Shelly Rood discusses how civilians can help address the mental health issues faced by the people in the military.
Shelly Rood, founder of Others Over Self, joins us on the podcast this week to go over what life in the military is like and what mental health looks like for military members after serving? Mental health in the military and out of the military is something that hasn't been talked about much in the past and needs to be talked about more. So many current and former military members struggle with their mental wellness and are being told to "tough it out". On this podcast episode we talk with Shelly on what mental health, military life, and life outside of the military is like.
Shelly served in the United States Army Reserves for 16 years as an Intelligence Officer and now is a small business owner and ordained minister, advocating for selfless service in action. A Distinguished Military Graduate from Western Michigan University, Shelly graduates in May 2022 with her M.A. in Ministry Studies at Moody Theological Seminary. She is the creator of Others Over Self®, a leadership mindset serving people in positions of influence to make a lasting impact on others. Shelly facilitates the Warriors With Warriors Program: Connecting Spiritual Warriors with Earthly Warriors. She is happily married and is tackling the daily challenge of raising two boys in an increasingly self-focused society.
SHELLY'S SOCIALS
LINKED IN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shellyrood/
INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/othersoverself/
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/shelly.matthews.355
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Mental health in the military and out of the military is something that hasn't been talked about much in the past and needs to be talked about more. So many current and former military members struggle with their mental wellness and are being told to "tough it out". On this podcast episode I talk with former military member Shelly Rood and what mental health, military life, and life outside of the military is like.
Thank you for joining me. Make sure you go over to YouTube and subscribe to our Iron Deep channel. We got all of these videos on our Iron Deep channel. We have also videos coming out each and every month with some great reflection videos that I'm doing. Our last one was on Pride. We did one on family. Go check that on our YouTube channel. Also, leave us a five-star review. I would appreciate that. My guest on this episode is Shelly Rood. She has served in the United States Army Reserves for sixteen years as an intelligence officer. She's a small business owner and an ordained minister.
We've talked about in this particular episode the concern of mental health that we as civilians have all been facing, but we talk about the mental health directed toward our soldiers who have served in the military and veterans. We dig deep and understand how we help our military with their mental health needs. Shelly described that 22 veterans are committing suicide every single day. It is a huge problem.
We aren't talking about it, and our faith-based organizations are not serving our military. They don't have military ministries. She's connecting our spiritual warriors with our earthly warriors. She's very passionate about it. She is a strong woman. She digs into that too. This is a great conversation with someone if you want to learn about how we help the people who are serving our country so you can sit there and have freedom, and fight for yourself. How do we serve them? We're going to talk about it. Here she is, Shelly Rood.
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What's going on? We're back with our guest. I got Shelly Rood out of Michigan. What's going on, Shelly?
Brett Snodgrass, you're so cool. You have the best last name next to me. I'm so excited to talk with you.
We should start a company. It would be Rood Snodgrass.
Everybody will remember us.
I'm super excited for this episode because it's a lot different. Number one, I don't get to interview a lot of females. I'm super excited to interview a female who has been in the military serving our country. Thank you for that. We're going to dive into something that has probably been on the minds and hearts of us all, especially in the past few years. We're going to dive into mental health, especially directed toward the mental health of our soldiers who have served. Before we dive into your organization, Warriors With Warriors, and mental health, let's talk about Shelly Rood. Who is Shelly Rood?
Shelly Rood is a hot mess, number one. I'm here in Michigan. That's very important. I'm a Michigander at heart. I live right outside of Detroit. I spent all weekend in downtown Detroit. I went to Western Michigan University. I was a distinguished military graduate from there, which meant that I got to pick my branch. If you don't know now, there are six branches of the military. We will talk about those.
I got to choose the Army, and then I got to choose my branch within the Army. I did choose the Intelligence Corps. I went on to have a very successful sixteen-year career in military intelligence in the Army Reserves. I have some active duty time in there. I've been to some cool places like South Korea, Fort Lewis in Washington, and Fort Huachuca in Arizona. I've been around a lot and I've seen a lot.
