Eric Rush’s Operation Search and Rescue

When I was preparing to speak today, I was full of nerves, and I might appear to be full of nerves right now. I had to embody someone, and two people came to mind. One was a Gold Star mom named Margie Taylor. If you know Margie, she isn’t going to let you forget her son, Joey Lenz. She is as strong as nails. The other was the total opposite, my sweet, loving friend Carla Wicks, who just introduced me. Loving and compassionate. Her son, PJ Stock. I brought their coins with me today, because it is important that I have them with me during this presentation.

First, I want to say to Roll Call: it is a tremendous honor to be speaking in front of such amazing warfighters and veteran advocates. Standing here today is very much a part of my rehabilitation journey. I also want to thank the Gary Sinise Foundation for sponsoring this event.

Before I begin, I need to see a quick show of hands. If you lead, founded, serve in, or volunteer with a veteran nonprofit, would you please raise your hand? Look around you. Remember those hands, because we are going to come back to them.

Before I share my testimony, I want to say this. There are men and women here today whose service and sacrifice deserve to be honored. Many of you carried heavier burdens. Many of you paid a higher price. I am grateful to be standing among you today.

For most of my life, I was the captain of a sinking ship. I convinced myself that I could outmaneuver any storm, patch up any crack, and power through any wreckage, because isn’t that what captains are supposed to do? Command, endure, lead. But here’s the thing about storms. They don’t care how strong and capable you think you are. What happens when the storm never ends? When the shore never appears?

I didn’t see it at the time, but my ship had been taking on water for years. Trauma, guilt, shame, hypervigilance, and addiction. At first, the leaks were small, almost unnoticeable. A childhood of survival fortified with stubbornness, war buried in silence, prison drowning in regret. But denial doesn’t rescue you, and pretending doesn’t keep your ship from sinking. And the cruelest revelation, the one I fought hardest to ignore, is that I wasn’t the captain keeping the ship afloat. One day the storm swallowed me whole, and that’s where I learned the most brutal and most paradoxical truth of my life. Sometimes you have to sink to the bottom of the ocean before you can rise.

But before we talk about rising, we have to talk about drowning. No ship sinks overnight. I didn’t just wake up one morning shattered. My collapse began long before I even recognized it. I didn’t have a childhood. I had survival training. My father left when I was five, and my mother was more than a child herself. There was no space for bedtime stories or affection, because the rent was due, the fridge was empty, and exhaustion was the only language spoken.

By the time I turned 18, I thought I was unbreakable, a warrior, a man forged in conflict and hardship. But I wasn’t strong. I was hollow. I had no idea who I was. That’s why I enlisted. I wasn’t just searching for structure. I was desperate for identity. And war, for a while, gives you that. It strips you down to the bone and reconstructs you into something sharp, something efficient, something that slots neatly into the machine. But what happens when that machine spits you back out?

Here’s a statistic nobody talks about. Approximately 55 percent of combat veterans say the hardest part of war isn’t what happens on the battlefield. It’s coming home. Because the man who returns is not the same one who left. You don’t just come back with PTSD. You come back unrecognizable, to yourself and to others. You return without a face, without a name, and worst of all, without a purpose. And when you have no identity, you will latch onto anything that will make you feel real again. For some, it’s anger and violence. For others, it’s a bottle. For me, it was both. And the worst part is, I didn’t even realize I was drowning until the day I tried to end my life.

Here’s what no one tells you about coming home. I left one war zone and walked right into another. The same house I escaped at 18. The same storms, the same silence. I told myself it would be different, that I would be different, but you can’t outrun weather that lives inside your soul. I was crashing, burning, going down with the ship, and for once in my life, I did the very thing they tell you to do. I reached out. I called my father, God rest his soul. I said, “Dad, I can’t do this anymore. I’m struggling. I need to talk.” And my dad said, “Meet me at the bar.” Because that’s what we were. Me, him, and his drinking buddies. That was the only harbor he knew. So the day I asked my dad to help save my life, we got drunk instead.

I left that bar and tried to end my life. Then I called my mother and said, “I’m coming home.” I sat in that house dying in front of her, and she screamed, “What is wrong with you?” But I couldn’t hear her anymore. All I could hear was the clock on the wall ticking. And then the screaming stopped. The ticking stopped. Everything stopped. I woke up in a hospital bed with my wrist handcuffed to a gurney.

Think about that. I reached out twice that day. The first time, help looked like a bar stool. The second time, it looked like handcuffs. Hold onto that, because before I’m done today, I’m going to ask this room to become the third kind of help, the kind I never got.

I survived, but surviving isn’t the same as living, and when existence becomes unbearable, you will do anything to escape. I turned to substances, and at first they worked. They blurred the edges, quieted the noise, and made the world feel distant and slow. But drowning doesn’t feel like drowning at first. It feels like floating, until you wake up one day and realize you’re already at the bottom.

My choices landed me in prison, and that’s where I learned what real drowning feels like. Prison isn’t just about bars and locked doors. It’s about what happens to your mind. I was thrown into solitary confinement for 30 days. A room the size of a bathroom. No windows, no sound, no escape. At first the silence felt like nothing. Then the nothing starts to grow teeth, and then the nothing starts to whisper. It whispers everything you’ve been running from: the mistakes, the faces, the blood, the awful nights you can’t undo. And suddenly you realize you’re not trapped inside the cell. You’re trapped inside yourself.

Let me ask you: if you were locked in a cell with only your thoughts, would you like the person you were left with? Because I didn’t. And for the first time, I did something I had never done before. On the walls of my personal prison, I wrote down the wounds of guilt, shame, regret, resentment, and blame, and I let go. Because sometimes, when you let go of the wheel, that’s when the real Captain can finally take control.

