Bonus 14-Dr. KD Wagner-From Hell to Hope: 3 Easy Steps to Resilience

Herb: 00:00:20

Today I have the pleasure of introducing KD Wagner. Katie is a multiple bestselling author, international speaker and former law enforcement enforcement officer.

Her books share her journey through loss, grief, depression, addiction, planned suicide and survival after the loss of her two sons, two years apart at ages 18 and 24. KD has appeared on every NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox, and multiple stages, teaching women how to reboot, recharge and reclaim their lives.

With the death of her son serving in the U.S. Navy, KD became a gold star service mother. So thank you very much, KD, for being here. Thank you for your sacrifices. It's. It's heartbreaking, but. But thank you for being here today.

Dr. KD Wagner: 00:01:09

Well, thank you for having me. And I can sit here and smile, and it's only because of the love of my two sons, so.

Kristina: 00:01:15

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, a special family is just like yours that help the rest of our families.

And yeah, we get emotional about this stuff because we love our service members and their families so very much.

Dr. KD Wagner: 00:01:26

So.

Kristina: 00:01:26

Thank you. Now here we go. Talk a little bit more about your passion, though. I mean, you have, you know, your two boys, everything that's been going on.

What kind of helped get you through that a little bit more and bringing these books to life?

Dr. KD Wagner: 00:01:43

Well, it took a while for me to figure out the word that covered it was resilience.

Because it's not like I woke up one day and said, hey, you know, I'm over this and I'm going to, you know, go on with my life because I live it every day. You know, I wake up in the morning, there's about 30 seconds when I don't remember that they're not here. And then, then it comes back. So. But.

But yeah, so what happened is I not only lost my two sons, but I lost my entire extended family. In this country, we're not taught to how to deal with death or how to talk about it. So they didn't know what to say, so they said nothing.

And pretty soon you don't get invited to the party or to the Christmas thing or I lost friends. So it was very important to me that I wrote the story of my two boys so they would never be forgotten because their lives mattered.

They were really cool kids. They. They were both different, but they had stuff that made them very special, and I didn't want to be forgotten.

So that became my focus was to finish these books. And now that I finished these books, they've all three gone international bestsellers in nine countries. And.

And there's people in, you know, Australia and Germany that now Know, my kids that would have never known my kids, you know, so it's kind of cool that they, they actually, you know, made an effect on people, the world at this point. So that's really why I wrote the books. And what, what started it was I had to see a psychiatrist when Jeffrey was murdered at 18 for six months.

ou know, I mean, in the early: 2000

And she said, if there's a book that you want to read and it's not there, then you're supposed to write it. And I'm like, okay, well maybe, you know, I had no idea. I was no plan of ever writing a book and much less three books. So.

But there were no true life stories of somebody who had. Had this happen to them. Maybe not as bad with two of them, but one at least, you know, and made it through. How did they do it? You know, that's how.

That's what I wanted to know was how. And there wasn't. There was the Five Steps of Grief and some psychiatric book.

And you know, in fact, I say in my book that I doubt what I did would have been a psychiatric treatment for people. But that's what saved my life. So, you know, so. And you know, we do.

Kristina: 00:04:01

We have to find our path whenever things aren't working for us, maybe a psychiatric treatment isn't working, then you go and you find something else that will work. But the biggest thing, like you said, is the resilience and the not giving up and having that purpose, that passion to share and keep going.

So thank you for being here and thank you for having those books.

Dr. KD Wagner: 00:04:18

Oh, well, thank you. They were very interesting boys. My son Jeffrey, he was tested at five for by a psychiatrist in Hawaii. We lived in Hawaii at the time.

And he had a genius IQ of 163. But he had mirror writing. He'd write his name backwards, backwards after, if you put it to a mirror, it looked right to us.

So he had to learn to read the word right to left, but left to right across the page like we do. And by the time he read it, it meant nothing to him. It was just, you know.

