[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:07] Speaker B: Hello there and welcome back to another episode of Just say Something podcast. My name is Philip Clark and I'm the CEO here at Just say Something. And I want to welcome you to this week's edition. Before we get started, I want to make sure that you, like, follow, subscribe and comment to our podcast and remember and share it with your friends and let them know that they can find our podcast where they find their favorite, their other favorite podcast.
So today we have a special guest with us. He hasn't been on with us, but Dennis Gilliam. Dennis, welcome.
[00:00:48] Speaker A: Philip. Thank you for having me. I appreciate you taking on this tough subject.
[00:00:52] Speaker B: Awesome, awesome. Well, I appreciate you being here and willing to speak about it. So tell us, our listeners, about Half A Sorrow Foundation.
[00:01:02] Speaker A: Sure. The first thing I want to say about Half a Sorrow foundation is where we got our name. It comes from an old Swedish proverb. A shared joy is a double joy. A shared sorrow is half a sorrow.
And that's what we. We got to get better doing.
And it's, you know, I like to think I'm in the suicide prevention world, but I'm really in the mental health world and I'm probably at parts of your world. All our worlds intersect, right?
[00:01:24] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:01:25] Speaker A: At some point. For desperate souls, anyone dealing with addiction or mental health issues or, you know, suicidal ideation, it's a big tent.
So that's what we do at Half A Sorrow Foundation. We focus on suicide prevention. I got here, like, like many people get in a nonprofit arena. I got here the hard way.
I. I lost two brothers to suicide.
[00:01:45] Speaker B: Oh, wow.
Yeah. Two brothers.
[00:01:48] Speaker A: Sucks the air right out of the room. Yeah, two.
Mark in 1983 and then Matthew in 1994. And I wouldn't wish one on the devil himself.
[00:01:58] Speaker B: Right, Right.
So how old were they when.
[00:02:03] Speaker A: Oh, 20. Mark was 23. Matt was 21. What we say forever, Right.
[00:02:08] Speaker B: And right. So as you look back at that.
What where you are now, looking back at that and knowing your brothers. Did you have a close relationship with your brothers?
[00:02:23] Speaker A: Sure. I was one of five kids, and I'm in the middle. Mark was older only by, gosh, 16, 17 months.
Back in the day when they used to bang up kids left and right, we lived on a cul de sac. Phillip was hilarious. There's three houses on the cul de sac. Three houses, 16 kids.
[00:02:40] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:02:41] Speaker A: Five, five and six.
[00:02:42] Speaker B: Holy cow.
[00:02:43] Speaker A: There was always something to do.
[00:02:45] Speaker B: Right? Right.
[00:02:46] Speaker A: And, well, Mark. Mark, let's. If you think about Mark, where I was, I was 20 when he died and he was 21. He battled depression for years, and there was some substance use there. You know, you come to learn, like most things post mortem is people would come up to me at my brother's funeral, and I think they were doing me a favor.
[00:03:04] Speaker B: Right.
[00:03:05] Speaker A: And they were saying, oh, I used to party with your brother. We did blank and blank together. They list the drugs out. Like, I don't know if I want to hear that right now.
[00:03:12] Speaker B: Right, right.
[00:03:12] Speaker A: But it adds to the picture.
[00:03:14] Speaker B: Yeah, totally.
[00:03:15] Speaker A: In the world you live in.
[00:03:16] Speaker B: Right.
[00:03:17] Speaker A: It just. There was some substance use disorder. There's some abuses there, and it warped a sense of reality. And who knows? I can't say that for him because he's the only one can say that. But probably like most people, he was in pain and tried to escape.
[00:03:29] Speaker B: Right, right. Were there signs now that you look back.
You know what?
Because, you know, I would be willing to say a lot of our listeners have not had to deal with suicide in their family. I mean, some have.
[00:03:48] Speaker A: I'm going to beg. The difference is.
[00:03:50] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:03:50] Speaker A: Because of what the world I'm in, it's prevalent that I'd like that way.
[00:03:56] Speaker B: Yep. Yeah. Because I know my best friends growing up, their father died by suicide.
[00:04:01] Speaker A: Everybody knows somebody.
[00:04:02] Speaker B: Right, Right.
