Today we’d like to introduce you to David Sanders.
Hi David, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
When I was six my parents divorced and split the siblings, my dad got my older brother and me, while my mother took our two sisters and a half brother with her. We lived in Southern California at the time, my mother moved to Seattle Washington. My father took the divorce extremely hard and basically spent all of his time in a local bar. At the age of ten my brother became my “keeper”. From six years old until the age of twelve I depended on my brother for everything in life. He became my father, mother, brother and sisters all rolled into one. I needed and loved him more than anything on earth.
He started drinking alcohol heavily and doing barbiturates, along with pot at the age of 13. Our house became a party house for all the local teenagers, with my dad being the primary source of supplying the alcohol. When I was 12 years old, the 16 year old brother that I depended on for everything in life walked into our shared bedroom and shot himself in the head with a high powered rifle on August 18, 1968. I ran into the bedroom right after the shot to the most horrific scene imaginable. The coroner’s report described the scene as: There was macerated brain substance, blood and skull fragments on every wall, ceiling and floor of the bedroom. I went into immediate shock and spent the next ten years of my life and childhood believing that my brother had possessed my body and I kept him alive in our shared space of my body. He gave me the strength I needed to survive, but he also gave me the constant desire to kill myself.
I enlisted in the Army 82nd Airborne Division on my seventeenth birthday, January 1973 with only one goal, to make it to Viet Nam and finally die an honorable death with my brother while earning the Medal of Honor posthumously. The war was scaling down at the time and even though the only options I elected at enlistment were Combat Arms and Airborne, I was never deployed.
I got married at the age of eighteen and my first child was born August 19, 1978, exactly one decade and one day after my brother’s death. In my lost state of mind, I moved my brother’s soul from the purgatory he had been spending in my body, to the reincarnation of my first son. My marriage did not last long after that, my wife took what I thought was my son and brother and left me when he was six weeks old. I was completely lost. For the first time in my life I was without my brother in every way and grieving was starting all over again.
My life took an unexpected turn, when in Apace Junction Arizona I met and fell instantly in love with my true soulmate, Judy. We were married in early 1980 and had our first son, David in September 1980. His birth was the first time that I felt a real purpose in life. We had our daughter, Amy in July 1983 and we moved to Friendswood, Texas in 1984, where we have lived and worked for Friendswood ISD over the past 41 years.
Throughout all of this time, I suffered with PTSD, including anxiety, depression and flashbacks, while trying to put on the facade of being a fairly normal person. I did go through with just a couple of very brief periods of time with professional counseling, but nothing more than a few visits with local counselors. I did however, thirty years ago, start trying a self help method by writing the story of how much the suicide had impacted my life and still does to this day. The book was written over a ten year period and included a trip my wife and I made back to the house the suicide had occurred in, where I actually talked the residents into allowing me to go into the bedroom where it happened. Not wanting to scare them, I did not mention the suicide, but told them that my brother and I lived there in 1968 and that he had since passed on, and that the bedroom would have a world of memories for me. They gladly allowed me in, and to my disappointment there was nothing there for me.
Fast forward to this past year. Approximately nine months ago I started going to regular Thursday night meetings at Transition Plus, a group therapy made up of veterans transitioning from military to civilian life, most suffering from PTSD as far back as the Viet Nam War. For the first time in my life I was around people that had been dealing with PTSD since the 1960s. One night as we were sharing coping methods I brought up the book I had written decades ago. Eventually that led to me bringing in copies of the rough version of the manuscript and sharing that with seven members of the group. I got an immediate push from all of them to get it published, everyone of them thinking it had the potential of saving lives.
The day I told my son James that I was going to publish it, he told me that a good friend had just committed suicide that week, and the day I told my sister that I was going to publish it she had a co-worker kill themself. That co-worker was a follow up from the co-worker’s daughter killing herself two years earlier. I made my mind up at the end of that call that I was going to retire and spend the rest of my life as an advocate for suicide awareness and prevention in every way possible. To start with I went through with publishing the book and while it is selling on Amazon (Bonded A Brother’s Love; One Bullet. A Thousand Echoes), I am also giving away almost as many copies to people that need help or are in a position of leadership to get it into the hands of people that need help.