But solitary wasn’t the only kind of prison I saw. Beyond those walls, I saw young men, 18 and 19 year old boys really, staring down life sentences. Not just locked up, but locked away, frozen in time, their worst moment tattooed to their future. I looked in their faces and saw not just criminals, but sons and brothers, kids who had barely begun their lives before they were written off. That does something to you. It strips away the distance, the judgment, the illusion of us and them. Because in that place where time stands still, you begin to see the truth: no one is the worst thing they’ve ever done. Even in the darkest corners, humanity flickers. And for some, the real sentence isn’t the years on paper. It’s knowing they’ll never get another chance to rewrite their story.

When I stopped fighting the ocean, I saw the treasure beneath the waves. One: identity is not what you do, it’s who you are. The military gave me a mission, prison took it away, but my purpose was never tied to a uniform or a prison sentence. It’s tied to someone greater. Two: grace is not earned, it’s given. I thought my mistakes defined me, that I would have to suffer for them forever. But Christ showed me that grace isn’t something you deserve. It’s something you receive. And when you accept that, you stop drowning in shame. Three: your story is a lifeboat for someone else. My pain wasn’t the end of my story. It was the beginning. Because the moment you make it out of the storm, you have a responsibility to turn that ship around and go help save someone else.

Everything I’ve said so far, I’ve said in another room before this. That was the story of how my ship went down. But that’s only half the story, because nobody tells you what happens after the rescue. So today, in this room, with the only audience that could fully understand, I want to tell you about the search and rescue.

Here’s the thing about sinking. It forces you to decide: drown, or learn to swim. I learned to swim, but I didn’t do it alone. During a spontaneous VA visit, something changed. For the first time, I had a name for my struggle: severe combat PTSD. That diagnosis wasn’t a prison sentence. It was a lifeline. The VA didn’t just help me survive. They helped me rebuild. With their support, I clawed my way back, step by step, day by day, breath by breath. And against all odds, I earned not one, not two, but three college degrees.

And then I found my way back to the work I was made for. Podcasting did something I didn’t expect. It forced me into a listening season. When I started podcasting, I thought I was offering a lifeline to others, but I had it all wrong. It wasn’t the talking that saved me. It was the listening. I sat across from veterans, survivors, Gold Star moms, men and women who had fought their own storms in silence for years. And as they spoke, I realized something profound. They weren’t just telling me their stories. They were holding up a mirror to mine. Every story I pulled out of someone pulled a little more of me out of the water, too. Because the truth is, our stories were never meant to be carried alone. We heal in conversation. We heal in connection. We heal when we stop speaking at the world and start listening to it.

Now let me tell you what I’ve learned doing this work. Search and rescue is not one boat. It’s a fleet. Remember those hands I asked you to raise? That’s the fleet. The Gary Sinise Foundation, who brought us here today, going back into the storm for the men and women who serve. And this room, Roll Call, you’re running a rescue fleet of your own. It’s called Hometown Heroes, your own podcast. I’ve heard Don Graves take us back to the sands of Iwo Jima. I’ve heard Shiloh Harris turn the worst day of his life into fuel for another man’s survival. And every time I listen, I’m reminded of something. These are not just interviews. They’re the oral history your grandchildren will actually go looking for someday. That’s what this work really is: making sure no story goes down with the ship, making sure no voice sinks unheard.

So here’s your mission. Three orders, and no one in this room is exempt.

Order number one: get your story out of the hull. Some of you have had your stories sealed below deck for 50 years. I’m not asking you to make it pretty. I’m asking you to preserve it. Sit down with Hometown Heroes. Sit down with Unfinished Business. Put your voice somewhere your family can find it, because your voice is the artifact your family will go looking for someday. Don’t let them find silence.

Order number two: be somebody’s kitchen table. Remember my night? I reached out twice. Help looked like a bar stool, then it looked like handcuffs. Somewhere out there is a veteran who will never take this stage, but he or she might sit across the kitchen table. Be the one who sits down. Be the one who asks. Be the one who listens, because listening is a rescue operation. And hear me on this: some of the veterans still trapped in that storm are behind walls. If your reach extends that far, a letter, a visit, a second chance, reach. Because somebody reached for me.

Order number three is for one person in this room. I don’t know your name, but I know you’re here. You’re gripping the wheel right now. You’re taking on water, and you’ve told yourself that asking for help means you failed. Brother, sister, I was you. The storm doesn’t mean you’re weak. It means you’re human, and you were never, ever meant to do this alone.

For years, I thought strength meant holding on. I thought survival meant fighting harder. Most of all, I thought I had to do it alone. As I stand in front of a sea of 500 patriots in this room, clearly, I was wrong. Sometimes real strength isn’t gripping the wheel. It’s knowing when to let go.

So let me ask you: what storms are you fighting alone? What weight are you carrying that you were never meant to bear? What if the very thing you’re afraid to release is the very thing keeping you from being saved? I was never meant to do this alone. Neither are you. The lifeboat is here. His hand is reaching out. Will you take it? Because I did, and that’s why I stand before you today.

But here’s what I know now that I didn’t know then. He doesn’t pull you out of the water so you can dry off on the shore. He pulls you out so you can row back in. There are sailors out in the storm. Some are sitting at your table right now. Some are sitting behind walls. Some are waiting on a kitchen table conversation that only you can start. The lifeboat is here, and this time, you’re in it. So I’ll leave you with the only question that matters: who are you rowing back into the storm for?

Before I leave, there is one person I would like to recognize. For many years, I carried this journey alone. But for the last six years, there has been someone helping me carry that weight. Someone who has seen the struggles, the shame, the self-doubt, the guilt, and the victories. My beautiful wife, Courtney. This room knows something about sacrifice, and the people who walk beside veterans make sacrifices too. Thank you, and God bless you. Welcome home.