[00:04:03] Speaker A: And it's. It's weird as I, you know, I didn't talk about my brothers for 16 years, and then once I started talking about them, people would come out of the woodwork. People that I respect. And only I have a story, too. Everyone has a story.
[00:04:15] Speaker B: Right, Right.
So looking back at your.
Your brother were there, knowing what you know now, because of all the studying and all the work that you've done as part of half a sorrow, were there signs that you didn't know then, but now you realize were signs that he was suffering?
[00:04:39] Speaker A: Yes. And Mark sort of blindsided me because I was at college and I was very much in a dentist at that time. It was all about me, of course. And we both know, because we work in the nonprofit space, it's not about you.
[00:04:50] Speaker B: Right, right.
[00:04:51] Speaker A: Because it took me six decades to figure that out.
Now he had to get was some issues there. He. He run away at one point, you know, left the house like, I'm out of here. And looking back, there were some academic performance issues in high school.
It was always felt like it was a square peg in a round hole. We're trying to get him to do stuff that he was so skilled at fixing. Stuff like running this computer and this. This podcast. This would be right up his alley. And he was doing Some stuff that didn't use those skills. I wasn't happy about that.
And unfortunately, with this suicide, and many of your listeners can attest to this, the person that we need the answers from.
Not here.
[00:05:35] Speaker B: Right, Right.
[00:05:36] Speaker A: Look at an overdose, say, what were you doing it? Well, the guy's not here. We can't ask him.
But there were. There was definitely some struggles.
[00:05:45] Speaker B: So as you.
So this brother, you were in high school or in college?
[00:05:53] Speaker A: College, junior year.
[00:05:54] Speaker B: In college, junior year. What was the time difference between this brother and your other brother?
[00:06:00] Speaker A: Yeah, my older brother Mark was 1983. I'm 20 years old. Matthew was 11 years later, 1994. Now I'm out of school, I'm married, and I'm living in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. And I think I got it going on. You know, Know I got a good job and all this stuff. And then the phone rang, and that rocked my world. And looking back at now, Matthew, one warning sign or risk factor is if you have a family history of suicide. When Mark died, we had a family history.
Two, there was a loss of illness. Matthew was in a very bad car accident.
Had a. Had a fused spine and a big rod where his femur used to be, just shattered.
And so chronic pain was an issue.
And now I'm coming into your world, people.
[00:06:44] Speaker B: Right.
[00:06:45] Speaker A: You know, this is before the opioids. You know. What was he taking? Tylenol. You know, it was maybe Johnson's baby aspirin at that point. We didn't have much back then.
[00:06:54] Speaker B: Right.
[00:06:55] Speaker A: So he. He struggled with pain. Like if it was going to rain, he knew about it. His body told him so. And then going even deeper, Matthew bought a firearm. And 54% of all suicides are with a firearm. And that should have been a flag, but he was a little redneck kid. He liked to go out and shoot. He hung out with a bunch of guys. They go out to a farm and shoot. I didn't think anything of it. My sister did offer a warning sign. She said, do you think it's a good idea for Matt to have a gun? And I kind of went, ah, he's fine. He's with his buddies.
[00:07:26] Speaker B: Right.
[00:07:26] Speaker A: And he was a little redneck, drove a pickup truck.
[00:07:29] Speaker B: Great.
[00:07:29] Speaker A: And I mean that as a term of a faction.
[00:07:31] Speaker B: Right.
[00:07:31] Speaker A: He was just. That was his tribe and he like to go hunt and all that stuff. And they shoot.
But the whole Gillen family for being Irish, there was a. There was a drinking culture, okay. And that's.
We all drank. And even when Mark died, I would drink with Matt. And we never talked about Mark. You know, we had plenty of opportunity, but never talked about it. One of those taboo subjects. Now, looking back, it's all I do is talk about it.
[00:08:00] Speaker B: Right?
[00:08:00] Speaker A: And kind of a.
I don't know. How do you say the. A good consequence of Matt's death, if there is one, is I stopped drinking when he died.
[00:08:13] Speaker B: Well, I was going to follow up with that. So at what age did y' all start drinking?
