The Battle Between Social Media and Suicide with Matthew Mattera

Today, we have a truly remarkable guest: Matthew Mattera—a retired Naval officer, inspirational writer, and motivational speaker. Matthew's life has been profoundly shaped by personal tragedy; he has lost six family members to suicide, including his father and his 15-year-old daughter, Elizabeth.

In his memoir, Hope: My Journey of Love, Loss, and Faith, Matthew provides a raw and unflinching perspective on suicide and its ripple effects.

Together with his wife, Erica, Matthew established the Elizabeth Mattera Foundation in honor of their late daughter. The foundation's mission is to prevent suicide through training and workshops, delivering hope, saving lives, and ending suicide.

In this episode, Matthew shares his journey of love, loss, and faith, and discusses how individuals can curate their 'informational diet' to foster a more positive and hopeful mindset. He also explores the role of faith in navigating personal tragedies and his mission to help others.

Join us for an inspiring and thought-provoking conversation that underscores the importance of mental health advocacy and the power of hope.

We are two sports chiropractors, seeking knowledge from some of the best resources in the world of health. From our perspective, health is more than just “Crackin Backs” but a deep dive into physical, mental, and nutritional well-being philosophies.

Join us as we talk to some of the greatest minds and discover some of the most incredible gems you can use to maintain a higher level of health. Crackin Backs Podcast

Transcript

Dr. Spencer Baron: 0:00

On this episode of The cracking backs podcast, we welcome Matthew Matera, a man whose journey through unimaginable loss has fueled a powerful mission to combat suicide and be an advocate for mental health after losing six family members, including his father and daughter, Matthew shares the raw truths behind his book titled hope, my journey of love, loss and faith. Welcome to the show. Matthew Matera, I gotta tell you, man, I read some of your background, and I'm ready with goosebumps and tears in my eyes. How's that to start? Man, I this is definitely our shows are oriented around physical, nutritional and mental health, and this is going to, you know, really provide some mental health for those of us, especially kicking off the holiday, the new year. So I understand you grew up in Rhode Island and you served as a naval officer. You're retired now, and that was for two decades you did that you probably experienced a lot of diverse environments and experiences, and you know, I want to, I want to know how your upbringing in the military, you know, shaped you and your perspectives on resilience and hope, which is quite the theme to start with.

Matthew Mattera: 1:28

Yeah, well, first off, Gentlemen, thanks for having me. It's a pleasure. We've heard a lot about great things about the pod through a mutual friend of ours, so it's great to join you all and have a chance to be able to share and make this connection here. But so thanks for having me like, like you said, grew up in Rhode Island, born and raised in New England, and that the nation's smallest state for the folks in the audience, like Rhode Island. Where is that? Then the top left, top right hand corner, and it looks like a piece of lint on your map. That's probably Rhode Island. It's, you know, that is, that is the the ocean state, and which segues well into the fact that I joined the military, specifically the United States Navy. When I was 20 years old, I was on a journey to find myself, and at the age of 20, I said, Okay, I gotta get the heck out of here and find myself and be part of something bigger than myself. And so that was obviously my call to the recruiter. Joined the Navy and through there. You know, before that, there was a lot of things that transpired leading up to that pathway to joining the military, and then after, during my military career, there was certainly a lot of things that transpired as well, both professionally and more specifically, personally.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 2:38

Well, I'll tell you, man, you know, this is really, this is the hot button here. And a lot of people think that winter time is statistically the highest rate for suicide, yet it's actually springtime. And tragically, you've lost six family members in total, including father and daughter. I repeat father and daughter, and that's really close to home to suicide. Now, can you share how these these losses influenced your mission to combat suicide and advocate for mental health awareness?