If you want to know the dirty laundry, I'll put a little bit out there because I'm sure we have this in common with our audience. I am divorced. I was previously married to an active-duty Army Ranger, a very hardcore type. It was something that involved alcohol abuse. It involved a lot of substance use and adultery. It lasted ten years, and we got a child out of it.
Moving from that transition into now, I'm remarried. I very much have found Jesus. It's the same with my husband. He's the most incredible man I've ever known because I don't know your audience well yet, Brett. That's a little bit of the story. I've lived a lot of life. I'm not somebody who was born and raised in a little church bubble. I didn't come to Jesus until I was in my 30s.
We have a lot in common, honestly because I came to Jesus at 30. I was not raised that way either. Not only do we have interesting last names. We also came to Christ later in life. I want to ask this. What does the intelligence department of the Army involve? What do you do? What does your life look like in that?
It depends on what type of intelligence you're doing and your branch. As a person, I did choose to become an officer. As an officer, I was a 35 Delta. What that means is an all-source tactical intelligence officer. As an all-source, what that means is there are lots of different sources of intelligence. If you listen to the rumbling of the ground, that's a source of intelligence. You can tell which trucks are headed your way like the old Indian cup of water to the wall and imagery. IMINT is called imagery analysis. They only look at photographs.
What I would do as an all-source leader is have a team of unique individuals who studied those specifics. I would have them dig into whatever our mission was, and we would make the recommendations to the command. Let's say that you have a new general or somebody new in command, and they want to send out troops to go on patrol in Iraq. They know what time they used to go out but they have lost a lot of soldiers lately. They want to know maybe this should be changed.
I would dig into my team. We would pull all sorts of data, everything from types of explosives to the time, the days, the holidays, the celebrations throughout the year, and all of that. We would take a look at it and give the recommendation to the commander, "Here's when we think that you should be going out to help save the lives of your troops." It's good work. It's extremely detailed and meaningful work. It carries a lot of moral weight because when you are wrong in my position, you are very wrong.
There are lives at stake. That's very important and detailed. That's interesting. A lot of our audience and me that have not served sometimes hear words that you might use every single day, and we're like, "Can you dig us into that? We never experience that." We have all experienced a little bit of mental health concern. This has been a little bit of a topic, especially over the last few years with the pandemic.
A lot of times, when I say mental health, I might be talking about how I have some anxiety because I'm stressed a little bit at work and because I'm too busy a little bit. I can't get off my social media, or whatever it looks like. I'm stressed and a little bit busy. I want you to dive into a little bit of a soldier's mental health and the concerns with that. A lot of our audience has not served. What have you seen with mental health?
First and foremost, I'm excited that you're even saying the phrase mental health and mental wellness because in the military world, up until recently, it has been a dirty phrase. It's worse than pornography. You don't talk about mental health and mental wellness. We are always encouraged to get the help we need, but who wants to get help? Nobody. We never ask for help. We do things the hard way, myself included.
When we're looking at the mental statistics of wellness across our military population and digging into the veteran population, we don't disclose the mental health statistics of our active service members. That would be a bad war move on our nation's part. When we look at numbers, we do look at the veteran numbers. If you're not familiar, 22 is a very popular number.
That means that 22 veterans every single day in the United States are taking their lives. That statistic has been around since 2017. Since 2017, it has gone as low as seventeen a day. It has unfortunately even risen back up to 22 a day. Now, it's looking like it's climbing higher. It is very significant when you talk about death by suicide. The chances are double that of the civilian population for both men and women.
Let's take it a little bit deeper. Veterans are taking their lives. What has gotten them to that point? What have they experienced? What has gotten into them? Their life has a desperation to get to that point.
I appreciate that question because there's this assumption that all of these deaths by suicide are happening because of some traumatic thing we experienced in war, and we haven't been able to recover and heal through it.
I'm thinking, "The soldier killed a lot of people. Their friend got blown up beside them."