[00:08:20] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh. I had to tell my wife this. And I was in eighth grade, going into ninth grade. Now, the drinking age was 18. And everybody had an older brother. I was doing the math. I was 13, going to be 14.
And my brother Mark and I and this guy, another neighbor, his older brother bought us like, a six pack and we split it in the woods. And I remember I should have. Should have went on my first instinct. I remember tasting it, going, this tastes like crap.
And I should have walked away.
[00:08:49] Speaker B: Right.
[00:08:50] Speaker A: The rest of my life. No, but I had to keep trying, you know, give it the old college try and keep trying. And so that's where it started then in high school, I grew up in New York, and again, the drinking age was 18.
Every Friday night, it was on. There was somewhere to go, someplace to hang out. It was just. Somebody had access. Somebody had an older brother. Somebody had a fake id. It was on. I remember, you know, after the football games, big cake parties. And it was the norm, right? It was at someone's house. We had one at my house one time. My sister decided to host it. My older sister.
And all of a sudden, my dad opens the garage. There's like four kegs in there.
I'm like 12 years old. Like, what's that? I want some of that. And. But it was part of the culture. It was ingrained. There was a drinking culture. And it's.
I'm going to be the guy that breaks it in my family because I'm 31 years sober now.
[00:09:43] Speaker B: That's awesome. Congratulations.
[00:09:45] Speaker A: After the day Philip, the day Matthew died, I'm not gonna lie. I want to get wrecked. And the night before his funeral, I got hammered, and I haven't touched his stuff since. I went to the funeral. Hungover, crying, headache, all the stuff that comes with a hangover, anyway. And then crying on top of that, right? And it was awful. And I just drove home. I remember driving home going, I can't keep this up. I decided to take a time out.
[00:10:09] Speaker B: Okay, all right. So where did half a sorrow Foundation?
Knowing why.
When did you start thinking about.
Because where you were, you were in corporate America, right?
[00:10:25] Speaker A: Correct.
[00:10:25] Speaker B: And so what was your life in corporate America? And then was there something that clicked that said I need to do something else?
[00:10:33] Speaker A: Sure. And I'm a big believer that, you know, sometimes God takes things away from you so he can focus on what he wants you to do.
Had a really good job up until about 2010 and then I got let go. It happens, downsized and it was awful. It was a really good job too. We used to say we're eating gold for breakfast. And that got stripped away. Then I struggled with other jobs. Then I had a marriage blow up.
And at the end of the day, the only thing I had left was this talk.
It started, I started speaking about suicide and people said, you're pretty darn good at it, can you keep going?
And literally everything was stripped from me.
The house is gone, the marriage is done, kids are up and running. I have two boys. It's kind of ironic, right? I lose two brothers, two boys. Haha, funny universe. Yeah. But here we are. They're awesome. And then in the end I was, I had nothing. I was like, well, let me try doing this talk. So I started going around talking about it. Some people, if they can, they pay, they make a donation. And then I was Dennis Gillen for a while I was denniskillen.com I'm like, think much of yourself, Dennis. It's not about me, you know, it's not.
[00:11:40] Speaker B: Right.
[00:11:40] Speaker A: So in 2020 when I had some downtime, I said, you know what, I should start a 501C3.
Because people want to help, they just don't know how.
[00:11:49] Speaker B: Right, right.
[00:11:50] Speaker A: And they say, hey dad, can we support you? So yeah, you can write me a check, but it's going to go to my bank account.
Now if you help support us, it goes to this foundation. And I could do really cool stuff, programs like the Camel Hackle, all this other stuff, you know, you're a fundraising guy. It's, it's no money, no mission, right.
And it's been very, very nice because one time I think when I was denniskillen.com One kid in Texas called me up and I couldn't make it work, like financially. Like you want me to fly down like three hours from Dallas? I'm like, that's two day backpack. You know, from where I am, like there's no way, right?
And I hung up the phone. I had to tell the kid. I also had to get an honorarian pay for my flight or something. They had no budget.
And I hung up the Phone. And I. I felt like crying. I was like, man.
Someone said, what's up? I said I had to say no for the first time.
I always say yes.
[00:12:43] Speaker B: That was tough.
[00:12:44] Speaker A: Get you in trouble.
[00:12:46] Speaker B: Definitely.