Matthew Mattera: 3:13

Yeah, sure. So, like I said at the intro, I joined the military and I was 20 years old, born and raised in Rhode Island, and going back to 1984 August of 84 is when really that that personal journey of navigating the battlefield of suicide, it was when I lost my dad. I was six years old. He was wrestling with his own internal struggles, some mental health challenges that he was dealing with, and some substance abuse and other things that came with that. And on in August, night, late August, he was having a an alcohol episode, and he was saying some things and behaving in a way that was extremely unstable. And he went into the back room to go. My mom took him back there to kind of go, hopefully sleep it off. She walks back out into the main den, where I was sleeping on the couch, and as she was crossing the threshold from one room to the other, you heard a pop, and he fired the fatal shot, she ran in there. Told me, Don't get up. Don't come in. I don't know what she I mean, she obviously feared the worst, and in that she ran upstairs to get my grandparents, his his mom and dad. And you know, I'm just a little six year old boy. I'm like, What just happened to my dad? Now, I had seen some struggles with him up into that point, different episodes, but nothing like that. Walked in the room, found him laying on the floor with a self authentic gunshot wound when I was when I was six that paved the pathway because my mom was about a month pregnant with my with our little brother at the time, he know he never had the chance to meet our dad, fast forwarding through that, growing up in a single parent home, a lot of a lot of struggles that come with not having a father in the home, economic struggles, emotional behavior. Health issues, just a lot of the spiritual health issues, a lot. There was a lot going on there. Fortunately, we were connected with a lot of good people in our church community that was able to model for myself what right looked like. Even though I couldn't put my finger on it, when I was forwarding, I told you, I said, Okay, I gotta get the heck out of here. I'm 20 years old. Join the military, leave mom and little brother behind in Rhode Island and right, Rav, Rav, rat left basic training, went into my technical school, met a girl who would later be my future wife. We dated for a very short amount of time, got married, fell in love. She's from Texas, and so I fell in love with this, this Latina girl from Texas, and I'm like, she just, just stole my heart. And we've been married this, matter of fact, this February be 26 years. So it's been, you know, it's, we're still, still going hard at it, at any event. So we, she, she, like I said, she was in the Navy at the time to found out we were going to have our oldest daughter, our first child. And she said, Hey, one of us, one of us needs to stay in and one of us needs to get out. We can't. Both of us can't do this and raise a baby at the same time. Well, Uncle Sam and God and their infinite wisdom said, Well, you get to stay in, Matt Erica, you get to get out. So she's like, good because he can have this navy thing. I'm done with it. So we so I was, and I was, I was just GI Joe all the way and like, I want to do this. I want to stay in and continue to serve my country. And still, this journey of finding myself, and I it was the military became like a father figure for me in a lot of ways. So I didn't want to leave that. Traveled overseas, got stationed in Guam, got stationed in, you know, in Japan. And while I was stationed in Japan, on board a warship there, I received an American Red Cross message. That is the military's way of sending a notification to the to the service member that some type of emergency has happened with the immediate family. And it was an am cross message letting me know that my little brother had passed away. He had died from an overdose, alcohol poisoning, specifically. And so that was really certainly a crisis of faith for me. I was mad at God, to be sure. I said, You know what I'll call you if I need you. Other than that, leave me alone. Because first my dad, now my little brother, I'm all alone. We buried him, my little brother, in the same cemetery, just yards away from our dad. So at the cemetery with my Cracker Jack dress blues on, if you've seen any of the movies with the sailors and the dress blues and the Cracker Jack blues, and I don't know what else to do, but just render a salute as they lowered his casket into the ground. Just tears have I had all the rest of our family, my uncles, my cousins and all that there, and was also obviously my wife and my our little girl, Elizabeth, who was four years old at the time, had just turned four from there. There was certain, like I said, there was certainly a, definitely a challenge in my in managing that grief, that pain, that anger. I poured myself into work a lot. I was a an e5 at the time, so second class petty officer for the Navy, guys, Sergeant, if you're in the in the if you're in the army, the Marine Corps. So, you know, kind of not, not quite senior enlisted, but seeing, you know, mid grade enlisted, just enough responsibility to have a leadership role. But you still, you still, you know, boots on the deck, doing the work with the rest of the with the rest of the sailors. And so I just poured myself into work, and I said, Well, I'm an e5 I'll just, you know, I'll be the best second class Patty officer I can be at work and at home. I'm dealing with things internally, in my heart and mind. It certainly took a toll on our family and our relationship. I had a lot of dreams about my brother after he passed away, and I didn't I didn't manage it well. That was in 2004 moving forward a little bit, 2007 at this point. Now, we're stationed in Hawaii, and where we our second daughter is on the way, and I get a phone call. I'm outside watching the Jeep, typical Hawaiian afternoon. Sun's out. It's it's gorgeous. And I got the Jeep out the tops down, and I'm washing it, and my wife comes out. She says, Hey, your cousin's on the phone. And I said, oh yeah. And she told me, he doesn't say it sounds like something's wrong. I get the phone my cousin, and he told me that his sister had taken her own life. And so I had to fly back out of once again, take emergency leave, fly out of Rhode Island. Excuse me. Fly to Hawaii. Go back to Rhode Island and bury the cousin, next to my brother, next to the dad, my dad and so at that point, it was really one of those things like, all right, God, I was mad at you before. Now I really don't know what's going on. You're over there, I'm over here. We'll figure this thing out eventually. At some points. Remember, I grew up in church, and faith has been very big into as a as a powerful catalyst for healing in my personal journey. But I just didn't know how to manage that, that whole God crisis type of thing and all this is happening. So what did I do? Just pour myself into work again. Just poured myself in so. Picked up a couple of promotions along the way, because I was a damn good sailor. And I did. I was, you know, sail the year, sale the quarter, always, always Johnny on the spot, do what I was told to do, and then some help. Different leadership positions throughout the different commands I was stationed at. By the time of 2010 came around. It was time for us to head back to the East Coast. I was going to get orders to get back to the ship. I'm at this point now, but promoted the chief petty officer. So that's e7 and so now I'm Senior Enlisted now at this point, and I'm I'm a senior enlisted sailor, leading sailors, and head back to the United States, back to the east coast the United States. Get on board a warship again, someone doing my second warship now, and I'm ready to go. I'm chomping at the bit. I'm excited to get back out to the fleet. Sailors belong in ships, and ships belong at sea. That's like way God meant it to be. And so I was excited. Packed my sea bag, got ready to go, met the ship in a and they were already in operation. So I got the family settled in Norfolk, Virginia. From there, I said, Hey, honey, I gotta catch the ship. I flew in country, got on board, checked in, started getting spun up with the and finding my feet, with all the things related to my job, from 2010 to 2012 lot of, lot of things were going on the my base, my wife's, you know, for all intents and purposes, she's, she's a navy wife. She's raising the kids and older the home front. Now, while I'm gone, gone, gone, constantly. We had a major deployment in 2012 and on that deployment, I got re linked up with kind of my faith, and there was some gentlemen on board the ship, several of which I'm in very close contact to this day, and got on board the ship, and while on operations in 2012 our major deployment, linked up with a gentleman, a very good friend of mine, and we started having Bible studies and praying together. And I read him in on my personal journey, my personal story. Meanwhile, in the background, I'm getting emails from home that our daughter, Elizabeth is struggling with things in a lot of challenges. And whenever I had the opportunity, if I could get a clear line off the ship to call back home, I was able to do that just real quick, check in everything, okay, and my wife would read me in on some of the challenges, and I would talk to my daughter for a little bit just to try to reassure her that I'll be home soon, and just try to do, do the best you can to cooperate with mom and everything's going to be okay while in that deployment, all that stuff going on in the background, on the home front a I got another am cross. It was actually an email at first, and then in am cross an email from the same cousin who lost his sister. This is all my dad's side of the family. He emailed me said, Hey, Maddie, I have some bad news, an uncle of ours, and I won't say his name. I used a I used a alias of the book when I described my uncle. But this is an uncle that was very, very close to he was a larger than life figure, if, if you were to watch any of the TV shows like sopranos or something like that, he was like this larger life character, very, very much into all things Italian. And he just had this charisma about him. He was a he was a character, for sure, but he struggled with a lot of the same things my dad did. As a matter of fact, it was his gun that my dad had used back in 1984 and so when I lost my brother, Ben, in 2004 this uncle and I got very, very close, because I lost a brother, he lost a brother. It was this kind of this, this synchronicity, where we just started gravitating towards each other. And he gave me a crash course and all things about my dad when I was in Rhode Island for my brother passing away, and he took me to the old neighborhoods where they grew up at and showed me, this is where your dad grew up, and this is what we used to do growing up. So I got a crash course and reuniting with my father's memory during that time. And so when I got the email about my uncle, our uncle passing away, that really hit me hard. He had taken his own life, and so he was like, again, wrestling with a lot of things. And I was very surprised. I was shocked, because in my mind, he was the last person I would ever expect, because the character that he just demonstrated, that strength, that he would make, that that fatal choice. But he did uniquely, though, because I was so strategically positioned with those good men on board the ship, brothers in arms, but also brothers in faith. They were able to support me all the way up to the executive officers. Were able to make sure that I got off the ship. And now we're in theater, in country, overseas, places that we're seeing in the news all the time. And they flew me out off the ship into a an operating base. From that operating base, I headed back back stateside. I had obviously called my wife ahead of time, let her know what happened. She was stunned. She's like, Oh my gosh, not your uncle too. Like, what is going on? I said, I know, baby, but I'm coming home. They told me I could take as much time as I need, considering the history in our family. Take as much. Time as I need to do what I gotta do. So went home and buried an uncle next to a cousin, next to my brother next to my dad in the same cemetery. