S3 Ep93 Charlie Radclyffe: When The Story Softens

Charlie Radclyffe's story is a hard pivot: British Army officer, injured on duty at 24, and an overnight shift from fully fit to paralysis. He speaks about the strange clarity he felt early on almost skipping the “expected” stages and how the fighter response took over: rehab, grind, “get better.” Alongside that, a quieter thread ran in the background: the sense that this was also a “quest,” a forcing function for deeper learning, identity change, and meaning.

A core theme is the tension between fight and quest. Charlie explores how fight can become a refusal to accept the present, and how quest can create a strange attachment to the “after,” as if recovery might mean losing the growth. Over the last year, his relationship with “loss” shifted less partitioning life into before/after, more acceptance, and less charge when old triggers show up.

That charge mattered because Charlie’s injury didn’t end at the injury. The legal and administrative reality pensions, tribunals, repeated errors, “brown envelope” letters kept pulling him back into the story. He describes how that system can freeze people in the lived harm, and how the process itself can become corrosive, especially for those with fewer resources, less support, or active mental health strain.

Out of that experience, Charlie has built work to bridge the gap between legal complexity and the lived reality of veterans navigating claims. He speaks with a new tone: compassion without denial, accountability without bitterness. And he lands on a practical vision convening major charities, then decision-makers, then law firms not to “wrong” anyone, but to shine a clear spotlight on what’s failing, what’s working, and how to make the path less damaging for the people already carrying enough.

Transcript

Meet Charlie Radcliffe

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Fortune Resilience, real conversations for high performance facing transition. I'm Erin Hill. And join me as I talk with people about challenge change and the adversity they faced in life, so we can learn from their experiences, insights, and stories. Today we're joined by Charlie Radcliffe. Charlie served as a British Army officer and was seriously injured on duty at the age of 24. His life changed overnight from fully fit soldier to being in a wheelchair. Charlie has 20 years' experience of transition and learning, giving him a great insight into how we respond to change. Last year he set up a veteran law project to help service personnel and veterans find the legal cases most relevant to their situation. Charlie, welcome to the show, buddy. Lovely to be here.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_00 0:54

No, it's a it's an absolute pleasure. Charlie, help us understand a little bit about yourself and give us a few um insights into your story.

The Accident And Immediate Aftermath

SPEAKER_02 1:03

Sure. So I served in the military. Um I actually I served twice, weirdly. I joined first in 1997 for about three months, and then I left voluntarily. Um and then it was weird, and then I kind of served for three years. I went to, sorry, I didn't serve, I went to uni, where I didn't view myself at any point as a veteran. And then after university, I rejoined, I went to Sandhurst, I became an officer, I was out on Iraq in 2003, and then really soon after that, I was um serving with my unit in Germany, and I had an accident on adventures training, and I jumped off a 70-foot bridge into a lake, and I paralyzed myself from the waist down. And it was an unplanned transition from fully fit, healthy service person to someone with a really serious injury being told, right, you're never going to walk again. You're never going to have children naturally, you're never going to ride a bicycle again. And it was interesting in my mind at that time how my body just switched straight off and was kind of like, okay, I have my pre-injury, fully fit active life. And then now I may be in a wheelchair for the rest of my life. That's the life I've got. And I always remember an episode from The Simpsons where something traumatic happens to Homer, and he's like, there are six stages of whatever it is. I can't remember, there's like fear and there's anger and frustration and denial. I've completely bastardized that series of things. But I remember that time thinking of that Simpsons episode and kind of going, surely I should be going through all of those stages that I'm not. Am I in like some sort of self-denial? And um I should be feeling those things. Why am I not feeling those things? And I was going out with a clinical psychologist at the time, and she was telling me all about, oh, you're projecting all of this stuff onto me and all these things you're not resolving. And I couldn't see it at that time. And I went completely into the sort of fighter response to trauma. And I was like, I'm gonna get better. And it's sort of at that time, military personnel getting injured, we're going to Headley Court. And I just got fully immersed into that world of fighting, trying to get better, whilst there was this little inkling in the back of my head on a sort of a sort of spiritual dimension to it, and sort of seeing my life having these two halves, like fully fit, they're now broken physically. And there was some learning, development, change that had arisen from um this injury. And so, kind of, yeah, that all happened 20 years ago now. Um, and I went on quite a big like spiritual journey really immediately after I left the injury a couple of years after my injury, and and and I was kind of scrabbling around for these changes and these realizations and epiphanies in life. And I I now look today at back then and I I took myself off to some amazing places and I met some phenomenal people in these spaces, but I wasn't ready to step into that work or to engage. Part of me right now would love to go and speak to those people I was interacting with back then and kind of go, what was your reflection on me back then? Because I was like a bull in the China shop of spirituality and transition and change. And I was like 26, 27, and I'd been medically discharged from the military, and I had all these things as a young man being told, right, you're never gonna have children naturally, and virility and being wanted by women, and I can I could fit all these different sort of tensions. Um, and so yeah, so I've had like 20 years of learning linked to that um sort of thing.

SPEAKER_00 4:45

So I'm I'm curious, Charlie, do you still look back on that event and mark it as life before injury and life after?