There's a lot that contributes to that. Let's take the state of Michigan as an example here. The state of Michigan does not have an active-duty military base anywhere within the state. We have multiple Federal installations. We train a lot of reservists. We have a lot of National Guards. Our death-by-suicide rate is not any better than the national. What's happening in the state of Michigan that we can prove is that people are taking their lives because of the same things as why civilians take their lives.
It tends to be a toppling board. With a lot of the leadership work that you do, you know that there are different areas of life. There's family, business, and faith. What happens is it's not just 1 or 2 things that go bad. All the little things start to snowball and get out of hand. When you feel like you can't come back, that's when you decide not to come back.
In the state of Michigan, we're talking about death by suicide from a veteran perspective. We're talking about the same issues that our civilians are facing as well. That's why there is such a huge opportunity here for our people of faith to connect with our military personnel because this is stuff that we all have in common. When I say business, you say business. When I say kids, you say kids. Maybe it looks a little bit different from here to there but we have those in common.
Would you say that statistics could get higher because of the lifestyle of the military? I had a previous relationship at one time. Her sister's husband was in the military. I look at their life and I'm like, "That's a hard life."
It is more common for divorce to happen inside of the military than out. I personally went through that. I was married to a military soldier, and we made it almost ten years. We used to joke that we were apart more than we were together. It was a joke. Looking back, it was not a funny joke because we didn't have the intimacy of a couple that lives day in and day out and does life together. When you do life together with somebody, that is so special and amazing. It's very difficult to do that in a military or first-responder environment.
When I think of the military or veterans, typically the people that I might think of that would be interested in helping are other people that have also served or other veterans but you've created an organization, Warriors With Warriors. It's a program connecting spiritual warriors with earthly warriors. Can you dive in on how you came about this particular program? Why are you so passionate about it?
In my military history, when I was discharged, I was an intelligence officer who had a request to transfer from intelligence to the Chaplain Corps. It's God's will that I never became a military chaplain. I was discharged because of health reasons. I can't reenlist and get back in. Now, I'm here. I'm with you and your audience. I'm trapped as a civilian. I have a heart for military people and I have all of these gifts. I love the Lord. How do I do it? I'm a civilian chaplain serving in the military. I had another civilian chaplain approach me. His name is Chaplain Brian Webb. The Warriors With Warriors program is his vision.
There are statistics that show that when a veteran or a military person is connected to an organization of faith like a mosque, a synagogue, or a church, then they are less likely to die by suicide and have these severe mental health issues. It's all about giving that level of support system. Armed with that data, he was able to go to the Federal government and get grant dollars to help fund this program. We're not joking around when we say you have the genuine opportunity to make a difference in the life of a military person. That can happen in a five-minute conversation. It has to be intentional.
I want to talk more about connecting spiritual warriors with earthly warriors. I had a personal question too. Do you find that it's hard when someone is serving, and they have this community? I'm sure they're close quarters with some of your best friends. You're doing things together. You're on a mission together. You get out of that and then you probably feel the loneliness. We're all designed to be in a community. Would you also say that the community piece, belonging to a church, and getting involved with that is a huge piece as well?
It's huge. There is clinical evidence that shows that peer support is a critical and effective strategy for ongoing healthcare and sustained behavior change. When you think about the military camaraderie, are you thinking about Captain America or Tony Stark? Most people think of Captain America, and I would love it if our United States military was full of Captain Americas. I'll be honest with you, there are a lot more Tony Starks running around unchecked. This is from the mouth of one of my dear friends. He's a general. He said that the army life is very Sparta, and it is.
I'll keep it somewhat PG-rated here but you're talking about hookers, pornography, and what we call MST or Military Sexual Trauma. The rate for MST is 1 in 3 or 1 in 4, depending on the report that you look at. Brett, let me ask you. If you gave your company report at the end of the year, and you were like, "Our Military Sexual Trauma rate against our people is 1 in 3 and 1 in 4," who is celebrating that? It's not okay, no matter which way we spin it. I'll drive this point home a little bit more. That rate is the same for men as it is for women. Already in this conversation, we have dispelled a few stereotypes of when we think of veterans, what we face, and what we go through.