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention this, though, that in in going back to 2004 real quick on the heels of losing my little brother, which was in March of 2004 in September of 2004 I got a phone call that an uncle on my mom's side, an Army veteran, had taken his own life, so he's buried in a veteran cemetery in Maryland. So I had all this stuff going on, right? All these family members, one uncle my mom's side, who I was also very close to, a cousin who I wasn't very like. I didn't grow up with her, but it's still part of the family. And I saw the casket, I saw the damage that inflicted on my dad's side of the family. I'm very close to her brother, who's the cousin that called me or emailed me those two times, once for a sister or once for our uncle. I'm very close to him. Matter of fact, we're on the phone last Friday, just for, like, I don't know, two hours, just unpacking stuff. So all this stuff's going on. I'm on emergency leave. It's 2012 just lost another family member to suicide, a very an uncle I'm very close to, but I have my faith, and I have people on the ship that are back, still doing operations that are I know they're praying for me. I know they're supporting us. But while in that time on emergency leave in 2012 gentlemen, I had got a chance to see firsthand what my wife had been telling me that our oldest daughter was wrestling with. It was I was gone. I was on emergency leave for about 30 days, and I saw firsthand that the the the academic struggle she was having, the behavioral health struggle. She was having the mental health struggles as well as the spiritual health struggles. And I didn't have the the understanding to really compartmentalize it all and parse it all out. I just knew something was wrong. And I told my wife say, Look, I have to go back to the ship. I need to fly back, back overseas, go back in operations and continue the nation's business, but I'll be home. I don't know when we were supposed to come home, in November of 2012 we ended up getting extended all the way through Thanksgiving. You almost almost missed Christmas, but that deployment ended. I came back home, reunited my family, probably about a week before Christmas, big homecoming, and I was good to be back with my with my wife, and both our both our daughters at the time. It wasn't until probably early 2013 was we started to really see firsthand, viscerally, very graphically of things that our daughter had been wrestling with. Elizabeth, she was involved in therapy. We had more medications than than a pharmacy because all the stuff they were given her. And I couldn't figure it all out, because I'm still trying. You know, I'm still active duty at the time, and I'm focused on my job. Erica, she's doesn't know what's going on with this stuff. We just see our little girl disappearing. But girl disappearing before our eyes slowly. She had her first hospital stay, I want to say, in February of of 2013 and that was scary. That was the result of a major emotional outburst, a major, I want to say, a mental, spiritual breakdown, and she ended up going to the hospital inpatient for about for about a week. And it was far away. We lived in on the just, just south of the Virginia, North Carolina State Line, and over in the kind of near the Chesapeake area. But in North Carolina, the hospital that they put her in was all the way in Raleigh, which is, I want to say, probably a two hour drive. So that was scary too. Like, here's our little girl. She's going to be gone two hours away in a place that we don't know, as a state run facility. Had no understanding of, no background with this or what this facility was, and she was there, like I said, there for about a week after that, she came home and we resumed the regimen of therapy and medication and all the stuff that comes with that seemed to kind of taper off for a little bit. And there was another flare up. There was another flare up in in that, want to say, July, late June, early July, of that of 2014 and once again, in a hospital stay, we kind of had a little bit better understanding of what to do in that particular crisis. We called her therapist. Therapist got her a room at a local facility that was a lot closer with where we lived at but it was still, still breaks you hard. You know, I still think back to from time to time, I remember going to visit her while she was in that facility, and see her coming out, and they're just having to say goodbye, and she goes back in and they she's because they're going to continue treatment and stuff like that. Lot of upheaval, a lot of challenging, my faith, one two, everything I understood about human behavior, I was not in a role yet where I worked in the cognitive domain, hearts and minds, that was later in my career. I. But, but I've always been in communications, more tactical level communication, so what does that mean? Troubleshooting, right? Okay, let's troubleshoot this. Let's figure out why this is not working. Fast forwarding again, from from, from late June, early July. She got out of the facility. After about a week, everything seemed to taper off. Everything seemed to be okay, and I started connecting dots with things that were going on in social media, interactions with her peers, the music she was listening to, but I didn't have language for it yet. I didn't quite understand what this thing is or or coalescing of things elements aren't leading to that. In September of 2014 she went in for another hospital stay. She tried to, she tried to stab herself, try to, it was, it was pretty bad, pretty bad episode. So we called the hospital right away, assuming we called the therapist right away. We then said, Take her to the ER, er er. Checked her in. She did another about a week 10, day stay an inpatient again. Nothing seemed to be getting better either. It just seemed to kind of, you know, peaks and valleys, peaks and valleys and every incident was getting worse. She got out of the hospital that September and brought it back home and and then, fast forwarding, in May of 2015 she had just come off a breakup with with one of her classmates that was a boy at school. They became involved, intimately involved, and they broke up. And it was Mother's Day weekend. I remember taking the family out to go go to the zoo, and then go to go watch a movie. And after that, we came back home, there was a little bit of a meltdown at home, and I told her, I say, Look, this is Mother's Day. We gotta focus on mom right now. This is, this is a big deal. Let's, let's concentrate on that. And but I remember looking at her as I'm talking to her, and she's looking and I could just, it's like she wasn't even there anymore. It's, it was a look that I had seen before, and I write about this in my book. As a matter of fact, I saw the same look in my father's eyes when, when him and I spent time together about a day or two before he made the fatal decision to take his life. I say all that because in two days later, three days later. So Tuesday, Tuesday May 12, 2015 I got home from work early. My chain of command was very supportive of my family, and I knew the challenges we were dealing with. I'm in a new role now. I'm back on short duty. I'm on the ship anymore, and she got off the school bus. I'm cutting the grass. We had about an acre of land, so I'm on my green rider mower, cutting the grass. See the school bus come up. She gets off the bus. I waved Hi at her. She waved Hi at me. I checked my watch to see how much more time I had left before we had to go pick up her sister from from from AFSA school care. Her sister now, our daughter Isabella. She was seven years old at the time, and mom was at work over Virginia Beach, working at a local law firm there. I figured, well, I got enough time to finish up this. One side of the yard is Elizabeth and I will pack up, go pick up her sister, go get some cheeseburgers, come home, and then Mom, mom can just take care of mom and do what she's got to do after work. So I finished cutting the grass. Little did I know that when I waved higher at her, at Elizabeth, that that was gonna be the last time I saw her on this side of eternity. I had put the put the rider mower into the garage, throttled it down, turned it off, walked into the house and was looking for and I said, Hey, we gotta go, kid, we gotta go get go pick up your sister Isabella, and head out. So where are you go go upstairs, go downstairs, go back outside, go back into the house, go into her room, go into the bathroom, go back in the garage. And I started thinking to myself, well, maybe, maybe she ran off. She had done that before. And when I say ran off like ran off into the woods, and try to process whatever she was processing. She wasn't outside. I walk up back outside again. Look down the road. I saw some kids, her friends, playing, other teenagers that all went to the same high school. I saw them playing. I didn't see them her in the group. Walk back to the front door, and when I walked back to the front door, I noticed my I walked back to my bedroom, look back in my bedroom again, and I noticed the master bedroom door was open, the closet door was open, and the light was on. And that kind of struck me, like, that's weird. Why is that? And because I had, when I came home, I had, you know, taken my uniform off, hung it up, turn the light off, close the door, walked outside, what as I walked in, and I looked so I looked at the closet, and I looked down, and I saw her on the floor, face down, and I'm talking to her, not knowing that she's already gone. And I'm like, Hey, Elizabeth, we gotta go. We gotta go. What's going on, and we gotta go pick up your sister. And no response. So I kind of paused there for a second, looked around and I realized. The closet. It looked like a bomb went off of there. Clothes were everywhere. Things were torn apart. And I thought to myself, well, she probably tried to hurt herself. She got tried to hurt herself before in the past. And I said, maybe try to hurt herself again. Was she looking for medication? What's what's going on here? As I walked up to her, and I leaned over, I saw that she had a Bible laying next to her, and it looked like somebody had dipped their hand in red paint and kind of went like that to the pages. And so that's when I knew something was wrong. I rolled her over, and when I rolled her over, she had, she had taken her own life the same way my dad took his whole life. I found it the same exact way, self, authentic, gunshot wound and you when you serve in the military, as long as I chair at the time. At that point, I've been in 15 years, multiple deployments. You know, when it's not good, I've grabbed my phone. I said, you know, I don't know how I had the presence of mind to do this. Grab my phone, call 911, just tell them, get over here. Now. My baby just shot herself. Like, get all get here right now. My little girl just shot herself. Get I don't want to. And I'm like, don't leave me alone. Get somebody here. Like, right now I'm on the whole time. I'm trying to compartmentalize, like, what I'm seeing at the same time I'm trying to, like, I'm vacillated between, okay, triage, combat triage to I'm a father. I'm looking at, I'm looking at my daughter. That was, that was tough. That was real difficult. I'll pause there for a little bit. I've said a lot, probably just that you probably processing. But I don't know if there's anything you want to, want to unpack there or or before I kind of proceed forward. No,