Fighter, Chaos, And Quest Responses

SPEAKER_02 4:54

If you'd asked me that a year ago, I would have said yes. And very much so. So much so that I think like last year, it's like I have now spent more than half of my life with someone with a sort of significant disability, even though I'm now not in a wheelchair and I use I use a wheelchair sometimes, but I walk with crutches. But yeah, yeah, very much. I partitioned it off, and it was, and and so I find that really interesting. So I remember at the time of the injury, I got the opportunity to go and hear um a psychologist talking about people's responses to trauma. And this was back in 2003. So I don't know how the academic research has changed since then. But he talked about at that time, he talked about three different kinds of responses people had to trauma back then. And he was talking about how you have the fighter response, which I kind of alluded to a moment ago, like the classic military one. I'm going to overcome this, I'm going to push through it, fight, no pain, no gain, all of those sorts of logics. And then you had the sort of chaos group who were kind of in despair. And they were like, My life, I don't know what to do, and higher rates of sort of mental health challenges and suicide and depression. And then you had the third group, which he referred to as the quest group. And for that third group, they kind of saw the it wasn't just like physical injuries, but for me at that time, I can only really think about him talking about it back then in relation to my physical injury. But the quest one, he was kind of saying, You're a physical thing happened which represented something was flawed or wrong in your life, and it's an opportunity that you can kind of grasp with both hands to now have a new life of learning and realization of things that maybe you hadn't thought about or realized before that moment. You can take this as an opportunity to learn and develop. And it was, and I kind of heard him talking and I was like, okay, that's interesting because I've got a bit of fighter and I've got a bit of quest. I'm kind of like 50-50, and I definitely had a period of despair a year or two later, which I can come on to in a bit. But the the quest one is interesting because it kind of holds you in a space of what it had a potential to hold me in a space of my life pre-injury was lacking in some way. And my life post-injury can be this one of greater realization and learning and of value for myself and the world. But part of that distinction between the two halves results in me almost not wanting to get better. Because if I if if you asked me a year or two after my injury, if I fully wanted to get better, the learnings that happened over that sort of next, not that quickly, but like three or four years after my injury, I kind of probably would have said, I don't want to be back up and running and with not using my wheelchair and crutches, because I would lose these things that I've learned to the degree that I had at that time. And so the quest one has that weird pre and post tension, but the fighter one also has it as well, because and this is something where I think the military causes quite a lot of harm to people through its ethos, which when healthy and we're striving to achieve so much physically and in terms of robustness and working as a team, the fighter response says to us, this moment with my maybe lost abilities or my lost uh sense of myself, I don't want to accept this current moment. I just want what I had in the past to come back again. And so you can look at some people who stay in that fighter response forever, potentially, because they're in this moment where they're not accepting the present day, I was gonna say reality of their situation. That that feels harsh and critical, but their present life is this like continuing denial of where they are today because they're looking to the future to return to their past. And so there's a sort of pre-imposed tension with the fighter one as well. So there's a dance between them. How can we take the strength of one without holding ourselves up on other dimensions and planes? I can't remember what your question actually was.

SPEAKER_00 9:05

Neither can I, but that's a good sign. We're flowing with it, mate. So how how how how do you manage that dance then, Charlie, uh from from where you're sat today between those those tensions and the quest, the fight then?

SPEAKER_02 9:19

So I think for me today is but it's accepting, accepting that I am where I am here today. And it's not wronging myself for not having done as much work, maybe like physically going to the gym or on other levels to help myself be as fully fit and active and capable as I could be. Like I'm here today, like that is okay, that's a win. And at the same time, I recognise it in the last yeah, it is the last year that my relationship to this sense of loss um has changed. And so a year ago I joined a program with um a UK charity called Save a Warrior, which is kind of a sister to an American charity, and through that it helps people who've served in the military and former sort of blue light responders to help their relationship with the things that happened in their life. And for me, there is a huge tension in all of this where I was injured on duty. It's like that was mostly clear-cut. And then I left and I got a war pension, and I get a pension from the military, and I've had battles in terms of correcting that pension over the last 20 years at multiple stages to different degrees. And those, those they are literally, they feel like battles to me, are moments that have kind of almost compelled me to go back to representing and demonstrating what I have lost and putting me back into the story of what happened and who didn't these things and why wasn't my treatment right and what happened afterwards. And so the Save of Warrior programs really helped me just kind of differentiate the two. It's like, what happened? I jumped off a bridge, I got injured. Like, that's fine, okay. The story I can tell myself about that, I can kind of big that up as much as I want to. And at times there's a time and place for doing that in terms of sometimes people need some more information. Maybe then what happened needs to be expanded. But over the last 20 years, the story of what happened, I remember I remember it in the about 15 years ago, I went out to India to go and spend three months out there having Ayurvedic treatment. And I went to this clinic, which was represented um recommended to me by Deepak Chopra, who I met in my early 20s whilst down in Devon. And it's just like, oh, I happen to be in this place, and I'm spending a day with Deepak Chopra. And I'm kind of like, okay, that's pretty cool in terms of learning about East meets West in terms of spiritual connection, in terms of medicine. And he was like, You need to go to India and you need to go to an iVedic clinic, you need to go and see this family. And I was kind of like, okay, and I made it, and I made that happen, and I got out there, and I spent three months um having this treatment out there, and I remember meeting a woman, and she was like, Tell me your story. And I sat there, and for 30 minutes, I just went off on one. My story, I went off the bridge, and this person didn't do the right thing, and this happened afterwards, and she just sat there for 30 minutes listening. I stopped. And she looked at me and she was like, Thank you. Is that the story you wanted to tell me? And it felt like a bit of a dig. And I don't think it was a dig, but it just stopped me in my tracks. And I was like, Yeah, I chose to tell that tell that story I just told. Is that a story and a representation that represents me and my life? I feel I've slightly done it in our chat here just today. It's sort of like my story and my history is something that I almost don't think about so much day to day right now, because I am where I am, and this is my moment, and I'm looking in this present, and so I'm looking forwards. Um and so it's just something happened a long time ago. But up until a year ago, I would my relationship with that past experience would have been different.

SPEAKER_00 13:17

Yeah, no, I I I get that. And I think what the the interesting thing for me and what why I talk about it or or or drawn to ask about it is the the the lessons and the insights that we can reflect on that you've had, irregardless of what we're going through, there's certain parallels parallels or similarities, and and like for accept acceptance as an example is a massive one for all of us in our own way, um, shape and form. And and I to follow on from that, I'm I'm curious, is there a moment that you remember like letting go or accepting? And you can do this.

SPEAKER_02 14:22

I wanted to say yes to that. I also wanted to say I was gonna have a longer pause in this recording than you do. But the yeah, no, I don't have a distinct moment. Um and I haven't caught that, and that's interesting in itself. Because yeah, because it's sort of some of the transitions that we have in life, or some of the transitions I've had in my life, have been very absolute. Like I tell myself that the injury happened on this one day, this moment is where that paralysis thing happened. But actually that's not true, because I think it actually happened the day before, where I jumped off the same bridge. I did the same thing, and there was a tiny little niggle. Maybe that was the day. And then it was like, well, okay. But then the transition and the change in life, was that at the moment of injury, or was that at the moment of the loss of that relationship to the person I was with at the time? Was that the moment of transition out of the military? And so the acceptance aspect of it, I think it's something that's just settled into me over the last year of a lot of inner work and processing of things.

SPEAKER_00 15:35

Which I I I I guess there's freedom to be found within that inner work. From certain story, um from Yeah, with acceptance, with letting go.