I mentioned in an earlier email that both of my parents were cotton pickers in the Lubbock Texas area just prior to my birth. Through the help of my wife and soulmate and with great expectations of our children, along with the stability we found in Friendswood, Texas, we were able to completely change the path of our family had been on.
We raised two very successful children, one is the owner of William David Homes, a high end luxury home builder and the other is an Associate Principal for Deer Park High School. My oldest son, James spent very little time with us while growing up, but did spend some very crucial time with us when he was nineteen and was lost in drug use. In nine short months and with lots of effort on his part he returned to Colorado completely clean with a new lease on life and went onto becoming the father of three and owner of 110 acres of peach orchards while developing two other thriving businesses in the small winery destination town of Palisade Colorado.
Both sons are multi-millionaires and my daughter has a Masters Degree, pursuing her life’s work in education management. All three of them make a positive difference in many lives every day. My wife and I have teamed up with a great brother/sister editor and graphic designer, Kel and Greg Majors to promote the book and all things related to suicide prevention.
I have been through two major heart surgeries, the last of which had me in ICU for three weeks and a total of almost three months of hospital and in-patient rehab stays. I was given a max of a ten year life expectancy at the end of my rehab. I currently have a mechanical aortic valve, two patches of bovine in my heart and a dual chamber pacemaker. I only mention the health issues because I don’t need and I am not taking any money from the sale of the book. If it ever makes a profit my wife will get 25% to help her when I am gone, my editor/graphic designer team will get 25%, we are donating 25% to veterans and civilian groups dealing with suicide and the last 25% will go into advertising and promotion to keep spreading the word of suicide prevention. I feel super blessed to spend the rest of my life with the goal of saving lives, one life at a time.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
There is not a smooth road when dealing with mental health issues like PTSD, anxiety and depression. I have spent the last 57 years of my life on an emotional rollercoaster, never knowing which way was up or down. I spent a good deal of my mid-teen years living on the streets, lost in the same world of drugs and alcohol that had taken my brother several years earlier. Once married to my second wife I was determined to raise our children with great expectations and stability. So I poured my heart and soul into my work. By day I was able to play the part of a fairly normal person and would crash each evening and throughout the nights that were haunted with almost constant nightmares and then doing the same pattern again the next day and every day.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
The book that I have written, is not from a professional author or done with a ghost writer. It was written over a ten year period and each page was written through eyes filled with tears. It was written during periods of time when my mind would suddenly change from the television show I was watching to a memory I shared with my brother. The thing I am most proud of to this day is the great possibility that the book has already played a part in saving a life. I had given a young man that worked with my son a copy of the rough draft to read. I knew at the time he was suffering from depression and had suicidal ideation. He was around 20 years old and still living at home. At that time the manuscript was named “A Guide to Suicide”. A few weeks later, about 10:00 pm at night, I received a call from his mother. She had found my manuscript laying around and had read it herself a few days earlier. Her call was for help. Her son had locked himself in his bedroom with enough pills to overdose and would not come out of the room. She asked me to come over and try to talk to him. It was over an hours drive from my house to his, but I jumped in my car and drove straight over. I was able to talk my way into his room, we talked for almost an hour before I left, feeling like he was in a pretty good spot for at least the rest of the night. This was about seven years ago and he is still alive today. I am not 100% sure the book alone was the lifesaver, but I know it played a large part in it.
On another personal level the absolute proudest moments of my life are the births of my children, and me being a veteran paratrooper of the prestigious 82nd Airborne Division.
Is there any advice you’d like to share with our readers who might just be starting out?
Dedicate your entire focus on what you are doing at the time. When switching from work to home and family make sure that the one at hand has 100% of your effort.
When you feel like giving up, don’t. Instead take a short time out and then accomplish what you started to do in the first place. Never accept that you can’t do anything that your body and mind are physically able to handle.
Don’t blame others on failed attempts. Learn from the mistakes and push on.
Do not be afraid to fail. Failure gives you the experience you need to know, to avoid near misses in the future.
Surround yourself with the right people.
Keep God and family in your heart with everything you do.
Pricing:
- Book is $17.99 on Amazon.
- Free to ministers, counselors and leaders of suicide awareness and prevention organizations.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://BondedABrothersLove.com
- Instagram: bondedbook
- Facebook: David Joe Sanders
- Other: mailto:info@bondedabrotherslove.com