Trust me.
[00:12:48] Speaker A: But now. Now, like, if someone calls up, says, can you come do something for me? And I had to say, you know, two questions. What time and what do I wear? Because of the wonderful donors who make me. Allow me to do that.
[00:12:58] Speaker B: Right.
[00:12:58] Speaker A: And then the cool part is some people pay me to speak if you go to corporate events.
And I had trouble with that for a while. Like, am I trying to prophetize off my brothers? But I have a mission. And then one guy said something to me. Phil, this is awesome. He said he was Dennis. The paid talks allow you to do the free talks.
[00:13:16] Speaker B: There you go. Shut your mouth. Take the money and keep talking.
[00:13:19] Speaker A: Go.
[00:13:20] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:13:20] Speaker A: And go. And it's. That was an eye opener for me because I couldn't. I couldn't get my arms around.
[00:13:25] Speaker B: Right, right. So you talk about the different talks that you have based on audiences. Give us some. Our listeners that are out there. Give them some examples of what your talks or maybe some of the different groups that you've spoken to to maybe get, you know, they may be sitting out there. Oh, what's, you know, what's his talk like? Or those kind of things.
[00:13:51] Speaker A: The beautiful thing about it, Philip, and, you know, this being a nonprofit, I'll go anywhere.
I'll go anywhere. I've spoken to, like, the P. FLAG folks, and then the next day, a church, you know, it doesn't matter.
[00:14:02] Speaker B: Right.
[00:14:02] Speaker A: It's all humans versus the dirt in my world. I don't care. I could barely do me. I'm not going to tell you how to do you. All I want you to do is stay on this side of the dirt.
[00:14:10] Speaker B: Right?
[00:14:10] Speaker A: That's how I look at it. So I've gone everywhere. Corporate events, military. I've been. I went to the FBI, The J. Edgar Hoover building.
[00:14:17] Speaker B: Oh, yes.
[00:14:18] Speaker A: And then I gone to, you know, Nebraska West, Nebraska Community college. So you go for the big ones and everything in between. One of the funniest gigs I ever had. I had to speak in a bar.
Everybody was drinking. And then I got to the part where I don't drink. The bartender's like, hey, get off that.
Stop it. You're killing.
[00:14:36] Speaker B: Stop. Right?
[00:14:37] Speaker A: Yeah. You're killing me.
Anywhere. Anywhere. I think it was.
It was locally here, the P. FLAG people had a.
It was like in a garage. Basically, I'll go anywhere. Big audiences, small audiences, One on one.
[00:14:51] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:14:52] Speaker A: You know this. If there's a need, you go.
[00:14:54] Speaker B: Right? Right. Yeah. And so as we look at our society today, many of our young people are suffering from mental health and addiction.
What would be some advice that if there's a parent out there listening, what would be some advice that you would give a parent about potential signs to look for in their child as well as, okay, if I notice this, then what do I do? Because I.
A lot of parents don't know what they don't know.
[00:15:38] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. And we may have some overlap with our risk factors and warning signs.
[00:15:42] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:15:42] Speaker A: You know, the family history went over, but some of the warning signs, right off the bat, people will start withdrawn and isolate. Okay, maybe the truth with an addiction, too.
[00:15:50] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:15:50] Speaker A: Right.
[00:15:50] Speaker B: 100.
[00:15:51] Speaker A: They're hiding something.
In this case, they may be hiding their suicidal ideation.
And there's behaviors like all of a sudden there's risky behavior. So we put them in three buckets. When I do the talk about talk behavior and mood, they may verbalize it, which is actually ideal. If somebody says something like, you'd be better off without me, you get to expand on that.
[00:16:14] Speaker B: Right.
[00:16:17] Speaker A: Talk behavior, behavior.
Withdraw, isolation, giving away stuff, prized possessions. Not caring about stuff they used to care about. If you got a kid that plays guitar and all of a sudden they say, you know what? I'm going to sell my guitar on Facebook. Marketplace. Timeout.
[00:16:34] Speaker B: Right.
[00:16:34] Speaker A: Talk about what's going on. Yeah, what gives here? And then the moods, you just tell when something's up. Irritability or suddenly happier commerce. That's an interesting one. You know, there are awesome. They have a plan.