But if he read it and he talked about it, he got straight A's, but the public school system, he was in three different public school systems and they wouldn't do anything for him. He couldn't go to the gifted classes worth his IQ because he had the ADHD and He'd wander around the class when you know, and all that stuff.

And then they couldn't go to special education at the time because your IQ had to be under 80 or you couldn't go. And they'd put him in regular school and then they just send him home and they didn't want to deal with him.

So by the time he got to high school, he was grades behind. So I ended up putting him in an at risk school for boys. That cost me a lot of money.

So $100,000 in a bankruptcy later, as a single mom, that was a lot. You know, I mean, I was just going to do what I had to do, but I knew I wouldn't be able to pay for it, so.

But he graduated from high school and then he went to heating and air conditioning school, graduated first in his class, my, my partner at the time, and I learned all about air conditioners and compressors and switches and, and that. But he graduated first in his class. And then three months later, a guy robbed him and shot him and left him to die for no reason.

So it was just totally unbelievable. I mean, I, I barely made it through, but I had Bud, my older son, who was in the Navy, and I had to, I had to help him.

You know, he had horrible survivor's guilt. He thought he should have saved his brother.

Kristina: 00:06:08

Yeah.

Dr. KD Wagner: 00:06:08

And it's kind of interesting. They were born on the same day, three years apart. So they were. And their birthday is July 17th. So they were very close.

They were, you know, brothers, best friends. And, you know, we grew up, as I always call this, the three Musketeers, because it was the three of us. And, you know, we were very close.

And my biggest goal, raising them, was to make them into good, good adults. You know, they knew how to cook, clean, do their own laundry. I mean, they, they were just good boys. And Bud was just as smart as Jeffrey.

He was in high school when they started teaching to the test and he was so bored. He said, mom, I'm gonna go down and find out what it takes to join the military.

And he, he needed 15 college credits, his GED, and he needed to be 17. So on his 17th birthday, he had 18 college credits, his GED, AND I signed for him to join the Navy, and he just excelled at it.

And, and then as soon as he got in the Navy and got his GI bill, he started going to college full time while he was in the Navy full time. So he had all kinds of goals and things he wanted to do and, and he got called up For Operation Iraqi freedom after 911 happened and he was killed.

So that when your child is killed in the military, it makes you a gold star mother. I don't know if you know what a gold star mother is, but it's not the group you want to belong to because the admission is really high.

They had to have lost a child to get in.

But it's, it was really good for me because I was with like minded mothers and we knew that, you know, you didn't, didn't have to necessarily talk about it, but you knew that they knew and they knew that you knew. And we just do a lot of volunteer work, work with the veterans, their families, the communities.

We raise funds for them and several of us speak for them to raise funds. So some of the mothers can't even speak about it. They just cry. So. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kristina: 00:07:58

Unfortunately you caught me off guard at the beginning, at the beginning of the show and that, that's me just because I'm tender hearted like that.

Herb: 00:08:04

But we also have a grandson who, who's currently in, currently in Djibouti or he's deployed. Deployed, yes.

Kristina: 00:08:11

And so yeah, one of those things that is going to be like, hopefully he's going to be a.

Dr. KD Wagner: 00:08:17

Okay.

Kristina: 00:08:17

But you know, there's always risks involved.

Dr. KD Wagner: 00:08:19

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kristina: 00:08:22

So I want to jump back to Jeffrey just for a little bit because I know you said that, you know, the schools were having a really hard dealing with him and things like that. But then he excelled once he got into being able to hear it and talk about it right away.

So you ended up having to learn along with him so he could excel in his classes.

Dr. KD Wagner: 00:08:38

But I promised him I would get him through high school and we did.

So he graduated at 17 and you know, and for the kids that are like him, that's, that's a big accomplishment, Huge accomplishment just to graduate and then to go on and you know, he would have had a great job. We were living in Las Vegas at the time. I mean there's always air conditioners breaking there. Right. So I mean he would.

And he really could have gone on and been on his own and, and had a good, good career. So I don't know.