Battling Pensions And Legal Systems

SPEAKER_02 15:55

Yeah, there is. I think there's also February last year I kind of went into the Save of Warrior container and started their process, and at that moment my story still felt raw for me. And my my story feels raw for me. No, my story felt raw for me at the times when um I would get like the latest sort of brown envelope from Veterans UK, sort of the wing of the Ministry of Defence, about something to do with my pension. And like literally at the moment, I've kind of got I've had six months of pension tribunal problems going on at the moment, and it did the but these brown letters would come through the posts, and I could just feel my heart sink. And I've only had one of those brown letters in the last year, and my heart didn't sink. It's just like okay, it's just like and so the there's a level of what is there? A level of the acceptance relates to not wronging others. I suppose compassion, I think that's one of my biggest words of the last year, is compassion for those people um around me at the moment, those people who I am interacting with bodies who I see as an authoritative body, and I have high expectations of that body to do the right thing and to be fair and reasonable and to make correct decisions. And my expectations are high in those ways. And I now have compassion for those people doing those roles and those jobs, and it's just I think so much of the charge has been taken away from wronging. And so the acceptance bit has been me transitioning from not being in a victim mentality to I can't think of that triangle with victim and persecution, whatever the third one is. You can probably not the guy, sorry. Um, but I've kind of yeah, I've sort of I feel I've moved on and from the victim mentality, and but but it's interesting because I thought I'd moved on from the victim mentality 15 years ago, and yet each time if I look back at some of the letters and some of the ways in which I've explained things to people, and it's very easy for me to over-intellectualise things in life, and I can kind of use sort of like legal ease writing to try, and it's like angry, and it's there's vitriol in it, and so I was telling myself a different story to what I was actually representing through my actions, um, and I suppose that's another one I've only really kind of clocked in this last year. Um yeah, acceptance, compassion, acceptance and compassion. They kind of overlap, they overlap a lot, I'd say.

SPEAKER_00 18:43

So your experience with this has led you on to set up your own or or support veterans that are uh claiming war pensions as well, Charlie, is that right?

Building The Veteran Law Project

SPEAKER_02 18:55

Yeah, so my my experience through this was having um the Ministry of Defence about four years after I left, they made just a really flawed decision in terms of my pension. And I spent six months trying to be very reasonable, explain to them, right, this is why it's wrong. And then they would reply, and their reply would have more mistakes in it. And I would explain the mistakes in that letter, and then their reply to that would have more mistakes, and and I was trying to be really reasonable and proactive, and I was like, we can just resolve this in an amicable way. And the system, for whatever reason, um, was struggling to make fair and correct decisions. And I found it really frustrating and it really, really harmed my mental health at that time. Um, and then that went to a tribunal, and then they went, You're completely right. Not only did the tribunal say, You're completely right on this. When I walked into the tribunal hearing, I think it was that hearing, it may have been my second one, where they had a barrister representing them, but not just a barrister, a KC, a QC at the time. And he whispered, I think it was him that whispered, or it was the Ministry of Defense. Representative whispered to me, he was like, I I accept everything in your argument and what you've reasoned. This hearing should not be going ahead, so should not be going ahead. I'm so sorry that you're here and having to go through this. And it was interesting. It was kind of like, okay. And now, with a bit of like ruthless compassion towards him and the process, it's like, you could have just said that at the start of that two-hour long meeting, and we could have not had the meeting. It's like, yeah, you're right. This isn't necessary. You could have said this a week ago or a month ago, or but that hearing, it kind of just reinforced me that there's something about this system and this interaction which isn't serving people to the degree to which it could. It is not of the quality that I expect, again, of a British institution. And so for me, I was injured in 2003. So I fall under the war pension scheme. And those people injured today, since 2005, fall under the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme. And they've got like different legislation and there's different rules and processes, but there's also a lot of overlap in terms of the teams managing this, some tribunal legislation. But for me, I had that first tribunal and I won it. And I was like, okay, that gave me a bit more confidence. It was like, okay, I am not legally trained. Like I'm kind of I'm well qualified. Um, I know that I'm kind of switched on and I'm capable. And I have like this, I have the wherewithal. I had actually I had the wherewithal in 2010 to challenge that decision. But I first tried to challenge my decision in 2007, straight after leaving the military. And I was on my own and my relationship had broken down, and I was in a moment of like one of my lowest points since my injury, and my mental health was really poor. And I felt isolated. I felt comp I like dropped off the radar of the world of the military, and I was angry about that, and I felt my decision wasn't right. And I tried to challenge it, and it was going to go to tribunal, and I withdrew my claim at something like 11:59 the night before the hearing was going to be the next day. I was like, I can't do this. This is too much. And so for me, each time I step up to challenge something instead of my decision, I see it as a representation of a sort of sense of strength that I found in my life. And so for me, I often talk about like the resources that we have in life, be it in terms of our family support for us or my mental health right now, or financial capacity in terms of getting legal support and the potential costs that could arise from that. Some people have more resources available to them at a certain time, and maybe they will have more resources available in the future. So for some people, it's timing of these things. But also for me, under the war pension, the timings is more fluid. Um, and you can apply any time after you leave, you can submit a claim for a war pension if you can demonstrate that you're harmed on duty, and the rules are more lenient in terms of the sort of balance of proof in terms of demonstrating that harm on duty or the harm that your medical treatment you got was caused by the military. As long as like it's more um, it's a weird one. It's the reverse of how courts work. Um, it's basically the Ministry of Defence has to show that there's reasonable cause to believe that they oh no, I'm gonna parsatize it. Can't demonstrate it right now. With the with armed forced compensation scheme, you've got to demonstrate it's more than 50% chance that your harm was caused by service. Um but with war pensions, it's much more lenient than that. Um and so more people are eligible under the war pension scheme. And for me, I've had another tribunal since then, and again I won that one, and I've got another one going on again, and I've won that one, and then the Ministry of Defence is challenging at the moment. And it's like if I've had these battles and challenges with the resources and sort of capabilities that I have available to me, how does your average Tom, who served, and there's quite a high chance in people getting seriously injured that maybe they're serving in the infantry, and then you kind of look at their sort of family structure and their background and their educational attainments, and you throw them into this legal world, giant forms and barristers fighting against the cases. Sometimes it's daunting, it's terrifying. I felt daunted in this. Um, and and okay, I can see it as more of a dance and it's a process, but most people getting injured don't realise how much of a challenge this process is going to be. And um, and I feel really sad about that. Um, and the and so I was discharged in 2006, so I'm now like 19, 20, almost 20 years of these sort of challenges with legal stuff. And there's no representation in these schemes for the harm caused during this decision-making process. So it's only kind of what was the injury and the loss and the harm caused kind of at the point of the injury or the point that that medical condition is recognized or spotted or learned about. Um and so, yeah, so there's a whole aspect of this when people talk about moral injury, and we can get onto that in a bit, because I think there's nuances to that towards this situation. And yeah, yeah. So last year I set up a project to help people find legal cases related to their cases. But before that, I'd spent three or four years mostly on Twitter, like helping people one-on-one, directing them to cases, sometimes sort of signposting people to law firms. And I realized that there was this world of people who were really suffering and angry and yeah, some stuck in the victim mentality. But there was like, there was truth and logic behind the sense of loss and abandonment that they were experiencing. And some of those aspects, the decision to do with their AFCS payment could have helped them with, or their war pension could have helped them with. But there was a whole extra layer of support and structure, and particularly those with mental health challenges or PTSD, which just kind of sort of falls under those schemes, but there was other support structures that they were missing. Um and I just recognized there was this whole cohort of people who felt lost and let down. And some were turning to like the Royal Bush Legion and Sappho and organizations like that to get support. And for some people that works, and that works really well. And for others, they then found that was another level of kind of not getting the support and outcome that they were hoping for. And Twitter all went a bit crazy with the Trump election and Musk thing. So I stepped away from that and I stepped into Blue Sky, where I stepped into there, and now I'm on Blue Sky with like a thousand UK lawyers following me. But it's kind of like the angry, struggling veterans and service people on Twitter haven't moved over. So I've kind of got these very professional lawyers who I'm now engaging with, but actually, like my level is more being I'm not, I'm like the I'm I'm the sort of the link between this technical, I'm the bridge between the technical legal world and then me. I am a layman legally, I'm very clear on this. Like if you want legal advice, don't come to me. I can direct and guide and give my kind of thoughts and reflections on how it relates to my experience and translate that for the layman into words and which had would have real impact for people on Twitter, and it was amazing, it was lovely. And so I feel that's a loss for me right now. And so, yeah, so I kind of that is something I would like to address and change this year. Because at the moment, my veteran law project, it's very high level, it's very much like these are the significant cases and and a little bit of analysis which I would like to do more of, but I haven't prioritized that recently. Um yeah.