The key, I tell parents and having raised two boys is go with your gut.
If your gut's going. We have three brains based on nerve endings and nerve endings. I'm just counting nerve endings. 1. Obviously, in our head, in our cabases, our heart has a lot of nerve endings. Our gut has a ton of them.
And if your gut is going off like, oh, this isn't good, and maybe it doesn't align with your heart and your brain, but your gut's going off, pursue it.
[00:17:17] Speaker B: That gut can tell you a lot.
[00:17:19] Speaker A: Pay attention to the tension as we say, there's something there, like, wow. And I remember my ex wife raising the boys. She would say something like, I think something's up with, you know, one of the boys. I said, ah, they're fine. Because I just blow her off.
They weren't fine. She was right. It's our gut. Women's intuition is a real Thing then with all these warning signs. There is one suicide out there that I call the BS suicide. And it's not the bad word. We're on a podcast. I call it the Blind side Suicide. They did such a good job of hiding all this stuff.
They're the life of the party. If you had a, you know, if you're in the room and they're one in there just ducking it up.
[00:17:55] Speaker B: Right.
[00:17:56] Speaker A: That one always gets me. I, I, I've talked to too many moms who said, you know, I didn't see a thing. He lived in my house.
One woman told me they were packing up to go on a trip the next day to Hawaii.
Like, who doesn't want to go to Hawaii? I've never been. Who doesn't want to go? And that wasn't a strong enough incentive for this kid to live. They lost him that night.
Yeah. So stuff like that, go with your gut.
[00:18:22] Speaker B: So knowing what we know because we're in this world, also knowing that the, I believe the average, the age for the average person who dies by suicide is, I want to say, 38 to
[00:18:39] Speaker A: 40 middle aged men are the worst.
[00:18:42] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:42] Speaker A: The worst.
[00:18:44] Speaker B: What's, why, what, what's, what's happening at that point in their life that they feel like there's, oh, there's a couple things.
[00:18:53] Speaker A: And often it's not one thing.
[00:18:55] Speaker B: Right.
[00:18:55] Speaker A: Like it's not one thing. There's a, maybe a financial aspect to it. Relationship. I have a friend of mine who does, she's a counselor and she goes, every middle aged man who's going through divorce, I ask him, are you suicidal? She doesn't even wait for the warning signs. She goes, I love it. Go right for it. Because I went through a divorce and it felt like a death and I love it. She goes right for it. So I thought that was brilliant.
Looking back in your life, you know, is this all there is? You know, there's a lot of reflection.
And you and I know because we work in a nonprofit space that you have to have a purpose in your life. Right. And sometimes if you're, you're, if you're working for the man and it doesn't feel like you're being compensated properly or even respected. You feel like you lost your purpose. But you could easily find that purpose if you help others get what they want.
[00:19:44] Speaker B: Because again, it's not about us.
[00:19:46] Speaker A: It's not about us.
[00:19:46] Speaker B: Right.
[00:19:47] Speaker A: Your life is not about you.
[00:19:48] Speaker B: Right.
[00:19:48] Speaker A: One of the coolest things I have going on right now for my mental health is I put Together, this box garden for my wife. And it was way too big.
She goes, you gotta get rid of it.
So I live near a homeless shelf that houses men. Miracle Hill. And I walked over there, I said, do you guys want this garden box that my wife doesn't want? They said, bring it. But they also give me a catch. And I love this. They said, you could bring it, but you have to maintain it. Oh, we'll get the guys to help.
[00:20:18] Speaker B: Yeah. Okay.
[00:20:19] Speaker A: But you got to fill it with dirt because they have a lot of those. Those people have a lot on their plate.
[00:20:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:23] Speaker A: Not taking on something else. And I. I said, all right, I'll do it. So literally today I'm going to stop by and see how our tomatoes are doing. And it's been this ministry of sorts. The guys come out. It's only a couple guys that really into it, but every guy in there knows about.
[00:20:36] Speaker B: Right.
[00:20:36] Speaker A: So that's. That's been like a really cool aspect of mental health. Back to the. If you get. If you help others get what they want, you get what you want.
And if I say that again, you can. You can get anything you want if you help others get what they want. Okay, that's it.