Kristina: 00:09:06

Yeah, exactly. So as a mom, what do you remember doing to kind of help him?

Because we have, you know, a lot of parents who listen to our show and they're like, my kid is the ADHD or the, or the whatever, whatever. And what are some of the things do you remember doing to help him? Maybe even sett, help handle some of Those things as he was learning and growing.

Dr. KD Wagner: 00:09:25

Well, there's several things. One was diet. You know, I took him off all the sugar and all the dyes and the things like that.

But the other thing that worked really well for him was he started swimming competitively at 5 because his brother was swimming, and he. He was like a little motorboat in the water. It was so cute. But he. He would go.

Go after school and swim for three hours, and then by the time he came home and ate dinner, you know, he could do his homework. And he was. I mean, you got to burn that energy off. It's kind of like having a puppy.

You know, you got to walk it and run it and play with it, because otherwise they're just a ball of energy. So that really worked well for him, and he liked it. Both of them loved anything to do with water. They surf, they scuba dive, they.

They swam competitively. Jeffrey used to scare the heck out of me when we were in Hawaii or Tahiti or somewhere.

He'd go underwater to look for shells, and he could hold his breath for five minutes, and I'd be sitting there going, come on, Jeffrey. Come on, Jeffrey. Yeah, he used to scare me all the time, but, yeah.

Kristina: 00:10:26

Wow. Yeah, exactly.

Dr. KD Wagner: 00:10:28

And that.

Kristina: 00:10:28

That's a great thing. You know, whenever we're talking about, you know, how do we help our kiddos is like, get their energy out, you know, especially boys.

You know, there's girls who need their energy out, too, but boys especially, lots of times, they need that energy. So, you know, we talked with a few other families, and that's the things like, oh, it's time to sit down and do our lessons, because we talk.

Talked to homeschool families as well, and the kiddo just couldn't do it. It's like, awesome.

Go run around the block two times for me, or go outside and play for 15 more minutes, and then come in and do the lessons or do the homework or whatever they need to do.

Dr. KD Wagner: 00:11:00

And that's what's really strange about the public school, is they've taken away recess, they've taken away gym class, and, you know, these kids, they're not meant to go sit there for eight hours.

Herb: 00:11:11

Yeah. And if you look at the food they serve in school, it's like 100 times the amount of sugar that a pregnant woman needs during a daytime.

So, yeah, they. They hype them up on sugar, expect them to sit still, and then put them on drugs when they can't. It's, like, crazy.

Dr. KD Wagner: 00:11:27

Yeah. And that. That's really sad because you Know, as a parent back then, and, you know, like I said, it was in the late 80s, early 90s.

They, you know, they told me, well, we, we're going to have to put them on Ritalin. And, you know, and I didn't know. I was a single mom and working and trying to do everything the right way.

And I wish I'd never had put him on any of that stuff, Ritalin or Adderall or any of that stuff. And. But he was such a good kid. He was so sweet.

You know, what's really funny is I could tell you a little story at the end of his book, from the time he could talk, he always said to me, I can't wait until I'm 18. You know, it would just come out in the middle of nowhere, you know, in the middle of not anything you talk about.

He goes, man, I can't wait till I'm 18. And I always thought he just wanted to be an adult and, you know, be able to do whatever he wanted to do.

And I think the little stinker knew he was going home at 18. So I didn't realize that until after he was murdered. So I actually put it at the end of the book because it dawned on me one day.

I said, geez, that little. Yeah. And he used to love to sing in the shower. He was funny.

Herb: 00:12:26

So. So I was. I was one of those smart kids.

I was never tested, but I remember in first and second and third grade, before my parents moved from California, this is how my. My teachers always used to say a word that. That still to this day, like, he has so much potential, but he doesn't do anything with it.

I don't know what that means. It's like I'm getting straight A's. It's like all the tests, I get everything right. It's like when I have a project to write, it's like I write.