Dr. Spencer Baron: 26:39

keep going, back. I don't think I can say much right after that, but go ahead, keep going.

Matthew Mattera: 26:46

Well, the first thing that ran through my mind was first my dad, then my little brother, all these other people, but this thing, this this Specter, this something that I didn't have words for, yet stole my kid. And between horrific grief and horror and just gut wrenching. The surge of adrenaline, all the stuff that comes into in the middle of a crisis is surging, surging right? So my stomach's in knots. Now. I feel like I'm ready to throw up, like this is bad. I remember trying to do CPR on her. I remember a matter of fact, when I called 911, they said, Hey, can you check for vitals? And I'm like, lady, I just checked for vitals, just, but I'll do this again. So I'm checking for vitals. I remember when I when I had rolled her over and I saw the look on her face and the damage that that had been been inflicted. It's it was so hard not to make eye contact. Just just just terrible. I remember I pressed on just looking for vitals on her chest. I pressed her chest to feel like any kind of heartbeat, any kind of, any kind of breath, and the weight of my body shifted just enough that whatever air was left in her lungs came out. And that was what really just, maybe just, I think, I fell apart at that point, and I was just just the horror of it all. 911 showed up right away as matter of fact, when I was on the phone with the 911 operator, I told him, said, Hey, get deputy. And I told him who the deputy was, because we knew who this deputy was. He had been a responding deputy at the house that, I think, that January for for an episode, again, we had called 911 and this deputy came over come to find out he's actually and is in his in his off duty hours. He's a, at least, I don't know if he still is, but at the time, he was a youth pastor at a local fellowship, so he happened to be the respondent deputy in January. That kind of planted a seed of, hey, this, this is somebody here. I'm not alone. Can I said, yeah, get somebody over here now. Like, get like, right now. And, oh, by the way, get deputy so and so here. I don't know if he's on duty or not, but I need, I need somebody that knows our family and and I knew I knew because he's a believer, and I know he's a fellow, fellow Christian, and at that moment, I needed to feel God near me more than any time in my life. I needed that same God that was pushing away and pushing away like I'll call you if I need you. I need you now, dad. I need you right now. So he happened to be driving by the neighborhood, off duty to go to go run some errands. And as he he right, he happened to be driving right by our street when the EMF, when the 911 operator, called him, he turned his car around, did a win, and he came right to the house he sees in civilian clothes, and he's looking at me like, it just, I fell into his arms. I'm like, oh, man, it was, it was horrible. It was horrible. I in the in the the what seemed like, you know, minutes, the hours and minutes, time just slows down. It just dilates when you're in a crisis like that. At some point in time, I call my cousin, the same cousin that lot, you know, we he's this one, that one that called me about his sister. He's the same one that sent me an email while I was deployed, about our uncle. I called him up. I couldn't even, I couldn't even get the words out, but I think I mustered up just enough to say, Elizabeth's gone. She killed herself. I. Um, he knew what that meant. He knew what it meant to our family. And just like just just the punch to the face of what it did to us, I told him, said, I can't call anybody else take care of the rest of this for me. Just call whoever you need to call in the family. This is our family back in Rhode Island, because I knew that we're going to have to put another one right next to everybody else. And that just sucked. At the same time, my wife's still at work. Isabella still at school. I didn't get a chance to go pick her up. So all this, our neighbors rallied around. But we lived in a very small community. Very best way I could describe a gentleman was something like out of Mayberry. If anybody to take it back, anybody in the audience that may have ever watched Andy Griffith, very old show. But that Mayberry type of environment, small town. Everybody knew, everybody churches in every corner. Just good, good people and our neighbors very much the same way. One of our neighbors is a firefighter in Chesapeake. He came over. He's able to, kind of proverbially put his firefighters hat on, EMS hat on, and go in and help triage the scene. Our other neighbor, another firefighter, former 82nd airborne combat veteran. We had talked many, many hours over a campfire before he came in. He came over. You know, everybody just rallied around. But the person that wasn't there was my wife, because she was on her way home from work, and I remember somebody asked me. Said, Hey, have you called your wife yet? I said, No, I haven't told her anything. And they said, Well, don't call her yet. Wait till she gets here. The I remember my wife's car coming down the road, and she sees the EM, she sees the ambulance, she sees the coroner's land. She sees the cop cars all that, right? She's wondering what is going on and what was there an accident? You know? Did Matt get hurt? Did Isabella get her? Did Elizabeth get hurt? She gets out of the car and is walking up to the house, and my our deputy friend said, Hey, Matt, you need to go talk, talk to her. And I'm walking up, and I've got to give a mother the worst news, the mother of my babies, the worst news possible, that her baby's not here anymore, and and I had just witnessed seeing the aftermath of it, and I'm processing all that, and I've just got to, Okay, I gotta put that aside now and go into husband mode. So I walk up to walk up, and I and she's looking at me and like, what's going on? And I couldn't get the words out. And so my deputy friend, he he told her what happened, and I'll tell you what guys, the sound of a mother that a mother makes when she screams out, oh my God. You know when she screams out the loss of her baby, that's something that will haunt you to this day, it's haunting. And so having to hold my wife up and struggling with that I couldn't protect my oldest daughter is all the things going through my head, the things I've had to navigate through since then. Couldn't protect my oldest daughter, and all the through all the hospital visits and whatever thing that it was that was stealing her mind. I couldn't protect her from that. I couldn't protect my wife from from her having to be to bear up that same cross that I had to grow up with of losing because in her family, suicide didn't touch anybody. And now, now all the trauma and the casualty of the grief of a suicide now touched my wife, and it's not just anybody, but it's but it's her own child. And then, as a matter of fact, as I was breaking the news to her, as my as the as my deputy friend was breaking the news to her, and I'm holding Erica, they're taking Elizabeth out black bag on a gurney, taking her out to the taking her out to the to the coroner's van. And so that was that whole that whole afternoon is just one, one big blur. We We lived in a neighborhood, and our neighbors across the street who were somewhat familiar with the challenges our family had been wrestling with her husband was in the Coast Guard, so her and Erica would spend a lot of time talking, doing military wife talk, and we stayed at their house that night. We couldn't stay in the house because our neighbors, interestingly, in a small town like that, as tight as it is, what it doesn't have is resources. And then it was, there was no resources to triage the scene, meaning, got to replace the carpet. You have to replace the walls, things, things have been, you know, damaged because of, you know, the gunshot wound like that. So they got to take certain clothes out of there, and anything that has, anything, you know, remains on there, morbid stuff, guys, it's not pretty at all. And they said, Hey, don't go in the house. We're going to triage everything. We'll take care of it. They had some extra some extra carpet. They were able to lay down, and they took everything out to the backyard. I guess they burned it from what I what they told me, what else they're going to do with it, right, painted the walls. All this took place within like eight hours, and meanwhile, we're at my neighbor's house, just spending time with them when they're we're trying to compartmentalize. And that's when I called one of my navy friends, a good Navy brother of mine. He was one. He was the one that made connections with back in 2010 and we served together. I was a senior enlisted. He's already an officer at this point, and I called him up, and we spent a lot of time, and he knew the journey that our family and I have been. Going on when it came to the loss of not the hospital stays that Elizabeth had, I would call him up regularly for different incidents leading up to that point. And he also knew the family history as well. He was on the he was on the West Coast, and at the Naval Postgraduate School for academics, he's like, Matt, is there anything I could do for you? I said, Well, you know, Tim, just nothing right now, other than when you the next time you get some leave, come home, come visit. We need, we need, we need somebody to keep us