I'm Sergeant Josh Hansen, Retired, Army.
Spent two tours in Iraq.
I've been hit directly by eight IEDs.
I've always been into motocross, and I always thought, you know,
"If I can't beat the guys racing, then I'll join them
by being a mechanic for the guys that were beating me."
I started my own business doing motorcycle repairs.
And then September 11th happened.
By October, I was heading to Basic Training.
They called us IED Hunters or Route Clearance.
I worked out of Fallujah, and I'd go ahead of the Marines, in a lead vehicle,
and I'd look for the IEDs in the road, find the bombs, disarm them.
Unfortunately, sometimes we'd get hit by the bombs
and get, you know, blow our trucks up.
It's a very stressful way to live when,
you know, you never know when your time is going to be.
One of the last times I got hit,
I was hit by two IEDs, one right after another.
I spent three months in the hospital recovering from injuries --
I had neck, back, a traumatic brain injury.
And it was probably four months after being home,
as the brain injury started healing a little bit better,
then the PTSD really took over.
Then I got to where I couldn't really sleep at home,
didn't ever want to ever get out of the house,
didn't want to be around people.
Everything made me angry.
Just even being around my own kids was really difficult
when they would argue, fight, or be loud.
I ended up spending 60 grand to add on to my existing house,
so I could add extra rooms just for me that I could
lock myself in and be away from the family.
My dad, he also suffers from PTSD, from the Vietnam War,
and he wanted to make sure that I didn't have to
suffer as long as he had before he got help,
and so my dad said, "You're going to the VA."
So, he was like, "Get in the truck, we're going."
The doctor started giving me a lot of coping skills to use,
and she talked me into doing the Prolonged Exposure,
which, you know, part of the healing with that is getting out to, like, a Walmart
or getting out to a store with a lot of people and just staying
for X amount of time, just start easing into the process.
So, doing that helped out a lot.
My doctor says, "Hey, there's this program, Wasatch Adaptive Sports.
They can get Veterans out and doing things."
It got me out of the house more and with other Veterans.
Now we've got a real tight group of us guys that go up and ski together.
So, they've asked me to be a military liaison for them because they realized that
civilians have a harder time communicating with soldiers.
So now, I really enjoy helping other Veterans
experience the outdoors and life, like I have.
But it's still a roller coaster.
I'll have a great week,
and then I might dive down and have two bad weeks.
I absolutely don't want to leave the house, but I force myself to.
And as soon as I get out and get with other Veterans,
it's like all my problems go away.
[Kids talking and laughing]
I'm 41 years old now, and it's like totally new beginnings for me.
I had one Veteran that's seen photos of me when I was doing the motocross stuff,
and he's all, "Wow, I had no idea you used to do that stuff.
Why don't you ever talk about it?"
And I said, "Well, that was then, and this is now."
You know, my life has totally changed, but it's been a change for the better.