I couldn't even imagine. Is it a common thread when you enter into that space and environment? It's what you do. It's an expectation.
It's the culture. I don't know if I'll ever be able to change it but there has to be some type of change within our military culture. It's not okay. Maybe we're not paying for it while we're in, but as soon as you get your discharge papers and you're out, that's where the negative mental health statistics are showing. I bring all this up because you were talking about the community.
There is a significant loss of community. I want to challenge that. You're around a whole bunch of buddies. You laughed, drank, and shared with women. Now that you're out as a veteran, life is seriously hard. You call them when you're struggling, and they're not there for you. You know as a Christian that there has to be a deeper level of care and support within the community. That's where the people of faith have the biggest opportunity.
Let's talk about that because a lot of times, there's this gap of, "How do we care?" Maybe we don't know what to say. We don't know what to do. You even wrote this article that dives into this. Let's talk about how civilians and people in faith can care for soldiers and people who have served beyond what we're doing now. What are we doing now? I go to our church on Veterans Day. Everyone stands up and gives some respect and honor. If someone serves, and I know that they served, our common response to that is, "Thank you for serving." That's it.
I feel awkward. I shake my head and go, "No problem," or I give the line, "Don't thank me. Thank your recruiter."
Take us into that. In this article, you say that we need to go beyond that. Sometimes that doesn't even help at all. It hurts.
If you want to make a meaningful connection, what we're talking about here is not somebody that you already know and have a relationship with. This is somebody at church or the gas station. You see somebody in uniform, or they're wearing a veteran hat, and you want to honor their service time. The go-to typically tends to be, "Thank you for your service." That's fine. I'm not going to tell you that's a bad thing. I'm somebody that has been spit on wearing the military uniform.
If you already have a positive heart attached to military people, I want to say thank you and I want to encourage you. I don't want you to stop there. Go ahead and open the conversation with, "Thank you for your service," and please carve out 2 or 3 additional minutes to stand there and show a personal interest in the human being in front of you. Remember that.
When you're in the military, you don't have a personal identity. You are the uniform. When somebody takes an extra couple of minutes to ask us a question, "What branch are you serving in?" Now we have something to talk about. There are four things that you can ask that are very simple. We won't go into detail because you can read them in the article. The first one is, "What branch?"
You and I started with that. What we're calling all of these lessons is something called military cultural competency. We want you to be competent and confident about how you're engaging with military personnel. To do that, you have to know the branches. We teach all six branches, including now the Space Force. If Space Force had been around, I bet I would have been in Space Force.
You're talking about Star Wars stuff.
I went to Space Camp when I was in middle school. I'm such a nerd. I'm going to have to lift weights after this to feel better about myself. You can ask them what branch they served and then ask them why they chose it. I told you why I went into intelligence versus something else. I thought maybe I would go into engineering but somebody swayed my opinion, and I ended up going into intelligence.
There are cool stories when you start asking. You can even ask, "Why did you join the military?" Don't assume that you already know the answer. Few of us joined because of Captain America and patriotism, "I'll do my duty for my country." A lot of us joined for the money. A lot of us joined to get away from our little hole-in-the-wall nowhere town. My friend Nancy Dakin is a combat fighter pilot. She's one of the most amazing people I've ever known. You ask her why she joined. She joined on a bet.
There are some crazy stories out there, and you would never know unless you took the moment to ask the question, "What branch did you serve in? Why did you join? What was your job?" I'm like, "35 Delta." You're like, "What in the world is that?" Don't feel ashamed or embarrassed that you don't know the jargon. I served in intelligence for over sixteen years. I don't even know all the jargon.
I had an Air Force person standing next to me. We were talking about the flight line and the call signs that they have. I was using the word handle. This is General Slocum. He's a good friend of mine. He's like, "We don't use handles." I'm like, "What do you use?" Even within the branches, we don't understand each other. Never feel stupid about asking those definitive questions.