company. He happened to be going to be coming home on leave or coming back to the states for leave, I think a month later. So we got a chance to spend some time together. We the next day, I called my grandmother up. She already had the news for my cousin. I called my grandmother up and she she had lost two sons, a grandson, a granddaughter, and now she's and she just lost a great granddaughter, my daughter. And I remember I called her on the phone, and what a the strongest woman I know, next to my wife, and she goes, Maddie, you poor baby, you poor boy. And I could hear the tears in her eyes, and I've been holding a lot in and then when I heard my grandmother say, Maddie, you poor boy, and she, I knew she we just, I just cried like, like, cried like a baby. I told her nanny, I'm coming home. She goes, Okay, what do you need for me? And said, if we can stay at your place, just and then sort this stuff out while we make final arrangements and all that. And she, of course, she said, Yes. Next person I call was her oldest son, my uncle who lost, remember, this is an uncle that had lost two brothers and a daughter and a nephew, and so we had all kind of eaten from the same sandwich of grief together because it's touched multiple generations. And I called him up, and I said, I won't say his name over the on the air. I use an alias in the book. But I said, Hey, we, if we can make final arrangements to just, let's, let's bury Elizabeth next to next to my brother, and next to everybody else that's just in a senseless situation, it would seem the only thing that makes sense. And so he did. He when I said, I don't have the bandwidth to pick out a casket. I don't have the bandwidth to pick out any of that stuff. If you could, if you could spearhead that with the local funeral home and all that, that'll free me up to take care of Isabella and Erica. So he's like, no problem, Maddie, I got you. So he took care of all that. The next thing that was difficult and all that as if it's not painful enough, is Isabella. This is going on now. It's the next day, and we have to tell her that her sister's not coming home. And so we're at our neighbor's house because we'd stayed there the night, right across the street, Isabella was playmates and classmates with her son, and so I called her inside. Said, Hey, Isabella, I need to your mom, and I need to tell you something. So the neighbors, they walked out of the room and gave us some time. And I tell you what, when I eat to this day, when my daughter and I, Isabella, who's now 16, we unpacked this from time to time, because it still, hurts. I tell her baby that, you know, I couldn't protect your big sister, I couldn't protect your mom from this stuff and and now I can't I can't protect you. I have to tell you what happened. And I told her, Elizabeth's not coming home. And she didn't know what that meant. At first, she goes, Did she leave? Did she move away? Did she did she run away? Did she in the hospital again? There's a little seven year old girl, right? She had seen a lot already at this point, and that's when I told her, No, she she died, she's she's in heaven now. And just to I think she, in her own little mind, had seen all the the breakdowns and the meltdowns in her daughter and her sister's posture. That she knew what that meant. She knew that that it was it wasn't good. So I, you know, tears came down her cheeks. I'm holding her. It's just my wife now, just our only daughter now, now all three of us just kind of huddled up like, All right, we're going to try to get through this as best we can. And then, of course, there's the memorials. You got to go to the memorial, and you got to go to the viewing and all this other stuff. And my wife and I were concerned, like, Oh my gosh. What are we going to see? You know, I had already seen the day of the damage, the day that it happened. So had that my mind. I remember talking to the funeral director, one on one again. Take the dad hat off, put the professional hat on. Said, Okay, gentlemen, give it to me straight before I take my my wife and my daughter in there. What are we going to see? And they politely, they, you know, gently, as as with as much decorum as they could kind of explain that they were able to to to manage what they needed to manage, and able to so we could do a viewing. And so we did that. Had a lot of shipmates, fellow Navy guys that that I served with at the time, rallied around us, tight community. I was getting ready to get, oh, by the way, I'm getting ready to head up to Newport, Rhode Island, where I grew up at. And I'm getting ready to go to the Naval War College, because I just got selected for a commissioning from enlisted officer and and I was going to go there in September. Here we are in May of 2015 burring my daughter next to next to a brother, next to my dad, next week. Was an external and all that, the whole theme in my mind is I'm processing all this. And this is 2015 I told my wife this the day we burned, Elizabeth, I stood at the end of my cousin's driveway. This is the same cousin again, that lost, lost a cousin as well, right? His sister. Excuse me, he lost his sister. So we, we've all like, very, very tight, and at the end of his driveway, he literally lives right across in the cemetery his driveway. You look at his driveway, and then from his driveway, two lane road, and you can see the driveway and you can see with the other headstones from the end of his driveway. The day we borrowed Elizabeth, we went back to his house and just relax, had a couple of beers and try to unwind. And I'm standing at the end of his driveway, the sun setting, and I could see the sun shining off of the other headstones. Elizabeth didn't have a headstone yet. She just got married that day, and I told my wife. I said, Honey, I don't know how God's going to use this. I have no clue, but we're going to use this. We're going to do whatever we can to steward this for him, to help other people and get after this thing that seems to be stealing so many people, not just in my family, but I know it's impacting so many other people. And so fast forwarding, went back to that was in May Bert, Elizabeth went back home, been back then North Carolina. My wife and I trying to get an assemblance of order in our house and stuff like that. We couldn't go in the closet anymore because it was just too traumatic. My wife was able to go in the closet. She's but I wasn't. I just couldn't go in there. And for me, I was nightmares, waking up in the middle of the night, flashbacks of the things that I was seeing that day, panic attacks, you name it. And that's when, about June timeframe, that's when my friend Tim came out, and he spent about a week, week and a half with us, and I got a chance to unpack with him. What you know, the things I'm discussing with you now. September of 2015 I had to go right back to Rhode Island again, to the Naval War College. And I grew up in Rhode Island, and I remember when as a kid, going across the Newport bridge, seeing Newport and seeing the Naval War College and the guys drilling on the parade parade field and all that. And it's a navy town, and so I remember thinking to myself, maybe one day I'll join the Navy. Well, sure enough, I did here. I am going back home to the War College, taking my career to the next step, accomplishing something that nobody ever accomplished in our family up to that point, getting commissioned as a military officer. But it's on the heels of I just borrowed my daughter four months a few months prior, the grass wasn't even growing on top of her grave yet, and I remember standing out there on the on the parade deck. It was mid September. The weather's still pretty nice up there in Rhode Island in September, thrust up the Labor Day, and we just finished doing our morning, PT, physical training exercises, and this breeze coming across the bay, sun's out, and I just had this kind of, almost like this divine, invisible hand on my shoulder, like, Hey kid, I got you. It's going to be okay. You're going to get through this. You and your family just hang on to me. Hang on to that anchor. And so from there, earned the commissioning, went back home, continued our life, try to pick up the pieces. And one of the things I did right away, I told my wife, said, we're going to get counseling like, like yesterday, let's go get some counseling, and we're going to unpack all this stuff. And it's not just the loss of Elizabeth, we have to go work all the way back to the loss of my dad, and what does that look like, and so and all but and also, we need to get Isabella some counseling as well, because that she just had a piece of her heart ripped away from her. And I wanted to be intentional with that, because I knew that when after my dad took his own life, and I saw what I saw that day, and we did it, you know, you know, my mom did the best she could with what she knew at the time, but I knew that, that it wasn't managed right, and that led to a lot of the struggles that I had. And as a young man, and I said, I want to make sure that in the midst of a tragedy, we can take this, this trauma, and use it as a testimony for other people, and part of that starts with step one. Let's get some help. Let's be vulnerable. Let's unpack these things, because if we don't help ourselves first, we're not gonna be able to help other people. And I wanna honor the memory of our daughter.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 44:18

