CONTENT WARNING: This podcast discusses a wide range of topics from depression, anxiety, and mental-health challenges to suicide and suicide ideation. Please listen with care. Welcome to the very first episode of the Elite Minds Podcast! I am so honored you are here and can't wait to chat with you each week about a huge variety of topics, including, but not limited to: parenting, healing modalities, depression, suicide ideation, self-care, and more. We definitely dive deep into some very important, yet challenging, conversations and I will always provide a content warning for specific episodes. These are hard topics to discuss, but they very much need to be part of our mainstream thinking and awareness. If you don't know me, I'm Suzi Freeman and I'm a suicide prevention specialist, helping moms and families (both in the military and outside of it) to identify warning signs in their loved ones suggesting depression or suicidal ideation. I'm also a Neuro-Linguistics Programming Master Practitioner, TIME Techniques Master Practitioner, a Master of Hypnotherapy, an Emotional Freedom Techniques Practitioner, a Master Success Coach and certified as a Suicide Recognition and Prevention (QPR) Instructor from the QPR Institute. I'm on a passionate mission to provide help, resources, knowledge, support, and mindset shifts to those believing suicide is an option, and those wanting to embark on a healing journey. In this first episode, I'm sharing the story of how I arrived here, in this moment in time with the work I'm doing, and my ties to the military and police. It started with what I was seeing in the Facebook groups I joined for military moms. Almost immediately, I realized there was so much concern about depression, anxiety, and suicide for their loved ones in the military, and quickly knew I had to do something. Through learning more, and becoming trained in a variety of ways to help others, I realized that I myself, had been living a life of suicide ideation, always thinking of suicide as an option, whether due to overwhelm, or believing that was how I was "preparing" my kids for their future, or for a whole host of reasons. My breakthrough moment came lying on the floor in my closet in my home and realizing I had to remove myself from that ideation phase, and that there were so many other modalities for awareness and healing. I'm here to tell you that there are so many choices, and suicide isn't one of them. Join in for a listen, and let's take this healing journey together over the course of this first podcast season.