I love that. I've been trying to study how to connect on a deeper level. We have gotten into this routine of saying these certain things, "Thank you for your service." That's something we say, "What do you do for a living? How is your day?" Even with my kids, I'm trying to get into that deeper connection. We can all learn by thinking of that deeper connection with humans. Your identity becomes your uniform and your number. To be treated with value is different.
You don't think about the experiences you have unless you've been in them. I'm a female, and I'm in military uniform. I like driving a Humvee across the United States. We're in Kentucky at this point. We get off at a gas station and I go, "I'm waiting in line to use the bathroom." This older woman is standing behind me. It's all crickets. All of a sudden, she says, "It's an awesome job you have there." I looked at her. In my mind, I'm a feminist and so empowered thinking, "Here I am, a captain, and so proud of being on military orders." I looked at her and said, "It is a great job I had." She looked at me, shook her head, and said, "Being around all those men.” I thought I was going to die.
Let me ask that question to you then for the audience because probably that is some stereotypical thing. What is it like as a female serving?
That's a whole other episode. It's amazing. I have the benefit of being both civilian and military because I was a Reserve. I had a broadcast television career. I also had a career in the fitness industry. Doing both of them at the same time, I got to see the juxtaposition between how businesses treat women in the business environment and how the military treats a woman.
What did you see?
The stereotypes are totally wrong. I went on a job interview in the civilian world. The general manager looked at me and said, "I have a concern about you serving in the military. Don't you think that you will be less creative, and you've lost your ability to think outside of the box?" I said, "Sir, I don't mean to sound rude but you couldn't be any further from the truth because the truth is that in the military, your boss doesn't care how you get the job done. Your boss tells you to get the job done." Typically, when you hire military and veteran people, you get this enormous amount of creativity and problem-solving. Even our brains are wired differently.
You say that we shouldn't say, "I'll pray for you."
The chaplain said, "Don't say that."
That's a pet peeve for me too. I've done this honestly, and we all do this. When you hear those words, you automatically think, "Are you really going to pray for me?" I bet 99% of the time they don't.
Let's even take it a step back here. Who are you going to pray to? I don't know the answer to that question. If you and I just met in a gas station, and you're like, "God bless you. Thank you for your service. I'm going to pray for you tonight," that military person's response in their head is not going to be, "Thank goodness this wonderful and wholesome American is going to put me on their prayer list." That is not the internal dialogue that is happening. It's going to sound more like this, "I don't need your help. I don't know who you think you are thinking that you have power over me or my people. I don't want you to pray for me. Who the heck are you praying to? There isn't a God anyway." It's a very negative rhetoric.
I have friends of every belief system. We talk on a regular basis about all the different things in life. If a Muslim came up to me and said, "I'm going to pray for you tonight," no, thanks. That's for them. They're going to pray to whoever about whatever. That has no effect on me because I don't even believe in that. Carry that mentality over into interacting with the military person. You cannot assume that we're all Christians because very few of us are.
I know this because one of the founding moments of me to become a chaplain was during one of my trainings, we had to update our paperwork. On the roster, it's time to get new ID tags or dog tags. You wear it around your neck. When you die, they put one on your toe. The roster has a space for your name and your religion. I'm looking through the roster, and I was one of the last ones of my hundreds of troops. The column for religion was blank. For almost every single person, it was completely blank.
What we have here is an opportunity. Not to force a viewpoint but we have an opportunity to plant a seed. When we talk about interacting with military people, there are three big issues outlined in the article. One of them is forcing a religious viewpoint. The phrase "I'll pray for you" is unintentionally forcing a religious viewpoint on another human being. I want everyone to remember that we believe deeply in freedom of religion. A lot of us hold that very dear even if we're not Christian.
Instead of, "I'll pray for you," once you get to know them a little bit and open a few questions, you can ask, "Do you have a certain belief system? Do you have a faith that you subscribe to?" You can then judge your answer appropriately from there. If you feel like they do disclose that they are Christian or they're going to church on Sunday, then it would be appropriate. Don't say, "I'll pray for you." Go ahead, take it a little bit deeper, and say, "How can I pray for you? How can I support you?" Wait for a specific answer.