I don't know how you are? You're Superman.

Matthew Mattera: 44:28

It's all him. Yeah,

Dr. Spencer Baron: 44:30

yeah, okay, Matt, you wrote a book. It was your memoir called Hope, and it gives some real perspective on suicide and the rippling effect from that, what motivated you to write that book?

Matthew Mattera: 44:52

Well, that came down to the honoring her. I said, if we're going to we're going to honor her, are we going to tell her story? If we're going to tell her story? Got to tell everybody else's story, and kind of, at least from my vantage point, and by extension, the vantage point of my media family, my wife and our daughter Isabella. And so it was cathartic, for sure. I mean, there was a lot of therapy and just writing it. I started out as a blog. It started as a blog, and I said, you know, let me just blog this in pieces. And then from there, it was codified into, into the, you know, sent to an editor which, by the way, come to find out, the editor that I found is actually from North Kingston, Rhode Island, which is like five minutes from the cemetery. Just interesting how God works all that stuff out. So wrote down. And the intent is to, you know, just help other people. There was certainly a cathartic piece of help me just to write it out. But also I want to really kind of shape the the narrative of of what takes place with the suicide, the the casket of damage that's inflicted upon a family. And I did that because I wanted to be able to reach those that are struggling or contemplating taking their own life they have no idea the damage that is left behind. My daughter didn't think about, oh, my dad's gonna walk in after cutting the grass, he's gonna find me horrifically taken away. My dad wasn't thinking, Oh, my little boy's gonna walk in and find me. They weren't thinking these things, because in that moment of desperation and hopelessness, people just tunnel vision into something that could potentially lead them down with a fatal, life altering choice. So I want to reach those folks that are if they're out there and they're struggling with these thoughts of ending, ending their own life, don't do it. You don't you have no idea the damage that's left behind in a family. You're more. I rather you call me at two o'clock in the morning than have to attend your funeral next week. Call me what. Just reach out to someone, get the help that you need. Life is not hopeless, no matter what it looks like. Don't let go. Do not let go. So that was the first part of the target audience. The other target audience is the folks that have walked through something like that, and they're trying to find a way to pick up the pieces and move and discover what hope looks like. I'm like, hey, you know what? There's a lot of there's a lot of different answers out there. I could tell you what worked for us, and that was and I spelled that out in the book, like, you know, my faith and belief in God and all that comes with that. And, you know, I'm a student of that, if you will, and I realized that he's a lot closer than we think. And don't let go of that and get the help that you need to triage and go through. You know, there's a lot you'll get some counsel to talk to professionals say, Hey, I saw my I saw my mom do this, or I saw my uncle do this, or I lost a family member to suicide. Over here, go get the help that you need. Don't let go of hope. And the other thing, it's probably the third target audience, is people in general, especially parents, but people in general, that are in across the whole of society, whether you're a school teacher and in academia, whether you're a civic leader, whether you're in politics and the community leader, whatever the case may be, there's something going on with our mental metabolism and this informational diet. And this was all words that came about when I did my last tour of duty. I worked at the at a command that supported the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And we specialize in information warfare, cognitive warfare, psychological operations. And that was from 2018 to 2021 and then during that three year period, I got immersed and meshed in and was really provided what I believe is secret sauce to like, hey, how does this battlefield of the mind work? How is social media weaponized, not just for political agendas, but how is it a weapon system that feeds into our cognitive posture, our mental posture? How? Why have suicides risen 60% since 2007 and by the way, 2007 is when the smartphone, the iPhone, was released onto the world stage, and since then, there's been 60% youth and young adults, right? So all this correlation in leveraging these skills that was learning as an information warfare officer that specializes in the Battle of hearts and minds, and I realized there's a direct suicide prevention component to this. And then not just a suicide prevention component, but a mental health component, a spiritual health component, a cognitive health component. So all that. And so I sat down and I said, Well, if we have a if food is to the body, then information is that to the mind. If we have a physical metabolism, what if there's a mental metabolism? How do we? How do we, what does our informational diet look like, and what are the ingredients that are laced into the information we're consuming on a daily basis? And how does that potentially exasperate pre existing issues that a family may have with depression or so on and so forth? How does it, how does this exasperate challenges that youth and young adults are facing because, you know, they're going through major hormonal changes, because just by sheer virtue being adolescents, plus academic pressures, all these things and we're I started really kind of everything coalesced. And I realized this is a whole lot bigger. There is an informational diet. What food is to the body, information is to the mind. And rather than throwing bumper stickers and slogans at it, I found myself. Come in and advocate for let's get to the root cause of why we're seeing this. I would just call it a mental health crisis in our country, right now, in our in our culture today, especially Western culture, why are we seeing this? And if and we have to really ask ourselves some uncomfortable questions and be reckoned be willing to reconcile with the honest yet difficult answers of what that comes with.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 50:21

Matt, Hey, man, oh, sorry. I was just gonna ask Matt about the music. He mentioned that his daughter was listening to because the phone is an issue with all the, you know, the Tiktok and Instagram and so on. But you mentioned something about music, and some of the concern you had about music that she was listening to.