Serving Members’ Dilemma And Evidence

SPEAKER_00 28:08

Yeah. So what what if for whatever reason somebody's listening that is that has served that has been injured, what what sort of things would you want them to know as they they they go about this process from an emotional perspective? So somebody else parallel might be able to relate to this, or yeah, a couple of things that you would would have done well knowing about as you stepped into this world of courts and legal battles and I'm gonna step into an intellectual answer to that before the emotional one.

SPEAKER_02 28:40

Love it. Um which is so so the vast majority of people applying under these schemes are still serving today. AFCS, you have to apply within seven years of the injury or learning about it. And so there's a tension because you are applying, you're requesting money as a compensation payment to the organization who's your you're you're like they're paying your bill, well they're paying your salary and they're they're providing your support structure and they're providing your healthcare and the um the roof over your head if you're still living in kind of service accommodation. And and there's a tension there, which I think affects the emotional aspect a lot. Um but I'm just gonna park that one right now. But for someone serving today, there's a couple of like starting point things I always say to people like if you're gonna claim under this under these schemes, you need to get your full service records. You need to submit a subject access request and get your full service military records. Where did you serve? What did you do? Because that can demonstrate at a time when you think you were harmed by your duty, that you were like on service on duty at that time. Um, and then the second one is your within that, hopefully, it would be your full medical records. And it's like without that evidence, you kind of can't take this any further. The Ministry of Defence, if you do put in a claim, they will pull those facts and documents out. Sometimes there's discrepancies between them, like um, and so it's if someone's still serving, I would hope that you will be able to get all of those documents. Um, and that's really important. And even if you just got them and you put them in a cupboard for a while until you've got the headspace to think about this and any further steps, um yeah, have them. Um emotionally so again, this the if someone is still serving, I kind of feel it's different to someone who has served and left. And I'd be really curious, Ron, to hear about your thoughts on this. So if you imagine you were serving today and you got so it's like it's like you go for like the classic injury with a classic injury when people think of someone being injured in the military, and you've got shot somewhere, and you you have I don't know, you've got you got shot through the thigh and and at the same time you saw a mate get blown up and you're struggling with your mental health, maybe it will get diagnosed with PTSD one day. If you were still serving at that moment what uh what do you reckon would be the emotional need that you have?

SPEAKER_00 31:12

Oh great question. You know, I d uh what immediately comes up for me is uh yeah, uh a a draw or a pull between two things. Um one is not to challenge the organization that uh that I work for. Um yeah, what to to almost take it as i i is it's done, and who am I to to speak out against them or to claim from them or because I feel like they owe uh who am I to ch say they owe me when I'm working for them? Um yeah, and the other one's completely gone. Completely gone. Um so yeah, I th I for me I feel a bit of resistance to be honest. Um and yeah, I could I could anticipate the fear of yeah, just staying away from the forms. And and and yeah, in and if I played that story out, I can I could also very quickly um understand and go to the to the anger, frustration, hurt, and isolation um that people must feel when when they're going through these things. Um yeah, that's what leaps out of me immediately.

Moral Injury, Authority, And Blame

SPEAKER_02 32:32

Okay, so yeah, I find that interesting. So if I turn this just into my personal experience at that moment while serving, I kind of didn't go through the anger-hate thing. And and the and actually the medical treatment I got from the Ministry of Defense was wonderful. And from German healthcare where I was injured and UK NHS, it was fantastic. My unit were really supportive whilst I was still serving. Um, and and the in-service bit generally, up until the last moment where it was like you're gonna get medically discharged, and then I just didn't exist on anyone's radar at all. It's only really afterwards that I've kind of like I feel um I feel let down on the emotional bit, like the in-service bit. It was interesting because I first went to Hedley Court in 2004, and I remember being there, and I was there for like three months, and they had this ward with like the sort of 30, 35 most seriously injured people, and it was um like Iraq had just been the year before. And there's so there was some it was and still ongoing, and there were some really like big injuries going through there. And and I was kind of on this ward, and I think one of the doctors said to me, There's a psychologist who comes in once a week for like half an hour if you want to chat to someone. This may be just a story I tell myself, and then maybe someone involved headly call back in 2004 going, that is complete rubbish. But there was something weird like that back then, and just the whole idea of like an emotional response to this change and loss just wasn't present. It was just like does this person on the surface on the surface feel like they are going to the gym and they are trying to strive to get better? And if they're doing those things, therefore they are okay. It was kind of nothing below what's going on below the surface. Um, and I find that really interesting. Because I imagine if I spoke to the professionals back then and I spoke to the doctors and the OTs and the physios, as individuals, they would all be like, there's totally going to be stuff that you need to talk about and work through. Yeah, that is completely understandable. But I don't remember that being part of the process in any way at all. Um, so for me, the emotional level back then from the official support structures I don't really feel was um was present. Um but for the individual who's serving or who has served um guidance regarding their emotional processes.