What I'm supposed to write is like, what do you mean, I'm not using my potential. So I hated that word for so long and I got left alone in school, so I got ignored. So kind of, kind of like your kid did.

They didn't know what to do with me. But on the other hand, I was. I was also more of that book smart guy. So I like, would sit in the back of the class and read and get straight A's.

Not paying attention in class. I made it luckily, so, yeah. But I also got totally ignored, and so I can see how.

So it's interesting that to hear that other smart kids are kind of going through that same thing, because I kind of thought it was me, because I grew up in a really small town out in the middle of nowhere.

Dr. KD Wagner: 00:13:40

Yeah.

And I think a lot of it, too, especially even more now with our diet, because they're, you know, they're putting hormones in the chicken and all that stuff. Well, the kids are. They're. They're growing up too fast, too. They're not. They're not getting through their. The processors are supposed to.

Herb: 00:13:57

I'm not letting boys play and be rough.

Dr. KD Wagner: 00:13:59

And. Yeah, boys have got to play and run and, you know, sweat, do that. That boy stuff. It's funny, my grandfather. My kids were really lucky.

They got to have their great grandparents for quite a while growing up.

And my grandfather, they go to his house and he say to my mother, why are they always climbing, Walking on the top of the fence and they're climbing a tree and, you know, yada, yada. And she goes, because they're boys. You know.

Kristina: 00:14:25

Tell us a little bit more about Bud's progression through school. Because you said that he was able to get his GED and have college credits and things like that. What were you able to find to help him?

Because there are parents also looking for that. Like, how do I get my child onto a kind of different path if high school's not working out for them?

Dr. KD Wagner: 00:14:43

Well, that, you know, he came home that day and said, you know, he says, I can't sit there for two more years, Mom. It is just too boring. And, you know, he said, I'm going to go find out.

When he did, then he came back home and he said, will you go to the college with me? We had a community college in our little town in Arizona. And I said, sure. So we went in there and I asked to see. I had to see the dean of the school.

And she said, well, why would I let him go to college if he's going to drop out of high school? I said, because he's bored. He is so bored. So he started school. He got straight A's this whole time through college.

He was one class short of his associate's degree when he was killed. You know, it's a little harder for them. They can take a class at a time in the military. Military. Because they're coming and going and all that stuff.

But, yeah, he was very smart. He put. We started going to school together after Jeffrey was killed because I lost my job after that, too.

I used to drive a big truck, and I couldn't be out there in the middle of nowhere by Myself for days at a time. I just play the woulda, coulda, shoulda game and you know, and I'd cry all the time and you know, so I, I ended up losing my job over it.

And so I, he said to me one day, he says, well, why don't you go to school? You always said when we grew up, you go to school. And I'm like. And he goes, we grew up.

You know, he was, they were both 6 foot 3, blonde haired, blue eyed surfer dudes, you know, the girls chased him mercilessly. In fact, Bud's name is funny story too, when, when I was pregnant with them, my mother in law said, you'll never have a boy.

It took me five girls to get one boy because we lived on this big farm and ranch when I was married to their dad. And so I had a boy and they're like, well then he's going to be named the fourth. I said, well, I will never call him that name.

So I had, he had a little western belt buckle that said Buddy on it. And then junior high, it got shortened to Bud.

And then when he was in the navy, he'd say, mom, I can walk into any bar and look, find a girl and just say, this Bud's for you. And I said, does that really work, Bud? And he goes, mom, you don't even want to know.

Herb: 00:16:43

You don't.

Dr. KD Wagner: 00:16:46

Yeah, that was his favorite saying. Yeah, this spud's for you. So yeah, he was a smarty, but he said, yep, we grew up.

So we started going to college together and he wanted to take a computer class where he had to build a computer. So we took the class, we had to go get all the parts and we built the computer and he used that for college the whole time.

I mean, he just was really smart. He had so many things he wanted to do. So he wanted to get his degree and then go back in as an officer.

And I just realized last week that he would be on his 29th year if he was still alive. So he'd be ready to get the big retirement by now.