Matthew Mattera: 50:44

Yeah. So in the in the information warfare, cognitive warfare, parlance, language, we talk about enduring themes of messages, and how enduring themes of messages over time have a multiplying effect. It can reinforce whatever sentiment is pre existing, or whatever sentiment you want to induct in the first place. And so think of music as a soundtrack to your life. If you would go watch, I love action movies. Most guys do movies like Top Gun, Gladiator and Braveheart, the soundtrack in there amplifies whatever scene you're already observing through your remember your five tactile senses, sight, sound, taste, smell and touch. Eyes and ears are the the primary they're the super highways of information consumption through your eyes and ears and everything else kind of compliments all that. And so if what I'm observing in my through my eyes and then through my ears is is compounding or amplifying whatever I'm feeling in my heart and mind, it ends up acting as a cascade effect and a force multiplying. So what do I mean by that? If you have you have music that is full of life, hope and purpose in the the the thematics of it, the the the melody of it, the words of it, are all about life, open purpose, right? That's going to have result in, over time, a shift in your cognitive posture and your mental posture. And likewise, if you're somebody that's that's, if your world around you is already death, despair, destruction and poverty, if you're listening to music that glorifies that, and amplifies that and then normalizes that. It has a multiplying effect. It's powerful, powerful conduit us. But the music, so the music my daughter was listening to as I went through her playlist, over and over and over again, I can't remember the band. There's a couple of bands remember off the top of my head, but I'm reading this. I'm like, this is dark themes. It's themes that seem to glorify depression. Seems to glorify loneliness. It glorifies and almost put, almost glamorizes being, being alone and not having a community around you. It glorifies, I mean, to the point where now she was actually manifesting that with the dark makeup and the dark hair dye, and she wanted, you know, get piercings and all that. Not knocking any of that stuff. That's fashion is just fashion. Hair dye is just hair dye, and piercings are just piercings. And I'm not knocking any of that. But when everything starts to when the holes in the Swiss cheese start to line up, and you have this soundtrack in the background, the soundtrack that they're pumping in, it becomes a soundtrack to the movie of your life. And then you just amplify with social media the dopamine hits that come with the currency of likes and followers and rehab, you know, re shares and all that that has such a massive compound impact on, on, on the human mind, especially developing human minds, and the neuroplasticity of a young mind, and the neural pathways that are still being developed, and the Emotional surges that come with all that it's, it's, we've opened Pandora's box as a culture with the advancements of these technologies, and without really fully understanding the downstream effects that this has on entire generations. And that's why we're seeing the youth, young adults are are ravaged with with with mental health crisis, suicidal ideations, depression, loneliness, bipolar, ADHD, you go down the list of all these different things, and it's like, well, how much of this is being exasperated by by the informational diet?

Dr. Terry Weyman: 54:14

You know, I believe in all that stuff. And so on a deeper level, we hear sometimes from people that are suicidal, who have gone through suicide, but once they make up their mind, they think they're doing us a favor. You know, we've heard all those, all those call them excuses, or whatever. We also hear the term we need to help mental health. We need, we need, we need. But you don't hear lost solutions. So on a deeper level, someone who's gone through it more than anybody I've ever met, what radical concepts do we need to change, or they need to happen, both at the bigger level and the local level, to actually see a shift and stop some of this?

Matthew Mattera: 54:56

I think it takes a whole of society approach. It's going to take the adults in the room having some honest conversations about and reassessing how we've been managing information. I'm not talking about suppressing information things like that. I'm a big you know, first amendment dude, like, all the way freedom of speech got it. But this is where people have to step up and and parents need to be informed. They need to be step up and be parents make the hard decisions for your kids. You know that means that you've got to be their mom and dad and not their buddy, regardless of peer pressure. Let me put this way. My daughter Isabella, who's now 16. She does have a smartphone. We have because we have busy schedules used to maintain contact. That kid does not have any social media on there, and because of because it's my phone, that's my phone, I pay the bill on that and let me see your phone from time to time. That's called being a parent. To the same level of due diligence that we show when it comes to managing our house that we live in or managing our vehicle. We that's the same level, dude, because this is stuff we've been entrusted with. We've been entrusted with the raising of our kids as parents, and that means we have to step up as parents and make ask those hard, the typical conversations, but they're easy to do. And say, hey, you know you're you're too valued to me. You know Timmy and Susie, whatever your kid's name is, for me, for me, just to hand you something that get that has, you know, this, this right here is more powerful. Smartphone more powerful than any radio station, any television studio or any newspaper. I don't think people read newspapers anymore. It's more powerful. It has the it is. It is a fire host and the information environment. That's the first thing. Be a parent. Step up, get informed. Two, we need leaders in the technology space to be able to have these open conversation. Be like, Hey, you know what? We have algorithms that are developed on purpose to exploit human proclivity. And the we have these platforms called on social media, whether it be tick tock, Instagram, Facebook's kind of demographics a little bit more towards older. On Facebook, Snapchat is one of those, all these different things, and when we what's happened is the developers of these social media platforms. They they don't develop these in a vacuum. They develop these platforms with whole teams of behavioral therapy, behavioral human behavior specialists, guys with lots of letters after their name, that understand how the human psyche works, how our appetite for information is is the driver for our behaviors. And at the end of the day, when money's on the line, and it's all about creating the profit. Well, the profit ends up superseding the actual viability of the human health. And so we have to ask those kind of questions and hold the technology space available as well, and the social media leaders responsible as well, or accountable at least. Finally, legislation, right? Things we can do with the power of the pen to provide better informational diet awareness. What does that look like? What is the informational diet? What is the mental metabolism? How does information coalesce to the output of our behaviors, which is the result of our mental state, our cognitive posture? And so more research into that, and I think just good fireside conversations with the family. It starts there fireside conversations with your family at the dinner table, having meaningful discussions about what really matters and connecting organically. We almost have this technology fatigue in our nation now, to a point where we have this there's a trend on social I just tell my wife about this, there's a trend on social media recently, of a lot of social media reels that talk about back in the 80s, right? And how it was in the 80s and the early 90s, where you go outside and play and when the street light came on, you came back home, and it's, you know, VHS tapes and cassette tapes and all that. And there was this. There's a this hearkening back to a simpler time, and looking at that because we have such a we have digital information fatigue, to the point where we've technology has not only been something that's become a convenience, but now it's become a captor. It's become a captor. And everything that we do in life we're no longer doesn't make life easier. It becomes more complicated, because it's the irony of the word social media. It actually creates anti social behavior, which is crazy. The fact that we call it social testing anti social we think about it, I guess it's a long way of answering your question, things we can do, conversations, more discussions, in awareness, about informational diet at the local family level, right in your own home, all the way up from from the from the doorstep of our house all the way to the White House. Think of it that way, and that includes the church house and the schoolhouse. Totally

Dr. Terry Weyman: 59:29

agree whether. But what's your thoughts or your since you have a unfortunately, you have experience in both. What's your thoughts on the the adults you know? You talked about the kids you know, monitoring their social media and stuff like that. What about the adults that are struggling? Well,