[00:20:52] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:53] Speaker A: It's old Zig Ziglar, like the old motivational tapes you need to check out from the neck up. You know, I used to listen. I got in my car. But it's so true. You can get everything you want in life if you help others get what they want.
[00:21:03] Speaker B: I love that.
[00:21:04] Speaker A: It's spot on.
[00:21:05] Speaker B: Yeah.
Yeah.
So knowing that resources for this type work, resources in the community, I'd be willing to bet that most of the community doesn't have any wherewithal other than maybe 911 of where to call or what to do. What are some local resources? Not in just Greenville, but maybe the upstate that you can tell our listeners about that they can reach out.
[00:21:38] Speaker A: All right. We're very blessed in the upstate of South Carolina that we have one of the call centers here. And the number now is 988. That's brilliant.
[00:21:46] Speaker B: Right.
[00:21:46] Speaker A: We lobbied for years to get that reduced. And it's. It should be on everyone's phone. 988. You can talk to a trained counselor. Hopefully the goal for all those call centers, if you're. They're trying to answer them locally. So if you're from South Carolina like we are, hopefully someone from South Carolina answers. Now there's an off occasion that it gets rerouted and someone in Nebraska still open. Wonderful person trying to help You Right. So that's nice.
Everywhere we go, we have a nami, national alliance of Method Illness. Good friends of ours.
[00:22:17] Speaker B: Right?
[00:22:17] Speaker A: Both of ours.
[00:22:18] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:22:18] Speaker A: Almost everywhere you go, they cover the upstate Mental health. America is everywhere in the upstate. It's hard not to find a place. And then we're blessed from the state level with the South Carolina Department of Mental Health. And I know they have a new name. I just can't remember.
[00:22:32] Speaker B: Yeah, there's been too many changes in Columbia. It's hard to keep up with.
[00:22:36] Speaker A: We're going to go with DMH, Department of Mental Health, that they cover all 46 counties. And we have a center here in Greenville. There's one. They call it AOP Anderson Okins.
Spartanburg has a nice mental health center. I've been there, done some training for those folks, so. And now we also have Mobile Crisis. If you're. If you're to. And I really should know this phone number, but just look. Google it. South Carolina Mobile Crisis. If you know somebody that's in a tough spot, maybe having a breakdown, you call Mobile Crisis. They will dispatch a council. Mm.
[00:23:06] Speaker B: Okay. All right. So as we bring this to a close, there's a couple of things I want you to let our audience know. How to get in touch with you, where to find you, and then what is that one thing that you want everyone out there to know that maybe we haven't mentioned? Or if you have mentioned it, you will, to make more emphasis on that point.
[00:23:36] Speaker A: Great. Two questions. First one, how do you get a hold of me?
Go to my website. It's halfasaro.org H A L F A S O R R O W Half a sorrow. Because that's where we get our name. Shared joy is a double joy. A shared sorrow is half a sorrow. You can fill out a form. You want me to come speak to a group? Say the word on that site. Hopefully it pops up. You should be able to download safety plans. We have those.
That's the best way to get out of me. Okay, and the second part of your question is, if I could say one thing, if one person out there hears me and all the trainings I do, everything I do boils down to this. Can you ask somebody, are you suicidal? And you have to say the S word. A lot of people want to say, oh, you ever think about going to sleep and not waking up? We've had friends of mine who overdose and did not want to wake up.
It was literally a suicide attempt. And they did. They did not want to wake up. And when they woke up, they're mad now. I know a guy did that. He now helps other addicts. So God had a plan for me.
[00:24:42] Speaker B: Right, Right.
[00:24:42] Speaker A: So it all works out. But can you say that? So are you suicidal? And Philip, when I go around the country, I talk to two people. One, you may be around somebody who's suicidal or in a mental health crisis. Let's go upstream. You know, suicide's the low rung of the ladder. Let's go upstream. Let's pick it off early.
[00:24:58] Speaker B: Right.
[00:24:58] Speaker A: So you may be around someone in a mental health crisis, and the other person I speak to, it may be you.
I was doing fine, and then Matt died, Mark died, my older brother. I wasn't doing fine. Then I got back on my feet.