Herb: 00:17:21

Yeah, so you talked a little bit about resilience and about how you, you use that to make it through. I, I came through a really dark time. Took my life apart. I've come out of the darkness, but I haven't been able to put my life back together yet.

And so I'm still, you know, looking for, for ways and, and trip tricks to get myself all the way back together because, you know, I've hurt my brain. So how did you Come through that? What, how did you come through that?

Dr. KD Wagner: 00:17:57

Well, it's not like I woke up one day, I told you, and I was like, oh, okay, I'm over this. But it just, literally it, the first thing I did was I had to find what my new purpose was because my old purpose was gone.

My, my purpose for 25 years was to ra kids and to take care of them and work and, you know, make sure they had everything I never had when I was a kid because I never had the right bike or the right shoes or the right, you know, whatever. But I would just, I had to find what my new purpose was.

And I realized that my new purpose was to tell their story and to honor them and to, you know, I, I tell people I get up every day and I, and I make them proud. And with that I can't go wrong. So. But then, you know, you gotta, you gotta find out what your new purpose is.

What, what in the pain and what happened to you and what you went through. What, what, what can you find in that? That you can go forward and help other people that maybe went through that same thing or something similar.

And how can you help them with how far you've came? You only have to be so far ahead of somebody to help the person behind you.

You don't have to have the answers, you just have to have enough to help them move forward to where you're at.

And then when you have like minded people, like I was saying about the Gold Star mothers, we didn't have to say we lost our child every day because we knew we lost our child.

That's how you got there, you know, so it makes it easier to have like minded people and to do things together and just to have that comrade, what do you call it? Comradeship? Yeah, that one. It's always hard to say.

And then the third thing is just to find a way, I think, to honor that loss because it happened for a reason. It may not, you know, I, I, it really changed my life. I mean, I wasn't raised with organized religion.

My parents had two religions and they couldn't find, figure out which one they wanted to be. So we were none. But I'm very spiritual. So I had to find out, you know, what was my purpose.

How could I take that pain and that purpose and help other people? And then you just keep moving forward. I mean, this is nothing I ever planned on doing.

I was perfectly happy driving a truck, had Friday, Saturday and Sunday off, worked four days, you know, made lots of money. I was perfectly happy Doing that.

But obviously, God, the universe, whoever decided that wasn't what I came here for, and I was going to do whatever it was that was. So it just. It's just a. It's. I guess it's your mindset. You just have to make a choice.

Like I said, I get up every morning and I'm just going to make them proud and be the person they believe me to be. And I can't go wrong, and I try to help other people. Like right now, we have two elderly ladies.

We used to live up in the mountain in California, and we moved and everybody moved or they died. And these two ladies are the only two that are still up there. They're 88 and 85. They can't drive. Neither one has a license.

And so we just go and get them. We bring them here, and then when they have to go to the doctors, we drive them back to California.

So we live by Phoenix for their doctor appointments, and we drive them back here. And it's just, you know, it's just kindness, giving back. And they're not even related to us, but they're just sort of friends. And, you know, we just.

You know, we just love them and try to help them. And by helping them, you help yourself.

Kristina: 00:21:14

And what a great role model. You know, you don't have your boys with you, but parents and families who are listening, you know, think about these kinds of actions that you do.

You're the role model. You're showing the younger generation how to be that passion, that kindness, that everything that we need be to be in.

Dr. KD Wagner: 00:21:31

This world right now.

Yeah, yeah, we, when we lived in Florida because we just moved to Arizona last year, but we had these two little boys across the street, and the mom, I would always bring them over. They were like three and six, and they come help me do yard work. Well, you can imagine how much help that really was, right?

But, you know, they'd always come help me, and then I'd always give them a couple dollars each, you know. And so she was there one day, and I said, well, what do you do with their money? And she said, well, it's just their money. They spend it or whatever.

And I said, well, you know, I'm not your mother, but I'm gonna just say this to you. You get mad at me at night. But I said, your only job as a parent is to raise them into being good adults. So you need to teach them that.