Matthew Mattera: 59:44

you know? So we talked about kids, youth, young adults. Suicides have ridden 60% approximately since 2007 we talked about why, there's another demographic that's an at risk for suicide and all things related to that, and that is middle aged, middle aged males, and then law enforcement. Uh, so part of the work of what I what I talk about, related in our informational diet, is, you know what it adult males die from suicide approximately four times more than any other demographic. And then, as you look at adult it's actually adult court Caucasian males, adult white males die from suicide four times more than any other demographic you can test in their other professions and whatnot. What is the current narrative about that particular demographic? What is the current narrative been promulgated in the information environment about that particular demographic that, oh, by the way, is dying from their own hand four times more than any other group. Well, if we ask ourselves, that's an honest, critical question. But I think the answer is an answer we don't want to reconcile with. And the fact the matter is, the enduring themes of messages that we've produced in Western society, especially in America, has been, has really, for lack of a term, demonized that particular demographic for a variety of reasons. Then you put into the law enforcement demographic, the law enforcement I just we stood up a foundation in honor of Elizabeth, the Elizabeth Patera Foundation, and we've been able to able to help a family so far. And we're just a fledgling organization. We just started out. We're taking, still finding our feet, but we've been able to, like I said, Help one family out. Well, that family was the widow and daughter left behind from a police officer that took his own life. And there was a rash of suicides in the law enforcement community here in my local area, back in 2021 so we got, we were able to make contact with this, with this wonderful lady help her, her daughter and and the first question I was asking myself, I bought pump and being a, you know, being a strategist and root cause analysis. My wife, she's talking to the widow from from a mother's from a mom perspective, a wife perspective. I'm over here pulling the string like I want to know the stats, law enforcement has had a radical increase in suicides and all things related to that mental health crisis, really, since probably 20, really, 2020 we saw a massive, massive spike in the law enforcement community with suicides and other self destructive behaviors. Well, gee, what has the been the current what's the current narrative been about law enforcement in the United States since 2020 and we ask yourself, What's the narrative, and is it helpful or harmful? And those are the type of questions we got to start asking ourselves, like, what are we saying? We know we say we want to prevent suicide on one hand, and look at all the stuff that we're pumping out in the information environment, through the media, through social media, through activist groups. We're we're doing the very we're doing the opposite thing, the very thing that's opposite to what we what we say we're trying to prevent. And I think that's where the adults have to from a leadership perspective, let's reevaluate the things that we're saying are enduring themes of message from a public standpoint about these at risk demographics. But also we need to reassess our posture as information look, information is like I said to the body with what food information is the mind what food is to the body, and if information is the fundamental element of influence, or everything we say and do as an adult, I still have to be mindful of the things I'm consuming through my eyes and my ears, the things I'm things I'm consuming through maybe social media, the news, the people I'm hanging out with, all of that needs to be we have to put a guard over that and really take this thing seriously, because I'll tell you what a steady state diet of toxic information, whatever form that may be. It could be a relationship with somebody else that's constantly feeding a negative or it could be a social media stream that you're you're in, you're in that that scrolling till 10 o'clock at night. Just scroll, scroll, scroll, and next thing you know, it's blow past your bedtime, and that cascades into your next day. There's, there's a, I think, a when the adult you know, Gen X group, there seems to be a, a return to things of a simpler time. And for us, I'll be what you know, the 70s, 80s, early 90s. And they, you know that those, those eras certainly had their problems, but we weren't inundated with this steady state. 24/7 360, 563. 65 65 fire hose of information like we are today.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 1:04:08

Wow, Matt, that was quite an intense series of events that happen. I I'm going to transition because of time, I'm going to transition to one of our favorite parts of our program. It's the rapid fire questions. I rearranged my my questions because they they start out rather funny, but I'm not ready for that yet, and I don't think the audience is so I'm going to reverse the order, and I'm going to ask you question number five first, and then we're going to count down. Now it requires you to be quick on your feet and be able to answer with brevity, but let me know. Are you ready for this question number five? If you could have dinner with any historical figure. Who would it be? And what's the first question you would ask them,

Matthew Mattera: 1:05:06

George Washington, and why did you decide to at o Dark 30 cross the Delaware? That's pretty cold.

Unknown: 1:05:14

That's great. That's unique. Very good. Love that. Yeah, I do too. That's fantastic.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 1:05:22

And how ironic it's coming from a Navy man who's been on the water for most of his life. That's

Matthew Mattera: 1:05:27

why that water's cold. Man, why'd you do that?

Dr. Spencer Baron: 1:05:32

Fantastic. I love it. Question number four, what's a quirky or unusual hobby you've picked up since retiring from the Navy?

Matthew Mattera: 1:05:42

I don't know if it's quirky or unusual, but I'm a New England kid that learned how to do barbecue. I learned how to actually smoke a brisket in Texas.

Unknown: 1:05:52

Go. You just no lobster clams. You went right for the barbecue. That's right. That's right.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 1:06:01

I love it. Question number three, what's your this is great because we were just talking about music. What's your go to song when you want to turn it up a notch and change your mood?

Matthew Mattera: 1:06:11

If I want to, when I'm here in the gym, there's a song called Hail to the King by avenged sevenfold. And it's just intense, upbeat. I like it. It's powerful. And then if I want to shift my mood to more introspective, it's a song from the from the movie The Last Samurai, one of my favorite movies, and it's the song a way of life, powerful. Both of those. I'm

Dr. Spencer Baron: 1:06:37

going to put those two on my playlist. Check it out, guys, that's good. Thanks. Man. Appreciate that. Question number two, if you could choose any destination for your next travel adventure, where would you go and why?

Matthew Mattera: 1:06:53

I would take my wife to Italy. Our family, Matera family, comes from an island called Ischia, right off the coast of Naples. Streets are named Matera. There's a castle, Matera castle over there, and so I would take her there, and she's always wanted to go to Italy. And so as long as anywhere with my wife, really, but Italy specifically. Oh,

Dr. Spencer Baron: 1:07:13

fantastic, beautiful. And final question, question number one, or actually, question number five, and you'll understand why I left this for last. As a former military man, what's the most memorable prank you pulled or witnessed during your military days?

Matthew Mattera: 1:07:32

Oh, wow, let's see. I'm retired now, so I can say these things. Well, it's not a prank that I pulled but there was a, there was a on the ship that would have guys that would did that the Phantom rhymes with the word hitter. The Phantom, right? The Phantom show you said it. So the Phantom shitter. And so there was, there was not my last ship, but my previous ship. Somebody was leaving turds in random locations. I was not partaking at that. I just full disclosure. But I every day you clean in the ship, you clean a couple times a day. And I did happen to come across one. I'm like, What is going on? So the things that Sailors and Marines will do with a Deployer, any guy, any military warrior, when you're deployed between between operations, you do have a lot of time, and sometimes you get creative with the things. What else you gonna do? You don't

Dr. Spencer Baron: 1:08:32

have TV. That's great, Matt, you brought me through all the emotions. I'm sure. Dr, Terry's gonna laugh at me afterwards for all that, you know, everything, goosebumps, tears, you know, inspiring conversation. I really, really appreciate your great storyteller with a great voice and the ability to recap all those events and not break down like I did, I want to thank you for what you've shared and what you're going to share with those who are opposed with such dilemmas.

Matthew Mattera: 1:09:08

Yes, sir, I appreciate it. If folks want, they can pick up the book hope. It's on Amazon. Hope and memoir, my journey of love, laws and faith. I wrote this book not to not to make money. I've given more books away than hair on your head. It's all about helping other people. So pick up the book hope and then mark, get one for yourself. Get one for a friend, and if they're more, if they're interested in learning more about Elizabeth Matera Foundation, they can go to www dot for Elizabeth. Dot O, R, G for elizabeth.org.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 1:09:35

That was fantastic. Thank you so much.

Matthew Mattera: 1:09:37

Man, yes sir. Thank you. Thank you gentlemen. It's an honor. I appreciate it. Thank you.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 1:09:45

Thank you for listening to today's episode of The cracking backs podcast. We hope you enjoyed it. Make sure you follow us on Instagram at cracking backs podcast. Catch new episodes every Monday. See. Next time you.