SPEAKER_01 35:14

Oh, I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 35:17

Well I'd I'd offer to to to help you out here slightly and and and share another reflection if you if that helps buy you a tiny bit of time or not, or we can move on, it's absolutely fine. But um is I I think then, whilst I've not been injured in service, like you alluded to right at the beginning, there's certain expectations we have of organizations to to help support and look after us. And I think there's there's a there's an interesting reflection here about our expectation and reality, um and and then to step away from it and to to not be able to express these expectations. And and yeah, I guess uh at some level uh it uh it could be uh a form of moral injury because we've not had that that followed on support. I'm fortunate enough, I don't feel like that that is my case at all. Um I think that is kind of the allude to the second point. Um, and if if I was to imagine myself yet from where I'm sat today with the knowledge I do, with the support that I do have, um, like like you, I've I've um sat in the the Saver Warrior cohort and and experienced those things, is to to reach out and ask for help. Um I think is probably one of my biggest things is not to try and do these heavy lifts alone. Yeah, yeah.

Systemic Flaws, Data, And Reform

A Plan To Convene Change-Makers

SPEAKER_02 36:43

I think that's you you are not alone. Yep. And that ties into again a sense of community or being seen or resources, yeah, connected. Because it's connective, and it's easy to say, well, yeah, but like reach out, but when I was in my wallows of despair, I just withdrew and I went into my cave and there and I wronged the world, and I wronged everyone, not everyone, lots of people that I met in my world I interacted with, and and then like I kind of found a certain defensiveness in like in sort of criticality, and I could wrong the others around me, and this sort of bitterness and frustration, and it was like unexpressed anger about some things. So the moral injury one I find really interesting in this. But I've listed I listened to some of your interviews of other people, and and um, and I find it a fascinating topic because it's sort of like if if I go like you you you spoke to um uh Rebecca Nicholson, Dr. Rebecca Nicholson, and she talked about three parts, and she always talks about legitimate authority, guilt and shame, and existential crisis. This is my prep for our chat, my main prep for our chat. And it whatever is that it's it's an interesting one because it's sort of like okay, legitimate authority. If you're injured in that moment of service, like your legitimate authority to me is like your if I continue with the military kind of example, you know, the Ministry of Defense is sort of your overarching boss, but in reality, for someone injured on the ground, it's like it's your buddies in your fire team, your section, it's the medical team who are going to rock up and help you in that next moment. It's the Kazafak, it's going to, oh God, I was going to give references to, I don't even know if we've got Bastion and Afghanistan. No, we're not in Afghanistan anymore, are we? I'm sorry out of date on this. Showing my age here. Um, but the that whole process and that structure is all the sort of the the sort of the clinical medical world. It's kind of like, okay, that's fine. But then when people have the moment to stop and pause and sort of consider this, and then to consider the thought that you just shared a moment ago about not challenging the organization you're working for? I think there's such tension here because you've got these people still serving, and then the Ministry of Defense like represents it as, oh, yeah, you can just go and you can download this form on our website. Actually, you can fill in the form on the website now, and uh and you can submit that, and that's all fine. That's all hunky-dory. But for me, if I went back to when I was serving, how is my boss going to respond to me if I'm kind of putting in a form saying, oh, that injury at work, I um I think I am I'm gonna claim for my leg injury and my PTSD or my mental health challenges. And then going through the process of claiming, it's then like, well, you've got to prove PTSD. So now you're into the whole like clinical diagnosis world, and that is challenging and long. And then AFCS has very prescriptive things in terms of short term conditions and long term ones. And I've got to be very wary here because I am super knowledgeable in war pension stuff and AFC. It's not my lived experience. I am not working in this day in, day out. And if you want to get please go and get legal advice if you're but it but it it is I I can sometimes make silly mistakes in terms of thinking one scheme works like the other. But the how is your boss gonna feel? Do they get sent the document saying, oh, they've your your kind of person serving you has put in this claim for this thing. Does this all seem reasonable? Are they part of that process? I don't think they are, but they could be. Is that gonna harm your service? Is that gonna harm your career progression? Because I think loads of people put this stuff off for as long as possible. But that also ties into if you saw some terrible things and you're you're struggling with your mental health and you go and see kind of the mental health team and nurses and doctors and clinical psychologists and psychotherapists, that would all strengthen your claim in the future, potentially, but it may weaken your career because you've got all of those red flags. We're not going to go send you off to some really stressful situation because you've had all of those problems. And so then we're kind of in this weird, murky world of your supporting, nurturing employer. You're they've then got this scheme which is meant to give you some kind of financial redress and support. I don't like it being used for the word compensation because it makes me think of like ambulance chasing law firms. And and it and I feel it's the military, when I served, has such strong principles about you don't turn your back on the military, you don't go against your brothers, you don't sue the military. It's like if you do that, it feels like you're kind of um going to get writ off by your peers and the system. And all of these murky tensions come up in that relationship. And I don't think people who have experienced that harm and loss in that moment are going to have processed these thoughts and feelings and emotions to the degree to which I or you may have done like 10, 20 years later, after some of these moments. And it's all going to be raw and it's going to come out in different ways. And so there's this sort of confusing overlap between the support structures available for serving personnel, which those personnel need at that moment, but it may also harm their service in other ways. And I don't think it's talked enough about. And so going back to like Rebecca's kind of um moral injury things, like legitimate authority, like the actions taken under trusted command emission. It's like, yeah, okay, I I my injury was because a captain sort of gave me an informal c an informal order, which I'm putting in, I'm inverted commas in the air here while talking to Ron. There's no such thing as an informal order, but it was kind of like the workplace environment extended to adventurous training, to jumping off a bridge, identifying risks. And he and I went and jumped off this bridge together, and it went wrong to for me. And and and for 20 years, I was really angry with that bloke. And then now I sit here. And this was a massive realization for me six months ago. It's like, wait, I was 24 when I got injured. He was probably 28, 29. Yeah, he was a captain, me as a second lieutenant. It was like, oh my god, he's a captain, amazing. But he was just like, he was just a kid, he was a slightly bigger kid than me. And yeah, maybe he made a small error of judgment, and I held that against him. And it's like the degree of compassion and love I feel for that bloke, because he must feel crap for the fact that he was related to a