What's your big goal in Warriors With Warriors? You talked about connecting spiritual warriors with earthly warriors. You're connecting that. Do you have a vision for Warriors With Warriors or a big goal?
It's about training. It's about connecting with as many faith organizations as we can and asking the question, "Do you have a military ministry?" It's either a yes or a no. If it's a yes, then it's like, "That's awesome. How can we support and bolster your efforts?" If it's a no, it's still, "That's awesome. Let's get you connected to somebody who does so that your military personnel are not falling through the cracks." That's where we start. The next step is training.
In Warriors With Warriors, we have identified the need for two types of training modules. The first is military cultural competency, which is what you and I have been talking about the most here. The second training module is imperative, and that is crisis awareness training. Crisis awareness is how to recognize and know the statistics around military personnel when they might be facing issues of dark thoughts, depression, or anxiety. Ask them a good question. This is applicable to anybody. When you feel like something is not right with somebody, I want you to ask them this question, "Is this the hardest that things have ever been for you?" Don't be afraid of what they say next.
This is very good information.
Too many soldiers that I know who have lost loved ones taken by suicide say, "I should have seen the signs." After they go through our training and recognize what the signs are, there's a level of guilt sometimes that is difficult to overcome. I want you to get in front of the situation and learn the signs, learn what to watch for, and learn how to have the conversations so that we can get them to the right resources. We're believers in Christ. We know that all of it is God's plan anyway, and he's using us along the path. We're helping each other out along the way.
It probably is difficult to speak up because of the culture. We talked about the culture a little bit. I'm sure the culture is to stuff it down, "I don't feel anything."
That's a big part of it. You're talking to me here. I had ten years of a marriage that was as tough and horrendous as you can get. I've had my throat grabbed. I've been slammed against the wall. There's a gentleman sleeping in the bed next to me that's throwing up. He's had so much to drink. I have been there. It is dark and dirty. “I don't need your help.” From the outside in, everybody says, "You need help. You need it then, and you need it now," but there is that culture of stuffing it down, throwing it away, and driving on. We call it mission-first. We're losing people.
That's one of the main reasons why the statistics for mental wellness are so terrible among our veteran population. It's because of this whole idea of asking for help. Asking for help is a terrible phrase. Don't ever say it. If you use the word help anywhere in your dialogue, I encourage you to get rid of it. It's so pompous. Half your audience is going to hate me for this. When people ask you, "What do you do?" and you tell them about your business, and your 60-second elevator pitch starts with, "I help," can we change that? We have to go deeper.
Before we wrap up this show, you talked about this before we hit record. This is the concept of moral injury. This is a term that I hadn't heard of before. We talked about some of the other mental health issues like post-traumatic stress, the crisis, and things like that but moral injury is a little bit something different. Not just people who have served but anyone, especially in the last few years, can get a lot out of this. What exactly is this moral injury?
A moral injury is something that happens before PTSD. We're all familiar with post-traumatic stress disorder or post-traumatic stress. A moral injury is the distressing psychological, behavioral, social, and sometimes even spiritual aftermath of exposure to certain events. A moral injury can occur in response to acting or even witnessing behaviors that go against someone's values and moral beliefs.
Here's a powerful example. It's a little dramatic. Use your caution here. One of my good friends was serving overseas in a war zone. His job was to stand security over what we call a burn pit. There's a lot of death, decay, and dying around the burn pits. As he's standing there and putting security, he's watching the wild animals, the dogs, and the dingoes come over and have a feast.
That's a horrible situation to be in. He has changed for life because of that job assignment. When he comes back home and goes through his screening at the health place, that's not PTSD. What is that? Nothing happened. There was no trauma attached to that. What we have done is we have developed this term called moral injury. It's being a part of a situation that can be either an action or a lack of action that has a deep effect on you.
When we talk about morals, we have to look at all of the different areas of morals that we have within our lives. One of the teachings that we do is eleven different areas of ethical influence that you need to know where you stand on, everything from business ethics to environmental ethics, your family ethics, and beginning-of-life and end-of-life ethics.