I was doing okay, and then Matt died, and I wasn't okay. So I've been in both buckets.
[00:25:20] Speaker B: Right.
[00:25:20] Speaker A: I'm not pointing fingers, because three of them are pointing right back at me.
[00:25:23] Speaker B: Right, right, right.
[00:25:25] Speaker A: That's. That's the only two people I speak.
[00:25:28] Speaker B: And so you know that. I guess that. Well, that makes me think of so many different things. As I thought I was bringing this to a close, but we'll go on
[00:25:41] Speaker A: for a little bit longer. We got time.
[00:25:44] Speaker B: It's.
Most people just like addiction, think that, well, that won't happen.
Or my spouse or my child or my niece, my nephew, my sister, my brother would never do that.
And we have that. We hear that in addiction.
[00:26:06] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:26:10] Speaker B: I don't. There's. I. I don't know. I. I want there to be something that people will say, oh, gosh, I never thought about that.
[00:26:21] Speaker A: Or a great question to ask people. Because we always walk by. Like, if I see you in the hallway, I say, hey, how you doing? And I walk by. I don't even wait for the answer.
[00:26:29] Speaker B: Right.
[00:26:30] Speaker A: We just say it. But if you're probing, be it an addiction, as, you know, someone in desperate straights, let's call it a desperate soul, a great way to ask that question is, how are you doing?
Really?
But that pause in there, really? Because that. That.
The way you ask that, that takes on a whole different tone right now. So I care, and you can tell me, I'm fine. I'm not going to believe you.
[00:26:56] Speaker B: Right.
[00:26:56] Speaker A: Because we all said, how you doing? I'm fine. It's the worst day ever.
[00:27:00] Speaker B: Right? Right.
[00:27:01] Speaker A: I'm fine. I'm fine. My whole world's collapsing. I'm fine.
[00:27:04] Speaker B: I look fine from the outside.
[00:27:05] Speaker A: Exactly. And that's it. We all look fine on the outside. And the inside's.
It's the toughest. What, six inches between my temples. That's what I gotta deal with on a daily basis.
[00:27:15] Speaker B: And we all do and everybody does, right? And knowing that there's so much additional stress on people, on families, on individuals right now that just know that there are resources out there for you. There's nami, Greenville, There's Mental Health America, Greenville County. There's the crisis line, which is 988, that there are people that can answer that call, that have been very, very, very well trained to help you either help yourself or help you to help a family member or friend.
So don't think that you have to do this alone because there are people out there that can help you.
Dennis, I want to thank you for being with us today.
[00:28:00] Speaker A: I want to thank you and thank you for that outro there because it boils down to what, what our, both our worlds are, right, Is just say something.
[00:28:07] Speaker B: Right at the end of the day. Just say something.
[00:28:09] Speaker A: Just say something.
[00:28:10] Speaker B: Yeah, it really is.
[00:28:11] Speaker A: There's a great non profit in Greenville called that. I'm not sure if you're familiar with them.
[00:28:15] Speaker B: You know, I think I've heard about them before. Just say something.
[00:28:18] Speaker A: There it is.
[00:28:20] Speaker B: Dennis, thank you for being here with us today.
Much continued success.
I've heard you talk. I've even was a participant at one.
[00:28:29] Speaker A: You were the first volunteer I had.
[00:28:31] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:28:31] Speaker A: You got a special place in my heart.
[00:28:33] Speaker B: So if you are looking about thinking about bringing a speaker in, whether it's your workplace, whether it's Sunday school, whether it's a men's club, whether it's a women's book club, doesn't matter.
His message resonates with everyone and you will not be sorry because at the end of the day, yes, you may be helping yourself, but there's that added opportunity. You could be helping somebody else and you don't know it.
[00:29:05] Speaker A: And we know that if you right, you help others, you help yourself.
[00:29:08] Speaker B: There you go. There you go. All right, well, this will end this edition of Just say Something podcast. Again, my name is Philip Clark. Dennis, I appreciate you being here today. Dennis Gilliam with Half a Sorrow Foundation.
And you can find
[email protected] org Correct. And until next time, we will see you then. Until then, be safe and remember to help others because they may not have the opportunities that you have.
Have a great day.