situation in which someone got seriously injured. I've never seen him since. I've never spoken to him again. And I feel like part of my healing and journey will be one day to reach out to that guy and to kind of go, hey, can we go for a cup of tea? Let's have a chat about life. I do not wrong you for any of the decisions that you made. If I was in your position as the captain and people asked me the same things, knowing what I knew back then, I would have made the same decision as you. I strongly suspect. And for me, going back again to my injury, the bravest decision for me wasn't jumping off a 70-foot-high bridge. It was standing on that edge of the bridge, holding onto the railing where I could feel every cell in my body saying, Don't do this. This is gonna go wrong. And I pushed myself through it because I felt expected to. I had members from my platoon who had only known me for a few weeks at that time standing next to me. I wanted to be brave and dynamic and all those kinds of things. And I pushed through all of that like awareness, maybe intuition of what was gonna happen in the future. And the braver thing for me would just be like, this is a stupid thing to do. I don't need to do this to prove myself to anyone. I'm gonna get off this bridge and let's go and go and do something else. And I didn't do that, and I would love to share that with this other bloke and go, yeah, I don't hold any blame or judgment against you and for what happened in that situation. And that's been one of the most profound. I can feel the sort of a wave of joy and sadness coming up in me here. And I'm talking fast and I'm impassioned and all of this. I can feel those things. But it's like, yeah, that was one of the most beautiful things of the last kind of six months was just when that struck me out of the blue. I wasn't expecting it. It wasn't something that I was looking to attain or to achieve. Oh, that person, I want to get to a stage of forgiveness for them or compassion for them. It just bubbled up. I put just there, I shouldn't have put just in that sentence. It bubbled up. And I'm happy that I was in a place where I was present enough to spot it. Because for much of my life, and I think in my twenties, those bubbles came up, and I was dashing around a million places, and the bubbles came up, I didn't catch it. I looked at other people having those bubbles of realization coming up, and I looked at them in awe, and I was probably and I quite a lot of the people were like our age, and it was sort of like, oh my god, they've done so much work. Oh, that's amazing. And I could feel myself wanting to be like the sponge. I want what they've got. But it wasn't a sort of, I want to emulate and learn from those. No, actually, no, it was. I was going to be self-critical back then. No, it was. I looked at them and I wanted to use that as a way of learning from them to step up and progress myself. But for some of the last kind of 20 years, it's been, I've been at times more stuck into the jealousy aspect. And it's like, oh, that person has got that. They don't deserve that. Like that's what happened when I got to my lowest point still serving. And I was, I was in the last year of service and I was doing a desk job in London, and it just wasn't what I'd like. I joined to join the infantry. I just wanted to have the most extreme infantry-based experiences in the military. And I kind of wangled my way technically into becoming a captain, into getting promoted to a lieutenant and a captain while still really seriously injured. I kind of danced through the hoops and I was like, I can do this actually, legally, which I didn't expect to happen. And then I saw my peers going off as junior captains, and they were doing some roles and the jealousy, oh, it was so like corrosive to me and to my relationships with them because it was like, oh, I'd be so much better at doing that. And I'd like, oh, and it was just, I just look back and I cringe at that sort of cringe at those feelings back then. Whilst today I would hope I would just look at what they've achieved that moment and just be like, wow. Like actually, what one of the people I served with back in 1997, he's just been made a major general and he's just got a CBE in the New Year's honours, and it's just like well done, mate. That's great. I'm so happy for you. And there's a little part of my ego, which is like, oh god, what have I done in my life to not be at that stage myself? And that's okay, I am okay. So I find um yeah, these aspects of the relationship between the serving and the organization really interesting. And I think the moral injury model of which I don't know very much about, okay, yeah, I I I think there's a nuance here because kind of after my injury, the the way in which I felt let down in terms of the decision making by the Ministry of Defence and their pensions team, their ill health pensions teams, I should say. I I I'm looking at these notes. It's kind of like that I didn't feel any guilt and shame for how I was acting in that time. I couldn't have done anything differently. Like my injury was my injury, I got medically discharged, that's all fine, that's done and dusted. And now I am taking this information and I'm presenting it to you in a clearly represented way, which to me, anyone acting reasonably in a sort of sane and logical manner would go logically that there's some truth behind what's being said here. Maybe we should look into this a bit. And it felt, and it still feels, as though the system struggles to have the capacity to step in to any kind of a dialogue with nuance to do with decision-making processes. Um, and I'm still experiencing that like in the last year. Like this is a present thing for me right now, until it got to a tribunal, and then there's a there's a bit more in the prep for that. There's this the first start of a bit of a dialogue, but that's only when the lawyers get involved. But part of the whole AFCS and the war pension thing is this sort of strange tension in the system where they're there's support structures to help people who have been harmed on duty. They're not a fault-based system. It's not saying the Ministry of Defence screwed up, which led to your injury. It's just saying you were serving on duty and you got harmed. And so there's a legal distinction there. Like if you can, so for me, jumping off my bridge, the system and the processes that led up to my injury meant that I was entitled to a war pension and an ill health pension. And because a fault was made in the system, I could also go to a court and I could claim civil damages and they're separate entities, like legally. But the people making the decisions for the Ministry of Defence are these people referred to as decision makers, and they follow for me under the war pension, they follow the advice of their medical advisors. And these people, they kind of have legal training of medical matters, but as soon as you get into talking about the legal aspect of this and other cases, it just seems like there's this brick wall. And so for me, the the aspect of guilt and shame, I can't have done anything differently in the 20 years of challenges I've had on this. And when I look at other people going through this process, I don't see them experiencing guilt and shame in terms of how they're acting. Maybe in the future they would reflect and maybe they'll feel a bit of guilt for being so angry and maybe getting slightly sort of um downplayed in terms of the significance when they submit a sort of a complaint or something like that. And they could kind of go, do you know what? I could have presented those things differently. But in the moment that just then there's a different aspect of the moral injury bit because I just feel so let down. I feel sadness, and it's kind of rocked my confidence in the British state, and I can tie this into background and class and education and lots of things to do with my history, but it's just like I have a fundamental belief that ultimately the right things are gonna be done. And sadly, I feel that isn't represented in action. I got really dark and negative. I quit all that back.

