This story discusses suicide. If you or someone you know is in crisis, call 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. September is National Suicide Prevention Month.
It’s not uncommon for military service members and people who work as first responders to experience trauma on the job, but overcoming that mental toll requires vulnerability, which can be scary. That’s why it requires a leap of faith.
Mike Lewis barely made it to his first Warriors’ Ascent retreat at Camp Heartland in late February 2022.
“I knew that I wasn’t going home if this program didn’t work,” Lewis said. “My mantra on the way up here — I dropped my little daughter off at school and, as she was walking to the school, I knew that that was the last time I was going to see my little baby girl.”
Lewis worked as a paramedic with Butler County EMS when learned about Warriors’ Ascent from Brian Rousseau, a friend who’d been through the program.
“The first day I met — I actually still have the picture — I brought him a dozen donuts,” Lewis said with a laugh. “We sat there and we talked about life in general — ironically enough, over a cold beer. He saw and heard the stories and my actions and my emotions. That’s when he really ramped up the talk about Warriors’ Ascent.”
The program had helped Rousseau, a police officer with the North Newton Police Department, tap into and regulate his emotions. He credited it for making him a better person, father and officer and thought it could help Lewis, too.
“He spoke highly of it and he said, if it could save him, it could save me,” Lewis said.
Warriors’ Ascent blends cognitive behavioral therapy, mindfulness-based therapy, and emotion-focused therapy with some self-care tips to help veterans and first responders heal.
“Avoidance is the predominant coping mechanism for veterans in particular — and, I'd submit to you, first responders as well,” Warriors’ Ascent Executive Director Mike Kenny said. “What that means is, ‘Hey, I don't want to feel the bad stuff, so I'm going to tamp it down.’”
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Avoidance isn’t an option at a weeklong Warriors’ Ascent retreat.
The latest cohort spent Wednesday probing the depths of their pain, piercing their egos, and working on forgiveness — of themselves, as much as anything else, in most cases — around a campfire together. It’s a powerful but emotional ceremony often centered on death and loss.
The group walks from the campfire to a challenge course, where participants ascend a 40-foot telephone pole and leap from the top.
“This is really all about leaping towards a new you,” Kenny said. “So, this morning is about, ‘Hey, what am I going to let go of? What am I not going to let define me?’ And this ceremony, the Leap of Faith, is really about jumping towards a brighter, better future.”
Lewis, who first attended a retreat in February/March 2022, returned to Camp Heartland as a mentor this week and calls the Leap of Faith the most impactful activity for a Warriors’ Ascent cohort.
“I don't know if you've watched today, but today was the most powerful day of this program for me,” Lewis said.
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COVID-19 delayed Lewis’ first Warriors’ Ascent retreat. Then, two months before he finally got to take part 2 1/2 years ago, Rousseau died unexpectedly.
“Brian Rousseau was my pushing force to come up here. As soon as I walked through the doors at the Heartland Center that Monday, I definitely felt him,” Lewis said. “If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be here.”
He even received a text from Rousseau’s wife that morning: “I hope that's you in that picture that I just saw from Warriors’ Ascent on their Facebook page.”
Lewis hadn’t been in touch with Erin since Brian’s funeral.
“There's just so many emotions that, I mean, it was just hard,” he said.
But he replied to Erin and acknowledged that he’d come to Warriors' Ascent.
“Believe, buy in and get home,” Erin wrote, a message that Lewis treasures and keeps on his phone.
Mile marker 98 became important to him. On the drive up from the Wichita area to Parkville, Lewis recognized as he passed mile marker 99 that he was leaving his coworkers’ EMS coverage area.
“I knew that was outside of my agency’s response area and they’d never find me,” he said. “There was not a town close by, so I came up here, I pulled in on the gravel and I was going to turn around. I was going to go home. Well, not go home, but I was going to go upstairs — you know, go to heaven.”
Instead, his heart was healed, his life was saved and his future was transformed through Warriors’ Ascent. He made it back to mile marker 98 and beyond.
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Lewis spiraled again in January 2024 when several coworkers died in a medical helicopter crash in Oklahoma.
“I lost not only my partner — he was going to be my partner, my full-time partner — I also lost one of my buddies that I met in New Hire Academy for Air Evac Lifeteam,” Lewis said. “... I started to kind of lose my focus on the Warriors’ Ascent (lessons). I practiced that all the time. I preach it to everybody I come in contact with, especially first responders.”
But recovery and mental-health journeys are seldom straight lines. They’re filled with peaks and valleys, stops and starts, struggles and moments to cherish.
For Lewis, the new trauma triggered a relapse.
“I haven't talked to my oldest (son, Tater) in three months, just because of my personal decisions,” he said. “I drowned all my demons on the playground with alcohol.”
But the support system he gained with Warriors’ Ascent went to work, inviting him to return to this week’s retreat. Lewis is sober again — and talking to his son again.
“The last three or four days since I've been up here, he's texted and called me every day and told me, ‘Dad, you're in the right place,’” Lewis said. “It just solidifies that this program is truly a lifesaving program. I would not be here if it wasn't for them.”
As Lewis watched a new cohort take the Warriors’ Ascent Leap of Faith, he couldn’t help but think about the better, brighter future he envisioned — one where he’s present in his children’s lives.
“That's my driving force — is knowing that I can be the best possible version of myself with the tools and tricks that I've learned from this program,” he said. “To go back home, I can blow past mile marker 99 and 98 and get home to my kids.”
Warriors' Ascent will host its 2024 Celebration Dinner on Friday, Nov. 8, 2024, in Overland Park.
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