a really wonderful place called Common Ground, Camp Common Ground. When the women come, we have so many special, amazing things planned and prepared for them. And Teresa, earlier you were you were talking about intimacy, right? And not being able to walk into a room full of people, but to really create a connection between the people. That's the kind of that's the kind of work that that's true.

SPEAKER_02 32:33

Yeah, like I prefer like either one-on-one or two to two or just these more intimate type of interactions.

SPEAKER_01 32:41

And I and that's exactly what we're going for, right? We're in order to connect with other people and especially for us to connect with other women and to sit shoulder to shoulder around a campfire and to be able to look into each other's eyes and share our story, or just talk about how it feels to be among women who have experienced the same thing. That kind of intimacy creates this beautiful opening. It just kind of cracks the wall that we may have created from walking on eggshells for so many years. So we spend time kind of starting to take scratch the surface and take down the wall that we have built up around ourselves to feel safe. And we create safety through that intimacy. We create safety by just moving in this group, doing yoga, breathing, resetting the nervous system so that these women can go home not only refreshed, but uh really stepping into their power, just the same way that Jackie and I did when we got home. We, I'm gonna speak for myself, I walked differently, I spoke differently, I believed in the things that I was saying, and I knew that it was important. And that's the gift that we will be giving to the women who join us for these retreats.

Keeping Community Going After Retreats

SPEAKER_02 34:13

I love it. Now, what are you guys doing something after the retreats to build that community and keep it going? Because I know for me, I go to this retreat and I'm like, oh my God, I meet all these amazing women. How do I how do I continue that conversation or what are you gonna are you planning anything to try to continue to build that community when you're not doing the retreats?

SPEAKER_01 34:37

Yes. And actually, thank you for asking. We are doing four weeks prior Zoom calls to build those relationships and start to connect with each other. And then we have the weekend. And after that, we actually plan to follow these women for a year. So we will continue to have Zoom calls to connect and to continue to grow with each other with the hopes that eventually they will take their cohort and continue their conversations and their connections throughout that year because we will be still serving other cohorts that go through but we will be kind of laying the groundwork for those women to keep connecting.

SPEAKER_02 35:25

I love it. I love it. It's such a I mean, this is a really unique thing. I mean, is there as you studied this this space, are there any other military spouse retreats that are consistent and they're go ongoing and wow, nothing exists right now that is solely focused on the spouse.

SPEAKER_03 35:47

I mean, yeah, it's fascinating. There's like standalone pro like Windower will have a retreat here and there, sure, but no one is has a only focus of the spouse. Um that really helps us differentiate ourselves from what's out there, it really does. Also, another important distinction is this is not for caregivers necessarily, you know, a caregiver could be a sister, a brother, a mother, you know, it could be any variation. We are really targeting the spouse, the person that's in the home, right? Because it's just a different experience. And that's who we are, right? We're playing into what we know. We're not at this point looking to work with first responder spouses because we we aren't them, and it's hard for us to understand what they're truly walking through so that we can be authentic with what and how we're serving them.

SPEAKER_02 36:48

So you're serving a very, very specific niche and you're filling a void that needs to be filled, and that's what's so amazing about what you're doing and so interesting. I mean, all I see is that this will continue to grow and climb because there isn't anything, as you say, out there that exists to serve this need, and it's very, very important. I mean, fellowship and community are so important, and so many people don't have it. We we we tend to, I think, think that what we see online is real, and I have come to the conclusion that the internet is not real, it amplifies these really fissures and these these very unique divisions that are on the extremes to make us think that we're more divided than we are. And I've made a round turn even in my own content, maybe not getting as many likes or views or reach, but I I don't really care because I don't want to feed into that drama or that the the the kinds of things that they're trying to do to pull good Americans and good people apart. I'm just not going to play, I'm not going to be a part of those things anymore. And my mental health and my peace has been, I mean, it's a it's a it's a night and day difference now that I'm not allowing those things to consume me the way I was.

SPEAKER_01 38:26

For you, it's not easy, and that's what we're about, right? We are coming together to raise each other up and to honor every single person that joins us, right? We are linking arms and just honoring the beauty of all of these women that come together. So, yes, we want to create this ripple effect where everybody can see their worth.

SPEAKER_04 38:52

Sure.

Where To Find Them And Final Message

SPEAKER_02 38:53

Yeah, I love it. I absolutely love it. Well, if people would like more information about the restored heart collective, uh, where can they find you?

SPEAKER_03 39:03

Oh, we're on all of the platforms. Um, so we have a website, the restoredheartcollective.org. We are on Instagram at the restored heart collective. We're on Facebook at the restored heart collective. We are kind of on X and Threads and TikTok, but right now our main platforms are Facebook and Instagram. The best way to stay in in touch with what's going on is signing up for our newsletter on our website. Kathy puts together a gorgeous newsletter every month. I love it. It's got all of our updates, it'll let you know when our applications open again because we do our applications based on each individual retreat. We might change that in the future, but for this year, we are doing it for each individual one. Our next retreat, if you're interested, is October 16th through 18th on Lake George in New York. And if you're familiar with what New England looks like in the fall, gorge applications will probably go out sometime this summer. And we are getting women from all over the country, which is just speaks volumes to what the work is that we're doing. So if you're interested, hop on social media, come find us, shoot us an email, a DM. Join our newsletter. Join our newsletter, we'd love to talk to you. I just message up the other day, and I was like, oh girl, I've been you. Like, let's be buddy.

SPEAKER_02 40:32

So I love it. I love it. Yes, awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on the stories of service podcast. Was there anything else that I didn't cover or you guys want to touch upon, or or anything else that you'd like to say to our audience?

SPEAKER_03 40:46

I have one thing. Okay. Okay, because this has really been speaking to me lately. Somebody in my life recently told me that they didn't want to apply for the retreat because they felt like there were other women who may be more deserving. And I just want to give this little plug. If you are married to a service member and you are a woman, you deserve this. Maybe somebody is in your eyes more deserving, but you deserve this space too. Everybody does. Regardless if you have a great marriage, a great job, a great life. Give yourself the space. What have you got to lose?

Host Wrap-Up And Next Week Preview

SPEAKER_02 41:26

Right. Everybody needs healing. I I have I've come to the conclusion that nobody gets through life unscathed. Everyone has something that they're struggling with or something that is challenging, and we all need those spaces for healing and support. So absolutely. Thank you so much for taking the time. I'm gonna go full screen, say goodbye to the audience, but I will say goodbye to you backstage and uh thank you again. Thank you. Thank you. All right, guys, that's a wrap this week. I did do two shows. I always say no two shows, but I did definitely needed to have on Thomas Maudley earlier this week, former uh undersecretary of the Navy and then acting secretary of the Navy and wonderful story. Next week, I'm so excited. I'll be having Michael T. Lester on. He wrote the book We Are the Bad Guys, and it is a pretty scathing look at some of the things that sadly we do overseas and some of the impacts of that. He was just on the Sean Ryan show. He went on for a second appearance on the Sean Ryan show, and now he is coming on the Stories of Service podcast. I absolutely loved his book. In fact, he had a huge impact on me personally to stop being as divisive as I feel like I was. So I really appreciate him and his mentorship and can't wait to have him on and for you guys to meet him. And with that, I'm going to sign off. But as I always say, please take care of yourselves, please take care of each other and enjoy the rest of your day. Bye bye now.