Identity, Purpose, And Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 52:00

No, uh, it's all good. And and and I'm gonna take you back quite a few minutes and just say, yeah, thanks for for sharing that that that moment of forgiveness and and joy and lightness. I definitely felt that as well. And whilst whilst if I get take back even further, there's no specific moment that was um obvious for you, it's definitely present with you. Um yeah, I guess it I guess it's a process of a continual reflection and and um to be able to experience that that letting go and the blame and and and the letting go of that corrosive anger. And it it it it all this follows on then to a question which maybe for for myself I can bring forward next time is is one of the bigger ones, is it so if individuals are going through these challenges, uh given the time that it takes, the potential that they are in a certain mindset where they are um yeah, isolating from the word, how how do we help individuals in terms of their resilience and being able to show up and say, yes, this this was done, but it's not all of who I am without playing into the the victim or the quest or or or any other behavior form that is is damaging to them or their health or their claim.

SPEAKER_02 53:22

Yeah, and and I I think I think again the system and the way in which it works is a challenge with that because part of me wants to go, what is how how can we, how quickly can we help them accept what's happened? How can how quickly can we accept and help individuals in that situation kind of go, okay, that thing happened, like right now, I'm okay. Like may maybe I've got some kind of I've got some twisted memories and I and my body isn't working quite like it was. But those risks and the harm that happened to me back then, that's not in my present life right now. But the more that they do that, the more they're gonna weaken their claim for this compensation payment. Exactly. And and this and the system and the process, it kind of holds you in this place of I was gonna say perpetual. I don't want to say perpetual. It it draws out this thing, this these continuing to feel the lived harm. And and this isn't just a military thing, this isn't just a police or fire brigade or ambulance service, it's it's a talk work and pensions, it's people having their personal independence payment reviews, and it's um and the same thing there. It's like every three years I have to explain talking work and pensions, it's like, yeah, I'm still paralyzed below the knees, yeah. My bladder still doesn't work, yeah, I have still have all of these other problems that hasn't changed. I can take you to any spinal doctor in the country and they will say, This is never going to change. Therefore, why am I having these reviews every three years? And it's like, oh, okay. So there's some sort of procedural aspect of here where we are wasting time and effort socially. And so I find it interesting the change from the war pension scheme to the AFCS one, because the AFCS scheme, I think it is an improvement on the war pension scheme. Like if you so I've I've only spoken to one person who was really happy, AFCS. He was injured May 2005. So the scheme had been running for about a month. He was he's something happened in Iraq, he put in his claim, he got a big payout, like more than 100 grand. Um, and he left the military, he used that money to buy a house, he's gone, just had a whole new career, and he was like, everything was just perfect. He was like, it was done, dusted, quick, happy with the award. He's the only one out of like two, three hundred people I've spoken to over the years about these matters, all of the rest, and okay, fine, this is just my experience and it's anecdotal and all those things, show the majority of people are dissatisfied with their decision. Um, and and I suppose a danger for me in all of this is when I feel when I start getting like all right, valid, and justified about wronging the system, I don't want to do that. I want to come from a place of how can I help make the system better? How can I help people be better informed right now to kind of go, well, this legal case demonstrated this aspect which relates to my case. And I would hope that someone can do that, and then a Ministry of Defence goes, Oh, yeah, that's a good point. We hadn't thought of that. Yeah, okay, fine. Yeah, great, we accept that logic. But just in practice, it doesn't work like that. And and I thought, yeah, I find that sad. I find that sad. So before we chatted, I said I was going to throw some numbers into this, and I realized I haven't thrown any numbers into this. And and and if I just set back a moment, so last year in March, what was it? More than 120,000 people are putting claims onto AFCS. And you're like, okay, and about a third of those are rejected. And you're like, okay, but and and I'm like, okay, maybe that's right. Maybe those are the right decisions. But if we look at the people most seriously harmed on duty who are getting these high levels of awards, that third of claims rejected suddenly goes up to two-thirds of their claims are incorrectly low initially. So there seems to be a skewing that the more significant the award, the more likelihood there is that it's not going to be the correct decision made initially. And these are the people who are going to be most likely to struggle with their mental health and their support structures and how they represent the challenges. So to me, there's something in this broader than just flaws in the system. There's something. I just want a giant spotlight. I want a giant spotlight that can kind of shine over the whole thing and then it can just go super focused on individual bits, right? This bit, what's going on there, this bit, what's going on there, this bit, and then tie that all together. And then your average jock who gets injured today is like, that was a really nice experience. It helped me. I got the support I needed. I could go and see mental health teams to go and get that support. The medical care was good. I got a fair decision that didn't take as long as I expected. And they told me before I started the process that there may be some rocky bumps in this. This may not all go smoothly, but we'll try and make it as quick and efficient as we can.

SPEAKER_00 58:26

That would be great. I'd love that. The word that jumps out at me is sutra.

SPEAKER_02 58:33

Thank you, Ron. Yes. Love that word. Tighten a bit, it is. It's it's tying, it's weaving together all these different bits, and it's not rocket science. That's the thing here.

SPEAKER_00 58:43

So if if we just stay on with that a second, what what might be the first step with that, Charlie, if we were to maybe wave a magic wand or pull resources or or people together towards doing something and shining that spotlight?

SPEAKER_01 59:04

Oh, okay. Yeah, good question. I should have prepared for this one, so that's supposedly what you're gonna learn.

SPEAKER_00 59:10

I'm quite good at this, mate, so no, you wouldn't have you wouldn't have anticipated that. And hey No! Hey, here's the thing: it doesn't have to be right, you can make it up and it can change, but that as you know from our conversations, there's a level of awareness that will come whatever the answer is.