You have a bank account. You put half the money in the bank, and then you can spend the other half or you can save all that money till you get something you really want.

And, you know, I said, I don't mean to tell you what you're supposed to do, but that's really your only job as a parent, is to raise them into good people. So.

Herb: 00:22:26

Yeah, so many people don't know that. They try and be friends with their kids. They want them to be there, their kids happy. And it's like, no, you don't.

You don't necessarily want happy kids. Well, you do, but you want prepared. You want them, you know, do something.

Dr. KD Wagner: 00:22:43

There's like a whole generation. I have nieces in who are in their 40s. Their children are in their third, you know, late 20s, and they don't work.

It's like, you know, they all live at home. And you're like, God, I couldn't wait to leave home and, you know, and work and do.

You know, I don't know what's happened in that generation, but there's something going on. But, yeah. So now, you know, and I used to bring them over.

You know, were both parents, and they both worked, but I'd be home and I'd teach them how to do things, you know, like, one day I was putting new numbers on my mailbox out front, and they could. They came over and they said, can we help? And I said, sure.

And I got them sitting on my lap with a drill, and they're drilling, you know, and they just love coming over to my house because they. They got to do stuff, you know, that they wouldn't do at home. So it's fun.

Herb: 00:23:28

But, yeah, that's where it takes a village to raise a family.

Dr. KD Wagner: 00:23:31

I think it does, really. And it took. It took me. They probably lived there for three years before I even touched one of them, because I couldn't take that loss again.

But one day, it was hot in the summer, and I said, we're gonna go swimming. Do you guys like to swim? Because we had a pool. And they said, yeah. So they ended up coming over to swim all the time.

We taught them both how to swim by the time we left. And it was. But it took me a long time to. Yeah. To learn that. So. Yeah.

Kristina: 00:23:56

Thank you so much. This has been a wonderful conversation. And I love, you know, you're sharing and, you know, the tips.

Parents who are listening out bring these tips forward, do things with it. Is there anything that you didn't get to mention that you wanted to mention?

And also give our AUD your contact information or where they can find your books. We're Wrapping up, but we want to let you have the last word here.

Dr. KD Wagner: 00:24:16

Well, they can go to my.

Go to talk to KD.com and they can sign up for a complimentary call, 30 minute call and they can get my From Hell to Hope three Easy steps for Resilience. And then if they sign up, they get a free copy of digital copy of Jeffrey's book that get them started. They can read that.

So, yeah, the main thing I think I would tell parents today is just talk to your children. My, my children knew they could come and talk to me about anything.

And you know, you want them to be able to trust you and to talk to you because they don't have people they can talk to sometimes. You know, like at school, there's not necessarily.

It's not like when we went to school and you could talk to the teacher or the principal or something. You know, it's, it's just make sure they trust you.

And, and like I say, you're teaching them to be good adults and teach them compassion and not to bully. And, you know, that's all you can do is do your best. I always told them they didn't come out with an instruction book. Exactly.

Kristina: 00:25:19

Awesome. And thank you so very, very much.

Audience would have to wrap up, but we wanted to thank Katie for being here and also for you for listening and sharing these podcasts with others so, so that we can be inspired and help all of our families be happy, healthy and successful.

Herb: 00:25:36

Thank you for taking your pain.

So many people have, have had losses like that and, and they just collapse in on themselves and they don't come out and, and you took that and you went there, but then you grew out of that and now you're helping other people to avoid that. And that is the hero's journey. And so, so that you went out and you slayed your dragon and you came home and you're sharing your wisdom with others.

So thank you for being here and thank you for being a hero and getting out and sharing.

Dr. KD Wagner: 00:26:04

Well, thank you for having me. I sure appreciate it. Nice to meet you.

Kristina: 00:26:07

Nice to meet you too. All right, audience, you know what to do. Share and like and we will talk to you next time.

Herb: 00:26:13

Bye for now.