If you don't know where you are on the sliding scale of all those pieces, that's why we have such a problem even communicating and having day-to-day conversations. It's because you're on this end of the sliding scale. I'm on this end of the sliding scale. We're both hurting from some type of moral injury that we have been through over the last few years.
I'll wrap it up with this because it is so interesting. The only way to heal or recover from a moral injury is to have some understanding as to why. There is no pill. There's no way to heal this except to help understand the question of why. Why did that young man have to stand on that hill? If he can answer that question for himself, then he won't have so much negative headspace about that time in his life.
I encourage the same to you and all of your audiences if you've got this moment of your life where you feel hurt, you feel wronged, and you hate it. This can happen while walking around. Maybe you disagree with cross-dressing, and you see somebody. That's a moral injury. That's why we have such a hard time with the political climate that we're facing.
That's true. It's all around us too and the civilians for sure.
The types of people who witness moral injuries tend to be your first responders and your military. Healthcare workers are right there, especially.
Think about the last couple of years of the pandemic. What side were you on? You would look at this person or judge this person and the government.
Here in Michigan, we are losing troops constantly because of the forced vaccines. Even if they're for the vaccine, they don't think they should be forced to have it. Your career is over. That's a moral injury.
We will wrap up with this question. You're a mom too raising a couple of boys. We talked about that. You have an almost-teenager and a young two-year-old. They're two boys. We're living in this self-focused culture. You've been around the military. We're living in this culture that we're in now. What's some of the training or learning that you want to train in your family and boys as they grow up?
My feminist hand goes up quickly. I hate to say it that way but when I see how my son reacts to movies, I always say, "I'm not a feminazi but I very much am a feminist. I believe that God created two, and I believe that the two are equal." When I see my son embracing a young woman because she is strong, she is a leader, she is skilled, and she is talented, that brings me a lot of joy. I'm not putting down anyone who is a homemaker if that's their choice. I believe that there's biblical evidence for both being a homemaker and being out in the business working world as a woman.
When I see my children embracing that, that gives me so much joy. I appreciate that because it gives me hope for the next generation that they're not going to have that reaction, even what the female did in the bathroom to me, "You get to be around all those men." There's so much more that we have to give each other in society. That's what I'm excited about.
I would go into severe debt not to have my kid in public school. They're both in a private Christian academy. They are being taught the bible day in and day out. They have faith formation. It's the first class of the day. When he's grown and out of there, it's his choice what he does but I'm not going to screw up as a parent because Shelly screwed up for the first 30 years of her life. If my parents had invested more faith in me when I was young, I would not have been such a hot mess up until now. I finally got it together.
You do. I love what you're doing with Warriors With Warriors. It's an awesome organization. You've taught me a lot on this show. You've taught our audience a lot on this show as well. How can we support you with Warriors With Warriors?
I was in intelligence for many years, which means that I didn't have social media. I was a secret squirrel. You couldn't find me if you paid somebody. That portion of my life is over. I would love for you to keep up with me on social media. Our company teaches at Others Over Self. That's our leadership mindset. You can check out the free article that we have for your audience, Brett, at OthersOverSelf.com/Snodgrass. I love your last name. I have to tell you this. One time, I was in Korea. I walked past a major, and his name was Major. There was a Major Major walking around in Korea.
That reminds me of the movie Airplane. That's so funny. That sounds good, Shelly. Thank you so much for that and providing that for us and our audience. It has been a blast, Shelly. I appreciate you and your mission. Thank you.
I appreciate you as somebody who lost the first ten years of a marriage because it went horribly wrong and because God was not involved. Brett, what you do to mentor and guide men is extremely needed. If there were more men that followed you and my husband, the world would be so much better even for us strong women.
Thank you. Wherever you're at in life, having some encouragement goes a long way. I appreciate you. I want to encourage you to keep doing what you're doing. You're making such a great difference. That's it. That's a wrap, Shelly Rood. Thanks.