SPEAKER_02 59:28

So for me, a big part of this is not wronging any party involved in this. Because there are lots of organizations doing great stuff in this. I would love to set up a conversation with the largest military sort of service support charities in the UK. And there's probably like ten, fifteen of the really big ones. And to get the leads of their teams working in this area, and and the charity by far working this most is the Royal Bridge Legion. But but from multiple charities to get their lead on these topics into a room with I don't know with who. Maybe just initially those people into a room. And then why would I be there? Because I'm not one of those people, but I could be the facilitator. Amen. To go, what are what are your experiences right now? What are the well, not your experiences, what the experiences of those people putting in claims today? Like keep it really fresh. What is going on today for the person putting in their initial claim right now? And then we can get onto the historic stuff in time. But right now, and what are the challenges and the hiccups? And I think if someone was listening to this episode, they would probably go, well, that's the kind of thing that Copsio does, or the British Legion has the sort of the lead on this. And maybe that's true, but I think there's a broader conversation to have in this. And then a second stage would be people initially who are still serving and they've been harmed on duty, is to get is to go and get in touch with a reputable law firm and just have a chat to them, which will be free, the initial chat, because the the beauty and the joy of a law firm is not only that anecdotally there's a high chance of success, you're going to have to pay for that success. They take a percentage cut, but they take that emotional charge off. They've got the expertise, they've got the contacts, they know how this system works. And even if it's just the initial conversation for them to go, yes, we think you've got a more than 50% chance of winning, that that just can give you the extra confidence to go ahead with submitting a claim because it is emotionally demanding. And if support structures aren't in place, um it can really give you a whole extra level of knockdown in how you're managing things, particularly as that process goes on and evidence comes up, and then you're submitting. Well, I in the past have submitted evidence, and it's like, no, that's not that's not okay. That that evidence isn't helpful. It's like that evidence is critical, you're just not seeing why it's important. Um, so yeah, so a first step, okay, right now I'm gonna make this a smart target. In the next six months, I will reach out to I don't know, service charities in the UK with more than three million pounds in the bank and invite them to a meeting in London with their lead on AFCS and war pension scheme decisions to have an open those individuals and me as a facilitator discussion about what's working and what isn't working well on the scheme. Um and I will see what happens from there.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:43

Love it. Let me know when it happens. And uh I was not expecting to be making it.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:51

But that feels good because I've got loads of other ideas for this year, which at the moment I'm thinking about and I'm not sharing. But that would be really great. Um because it is, it's about starting a it's about starting a discussion. And then a second stage would be to have a discussion with some of the decision makers at the Ministry of Defense, and then another stage will be talking to the leading law firms working in this area, and then tying together their different experiences and their expectations and their demands and their challenges. Like I've spoken to the person who runs the department that I am, I'm just gonna I am still angry with, even though I'm being compassionate, there is still some anger towards the Veterans Utah UK department at Norcross near Blackpool. Like, and and I've spoken to their senior people who know my case and they've been making decisions to do with my case, and it's they're all just people and they're doing their job as best they can with the resources they've got available, and but some of the processes, and there is a willingness to change and to improve things. And I see that they have improved things, and I kind of and I praise them for that, but there's still a lot of work that can be done. Um, and then there's other organizations linked to this, like Forces in Mind Trust, who do like amazing research to do with these topics, and there's aspects to do with their involvement in researching and guiding from an academic point of view, and how do other countries do support things in these ways? Um yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna need to listen to this again to write down what that smart goes.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:26

Listen to it, thank you. Charlie, um yeah, as we start to wrap this up, is it is there anything you that we've not talked about that you'd like to mention?

SPEAKER_02 1:04:38

It's interesting because there were things I said to myself before chatting today, I was like, oh, I really need to talk about that point and that point and that thing. And it's reflecting on it now, it was kind of me drawing myself into the story of why why did I serve and why has my service actually been much more about my post-discharge experiences than my in-service experiences? And and and I find it really fascinating. Like a psychologist listening to this would kind of feel I'm a bit of a cliche from how I'm going to describe this. But I I finished my training and then I was injured so soon after starting off my career, I never got to the stage of like my platoon calling me boss or whatever it may have been. It was like I never got to the stage of proving myself, and I was kind of on the sick, and then I was doing these desk jobs, and they weren't like proper military jobs. And then I left, and then I kind of went on this journey of discovery and challenge and re-finding myself and my relationship to my world around me on a very base level. It's like, okay, what is it to be someone with a disability? What is it to be a man and interact with other men? What is it to be a man and interact with women? Um, what is my purpose and role in society? And and then sort of tested different things over the last 20 years, and then I find myself in Devon with this really grounded life of land and woodland and in nature. But through that groundedness over the last five years, I felt I have the structure through my marriage and having kids to step up and to support others and to kind of recognize my strengths and skills and my experiences have value to others, which I hadn't clocked for the first 15 years of this post-discharge experience. And then now I'm kind of sort of ready with this loosening and this release of this judgment of others and feeling compassionate for the system. I feel I can now take that five years of gritty helping others with their individual battles and now slightly step out of that, a bit like kind of being the person sort of fighting through the thicket on the ground. I'm now like trying to go up to the eagle's view up above, and I'm looking at sort of the maze. Oh, I love my maze is. I'm looking at the maze and I'm trying to weave in the suture. Well, it's not quite a sutra's example, but I'm trying to help people spot the path and the process that they can walk and flow through with greatest ease for themselves. And I feel really excited about that. And that's literally that last aspect there is something that literally only struck me like kind of two days ago after analysing a dream. And it's sort of like yeah, that I am part of the work right now is me still I'm still trying to heal and fix and save others, that's still there, and I'm still I still want to have clarity that at this moment for the last year my main purpose and path has been my own healing. How can I get to a full stage of acceptance? That little bit of anger I just expressed with this MOD department. How can I help myself release that last bit that's still there? And and I I yeah, I feel I feel I have value and purpose in this field to help others, and that feels yeah, exciting. But I still feel part of it is because I'm still trying to prove my military career wasn't as long as it should have been, or I didn't do the things I was capable to, and there's still a bit of bitterness on that, which I'm really surprised to hear myself said because I thought that was all sorted with dealt with.

Gratitude And Closing Reflections

SPEAKER_00 1:08:47

Brilliant, mate. Well, Charlie, thank thanks for taking the time to talk with me today, mate, and thanks for expressing a bit about your story. Thanks for the incredible work and support that you provide for for others. Um thanks for your support and encouragement for me, mate. Um, I appreciate you, appreciate the work you do, and um yeah, I look forward to having another conversation soon.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:09

Thank you, Ron. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for the invitation. Thanks for your work, it's a beautiful thing to see. Lovely. Cheers, mate. Speak soon.